Mr. James Ingram was Constituting America Founder, actress Janine Turner’s, beloved 5th grade teacher, who instilled in Janine a love of our founding fathers, through the 5th grade’s production of 1776.

Mr. Ingram was honored as Constituting America’s Constitutional Champion in 2011 and was a beloved and active member of our Education Advisory  board.

Mr. Ingram’s full obituary is below.

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS – James Ingram, 72, passed away on Saturday, March 2, 2024.
Graveside Service: 10 a.m. Saturday, March 9, 2024, at Mount Olivet Cemetery with Jinx Ingram Thompson to officiate. Elizabeth Hatley, a dear friend, will deliver the eulogy. Visitation: 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, March 8, 2024, at Mount Olivet Chapel in the Sandburg Suite.
James was born in Fort Worth. He was the son of, James and Juanita Ingram. James accepted Christ as his personal Savior at a young age. He prayed daily and maintained a positive spirit. His cousins, Jinx and Betty, were like sisters to him. They had many great times including U.S.A. and world travel experiences.
James graduated from Texas Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Science degree. He obtained a Master’s in Education degree from Texas Christian University.
His lifelong, devoted career encompassed 34 years as an elementary fifth grade teacher at Eagle Mountain Elementary. He enjoyed the challenge of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in a modified version on the stage with his fifth grade Language Arts classes. He also produced musicals with his students early in his career. The Eagle Mountain-Saginaw I.S.D. school board named the school stage in his honor when he retired.
Other educator honors included: 1995-1996 District-wide Elementary Teacher of the Year, Peer Professional, PTA Life Membership Recipient, PTA Extended Service Award, and Saginaw Chamber of Commerce Educator of the Year.
James appeared on television’s Disney’s American Teacher Awards. He was selected by actress, Janine Turner, a wonderful former student, as her favorite teacher. Furthermore, Ms. Turner recognized him as “The Constitutional Champion Teacher at the “Constituting America” gala.
His involvement with Miss Texas Pageant included Board of Trustees member and Awards Ball Set-Up committee chairman. James was inducted into the Miss Texas Hall of Honor for his pageant work.
James was a season ticket holder with dear friends for the Fort Worth Symphony Pops, Texas Ballet Theater, and Theatre Arlington. B. J. Cleveland, former artistic director at Theatre Arlington, was a talented former student.
Trips to the Texas Rangers baseball games were a highlight. The “good times” were highlighted with his Bunco groups of special friends. The Olive Garden, Chili’s, Babe’s Restaurant, Saltgrass, and Abuelo’s were his favorite restaurants. James enjoyed reading best sellers and viewing the Oscar-nominated movies. Morning walks with his mall buddies at the NE Mall and Grapevine Mills Mall, started each day with special conversations and many smiles. Pilgrimages to Scarborough Faire in Renaissance costumes with his Bros.-in-Hose provided majestic experiences for James and friends.
Surgeries were a challenge later in life. These included open-heart surgery, two hernia surgeries, six leg surgeries, cataracts surgeries, skin cancer surgery and gallbladder surgery. God’s Grace saw James through these times.
Survivors: All from Fort Worth
Cousin, Jinx Ingram Thompson
Cousin, Betty Evans
Second Cousin, Kim, and her 3 children
Second Cousin, Josh and wife, Laurie and their 5 children
Cousin, Tommy Freeman, and his 3 children
To plant Memorial Trees in memory of James Arnold Ingram, please click here to visit our Sympathy Store.

In loving memory of our dear friend, Anne Maureen Quinn. Maureen entered this life on September 25, 1956 and passed away December 14, 2022. Maureen was a bright light who shone in all of our lives.

We were blessed to have Maureen’s beautiful voice narrate many of our 90 Day Studies. She also submitted our We The Future Contest winners’ films into film festivals, achieving over 118 film festival acceptances for our winners over her time with us. In Maureen’s memory, we have named our We The Future short film category after her.

Maureen was a talented writer, inspirational life coach and sought after voice talent in Hollywood, but most of all, she was a treasured friend to all of us who had the blessing of knowing her and working side by side with her over the years.

Please join us in leaving your remembrances of Maureen here on our page.

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Does the United States today resemble the nation envisioned by the American Founders? Have we lived up to the political and constitutional principles they believed are so important for maintaining a free society and remaining a self-governing people? Have we as a people done a good job of preserving those principles by educating and reminding each generation on their importance? Constituting America’s 90-Day Study on “First Principles of the American Founding” should help each of us, as citizens, think about the first two questions in a more enlightened and informed way – and certainly goes far in ensuring that the third question is answered in the affirmative.

In this series of essays, written by exceptionally thoughtful thinkers, teachers and scholars, we can discern how insightful the American Founders were in recognizing and articulating the first principles upon which the nation of America was founded. From ideas identifying the basis of rights in nature rather than tradition, to constitutional principles that established a limited government, to foreign policy principles meant to promote justice with other nations, these essays allow us to glean in a more capacious way the overarching ideas that informed who we were meant to be as a people and a nation.

These essays reveal that Americans, and especially the Founders, had learned extensively from the careful study of history. Born of English tradition, Americans gradually came to develop their own identity – one might even say “mind,” as Thomas Jefferson called it. Separated from Great Britain and largely left alone for decades, American colonists lived in relative freedom and came to establish local governments and social institutions that complemented their understanding of rights and liberties. They frequently heard these ideas of individual liberty and limited government reinforced in their churches, newspapers, shops, and businesses. The essays in the 90-Day Study, as a whole, show the story of how Americans became one people united by common principles.

The American Revolution was, in more than one sense, a test of those principles. Should the Revolution fail, the principles of liberty and self-government might be lost forever. It was also a test in the sense that Americans found themselves in the position of having to accomplish a political separation and wage a war in accordance with the very principles they declared to be self-evidently true. Winning the war and gaining independence seemed to many, including George Washington, nothing short of miraculous. Having accomplished this, Americans next found themselves having to apply the principles of the Declaration of Independence to the creation of a government that would fulfill the demands of justice both at home and toward foreign nations. In other words, Americans had to learn how to act like a nation – and this is when Americans applied and thought even more deeply about the meaning of their founding principles.

Domestically, Americans faced the great difficulty of establishing a republic, based on consent, to replace the traditional form of monarchy that had prevailed throughout most of human history. The challenge facing the Framers of the United States Constitution was how to frame a government that was sufficiently powerful to secure the natural rights of American citizens, but that was also sufficiently checked to prevent it from abusing and violating these rights and liberties. Another great challenge was to find constitutional ways of obligating America’s government to secure American sovereignty and independence, and to respect the independence and sovereignty of other nations. The essays in this 90-Day Study reveal that, to fulfill these ends, knowledge of fundamental principles proved to be the guiding star for the Framers of the Constitution, and the standard by which American citizens could judge the justice or injustice of acts of government even after the Constitution had been ratified.

In the end, these essays bring to the fore the Founders’ view that without civic virtue, no government – not even America’s own Constitutional government – can succeed. Local political participation can never be replaced by national administration without some cost to individual liberty; and despite the best efforts of the Framers of the Constitution, civic awareness and engagement is still necessary to check laws and policies that are contrary to the principled purposes of government. All of this reinforces why the Founders believed that a proper civic education of the American people was so critical – an education that informs them of both their rights and duties. This 90-Day Study, as a whole, aims to fulfill that crucially important purpose of the American Founders.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution

American government, as President George Washington notes, is to be based on opportunities to discuss political and policy issues by reflection and choice rather than by accident and force:

[I]f Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led like sheep, to the Slaughter. – George Washington, Speech to the Officers of the Army at Newburgh, the Newburgh Address, March 15, 1783.

The Articles of Confederation Congress had difficulty with the states meeting their funding requisitions during most of the Revolutionary War period. Ending the siege at Yorktown in General George Washington’s favor only made matters worse. With the British no longer posing a threat, the men of the Continental Army were ordered into bivouac at Newburgh, New York. Soon thereafter, Congress stopped paying them, as a “cost-saving” measure, and also stopped funding the soldiers’ pensions.

The conflict over this came to a head when an anonymous letter was circulated in Congress in which a threat was made: the Army would remove itself to “unsettled” western lands, leaving the states unprotected until such time as pay and funding resumed.

Commander-in-Chief General George Washington traveled personally to Newburgh, and in an emotional scene during which he apologized for having to use spectacles to read his prepared remarks said, “I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country,” he convinced the officers and men to renew their trust in Congress. Washington noted that the anonymous letter was appropriate since, “[I]f Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, … the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led like sheep, to the Slaughter.”

“The Founders considered freedom of speech a fundamental natural right.”[i] At the same time, the right was also understood to not be absolute because during the early colonial period, “seditious words” were taken seriously and often prosecuted, as was blasphemy in most states.

When Patrick Henry proclaimed on May 29, 1765, that “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third … may profit by their example,” he was indeed guilty of treason under English law. To “compass or imagine” the death of the King was one of the several crimes in the Treason Act of 1351, and Henry knew this. To the cries of “Treason” from some of the Burgesses in the room, Henry replied, “If this be treason, make the most of it.”

Christian thinker, G. K. Chesterton, said: “To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”[ii]

Sir William Blackstone agreed: “Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public…But if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his temerity.”[iii]  Note that Blackstone refers here to “illegal” speech; the Treason Act would provide but one example.

But other founding era philosophers disagreed. French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu,[iv] in his acclaimed work, The Spirit of the Laws, wrote: “The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts. . . . Words do not constitute an overt act; they remain only an idea.”

Without freedom of speech during the period 1760-1776, there likely would have been no revolution leading to American independence. Based on the Founder’s experience, the British would have prohibited public speeches arousing the people to claim their freedom and the press would have been severely curtailed.

“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates. An evil magistrate entrusted with power to punish for words, would be armed with a weapon the most destructive and terrible.”[v]

In ratifying the United States Constitution, Virginia, North Carolina and Rhode Island (both of which copied Virginia’s submission verbatim) all proposed a free speech amendment and James Madison included an amendment, which read: “That the people have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing and publishing their sentiments; that the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and ought not to be violated.”[vi] In successive House and Senate committees this was “wordsmithed” to the wording eventually placed within the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution.

The Founders great emphasis on freedom of speech makes the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 difficult to explain. Perhaps the expression “when the shoe is on the other foot” best captures Congress’s motivation to censor and suppress speech as the infant nation of America attempted to stay neutral in the on-again, off-again war between England and France. Americans were equally split on the question of which country the John Adams administration should support (even as both England AND France were both interdicting American shipping heading for their enemy’s ports). The Sedition Act made it illegal to make false or malicious statements about the Adams administration, specifically mentioning the President while conspicuously not mentioning the Vice-President. Criticism of Thomas Jefferson was therefore fair game, and certain “Adams-friendly” newspapers took great advantage of it.

So convinced they were of the unconstitutionality of the Acts, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison consented to drafting, respectively, the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. These essays argued that the states have both a right and a moral responsibility to declare unconstitutional acts of the national government to be so and hold them to be null and void within their state.

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually found the Sedition Act to be constitutional in United States v. Thomas Cooper (1800).[vii] Congress had set the Alien and Sedition Acts to expire on March 3, 1801; the reason being was, the following day, a new President and Vice President would be inaugurated. Over a century later, President Woodrow Wilson’s administration would bring back the Alien and Sedition Laws (as the Espionage and Sedition Acts) as the U.S. entered World War I.

The Free Speech landscape had changed drastically by 1925 when the Court “incorporated” the Free Speech Clause into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Gitlow v. New York,[viii] creating an explosion of free speech cases based on state government actions, which continued thereafter.

Although the Free Speech Clause was intended to only restrict government actions, in the 1970s, the Supreme Court began deciding that commercial “speech” could also be regulated to some extent.[ix] Since that time, regulations on commercial advertising have become commonplace.

Eventually, the Court decided that certain types of “symbolic speech,” i.e. “speaking” through actions rather than words, should also be protected.[x] Over the years, the following are some examples of types of symbolic speech among those requiring protection:

  • Wearing of black armbands (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District,1969)
  • Flag-burning (Texas v. Johnson, 1989)
  • Burning a Cross (R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 1992)
  • Political campaign contributions (Citizens United, 2010)

Without freedom of speech, remaining steadfast to the principle of free civil discourse and public debate without censorship, America would likely be a very different place. “Freedom of Speech is the great Bulwark of Liberty; they prosper and die together.”[xi]

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter @constitutionled.

[i] Robert Natelson, The Original Constitution; What it Actually Said and Meant.”Apis Books Colorado Springs, CO, p. 212.

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

[iii] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1769.

[iv] Montesquieu was the most oft-quoted political philosopher at the Constitutional Convention, after the Bible.

[v] Benjamin Franklin, On Freedom of Speech and the Press, Pennsylvania Gazette (17 November 1737).

[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

[vii] https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/sedition-case

[viii] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/268/652

[ix] https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/freedom-of-speech-for-corporations.html

[x] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1022/symbolic-speech

[xi] Trenchard and Gordon, Cato’s Letters, February 4, 1720.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

Amending the Constitution Without Amending the Constitution

Article V of the United States Constitution describes that the only lawful methods, of amendment, are by its keepers, the American people. While that may have been the Framers’ intent, an unlawful method of amending the Constitution, through judicial activism, for example, usurps the legislative process of the American people when the courts are used as a legislature. Black’s Law Dictionary defines “judicial activism” as a “philosophy of judicial decision-making whereby judges allow their personal views about public policy, among other factors, to guide their decisions.”[1]

When the Supreme Court renders an opinion about a constitutional provision, that opinion–it is called an “opinion” and not a “law”–has traditionally assumed the status of the Constitution itself; since the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land (see Article VI), the American people and the federal government have given federal court opinions the same status: the law of the land. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires this, but that is the way America has operated as a people since the Constitution was ratified. Many distinguished men over the years have warned against this approach:

Thomas Jefferson: “[T]o consider the judges the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

Andrew Jackson: “The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges.”

Abraham Lincoln: “[I]f the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court…the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Is the U.S. Constitution “Alive?”

President Woodrow Wilson is credited with originating the concept of a “Living Constitution,” the idea that the Constitution must constantly be updated to reflect changes in the culture and mores of an evolving society. Who best to guide the “evolution” of the Constitution but the legal “scientists” of the federal courts? Why go through the arduous process of amending the Constitution through Article V when the Supreme Court is willing to issue an opinion which will have the same effect as a desired amendment? The Supreme Court has often been viewed as the “legislature of last resort.” Policies which have failed to gain majority acceptance in the Legislative Branch, whether state or federal, are instead “enacted into law” by the Judiciary.

The Anti-federalist called “Brutus”[2] warned: the “power in the judicial, will enable them to mould the government, into almost any shape they please.”

James Madison mentioned in Federalist 51 that the Constitution requires the government “to control itself.”[3]

Congress last proposed an amendment to the Constitution fifty-two years ago, in 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment. Scores of proposed amendments are introduced in Congress each session; a handful may make it out of committee; none have achieved a two-thirds vote on the floor in either chamber, or both chambers, since 1971.

Article V of the United States Constitution, on amending the Constitution, states that when two-thirds (34) of the state legislatures apply to Congress for an amendment convention, Congress shall convene one. Nothing in the Constitution describes how such a convention must operate, or the threshold within the convention for approving amendment proposals before they are transmitted for ratification, but there is ample historical evidence showing how such conventions of the states operated during the founding period and model rules for such a convention have already been composed and tested.[4]

Consider next the alternatives to amending the Constitution through an Article V convention:

  • Wait on the Supreme Court to correct past errant rulings?
  • Wait on Congress to “start following the Constitution?” The 240 years of Supreme Court opinions and interpretations have removed most limitations on Congress’ authority.
  • Wait for Congress to proffer needful amendments? How likely is it that Congress will propose term limits on themselves, propose a balanced budget amendment, narrow the interpretation of general welfare or interstate commerce, propose repealing the Sixteenth and/or Seventeenth Amendments, or propose any amendment which results in a reduction of their jurisdiction or power?

The “Article V Question” is indeed controversial. Some opponents insist it will do more damage than good. Still, with arguments on both sides, correctly amending the Constitution remains in maintaining the principle that “the United States Constitution prescribes within the document the only lawful methods of amendment, by its keepers, the American people.”

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter @constitutionled.

[1] As quoted in “Takings Clause Jurisprudence: Muddled, Perhaps; Judicial Activism, No” DF O’Scannlain, Geo. JL & Pub. Pol’y, 2002.

[2] The identity of Brutus is unknown, but scholars have suggested he was either Melancton Smith of New York or John Williams of Massachusetts. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutus_(Antifederalist).

[3] James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788, read at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp.

[4] https://conventionofstates.com/videos/official-convention-of-states-historic-simulation-live.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

Prior to achieving statehood in March 1791, the Republic of Vermont placed a provision in their 1786 State Constitution. Every seven years, the people would elect a 13-person Council of Censors who would examine whether: “the Constitution has been preserved inviolate in every part, during the last septenary (including the year of their service;) and whether the legislative and executive branches of government have performed their duty, as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves, or exercised other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the Constitution: they are also to inquire, whether the public taxes have been justly laid and collected in all parts of this Commonwealth–in what manner the public monies have been disposed of–and whether the laws have been duly executed.”[i] This Council would: “recommend to the Legislature the repealing such laws as appear to them to have been enacted contrary to the principles of the Constitution; these powers they shall continue to have, for, and during the space of one year from the day of their election, and no longer. The said Council of Censors shall also have power to call a Convention, to meet within two years after their sitting, if there appears to them an absolute necessity of amending any article of this Constitution which may be defective–explaining such as may be thought not clearly expressed–and of adding such as are necessary for the preservation of the rights and happiness of the people; but the articles to be amended, and the amendments proposed and such articles as are proposed to be added or abolished, shall be promulgated at least six months before the day appointed for the election of such Convention, for the previous consideration of the people, that they may have an opportunity of instructing their delegates on the subject.” (Emphasis added)

Laying on land claimed by both New Hampshire, New York and, at times, Canada, Vermont finally became an independent republic on January 15, 1777. It called itself the State of Vermont but failed to receive recognition by any country until admitted to the union on March 4, 1791.[ii] Because of its independency, Vermont was not invited to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. If it had been invited, would these ideas of constitutional review and revision have made it into the United States Constitution? If the U.S. Constitution had contained such a provision, what sort of amendments might have been ratified over these 234 years (as of 2023). And over these years, would the Constitutional “Council of Censors” find, repeatedly, that the Constitution had not “been preserved inviolate in every part”?

Amendment Under the Articles of Confederation

One of the chief defects of the Articles of Confederation, found in Article XIII, reads in part: “nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of [these Articles]; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.”[iii] (Emphasis added)

This requirement for unanimity among the states meant that the Articles would never be amended or otherwise improved. In his Vices of the Political System of the United States, James Madison’s “homework assignment” to himself, he fails to mention this flaw among the twelve “vices” he identifies; it could be that much of the “blame” for America’s moving to a new Constitution is due to this one defect. At the Constitutional Convention, Charles Pinckney said “it is to this unanimous consent [provision of the Articles], the depressed situation of the Union is undoubtedly owing. Had the measures recommended by Congress and assented to, some of them by eleven and others by twelve of the States, been carried into execution, how different would have been the complexion of Public Affairs? To this weak, this absurd part of the Government, may all our distresses be fairly attributed.”[iv]

In 1781, a proposal was made to amend the Articles of Confederation to give Congress the power to set an impost on goods. Rhode Island refused to approve the measure. As described in the notes of delegate James Madison, “[t]he small district of Rhode Island put a negative upon the collective wisdom of the continent.” Just as Rhode Island’s veto prevented the adoption of an impost in 1781, New York would be the sole state to obstruct a second impost attempt two years later.

Early in 1785, a Congressional committee recommended amending the Articles of Confederation to give Congress power over commerce. Congress sent the proposed amendment to the state legislatures; only a few states responded.

Later that year, in a letter to James Warren, George Washington, wrote:  “In a word, the confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance;..Indeed it is one of the most extraordinary things …that we should confederate for National purposes, and yet be afraid to give the rulers of that nation… sufficient powers to order and direct the affairs of the same.”[v]

In 1786, Charles Pinckney proposed a revision of the Articles. A committee debated the proposal and recommended granting Congress power over both foreign and domestic commerce, and empowering Congress to collect money owed by the states. By now, convinced that at least one state would disagree, Congress never sent the measure to the states. Given this history, it appeared to the Constitutional Convention delegates that something less than unanimity was required to amend the new Constitution they had drafted.

Amendment at the Constitutional Convention

Item seventeen of the Virginia Plan, introduced in the “Grand Convention” on May 29, 1787, stated: “Resolved. that provision ought to be made for the amendment of the articles of Union, whensoever it shall seem necessary;” There  were many provisions of the Virginia Plan to discuss and debate. The delegates did not discuss a process of amendment until a month before the end of the convention.

The U.S. Constitution, Analysis and Interpretation website,[vi] provides this account of the debates over what became Article V of the new United States Constitution:

Alexander Hamilton … suggested that Congress, acting on its own initiative, should have the power to call a convention to propose amendments.[vii] In his view, Congress would perceive the need for amendments before the states.15 Roger Sherman took Hamilton’s proposal a step further, moving that Congress itself be authorized to propose amendments that would become part of the Constitution upon ratification by all of the states.16 James Wilson moved to modify Sherman’s proposal to require three-fourths of the states for ratification of an amendment.17 James Madison offered substitute language that permitted two-thirds of both houses of Congress to propose amendments, and required Congress to propose an amendment after two-thirds of the states had suggested one.18 This language passed unanimously.19

But on September 15, 1787, two days before the convention adjourned for the last time, Article V of the draft Constitution was again discussed. To that point, the approved wording gave all power to Congress to officially propose amendments, although the states could suggest them. Virginia’s George Mason rose and cautioned that: “No amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive (as Madison wrote in his notes), as he verily believed would be the case.” Gouverneur Morris and Elbridge Gerry then moved to require a convention on application of two-thirds of the states and the motion passed “nem: con:” (unanimously). And this provided the alternate method of proposing constitutional amendments: a convention of the states. But notice the rationale for this alternate method of amendment: should Congress become oppressive.

The process of amendment placed in Article V was further debated in the state ratifying conventions, the records of Massachusetts,[viii] North Carolina[ix] and Virginia[x] particularly recording the concerns of delegates. Some convention delegates, like Virginia’s Edmund Randolph, who refused to sign the Constitution, even called for an amending convention[xi] to be immediately convened to fix the “deficiencies” in the Constitution before they went into operation, which would make them harder to correct. Madison thought the idea dangerous. Randolph’s suggestion never gained momentum and the Constitution was ratified by Virginia on June 26, 1788, four days after New Hampshire’s ratification “sealed the deal” because it was the ninth state to ratify, the number of states required by the new Constitution. Less than a year later, the new national government went into operation.

Amending the Constitution – Correctly

Article V of the United States Constitution contains two methods of proposing amendments and two methods of ratifying amendments. Congress, with a two-thirds vote of both chambers, can propose an amendment for ratification by the states and the states themselves, in a convention called for that purpose, can propose amendments for ratification. Over America’s history, all 27 current amendments have been proposed by Congress, none by a convention of the states.

Ratification of a proposed amendment can also take two forms: ratification by three-fourths of the several state legislatures (38) or ratification by three-fourths of state conventions held for that purpose, Congress may “propose” either method. Over America’s history, the later method of ratification has been used only once, to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment.

As many as five thousand amendments have been proposed in Congress since the Constitution went into effect in 1789 and only twenty-seven survived the high hurdle of committee discussions/votes followed by super majority floor votes in both chambers.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter @constitutionled.

[i] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a5s1.html.

[ii] It was Vermont’s admission to the Union which required ratification of the Bill of Rights by ten states versus the nine required to ratify the Constitution itself.

[iii] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-confederation.

[iv] Charles Pinckney, Observations on the Plan of Government Submitted to the Federal Convention of May 28, 1787, reprinted in 3 Farrand’s Records, supra note 1, at 120–21.

[v] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch5s9.html.

[vi] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artV-2/ALDE_00013047/#ALDF_00017913

[vii] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artV-2/ALDE_00013047/#ALDF_00017913

[viii] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a5s7.html.

[ix] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a5s10.html.

[x] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a5s9.html.

[xi] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a7s4.html.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Kevin Portteus

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Though the concept of national borders is rejected by many,[1] with some even denouncing the very idea of borders between nations as racist,[2] at both principled and practical levels, however, secure borders are not only defensible, but essential.

More than any other single concept, the foundational principle of the American regime is the principle of natural equality. “That all men are created equal” is the first of the “self-evident truths” proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. In his 1791 Lectures on Law, James Wilson explains that this equality does not extend to “to their virtues, their talents, their dispositions, or their acquirements,” but only that “the natural rights and duties of man belong equally to all.”[3] This equality of rights originates in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”: it is inherent in our humanity, and not dependent on any regime or government.

The political corollary of the equality principle is the principle of government by consent. Abraham Lincoln describes this as “the sheet anchor of American republicanism” and “our ancient faith.”[4] Precisely because all men are created equal, no man has the right to govern any other man, without that other’s consent. No one is inherently superior to anyone else in his right to govern. All legitimate political relationships between equal human beings must be on the basis of consent.

This principle of consent is directly applicable to immigration and border security. If borders are insecure, then people may enter into a country, without the consent of those who already comprise that country. It would be as if a homeowner had no right to prevent random people from simply walking in the front door, plopping themselves down on the couch, and claiming to live there now. A property owner has a right to control ingress into his property. A nation is the collective property of its citizens, who have consented to live with each other. If a random person could force himself on the people of a country, without their consent, then that is not a relationship of equals. It is instead tyranny.

Not only is a nation without secure borders subject to the arbitrary whim of whomever may choose to impose himself upon it, that nation also has no control over what comes across its borders. There is overwhelming evidence that huge quantities of illegal narcotics, such as fentanyl, have been pouring across America’s porous southern border.[5] Other problems are known to occur such as increased rates of diseases like polio and tuberculosis.[6] Finally, an insecure border is an invitation to engage in international human trafficking, and the practice is epidemic at the US-Mexico border.[7]  In short, a nation, which does not have secure borders, is not really a sovereign nation at all.

The power to protect the integrity of America’s borders is embedded in the United States Constitution in at least two places.  First, Article I, Section 8 states that Congress “shall have power…to define and punish…Offences against the Law of Nations.” Borders, and migration of non-citizens across those borders, were understood by America’s Founders to be a law of nations issue and are thus covered by this clause. Second, Article I, Section 9, the infamous “Importation Clause,” creates a “negative pregnant,” implying that in the absence of one very specific set of conditions, Congress may regulate “migration” into the United States, not just the “importation” of enslaved persons[8] as was being addressed by the Founders at the time of writing the Constitution. They wanted to continually reduce and end the scourge of slavery in the United States while preserving the Union and without fomenting war between the states over controversial issues.

With this understanding by the Founders, how would it be possible to maintain what makes America its own nation able to self-govern apart from any dictatorships that could take hold? As President, John Adams wrote “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[9] meaning that the nation of Americans possesses a specifically chosen cultural infrastructure, and the American people have historically adopted certain moral values, that make its system of constitutional self-government possible. This system, in turn, makes it possible for Americans to enjoy their natural rights. Other peoples, and other cultures, antithetical to that system of government, are thus a mortal threat to America’s political system and way of life, and Jefferson cautioned against a mass influx of peoples with opposing cultures and values, to those of America’s, in Notes on the State of Virginia.[10]

The ultimate tendency of the obliteration of borders is the obliteration of the very idea of sovereign nations. In Federalist 10, James Madison argues for the viability and desirability of a large republic, but even this has its limits.[11] The limits of communication and transportation cannot be completely overcome, and there’s more to a self-governing political society than that. The competing interests of society must have something to unite them; Madison also notes in Federalist 10 that “justice ought to hold the balance between them.” In order to constitute a true political society, a regime, they must share something fundamental, which Aristotle at the outset of The Politics calls the “good.”[12]

The natural and inherent differences in people’s thinking about ideas such as what is good and just means that the peoples of the world will never agree on them perfectly, and they can thus never come together into one regime on principles of justice. The result will either be tyranny or anarchy, as philosophers as diverse as Leo Strauss and John Rawls have noted.[13] The destruction of sovereign nations does not signify the dawn of universal justice; it rather heralds the establishment of universal tyranny.

Secure borders, then, are a necessary precondition of liberty and self-government. It allows us to distinguish between those who are members of our political community, and those who are not. It allows people who share conceptions of justice and the good to congregate into one political community and govern themselves according to those conceptions. Secure borders allow Americans to preserve the cultural infrastructure that makes the United States’ version of free self-government possible. The concept of secure borders is embedded in both American principles and constitutionalism. The destruction of secure borders would be a catastrophe for the American republic.

Kevin Portteus is Professor of Politics, Director of American Studies, and the Lawrence Fertig Chair in Politics at Hillsdale College.

 

[1] https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/RI_TheStatueofLibertyPlan_Report_202208.pdf (accessed August 4, 2023); https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/this-is-the-immigration-policy-liberals-want.html (accessed August 4, 2023); Alex Nowrasteh, Open Immigration: Yea, in Alex Nowrasteh and Mark Kirkorian, Open Immigration: Yea & Nay (New York: Encounter Books, 2014).

[2] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/30/1041623709/the-racist-legacy-of-early-immigration-law-is-still-alive-today (accessed August 4, 2023); https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nevada-judge-says-immigration-law-making-reentry-a-felony-is-unconstitutional-has-racist-origins (accessed August 4, 2023).

[3] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s48.html (accessed July 30, 2023).

[4] https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/speech-on-the-kansas-nebraska-act-at-peoria-illinois-abridged/ (accessed July 31, 2023).

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fentanyl-seizures-u-s-southern-border-rise-dramatically-n1272676 (accessed July 31, 2023).

[6] https://nypost.com/2023/04/18/bidens-open-borders-are-bringing-contagious-diseases-to-your-neighborhood/ (accessed July 31, 2023).

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/us/migrant-smuggling-evolution.html (accessed July 31, 2023); https://www.npr.org/2021/04/24/990150761/human-smugglers-bypass-border-patrol-bedeviling-sheriffs-and-ranchers-in-south-t (accessed July 31, 2023); https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/trouble-at-the-border-is-fueling-human-trafficking (accessed July 31, 2023).

[8] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/705604 (accessed July 31, 2023).

[9] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102 (accessed July 31, 2023).

[10] https://vindicatingthefounders.com/library/notes-on-virginia-8.html (accessed July 31, 2023).

[11] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0178 (accessed August 4, 2023).

[12] Aristotle, The Politics, book 1, chapter 1 (1252a1-3).

[13] G. P. Grant, “Tyranny and Wisdom: A comment on the Controversy Between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve”, Social Research 31, no. 1 (spring 1964): 45-72; John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 36.

Guest Essayist: Amanda Hughes

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Though we might give to such a government certain powers with safety, yet to give them the full and unlimited powers of taxation and the national forces would be to establish a despotism, the definition of which is, a government in which all power is concentrated in a single body. To take the old Confederation, and fashion it upon these principles, would be establishing a power which would destroy the liberties of the people… It was seen that the necessary powers were too great to be trusted to a single body; they, therefore, formed two branches, and divided the powers, that each might be a check upon the other…The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendency over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation. – Alexander Hamilton in a speech, Compromises of the Constitution, June 20, 1788 during the New York Ratifying Convention.

On federal-state confrontation, Hamilton—an aide to General George Washington during the American Revolution and then our first Secretary of the Treasury— in speaking on this topic quoted above, as he argued for the ratification of the United States Constitution: “We might give to such a government certain powers,” he said of the proposed federal government, and yet, he continued, “to give them the full and unlimited powers of taxation and the national forces would be to establish a despotism . . . establishing a power which would destroy the liberties of the people.” Hamilton wanted the states and their people to have power, too, as a counterweight to the danger of federal usurpation. These warnings note that liberty can be destroyed through abrupt or gradual means either by a domestic tyrant or if a foreign force overwhelms it. Hamilton had the answer for both: “The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendency over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments.”

Hamilton made it plain he sympathized with the states: “That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.” In other words, keep the states intact, as a bulwark of freedom for themselves, and as a bulwark against national impingement. This is part of the genius of the Constitution: for every legitimate power, there’s a legitimate counter-power.

As an entity intended to be indestructible, each state has a right, and a duty, to ensure its own integrity and survival. For example, the federal government leads the national defense, but if it won’t, the states must act. For example, one of the state constitutions declares, “Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States.”

Additionally, if the federal government attempts to centralize, for example, law enforcement, education, differing circumstances affecting city or county funding or regulatory needs from state to state, then local control can be usurped of its most basic foundations for maintaining self-government and accountability. Through state constitutions, state legislatures, city and town councils, civil systems closest to the people are enabled to uphold Americans in charge of their own governing.

Along with Founders such as Hamilton, others later in American history learned the importance of state sovereignty which meant local control and self-governing. For instance, Salmon P. Chase appointed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 as Chief Justice of the United States, in 1869, Chase opined on behalf of the Court, “The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.” So how, precisely, does the indestructible Union interact with the indestructible States? That is a question each generation of Americans must carefully discern through the study of history.

America’s Founders, and Framers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution knew the dangers of centralized government that easily usurped the local decision-making process. From the study of world history, they understood this well leading up to what would be contained in the words of the Declaration of Independence, and fought for in the American Revolutionary War. Though they did not want war, they were willing to do so for independence. They discussed through meeting together, writing letters, pamphlets and newspaper articles about how freedom is not free and that the steps to gain independence would be slow and difficult, but worth it. They understood how a government distant from the people could easily turn into a tyrannical dictatorship of top-down control. From the perspective of America’s Founders, Framers of the Declaration of Independence, and eventually the United States Constitution, it was far better to protect local decision-making that would not remove self-governing from the people than to allow centralization of government to take root. This was the importance they saw in limiting the federal government and ensuring liberty of the states and localities of America.

This understanding was more stark to them each day of work it took to gain their independence from Great Britain and eventually form a different type of government. Samuel Adams emphasized this importance after the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776. Then a little over a week later the Articles of Confederation were presented on July 12 that would serve as a constitution to get the new nation’s government started. In his speech “On American Independence” on August 1, 1776, Adams stated: “Our Union is now complete; our Constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties. We may justly address you as the decemviri did the Romans, and say: ‘Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.’”

The ideas that animated the debate over the United States Constitution nearly a quarter-millennium ago are as alive today as today’s headlines. The principle of distinguishing between the purpose of federal and state governments cannot be overstated. Maintaining the Union through preventing federal encroachments on the states and individual Americans is vital to the foundation of self-governing and independence. Legal and political issues that threaten the ability of the states to maintain local control continually prove the Constitution so relevant and urgent for American citizens to understand and apply.

Amanda Hughes serves as 90-Day Study Director for Constituting America. She is author of a book on faith and voting, Who Wants to Be Free? (WestBow Press). She is a story contributor for the anthologies Loving Moments and Moments with Billy Graham (Grace Publishing). She served as editor of her father’s book, Adventures, Wit & Wisdom: The Life & Times of Charlie Hughes (WestBow Press). Amanda received her B.A. from Texas State University and her M.A. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“The freedom of speech is a principal Pillar in a free Government: when this support is taken away the Constitution is dissolved, and Tyranny is erected on its Ruins.” – Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737, printed by Benjamin Franklin, later reprinted in the Barbados Gazette, 1738, and attributed to Pennsylvania Lawyer and Pennsylvania Colonial Representative as having possibly been the author of the article.

The Declaration of Independence asserts the self-evident truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed with natural rights. The Declaration then states that governments are established with the purpose of protecting those rights with the consent of the governed. This Lockean conception of social compact theory supported a representative government in the American republic.

The concept of consensual government naturally supported the idea of freedom of speech. While the nature of free speech differed from America’s modern conception, the principle of political free speech was fundamental to a republican form of government and self-governing society. Expressing political opinions in speech and in print, engaging in hearty debate and deliberation, and giving consent to representatives in legislatures were all essential for self-governance.

In The Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote, “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” As the first branch of government, Congress most embodied the principle of self-government and representation. The legislative branch, both in Congress and the state legislatures, was the center of deliberation, debate, and consensus.

Indeed, the American founding experienced great deliberative moments that represented profound moments of reflection and discussion. These debates demonstrate the importance of free speech to exchange political viewpoints in a free society. In each case, they show that free debate of clashing viewpoints can result in the common good. For example, the members of the Second Continental Congress were unsure or even opposed to independence in early 1776. A vigorous debate occurred in which both sides of the issue sought to persuade the other. Eventually, the Congress unanimously agreed to independence.

During 1787-1788, the great deliberative moment of making and ratifying the United States Constitution witnessed robust debates between the Federalists and Anti-federalists over the principles of human nature and government. The debates took place in the secret Philadelphia convention, but the vigorous conversation moved into state ratifying conventions, newspapers and pamphlets, private letters, and taverns.

In the early republic, the George Washington presidential administration had its share of highly partisan and contentious debates. The debates over Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s financial plans and the crafting of American foreign policy were rooted in constitutionalism and establishing the right precedents for the new government as prescribed in the new Constitution. These deliberations could be offensive and personal, but they were also deeply rooted in constitutionalism as both sides took the document seriously.

In all of these debates, the key principle was the element of free speech. The representatives and the people freely asserted their views about the best ways to achieve good government. They may have often had rival conceptions of the public good, but they built consensus through sharing and debating those ideas, listening to the arguments of the other side, and trying to persuade others of a reasonable viewpoint. For these reasons, holding to the first principle of free speech and thought has always been a core component of a self-governing people.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: George Landrith

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“…there must be Associations of Men of unshaken Fortitude. A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy.” – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, Philadelphia, February 12, 1779.

The Bill of Rights doesn’t grant or create rights, but it does outline and protect rights. Our nation’s Founders believed that rights were given to us by our Creator. But they also believed that the proper role of government was to protect God-given rights. The freedom of association is a fundamental right of a free people. The First Amendment lays out the basis for the freedom of association — which simply means we have the right to associate with like-minded people, if we choose to.

The First Amendment explicitly protects religious freedom, freedom of speech and of the press, the right to assemble peacefully, and to petition the government to remedy injustice. While the phrase “freedom of association” does not appear in the United States Constitution, the right is wrapped up in the ideas of freedom of speech, the right to peacefully assemble, and the right to petition our government as well as the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It is important to remember that the Bill of Rights was never intended to list every God-given right that we have. The Ninth Amendment explicitly states this point — “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Likewise, in some ways the Bill of Rights is more a list of limits on the power of government than it is a list of rights. For example, the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law ….” The Second Amendment says that the right of the people “shall not be infringed.” The Fourth Amendment says that “the right of the people … shall not be violated….” The Eighth Amendment prohibits government from imposing cruel and unusual punishments and excessive bail and fines.

If the Bill of Rights had been intended by our Founders to be a complete and comprehensive list of every God-given right that we had, it would have been much, much longer. The issues raised in the Bill of Rights were things that the Founders had experience with. They had seen the British crown mandate religious practices, limit speech, destroy presses that published disfavored ideas, and try to confiscate American guns. They had also seen Redcoats terrorize Americans, searching and destroying their homes and businesses without due process. They had also seen throughout history a number of abuses by other overbearing and unjust governments. So the Bill of Rights was only a partial listing of the rights that history had taught them were most likely to be abridged by a tyrannical government.

America’s Founders did speak specifically of the freedom of association. Samuel Adams was an ardent patriot, an influential leader of the movement for American Independence, and a cousin of John Adams. In a letter dated February 12, 1779, to James Warren — a fellow advocate for American independence and a Major General in George Washington’s Continental Army — Sam Adams wrote “…there must be Associations of Men of unshaken Fortitude. A general Dissolution of Principles and Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy.”

It makes perfect sense that America’s Founders would see the freedom of association as foundational to a free society. They had gathered together and worked together to promote American independence. And the British Crown had attempted to make those associations a criminal activity. America’s Founders understood that they would have to associate and work with other Americans who shared their desire for independence. The British attempt to deny them the right to associate with like-minded Americans was simply an attempt to silence them and prevent them from petitioning the government for redress of their grievances. And only after years of presenting their grievances and being entirely rebuffed did they finally decide to declare their independence.

A logical extension of the rights of free speech and the right to peacefully assemble is the freedom of association. So while the actual words “freedom of association” do not appear in our Bill of Rights, the principle of freedom of association is clearly intended by our Founders and the United States Constitution. If you only have the freedom of speech as an individual, but cannot align yourself with others who share your views, that would give government the power to limit your ability to effectively speak your mind or petition the government.

Likewise, freedom of association includes the right for a group or association to establish its own rules for governing the internal affairs of the group. Imagine if government could regulate political parties or issues-based groups and how they operate. If government had this power it could effectively stifle a political group’s ability to petition the government or to speak out on policies that it supports or opposes.

Freedom of association also includes the freedom to not associate. An example of unwanted association is when a group tries to force employees to contribute to spending on ideological or political issues that employees may disagree with. The point is that government should not be requiring people to associate or preventing them from associating. In a free society, people get to decide what groups they agree with and which ones they disagree with and to either associate or not to associate based on their own determination — not government mandates.

We have a wide variety of possible associations — family, friends, neighbors, schools, the workplace, clubs, political parties, issue-based groups, etc. Not all are voluntary — for example, we are typically born into a family, we don’t choose the family we belong to. But once we become adults, we do choose how closely we want to align with and associate with our family. Likewise, young children don’t really choose to attend school or even a particular class.

But by the time we are adults, our associations are by choice — the church we go to or don’t go to, the job that we choose to pursue, and the clubs or organizations that we join or support. In a free society, government ought not be dictating what friendships, memberships, or groups we must maintain or support, and alternatively those which we must avoid or spurn. And government should not impose rules upon groups which discourage membership or punish those who align with the group.

In 1958, in NAACP v. Alabama, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the freedom to associate was part and parcel of free speech and peaceable assembly and that it also flowed from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved the State of Alabama trying to deny the NAACP the right to operate within the state unless the organization fully disclosed its membership and donor lists.

The NAACP was concerned that such disclosure could be used to harass its members and would significantly limit its ability to align with Americans who supported civil rights and equal rights for all citizens. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that the freedom to associate was part of the ability to engage in free speech and to peacefully assemble and that advancing your beliefs through association with like-minded people was an inseparable part of the Bill of Rights and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Freedom of association is part of American life since the nation’s earliest days. We even associate with other Americans via social media. It is instructive that totalitarian regimes like North Korea, China and Iran outlaw free association. If you’re spotted visiting or dining with the wrong people, these regimes will punish you. If you attend religious services, or have friends who attend such services or have friends who are known to support reforms, you will be punished.

Even China’s social credit program is designed to enforce a mechanism that requires its populace to maintain only those relationships that are approved of by the government. No free society can tolerate a government that believes it has the power or authority to dictate associations in this fashion.

America’s Founders wisely understood that a free people must have the right to think for themselves, to speak freely, to petition their government without reprisals, to create associations to further their beliefs and leverage their speech, and to work individually or in association with others for policy reforms. The nation of America has been blessed that its Founders recognized this important fundamental right of freedom of association.

If America hopes to continue to be a free people, then we must continue to embrace and defend free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience, the right to petition the government and the freedom of association. These freedoms are foundational elements of self-determination.

George Landrith is the President of Frontiers of Freedom.

 

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“How then will it be possible, under these circumstances, to endure this Tax which is laid upon us by Parliament? –Add to this, that it will drain the Province of the little Cash left among us, which at present barely serves for a Medium of Trade…And if you should be active in bringing this Tax upon yourselves, at it will inevitably destroy our constitutional Privileges, so it will perpetuate to the latest Posterity, a most despicable Opinion of the civil Principles of their Ancestors…But should your Representatives be instructed by you, (which God forbid!) by a solemn and public Act to promote the Operation of this Law, you will implicitly declare that you resign that inestimable Right; and, in Consequence of such Resignation, you may next expect a Tax on your Lands; and after that one Burthen on the Back of another, till you are reduced to a State of the most abject Poverty…The Effects I presage are dreaded far and wide. –Would to God our Terror was merely panic, and that the Disagreeableness of the Act arose only from its Novelty. –But our Fears are founded on Reason and universal Experience…Consider gentlemen, that the least infraction of your Liberties is a Prelude to Encroachments…Indolence –Indolence has been the Source of irretrievable Ruin –Languor and Timidity, when the Public is concerned, are the origin of Evils mighty and innumerable” –A letter authored only using the initials W.B. “To the Inhabitants of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay,” concerning the Stamp Act, appeared in The Boston-Gazette and Country Journal, October 7, 1765.

In 1765, the Stamp Act ignited a storm of protest and led to a series of events that sparked a revolution of the American colonies against Great Britain. The dreaded act was a British tax on colonial stamps on newspapers, legal documents, and playing cards among other items. The taxes provoked a strong reaction against the colonists who raised cries that they were being taxed without representation in Parliament.

The colonists resorted to several different forms of protest to the taxes. At first, they petitioned the king and Parliament claiming their constitutional liberties as Englishmen and their natural rights. Soon after learning of the impending taxes, in December 1764, the Virginia House of Burgesses was the first to level a protest and sent a petition stating that, “The people are not subject to any taxes but such are laid on them by their own consent.”

In addition, colonists formed mobs that intimidated and coerced the Stamp Act collectors into not collecting the tax and resigning their offices. Some were threatened with violence, others were burned in effigy, and one was frighteningly buried alive until he relented. Other acts of violence erupted, with Boston mobs tearing down the Stamp collector’s office and vandalizing and plundering the home of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

The colonists also began to demonstrate a sense of common identity and unity when nine colonies agreed to meet at the Stamp Act Congress in New York. After their deliberations, the delegates agreed to a declaration of rights asserting their fundamental liberties. Foremost among these was the right not to be taxed without their consent. “It is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.”

British merchants were devastated financially by the colonial boycotts of British goods. They petitioned the king and Parliament for relief and eventually found it when Parliament revoked the Stamp Act Taxes. However, the Parliament also passed the Declaratory Act, which affirmed that principle that the body could legislate and tax the colonists in “any case whatsoever.”

The clashing perspectives of the colonists and British showed a fundamental disagreement over taxation and the powers of government. The parliamentary assertion of unlimited authority to govern the colonies led to additional attempts to tax the colonists, who predictably stood by the principle of no taxation without consent and resisted the taxes.

In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts which were a tax on a variety of items including glass, paint, paper, and tea. The colonists again resolved not to import British goods, which dried up trade between Great Britain and her colonies. Parliament relented and revoked the taxes but soon passed the Tea Act which collected three pennies per pound.

While it might seem like a trifling amount, Virginian George Washington explained that it was the principle that was at stake rather than the money. “What is it we are contending against? Is it paying the duty of 3d. per pound on tea because burdensome? No, it is the right only…as Englishmen, we could not be deprived of this essential and valuable part of our Constitution.”

The Boston Tea Party in late 1773 was the clearest expression of colonial opposition to being taxed without consent. The British retaliated harshly with the Coercive Acts shutting down the Port of Boston, banning town meetings and self-government, and allowing British colonial officials to escape American justice. This course led to the First Continental Congress and the first shots of the war being fired at Lexington and Concord. One of the grievances of the Declaration of Independence was “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.”

During the war and after, however, the opposition to central authority provoked by resistance to British tyranny meant that one of the problems in the new nation was the inability to tax and collect adequate revenue. During the period, the Continental and Confederation Congress relied primarily on requisitions to the states for taxes, which were frequently ignored. Meanwhile, the states and national government were burdened by large war debts. The national government under the Articles of Confederation was especially unable to pay it off or use revenue to pay for armies to suppress internal rebellions such as Shays’ Rebellion.

Article I of the new United States Constitution empowered the Congress to pass taxes with the consent of the people through their elected representatives. Article I, section 8 stated: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

However, because of the fear that the Senate might form a corrupt cabal with the executive branch, and because the House of Representatives was the only popularly-elected branch of government and was closest to the people, any bills in Congress for taxes had to start in the House. Article I, section 7 states, “All Bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.”

Taxation in the United States was often controversial from the tariff and protective tariff in the nineteenth century to the escalating tax rates to fund a growing federal government in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The ideals of the American founding continued to shape American concerns and fears of centralized government and taxation. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall asserted in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) that, “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Americans have believed since the founding that a government that taxes too much destroys liberty.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Religious freedom, assembling, speaking freely and defending the nation’s liberty. “While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determind to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick Virtue. I do verily believe, and I may say it inter Nos, that the Principles & Manners of New England produced that Spirit which finally has establishd the Independence of America; and Nothing but opposite Principles and Manners can overthrow it.” – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, Philadelphia, February 12, 1779.

In A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, John Adams mused about a lengthy quote from Aristotle’s Politics. There, Aristotle extols the benefits of a polis controlled by a broad middle class and warns of the danger to societies if the number of the middle class dwindles. His assessment of the best practical political system is consistent with what is called the “Golden Mean,” a concept taken from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. For the most part, excellence of the soul—virtue—lies in taking a path between two extremes that are vices. Another key element of classical Greek philosophy was that excellence of the person and of the state were intimately connected, that the polis was the soul writ large, so the analogy of the benefits of moderation for the individual to the benefits of middle-class government for the state was obvious.

It is worth quoting Aristotle at length on this point, as Adams did:

“In every city the people are divided into three sorts, the very rich, the very poor, and the middle sort. If it is admitted that the medium is the best, it follows that, even in point of fortune, a mediocrity is preferable. The middle state is most compliant to reason. Those who are very beautiful, or strong, or noble, or rich, or, on the contrary, those who are very poor, weak, or mean, with difficulty obey reason.… A city composed only of the rich and the poor, consists but of masters and slaves, not freemen; where one party despise, and the other hate; where there is no possibility of friendship, or political community, which supposes affection. It is the genius of a free city to be composed, as much as possible, of equals; and equality will be best preserved when the greatest part of the inhabitants are in the middle state. These will be best assured of safety as well as equality; they will not covet nor steal, as the poor do, what belongs to the rich; nor will what they have be coveted or stolen; without plotting against any one, or having any one plot against them, they will live free from danger. For which reason, Phocylides wisely wishes for the middle state, as being most productive of happiness. It is plain then that the most perfect community must be among those who are in the middle rank; and those states are best instituted, wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate; so that, being thrown into the balance, it may prevent either scale from preponderating. It is, therefore, the greatest happiness which the citizen can enjoy, to possess a moderate and convenient fortune. When some possess too much, and others nothing at all, the government must either be in the hands of the meanest rabble, or else a pure oligarchy. The middle state is best, as being least liable to those seditions and insurrections which disturb the community; and for the same reason extensive governments are least liable to these inconveniences; for there those in the middle state are very numerous; whereas, in small ones, it is easy to pass to the two extremes, so as hardly to have any medium remaining, but the one half rich, and the other poor. We ought to consider, as a proof of this, that the best lawgivers were those in the middle rank of life, among whom was Solon, as is evident from his poems, and Lycurgus, for he was not a king; and Charondas, and, indeed, most others. Hence, so many free states have changed either to democracies or oligarchies; for whenever the number of those in the middle state has been too small, those who were the more numerous, whether the rich or the poor, always overpowered them, and assumed to themselves the administration. When, in consequence of their disputes and quarrels with each other, either the rich get the better of the poor, or the poor of the rich, neither of them will establish a free state, but, as a record of their victory, will form one which inclines to their own principles, either a democracy or an oligarchy….”

This critique of pure oligarchic or democratic systems has been summed up as the unwelcome prospect of the rich stealing from the poor in the former, and the poor stealing from the rich in the latter.

Adams quoted this passage with approbation, but occasionally expressed opinions which seemed to be at odds with Aristotle’s political theory. Aristotle proposed a mixed government (mikte) as the most stable and conducive to human flourishing. The mixed government would not be democratic or oligarchic but would have elements of both in a mediated balance, such as in Athens, where the popular Assembly was balanced by the Council of 500 and its steering committee. Adams’s own work in drafting the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 incorporated a similar bicameral structure in a Senate and a House of Representatives, with qualification for election to the former requiring ownership of an estate three times the value of property needed for election to the latter. But he also put in place a further structure of separation and balance of powers among the three branches of government, explicitly affirmed in Article XXX of that constitution, so that “it may be a government of laws and not of men.”

Aristotle’s description of the instability of pure systems such as oligarchy and democracy was not new with him. Plato and other Greeks had done likewise. American writers had similar misgivings. James Madison addressed such instability in his writings in The Federalist, especially in his discussion of factions in essay No. 10. Aristotle’s observation that “extensive governments are least liable to these inconveniences; for there those in the middle state are very numerous; whereas, in small ones, it is easy to pass to the two extremes, so as hardly to have any medium remaining, but the one half rich, and the other poor,” sounds remarkably like Madison’s defense of the national government.

Factions are the result of the inevitable inequality of rights in property which proceeds from the natural inequality of talents. “Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society.” Moreover, because of the inherent nature of democracies, where a small number of citizens conducts the government in person, those factions are most likely to become entrenched, with the stronger party sacrificing the weaker. “Hence it is, that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.” This remark might as well have been a summary of Athenian politics. Again, Aristotle’s observation, “When, in consequence of their disputes and quarrels with each other, either the rich get the better of the poor, or the poor of the rich, neither of them will establish a free state,” matches Madison’s critique.

The instability and short survival of democracies carried over to other small political entities.

“The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing the majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plan of oppression….[T]he same advantage, which a republic has over a democracy, in controling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic…is enjoyed by the union over the states composing it.”

Specifically,

“…a religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it, must secure the national councils against any danger from that source: a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the union, than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district than an entire state.”

Samuel Adams’s letter to James Warren quoted in the introduction to this essay tied stable government and individual liberty to virtue and bound private and public virtue to each other. This emphasis on the interdependent virtue of the citizen and of the society was the essence of classical republicanism and a fundamental concept in the political philosophy of Greek and Roman writers. Moreover, Adams confided to his fellow New Englander that it was the “Principles & Manners” of that region which produced the spirit of liberty that fueled the drive to American independence. In the views of many New Englanders, especially Samuel’s cousin John Adams, widely-distributed land ownership of medium size lay at the heart of developing those New England principles that allowed for private and public virtue to take root.

In that letter to Warren, Adams also echoed Aristotle’s identification of a free city with a large middle class, whose ownership of a moderate estate made them most receptive to governance based on reason. Government by reason is analogous to the exercise of public or civic virtue and is most conducive to happiness (eudaimonia). When Aristotle declares, “It is plain then that the most perfect community must be among those who are in the middle rank,” he is associating excellence of government with a middle-class society. Excellence was arete in Greek. In Rome, the Latin translation became virtus and denoted a particular type of attribute and action that connected private character and public conduct.

The inevitable link between widespread property ownership of land, a virtuous citizenry, liberty, and survival of republican government was a common theme outside New England, as well. Although property ownership in the South was somewhat more complex due to the existence of the planter class in the Tidewater regions, other regions of the area still had a large class of yeoman farmers with moderate estates. Two of the most prominent advocates of Southern agrarian republicanism were Thomas Jefferson and John Taylor. Jefferson sought to realize his idealized virtuous republic of artisans and yeoman farmers politically through his promotion of land sales in the Old Northwest and the acquisition of Louisiana. Taylor’s writings on land ownership, virtue, liberty, and republican institutions brought systematic cohesion to agrarian republicanism and tied its principles to contentious issues of public policy.

But faith in a virtuous middle class as the source of personal liberty and political stability was not blind. Various writers, including John Adams in 1776, expressed reservations about the capacity of Americans to acquire the virtue necessary for self-government. New Englanders’ faith in their virtue and their fitness for republican government was shaken severely by the tax rebellion of Daniel Shays and his followers in 1786. Perhaps such virtue was not possible without a strong hand of government to correct deviations. More Americans were forced to confront that issue during and after the Whiskey Tax Rebellion in Pennsylvania from 1791 to 1794. After all, in both scenarios, the challenge to the republican governments had come from yeoman farmers, the supposed embodiments of republican virtue.

Southern agrarians had always been more skeptical that there was sufficient virtue among politicians to maintain republican government. Their experience with the turbulence and corruption of state governments after independence only confirmed their doubts. Madison expressed that sentiment in essay No. 51 of The Federalist. While there was some basis to believe that the people might acquire the requisite virtue, in the case of politicians it was best to assume that “the better angels of [their] nature,” to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s famous language from years later, would not direct their actions. It was more likely that pure self-interest and desire for power would be their motivation.

Therefore,

“[a]mbition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, nether external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

Those auxiliary precautions lay in the structure of the government under the Constitution, primarily a separation of powers and blending and overlapping of functions as in John Adams’s Massachusetts constitution.

Madison was not alone in declining to place all bets for success of republican self-government and liberty on human virtue. Samuel Adams may have been correct that those “Blessings of Liberty” cannot be passed on without cultivating virtue in the people, especially the virtues of the Aristotelian golden mean. Self-government requires self-restraint. But virtue, though necessary, may not be sufficient. “The best republics will be virtuous, and have been so,” the other Adams—John—concluded in the last pages of the multivolume Defence in the somewhat stilted syntax of his time,

“But we may hazard a conjecture, that the virtues have been the effect of the well-ordered constitution, rather than the cause: and perhaps it would be impossible to prove, that a republic cannot exist, even among highwaymen, by setting one rogue to watch another; and the knaves themselves may, in time, be made honest men by the struggle.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“To suppress Enquiries into the Administration is good Policy in an arbitrary Government: But a free Constitution and freedom of Speech have such a reciprocal Dependence on each other that they cannot subsist without consisting together.” – Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737, printed by Benjamin Franklin, later reprinted in the Barbados Gazette, 1738, and attributed to Andrew Hamilton, a Pennsylvania Colonial Representative, and lawyer who defended John Peter Zenger who was arrested for criticizing the government, as having possibly been the author of the article.

The age-old proclamation made in the Pennsylvania Gazette, attributed to Andrew Hamilton, regarding the “reciprocal dependence” between the United States Constitution and free speech, resonates powerfully with the principles held dear by anyone deeply concerned with balance of power between individuals and their government: the inseparability of a free constitution and freedom of speech. For a republican form of government to remain genuinely representative, it is imperative to ensure that citizens can air their grievances without fear of retaliation. To suppress the voice of the people is, in effect, to suppress the very essence of democracy which is the means a representative republic uses to make apparent the consent of the governed.

At the heart of a representative government lies the principle that those in power are there to serve, and not to dictate. They are but emissaries, chosen by the populace to voice their hopes, aspirations, and concerns. Such representation is hollow if the populace cannot, or is afraid to, communicate openly.

Civil discourse, which is simply the ability to discuss and debate matters of public interest in a reasoned and respectful manner, is the bedrock upon which representative government stands. Without it, the bridge between the representatives and those they represent is broken. The essence of representative government is lost if its constituents cannot engage in free discourse without fear of persecution.

Traditionally, classical liberals (which is how one can describe most, if not all, of the founding fathers) firmly believe in the principle of minimal government intervention in the lives of its citizens. Freedom of speech, as a cornerstone of liberty, is not just the ability to speak one’s mind but to do so without fear of government retribution. To silence or suppress speech is to curb the very freedom that serves as a bulwark against tyranny.

The case of John Peter Zenger, defended by Andrew Hamilton, stands as a testament to the dangers of a government that seeks to stifle criticism. Arrested for merely voicing his critique of the establishment, Zenger’s plight underscores the importance of preserving unhindered freedom of speech. When governments are allowed to decide what can and cannot be said, we tread perilously close to the realms of despotism.

The quote from the Pennsylvania Gazette highlights a profound truth: a free constitution and freedom of speech are interdependent. Without the liberty to speak one’s mind, a constitution, however free in letter, becomes tyrannical in spirit. Conversely, freedom of speech without a constitution that protects and upholds it is but an illusion.

The reason for this reciprocal relationship is clear. A free constitution provides the framework within which rights, including freedom of speech, are preserved. Meanwhile, unhindered freedom of speech ensures that this constitution remains truly representative, constantly held to account by the voice of the people.

In an age where voices are increasingly stifled under the guise of various reasons, it is paramount to remember the wisdom of yesteryears, as echoed by Andrew Hamilton. To suppress inquiries into administration might be the hallmark of autocracy, but in representative government, the voice of the people must remain unbridled and unbroken.

In any dynamic society that prides itself on progress, innovation, and the welfare of its people, the free flow and exchange of ideas is not just a luxury, but an absolute necessity. The significance of this cannot be overstated, particularly when it comes to addressing and solving the myriad problems society faces. At their core, the principles upon which this nation was founded cherish the values of individual freedom, limited government, and the sanctity of personal choice. This philosophy acknowledges that every individual, with their unique experiences and perspectives, has the capacity to contribute to the vast tapestry of human knowledge. However, this can only be realized if they are allowed and encouraged to express themselves freely, even if their ideas are unpopular or deemed contentious.

At the foundation of the free exchange of ideas is the belief in the “marketplace of ideas,” a theory that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse. Just as economic markets rely on competition to produce the best goods and services, intellectual progress requires a contest of ideas. Suppressing unpopular or controversial ideas, even those deemed false or harmful, doesn’t necessarily make them disappear. Instead, it drives them underground where they are not subject to public scrutiny, critique, and potential refutation.

Moreover, it creates a “marketplace of ideas.” Many of the most groundbreaking discoveries and social movements in history were once viewed as controversial or even heretical. Galileo’s heliocentric model and the rights of women to vote were both, at different times, unpopular ideas. Without the freedom to challenge prevailing notions and the status quo, society would stagnate, and advancement would be hindered. A society that is open to the free exchange of ideas is more adaptable, resilient, and inventive.

Free speech also offers protection from despotism and tyranny. One of the most potent tools at the disposal of tyrannical regimes is the suppression of speech and the curtailment of the free exchange of ideas. By controlling the narrative and silencing dissent, these regimes can maintain power and perpetuate their ideologies unchallenged. History has repeatedly shown the dangers of this approach. Protecting even unpopular speech ensures a check against potential governmental overreach and tyranny.

One can also not understate the importance of freedom of speech to the betterment of men and women themselves, outside of just the political realm. On an individual level, exposure to a wide array of ideas, even those that challenge our deeply held beliefs, is essential for personal growth. It encourages critical thinking, promotes empathy by understanding various perspectives, and enriches our knowledge base. Suppressing unpopular speech denies individuals these opportunities. Promoting the greatest amount of speech ensures a vibrant civil society.

The freest speech also is a way to ensure that society solves its own problems. No society is without its problems, and often, it is only through open dialogue and the free exchange of ideas that these issues come to light. Unpopular speech can draw attention to overlooked issues, catalyze movements for change, and present alternative solutions to pervasive problems. Silencing such speech, on the other hand, can perpetuate ignorance and hinder society’s ability to address its challenges.

The suppression of speech, particularly when it involves the silencing of religious or ethnic expressions, can have dire consequences on societal cohesion and stability. Yugoslavia, under its Communist regime, is a poignant example of this phenomenon. The country, a mosaic of ethnicities and religions, was kept together through strong centralized governance and strict control over nationalist sentiments. The Communist authorities aimed to forge a unified Yugoslav identity, which involved suppressing religious and nationalist expression, relegating it to the private sphere, and often demonizing it in the public sphere. This suppression did not eradicate the deeply-rooted ethnic and religious sentiments; rather, it drove them underground, where they festered, accumulated grievances, and lacked the necessary open space for dialogue and reconciliation.

When the Communist regime in Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s, the suppressed sentiments and grievances came to the surface with a vengeance. Without the structures or platforms for peaceful dialogue in place, these sentiments exploded into sectarian violence, leading to a series of brutal wars that resulted in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Had there been a more open space for religious and ethnic expression during the Communist era, communities might have had the opportunities to address and possibly reconcile their differences or at least coexist peacefully. Instead, the suppression created a vacuum, and when the lid was abruptly removed, the pent-up frustrations and hostilities were unleashed in a tragic wave of violence. This serves as a powerful reminder of the dangers inherent in suppressing speech and the importance of fostering open dialogue in multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies.

The importance of the free flow and exchange of ideas, even those that are unpopular, cannot be emphasized enough. Such freedom is at the very core of a thriving, advancing society. In embracing the free exchange of ideas, the fundamental human right to express oneself is championed, and fostered is an environment ripe for innovation and the holistic betterment of society.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, a Fellow with Constituting America, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner
Carpenter's Hall In Old City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“New England town meetings have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1816

“Local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.” – Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

The concept of people openly gathering to discuss matters of public interest was developed among the ancient Greek city states in the 6th Century B.C.  It became known as “Athenian Democracy” under the leadership of Pericles (461-429 B.C.) during Athens’ “Golden Age.” Participation was open to all adult free male citizens.

In actions that would be repeated throughout history, Athenian public meetings were suppressed to centralize government power. This occurred in 322 B.C. by the rulers of the Macedonian Empire, first Philip II and then his son, Alexander “the Great.”

Freedom of assembly vanished during the Roman Empire and the feudal states. People could still petition the chief, warlord, or king for grievances, but local democracy was lost.

Iceland rekindled community-based democracy in 930 A.D.

The Althing (Norse for “assembly field”) was an open area (near present day Reykjavik) reserved for the annual gathering to discuss and decide issues facing the community. The presiding official, Lögsögumaður (Norse for “Law Speaker”), stood on a central rock outcropping known as the Lögberg (Norse for “Law Rock”).  He established the procedures for the Althing and declared decisions after open discussion and voting. All free men had the right to attend and participate.

The Althing lost its authority when Iceland was annexed by Norway in 1262.

In 1231, the freedom of assembly, and early federalism, arose among the various independent regions (Cantons) in Switzerland. The Landsgemeinde (German for “cantonal assembly) was established as a system of direct democracy, open voting, and majority rule among the communitas hominum (Latin for “the community of men”). This terminology was to emphasize that it was an assembly of all citizens, not just the elite.

Citizens of the Swiss Cantons fiercely defended their assemblies. In 1499, they defeated the forces of Emperor Maximillian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, at the battle of Dornach. They retain their system to this day.

The practice of holding town meetings in Colonial America developed from 17th Century English “vestry” meetings. These meetings allowed parishioners to discuss and decide issues relating to their local parish. These became integral to New England communities in the mid to late 1600s. Their agendas ranged beyond church governance to community matters.

In 1691, the Colonial Parliament (General Court) of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a Charter that declared that final authority on bylaws rested with town meetings. In 1694, the Massachusetts General Court granted town meetings the authority to appoint assessors. In 1715 it granted town meetings the right to elect their own presiding officers (moderators) instead of relying on outside appointees.

Colonial meeting houses remain places of reverence in small towns throughout New England.

It is not surprising that eradicating town meetings, and restricting the right to free assembly, were key elements in Britain’s suppression of America’s Independence movement in the early 1770s.

Lord North, the British Prime Minister (1770-1790), instituted harsh measures to suppress dissent and disrupt the culture of self-government, which he viewed as the root cause of the chaos. On May 2, 1774, North declared Massachusetts was “in a distempered state of disturbance and opposition to the laws of the mother country.”

On May 20, 1774, the British Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act, which nullified the Massachusetts Charter of 1691. It abolished local town meetings because, “a great abuse has been made of the power of calling them, and the inhabitants have, contrary to the design of their institution, been used to treat upon matters of the most general concerns, and to pass dangerous and unwarrantable resolves.” Ongoing local meetings were replaced by annual meetings only called with the Colonial Governor’s permission, or not at all.

A series of five punitive acts were passed by Parliament intended to restrict public discourse and punish opponents. It was England’s hope the “Intolerable Acts” would intimidate rebellious Colonists into submission. The “Acts” ignited a firestorm of outrage throughout Colonial America. More importantly, it generated a unity of purpose and inspired a willingness for collective action among leaders in the previously fragmented American colonies.

In a bold “illegal” act to assert its right to free assembly, the First Continental Congress met in the Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia from September 5 to October 26, 1774. Twelve of the thirteen colonies (Georgia opted out) were represented. They issued the “Declaration of Rights and Grievances,” the first unified protest of Britain’s anti-colonial actions.

The British Crown’s assault on the right to free assembly was among the top Grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence less than two years later.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Patrick Garry

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do;…that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;…and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:…Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or Ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief;” – Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786.

Freedom of religion has been a foundational belief ever since America’s colonial beginnings in the seventeenth century. Most of the colonies were religiously inspired enterprises, and the early laws and charters of the colonies reflected those religious beliefs.

The European settlement of America owed much to the desire of the new settlers to escape the religious oppression of their old country. They braved the long, treacherous ocean journey to come to an unknown land filled with unknown dangers, all for the sake of finding the freedom to practice their religion.

A belief in freedom of religion stems from the conviction that religion reflected a higher source of authority than do civil governments; therefore, those governments should not coerce individuals from following their religious beliefs, especially when those beliefs do not threaten the state or pose harm to any other individual.

England, an originating country for many early settlers, possessed a state established religion—the Church of England. The government both supported this religion, with tax revenues, and regulated its theological practices. This meant that individuals who did not adhere to the tenets of the Church of England and who did not wish to belong to that religion were nonetheless forced to support it. Moreover, religious dissidents were often oppressed and discriminated against in various ways. It was this oppressive environment from which many American settlers wished to escape.

Once in America, the settlers initially formed their colonies around the single religion of their belief. However, as settlement increased and the colonies became more diverse in their population, the colonies in turn became more diverse in their religious identities, with the result that the American colonies acquired a practice of religious tolerance unknown in Europe.

This tolerance continued after America achieved its independence and formed a constitutional republic. The very first freedom enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees individuals the right to freely exercise their religious beliefs. To further protect religious freedom, the First Amendment also prohibits Congress from establishing a state-run religion, as England had done with the Church of England.

Over the years, courts have grappled with the application of these religious liberty provisions in the First Amendment. The courts have ruled that the Free Exercise Clause prohibits government from targeting religion for selective burdens or discriminating against religious believers. However, because courts have not wanted to adjudicate all the areas in which religious beliefs might conflict with secular laws, the courts have held that neutral and generally applicable laws that incidentally burden religion are not unconstitutional. This holding has left religious believers vulnerable on a number of fronts, and so Congress in 1993 by an overwhelming margin passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sought to strengthen legal protections for religious liberty. Unfortunately, during the thirty years since passage of that law, the commitment to religious liberty on behalf of many political and governmental leaders appears to have waned.

With respect to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, courts have been even more confused and divided. Whereas some judges believe that the Establishment Clause was intended as another means by which to protect religious liberty, other judges have seen the Clause as a tool by which to prohibit any interaction between government and religion, thereby preventing religious institutions from receiving any government benefits or recognitions that all other social institutions are entitled to receive. This latter position rests on the argument that any government benefit given to a religious organization, regardless of whether that benefit has anything to do with religious beliefs, amounts to an unconstitutional establishment of religion. Essentially, this argument equates a Christmas display of a nativity scene in a public park with the tax-supported Church of England.

The judicial dispute on the Establishment Clause has come down to a debate over whether the Clause was intended to protect religious liberty or the secular identity of society. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has greatly clarified the nature and purpose of the Establishment Clause. Several years ago, it held that a cross monument constructed by private parties to honor military veterans, but now standing on public property, did not rise to the level of an unconstitutional establishment of religion. And in 2022, the Court held that a public school district did not violate the Establishment Clause by not forcibly prohibiting an assistant football coach from voluntarily saying a private prayer at mid-field after the conclusion of a game.

Opinion polls and political agendas suggest that Americans may not value religious liberty in the same manner as eighteenth-century Americans did. But the constitutional Framers foresaw that religious liberty should not be left up to the dictates of political opinion. The Framers so valued religious liberty that they placed it as the first liberty protected by the Bill of Rights.  And unlike contemporary critics who see religion as divisive, the Framers valued religion for contributing to the civic virtue and welfare of society.

For the constitutional Framers, freedom of religion was necessary not just to protect what was considered the most important individual liberty, but to protect the vitality and thriving of religious beliefs and institutions that in turn did much to strengthen society. Through religion, citizens learned the values of public service, honesty, and the rule of law. Religious belief combatted the vices of selfishness and greed and helped strengthen the virtues of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, which were seen as necessary traits for a stable nation.

Patrick M. Garry is professor of law at the University of South Dakota. He is author of Limited Government and the Bill of Rights and The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Alexander Hamilton responded in numerous essays in The Federalist to the charges that Congress might impose excessive taxation. Among his efforts to calm the torrents of dissent was essay No. 21, where he opined that imposts, excises, and other duties on articles of consumption were preferable to other types of taxes. Consumption taxes were unlikely to be excessive, as they had a built-in safety valve. The higher the tax, the less of the article would be consumed, which would result in less revenue collected. “This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens, by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them.”

As a supporter of the wealthy merchant class, Hamilton might have been supportive of consumption taxes for another reason. In England as well as North America, the tendency was for legislative majorities to impose most taxes on other than their own class. As the historian Forrest McDonald describes the matter of taxes as “gifts” to the government in his book Novus Ordo Seclorum, “When deciding whether to give away one’s own property or somebody else’s, humankind—being imperfect—has a disposition to give away somebody else’s. Hence, for several centuries, the landed gentry in the House of Commons elected to have as much of the tax burden as possible fall either upon their tenants or upon gentlemen of trade. When the latter gained influence and power proportionate to their wealth, this trend was altered; but the costs of government rose astronomically during the eighteenth century, and country and city gentlemen tended to meet these costs by multiplying the kinds and amounts of taxes upon consumer necessities. They volunteered as many of the ‘gifts’ as possible from the unrepresented poor.”

In the American colonies, according to McDonald, legislatures were mostly controlled by the landed gentry, elected by the broad proportion of the adult male population which owned sufficient land to meet the property qualifications for voting. “The American colonists developed an aversion to taxation for which they were to become celebrated. What was less celebrated, they tended to place the main burden of taxation, insofar as was possible, on merchants and on the well-to-do. The euphemism for this practice was requiring the most taxes from those who were best able to pay; again the reality was requiring somebody else to make the gift.” James Madison, in his 1792 essay, “Property,” was making that same point when he wrote, “A just security to property is not afforded by that government under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor.” Those attributes of taxation remained, although mainly in the form of income taxes, which grind the middle and upper middle class.

Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, rather predictably supported taxes on merchants and manufacturers. In April of 1811, in a letter to General Thaddeus Kosciusco, Jefferson wrote of his ideas about restraining the tendency for manufacturing to concentrate wealth and encourage corruption, dependence, and servility among the population. “…. [W]e shall soon see the final extinction of our national debt, and liberation of our revenues for the defence and improvement of our country. These revenues will be levied entirely on the rich, the business of household manufacture being now so established that the farmer and laborer clothe themselves entirely. The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied. The poor man who uses nothing but what is made in his own farm or family, or within his own country, pays not a farthing of tax to the general government, but on his salt; and should we go into that manufacture also, as is probable, he will pay nothing. Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc….” Jefferson did not take into account the imposition of tariffs on imported goods, which increased the influence and wealth of domestic manufacturers at the expense of the landed yeomanry, raised the prices of domestic goods, and caused frequent sectional conflicts between the South and West on the one hand, and the Northeast on the other.

Other than proceeds from the sale of western lands, the most common source of revenue for the early United States was import duties. Those were generally acceptable during the first several decades, because they involved voluntary purchases and were often seen, as Jefferson’s remarks show, as luxury taxes paid by the wealthy. Attempts to tax the fruits of labor, such as the Whiskey Tax of 1791, precipitated significant political opposition and a drawn-out period of unrest from 1791 to 1794. There were incidents of violence against federal tax collectors and the property of federal officials. That unrest, dubbed the Whiskey Rebellion, ended only after a show of military force by federalized militia, the arrest and trial of a handful of participants, and, eventually, the repeal of the tax.

A later tax on labor, the 1894 federal peacetime income tax, was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1895 in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co. It took another couple of decades and a constitutional amendment before a one percent tax on income above $3000, affecting only about three percent of the population of the United States, was enacted. Since then, the federal government has relied primarily on taxes on production and labor, such as excise taxes on products and income taxes, rather than on import duties and tariffs.

Another threat to the rights in property was expropriation and redistribution of land. Many Revolutionary War era state legislatures found it impossible to resist the lure of seizing property owned by British subjects and American Loyalists and reselling it to American Patriots, either settlers or speculators. But, in general, there probably was nothing that more viscerally frightened and repelled most Americans than redistribution of property. As noted earlier, many Americans reacted in shock to the alleged goal of Daniel Shays and his followers to force a redistribution of land. There was no less opposition to a peaceful redistribution of land through what were called “agrarian laws.” Hamilton, Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, and John Taylor of Caroline County might view agrarian republicanism with lesser or greater degree of favor, but all rejected such interference with a person’s rights in property.

Even Taylor, the foremost American theorist and defender of agrarian republicanism, declared that redistributions of property were grotesque infringements of liberty. He noted that government was instituted primarily to protect private property, the “acquisitions of private people, which no law can transfer to other private people.” On a curious note, Taylor assured his readers that, as a practical matter, it would be futile to support such laws, because the political system was rigged against them: “My fellow laborers, mechanical or agricultural, let us never be deluded into an opinion, that a distribution of wealth by the government or by law, will advance our interest.” The mechanics and farmers may constitute the majority of nations, but “a minority administers governments and legislates.”

The judiciary also placed themselves firmly in categorical opposition to such laws, using both specific constitutional restrictions and more abstract political theory. A clear statement to that effect came from Justice Samuel Chase in 1798 in Calder v. Bull. In language similar to that of Taylor, Chase insisted that “a law that takes property from A. and gives it to B.” would “take away that security for personal liberty or private property for the protection whereof the government was established” and would be “contrary to the great first principles of the social compact.” Presumably, even an exercise of eminent domain through which government compensated the property owner for the land seized was unconstitutional if the land was transferred to another private person. For better or worse, that strictness was not always observed as states condemned land for private canal and turnpike operations. Not unexpectedly, given the breeziness with which rights in property are infringed today, the Supreme Court no longer sees forced transfers of property from one person to another as fundamentally objectionable, as long as the original owner is compensated, and the transfer achieves some vague public purpose.

In Vanhorne’s Lessee v. Dorrance, a federal circuit court case in 1795, Justice William Paterson, a leading figure at the Philadelphia Convention, struck down as an unconstitutional taking of property a Pennsylvania law that vested title to tracts of land after the land had previously been granted to another claimant. Using both the Constitution’s text and natural law reasoning Chief Justice John Marshall and Justice William Johnson wrote opinions in Fletcher v. Peck in 1810 striking down a similar Georgia law as a violation of vested rights in property. Johnson, a Jeffersonian republican, went so far as to announce that such laws went against a general principle which binds all legislatures, “the reason and nature of things; a principle which will impose laws even on the deity.” Setting aside theological disputation about the last part of that assertion, Johnson’s opinion recognized the fundamental nature of rights in property.

The final threat to property and the fruits of one’s labor in the early United States came in the form of laws which interfered with duly made contracts. State legislatures in the 1780s, responding to depressed economic conditions, repeatedly meddled in debtor-creditor relations with a plethora of laws designed to assist debtors. Most notorious were state laws making depreciated paper currency legal tender for the payment of debts. Neither state constitutional guarantees nor the frail central government created by Articles of Confederation proved able to halt these legislative abuses. State courts were simply unable to uphold the rights of creditors in the face of public pressure. “Americans,” Forrest McDonald concluded, “were not as secure in their property rights between 1776 and 1787 as they had been during the Colonial period.”

When discussing the destructive influence of political factions in essay No. 10 of The Federalist, Madison described the types of pernicious laws that have resulted from factions gaining majority control of legislatures. He was obviously referring to the laws enacted through the tumultuous factional politics of the state governments of his time: “…a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than any particular member of it, in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.” Such laws, too, interfered with the legitimate expectations of people to have the fruits of their labor protected, because funds lent in good faith could be repaid in worthless scrip and contracts for goods and services performed in good faith could be undone on legislative whim. The Constitution sought to remedy this problem by prohibiting state laws which impaired the obligations of contract and frustrated rights vested under such contracts. Unfortunately, over the past century, the Supreme Court has effectively neutered that clause.

Justice Stephen Field, the most influential American judge of the latter part of the 19th century, put it succinctly in 1890 in an address on the occasion of the centenary of the Supreme Court: “It should never be forgotten that protection to property and persons cannot be separated. Where property is insecure the rights of persons are unsafe. Protection to the one goes with protection to the other; and there can be neither prosperity nor progress where either is uncertain.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.” – Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792.

One of the fundamental philosophical tenets of American republicanism in the late 18th and the 19th century was the inviolability of rights in property. Influenced by the writings of John Locke on political theory, the definition of property extended not only to material property, but to the status of ownership over oneself. One had natural rights in one’s person. The exercise of one such right, labor, would lead to the acquisition of an estate in material property. As James Madison explained in essay No. 10 of The Federalist, there is a “diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate…. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.” It is these inherent characteristics of mind, body, and talents that government must protect, not handicap. “From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results.”

Property in both senses, metaphysical and material, was the source of a person’s liberty. In the metaphysical sense, one’s property in oneself meant that one was not by nature the slave of another, and that, therefore, as a free person, one had certain rights of which one could not be deprived. In the material sense, a sufficient portion of property, especially of land, provided the independence that was necessary for the effective exercise of one’s liberty. Further, that independence from others’ control must exist broadly within the community to supply the civic virtue needed for republican self-government. Property as so understood was at the basis of human flourishing for the individual and the community. When Thomas Jefferson changed the last aspect of Locke’s formulation of natural rights from property to the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence, he did not change the fundamental point that property was critical to human happiness understood as individual flourishing within a political commonwealth governed by consent of its people.

Locke had posited that one’s labor, mixed with the land (or with other raw materials in the case of non-agricultural pursuits), created private property out of what God had given humans in common in nature. An estate, therefore, was a fruit of one’s labor, and government action to take or diminish one’s estate or to commandeer one’s labor was a violation of fundamental rights to property and liberty. A century after Locke, Adam Smith made a similar point in 1776 in Wealth of Nations. “The property which every man has in his own labor,” Smith wrote, “as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of the poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his own hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper.”

Writing yet another century later, in 1872 in The Slaughterhouse Cases, the highly-respected Justice Joseph Bradley observed in a dissent from a Supreme Court decision to uphold a slaughterhouse monopoly, “Rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are equivalent to the rights of life, liberty, and property. These are the fundamental rights which can only be taken away by due process of law, and which can only be interfered with, or the enjoyment of which can only be modified, by lawful regulations necessary or proper for the mutual good of all; and these rights, I contend, belong to the citizens of every free government.

“For the preservation, exercise, and enjoyment of these rights the individual citizen, as a necessity, must be left free to adopt such calling, profession, or trade as may seem to him most conducive to that end. Without this right, he cannot be a freeman. This right to choose one’s calling is an essential part of that liberty which it is the object of government to protect, and a calling, when chosen, is a man’s property and right. Liberty and property are not protected where these rights are arbitrarily assailed.”

The right to engage in labor of one’s choosing, and the right to retain the fruits thereof in the form of property, are central to one’s liberty, yet experience has shown that governments have threatened these rights repeatedly. Taxation, redistribution of property, especially of land, and abolition of debts have been the most potent threats to security in property. Taxes, notably those on land or its produce, were particularly suspect because they could deprive people of their most basic means of subsistence and status, while benefiting some favored politically powerful individual or group.

Sounding much like Plato in The Republic about the defects of democracy, John Adams identified the danger in his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States. Although his posited facts appear odd considering his assurances elsewhere about the widespread distribution of property in New England, he argued, “[A] great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”

The long struggles over taxation between king and barons in Magna Charta, and subsequently between king and Parliament, had ended with Parliament’s power over the purse confirmed in the settlement offering the throne to William and Mary after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Taxes were said to be a “gift” of property from the people to the king. Therefore, the king could not simply impose taxes, any more than a thief could help himself to one’s property or command one’s labor. However, under the class-based theory of virtual representation which held that all Englishmen other than the high nobility were represented in the House of Commons, that body had the authority to vote in favor of granting the king such a gift. The American colonists had a different theory of representative government, one based on geographic communities whose residents selected “their” representatives. As such, they rejected taxes levied by vote of the House of Commons in which, the colonials averred, they were not represented. That basic difference over the nature of representation led to the revolutionary slogan “no taxation without representation.” But even domestically, contests between royal governors and colonial legislatures over taxation were endemic.

Americans’ distrust of taxation continued after independence. The power to tax was still the power to destroy, even if it was exercised by a legislative majority elected by themselves. The problem existed at the state level and, if anything, was considered even more of a threat at the national level. The Articles of Confederation tried to strike a balance between taxes and liberty by giving Congress only the power to levy requisitions on the states, not to impose taxes directly on people. When the Constitution of 1787 gave Congress a broad taxing power, it produced significant resistance. One concern was that the Congress might impose a level of taxation that destroyed the liberty of persons by impoverishing them. Another was that the power threatened the vitality of the states.

The example of Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786 provided a concrete lesson about the former concern. The state legislature, acting on the prompting of Governor John Hancock, had voted expensive programs of repaying the state’s war debts at face value, even though the state’s notes had depreciated significantly in value. This benefited wealthy speculators in those notes. It also placed a severe burden on the state’s finances. However, Hancock refused to collect the taxes the legislature had voted to cover the costs. When he left office, the state’s treasury was in dire straits, and that politically unpleasant task fell to his successor, James Bowdoin. The taxes heavily burdened farmers in the western part of the state. The resulting discontent produced statements of grievances, interference with court proceedings, and a loosely organized armed force of debtor farmers eventually defeated by a volunteer army recruited in the state’s eastern counties.

Shays’s Rebellion frightened many Americans. They were alarmed by exaggerated accounts of Shays’s “army,” especially the report written to George Washington by Henry Knox, the superintendent of war under the Confederation. Washington believed Knox’s wild claims, including that Shays intended to march south and to seize and redistribute land. A letter from Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson noted that some Shaysites called for an equal distribution of property. Another letter, from James Madison to his father, asserted that “an abolition of debts, public and private, and a new division of property are strongly suspected to be in contemplation.” The tumult gave strong impetus to the convening of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Patrick M. Garry

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech” – Part of an article by Benjamin Franklin, under the pseudonym Silence Dogood, a name he used due to threats against free speech. Franklin wrote it on freedom of speech and of the press; it published in a newspaper: No. 8 on July 9, 1722, The New-England Courant.

The principle of a free press is enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. This principle has shaped and characterized American society and political governance from the nation’s earliest beginnings. Americans of every generation have valued a free and independent press, protected from the controlling or censuring arm of government.

This strong American cherishing of a free press has its roots in the colonial period, during the lead-up to the movement for independence from Britain. As the colonists learned, such a movement would not have been successful without a free and vibrant press.

One of the political catalysts of the American Revolution was the effort of the British to subdue the popular press in colonial America. This attempt was twofold. The first was an accelerated use of the law of seditious libel. The second was the Stamp Act, under which a prohibitive tax was placed on the paper used by the presses. This tax threatened to force the inexpensive press out of circulation and thus to suppress colonial discussion of politics.

The Stamp Act passed by Parliament in 1765 proposed a host of unprecedented and, in the American view, unconstitutional burdens. The passage of the Stamp Act hurt printers by threatening an increase in their costs and by jeopardizing their subscription base, since many subscribers refused to even indirectly pay a tax to the Crown.

Following passage of the Act, the colonial newspaper documented the public’s mounting opposition to the Act. Indeed, the outburst of popular resentment against the Act was so great that it led to the start-up of four new newspapers. Printers took an active role in the debate and developed a close alliance with political groups such as the Sons of Liberty. These political groups also founded new newspapers whenever they felt it desirable.

As the Stamp Act became effective, the majority of colonial newspapers became inspired by the wave of public opposition to the Act, and in one manner or another opposed the Act. By the time the Stamp Act was repealed, newspaper printers had acquired a heightened sense of their role in the community. The principle of “liberty of the press” had become a battle cry against the Stamp Act. The campaign against the Stamp Act also increased the opinion role of newspapers. No longer mere transmitters of information, they had become engines of opinion.

The newspapers carried forward the role they had played in the Stamp Act crisis to the protest against the Townshend Acts. Even more so than the Stamp Act, the Townsend Acts sparked an intense battle of opinion waged in the newspapers. This battle was fought between the patriot press and the government press, revealing the degree of public support behind each cause. The spirited campaign fought by the patriot newspapers against the Townshend Acts contributed to the eventual repeal of nearly all of the duties.

During the controversy surrounding the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts, printers were greatly swayed by the opinions of their readers. The more radical the readers, the bolder the printers. The content of colonial newspapers closely mirrored the particular issues that were important to the local constituencies. The press in effect became intertwined with local partisan battles, and newspapers often started up just as a political issue rose in importance.

During the interim period between the Townshend Acts and the Revolutionary War, newspapers continued to exist and to flourish, keeping open the channels of public discussion, which would become valuable in the crucial years ahead.

In 1773 when Parliament passed the Tea Act, a roar of protest once more emerged from the newspapers. The most aggressive editors were those who had participated in the protests in the 1760s. Again, the public mood thrusted the newspapers into the midst of the protest.

The American press played a major role in opposing British rule. The distinct gain in prestige made by the press during the revolutionary period began with the Stamp Act, the repeal of which was recognized as the result of a united colonial opposition made possible by the important role played by the newspapers of the day.

In addition to its political consequences, the newspaper offensive unleashed by the Stamp Act made several permanent impacts on American journalism. First, the influence of the press was enormously enhanced, instilling a newspaper-reading habit that would characterize many succeeding generations. In 1800, for instance, a magazine declared the United States to have become a nation of newspaper readers, and foreign observers noted in comparison with Europe the prevalence of newspapers in America.

After achieving independence from Britain and setting out to form a new constitutional republic in the United States, the Framers knew and treasured the role that a free press had played in shaping a new nation. This principle would receive not only constitutional protection in the Bill of Rights but would also command widespread popular support throughout America for centuries to come.

Patrick M. Garry is professor of law at the University of South Dakota. He is author of Limited Government and the Bill of Rights and The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Stephen Tootle

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called.” – Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792

Americans are exceedingly fortunate in some regards. The founding generation that theorized about creating a government did not evaporate into thin air or disappear into classrooms after publishing a few papers or demonstrating for change. Instead, most of them engaged in practical politics. They were around to find the limits and implications of their theories. James Madison, as the primary author of the United States Constitution could have retired and lived the life of a hermit and still made it into our history books. He did not do that.

By the Spring of 1792 Madison was a congressman from Virginia, engaged in the messy horse-trading of practical politics. He was also actively engaged in describing how the underlying principles of our government interacted with the real world. He watched the beginnings of the ideological and partisan divisions between people who shared all of the same fundamental principles. He saw regions compete with regions and nations serve as both positive and negative examples for America.  In that spirit, he wrote an essay on the subject of property published March 29, 1792.

Madison conceived of property rights in a way that was much broader, deeper, and more expansive than the mere protection of wealth or land. Understanding his conception is central to understanding the very nature of the American government. Unlike some later thinkers, Madison and the Founders did not consider the rights of property to be a “thing” that was separate, apart, held only socially, or distinct from all other rights of an individual. While that might seem like an inconsequential bit of political theory, the practical implications of this formulation were enormous and foundational to the idea that human beings could live prosperous lives at peace with one another.

If property rights were natural to all other rights, things like free market trade, industry, innovation, and competition were the consequences of the deeper foundational principles of the Founders—not their purpose.  To put it another way, Madison and the Founders did not envision liberty in order to justify the free market or property rights; Madison merely recognized the implications of property rights in the real world. To pretend that our system of government could function without the protection of individual property rights would have seemed oxymoronic and absurd to the framers of our political institutions.

In the American system and as outlined by Madison, the same set of individual rights have both a private and public function. He understood that every right an individual holds has some manifestation in the physical world. Understanding that simple fact led him to a conclusion that was inescapable, profound, and should be obvious: Every right lived and breathed in its relationship to the rights of property. No just government could sever property rights from any of the natural rights held by any individual. This was not enough.

Because individuals exercise the rights of property in a social context, they depend on a reciprocal, peaceful recognition within a political system. A just system protected the rights of every individual. As Madison wrote, property, “…embraces every thing to which a many may attach a value and have a right, and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.[1] Any right you have and anything you find valuable is defined as property. Because everyone has rights, everyone has property worthy of protection.

Property then, was more than simply money, wealth, land, or objects. Madison understood that one could not claim to have free opinions without being free from violence when communicating those ideas. One could not freely express religious belief and practice when personal safety and property were threatened. The freedom to choose where to work, what to work for, and what to do with the product of one’s work were inseparable. All were rights. All were inseparable from property.

To Madison, any pretended choice between the rights of property and any other right was a false dichotomy. The rights of property were inextricably linked to every other right and should be recognized and balanced in a peaceful constitutional order. As he concluded, “…a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”[2] Protecting property rights – in this expansive understanding of property – was the very purpose of just government. There could be no other definition of justice beyond every individual peacefully having what they deserved to have while secure in their peaceful possession of all liberties. Because of this, Madison believed government ought only to interfere with property rights sparingly.

Any government that violated religious liberty with tests, taxes, or an imposed hierarchy would not be just. Any government that failed to enforce contract law, engaged in arbitrary property seizures, or allowed one class of people to oppress another would be violating the rights of conscience, which Madison called “the most sacred of all property.”[3]  But he had a special ire for the regulated markets of the British mercantilist system and worried that America might follow their example.

Government itself could easily fall out of balance by imposing, “restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies” that would interfere with property rights.[4] Property was not secure when government encouraged one form of work or manufacturing over another. Such encouragement would be similar to an unjust tax designed to reward friends and punish enemies. He deplored the use of taxation as social policy and recognized the temptation to, “invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich,” or taxation that would, “grind the faces of the poor.”[5] He understood that human beings always sought advantages for themselves and would try to use taxation to gain those advantages.

Leaders needed to be scrupulous in dealing with all forms of property–including the property that individuals hold in ambitions, religion, opinions, and labors. None should be taken from an owner without full compensation. If the United States wanted to maintain its legitimacy and serve as an example to the world, its government had to “equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights….”[6] There could be no substitute for this formulation.

Human beings are infinitely complex. Part of Madison’s genius was his understanding of the practical application of rights based on how imperfect human beings lived in an imperfect world. Instead of theorizing about how to turn human beings into angels, Madison understood the complexity of human experiences and the relationship between the internal and the external world. He knew that politics can do many things, but it cannot do everything.

Of course Madison and the Founders believed in the principles of free market trade, industry, innovation, and competition. Every competition requires the peaceful execution of its rules or it could not be said to be a competition. The violent suppression of innovation or use of violence in directing labor was anathema to anything resembling a free life. If all of our rights have a manifestation in property, individuals must be able to buy, sell, withhold, cherish, and labor for property – broadly understood – as they see fit. To say that our Founders believed in a “free market” is to state nothing so plain as the Founders believed that people could live peaceful lives. One could not protect any fundamental rights without protecting the “property in rights.”[7] There is no other way.

Stephen Tootle is a Professor of History at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California and Honored Visiting Graduate Faculty in History and Government at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. His writings have appeared in National Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Claremont Review of Books, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and other publications. He gives talks on politics and political history for the Ashbrook Center and the Bill of Rights Institute and is the co-host of The Paper Trail Podcast, a weekly public affairs podcast published by the Sun-Gazette.

[1] https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/property/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

In the early 1790s, Representative James Madison was a skilled politician, newspaper polemicist, and member of the Jeffersonian Republican Party. In all of these roles, Madison demonstrated increasing concerns about the centralizing tendencies occurring in the first of the American presidencies which began with the Washington administration. He was especially concerned about Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s financial policies regarding the public credit and a national bank.

In late 1791 and throughout 1792, Madison penned a series of eighteen newspaper essays on various topics of government, law, and economics. He wrote them to reflect on various topics related to self-government, but his main purpose was to expose how Federalist Party policies stretched the boundaries of the United States Constitution by expanding the power of the national government.

On March 29, 1792, Madison published one of the essays entitled “Property.” In the essay, he leaned in on the principles of natural rights, the purposes of government, and limited government. These principles were important to Madison because they protected individual liberty. His ideas were heavily influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment philosopher, John Locke.

In his Second Treatise of Government (1689), Locke wrote that all humans  are in a state of nature, free and equal in their natural rights. For Locke, property was the most important natural right, and it included possessions but also most significantly a property in one’s person, labor, and rights. He wrote, “Yet every man has a property in his own person…The labour of his body, and the work of his hands.”

Government was established by common consent for the purpose of protecting a person’s property rights. He wrote, “The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.”

These Lockean ideas fundamentally shaped the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The Declaration lays down natural rights as the basis of self-government. It asserts that “all men are created equal,” and that they were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration also states the fundamental purpose of government is to protect rights. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

In 1792, these ideas continued to shape Madison’s thinking about American constitutionalism when he penned his “Property” essay. Locke clearly helped to influence Madison’s understanding of property as he argued that it included physical property, a person’s opinions, the right to have safety of one’s person, and an individual’s religious liberty. In fact, he described religious conscience as the “most sacred of all property.”

Importantly, while Madison had all of these conceptions of property, he thought that individuals had an inalienable property in their rights. “In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights,” he wrote.

Like Locke and the Declaration of Independence, Madison believes that government exists to protect inalienable rights especially property. He explains that a just government is one that protects rights, and, conversely, an unjust government violates those rights or fails to protect them adequately. Therefore, he attacks arbitrary government, which is the definition of tyranny. He writes,

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own…That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties.

Madison continued to oppose many of the policies of the Washington and Adams administrations. He served as vice-president under Thomas Jefferson and helped to usher in the “Revolution of 1800,” in which they believed they restored republican limitations on the national government. Madison was elected president in 1808 and served two terms. While his administration reflected his republican ideals from his “Property” essay, he did eventually change his mind on certain centralizing policies he opposed in the early 1790s including signing the Second National Bank into law in 1816. Still, James Madison believed in a natural rights republic and constitutionally limited government throughout his entire life.

The Founders applied the principle of limited government in the Constitution and early republic. The national government had no authority to tax without consent or to take property without consent or compensation. The First Amendment prevented a national establishment of religion and protected religious liberty. George Washington set the great example of limited republican government when resigned from the presidency after two terms.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Contracts are the promises that are made individually or collectively that are presumed to be legally enforceable. They are normally the product of negotiation and deliberation among parties regarding the mutual obligations that they accept voluntarily.[1] Not every agreement is a contract, and not every promise is legally enforceable, but contracts have become an essential means by which individuals can organize themselves and carry out personal and professional interactions, particularly with persons or entities with whom they have no personal or familial connection. The ability to make contracts, and the capacity and willingness for a neutral arbiter to guarantee that contracts will be enforced, became one of the critical developments that made long-term and long distance trade relations possible.[2] Contracts also became a building block of the modern corporation, which is often described today as a “nexus of contracts.”[3]

The freedom to make contracts and the confidence that contracts will be enforced cannot be taken for granted. Prior to the United States Constitutional Convention of 1787, many of the original thirteen states were actively undermining the enforcement of contracts among citizens. In most cases, the contracts that were threatened by state actions were concerned with debts. State legislatures enacted a number of laws which prevented creditors from collecting debts in the time frame stipulated in contracts. For this reason, many creditors looked to the federal government to curb state actions which threatened the execution of contracts. Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, provided in the Northwest Ordinance that in that soon to be developed territory stipulated “no law ought ever to be made, or have force in the said territory, that shall in any manner whatever interfere with, or affect private contracts or engagements, bona fide and without fraud previously formed.” [4] Notably the clause pertained only to “private” contracts that were already in existence.

At the Constitutional Convention, a stand-alone contracts clause was debated and ultimately rejected, but the Committee on Style inserted a general form of the clause within a section dealing with limits on state power, which the convention did approve.[5] The final language in Article 1, Section 10, reads as follows: “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”[6] The clause is sandwiched between other provisions that limit states’ ability to engage in diplomacy, affect international trade, or carry out monetary policy. There is no language limiting the clause’s application to private contracts, nor is the clause clearly limited to contracts that were “previously formed,” although the courts quickly established that state law could regulate future behavior that might otherwise be the subject of a contract. It should also be noted that the contracts clause does not forbid the federal government from “impairing the obligation of contracts.” In fact, the federal government may modify debt contracts very dramatically through bankruptcy laws, which were authorized explicitly by the bankruptcy clause in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution.

The clause was applied in some early cases of the Supreme Court. In 1810, the Court ruled in Fletcher v. Peck that the state of Georgia could not revoke a previously issued land grant to private parties. This ruling established that the contract clause applied to both public and private contracts.[7] A few years later, the Court more clearly asserted the constitutional protection of contracting in the case of Dartmouth College v. Woodward. In this ruling, the Court held that a charter establishing and organizing a private academic institution could not be fundamentally changed by an enactment of the New Hampshire legislature.[8] This decision was not only significant because it defended the right of private parties to have their contracts respected, but also because it recognized that private associations and incorporated entities could be at least somewhat insulated from state government control.

In later cases, the Court made clear that the right to engage in personal contracts is not absolute. In Ogden v. Saunders, the Court ruled that the states could make laws affecting contracts as long as those laws had prospective effect.[9] Later, in Stone v. Mississippi, the justices ruled that the contract clause did not prevent states from exercising their police powers to protect health and morals.[10] This ruling was echoed in a twentieth century case, Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, in which the Court expanded that exception to include advancing public welfare through a redistribution of resources.[11] In recent years, some legal scholars have said that the federal Constitution’s contract clause has been eviscerated because the courts have ruled that its applicability is limited by so many public policy related exceptions.[12] Nevertheless, it should be noted that many state constitutions contain contract impairment laws which are still applied, often in legal challenges to legislative changes in public employee pension fund benefits.[13]

The freedom to contract and the expectation that contractual obligations will be enforced has been critical to American economic life since its founding. Courts have long been involved in the settling of contractual disputes, sometimes invoking the contract clause, but more often using common law principles or provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code, which every state has adopted. But the implications of the freedom to contract is not limited to economic matters. Contracts are involved in many forms of association,  including political organizations and civic and religious entities. Without protection for these contracts, these associations could not function effectively.

James C. Clinger, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor of political science at Murray State University. His teaching and research has focused on state and local government, public administration, regulatory policy, and political economy. His forthcoming co-edited book is entitled Local Government Administration in Small Town America.

[1]  Cornell Law School.   Legal Information Institute.  https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/contract  Accessed August 12, 2023.   On the view that contracts should be seen essentially as promises, see Fried, Charles.   Contract as Promise: A Theory of Contracting Obligation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.

[2] Wallis, John Joseph.  “Institutions, Organizations, Impersonality, and Interests:  The Dynamics of Institutions.”   Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 79 (1-2)

[3]  Jensen, Michael C., and William H. Meckling. 1976. “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure.” Journal of Financial Economics 3 (4): 305–60.

[4]  Northwest Ordinance.  Article II, Clause 5.   See also McConnell, Michael W. “Contract Rights and Property Rights: A Case Study in the Relationship between Individual Liberties and Constitutional Structure.” California Law Review 76, no. 2 (1988): 267–95.

[5]  Douglas W. Kmiec and John O. McGinnis, “The Contract Clause: A Return to the Original Understanding, 14 Hastings Const. Law Quarterly 5 (1987): 525-560.

[6]  United States Constitution, Article I, Section 10

[7]  Fletcher v. Peck.  10 US 87 (1810).   See also  Hobson, Charles F. 2017. “The Yazoo Lands Sale Case: Fletcher v. Peck (1810).”      Journal of Supreme Court History 42 (3): 239–55.

[8]  17 US 518. See also O’Kelley, C. R. T. (2021). What Was the Dartmouth College Case Really About? Vanderbilt Law Review, 74(6), 1645–1725.

[9] 25 US 518 (1827).

[10]  101 US 814 (1879).

[11]  290 US 398 (1934).

[12]  Ely, James W., Jr. “Whatever Happened to the Contract Clause?” Charleston Law Review 4 (2010): 371–94.

[13]  Hull, Bradley. 2015. “State Contract Impairment Clauses and the Validity of Chapter 9 Authorization.” Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal 32 (1): 87–122.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Robert E. Wright

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“And since a Plentiful Currency will be so great a Cause of advancing this Province in Trade and Riches…I cannot think it the Interest of England to oppose’ us in making as great a Sum of Paper Money here, as we, who are the best Judges of our own Necessities, find convenient. And if I were not sensible that the Gentlemen of Trade in England, to whom we have already parted with our Silver and Gold, are misinformed of our Circumstances, and therefore endeavour to have our Currency stinted to what it now is, I should think the Government at Home had some Reasons for discouraging and impoverishing this Province, which we are not acquainted with…” – Benjamin Franklin, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency, Benjamin Franklin, April 3, 1729.

For over half a century, the colonists living in mainland British North America sought a monetary system like that described by Benjamin Franklin in his 1729 Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency. In other words, they wanted their own “inside” money composed of paper “bills of credit” (fiat notes like today’s Federal Reserve notes) useful only in local trade and an “outside” money composed of full-bodied gold and silver coins (referred to collectively as specie) useful in international trade.

All the colonies eventually emitted fiat paper bills of credit but only the Middle Colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia managed to do so without causing massive inflation, which the colonists perceived as depreciation of the bills of credit in terms of the “outside” or “real” money, specie.

As with most things in life, too much of a good thing can lead to bad outcomes. The colonists wanted “inside” money because each unit of it  (confusingly, for us, called “pounds”) they emitted into circulation allowed the same amount of gold or silver to be used to purchase goods abroad. That helped the colony’s economy but only until all the specie had been exported. The effect of issuing more bills of credit after that point was to make each unit less valuable domestically – price inflation or currency depreciation depending on your perspective.

The northernmost and southernmost colonies greatly exceeded that break-even point because they found it easier to finance their many wars against the French, Spanish, and their American Indian allies by printing more inside money than by raising taxes. Double-digit inflation ensued, which injured the interests of creditors, the rich people who lent money. That is because the purchasing power of the depreciated money they were repaid with, even with single-digit interest paid in addition, was less than they expected.

Those rich lenders had the ear of policymakers in London, who in 1764 prohibited the colonists, even those in the Middle Colonies, from emitting any more bills of credit. This may have merely miffed the colonists had the restriction not taken place in the midst of a postwar economic downturn and a period of toughened trade restrictions that made it difficult for the colonists to trade enough with the right partners abroad to maintain sufficient amounts of specie in domestic circulation. Instead of inflation, the colonists suffered from massive deflation.

As a result, foreign and domestic trade decreased markedly, as did real estate prices. Interest rates increased on mortgages, when they could be had at all, because money was in such limited supply. Money matters became so desperate that squirrel scalp bounties began to circulate as cash in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and newspapers published odes to coins that colonists rarely saw in circulation anymore.

By 1765, borrowers began to default and lose all their property at sheriff’s sales. Many found themselves still owing money even after all their assets had been sold at low prices and ended up in debtors’ prison, where some died. The colonists pleaded for relief but instead the “Mother” Country implemented the Stamp Act, which imposed new taxes and threatened to denude the colonists of all their remaining specie.

The colonists successfully protested the Stamp Act but in the process initiated a series of increasingly violent conflicts that ended with the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War. The Americans funded much of the war effort with a new inside money called Continentals, issued far too many, and saw them depreciate in value, at first slowly but later essentially to zero. No longer constrained by British trade policies and with help from French infusions, specie again became the predominate form of money in America.

Yet Franklin and younger financially savvy policymakers, like Robert Morris, Thomas Willing, and Alexander Hamilton, knew that inside money could help to stimulate the economy, so long as it did not displace all of the specie once again. So they created new institutions, commercial banks, that issued two forms of inside money, deposits and notes, convertible on demand into a fixed amount of specie.

When the new Constitution was framed, the financiers managed to ban state governments from issuing fiat money but were silent about the new federal government’s power to issue it. For over a century, it did so only during major wars and afterwards withdrew it from circulation via taxes, as the Middle Colonies had done.

Before the Federal Reserve became operational in 1914, most money in America took the form of bearer or “cash” instruments like banknotes and specie coins, supplemented by money of account in the form of bank deposits transferable by check. Deposits could be tracked but the government rarely tried to access private bank records because of strong customs concerning confidentiality. Notes and specie provided anonymity and hence even stronger privacy protections.

From its inception, America defined its dollar in terms of specie, eventually settling, as most other nations did, on gold alone. Dollar denominated banknotes and deposits were not legal tender but convertible into legal tender coins on demand. They circulated because they were more convenient than coins but always could be exchanged for them.

Retail convertibility meant that international trade, not policymakers, determined America’s money supply. Gold flowed in when exports exceeded imports and out when imports outstripped exports. As explained by Scottish Enlightenment thinker David Hume and well understood by policymakers like Hamilton, the gold flows automatically adjusted the domestic money supply and interest rates towards more balanced international trade and long-term price stability.

During the New Deal of the 1930s, however, the nature of money changed dramatically in America, starting a process that culminated in the 1970s with the nation’s monetary system returning to its Revolutionary War roots, or in other words a fiat inside money delinked from specie and of constantly declining value.

Some dispute the Constitutionality of the current monetary regime, which simultaneously greatly diminished the privacy of bank accounts. A planned central bank digital currency (CBDC) threatens to end anonymous cash transactions entirely and wipe away the last legal vestiges of transaction privacy. Benjamin Franklin and the other Founders and Framers would not approve. Instead, they would urge moving back to the retail specie standard that the nation enjoined from its inception until the New Deal.

It will be up to the American people to push for a return to Constitutional money, though, because politicians dislike the constraints that come with linking the dollar to gold, or anything else, like Bitcoin, in relatively fixed supply. Unlike the statesmen of the founding generations, partisan policymakers today want to borrow and spend so they can appear to help some people without immediately increasing taxes on others. In the process, though, they run huge deficits that have compounded over the last few decades into a massive national debt that would be impossible with a gold-linked dollar.

Robert E. Wright is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the (co)author or (co)editor of over two dozen major books, book series, and edited collections, including AIER’s The Best of Thomas Paine (2021) and Financial Exclusion (2019). He has also (co)authored numerous articles for important journals, including the American Economic Review, Business History Review, Independent Review, Journal of Private Enterprise, Review of Finance, and Southern Economic Review. Robert has taught business, economics, and policy courses at Augustana University, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Temple University, the University of Virginia, and elsewhere since taking his Ph.D. in History from SUNY Buffalo in 1997.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Patrick M. Garry

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

The phrase marketplace of ideas has for more than a century been used to describe the nature and purpose of the First Amendment’s free speech protection. This phrase was famously articulated by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his dissenting opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Abrams v. United States.

The issue in Abrams was whether the First Amendment protected Jacob Abrams from prosecution under the Espionage Act for distributing leaflets criticizing the dispatch of American troops to Russia and calling for a general strike in the U.S. The Supreme Court upheld Abrams’ conviction, ruling that his behavior posed a “clear and present danger” to the national security interests of the United States. Justice Holmes, however, disagreed. In a dissent that would later cast him as a defender of free speech and the First Amendment, Holmes wrote that the “best test of truth” of particular ideas is not the approval of government but the power of that speech “to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”

Just because speech might be problematic or even contrary to government policy, it should not be prohibited by law, according to Holmes. Instead, the speech’s ability to gain approval in the social marketplace of ideas should determine its worth and staying power, Holmes argued. Only through the open competition of free and unhindered speech can society discover the truth necessary to govern itself. Since the people in a democratic society are the ultimate arbiters of social truth, there must exist a means by which the public can learn and acquire truth. As Justice Holmes recognized, and as courts have subsequently accepted, the best and perhaps only means to acquire truth is through the free exchange of ideas.

It would be nearly a half-century before the Supreme Court would accept the theory put forth by Justice Holmes in his 1919 Abrams dissent. Courts would come to value free speech as both a social and constitutional goal, and government restrictions on speech would be struck down as unconstitutional constraints on the marketplace of ideas. The constitutional protections of speech would not hinge on the government’s evaluation of the value or desirability of the speech.

The marketplace metaphor values free speech because only through open expression can society ever arrive at the social truths necessary for self-government. Consequently, to value truth is to value free speech; for without free speech, there can be no truth.

The enduring legacy of Holmes’ marketplace of ideas metaphor lay in its broadening of the justification for free speech. Prior to Holmes’ Abrams dissent, speech was looked upon as strictly an individual value. Thus, the only justification for protecting speech was the individual interest in being able to say whatever he or she wanted to say. At this point in America’s history, individual freedom to do or say whatever one felt like doing or saying was not highly valued. Social order and stability were far more valued, meaning the good of society prevailed over the interests of the individual. Survival and prosperity meant that individuals had to conform to societal norms.

Through his marketplace metaphor, Holmes demonstrated that free speech was not simply an individual value and that the reason for protecting free speech was not simply to grant unrestricted freedom to individuals. Instead, free speech was a necessary component to an effective and thriving society and nation. Without an open marketplace of ideas, the public could not come to a full and agreed upon appreciation of truth, which was the very foundation of self-government.

This marketplace principle can be violated today when unwanted speech is labeled “misinformation” and then censored.

Patrick M. Garry is professor of law at the University of South Dakota. He is author of Limited Government and the Bill of Rights and The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As most Americans will recognize, these are words from the Declaration of Independence.

Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, in his beautiful and insightful book: The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It,” writes: “The Founders understood [the Declaration and Constitution] to be connected, to supply together the principles and the details of government, to be a persuasive and durable unity.”[i]

Most Americans have never encountered Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration[ii] and are not aware the Declaration went through significant “wordsmithing” on its path to approval on July 4, 1776. In his draft, I particularly prefer Jefferson’s more powerful: “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable” to the final, “self-evident.” On the other hand, other sentences in Jefferson’s draft clearly benefited from the collaboration of the Congress, even while Jefferson later complained his work had been “mangled.” The judgment of historian Carl Becker was that “Congress left the Declaration better than it found it.”[iii]

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Here Jefferson is of course referring to the “certain unalienable Rights” we have been “endowed by [our] Creator.” These natural, unalienable rights derive from natural law. In a 1775 newspaper essay entitled “The Farmer Refuted,” Alexander Hamilton explains the relationship between natural law and natural rights this way:

“To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature … Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind … The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” (Emphasis added)

Indispensably obligatory? Sir William Blackstone explains why:

“Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. A being independent of any other, has no rule to pursue, but such as he prescribes to himself; but a state of dependence will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him, on whom he depends, as the rule of his conduct; not indeed in every particular, but in all those points wherein his dependence consists. This principle, therefore, has more or less extent and effect, in proportion as the superiority of the one and the dependence of the other is greater or less, absolute or limited. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker’s will.”[iv]

If there was one political principle which was ubiquitous during the founding period, it was the natural, unalienable rights of the colonists. Early Americans almost never missed an opportunity to proclaim them. As Thomas West argues, “the founders shared a ‘theoretically coherent understanding’ of politics rooted in natural rights philosophy.”[v]

While Jefferson directly lists only three unalienable rights, other rights, both individual and collective, are hidden in plain sight. These include:

  • The right of a people “to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”
  • The right “to alter or to abolish [an old government], and institute new government.” (Note: this right can also be seen as a duty!)
  • The right to secure their unalienable and civil rights through the institution of government.
  • The right to delegate power to government, through the people’s consent.

We must also note that Jefferson’s use of “the pursuit of happiness” is unusual. The normal “trio” of essential rights was “Life, Liberty and Property.” We find property mentioned in most “rights” documents from the founding period: “pursuit of happiness” is an outlier. John Adams, in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787), reminds us:

“Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty.…The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”

But as Thomas Paine warns us:

“[P]roperty will ever be unequal …. Industry, superiority of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression; and besides this there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence; while in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclusive rights.”[vi]

Is there a relationship between property and other rights? To James Madison there certainly was: “In its larger and juster meaning, it [property] embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to everyone else the like advantage… In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions, and in the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the professions and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right in his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”9 Madison then explains that “conscience is the most sacred of all property … more sacred than his castle.”[vii]

With “property” aside, the unalienable rights of Life and Liberty are relatively easy to understand, but a right to “pursue happiness” begs further explanation.

In his First Inaugural Address, George Washington explained: “There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.” Jefferson would agree. But perhaps we should first clarify what the pursuit of happiness did not mean. To America’s founders, it was not the pursuit of licentiousness, the pursuit of base pleasure or the pursuit of wealth for wealth’s sake. John Locke warns us: “mistake not imaginary for real happiness”[viii]

“[T]he “pursuit of happiness” as envisaged by [John Locke] and by Jefferson was not merely the pursuit of pleasure, property, or self-interest (although it includes all of these). It is also the freedom to be able to make decisions that result in the best life possible for a human being, which includes intellectual and moral effort. We would all do well to keep this in mind when we begin to discuss the “American” concept of happiness.”[ix]

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter @constitutionled.

[i] Larry Arnn, The Founders’ Key; The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It, Nashville, 2012, p.11.

[ii] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0176-0004.

[iii] Carl Becker, Declaration of Independence, New York, 1922, p. 209.

[iv] Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Section 2, Of the Nature of Laws in General, accessed at: https://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/blackstone/cle.int.s02.html.

[v] Thomas West, The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom, 2017.

[vi] Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

[vii] Kurland, Philip B. The Founders’ Constitution. Vol. 1. Chicago , IL: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1987, p.598.

[viii] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689, accessed at https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/locke-the-works-vol-1-an-essay-concerning-human-understanding-part-1.

[ix] Anonymous, accessed at https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/john-locke/.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

The essence of the American Dream lies in the belief that every individual, irrespective of their background, has the opportunity to succeed based on their talents, abilities, and hard work. A central driver of this dream is the principle of individual free enterprise, a system where businesses are free from excessive government interference, and individuals have the right to use their resources to create, innovate, and grow.

The beauty of individual free enterprise is that it unleashes the inherent potential within each of us. It allows an individual with a great idea to take that concept, build upon it, and bring it to the marketplace. It encourages creativity, fosters competition, and drives innovation. In this arena, an entrepreneur’s vision can be actualized, and dreams can truly come alive.

The American Dream, therefore, can be aptly described as the Entrepreneur’s Dream. It is a dream that does not discriminate based on race, color, or creed, but instead extols the resilience, tenacity, and spirit of individuals who are willing to take risks and work hard to realize their visions. It is the dream of creating something that can not only change an individual’s life but potentially impact the world.

The cornerstone of the American dream, the pursuit of happiness, is intrinsically linked to the principles of private property rights and individual free enterprise. Rooted in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, these tenets have been the lifeblood of our nation’s prosperity and ingenuity for centuries. Understanding the interconnectedness of these concepts and their critical importance is paramount to preserving the spirit of liberty that fuels American progress.

The right to “pursue happiness” is not merely a poetic phrase; it is the Declaration of Independence’s embodiment of the American dream, anchoring the pursuit of personal fulfillment and prosperity to the soul of the nation. Rooted in the Enlightenment philosophy of John Locke, the Founding Fathers believed that government’s primary role was to safeguard the natural rights of its citizens, granting them the autonomy to seek their own path to happiness. This novel notion freed the American people from the chains of monarchical rule and ushered in a new era of self-determination, where individuals were encouraged to chart their destinies with vigor and determination.

Yet, for this dream to thrive, we must create and maintain an environment conducive to entrepreneurial growth. An essential ingredient of this environment is a regulatory and policy framework that facilitates rather than hinders enterprise. The government’s role should be to provide a stable, predictable legal framework that protects property rights, upholds the rule of law, and maintains a level playing field.

The concept of individual free enterprise, which underpins the American economic system, complements the right to pursue happiness perfectly. Free enterprise embodies the principles of economic freedom, private property rights, and voluntary exchange. By unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, it facilitates the pursuit of happiness on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, the Founding Fathers understood that the realizations of one’s dreams and aspirations were inextricably tied to the freedom to engage in commerce and create wealth.

At the core of the Constitution’s protection of private property rights is the Fifth Amendment, which states, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The Founding Fathers understood that private property is the bedrock of personal liberty and economic growth. It is a tangible manifestation of an individual’s labor, ingenuity, and ambition; it fuels motivation and contributes to societal development. Moreover, the right to private property extends beyond the mere possession of physical goods to encompass intellectual property, businesses, and even ideas.

Inextricably linked to the notion of private property rights is the concept of individual free enterprise. This principle is the foundation upon which America’s economic success has been built. Free enterprise allows individuals to use their private property—whether it be their labor, capital, or ideas—to create value, compete in the marketplace, and achieve their own version of the American dream.

These concepts are not separate entities, but rather two sides of the same coin, each strengthening and reinforcing the other. The security of private property rights fosters an environment conducive to free enterprise, where individuals are more inclined to take risks, innovate, and invest, knowing that their efforts and resources are safeguarded. Similarly, free enterprise, through its production of wealth and opportunities, allows for the further accumulation and managing of private property.

Another critical factor is the societal attitude towards failure. In a true free enterprise system, failure is not a stigma but a stepping stone toward success. It is through trial and error that entrepreneurs refine their ideas, hone their skills, and ultimately succeed. A culture that encourages risk-taking, celebrates entrepreneurial spirit, and sees failure as a learning opportunity is one that will generate more innovation and prosperity.

Education also plays a significant role. Equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills to start and manage businesses, understand market dynamics, and adapt to changing economic landscapes is vital. This isn’t merely about promoting business education but encouraging a mindset of creativity and problem solving.

However, it is essential to note that these principles do not exist in a vacuum. The government plays a crucial role in ensuring their existence and efficacy, providing a stable legal framework and enforcing the rules of the game. Nevertheless, the balance is delicate. Overreaching government intervention can stifle creativity, disrupt the natural mechanisms of the free market, and erode private property rights. Thus, the principle of limited government—another pillar of our constitutional order—is central to this discussion.

The government should avoid policies that stifle ingenuity or add unnecessary burdens to entrepreneurs. High taxes, excessive regulations, and restrictive labor laws can serve as barriers to entry, preventing new ventures from getting off the ground and stifling the creativity and dynamism that drive economic growth and job creation.

The connection between the Constitution’s protection of private property rights and individual free enterprise is a testament to the profound wisdom of our Founding Fathers. Their understanding of human nature, individual freedom, and economic principles enabled them to construct a system that has fostered unprecedented prosperity and liberty.

Today, as we face the challenges of an increasingly globalized and digital world, these principles are more important than ever. Protecting private property rights and promoting free enterprise will enable us to preserve individual liberty, spur economic growth, and maintain America’s position as a bastion of invention.

The success of free enterprise in America is rooted in the belief that individuals, not government, are best suited to determine their needs and aspirations. This laissez-faire approach to economic governance has unleashed an unparalleled era of prosperity, creating the world’s largest economy and improving the lives of countless citizens. The unyielding spirit of entrepreneurship, driven by the pursuit of happiness, has fostered a culture of risk-taking and relentless ambition that has propelled America to greatness.

Individual free enterprise embodies the principles of meritocracy, rewarding hard work and creativity while fostering competition. It allows individuals to utilize their unique talents and skills to create value for others and, in turn, realize their own dreams. By removing bureaucratic barriers, free enterprise empowers citizens to participate in an ever-changing economic landscape, ensuring that success is not predestined but earned through dedication and effort.

The right to pursue happiness, as written in the Declaration of Independence, and the ideal of individual free enterprise are intrinsically linked. Together, they form the bedrock of the American dream, empowering individuals to chart their own destinies, create prosperity, and leave a lasting impact on society. Embracing the principles of liberty and free enterprise ensures that the pursuit of happiness remains not just a mere aspiration, but a tangible reality for all American citizens, as it has been for centuries since the nation’s founding.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, a Fellow with Constituting America, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

In 1785, in his book Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote in Query XIX, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example.” In similar tone, in a passage in a letter to John Jay that same year, Jefferson effusively tied together all of the notions American agrarians held dear: “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to its liberty & interests by the most lasting bonds.” He repeated similar sentiments throughout his life.

Jefferson was not alone in these adulatory opinions. Americans, whose beliefs otherwise might be quite heterodox about the nature of virtue or the best government or economic system, broadly shared his views. Nor was this mindset restricted to Americans, who occupied—rather sparsely, on the whole—a large tract of land and whose nation was overwhelmingly agricultural. The French physiocrats of the mid-18th century endorsed agricultural production as the true measure of a nation’s wealth, and land combined with agricultural labor as its only source. Going back further, Aristotle had extolled the virtues associated with agrarian society. But it was Roman writers such as Cato, Cicero, and Virgil whose works most influenced Enlightenment agrarians. Roman republicanism exalted land ownership to the point that senators were formally prohibited from engaging in any but agricultural endeavors, a restriction the senators avoided through various artifices as Rome became a more commercial society. The ideal of the Roman statesman was told in the story of Cincinnatus, the nobleman who was called from his pastoral existence to lead Rome in a time of crisis, only to lay down his office and return to his small farm when the crisis ended. For Americans, the resemblance to George Washington was not a coincidence.

But the most immediate influence on Americans’ exaltation of the yeoman farmer was a school of British Whiggism, the so-called country party. The 17th-century political philosopher James Harrington had penned Oceana, his description of an ideal commonwealth based on roughly equal holdings of land by its citizens. The land must be enough, unencumbered by debts, to provide for himself and his family. Only in this manner could he avoid dependence on another, his would-be master. That independence was crucial to cultivating the virtue necessary for self-government. English essayists of the 18th century, such as John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, writing in Cato’s Letters, and Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, with whose works Americans were quite familiar, also advocated the necessary relationship among ownership of an adequate estate in land, independence, virtue, and liberty.

Perhaps the single most influential philosopher for Americans of the Founding was John Locke. As with other political principles, Locke’s ideas on property, virtue, and limited government resonated in Jefferson’s writings. Locke posited that God gave the world to mankind in common. But man had the right to his own labor and could claim as his own both the land with which he mixed his labor and the fruits of his labor in the crops the land produced. At least implicitly, this required a plentiful supply of land that would be available for future generations.

Not surprisingly, Locke’s views found favor among Americans, who saw a virtually limitless bounty of land in their world. Although some areas along the Atlantic seaboard were becoming more populated, it was always possible to decamp for a tract unsettled, at least by Europeans, just a few dozen miles farther west. Various plans of settlement were grounded in the easy availability of land. There was the almost feudal system of land ownership designed for the Carolinas by John Locke, the secretary for one of the proprietors of that colony. Fortunately, his Fundamental Constitutions were substantially amended by the proprietors and then suspended after two decades, in 1690. More consistent with Locke’s other writings was the project of the proprietor of Georgia, James Edward Oglethorpe, in 1733. Oglethorpe designed a plan of economic and social development founded on land grants of equal size. Acquisition of additional land by marriage or purchase was prohibited. Likewise, slavery was prohibited as immoral, but also to prevent the emergence of large plantations as had happened in other colonies.

There was plenty of land in Georgia, as well as in the country west of the Allegheny Mountains. But there was a catch. After the end of French rule in North America, the British government signed treaties with the Indians to end Pontiac’s Rebellion and issued the Proclamation of 1763 to prevent western settlement. Existing settlers were ordered to abandon their tracts. Americans considered this to be a blatant attempt to prevent an increase in the population. The Proclamation was immensely unpopular among all classes, from the land speculators and investors in land syndicates with their fortunes now at risk, to the settlers looking for cheap and plentiful land. It became a major contributor to the ill will emerging against the British government.

Once American independence was achieved, settlers poured through the mountain passes into the western lands of the states and then into the unorganized areas of the Old Northwest. The Confederation Congress adopted the Land Ordinance of 1784, drafted by Jefferson, and the implementing Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey the lands and prepare them for sale.

While the peace treaty with Britain opened up potentially vast tracts of land for sale or, more frequently, squatting, some of the most committed ideologues of American agrarianism were still ill at ease. In particular, the rise of manufactures and merchant commerce troubled them. They saw in England the fate that awaited Americans of future generations. As the population there grew and the supply of land became filled, people were forced into wretched conditions in cities to labor for others. Adam Smith had described their condition in 1776 in Wealth of Nations: Farming required a variety of knowledge and practical understanding; not so factory work. “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps always the same…has no occasion to exert his understanding …. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” This was hardly the stuff of the virtuous and enlightened citizen, jealous of his liberty, but ready to sacrifice for the well-being of the community, the free yeoman farmer or artisan suited to self-government in a republic.

Jefferson needed no convincing. He agreed with Smith that the division of labor in the emerging capitalist manufacturing sector produced significant material benefits. But he was also convinced that the nascent banking system with its creation of debt, as well as the monotony of factory work, created a dependency that robbed ordinary citizens of the autonomy needed for republican government. Regardless of material wealth produced by manufacturers and “stock jobbers,” a nation of farmers was better suited for a republic. Writing in Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson declared, “Manufacturing, and its attendant commerce, as European evidence had so graphically shown, distorted relationships among men, bred dependence and servility, and spawned greed and corruption which became a canker on the society. A nation of farmers, on the other hand, each of whom owned his own plot of land, who was free and beholden to no one, would assure the preservation of those qualities on which the strength of a republic depended.”

It was important, therefore, to provide land for as many as possible, including future generations. Echoing Locke, Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison on October 28, 1785,

“The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to labor the earth returns to the unemployed… It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.”

Jefferson’s advocacy for the Land Ordinances of 1784 and 1785 reflected his eagerness to promote widespread land ownership. But his most edifying moment was the stroke of good fortune in the form of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. For a bargain price of $15 million, or an estimated $350 million in today’s money, the territory acquired from France almost doubled the size of the United States. More accurately, the United States acquired the exclusive right to deal with the American Indian tribes that occupied most of the land. While there were other benefits, commercial and military, sufficient to overcome whatever constitutional scruples President Jefferson voiced to others about his authority to make the treaty, he was most gratified that the purchase achieved his goal of plentiful land for his republic of farmers and artisans: “The fertility of the country, its climate and extent, promise in due season important aids to our treasury, an ample provision for our posterity, and a wide-spread field for the blessings of freedom.” By this action, he could assure himself, he had guaranteed a republican future for generations of Americans to come, where the plenitude of land made certain that no one would have to subject himself to exploitation or domination by another.

Whereas Jefferson returned to the theme of his republic of farmers and artisans in frequent correspondences, he was not a systematic theorist of American agrarianism. That description best fits John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia. Taylor was a lawyer, planter, military officer, and politician. He engaged in scientific agriculture, becoming a leader in promoting crop rotation, and published pamphlets and a book about those endeavors. He also wrote several books about political economy and the connection among land ownership, private happiness, independence defined as republican self-government, liberty, a limited and decentralized political system, division of political powers, and the laissez-faire economics of a free market. He vigorously opposed wealth and political power from the emerging capitalist manufacturing enterprises fueled by burdensome protective tariffs. But his most fervent denunciations were of banks, the paper issued by them unbacked by sufficient specie, and their practice of patronage and lobbying which according to Taylor, secured them unnatural privilege and wealth.

Taylor’s five books, especially his 1814 work, Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States, brought philosophical discipline to the agrarian mythos among Americans. His contributions to political theory have been declared among the best that Americans have produced. Taylor’s adoration of agrarian republicanism at times took on a religious tone. He tied the story of the Garden of Eden to an agrarian social order and was convinced that an agrarian republic would allow man to regain his lost paradise.

Agriculture provided freedom which, in turn, produced private happiness. With family roots in the land, social organizations could develop organically, and people would enjoy true community through friendship, love, religion, education, and leisure. As well, agriculture provided the independence needed for republican self-government and the resulting public happiness created by wise laws. Manufacturing and capitalism had the opposite effect. In language reminiscent of Adam Smith, and to a degree of Karl Marx, Taylor denounced the emerging factory system as degrading human nature by destroying man’s freedom and happiness. The laborer was nothing more than a wage slave, paid a wage that supported him for that day and left no money for savings and improvement of his condition. Capitalists got the laborers to work for them but did not reward their efforts in commensurate manner. Like Smith and the French physiocrats, Taylor believed that true wealth ultimately was derived through the profits from land. Capitalism robbed that wealth from farmers and workers through tariffs and banks, and substituted paper wealth for true prosperity.

In all societies, some groups or classes dominate the exercise of political power at a given time. In a republic, a landed gentry was best. Perhaps not coincidentally, Taylor was among the landed gentry exercising political power in Virginia. Admittedly, a landed gentry had a degree of inherited power. The disparity in wealth and power among the agrarian class was tolerable, because these resulted from working the land. The broad availability of land and the nature of agricultural work would keep such differences within appropriate limits. On the other hand, a “paper system” of banking and commercial speculation created exorbitant wealth dangerous to society. Such a paper aristocracy relied on patronage and on taxation of productive farmers and laborers to maintain itself.

Taylor’s acceptance of inequality of landed wealth as sufficiently innocuous not to threaten personal liberty or republican self-government touched on a ticklish point for American agrarians. If republican government depended on broad participation by a politically fit and independent people, exercising their freedom through their connection with the land, was it not obligatory on republican government to assure broad equality in land ownership? Those who wrote passionately about the republic of yeoman farmers and artisans inevitably had significant land holdings themselves. Taylor, for example, at one point owned three plantations in Virginia and thousands of acres of western lands, so there was a limit to how far he was willing to press agrarian fundamentalism. There was the scent of self-interest in their discussions when they opposed proposals to redistribute land through “agrarian laws.” The only estates that were redistributed were those seized from Loyalists during the Revolutionary War, and even those were generally sold to purchasers of substantial means, often for speculation.

The opposition to such redistribution was broad and deep among those who determined policy. Jefferson may have been a supporter of the idea of equality in landed estates, but was less enthusiastic about redistributive laws. As he wrote in a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of [political] association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

Madison devoted considerable attention to the matter in the debates over the Constitution. He was strongly critical of the more enthusiastic exponents of agrarianism and considered the whole doctrine potentially turbulent. At the Philadelphia Convention, Madison warned about the “leveling spirit” manifested in the tax rebellion of farmers in western Massachusetts in 1786, known as Shays’ Rebellion:

“An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, & secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this Country, but symtoms [sic], of a leveling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarters to give notice of the future danger. How is this danger to be guarded agst. on republican principles? How is the danger in all cases of interested coalitions to oppress the minority to be guarded agst.?”

In short, as John Adams succinctly observed in 1790, “Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.” People were equal in that no one should be dependent on the will of another, and property, in particular land, made this independence possible. The way to such independence was not, however, through radical redistribution schemes but through the acquisition of plentiful land. Adams observed in a May 26, 1776, letter to James Sullivan:

“The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society, to make a division of land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates. If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue and interest of the multitude, in all acts of government.”

Americans at the Founding and for several generations thereafter saw themselves and their communities as naturally fit for republicanism precisely because they were “a people of property; almost every man is a freeholder.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Corruption means rottenness—disintegration caused not by external pressure but by some inner flaw. Political corruption occurs when a ruler, responsible for the country’s good, the good of the citizens, instead uses his authority to obtain a private benefit—something that seems good for himself, his family, his friends. Distrust and faction then weaken the body politic.

At the Constitutional Convention, the American Founders knew what corruption was. They had read the Bible which had taught them that corruption began with the human heart, that sin persisted in each of them, and that they might succeed in suppressing it. Each man at the Constitutional Convention was wary of the American people, their colleagues, and himself.

They had declared independence from the British Empire, a monarchic regime which had elevated political corruption to a routine practice, a way in which government ran. British monarchs exerted control over Parliament, the supposedly separate legislative branch, by offering key members positions within the royal administration, positions members could hold while continuing to sit in Parliament. The Founders saw a similar form of corruption in George III’s rule over the American colonies. Amongst the “long train of Abuses and Usurpations” designed to reduce the colonists to the status of subjects under an “absolute Despotism,” we find: “He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries,” and “He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.” Such patronage bound public officials to the monarch, putting them at his service, turning them against governing for the good of the people governed.

George III was no anomaly. “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree,” James Madison warned, at the Convention. Corruption being ingrained in every human heart, the Framers of the United States Constitution never supposed it to be limited to regimes in which one person or a few persons ruled. Elected representatives in a democratic republic might engage in corrupt rule as readily as tyrants who call themselves kings or oligarchs who call themselves aristocrats. The small republics, the states whose people they represented at the Constitutional Convention had seen any number of such incidences. And the states, delegates agreed, were highly “democratical.”

In late June, the delegates were considering the legislative branch—instantiated by law in what would become Article I of the Constitution. How shall the members of the House of Representatives be paid? And will they be eligible for appointment to the executive branch? Money and power: indispensable to any government, the purpose of which is to secure the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but also potentially the means of corruption, whereby the instruments of public good might be diverted to the acquisition of private wealth and aggrandizement.

When it came to paying Congressional representatives, all agreed that they should receive, in the words of one delegate, “adequate compensation for their services.” But who should pay them? To avoid the corruption that might creep in if they set their own salaries, some delegates argued that the states should determine them. Edmund Randolph of Virginia disagreed, arguing, “If the States were to pay the members of the National Legislature, a dependence [upon the States] would vitiate the whole system.” More specifically, Madison observed, this would make Senators “mere Agents and Advocates of State interests and views instead of being the impartial umpires and Guardians of justice and the general Good.” Alexander Hamilton concurred, distinguishing between “the feelings and view of the people” and “the Governments of the States,” as the latter might well be unfriendly to “the General Government.” Since “the science of policy is the knowledge of human nature” as it is seen in ruling and being ruled, and since such knowledge tells us that “all political bodies love power, and it will often be improperly attained,” state legislatures ought not be “the pay masters” of federal officials.

These arguments prevailed. Indeed, the state legislatures were to select the members of the United States Senate anyway, giving the state governments substantial influence on the Congressional conduct. Control over pay would have extended states’ control to the House of Representatives. Article I, section 6 stipulates that “Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law”—federal law—and “paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”

George Mason expressed no concern about corruption in the form of salaries, but the corruption itself worried and disgusted him. He had also become increasingly concerned about the ability of the states to defend themselves against encroachments by a newly empowered federal government, which, he worried, might ruin the states by corrupt means. When the question of making Congressional representatives ineligible for executive branch offices during their terms, and perhaps for a year after leaving office, he rose to say, “I admire many parts of the British constitution and government, but I detest their corruption.” Citing “the venality and abuses” of the British regime, he described the disqualification of Congressmen from executive offices as “a cornerstone of the fabric of the Constitution” and “the cornerstone on which our liberties depends.” Though mixed, the metaphor was ardently raised, for, whether offices are filled by the executive, as in Great Britain, or by the legislature, as in Virginia (“many of their appointments are most shameful”), “it is necessary to shut the door against corruption.” If legislators are allowed to take executive offices, “they [might] make or multiply offices, in order to fill them”—precisely what George III had done in North America. Mason identified ambassadorial posts as a rich field for such bestowals, as there are many small and obscure countries where a Congressman might find himself and his wife elevated to high and remunerative positions in exchange for a few votes on important national matters. Exactly this practice explains why “the power of the [British] crown has so remarkably increased in the last century.”

Against this, proponents of dual officeholding—in particular, James Wilson of Pennsylvania—maintained that disqualification would prevent good men from serving their country to the fullest extent of their abilities. Elected representatives are likely seen by their fellow citizens as men of virtue and ability. “This is truly a republican principle. Shall talents, which entitle a man to public reward, operate as a punishment?” In reply, Mason deprecated the thought. Can such men not be found outside Congress? Or, if Congressmen leave Congress for executive branch positions, are no good men available to replace them? “If we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end, nor would I wish to put a man of virtue in the way of temptation.”

Although he opposed Mason on the larger question of empowering the federal government, Hamilton sided with him here. “Our great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.” But “our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.” Therefore, “when a member [of Congress] takes his seat, he should vacate every other office,” whether in the state or the federal government.

For his part, Madison disagreed with his future collaborator on The Federalist. Without the possibility of dual officeholding, he claimed, it will be hard to recruit qualified men for Congress. Further, disqualifying members won’t disqualify their cronies, so corruption will occur, anyway.

The majority of delegates found Mason and Hamilton persuasive. Article I, section 6 thus reads, “no Person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House during his Continuance in Office.” To prevent legislators from creating new federal offices or raising the salaries of new ones and then quitting Congress to occupy one of them, “no Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he is elected,” be appointed to any such office (emphasis added).

But who shall appoint executive officeholders? If not the legislators or the president, and surely not the Supreme Court justices, then—who? Mason did not say. But his argument leaves only the states to perform this task. Mason had earlier argued that state legislatures’ election of U.S. Senators provided one means of self-defense for the states. In his mind, state legislative control of executive branch appointments might have been another, even as control of salaries had been, in the eyes of delegates who later joined him in becoming Anti-federalists. If so, the notion went nowhere, and the delegates eventually split the power between presidential appointment and Senatorial approval.

The argument over political corruption thus went well beyond the moral objection to corruption itself—ingrained in human nature, to be sure, but also susceptible to rational discipline and dilution. Corruption raised the overall question the delegates addressed, the question of the structure of the American regime. A republic, if you can keep it, Mr. Franklin famously said. But how to keep it? In shaping a government strong enough both to represent and to rule the people, to secure their unalienable rights and not to undercut them, the Framers sought to set down institutional barriers that would impede corruption, without pretending to remove it from the human heart.

Will Morrisey is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College, editor and publisher of Will Morrisey Reviews, an online book review publication.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson working on the Declaration, a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1900

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“I do believe that men of genius will be deterred unless possessed of great virtues. We may well dispense with the first characters when destitute of virtue I should wish them never to come forward–But if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end: nor would I wish to put a man of virtue in the way of temptation. Evasions, and caballing would evade the amendment. Nor would the danger be less, if the executive has the appointment of officers. The first three or four years we might go on well enough; but what would be the case afterwards? I will add, that such a government ought to be refused by the people–and it will be refused.” – George Mason, Farrand’s Records, Federal Convention, Saturday, June 23, 1787, regarding provisions against fraud and corruption regardless of an invasion’s origin slowly eroding the United States.

In the true spirit of the American founding, George Mason’s assertion during the Federal Convention of 1787 deeply resonates with our contemporary political and social landscape. As he opined, a lack of virtue and unchecked corruption pose significant threats to the integrity and endurance of our government. Today, as we explore the principle of the appropriate role and purpose of government in protecting people from violence and fraud, we must bear these foundational truths in mind. We must also heed the wisdom of Mason, understanding the immense potential of the government as a force for good, but also the catastrophic possibilities when it strays from the path of virtue and integrity.

At its most fundamental level, the government exists to serve and protect its citizenry, a contract defined and limited by the United States Constitution. In this regard, the state’s role as a protector against violence and fraud becomes manifestly clear. This duty underscores the necessity for law enforcement agencies, a system of justice that ensures accountability, and regulatory mechanisms that guard against fraudulent actions. It is within these parameters that the government can and must act, without overstepping its boundaries and encroaching upon individual liberties.

Mason’s words have their roots in the prose written by his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence: “to secure… rights, Governments are instituted among Men” and is the very the heart of the United States’ philosophy and the very nature of democratic governance. These words are an affirmation of the contract between the governed and their governors, denoting a central truth of political theory and civil society: the state’s primary purpose is to protect the individual rights of its citizens.

Liberty has an intrinsic value, not as an abstract philosophical concept, but as a practical, living principle that shapes our everyday lives. The freedom to pursue our dreams, express our thoughts, associate with others, and engage in economic transactions without undue restraint is what gives life its richness and vitality. Yet, as vital as individual liberty is, it does not exist in a vacuum. Rights inevitably come into conflict, and when they do, a mechanism is needed to adjudicate those conflicts in a fair and just manner. This is where government steps in.

The role of government in protecting individuals from harm when individual rights conflict is a delicate balancing act. The government must tread carefully to prevent undue encroachments on individual liberty while simultaneously safeguarding the common good. It must protect individual rights without creating a lawless society where might makes right and the strongest prevail over the weakest. In doing so, it preserves the delicate balance between individual freedom and societal stability.

Consider the realm of property rights. Suppose one person’s use of their property causes harm to another’s property, such as pollution flowing downstream from a factory to a farmer’s field. Here, the rights of one individual or group, the factory owners, are in direct conflict with the rights of another, the farmers. If left unresolved, such conflicts can escalate, potentially leading to animosity, legal battles, and even violence.

In this instance, government, as the arbiter of rights and protector of the public good, has a vital role to play. By setting and enforcing regulations that prevent harm, it can ensure the factory owner’s right to conduct business without infringing on the farmer’s rights to a clean environment and productive land. In this way, the government upholds the tenets of liberty and justice for all, ensuring that no individual or group’s rights supersede another’s to the detriment of society.

All just law is rooted in this concept: where rights come into conflict, the party that is more aggrieved/harmed is supposed to be protected by the law. However, as the government steps in to mediate such conflicts, it must be careful not to overreach, a common pitfall in the quest to ensure harmony. Overreach can manifest in excessive regulation, infringing upon individual freedoms, and stifling economic prosperity. The challenge lies in striking the correct balance, respecting individual rights while preserving the common good.

Moreover, it is vital to remember that government itself is not immune to the temptation of overreach. This is precisely why the Founding Fathers, mindful of the potential for tyranny, insisted on a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch of government from gaining too much power. It is incumbent upon us, as citizens, to remain vigilant against any such overreach, to question and challenge when necessary, and to insist on our rights and freedoms.

The delicate balance between liberty and security is a critical concern. Too much emphasis on security, and we risk suffocating individual freedom; too little, and we expose ourselves to the danger of anarchy and lawlessness. This tension forms the crux of the government’s challenge in protecting its people from violence and fraud while preserving the inalienable rights of its citizenry.

However, in today’s increasingly complex society, the government’s role is constantly being tested and redefined. As we delve further into the 21st century, we find ourselves grappling with unprecedented challenges—cybercrime, international terrorism, economic fraud on a massive scale—that blur the boundaries of the state’s role. In this context, it is crucial to reassert the primacy of integrity and virtue, two pillars Mason identified as essential to good governance. Without them, the government risks becoming a tool for the powerful, rather than an institution that serves its people.

Indeed, Mason’s concerns about corruption, temptations, and the erosion of government integrity remain as pertinent today as they were in the 18th century. The key to preserving the integrity of our government lies in adhering to the principles of transparency, accountability, and the rule of law. Our elected officials must remain accountable to the people they serve, demonstrating their commitment to these ideals in every decision they make. Additionally, the government’s regulatory role must be applied uniformly, without favor or prejudice, to ensure a level playing field for all.

Mason was also prescient in his prediction of how unchecked corruption could spell the end of a government. In this, we are reminded of the ever-present need for vigilance and active participation from the citizenry. The fight against corruption and fraud should not be left to the government alone. As citizens, we must hold our government accountable, demanding transparency and integrity in all its dealings. Furthermore, we should also resist the allure of complacency, instead embracing our civic duty to contribute to the democratic process, whether that be through voting, peaceful protest, or public discourse.

Mason’s words serve as a beacon, guiding us through the murky waters of modern governance. As we navigate the complexities of the 21st century, his emphasis on virtue, the prevention of corruption, and the importance of a government that serves its people rather than its self-interests continues to ring true. As we affirm the government’s role in protecting us from violence and fraud, we must also insist on its adherence to the principles that have defined our nation since its inception: liberty, integrity, and the unyielding pursuit of justice. Only by doing so can we ensure the preservation of our government and the endurance of America.

The role of government as the protector of individual rights when they come into conflict is an essential one. It balances the scale between liberty and societal stability, ensuring harmony among conflicting interests. Yet, it must perform this duty with due respect for the very rights it is sworn to protect, treading the line between regulatory oversight and individual freedom. As we navigate these complex issues, we must remember that preserving liberty is the ultimate goal, and a government that respects this will indeed be a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, a Fellow with Constituting America, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: James P. Pinkerton

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

The new movie Oppenheimer offers us a window into the past: Into a key moment in the evolution of our national defense—and along the way, the film underscores the importance of fending off treason.

The authors of the U.S. Constitution, steeped as they were in history, knew all about the danger a nation faced from betrayal. In particular, the Catilinarian Conspiracy of the ancient Roman Republic loomed large in their minds, such that in the 18th century, “Catiline” became synonymous with “traitor.” Yet that same knowledge of history told the Americans that oftentimes in the past, mere dissent, peaceful and legitimate, had been labeled as treachery, the easier to crush the dissenters. So Article Three, Section Three, of the Constitution carefully circumscribes the offense; it declares that treason “shall consist only in levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Explaining this narrowly constructed language in The Federalist Papers, the essays aimed at encouraging the ratification of the Constitution, James Madison wrote, “Artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions . . .  have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other.” That is, bad regimes were too easily tempted to label troublemakers as traitors. Seeking to reassure Americans that their rights and liberties would be protected, Madison pledged that the Constitution establishes “a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author.” In other words, no overbroad definition of treason, and no collective punishment—no reigns of terror—for the acts of an individual.

The Constitution’s sense of moderation and due process informs the new movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., which developed the atomic bomb during World War Two. Oppenheimer was a scientific genius blessed with, in addition, great skills of organization and leadership. And he was also at least something of a communist. Thus the paradox in the film: Oppenheimer was needed for national defense, and he was also a potential security threat.

Beyond any reasonable doubt, the atomic bomb has been vital to defending America and protecting American lives. During World War Two, there was reason to believe that Nazi Germany was building an atomic weapon, and we had to have the bomb before Hitler. And even after that satanic regime was crushed, the other enemy, Japan, was still fighting, still killing Americans; the Okinawa campaign of April-June 1945 led to the death of some 12,500 GIs, as well as more than 110,000 Japanese. Yet despite these terrible defeats, Japan showed no inclination to give up its hopeless fight—until the U.S. used atomic bombs in August 1945. The carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki notwithstanding, Japan’s surrender saved hundreds of thousands of American lives, and many millions of Japanese lives. To illustrate the depths of the challenge the U.S. faced, in 1946, Karl Compton, president the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported on his conversation with a Japanese military officer who suggested that were it not for the intervening surrender, every Japanese would have died combating Americans. “We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated,” the officer told Compton. The population of Japan at the time was 77 million.

So Oppenheimer was a hero of our national defense, just as Americans were heroes for mobilizing the resources needed to build the bomb. The Manhattan Project employed a total of 610,000 Americans. And some of those Americans were traitors, spies for the Soviet Union. Only after World War Two, with the onset of the Cold War against the Soviets, did we discover the espionage of such figures as Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass, and Ted Hall. All had worked at Los Alamos under Oppenheimer.  Fuchs and Greenglass were tried, convicted, and imprisoned—but in both cases, for less than a decade (Fuchs served his time in Britain). As for Hall, he was stripped of his security clearance, but allowed to continue his career as a physicist.

This pattern of treachery, of course, reflected on Oppenheimer himself. In 1954, after a quasi-judicial proceeding lasting two months—complete with witnesses to be examined and cross-examined by lawyers—Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance. Yet even so, he was free to live his life; he wrote a book, lectured widely, toured the world (although not the USSR or any other communist country), and even received an award from President Lyndon Johnson in 1963. He died in 1967.

So we can see: The Constitution’s carefully crafted words about treason—and the overall tone of restraint applied to the charge—prevented any of these convicts and suspects from drastic punishments.  (Other spies of that era were treated more harshly.)

The freedoms accorded to us by the Constitution have made us prosperous, of course, in no small part because liberty makes the U.S. a magnet for talent from around the world—four of the top Manhattan Project scientists were born in Hungary, and none of them were spies. Those strengths give us the capacity to build wonder-weapons such as the atomic bomb. And yet that same freedom makes it harder for us to keep secret our secrets.

So this is our Republic: If we can keep it.

James P. Pinkerton worked in the White House domestic policy offices of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and in their 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns. In 2008, he served as a senior adviser to Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign. From 1996 to 2016, he was a Contributor to the Fox News Channel. A frequent contributor to Breitbart, The Daily Caller, and The American Conservative, he is a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute. He is finishing a book on directional investment.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Parthiv Varanasi is an 18-year-old who is graduating from Plano East Senior High School in Plano, TX. He plans to attend the University of Texas at Austin to pursue a double major in Mathematics and Economics and wants to work in international economic policy eventually. Outside of school, Parthiv has been playing tennis for 11 years competitively and has been on the varsity tennis team for four years, serving two of them as the captain of the team. He has also been a leader in his high school’s JROTC program for four years reaching the senior-most leadership position as the Battalion Commander. In the JROTC program, Parthiv led the Academic team and qualified for the JROTC Leadership and Academic Bowl International Championship. In his free time, he enjoys cooking and being active through running and rock climbing. During his time in high school, Parthiv helped raise over 15,000 pounds of food for homeless people, wrote a 4000-word essay evaluating the 17th amendment, and got selected to represent his peers and programs on the Principal’s Advisory Committee and the Student-Athlete Leadership Team.

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“They were likewise sensible that on a subject so comprehensive, and involving such a variety of points and questions, the most able, the most candid, and the most honest men will differ in opinion…Although many weeks were passed in these discussions, some points remained, on which a unison of opinions could not be effected. Here again that same happy disposition to unite and conciliate, induced them to meet each other; and enabled them, by mutual concessions, finally to complete and agree to the plan they have recommended, and that too with a degree of unanimity which, considering the variety of discordant views and ideas, they had to reconcile, is really astonishing…Reflect that the present plan comes recommended to you by men and fellow citizens who have given you the highest proofs that men can give, of their justice, their love for liberty and their country, of their prudence, of their application, and of their talents. They tell you it is the best that they could form; and that in their opinion, it is necessary to redeem you from those calamities which already begin to be heavy upon us all.” – John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in his pamphlet, A Citizen of New York: An Address to the People of the State of New York, April 15, 1788.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

The Oath of Office for elected and appointed officials of the United States government, including Congressional Senators and Representatives, states that they will “support and defend” and “bear true faith and allegiance” to the United States Constitution. Yet, the first time the Constitution was read aloud in the Congress was in 2011. Every two years since, at the beginning of each new Congressional term, members of the House from both parties, for most years since 2011, read aloud the Constitution.

Many Americans support Congress taking time (approximately 45-90 minutes) at the beginning of each Congressional session to read aloud the document they pledge to support; many other Americans consider the reading a waste of time. Videos of the readings seem to support the latter opinion. The only members of Congress in the Chamber during the reading appear to be those who read passages. If all members are not present following along, one can easily conclude that there is little to no value to the exercise.

In September, 1787, upon completion of the writing of the Constitution, a Mrs. Powel is reported to have asked Benjamin Franklin, upon exiting Independence Hall in Philadelphia, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Dr. Franklin replied “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The creation of the document, the Constitution, over the summer of 1787 involved much heated debate among the Convention’s delegates, focused primarily on the concern over the transition from a Confederation, where the states were relatively independent and sovereign, to a Representative Republic, which many feared would eventually become more authoritarian in practice, leaving the states with little to no sovereign powers. New York’s ratification was a concern.  Alexander Hamilton and John Jay of New York and James Madison of Virginia took it upon themselves to write the Federalist Papers for publication in New York newspapers to promote ratification by New York.

Jay also wrote a pamphlet entitled Address to the People of New York in April 1788, to further convince New York to ratify the Constitution. At the time of his Address, only six of the required nine states had ratified the Constitution. New York ratified the document in July, after the required nine had been achieved.

After the Constitution was ratified, the desired “more perfect union” quickly reflected Madison’s warning of faction, expressed in Federalist 10. Jefferson and Madison formed the Democratic Republican Party to oppose their perceived centralized national government tendencies of the Federalist Party of George Washington and John Adams. Over the past 231 years, the “more perfect union” has been under constant attack and counterattack by factions.

Some of today’s influential politicians believe that the 1787 Constitution no longer is relevant in a more pluralistic and modern nation than existed in 1787. Some others differ and believe that the core principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution reflect the best aspirations of the nation formed in the 18th century, that those aspirations remain relevant today and must be retained.

So, many questions are worth asking. For example, if a member of Congress professes to be a Socialist and intends to propose legislation that makes the country more Socialist in nature, is he or she not “bearing true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution? If a member of Congress encourages universities to stifle the speech of members of opposition parties in the classroom and at on campus events, is he or she rejecting the First Amendment to the Constitution, not “supporting and defending” the Amendment? Many other similar questions can be posed.

All factions over the past 231 years have believed that they have better plans for how the American government should be structured. But, John Jay’s 1788 remarks on that topic are as relevant today as they were in 1788.

Jay also noted in his address to the People of the State of New York that:

“zeal for public good, like zeal for religion, may sometimes carry men beyond the bounds of reason. Remember that a power to do good, always involves a power to do harm. The objections made to it (the Constitution) are almost without number, and many of them without reason—some of them are real and honest, and others merely ostensible.”

He acknowledges man’s hubris, saying:

“Let it be admitted that this plan, like everything else devised by man, has its imperfections: That it does not please everybody is certain and there is little reason to expect one that will. It is a question of great moment to you, whether the probability of your being able seasonably to obtain a better, is such as to render it prudent and advisable to reject this, and run the risk.

They do not hold it up as the best of all possible ones, but only as the best which they could unite in, and agree to. What reason have we at present to expect any system that would give more general satisfaction?”

Today, some on both sides of the political divide suggest that we should have a Constitutional Convention. Jay addressed this also.

“Some will answer, let us appoint another Convention. This reasoning is fair, and as far as it goes has weight; but it nevertheless takes one thing for granted, which appears very doubtful; for although the new Convention might have more information, and perhaps equal abilities, yet it does not from thence follow that they would be equally disposed to agree. The contrary of this position is the most probable. You must have observed that the same temper and equanimity which prevailed among the people on the former occasion, no longer exists. We have unhappily become divided into parties.

Nor will either party prefer the most moderate of their adherents, for as the most staunch and active partisans will be the most popular, so the men most willing and able to carry points, to oppose, and divide, and embarrass their opponents, will be chosen. The same party views, the same propensity to opposition, the same distrusts and jealousies, and the same unaccommodating spirit which prevail without, would be concentrated and ferment with still greater violence within. As vice does not sow the seeds of virtue, so neither does passion cultivate the fruits of reason. To expect that discord and animosity should produce the fruits of confidence and agreement, is to expect “grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles.”

A discordant warning follows:

“But if for the reasons already mentioned, and others that we cannot now perceive, the new Convention, instead of producing a better plan, should give us only a history of their disputes, or should offer us one still less pleasing than the present, where should we be then? The old Confederation has done its best, and cannot help us; and is now so relaxed and feeble, that in all probability it would not survive so violent a shock. Then “to your tents Oh Israel!” would be the word.”

Jay concludes, saying:

“Let us also be mindful that the cause of freedom greatly depends on the use we make of the singular opportunities we enjoy of governing ourselves wisely; for if the event should prove, that the people of this country either cannot or will not govern themselves, who will hereafter be advocates for systems, which however charming in theory and prospect. are not reducible to practice. If the people of our nation, instead of consenting to be governed by laws of their own making, and rulers of their own choosing, should let licentiousness, disorder, and confusion reign over them, the minds of men everywhere, will insensibly become alienated from republican forms, and prepared to prefer and acquiesce in Governments, which, though less friendly to liberty, afford more peace and security.

Some of our Congressional Representatives and Senators may sincerely believe that a better government can be formed than the Republic under which we have prospered for 231 years. If so, then they should meet, not in a Constitutional Convention, but in study groups outside of Congress to discuss, plan, and test their ideas against history. In the meantime, their duty, expressed in their oath of office, is to better understand the Constitution under which they serve and to faithfully uphold its principles and laws. They should not propose legislation, nor ignore enforcement of existing legislation, that they can, and should, know is inconsistent with the Constitution to which they have obligated themselves to “bear true faith and allegiance” as well as to “protect and defend.”

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sources:

Bowen, Catherine.  Miracle at Philadelphia.  New York:  Little, Brown and Company, 1986

“I Do Solemnly Swear” – The Oath Of Office And What It Means | FedSmith.com

1787: Jay, Address to the People of N.Y. (Pamphlet) | Online Library of Liberty (libertyfund.org)

Order of States in Ratification of the US Constitution (thoughtco.com)

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

The way is plain, says the anonymous Addresser. If War continues, remove into the unsettled Country; there establish yourselves, and leave an ungrateful Country to defend itself. But who are they to defend? Our Wives, our Children, our Farms, and other property which we leave behind us. or, in this state of hostile separation, are we to take the two first (the latter cannot be removed), to perish in a Wilderness, with hunger, cold and nakedness? If Peace takes place, never sheath your Swords Says he until you have obtained full and ample justice; this dreadful alternative, of either deserting our Country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our Arms against it…what can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the Army? Can he be a friend to this Country? – George Washington, Speech to the Officers of the Army at Newburgh, in response to petitions for the United States military to protest in mutiny. March 15, 1783.

In late 1782, General George Washington was encamped with the army at Newburgh, New York and was deeply troubled. He had won the Revolutionary War with the stunning allied victory over the British at Yorktown and awaited word of a preliminary peace treaty that had been signed in France. However, the British still occupied New York City. Virginia revoked its approval of a five-percent tariff which meant that Congress had little funds. Therefore, it could not pay the officers and soldiers of the Continental Army who were increasingly disgruntled and ready to mutiny. Washington would soon face one of his greatest crises that would test his character and the survival of the republic.

Throughout the war, as Commander-in-Chief, Washington had scrupulously deferred to the civilian authorities of the states and the national Congress. Even when the states and Congress did not pay the troops or offer much-needed supplies, weapons, and money, the general always supported the republican government. He was often frustrated by the civilian government as it hampered the war effort, but he set the right precedents for civil-military relations within a republic.

On December 28, the officers sent a delegation from Newburgh to Congress with a threatening petition that read, “We have borne all that men can bear – our property is expended – our private resources are at an end, and our friends are wearied and disgusted with our incessant applications.” They warned, “Any further experiments on [our] patience may have fatal effects,” and hinted at an overthrow of Congress and civilian government.

A few politicians in Philadelphia saw an opportunity to use the anger to secure a more powerful central government rather than the weak government under the Articles of Confederation. For example, financier Robert Morris threatened to resign if Congress did not pass a tax to collect revenue to pay the soldiers. Representative Alexander Hamilton and others also wanted to use the threats of the officers to pressure Congress to adopt greater powers.

Despite the woeful financial situation, Washington did not stand alone in his support of Congress. His trusted friend and general of the artillery, Henry Knox, was a patriot who refused to take the bait of his fellow officers and defended the civilian government. Knox told them, “I consider the reputation of the American Army as one of the most immaculate things on earth. We should even suffer wrongs and injuries to the utmost verge of toleration rather than sully it in the least degree.”

In February, Hamilton tried to persuade Washington to join the scheme. Hamilton wrote, “The claims of the army urged with moderation, but with firmness, may operate on those weak minds . . . so as to produce a concurrence in the measures which the exigencies of affairs demand.” Washington would have none of it and responded that the consequences of a general mutiny against Congress “would at this day be productive of civil commotions and end in blood. Unhappy situation this! God forbid we should be involved in it.” He cautioned Hamilton that, “the army is a dangerous instrument to play with.”

In mid-March, General Horatio Gates, the hero of the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, joined the conspiracy. Gates’ aide penned an address to American soldiers that fanned their anger towards Congress: “Faith has its limits, as well as temper; and there are points beyond which neither can be stretched.” Gates called the officers to a meeting to discuss the situation.

The rebellion against the government was averted by the character of George Washington, who dedicated himself to the republican principle of military deference to the civilian government. He learned about the Newburgh conspiracy and strode into the appropriately-named Temple of Virtue on the symbolically-fraught March 15—the Ides of March. In the Newburgh Address, he called on his soldiers to stop those who would “overturn the liberties of our country, and who wickedly attempt to open the flood gates of civil discord.”

Washington continued: “This dreadful alternative, of either deserting our Country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our Arms against it…what can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the Army? Can he be a friend to this Country?” His view of patriotism was rooted in Roman virtue—serving the republic, acting with reason over passion, putting country over himself, respecting civilian authority.

When the general’s patriotic appeal fell somewhat flat and his audience seemed unpersuaded, Washington made a dramatic appeal based upon his love of theater. He pulled out his glasses while stating, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my country.” Most of the men present had never seen their general use eyeglasses; this simple action reminded the officers that Washington, like the men he led, had made great sacrifices for the cause of liberty. The men renounced their intent to overthrow Congress and pledged their support for the republican government.

Washington quelled the rebellion in the army and established the right precedent for civilian control of the military. He refused to become a Caesar who overthrew the Roman republic for his own glory and became a modern Cincinnatus who served the republic in its hour of need and returned to his plow. The Newburgh Conspiracy became Washington’s finest hour.

The history of American civil-military relations has seen its share of challenges from ambitious individuals. Perhaps the most notable and infamous case was President Harry Truman firing an insubordinate General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. In each challenge, the example laid down by Washington held, and the American republic continued to be governed by the constitutional rule of law and popular self-rule rather than military dictatorship.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
George Washington, presided over the first Continental Congress; Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War; first President of the United States; painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1796.

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith…Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements…Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” – George Washington, Farewell Address, first published September 19, 1796 in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser and given the date September 17, 1796.

When George Washington assumed the office of the presidency in 1789, the new republic faced a world fraught with imperial rivalries of the European great powers. This struggle played itself out in North America where the British ruled Canada and had troops stationed in forts along the northwestern frontier of the United States. The Spanish held Mexico, the West, and the Floridas. Meanwhile, the new nation soon went to war with several hostile Native American tribes on the frontier. Several powers, including the French, contended for the valuable sugar islands of the West Indies, or Caribbean. The British Empire excluded its former colonies from lucrative imperial trade.

Washington and his Cabinet along with members of Congress had to formulate the principles and policies of American foreign policy according to the dictates of constitutionalism, American ideals, and prudence. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and its expansionary wars compounded the difficulties of American diplomacy in the early 1790s.

President Washington had to navigate these shoals keeping in mind that the new nation was weak compared to the great empires. The United States had only a small army and not much of a navy. The economy was similarly weak as the country was locked out of former markets in the British West Indies and had to get its public credit in order by paying off the Revolutionary War debt. National security was a priority for the Washington administration but securing it would not be easy.

When the French revolutionaries sought to spread the fires of revolution to liberate the people of Europe from monarchy and aristocracy, Washington had to decide an appropriate response for the new nation. Washington and his Cabinet debated the issue and prudentially decided that it was ill-prepared for war and would not join the French despite their 1778 treaty from the American Revolution. The United States would remain neutral with a presidential Proclamation of Neutrality.

This led to an internal debate within the administration that was played out in essays published in partisan newspapers. Among them were Alexander Hamilton writing as Pacificus, who urged presidential prerogative over asserting neutrality, and James Madison writing as Helvidius, who thought the Congress had power over war and peace. The debate fueled the emerging contentious party system and split the administration into factions.

The Washington administration pursued a policy of trade and non-interference, but the British and French were at war and began seizing American vessels because they traded with each of the belligerents. Soon, Washington dispatched John Jay to Britain to resolve the seizure of ships, impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy, and outstanding issues from the Revolutionary War including western British forts.

The resulting Jay Treaty benefited the United States, including some trade concessions in the West Indies, but it did not resolve many of the key issues including impressment. Moreover, it further inflamed partisan tensions among Americans and in Congress. Even worse, as it soothed relations with Great Britain, the French saw it as an Anglo-American alliance aimed against France. The French became more belligerent and ramped up their seizure of American vessels leading to an informal war that continued into the John Adams administration.

In 1795, the administration signed the Pinckney Treaty with Spain which extended the western boundary of the United States to the Mississippi River. Americans also won long-contested rights to free navigation of the Mississippi River to conduct trade.

By the end of his second term, President Washington could proudly survey the diplomatic accomplishments of his administration. From a position of relative weakness, he had averted war, successfully negotiated important treaties, established a strong presidency respecting foreign policy, and placed the country in a stronger position in a dangerous world. As he prepared to retire and worked on his Farewell Address to his fellow countrymen, he used his decades of experience as general and president to lay down certain principles of American foreign policy.

In his Farewell Address, Washington asserted that it should be the policy of the United States to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” He explained that it should be the principle of the United States to establish “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.”

Washington promoted an enlightened and principled national self-interest in foreign relations. The United States would pursue its self-interest trading with other nations and forming temporary alliances in its interest. As the French example proved, a nation might be a friend at one point but could become an enemy at another. So, the United States would not form a permanent alliance that would bind it in an untenable situation. Instead, as with all nations, it would pursue its own interest.

However, Washington strikes an important chord of principled self-interest according to the founding ideals of an exceptional nation. In the Address, he speaks of “amity,” “justice,” “liberality,” “good faith,” and “harmony” as the principles guiding American relations with the other countries of the world. He proposed the idea that America should demonstrate a good example for the world. He wrote, “It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”

American foreign policy has changed over the last two centuries. Successive administrations through the nineteenth century generally followed Washington’s vision; however, during the twentieth century, President Woodrow Wilson helped commit the United States to “making the world safe for democracy” and exporting it abroad. Wilsonian internationalism meant that the United States would not merely be a “City Upon a Hill” for other countries to emulate its ideals but would take an active role in bringing about more democratic regimes. This expansive and controversial foreign policy was at odds with Washington’s vision in the Farewell Address. George Washington’s words and example reminds us to exercise justice and good faith toward other nations but also defending American national security with enlightened self-interest.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms.” – Richard Henry Lee, Federal Farmer XVIII, January 25, 1788.

A significant point of contention in the debates over the proposed United States Constitution was the maintenance of a peacetime army. Some stalwart opponents, like Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts, wanted a ban on a “standing” army written into the Constitution. Others wanted the text to specify a maximum number and an expressly limited peacetime use, such as for border garrisons. In the minds of many Americans, standing armies were a direct and dire threat to the people’s liberties. Recalling their use by the last Stuart kings and the debate over them in the English Glorious Revolution of 1688, those Americans saw such an army as a tool of monarchical absolutism unfit for a republican system.

Instead, those critics wanted to rely on the militias of the states as the principal armed forces. Militia service long had been the mainstay of colonial self-government. It extended to all men able to bear arms, with some variations as to age and race. Universal service was a practical necessity to suppress insurrections and counter Indian raids. It also maintained the ancient republican connection between military service and qualification to participate in the community’s public affairs. Laws required individuals to keep arms sufficient to serve in the militia and, in some communities, to bear those arms while walking about.

The critics’ alarms about the Constitution were only magnified when they saw that the proposed charter also gave Congress the power to organize, arm, and discipline the militia, and to govern the militia employed in the service of the United States. They considered this to be an obvious attempt to deprive the states of control over their militias by establishing a highly trained national “select militia” composed of only a small portion of the whole eligible militia, in effect creating a standing army by another means. The distinction between the whole militia and a select militia was a common practice at the state level and was also followed by the federal government with the Militia Act of 1792. Although men fifty-five years old might be part of a state’s whole militia, they were unlikely to be called out for actual service at that age. Alternatively, critics charged that these provisions allowed Congress to neglect funding and training the militia altogether.

Supporters of the Constitution pointed to the Revolutionary War to expose the deficiencies in armament and training of the militias. General George Washington wrote the Continental Congress about his wartime experience with the militia:

“To place any dependence on the Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender Scenes of domestic life; unaccustomed to the din of Arms; totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to Troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge and superior in Arms, makes them timid, and ready to fly from their own shadows….”

The general tenor of Washington’s letter reflected a common critique. Alexander Hamilton, a former militia officer who also served in the regular Continental Army, was more generous in Essay No. 25 of The Federalist, but nevertheless made similar points:

“The American militia, in the course of the late war, have, by their valour on numerous occasions, erected eternal monuments to their fame; but the bravest of them know and feel, that the liberty of their country could not have been established by their efforts alone, however great and valuable they were. War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perseverance, by time, and by practice.”

It was not enough for the Constitution’s supporters to point out the practical need for a regular army. Thoughtful critics might accept that, but still be alarmed by the danger an army posed to republican liberty. James Madison in Essay No. 46 of The Federalist sought to assuage those concerns:

“Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still, it would not be going too far to say, that the state governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.”

Madison lay great stock in three facts, that Americans were armed, that they could form themselves into militias that would still be commanded by men chosen by them or their states, and that there existed subordinate governments—the states—to which they were more attached than to the national government. As he wrote, “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”

The critics were not persuaded. True, even if Congress set up a select militia, or, worse, if Congress refused to fund the militia, the states could still, under their reserved powers and general principles of federalism, maintain militias outside those parameters. That authority was eventually confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1820 in Houston v. Moore. The problem was what else Congress might do. After setting up a select militia, Congress could, the critics reasoned, then pass laws to disarm the rest of the citizenry. Something else was needed to protect the people’s liberties.

Madison in that same essay had noted the distinction between the American states and other countries. In the kingdoms of Europe with their military establishments, “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” But something more concrete than reliance on the willingness of politicians to trust the people was needed. American politicians are not necessarily and inherently more respectful of the people’s liberties or less prone to oppressive actions than the European versions. If Congress and the President join to form a national tyrant, and the states have been rendered impotent, the people have the right to organize themselves to oppose that tyrant, just as the Minutemen did to King George and his regular army. As the Declaration of Independence averred, each person is endowed by the Creator with certain “unalienable rights,” and each person individually has the right to defend his life and liberty, even if the right as a practical matter sometimes might be carried out collectively. As concerns a tyrannical government, that right normally might be exercised through the state’s formal militia structure, but it does not depend on such a structure.

It is this right of self-defense exercised through a personal right to keep and bear arms that is reflected in the language of the Second Amendment. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story made that point in a famous passage in his influential 1833 work on the Constitution. “The militia is the natural defence of a free country,” he wrote. “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers.”

The right to life, including the right to defend oneself and others from those who wantonly pose an imminent threat to that right, is the most fundamental of all rights. No government may deprive an individual of that right, including the right of defense by means reasonable and commensurate to the threat. That right of defense extends to defense of the community. It is an individual right. While, in the latter case, it is usually exercised collectively, that is not a requirement and is not the basis of the right’s existence.

The connection between the individual nature of the right and its practical collective application when used in defense of the community is reflected in the words of the Second Amendment. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia explained for the Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller, the right protected in the amendment’s operative clause is the individual right to keep and bear arms. The prefatory clause explains the concerns that drove the adoption of the amendment, the right of the people to organize themselves into a militia to resist tyranny even if Congress and supine state governments seek to disarm them.

The formulation of the Second Amendment through a prefatory and an operative clause is unusual among those in the Bill of Rights. But the approach was not uncommon in other settings. The original proposal by James Madison was clearer, but the definition of the right and its distinction from the concerns that gave rise to the amendment are similar: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well regulated militia being the best security of a free country ….”

Likewise, various state proposals to amend the Constitution followed this structure. Thus, the Virginia convention observed in relevant part on June 27, 1788, “That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit ….” Lest the formulation “the people” suggest only a collective right, that same term was used by the Virginia convention to define the right of the people to freedom of speech and of writing and publishing their sentiments. Yet such a right is clearly one that is exercised individually.

Other state ratifying conventions generally used the same structure for various proposed amendments. The report of the Pennsylvania Minority declared, “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own state, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals, and as stranding armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty they ought not to be kept up ….”  The New York convention urged, “That the People have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, including the body of the People capable of bearing Arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State ….” [Emphasis in the original.]

What if there were no Second Amendment? Ultimately, that would make no difference. The right to life and self-defense is a fundamental or natural right conferred not by the Constitution as a matter of political grace but, in the language of the Declaration of Independence, by the Creator. It is a long-recognized right inherent in each human that even as fervent an apologist for powerful government as Thomas Hobbes accepted. As to the right to defend the community by organizing a militia, that is exactly what the colonists did at Lexington and Concord when the British sent a military force to seize American weapons. It was this engagement that started the Revolutionary War and led directly to the Declaration of Independence with its endorsement of armed resistance to tyrannical government.

The Supreme Court has embraced this reasoning as to state and local laws in cases such as McDonald v. Chicago. After all, the Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, only applies to the federal government. States and cities are, however, limited by the Fourteenth Amendment, which includes protection against legislative violation of fundamental rights of life, liberty, and property. The rights to individual and collective self-defense, including the right to keep and bear arms and the right to organize a militia, are integral to all three.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”[i]

As most Americans know, our pledge to the American flag concludes with those words; where did that phrase come from?

We owe a minister named Francis Bellamy for the original inspiration for our pledge. Bellamy went to work for a Boston-based magazine: Youth’s Companion[ii] which was published from 1827–1929, an impressive 102-year run. Bellamy’s pledge was not exactly what we recite today: it originally read “my flag” without saying whose or what nation’s flag was the object of the pledge. That was rectified in 1932 when “of the United States of America” was substituted.

The phrase “under God” was added in 1954 by an act of Congress[iii] at the urging of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was responding to citizen petitions.

Is America in fact “one nation under God?” Well, certainly we are – in one respect we cannot not be; the sovereign God overlooks our affairs whether we would like Him to or not, whether we acknowledge his presence or not, whether we worship Him or ignore Him. In that sense the phrase is true and will always be true. But let’s pick the phrase apart a bit.

There is disagreement on this point today,[iv] some arguing that America is a country and/or a federation or union of sovereign states, and not a nation. Some point to the fact that the word “union” appears six times in the Constitution; “foreign nations” and “the law of nations” are the only use of the word “nation” and neither refers directly to the United States. But the evidence is strong that the most prominent of America’s Founding Fathers considered us a true nation.

After the Constitution went into effect with the ninth ratification, various Founding Fathers did refer to “the Union” in speeches and letters, but they frequently used the word “nation” as well.

Alexander Hamilton compared us with “other nations” almost incessantly as Washington’s Secretary of State. But his boss used the word nearly as much. In fact, George Washington can rightfully be called one of the strongest nationalists of the founding era.

Even before the Constitution was ratified, Washington, as a private citizen albeit a celebrated one, wrote a circular letter to the Governors of the several states. He ended the letter by stating:

“I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection; that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government; to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States at large; and, particularly, for their brethren who have served in the field; and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacifick temper of the mind, which were the characteristicks of the divine Author of our blessed religion; without an humble imitation of whose example, …, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.”[v]

In his first inaugural address, drafted by his friend and new Congressman, James Madison, Washington said:

“No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”[vi]

In his first Thanksgiving Proclamation as President, Washington began by insisting that “it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.” Wouldn’t it be fitting and proper to read President Washington’s Thanksgiving proclamation each year at church on that holiday?

To a Jewish congregation in Savannah, Georgia, President Washington wrote:

that Jehovah God, who had delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors … has been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent Nation.”[vii]

James Madison called us a nation;[viii] Thomas Jefferson,[ix] James Wilson,[x] John Adams and John Jay[xi] did as well.

There is no doubt America’s Founding Fathers viewed us as “a nation under God;” and for them, that meant the God of the Bible. Donald Lutz, professor of political science at the University of Houston, reports: “Scholars in recent years seem to have forgotten the degree to which religious ideas permeated the political world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”[xii]

Carl Sandburg, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and author, once wrote: “When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.”[xiii]

I’ll conclude with the words of Ronald Reagan, who said: “If we ever forget we are one nation under God, we will be a nation gone under.”[xiv]

The United States can never be a nation that is not “under God.” We can either be a nation that acknowledges that fact and seeks God’s superintending care, one that humbly asks God to heal our land,[xv] or we can be a nation that insists on going it alone. The choice is ours.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

[i] https://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm.

[ii] http://youthscompanion.com/.

[iii] https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title4-section4&num=0&edition=prelim.

[iv] https://mises.org/wire/united-states-not-nation-problem-national-conservatism

[v] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-11404.

[vi] https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/first-inaugural-address-gw/.

[vii] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-05-02-0279.

[viii] James Madison, Federalist #46: “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”

[ix] Thomas Jefferson, Notes in the State of Virginia: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

[x] James Wilson, Remarks at the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, November 26, 1787: “Governments, in general, have been the result of force, of fraud, and accident.  After a period of 6,000 years has elapsed since the creation, the United States exhibit to the world the first instance…of a nation…assembling voluntarily…and deciding calmly concerning that system of government under which they would wish that they and their posterity should live.”

[xi] John Jay, Federalists #2: “As a nation we have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states.”

[xii] Donald S. Lutz and Jack Warren, A Covenanted People; The Religious Tradition and the Origins of American Constitutionalism. 1987.

[xiii] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_sandburg_400796.

[xiv] https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-ecumenical-prayer-breakfast-dallas-texas.

[xv] See: 2 Chronicles 7:14.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

The principle of establishing justice through the rule of law is a means of guarding against gradual erosion of law and order into chaos to break down America’s system of self-governing. It guards against eventually ushering in tyranny to control the people rather than protect liberty by protecting the rule of law.

“…you seem…to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an Oligarchy. our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. they have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps. their maxim is ‘boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,’ and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective controul. the constitution has erected no such single tribunal knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time & party it’s members would become despots.” – Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Charles Jarvis, Monticello, September 28, 1820.

The quoted passage by Thomas Jefferson addresses an issue that has been a repeated topic of controversy since the United States Constitution was proposed to the state conventions, namely, the role of the unelected federal courts in a system grounded in popular consent and self- government. Courts are supposed to apply the law prescribed by the people’s representatives but not be swayed by popular opinion in particular cases. An independent judiciary long has been recognized in Western constitutionalism as a fundamental component of any political system which takes seriously the individual liberties of its citizens. In ordinary criminal cases or civil suits the role of the courts as guardians of individual rights and as dispassionate decision-makers is indisputable. In cases of constitutional law and judicial review of the constitutionality of the acts of elected officials, the matter becomes more ambiguous.

Such cases are inherently political in that they present a challenge to self-government and call into question the particular competence of judges to resolve them. True, some topics, such as foreign affairs, are more political than others, such as specific guarantees of individual rights. But, as has been noted by various writers, each time a court strikes down a law, that action can be seen as a blow against self-government. When the Supreme Court decides a constitutional law case, the holding affects the entire country, not just the specific litigants. Moreover, those litigants often do not represent the opinions of a popular majority on the issue. To be consistent with the fundamental republican principle of majority rule, should unelected courts be making such decisions at all, then?

Abraham Lincoln made the point succinctly in his first inaugural address when he pledged non-interference with the specific decision in the Dred Scott case about Scott’s inability to sue for his freedom but also declared, “At the same time, the candid citizens must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” Clearly, our constitutional system has decided that judges ordinarily should make such decisions, but the inherent contradictions among first principles created thereby do not disappear.

Republican government is premised on the idea that the people, or some portion thereof deemed sufficiently qualified, decide the important public matters. Unlike in a democracy, they do so through representatives selected by them directly or, in the original design for the Senate and the President, more circuitously. Should a 5-4 majority of the unelected Supreme Court effectively have the final word, or should a majority of the people’s representatives have the power to override the Court’s holding on the matter? This is a particular problem in that the Supreme Court is selected from a very small class in society, an elite whose cultural and political values differ sharply from those of the American people as a whole. Should federal judges be elected, rather than appointed? Indeed, considering the classic republican principle that the greater the power, the shorter the term in office in order to avoid oligarchic control, should federal judges serve very short terms before returning to their ordinary stations in life? In turn, would such alternatives adequately preserve the necessary independence of judges?

All these questions were raised by various Anti-federalist writers during the debate over the adoption of the Constitution. The potential life tenure of federal judges was a glaring red flag for critics of the proposed charter. As a textual matter, the Constitution fixes their tenure by “good behavior,” but that ambiguous concept itself was tied to the practice of impeachment. Because impeachment in England had come to be seen as a limited tool requiring something more than political disagreement or general unpopularity, the Constitution expressly provided specific, and quite restricted, grounds for removal of officers by that method, effectively creating “life tenure.” But Antifederalist attacks on the federal courts were not limited to the issue of life tenure. Although the Constitution is silent on the matter, the opponents soon focused on the perceived ability of the Supreme Court to sit in judgment of the constitutionality of the actions of the people’s representative in Congress and the state legislatures.

A very sophisticated attack on the Supreme Court appeared in 1787 and 1788 in various essays of Brutus, one of two pen names generally attributed to the New York judge, and eventual state chief justice, Robert Yates. Yates had been selected as one of New York’s three delegates to the Philadelphia Convention but, along with Judge John Lansing, Jr., had left that assembly early because he objected to the nationalizing tendencies he saw in the emerging draft. His essays were authoritative during the debates in the critical New York ratifying convention.

In Essay No. 11, published January 11, 1788, Brutus observed that Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution vests the power to determine all questions that may arise under the Constitution. He questioned whether that power would be used for the general good. He explained his concerns, “[I[n their decisions, they will not confine themselves to any fixed or established rules, but will determine, according to what appears to them, the reason and spirit of the constitution. The opinions of the supreme court, whatever they may be, will have the force of law; because there is no power provided in the constitution, that can correct their errors, or controul their adjudications. From this court there is no appeal. And I conceive the legislature themselves, cannot set aside a judgment of this court, because they [the judges] are authorised by the constitution to decide in the last resort.”

Brutus worried that the federal courts would interpret the Constitution’s often ambiguous language broadly in favor of the general government to the eventual “subversion of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the individual states.” Applying the history of the English court of exchequer, he charged that the courts would extend their jurisdiction and influence well beyond that understood at their creation. “Every body of men invested with office are tenacious of power; they feel interested, and hence it has become a kind of maxim, to hand down their offices, with all its rights and privileges, unimpaired to their successors; the same principle will influence them to extend their power, and increase their rights; this of itself will operate strongly upon the courts to give such a meaning to the constitution in all cases where it can possibly be done, as will enlarge the sphere of their own authority. Every extension of the power of the general legislature, as well as of the judicial powers, will increase the powers of the courts; and the dignity and importance of the judges, will be in proportion to the extent and magnitude of the powers they exercise. I add, it is highly probable the emolument of the judges will be increased, with the increase of the business they will have to transact and its importance.”

In Essay No. 15, published March 20, 1788, Brutus again addressed the danger to the people’s liberty and to the existence of the state governments from the lack of any control over the constitutional rulings of the Supreme Court. “There is no power above them, to controul any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controuled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself.”

For Brutus, the solution would have been to make such Supreme Court rulings subject to review by the legislature, much as English court holdings often were subject to review by the House of Lords. “Had the construction of the constitution been left with the legislature, they would have explained it at their peril; if they exceed their powers, or sought to find, in the spirit of the constitution, more than was expressed in the letter, the people from whom they derived their power could remove them [through elections], and do themselves right; … A constitution is a compact of a people with their rulers; if the rulers break the compact, the people have a right and ought to remove them and do themselves justice; but in order to enable them to do this with the greater facility, those whom the people chuse at stated periods, should have the power in the last resort to determine the sense of the compact; if they determine contrary to the understanding of the people, an appeal will lie to the people at the period when the rulers are to be elected, and they will have it in their power to remedy the evil; but when this power is lodged in the hands of men independent of the people, and of their representatives, and who are not, constitutionally, accountable for their opinions, no way is left to controul them but with a high hand and an outstretched arm.” [Emphasis in the original.]

The convincing effect those and similar other critical essays Yates wrote had on New Yorkers finally prompted Alexander Hamilton to write a response published on May 28, 1788, just ahead of the meeting of the New York ratifying convention on June 17. Essay No. 78 of The Federalist is among the longest of the papers and the one most frequently cited by the Supreme Court. Hamilton agreed with Yates that the federal courts would interpret the Constitution, because the Constitution being law, it “is the proper and peculiar province” of them to do so. Because judges owed their powers to the Constitution, just as did the legislators, the courts would, and must, disregard statutes which conflicted with the fundamental law of the Constitution. Hamilton dismissed Yates’s contention that this implied a superiority of the judicial branch, claiming instead that “[I]t is far more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.” Thus, Hamilton laid the groundwork for an independent federal judiciary in matter of constitutional law.

As his quoted letter attests, Jefferson shared Yates’s concerns and discomfort about the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court’s power of constitutional judicial review. Jefferson believed that the rule of law and the fundamental structure of a government of divided powers created under the Constitution was best served under a “departmental theory” of final authority. While the Supreme Court might have the final say as to how the courts will decide cases, their opinions about the constitutionality of a co-equal branch’s acts, although entitled to respect, were not binding on those other branches. The remark from Lincoln’s first inaugural speech, quoted above, is an application of that theory. So is the admonition, perhaps apocryphal, attributed to President Andrew Jackson on the occasion of an unpopular opinion by Chief Justice John Marshall in Worcester v. Georgia, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

Hamilton was not insensitive to such criticisms in his essay. He adamantly insisted that the judges’ life tenure was necessary to preserve their independence. Still, the scope of the courts’ constitutional judicial review must be limited. He wrote, “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; …” The rule of law demands that such rules be clear and constant, knowable, and predictably applied. This was particularly important with the Constitution, which was “law” because it was written. Therefore, it was the letter of the document, not some vague notion of its “spirit” that the courts must apply, lest their opinions become exercises of “WILL instead of JUDGMENT,” which would merely be the “substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.” [Emphasis in the original.]

Moreover, courts could disregard only those statutes which were clearly unconstitutional.

“If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two [a statute and the Constitution], that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.” Using tortuous arguments to discover theretofore unknown penumbras and emanations from constitutional language, or investing that language with personal notions of good policy or better morality would not suffice.

Finally, Hamilton laid down a crucial limitation by specifying the object of constitutional judicial review. Judges must be independent and zealous protectors of liberty rooted in law. But there was a limit to judicial independence, lest it become itself a threat to republican rule. “This independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humors [tempers], which the arts of designing men or the influence of particular conjunctures sometimes disseminate among the people themselves; and which, though they speedily give place to better information and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.” Judicial review was to be conservative, in the sense of protecting the received constitutional order from the excesses of momentary popular passions as well as from “the cabals of the representative body.” That, too, is consistent with the order provided by the rule of law. It is also consistent with republican self-government, as it merely seeks to slow down a heedless rush to action by allowing for further reflection and the triumph of reason.

What is not consistent with republican self-government and legitimate Hamiltonian judicial review is when the judiciary assumes the role of constitutional innovator. For example, when the Supreme Court abruptly overturns long-settled and widespread laws that affect basic institutions of society or traditional social relations, the justices are exercising independence. But they are not guarding the liberty of individuals or political minorities from temporary majoritarian passion. They are, in effect, amending the Constitution by a simple majority vote of one branch of government composed of a few members enjoying life tenure, the branch that has no accountability to the public and is drawn from a very small elite. That is consistent with neither the stability and predictability associated with the rule of law nor republican self- government. In taking such actions, the Court assumes the role of a constitutional convention.

Relying on the postulate of popular sovereignty, Hamilton, Madison, and other supporters of the Constitution emphasized as a first principle the people’s right to change their constitutions at any time and for any reason. Such innovations should not be undertaken lightly, and at least as codified in Article V of the Constitution, require a difficult super-majoritarian process involving multiple governmental bodies, radically different from judicial constitutional amendment by a 5-4 vote.

There is much to admire in a culture which has preserved for so long an independent judiciary within its constitutional structure. One hopes that this remains the norm, and that voices who have suddenly now discovered a political advantage from changing the rules of the game will go unheard. The Supreme Court has warranted the respect it has enjoyed overall as an institution, because in most cases the justices have performed their roles with wisdom and sagacity. But they are political actors, and their judgment has not been infallible. To preserve that respect and the independence required to counteract majoritarian passions when the need arises, the Court is well-advised to stay true to its role as the guardian of the rule of law and the received Constitution, not as a constitutional lawgiver leading a compliant people.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: J. Eric Wise
United States Congress, House Floor, United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Almost 250 years ago, on December 16, 1773, American colonists dressed as Mohawk Indians dumped tea into Boston Harbor protesting under a rallying cry of “No taxation without representation.” We call this the Boston Tea Party.

23 years ago, in May of 2000 Washington, D.C. changed the design of its license plates replacing the words “Discover and Celebrate” with “Taxation Without Representation.” This memorialized D.C. residents’ grievance that they have no voting representatives in Congress.

Suffice it to say, the principle of representation is an enduring opinion that is at the heart of what it means to be an American. But like many such opinions that spring from what Abraham Lincoln called “the mystic chords of memory” does anyone really know, concretely, what it means?

To understand, perhaps it helps to think about concepts of sovereignty. For the most part after the end of the Roman Republic most of Europe was ruled by kings or emperors. They ruled on a religious, revealed, and practical basis known as divine right of kings.

Derived from the Bible and history, divine right of kings relied on the authority of Abraham over his children, the authority of anointed kings beginning with Saul and David, and the authority of Caesar over Rome and its dominions. A single person embodies the sovereign for subjects, and that person’s authority comes down from divinely sanctioned anointing, according to hereditary rules and conquest.

The Scottish protested the oppressions of the English king, Edward II. In the Declaration of Arbroath, the Scottish appealed to their own divine right of kings through conquest.

“The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts.”

Contradictions aside, that was how most of Europe thought about the question of just government.

But did this mean they had no representation? To the contrary, when the English nobles at Runnymede in 1215 forced the king to sign the Magna Carta, representation in parliament became part of the English system of government though that system remained clearly under the notion of the divine right of kings. The French, whose monarchy was more absolute, had the Estates General, beginning in 1302 A.D. The German principalities of the Holy Roman Empire had the Imperial diet, as early as 777 A.D.

If there is any doubt about the compatibility of divine right of kings and representation note that the Mayflower Compact, organized to authorize the colonial pilgrims to frame “just and equal laws,” begins with the identification of the signers as “the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James.”

But compatibility is not the same thing as perfection, and at some point after the Protestant Reformation, new ideas about the authority of men over their conscience in the concept of the “priesthood of every believer” [presbyterii fidelium] led to new ideas about the authority of men over their own government.

In Connecticut, in the 1600s, the Reverend Thomas Hooker established in his sermons consent as the basis of government rather than divine right of kings. “The foundation of authority is laid firstly in the free consent of people,” he propounded from the pulpit. And in 1639, he drafted the Fundamental Orders governing Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, the first charter government in the New World that did not appeal to the authority of a king for its basis in justice. Reverend John Wise of Massachusetts would preach and protest in 1687 against the imposition of taxation without representation. President Calvin Coolidge would later praise Reverend John Wise as an inspiration of the Declaration of Independence.

One should observe that the positions of Hooker preceded Thomas Hobbes’ theoretical writing on consent in Leviathan by more than 11 years, and John Locke’s theoretical writing on consent in Two Treatises by 50 years. Should anyone tell you the foundations of American notions of consent were dreamed up by theoreticians or first came to mind in 1776, correct them. Theory backfilled the practice and ethos that had taken root and was growing in America from the very start.

By the time the American Revolution rolled up on the English, Americans had been thinking about government and justice in terms of consent for more than 100 years. The Declaration of Independence reiterated and memorialized this, stating “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

But consent requires renewal, and this implied that the practice of the colonists of electing their representatives would continue under the new forms of government of the new nation. Every election is a reflection of the principle of consent, which is not just compatible with consent but a microcosm of a broader conception of the universe. God chooses us; we choose our form of government; we choose to renew it through amendment of its form; we choose our representatives in our form of government.

J. Eric Wise is a partner in the law firm of Alston & Bird.

 

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tara Ross

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“[The President] will, under this Constitution, be placed in office as the President of the whole Union, and will be chosen in such a manner that he may be justly styled the man of the people.” – James Wilson, Speech at the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention (December 4, 1787).

“It was also peculiarly desirable, to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government, as the president of the United States.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68

America’s founding generation gets a bad rap these days, and the presidential election system they created, if anything, receives even less respect.

News outlets blast the Electoral College as “terrible, skewed, [and] anachronistic.” The system was allegedly created because of slavery, one prominent critic writes, and it was intended to “help one group—white Southern males.” Others claim the system is anti-democratic, created by aristocratic white men who wanted to dilute the voices of the masses because they believed “ordinary citizens . . . too poorly informed to choose wisely.”

To listen to these critics, free and fair presidential elections will not exist until the Electoral College is eliminated, replaced by a national popular vote.

Except none of it is true. The reality is that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention strove to design a system that would accurately reflect the will of the people, knowing that the new United States government would be a miserable failure if the people’s voice was not expressed at election-time.

George Mason, delegate from Virginia, emphasized that “the genius of the people must be consulted.” Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson agreed that “[n]o government could long subsist without the confidence of the people.” Governmental authority, he concluded, must “flow immediately from the legitimate source of all authority. . . the mind or sense of the people at large. The Legislature ought to be the most exact transcript of the whole Society.”

This sentiment was just as strong when it came to election of the President.

“It was desireable, that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided,” Alexander Hamilton concluded.

Yet what does it mean to reflect the “sense of the people” in a nation composed of both large and small states, as well as many religions, industries, and subcultures? How can both rural and urban areas be represented? The questions are difficult. After all, the President is the only elected official expected to represent every single American, from every walk of life, simultaneously.

A simple national popular vote for President would be too easily manipulated, the delegates to the Convention concluded, ensuring that large states and heavily populated areas are over-represented while small states are ignored.

“An Election by the people [is] liable to the most obvious & striking objections,” Charles Pinckney of South Carolina observed. “They will be led by a few active & designing men. The most populous States by combining in favor of the same individual will be able to carry their points.” Roger Sherman, delegate from Connecticut, echoed this concern: “[The people] will generally vote for some man in their own State, and the largest State will have the best chance for the appointment.”

The Founders knew that a unique presidential election process would be needed to reflect the “sense of the people” in such a large, diverse country. Thus, they created our Electoral College: Its state-by-state election process requires presidential candidates to obtain more than just a simple majority, too heavily focused on one part of the country. Instead, candidates must obtain cross-regional support and federal majorities to win.

“[The President] is now to be elected by the people,” James Madison concluded. James Wilson, delegate from Pennsylvania, agreed that the President “will, under this Constitution, be placed in office as the President of the whole Union, and will be chosen in such a manner that he may be justly styled the man of the people.”

It’s an important point: The Electoral College seeks the fairest solution for the whole Union, not merely one part of it.

The Electoral College supports the principle of fair and free elections in a second way that often goes unnoticed. The system minimizes fraud and provides “as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder,” as Alexander Hamilton wrote.

Because of its state-by-state structure, the Electoral College typically produces quick and undisputed outcomes. When problems do occur, they are isolated to one or a handful of states, where they can be more easily resolved. Fraud is minimized because it is hard to predict where stolen votes will matter.

The election of 2020 proved—again—the ability of the Electoral College to provide stability when chaos threatens to reign. Because of the system, problems were isolated to a few states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Moreover, problematic areas such as Detroit and Philadelphia were highlighted.

Such transparency would not have occurred without the Electoral College. In a national popular vote system, local difficulties could have been glossed over, lost in the glare of the large 7-million national popular vote margin. As things stand today, however, state legislators have an opportunity to investigate and fix local problems, as needed.

An American historian once described the Founders’ conclusions about their presidential election system: “[F]or of all things done in the convention,” Max Farrand wrote, in his book, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States (2022), “the members seemed to have been prouder of that than of any other, and they seemed to regard it as having solved the problem for any country of how to choose a chief magistrate.”

Indeed, the Electoral College has done more to protect fair and free elections in America than the Founders could possibly have imagined.

Tara Ross is a retired lawyer and the author of several books about the Electoral College, including Why We Need the Electoral College (Regnery Gateway).

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Janine Turner

 

There are however some things deducible from reason, and evidenced by experience, that serve to guide our decision upon the case. The one is never to invest any individual with extraordinary power; for besides his being tempted to misuse it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest power long in the hands of any number of individuals. The inconveniences that may be supposed to accompany frequent changes are less to be feared than the danger that arises from long continuance.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

Advocates of republican systems long have insisted on certain features in a government to qualify it as a republic. Among those are the right to vote vested in a variable, yet sufficiently substantial, portion of adult residents, the election of the important figures in government, regular elections, short terms for those elected, rotation in office through restrictions on re-election, and the right of voters to recall elected officials. The objectives of these conditions are to keep the governing members responsive to the people’s wishes, to promote fresh blood in positions of authority, and to allow more persons to participate in governing, thereby bestowing legitimacy on the system even in the eyes of those who may lose a particular political contest.

The opponents of the United States Constitution found much to criticize in what they saw as the deficient republicanism of the proposed charter. Colonial practice had been annual or even semi-annual terms for legislators. Early state practice generally continued that tradition, although some permitted longer terms for the upper house of a bicameral legislature. Annual or biennial terms became the norm for governors. For example, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 provided that the governor, lieutenant governor, and senators and representatives in the state legislature be elected annually. The Virginia constitution of 1776 provided for annual election for the House of Delegates, the lower house of the state legislature, but allowed four-year terms for state senators, the terms ending on a rotating basis, with one-quarter of senate offices up for election each year. The governor was elected annually. He could be re-elected for three terms but then became ineligible for re-election for at least four years.

At the level of the national government, the Articles of Confederation left the precise mode of choosing delegates to the states, but limited their terms in Congress to three years in six. Virginia, for example, chose its delegates to the Confederation Congress anew annually. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, enacted by the Confederation Congress to govern the Old Northwest territory also required annual election to the territorial legislature.

It is today taken for granted that only citizens might vote. But that was not always the American practice. The Constitution requires citizenship for those elected to either house of Congress and to the Presidency. But there is no similar qualification required for those doing the electing. The Constitution left it to the states to sort out. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, for example, discussed voting by “inhabitants” and imposed age, residency, and property qualifications, but not separate citizenship.

Nor was there a lack of awareness of the concept of citizenship versus residency. The Northwest Ordinance provided that voting for territorial representatives was open to two classes: those who were citizens of other states, had resided in the territory for one year, and owned a specified amount of property; and those who were not citizens, but had resided in the territory for three years, and owned the same specified amount of property. The Ordinance made a similar distinction between citizens and non-citizens for candidates for election to the territorial legislature.

States generally allowed non-citizens to vote well into the 19th century to attract immigrants. It is a common trope in historical accounts to write about urban political machines whose operatives at election time waited at the docks to welcome those fresh off the ships from Europe with job opportunities, a small gift, and a voting card filled out in favor of their benefactors. At the level of presidential elections, it was not until the election of 1928 that all states restricted voting to American citizens. Even today, about a dozen municipalities, mostly in Maryland, allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

While there was no significant debate about citizenship for voting, the length of terms of office was a matter of significant contention at the convention in Philadelphia and in the state ratifying conventions. The Constitution’s supporters tried different approaches to blunt attacks. One was to cherry-pick the length of terms of particular state offices or offices in Great Britain. As to the two-year terms of the House of Representatives, James Madison in No. 53 of The Federalist agreed that there must be frequent elections, but “what particular degree of frequency may be absolutely necessary for the purpose, does not appear to be susceptible of any precise calculation,…” Thus, a range of terms of service reasonably would be sufficiently republican.

To illustrate his point, Madison contrasted the terms of the lower houses of various state legislatures:

“In Connecticut and Rhode Island, the periods are half-yearly. In the other states, South Carolina excepted, they are annual. In South Carolina they are biennial; as is proposed in the federal government. Here is the difference as four to one, between the longest and the shortest periods; and yet it would be not easy to show, that Connecticut or Rhode Island is better governed, or enjoys a greater share of rational liberty, than South Carolina;…”

If anything, shorter terms were undesirable, in that they encouraged electoral fraud, a concern not unheard of today: “[S]purious elections cannot be investigated and annulled in time for the decision to have its due effect….Hence a very pernicious encouragement is given to the use of unlawful means, for obtaining irregular returns.” It might be added that representatives complain that, even with modern transportation, two-year terms are burdensome because they need to spend so much time campaigning for re-election. It should be noted that these complaints have increased as the members of Congress have become full-time legislators and the size of the government has expanded.

Even if long terms of office might be undesirable as a matter of general consideration, there might be more justification for a longer term in Congress than in state or local legislative councils. National affairs regulated by Congress require greater acquisition of knowledge of complex policies and of the needs of other states. Hence, more time is needed to become sufficiently familiar with these complexities, whereas in a state the laws are uniform and the people and their needs are less diversified. In the end, Madison argued, “the business of federal legislation must continue so far to exceed, both in novelty and difficulty, the legislative business of a single state, as to justify the longer period of service assigned to those who are to transact it.”

The six-year terms for Senators came in for especially harsh criticism. Madison and other Federalists frequently defended the Senate’s long terms on two grounds, the need for a stabilizing influence over the popular passions likely to influence the short-term focus of the more democratic House of Representatives, and the Senate’s role in the potentially complex matters of foreign relations. After a brief attempt to analogize the terms of office of United States Senators to the five-year terms of senators in the state of Maryland, Madison in Essay No. 63 of The Federalist emphasized the role of the Senate as a stabilizing influence on the House of Representatives both by taking a “longer” view on policy and because of the “propensity of all single and numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.” As well, there was the Senate’s function in foreign affairs which required sophistication, wisdom, and knowledge. Moreover, longer terms gave that body the stability to provide a “national character” needed for the United States to be effective in dealings with foreign nations.

The critics were not convinced. Even moderate opponents saw the Senate’s terms as dangerous. In Essay of Brutus No. 16 of April 10, 1788, the New Yorker Robert Yates agreed that the Senate’s stabilizing role and its tasks in foreign affairs required longer terms than those of the typical state legislature or of the House of Representatives. Yates also agreed that the Senate was to represent the country’s “natural” aristocracy. But the danger to republicanism remained. “Men that hold office for long become detached from their constituents.” This is especially a problem with the Senate, as “they will for the most part of the time be absent from the state they represent, and associate with such company as will possess very little of the feelings of the middling class of people. For it is to be remembered that there is to be a federal city, and the inhabitants of it will be the great and the mighty of the earth.” [Emphasis in original.]

The solution for Yates and for his fellow New York Anti-federalist Melancton Smith, writing as The Federal Farmer, was to reduce the term to four years. In addition, there must be rotation in office—Yates proposed a limit of three terns for Senators—and recall as existed in the Articles of Confederation. Otherwise, the reality will be that Senators will be reelected over and over for life, due to the influence of their “friends.” “Everybody acquainted with public affairs knows how difficult it is to remove from office a person who is long been in it. It is seldom done except in cases of gross misconduct. It is rare that want of competent ability procures it.”

The concerns of the Constitution’s critics found their way into proposals for reform even as the states approved the new plan of government. Among the list of proposed amendments from the Virginia convention sent on June 27, 1788, was one that called for rotation in office as a very useful tool to limit the potential threat to the people’s liberty from an entrenched political class: So that members of legislative and executive branches “may be restrained from oppression by feeling and participating the public burdens, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into the mass of the people, and the vacancies be supplied by certain and regular elections,…”

None of the proposals have been adopted. Senate terms are still six years. There is no rotation in office, and an attempt by the people of Arkansas to provide “term limits” for members of both houses of Congress elected in Arkansas was struck down as unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. Likewise, an attempt by people in New Jersey even to collect signatures to allow a recall vote for a Senator was blocked by the state supreme court as unconstitutional. Meanwhile, members of Congress, especially Senators, generally hold office for decades, often until death. It is common for them to be “absent from the state they represent.” They live in the “federal city,” returning to their states only at election time. The environs of the District of Columbia include the wealthiest areas of the United States, so it may also be rightly said that they associate with “the great and mighty of the earth,” who “possess very little of the feelings of the middling class of people.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Janine Turner

 

The Framers of the United States Constitution considered ex post facto laws and bills of attainder so repugnant to justice that the document expressly bans them twice. In Article I, Section 9, the prohibition applies to the federal government. The subsequent section of the charter likewise targets state enactments. These provisions are a proto bill of rights in the body of the original document, which makes them unusual in that opponents of the Constitution often cited the lack of a bill of rights as the reason for their stance. Still more thought-provoking is the claim often made then that such laws would be invalid even without an express constitutional provision. That position required its advocates to appeal to higher principles of justice or law as limiting the power of legislatures.

Emblematic of that approach was the opinion of Justice Samuel Chase in the 1798 case of Calder v. Bull. The suit involved a Connecticut case in which a will initially had been denied probate, to the benefit of certain of the deceased’s heirs at law, Mr. and Mrs. Calder. The state legislature then enacted a law which provided for a new hearing that was not permitted under the statute in effect when the original proceedings were held. The will was then admitted to probate, which benefitted the beneficiaries under that will, Mr. and Mrs. Bull.

Justice Chase defined ex post facto laws as,

“1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law and which was innocent when done, criminal and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was when committed. 3rd. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence and receives less or different testimony than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense in order to convict the offender.”

He also gave examples of English precedents to illustrate the dangers of such laws. Bills of attainder were acts of Parliament that imposed the death penalty on an individual for a criminal act. If Parliament imposed a lesser penalty, the law was a bill of pains and penalties. Either one was odious. Often, but not always, they operated ex post facto:

“These acts were legislative judgments; and an exercise of judicial power. Sometimes they respected the crime, by declaring acts to be treason, which were not treason, when committed; at other times, they violated the rules of evidence (to supply a deficiency of legal proof) by admitting one witness, when the existing law required two; by receiving evidence without oath; or the oath of the wife against the husband; or other testimony, which the courts of justice would not admit; at other times they inflicted punishments, where the party was not, by law, liable to any punishment; and in other cases, they inflicted greater punishment, than the law annexed to the offence.”

But Chase went further and declared that a legislature could not pass bills of attainder or other ex post facto laws, even if there were no express constitutional prohibition. He urged that such laws were against the social compact through which people enter into political society and against fundamental principles of free republican government. A legislature that undertook such an action might engage in an “act” but had not made a “law,” because a law must not conflict with the fundamental purposes for which governments are formed by the people, to protect their persons and property.

He provided examples of the types of laws that are so destructive of personal liberty and private property and so manifestly unjust, that they are obvious and flagrant abuses of power:

“A law that punished a citizen for an innocent action, or, in other words, for an act, which, when done, was in violation of no existing law; a law that destroys, or impairs, the lawful private contracts of citizens; a law that makes a man a Judge in his own cause; or a law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with SUCH powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it. The genius, the nature, and the spirit, of our State Governments, amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation; and the general principles of law and reason forbid them.”

If bills of attainder and ex post facto laws were so obviously contrary to justice, reason, and the essential purposes of governments, why then is there a need for specific prohibitions in the Constitution? Some delegates in the Philadelphia convention and in the state ratifying conventions raised that very question. A couple of reasons present themselves.

Consider another opinion in Calder, that of Justice James Iredell. He agreed about the definition of ex post facto laws and their unconstitutionality under the express provisions of the Constitution. But he also warned that, in their absence, a court was incompetent to declare such laws void.

“If, then, a government, composed of legislative, executive and judicial departments, were established by a constitution which imposed no limits on the legislative power, the consequence would inevitably be that whatever the legislative power chose to enact would be lawfully enacted, and the judicial power could never interpose to pronounce it void. It is true that some speculative jurists have held that a legislative act against natural justice must in itself be void, but I cannot think that under such a government any court of justice would possess a power to declare it so.”

The reason was that natural justice was not a sufficiently precise concept to allow judges to override the legislature’s power to make all laws which are not expressly prohibited to it: “The ideas of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard; the ablest and the purest men have differed upon the subject, and all that the court could properly say in such an event would be that the legislature (possessed of an equal right of opinion) had passed an act which, in the opinion of the judges, was inconsistent with the abstract principles of natural justice.”

Another reason was that, in fact, there had been such laws passed. During the debate in the Virginia ratifying convention in June 1788, Patrick Henry defended the use of bills of attainder and ex post facto laws in some circumstances. His example was the case of one Josiah Philips, a loyalist guerrilla leader during the Revolutionary War. Philips’s band had repelled a militia sent by then-governor Patrick Henry. Henry then had sought an attainder of Philips. None other than Thomas Jefferson had drafted the bill of attainder which the legislature had adopted unanimously on May 28, 1788. The bill accused Philips and his associates of various crimes amounting to treason and directed that they be executed expeditiously after their capture. Moreover, if those attainted had not turned themselves in to the authorities, the act directed that “it shall be lawful for any person with or without orders, to pursue and slay the said Josiah Philips and any others who have been of his associates or confederates… or otherwise to take and deliver them to justice to be dealt with according to law provided that the person so slain be in arms at the time or endeavoring to escape.”

Edmund Randolph, the state attorney general at the time, had opposed the attainder. Instead, when Philips was caught, he was tried and convicted by a jury for grand theft of 28 hats and five pounds of twine. That made little difference in the end, as the punishment for that conviction also was death by hanging. Both Henry and Jefferson years later still defended the attainder of someone they considered the equivalent of a pirate engaged in crimes against humanity and therefore hostis humani generis, beyond the protection of the law.

Nor was Virginia alone. Many other states engaged in the practice against Loyalist Tory sympathizers. It must be noted, however, that actual executions under such attainders were rare, estimated by one authority to number 15 during the entire war. The Pennsylvania legislature, acting on its own initiative or at the instigation of its judiciary, enacted attainders for treason in hundreds of cases, although only four ended in hangings, all of Quakers. Due to its pacifism, that religious minority was broadly suspected to be at least unfriendly to the Patriot side. A particularly colorful tale is that of the members of the extended Doane family of Loyalist Quakers who helped the British while marauding in the countryside.

Several states used such attainders, even though their own constitutions prohibited them. It was to these events that James Madison was reacting in The Federalist No. 44 in language similar to Justice Chase’s,

“Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. The two former are expressly prohibited by the declarations prefixed to some of the state constitutions, and all of them are prohibited by the spirit and scope of these fundamental charters. Our own experience has taught us, nevertheless, that additional fences against these dangers ought not to be omitted.”

Although all justices in Calder v. Bull agreed that ex post facto laws were those that retroactively altered rules about conduct to the detriment of the now-accused, there apparently was less unanimity about that definition during the debate over the Constitution. Some constitutional historians, most notably Professor William Crosskey writing in the mid-20th century, have argued that the phrase ex post facto was commonly understood in the 18th century to apply to any retroactive law. They have reviewed the records of the debates at the Philadelphia convention, primarily the printed Journal of the Convention, James Madison’s notes and notes taken by another delegate, David Brearley, a future New Jersey chief justice, and by convention president George Washington. Crosskey also analyzed numerous other contemporary English and American sources of 18th-century usage of the term.

The more restricted definition arose when, according to Madison’s notes, some delegates registered confusion about the phrase. John Dickinson, a much-respected authority on constitutional law at the time, then claimed to have researched the matter by consulting Blackstone’s influential Commentaries on the Laws of England. He concluded that Blackstone defined the phrase as applying only to retrospective criminal laws. The problem is that this definition appears to conflict with the Journal and with another part of Madison’s notes recording a debate about the clause a day earlier, on August 28, 1787, where the speakers assumed that the phrase applied more broadly to all retrospective laws. As well, the notes of Brearley and Washington reflect that earlier, broader understanding and say nothing about Dickinson’s remarks. Dickinson’s own papers about the Constitution do not show that he made those remarks.

Ten months later, during the intense debates in the Virginia ratifying convention, Patrick Henry also charged that the ex post facto clause applied to all retrospective laws, criminal and civil. Henry objected that, if no such laws were permitted, would the old worthless continental paper dollar notes have to be repaid at face value with gold and silver because no law could discharge such payment retroactively. Faced with such assertions, it is surprising that neither Madison nor his fellow delegate to the Philadelphia convention Edmund Randolph cited Dickinson or Blackstone. As a result, these historians speculate that Madison’s position in the Virginia convention and in essay No. 44 of The Federalist, which was adopted in Calder was not correct and that, indeed, Madison made up the Dickinson remarks and added them to his notes some years after the events.

Whatever the understanding about the scope of ex post facto was in 1787, the more limited meaning put forth by Madison in his essay and in the Virginia convention, and adopted by the justices in Calder is the accepted meaning today. Retroactive criminal laws create profound instability in that no one can predict whether one’s conduct is outside the law, because the law might be changed retroactively at any time. Their potentially destructive effect on people’s lives justifies Justice Chase’s description of ex post facto laws as contrary to basic conceptions of justice and a fundamental violation of the proper relationship between the government and the governed.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Janine Turner

 

 

The right to a trial by jury is one of the core principles of the Anglo-American constitutional tradition. The trial by jury ensures that the government is limited, essential rights are protected, and the rule of law is preserved. As Thomas Jefferson noted to Thomas Paine, “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

The trial by jury can be traced back to Magna Carta (1215), which King John signed as a limit on royal power. Clause 39 read, “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” It protected the right of habeas corpus—meaning that one could not be indefinitely imprisoned.

The English Bill of Rights (1689) confirmed the right to a trial by jury. It also protected related rights for those accused of crimes. The document guaranteed a trial by jury as well as protections against arbitrary government. It outlawed cruel and unusual punishments, excessive fines, and unreasonable bail for the accused.

The English colonists brought this tradition of rights to British North America. They expected to enjoy the rights of Englishmen. The trial by jury became a core issue of the resistance to British tyranny during the 1760s and 1770s. The British began enforcing the Navigation Acts regulating imperial trade more stringently and tried colonial smugglers in Vice-Admiralty courts. These courts did not have juries, and cases were decided by judges. Colonists felt as if they could not get a fair trial and protested this injustice.

In late 1765, delegates from nine colonies attended the Stamp Act Congress in New York. They issued a list of resolutions claiming their rights especially the principle of “no taxation without representation.” They also asserted the right to a trial by jury. “That trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies,” the Stamp Act Resolutions read. Many other documents claimed this essential right over the next decade.

The Declaration of Independence asserted the right of a people to overthrow an oppressive government violating their rights. The Continental Congress included a list of grievances against arbitrary government to prove British tyranny and justify separation. One of those grievances was blaming the king for “depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.”

When the Framers created the United States Constitution during the Philadelphia Convention in the summer of 1787, they protected some basic rights including habeas corpus and trial by jury. Article III, section 2 guaranteed the right to a trial by jury. It stated, “The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed.”

During the 1787-88 ratification debate, the opponents of the Constitution, the Anti-federalists, argued for a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties against a more powerful national government. The Federalists, those who supported the Constitution, promised to create a Bill of Rights in the First Congress. In 1789, Representative James Madison urged his colleagues to craft a Bill of Rights and took the lead in the process.

Congress did pass a Bill of Rights that was ratified by all the states by 1791. It provided widespread protections of rights for the accused including the right to a fair and speedy trial in criminal prosecutions, the due process of law, the right to an attorney, and no cruel and unusual punishments. The Seventh Amendment guaranteed a jury in civil trials.

The right to a trial by jury and related essential rights have been a bedrock of justice and the rule of law in the American constitutional system. Controversies have arisen throughout American history such as the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the denial of trials for Blacks during slavery and rarely fair trials during segregation, the constitutionality of the death penalty, and the holding of terrorists in Guantanamo Bay without a trial during the War on Terror. During the 1960s, the Court also protected several rights of the accused including the right to a trial by jury for the indigent in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) and the right against self-incrimination in Miranda v. Arizona (1966).

The right to a trial by jury has been one of the foundations of a just constitutional order and limited government in the British tradition and under the American Constitution. The trial by jury thwarts arbitrary government and provides a rule of law that preserves the liberties of the people.

*****

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Guest Essayist: James Humphreys

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects Americans from “unreasonable searches and seizures” by government officials. The Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1791 along with the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. It reads, “The rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Fourth Amendment safeguards Americans from heavy-handed and arbitrary government action in some of the most private arenas of their lives.

The experience of the American colonists with British military and civil officials during the American Revolution convinced many colonists of the necessity of defending themselves from invasion and search of their homes by government agents. A number of state constitutions, written in 1776 during the early stages of the Revolution, included in a list of rights belonging to citizens a prohibition against the use of general warrants. Among the states with such a restriction in their constitutions were Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

British officials, during the colonial era, often used general warrants to justify the search of a colonist’s home. General warrants provided little detail about whom or what were to be searched for, and, in some cases, colonists, with no evidence against them of illegal activity, suffered the indignity of having their homes searched. The Fourth Amendment demanded that a warrant be more detailed for a search and seizure to be legal. First, to obtain a warrant, there had to be “probable cause” or a good reason to believe a search was necessary in order to uncover evidence of a crime that might be used in a court of law.  Second, a search warrant had to denote explicitly whom or what authorities were searching for and where their search would take place. Third, a warrant had to be signed by a judge. These three conditions lessened the chance of government authorities carrying out a baseless search of an American’s home and personal property.

State and federal judges’ interpretations of the Fourth Amendment became more complicated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries than in earlier eras with the explosion of technologies that enhanced government officials’ ability to carry out electronic surveillance of citizens. The members of the Supreme Court, for example, upheld the use of wiretapping in the 1928 case of Olmstead v. United States, but in later cases, they ruled that government officials needed search warrants to justify wiretapping. In 2010, in the case of City of Ontario v. Quon, the judges ruled that emails and other forms of communication sent by workers over their employers’ servers were searchable without a warrant. According to another Supreme Court ruling, information on a personal cell phone belonging to an individual, who had been arrested, could not be subjected to a warrant-less search. The cell phone could be confiscated by the police and searched later after the issuance of a warrant.

Online learning, widely implemented during the Covid pandemic, also has Fourth Amendment ramifications. A federal judge, in 2022, wrote that a testing system’s requirement that a student scan his room before remotely completing an online assignment met the Fourth Amendment’s definition of an unreasonable search. University officials, who appealed the decision, argued that a scan held the potential to reveal evidence that a student planned to cheat on an assignment. While questions regarding the application the Fourth Amendment to the use of electronic devices abound, there is no question that evidence, for it to be admitted in court, must be obtained legally, that is, in accordance with all laws and rulings on what constitutes a reasonable search. The Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, ruled that evidence gathered illegally was inadmissible in court in the 1961 case of Mapp v. Ohio.

That the Framers of the Fourth Amendment included protection from illegal searches and seizures in the Bill of Rights indicates the significance of the right to the Revolutionary generation. In no way, though, is that liberty less important now than it was in early America. Instead, with government officials’ enhanced ability to surveil American citizens through more clandestine ways than entering and searching homes, the right may be of even more significance today than it was in past eras. One thing is for certain: During every period of United States history, citizens’ freedom from illegal searches and seizures has been vital to the maintenance of a free society.

 James S. Humphreys is a professor of United States history at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. He is the author of a biography of the southern historian, Francis Butler Simkins, entitled Francis Butler Simkins: A Life (2008), published by the University Press of Florida. He is also the editor of Interpreting American History: the New South (2018) and co-editor of the Interpreting American History series, published by the Kent State University Press.   

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

 

Guest Essayist: Ben Slomski

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“Every man ought to be amenable for his conduct, and there are no persons so proper to complain of the public officers as the representatives of the people at large. The representatives of the people know the feelings of the people at large, and will be ready enough to make complaints. If this power were not provided, the consequences might be fatal. It will be not only the means of punishing misconduct but it will prevent misconduct. A man in public office who knows that there is no tribunal to punish him may be ready to deviate from his duty; but if he knows there is a tribunal for that purpose, although he may be a man of no principle, the very terror of punishment will perhaps deter him.” – James Iredell, U.S. Supreme Court Justice placed by George Washington, North Carolina Ratification Convention, July 24, 1788

The United States Constitution places members of the federal judiciary in a unique position. Article III stipulates that “the Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” Unlike members of Congress or the President who are elected for a set term length, all federal judges are appointed for the term of good behavior. Practically, this means federal judges are appointed for life. The only way to remove a federal judge from office is through impeachment by Congress, which is limited to the cases of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The logic of life tenure for judges was best explained by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78. Here, Hamilton declared that

[t]he standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy, is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government. In a monarchy it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince; in a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.

Life tenure upon appointment creates independence for the judiciary in the administration of the laws. This ensures that the laws are applied in a consistent and fair manner. Even in a republican government, the individuals who comprise the legislature are human beings who can succumb to despotic passions. Judicial independence is just as useful a safeguard from oppression in a republican government as any other.

The institutional capacity of the judiciary makes life tenure especially necessary. Hamilton explained that the judiciary lacks Congress’ power of the purse and the President’s power of the sword and wrote that the judiciary “may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” The judiciary is comparatively weaker to the other two branches of government because it lacks the will to make laws as well as the force to enforce the law. There is a risk that the political branches could ignore the Constitution and the judiciary could be too weak to resist their usurpations.

In order to protect the judicial branch from the greater powers of the other branches, life tenure is necessary to create judicial independence. Hamilton stated that

as, from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security.

Federal judges are appointed through a political process where they must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Once judges are appointed, however, they have life tenure so that they do not need to rely on the political branches for any further security. Life tenure allows judges to be independent from politics so that they have the security to stand up against the political branches when necessary.

Judicial independence is beneficial under all forms of government but it turns out that it is especially necessary under the American form of government with a written Constitution. For Hamilton,

[t]he complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.

A written constitution embodies the fundamental will of the people for the government. There is no point to writing down a constitution if the written limits are not enforced. The task of enforcing constitutional limitations cannot be left to Congress or the President because each would naturally be inclined to favor itself. The judiciary must exist as a third, independent branch that stands outside the political process to enforce the Constitution’s limits. Hamilton explained that it is natural that the judiciary fulfills this role because “[t]he interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts.” Courts interpret and apply laws as part of their normal function and so it makes sense that it will be the judiciary that interprets the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land in legal cases.

Federal judges are given excellent job security because they are entrusted with a great responsibility. Article III ties life tenure to the specific office that is held, which is that of a judge on a court. Good behavior for judges is understood in the sense of carrying out one’s duties in a judicial manner. Judges act consistently with their constitutional charge when they remember that they are judges tasked with the application of the Constitution and the laws to particular legal cases. Judges stray from this responsibility when they seek to exercise the functions of legislating or executing laws and impose their will rather than the Constitution. Impeachment by Congress remains as a check on judges who misuse their office. Good behavior requires judges to resolve legal cases and invalidate government acts when necessary to preserve the sanctity of the Constitution.

Benjamin Slomski is Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Ashland University.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Eric C. Sands

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

It has been around since the Middle Ages. It’s been called the second Magna Carta by some, and the “great writ” by others. What we are referring to is habeas corpus, a Latin phrase meaning “you should have the body.” Put most simply, habeas corpus allows a person who has been detained the chance to challenge that detention in court. This prevents the government from holding an individual indefinitely without bringing charges against them. In the American system of justice, habeas corpus applies both at the federal and state level.

While some scholars locate the origin of habeas corpus in Roman law, a less disputed claim is that habeas corpus originated in Article 39 of the Magna Carta. Article 39 held that “no Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned…but by lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land.” It is true that this does not necessarily speak directly to habeas corpus as it is understood today, but it seems to have something like habeas corpus in mind. From this starting point, though, habeas corpus evolved in the English courts and sheriffs could be served with the writ.  A court could then issue an order to release a prisoner if it was found he or she was being held without cause.

The modern understanding of habeas corpus arose out of conflicts between Parliament and the king in the 17th Century. The Petition of Right in 1628 charged that the king’s jailers were ignoring the writs and were illegally detaining English subjects. In 1679, Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act, which applied to sheriffs and jailers who were causing delays in releasing prisoners. The Act imposed strict deadlines for responding to the writ and imposed heavy fines if sheriffs or jailers did not act promptly. By this point habeas corpus had come into its own in Britain, but it still needed to make its way to the new world.

When the United States Constitution was written, the writ of habeas corpus was the only English common law writ given specific reference in the document. Article I, Section 9 of the document provides that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”  This became known as the Suspension Clause and it both recognized the existence of the writ of habeas corpus and stipulated the conditions under which it could be withheld. Two years later, in the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress provided that both justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and judges of the federal district courts “have the power to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of inquiry into the cause of commitment.” Importantly, though, this law only applied to people in custody by the federal government or being tried in federal courts. Federal judges thus did not have the power to extend the writ to prisoners in the states.

During the Civil War, the Suspension Clause was put into effect by President Abraham Lincoln at the beginning of the war to deal with saboteurs and traitors operating in the state of Maryland. Under the suspension of the writ, John Merryman was arrested by military authorities, and was detained at Fort McHenry outside of Baltimore. Merryman’s lawyer petitioned Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney for a writ of habeas corpus. The issue in Ex parte Merryman was whether Lincoln, as president, could constitutionally suspend the writ in a case of rebellion. That the country was in a state of rebellion no one had any doubt. But the Constitution located the Suspension Clause in Article I, which dealt with the powers of Congress. This seemed to make it a legislative power and, therefore, one the president could not exercise alone. Lincoln believed the suspension of the writ could be undertaken by either the president or Congress, especially if Congress was not in session when an emergency began.

Taney disagreed with Lincoln and held that Lincoln had violated the Suspension Clause by suspending the writ. Yet, Taney seemed to recognize the limited scope of his power and, therefore, did not order Merryman’s release. Instead, he filed his opinion with the U.S. Circuit Court of Maryland and ordered that a copy of the opinion by delivered to the president. Taney concluded that “it will then remain for that high officer…to determine what measures he will take to cause the civil process of the United States to be respected, and enforced.” In the end, the Merryman decision became a moot point as Congress retroactively approved the suspension and passed sweeping legislation that authorized Lincoln to suspend the writ for the duration of the war. Moreover, the case left unanswered the question of who has the actual power to suspend the writ since Taney did not write in his capacity as Chief Justice and, therefore, the case did not become Supreme Court precedent.

During Reconstruction, in tandem with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867. This Act provided “That the several courts of the United States, and the several justices and judges of such courts, shall have power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the Constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States.” What this meant, significantly, is that federal judges could now issue writs to state prisoners in state cases for violations of their constitutional rights. While this expanded protections for those charged with crimes throughout the United States, it also created a great deal of tension between the states and the national government and raised issues of federalism. Clearly, therefore, the issues related to habeas corpus have not all been resolved, yet it remains without question one of our most important civil liberties.

Eric C. Sands is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Berry College. He has written a book on Abraham Lincoln and edited a second volume on political parties. His teaching and research interests focus on constitutional law, American political thought, the founding, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and political parties.

Guest Essayist: Ben Peterson
Scales of justice in association with Lady Justice and the presentation of evidence to be carefully weighed.

 

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Numerius, the Governor of Narbonensis, was on trial before the emperor, and, contrary to the usage in criminal cases, the trial was public. Numerius contented himself with denying his guilt, and there was not sufficient proof against him. His adversary, Delphidius, “a passionate man,” seeing that the failure of the accusation was inevitable, could not restrain himself, and exclaimed, “Oh, illustrious Caesar, if it is sufficient to deny, what hereafter will become of the guilty?” to which Julian replied, “If it suffices to accuse, what will become of the innocent?” Coffin v. United States (1894), citing Rerum Gestarum, L. XVIII, c. 1

I served on a jury for an assault and family violence case last year. The defense counsel reminded me and the other potential jurors that the prosecution bore the burden of demonstrating the defendant’s guilt. Even if the defense presented no evidence, called no witnesses, or gave no testimony, jurors were not to take absence of exculpatory evidence as an indication of guilt. It was the prosecutor’s task to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant was guilty.

Neither the phrase “innocent until proven guilty,” nor “presumption of innocence” appears in the United States Constitution. Yet, the presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle of our legal order. Colonial governments and the First Continental Congress invoked the principle, it lies in the background of protections for the accused and requirements of due process in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and it appears in the constitutions or penal codes of some states.

Supreme Court justices have referred to the presumption of innocence as a fundamental, axiomatic legal principle. Associate Justice Joseph Story (d. 1845), offering the opinion of the Supreme Court in United States v. Gooding (1827), wrote that, “the general rule of our jurisprudence is that the party accused needs not establish his innocence, but it is for the government itself to prove his guilt before it is entitled to a verdict or conviction.” Associate Justice Edward Douglass White (d. 1921), writing for the Court in Coffin v. United States (1894), wrote, “The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.” The Court found that the lower court should have instructed the jury that,

The law presumes that persons charged with crime are innocent until they are proven by competent evidence to be guilty. To the benefit of this presumption the defendants are all entitled, and this presumption stands as their sufficient protection unless it has been removed by evidence proving their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The doctrine of presumed innocence has medieval roots, and there are ancient principles regarding fair procedure that are widely shared, finding echoes in Talmudic and Islamic legal theory, and even in the Code of Hammurabi, as well as Roman law. While Justice White and other writers traced the principle to the English common law, in great measure incorporated into the American legal order, Kenneth Pennington credits a French canon lawyer who lived in the thirteenth and first part of the fourteenth century, Johannus Monachus (d. 1313), with the first clear, pithy formulation of the principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty: “item quilbet presumitur innocens nisi probetur nocens.”

The canonist was himself referring to a decretal by Pope Innocent III (d. 1216), and he was among a number of jurists who, in the thirteenth century, sought to ground procedural rights of defendants charged with criminal acts in the divine law and biblical teaching. After all, even God, the supreme judge, did not expel Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden before they had a chance to appear and plead their case. These canonists drew on and contributed to the Ius commune, the common law of the civil law systems of Europe, based on the Corpus juris civilis of Justinian, moving European legal systems away from trial by ordeal or even torture such as employed in some inquisitorial proceedings to induce confessions.

As Pennington notes, there were jurists who argued, contrary to the presumption of innocence, that public order often requires limiting the rights of the accused to ensure conviction of the guilty. The Ius commune, and subsequently judges and jurists contributing to the English common law, instead adopted the principle reflected in William Blackstone’s (d. 1780) famous ratio: “The law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” Blackstone was an authority on jurisprudence at the time of the American founding and early republic, and in his ratio he was distilling a notion that other common law jurists such as Sir John Fortescue and Sir Matthew Hale had also expressed.

Pennington’s point that the English common law isn’t the primary source of the presumption of innocence notwithstanding, we find an assertion of the importance of due process of law, the idea that government must demonstrate guilt via a legal process established in advance before depriving a citizen of life, liberty, or property, in the Magna Charta (1215): “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

The presumption of innocence, a legal principle with deep and broad roots in ancient, medieval, and modern tradition and experience, is a central part of the constitutional and legal order in the United States. I’ve seen the principle in action; my fellow jurors and I voted to acquit the defendant because we didn’t believe the prosecution demonstrated guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. No doubt there are many others—some innocent, some guilty—who are today not incarcerated or tagged with criminal records because of the presumption of innocence. Such is the fruit of this foundational principle of legal administration, a bulwark of constitutional liberty where it is honored.

Ben Peterson is an assistant professor of political science at Abilene Christian University.

 

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger
Principle of Due Process of Law

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Janine Turner

 

 

The principle of due process of law has long been a central principle in Anglo-American jurisprudence. The principle has been formally codified within the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. However, while the principle has a long history, it has changed dramatically over time, with new interpretation and applications of the principle affecting not only law and administrative practices throughout the country.

In Clause 39 of the Magna Carta, the essence of due process is expressed in the following terms: “No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”[i] At the very least, this provision limited the power of the crown to take arbitrary or capricious injurious actions that were not sanctioned by law. The phrase “law of the land” later found its way into many of the provisions of American state constitutions, although the phrase “due process of law” was also used, with apparently very similar if not identical meaning. Many of the early state courts, applying this language, considered the protections of due process or the law of the land to be a means of preventing governments from carrying out policies threatening vested rights in property of their citizens, although it could also protect their personal liberty.[ii]

The “due process” language appeared in the federal constitution in the form of the Fifth Amendment, which declares that no person “be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The Fifth Amendment is most famous for its provisions regarding criminal procedures, although it also contains the very significant “takings clause” pertaining to protections for property. There is very little historical record regarding the inclusion of the due process language, and the clause was not invoked by the United States Supreme Court until the 1856 case of Murray v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Company.[iii]    The following year saw the clause invoked again, this time in an infamous ruling in the case of Scott v. Sanford,[iv] more commonly known as the Dred Scott decision.

For much of the period before the Dred Scott case, state courts had generally treated due process as a procedural protection, just as the wording suggests. When government deprived someone of life, liberty, or property, due process required that individuals have a right to a hearing before an impartial arbiter and to confront their accusers. In short, due process did not absolutely prohibit deprivations of life, liberty, or property by government but did require government to do so only in a manner that contained expected legal safeguards. What emerged in the Dred Scott decision was a judicial concern for the substance of government action, a view that has come to be known as “substantive due process.” To some, substantive due process is an oxymoron concept, much like “green, pastel redness,” in the words of John Hart Ely.[v] In this decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney, joined by six other justices, ruled that the federal government had deprived a slaveholder of property without due process of law by forbidding slavery in free territories under the Missouri Compromise. This decision was essentially about the substance of the federal government’s position on slavery and had little to do with the process by which that policy came into being or the way in which it was enforced. The decision was immensely controversial and must be considered one of the key events that precipitated the Civil War.

After the war, Congress proposed and the requisite number of states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which includes a due process clause that is applicable specifically to the states, rather than just the federal government. It should be noted that most state constitutions already had due process clauses at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, but this new provision involved the federal government in ensuring that due process was followed. These protections were intended to provide a legal guarantee of due process for the recently freed slaves and their descendants in all states, including the states that had promoted slavery prior to the Thirteenth Amendment. Of course, the language was quite broad, offering a guarantee of due process to all persons.

Many states, however, found ways to circumvent the due process clause, largely because the provisions applied to public action, rather than private activities. In some cases, the clause was used by business organizations who believed that state regulations deprived them of property without due process of law. In the case of Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court invoked essentially substantive due process arguments to strike down a New York law limiting the working hours of bakers.[vi] In that case, the plaintiff successfully argued that the state law denied him property that could have been generated if his freedom to contract had not been denied by the regulation. By the 1930s, the Supreme Court stepped away from economic versions of substantive due process arguments, but in the 1960s and thereafter began to identify a doctrine of individual privacy that is not explicitly based on specific provisions of the Constitution but which appears to be a socially liberal version of substantive due process.[vii]

Another implication of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause is what has been called the “selective incorporation” of the Bill of Rights. What this doctrine means is that some if not all provisions of the Bill of Rights, which originally limited the actions of the federal government, are now applied to the state governments. It is not clear that the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment had any form of incorporation in mind when the due process clause was written. The Supreme Court did not clearly apply this doctrine until 1925 in the Gitlow v. New York decision that applied the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech to state governments.[viii] No majority of the Court has ever concluded that the entirety of the federal constitution applies to the states, but the Court has concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment selectively incorporates only those rights that are “of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty.”[ix] Over time, through incremental decisions, the Court has incorporated most of the Bill or Rights. The few exceptions include such provisions as the Third Amendment’s prohibition against the quartering of soldiers, the grand jury indictment requirement in the Fifth Amendment, and the Seventh Amendment’s stipulation that a jury trial be available for suits where the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars.

Over the last sixty years, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has taken on new meaning because the definitions of property have changed. The language of the clause indicated that due process must be provided when the state deprives “life, liberty, or property.” In cases involving capital punishment, the government clearly must supply due process. In fact, in such cases the government is compelled to provide exceptional procedural protections. In cases involving arrest or incarceration, obviously the government is obligated to provide due process. Traditionally, when governments deprive individuals of property they are involved in activities such as eminent domain or regulations that affect personal and corporate income. But beginning in the 1960s, the courts began to perceive that individuals could have a property interest in various kinds of government benefits, which could include welfare or disability payments, public contracts, government licenses or permits, or even public employment. In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that welfare recipients had a property interest in the receipt of their payments, so that the state of New York could not terminate payments without first having a public pre-termination hearing.[x] A few years later, applying the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, the Court ruled that recipients of Social Security disability checks were entitled to some due process, but not as much as in the case at issue in Goldberg v. Kelly. With disability cases, post-termination hearings would be sufficient, because the Court reasoned that other interests must be “balanced” with those of the individual claimants.[xi] The courts have continued to ponder very particular circumstances in individual cases to determine how much and what kind of process is due in very particular situations.[xii]

The last issue that this essay examines is the ambiguous issue of what constitutes public action. The due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments apply to public entities, not private firms or organizations. But can a private organization be subject to due process requirements if it is acting pursuant to public policies?[xiii] Of course, there is also a dispute regarding what constitutes a policy? Would a guidance document issued by a government agency be considered a public policy? A statute enacted by a legislature no doubt would be a public action. Generally speaking, a rule issued by a government agency under a legislature’s delegated authority would be considered a public action, since it would normally be considered legally binding. A guidance document or an interpretive rule would not, strictly speaking, be considered legally binding, but agencies may threaten investigations or the loss of future grant funds or contractual dollars if a private organization is not in compliance with directives that are not formally recognized as legally binding. The case law on these issues is still developing, but recent cases indicate that private organizations acting under the influence of government may be liable if they do not offer due process protections, even if the policy that they are following is quite informal. For example, Cornell University, a private institution, has been challenged by a dismissed faculty member for following irregular investigative procedures derived in part from the Title IX guidance handed down by the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education.[xiv]

James C. Clinger, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor of political science at Murray State University. His teaching and research has focused on state and local government, public administration, regulatory policy, and political economy. His forthcoming co-edited book is entitled Local Government Administration in Small Town America.

[i] Magna Carta, Clause 39.  Accessed July 7, 2023 from Magna Carta Project – 1215 Magna Carta – Clause 39 (uea.ac.uk)

[ii] Inglis, Laura. “Substantive Due Process: Continuation of Vested Rights?” The American Journal of Legal History 52, no. 4 (2012): 459–97.

[iii] 18 Howard 272.

[iv] 60 US 393 (1857)

[v] John Hart Ely, 1980.  Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 18.

[vi] 198 US 45 (1905)

[vii] See, for example, Griswold v. Connecticut 381 US 479 (1965).

[viii] 268 US 652 (1925)

[ix] 302 US 319 (1937)

[x] 397 U.S. 254 (1970)

[xi] 424 U.S. 319 (1976)

[xii] Shapiro, Sidney A., and Richard E. Levy. 2005. “Government Benefits and the Rule of Law: Toward a Standards-Based Theory of Due Process.” Administrative Law Review 57 (1): 107–53.

[xiii] Verkuil, Paul R. 2005. “Privatizing Due Process.” Administrative Law Review 57 (4): 963–93.

[xiv] Vengalatorre v. Cornell University.  2022.  United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.   Docket No. 20-1514.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“…it ought not to be overlooked, that such an additional accumulation of power in the judicial department would not only furnish pretexts for clamor against it, but might create a general dread of its influence, which could hardly fail to disturb the salutory effects of its ordinary functions…There is nothing, of which a free people are so apt to be jealous,, as of the existence of political functions, and political checks, in those, who are not appointed by, and made directly responsible to themselves.” – Joseph Story, United States Supreme Court Justice appointed by James Madison, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With A Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution. Published in 1833.

The above quotation from Joseph Story, an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court, is drawn from his discussion of the United States Senate, and more specifically from his analysis of the role of the Senate in the impeachment process. Story’s analysis is an insightful illustration of what is sometimes called the separation of powers, but which some observers call “separate institutions, sharing powers.”[1]

In Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, the Framers wrote that “all legislative powers are vested in a Congress.  Article II of the Constitution discusses executive powers, and Article III covers judicial powers, but notably the adjective “all” is absent from the text of those articles. Only in the first article does the text emphasize the comprehensive nature of the powers vested in Congress. To make sense of this language and to contrast it with the empowering language written for the executive and judicial branches requires us to have some understanding of what words such as “legislative” and “executive” and “judicial” actually mean. Virtually all dictionary definitions describe the word “legislative” as pertaining to the making or enacting of laws. However, that definition is of little use to us if we do not have any particular idea of what a law actually is. Definitions of “law” are a bit more varied, in part because the definitions sometimes refer to regularities in natural phenomena with a common causal pattern (e.g., the law of gravity). In a constitutional context, law is generally regarded to be general rules made by government, using a proper procedure not forbidden to the government, which the government enforces with the use of penalties. Those penalties may take the forms of civil and/or criminal actions. This legislative power stands in contrast to the power of the executive, which is a word drawn from the Latin word exsequor, which means “to follow thoroughly.”[2] Ironically, the executive function has come to be known as a matter of leadership, rather than as the role of a follower. In the case of a government executive, the executive function is a matter of following or administering the rules enacted through a legislative process. The judicial power is generally a matter of making decisions regarding a legal matter in which there are two or more contending parties. Unlike the legislative power, which is applicable to all within a community, and accessible to all in a republic, the application of the judicial power has immediate effect upon the particular parties standing before the court. However, the judgments of an appellant court may become precedents that would have impact on other parties more generally.

In the case of impeachment, the Constitution authorizes a legislative function that in some respects resembles a judicial process.   Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution specifically states that the president, the vice-president, and all civil officers of the United States may be removed from office “on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” This is a process that makes decisions regarding particular individuals accused of high crimes and misdemeanors. It is not a process that implicates whole classes of individuals or entire categories of behaviors, but a particularized decision about specifically identified individuals. The cause of action for an impeachment action is some kind of “High Crime or Misdemeanors,” which implies the possibility of a criminal proceeding. Nonetheless, as Joseph Story points out, impeachment is not considered a judicial process. No punishment beyond removal from office can be ordered through impeachment. In these instances, a civil officer accused of misconduct is examined by the House of Representatives, a chamber made up of elected individuals. Upon an impeachment vote by the House, the members of the Senate, acting as representatives of the states, consider whether or not to remove the civil officer.

As Story noted, a “free” public would be “jealous” of its power to use their elected, political representatives to make decisions on the removal of civil officers found to be guilty of misconduct. That kind of decision, if made by unelected judges, would outrage the public. As is often the case, the public has expectations about what kinds of decisions an institution within the government should make. Of course, since Joseph Story’s time public perceptions of the proper institution to address different issues may have changed dramatically. Views on the separation of powers have often changed over time. Recent events suggest that much of the public has a very results-oriented view of public decisions, without considering which institution is constitutionally authorized to make important policy choices. These views may be quite short-sighted, since an institution which usurps the powers of other institutions may occasionally make decisions favored by the public, but over the long term may accumulate power that will threaten individual rights and the aggregate interests of the public.

James C. Clinger, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor of political science at Murray State University. His teaching and research has focused on state and local government, public administration, regulatory policy, and political economy. His forthcoming co-edited book is entitled Local Government Administration in Small Town America.

[1] Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership.   New York: Wiley (1964), p. 42.

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exsequor#Latin

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

From the beginning of our nation’s founding, the concept that all are equal under the law and have equal justice under law has been aspirational. But in the late 1890s, with the Supreme Court of the United States’ Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, the concept became concrete. Questions remain about whether the concept has been fully fulfilled.

The Idea

The concept of equal under the law is pretty straightforward. It means that regardless of race or color, political views, sex, religion, or other characteristics, justice is blind and everyone is treated the same and equally under the law. From the most powerful to the penniless, all are to be treated equally under the law, from due process rights to the rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. A mental image of the concept can be had by taking a look at statues of Lady Justice, who has balanced scales before her and a blindfold over her eyes, so that impartiality is the standard by which all under the law are judged.

The Fourteenth Amendment

Some have referred to the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments as the “Second Founding.” The Fourteenth Amendment language provides for equal protection, Section 1 ending, “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  Blacks were the intended beneficiaries of the language, but in its early days after ratification, the Equal Protection Clause was not always used to benefit the intended beneficiaries.

The Language of Equal Justice Under Law

In 1891, in a case, Caldwell v. Texas, 137 U.S. 692 (1891), Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote in a Fourteenth Amendment case (emphasis added), “By the Fourteenth Amendment, the powers of the states in dealing with crime within their borders are not limited, but no state can deprive particular persons or classes of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law.” In a second case, Leeper v. Texas, 139 U.S. 462 (1891), the Fuller Court repeated the same language. (The Fuller Court in 1896 in the context of segregation also gave us the language “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).)

In 1958, in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958), a post-Brown case involving the State of Arkansas and resistance to integration of public schools, the Court in an unsigned opinion wrote:

“The Constitution created a government dedicated to equal justice under law. The Fourteenth Amendment embodied and emphasized that ideal.”

The United States Constitution itself makes no mention, except for the Equal Protection Clause, of any equality concept.

The Pledge of Allegiance

The concept of equality is embedded in many of our national documents, including the Pledge of Allegiance, which was written in 1892 (around the time of the Texas cases referenced above. The original Pledge read, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The words “under God” were added in 1954, during the Red Scare, by President Dwight Eisenhower.

The Supreme Court Building

Prior to the 1930s, the Supreme Court met in the Senate building, with no separate home. Former President William Howard Taft, who became Chief Justice of the United States, worked to establish a place for the Court. Architects suggested the front of the building, the West Pediment, have the phrase, “Equal Justice Under Law,” over the entrance, to remind all that when they stepped before the highest court of the nation, they each were treated with equality. From the beginning, some have debated the phrase and whether the nine justices inside the building have lived up to the aspirational goal.

Roots Go Way Back

Democratic principles have long included notions of equality under the law. For example, in ancient Greece, Pericles wrote of equal justice under law.

From the United States of America perspective, our initial document establishing this Union, the Declaration of Independence, which we recently celebrated, begins in substance with the concept of equality:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Conclusion

The debate about the law and whether all are treated “equal under the law” remains one of great interest and discussion. Our nation should be one that treats all equally under the law, and may this continue to be a goal we aspire to achieve.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

The United States Constitution, ratified in 1788, has stood as a beacon of democratic principles and rule of law for over two centuries. One of its most profound contributions is the pursuit of “justice for all,” an ideal engraved in the Pledge of Allegiance. The preamble to the Constitution sets the tone by stating one of the document’s purposes as to “establish Justice.” This phrase signifies the Framers’ intent to create a system of governance that promotes fair treatment and equality under the law, a cornerstone of justice.

“Justice for All,” Generally, in the Constitution

The Constitution’s first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, are crucial to achieving “justice for all.” These amendments protect individual liberties and limit governmental power, thereby ensuring fairness. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, while the Fifth and Sixth Amendments guarantee rights that are fundamental to a fair trial, such as the right to due process and the right to a speedy and public trial. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, affirming that punishment must be proportional and humane.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, is another cornerstone in the pursuit of justice. The amendment’s Equal Protection Clause prohibits states from denying any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. This provision has been instrumental in combating discrimination and ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their race or other innate attributes, are treated equally in the eyes of the law. Landmark Supreme Court cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education have utilized the Equal Protection Clause to deliver justice to marginalized groups.

The Constitution establishes the judiciary as an independent branch of government, playing a vital role in upholding justice. Article III vests the judicial power in the Supreme Court and other federal courts as Congress may establish. The courts interpret the Constitution and have the power to strike down laws that are unconstitutional, ensuring that the principles of justice are upheld against potential abuses of power.

Lastly, the Constitution itself provides for amendments to adapt to changing societal norms and understandings of justice. The Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18, are examples of how the Constitution can evolve to better realize the promise of “justice for all.”

“Due Process” as the Embodiment of “Justice for All”

The concept of due process and the ideal of “justice for all” are two fundamental principles that underpin the legal systems of free and just societies. At the core of these principles is the commitment to protecting individual rights and ensuring fair treatment for all citizens under the law. Both concepts are deeply intertwined, serving as the backbone of a just and impartial society.

Due process, a concept firmly rooted in the legal framework, is a safeguard from arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the government. It’s a constitutional guarantee that all legal proceedings will be fair and that no person will be deprived of their rights without a fair procedure. The essence of due process is the right to notice and a reasonable opportunity to be heard and defend one’s rights.

The commitment to due process is directly linked to the promise of “justice for all.” It establishes a level playing field in the court system, ensuring that no one is unduly favored or unfairly disadvantaged. This adherence to process and fairness guarantees that every citizen, irrespective of their social, economic, or political standing, has an equal opportunity to present their case and seek justice.

Through due process, the law is applied uniformly, emphasizing the principle that all are equal before the law. This means that every person, regardless of their status, is subject to the same laws and legal proceedings as anyone else, reinforcing the concept of “justice for all.” It embodies the idea that justice should not be the privilege of the few, but the right of all.

Due process is a bulwark against the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. It prevents individuals from being unjustly targeted or punished without substantial evidence and a fair trial. By doing so, it reinforces the ideal of “justice for all,” ensuring that no person is unjustly deprived of their rights or freedoms.

Due process promotes transparency and accountability in the legal system. It requires that legal proceedings be carried out in a fair, open, and consistent manner, which enhances public trust in the system. This transparency ensures that justice is not only done but seen to be done, thus promoting the ideal of “justice for all.”

Due process is intrinsic to the concept of “justice for all.” It guarantees fair treatment, equality before the law, protection against arbitrary power, and promotes transparency and accountability. Without due process, the promise of “justice for all” would be an empty rhetoric. As such, any society committed to justice must also be committed to upholding and enforcing due process.

“Justice for All” and the Supreme Court

While the phrase “justice for all” is not found in the body of the Constitution, the preamble to the Constitution does present a mandate that the Federal Government will “establish justice.” The Supreme Court has often been tasked with interpreting what “establishing justice” means in various contexts and how it should be applied in practice. Most scholars look at four seminal cases in which the Supreme Court has interpreted and applied this mandate: Marbury v. Madison, Wesberry v. Sanders, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board of Education.

First, Marbury v. Madison (1803) was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Marshall, affirmed its power of judicial review, the power to declare laws unconstitutional. It was a case where the interpretation of “establish Justice” was at the core. The Court held that it was the very essence of justice to ensure that government acts within the limits of the law, and when it doesn’t, there needs to be a mechanism to check and correct it. Judicial review was therefore seen as an essential instrument of justice, ensuring that the laws themselves and the actions of government are just, fair, and align with the Constitution.

Second, Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) centered on the principle of “one person, one vote,” an essential aspect of democratic justice. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that electoral districts must be roughly equal in population, ensuring that all citizens’ votes carry equal weight. This interpretation of “establish Justice” reflected the belief that justice in a democratic society requires political equality, where each citizen’s voice matters equally in the public decision-making process.

Third, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is a historic case that unfortunately reflects a period when the Supreme Court fell short in its mandate to “establish Justice.” The Court upheld state racial segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of “separate but equal.” This decision was a significant deviation from the ideal of justice as it endorsed racial discrimination and inequality, contradicting the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Lastly, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court rectified its previous stance from Plessy v. Ferguson. The Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This case epitomizes the Supreme Court’s role in establishing justice, as it actively sought to dismantle institutionalized racism or uphold the principles of equality and protect the rights of marginalized communities.

“Justice for all” runs as a vein throughout the Constitution—starting with the preamble’s charge that “We the people” will use the Constitution to “establish justice” and then running through the principles embodied therein. Much of this charge is carried out by the Due Process clauses in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and it has been left to the Supreme Court throughout U.S. history to further ensure that this commission from the Founders to ensure that there is “justice for all” is carried out.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer
Mandate or Law: The American Founders on Warning Against Arbitrary, Tyrannical Dictates Diluting Rule of Law

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

In the realm of United States governance, the terms “mandate” and “law” frequently arise, often creating confusion due to their seemingly overlapping meanings. Both play essential roles in shaping the country’s legal and political landscape, yet they are distinctly different in nature and application—and both must be understood within the context of due process of law, both substantive and procedural.

A law, as per the United States Constitution, is a rule established by the government that dictates the actions of its people. It’s a formal norm that has been approved by a legislative body and, if necessary, signed into effect by the executive branch. Laws are codified in written form and are enforceable by the judiciary. In the United States, federal laws apply to all states and territories, while state laws apply only within their respective jurisdictions.

On the other hand, a mandate in the context of U.S. governance often refers to a policy or requirement that a higher level of government imposes on a lower level. For instance, federal mandates require states or localities to perform certain actions, often under the threat of financial or legal penalties. These mandates may come in various forms, including conditions for receiving federal grants, requirements imposed as a part of federal civil rights laws, or conditions for participating in voluntary federal programs.

Unlike laws, mandates do not necessarily have to go through the same rigorous legislative process. Some mandates are issued by federal agencies as regulations, under the authority granted to them by Congress. Others are issued directly by the executive branch, such as through executive orders.

While a law is a directive that comes with its own enforcement mechanism, a mandate is a requirement that may or may not come with specific penalties for non-compliance. Compliance with a mandate is often tied to the receipt of federal funds. For example, states may be required to comply with certain federal mandates to receive funding for highway construction or education.

In the dynamic landscape of American politics and law, it is essential to note that the boundary between mandates and laws can sometimes blur. As such, ongoing vigilance and discourse are required to ensure the appropriate balance—especially given how both laws and mandates can impact “true” law—which can be viewed within the context of the 5th and 14th Amendments’ guarantees of due process for all citizens,

The founding of the United States was a grand experiment, the creation of a republic aimed at securing the rights and liberties of its citizens. Central to this vision was the rule of law, which the Founders intended as a safeguard against arbitrary and tyrannical rule. The United States Constitution thus enshrines due process as an essential component of legal justice, a bulwark against any effort to dilute the power and relevance of law and order. The twin concepts of substantive and procedural due process, while less known to the general public, are pivotal elements of the due process doctrine and serve as vital tools in safeguarding individual liberties.

Before delving into the importance of both substantive and procedural due process, it is crucial to understand the distinction between the two.

Substantive due process is a doctrine that protects citizens from government actions that could interfere with fundamental rights or liberties. It requires the government to justify any intrusion into personal and economic freedoms with a sufficient and compelling state interest. For instance, the right to privacy and the freedom of speech are protected under this doctrine, and any governmental attempt to restrict these rights must meet a rigorous standard of scrutiny.

Procedural due process, on the other hand, is concerned with the fairness of how a law is applied or a decision is made. It safeguards individuals from arbitrary deprivation of life, liberty, or property by ensuring they receive a fair process, which typically involves notice and an opportunity to be heard. Procedural due process thus protects against the abuse of power, ensuring that the rule of law is upheld even when the government takes necessary actions.

The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of the danger posed by arbitrary laws and mandates that had the force of law but lacked the due process of law. They had experienced firsthand the arbitrary rule of a distant monarch and were determined to construct a system of government that would prevent such abuses.

Substantive due process plays an indispensable role in upholding this vision. By requiring the government to justify any infringement on fundamental rights, it ensures that laws and regulations do not arbitrarily or unjustly infringe on individual liberties. This doctrine serves as a shield, protecting citizens from arbitrary laws that could unduly limit their freedoms.

Procedural due process, meanwhile, acts as a sword, enabling citizens to challenge any governmental actions they believe infringe on their rights. By providing a fair and transparent process for reviewing governmental actions, it ensures that citizens have a meaningful opportunity to contest any perceived injustices.

Timothy Sandefur, a legal scholar, has made significant contributions to the understanding of the phrase “due process of law” in the United States Constitution, specifically emphasizing the importance of the term “of law.” He has argued that “due process of law” is not just about the process itself, but also about the substance of the laws that govern that process, a concept commonly known as substantive due process.

One of the key elements of Sandefur’s argument is the idea that “due process of law” should not be understood as merely a procedural guarantee. Rather, it also provides substantive guarantees against “unfairness.” This understanding is rooted in a deeper interpretation of the Constitution, not limited to the literal wording of the document but also considering its structure, ideas, and history. According to Sandefur, the Constitution’s promise that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” implies not only that the government must adhere to certain procedures when imposing a deprivation, but also that some acts are inherently off-limits for the government, regardless of the procedures used to implement them​.

Sandefur also discusses the concept of law in this context. He explains that law is the use of government’s coercive powers in service of a general principle of the public good, and it is the opposite of arbitrariness. The law should not be a self-serving tool of those in power. Therefore, the “of law” in “due process of law” ensures that the government’s actions are guided by lawful principles and not by arbitrary or self-serving motives. A lawful government is characterized by general rules that benefit all, rather than specific commands or actions that only benefit those in power. This principle is a fundamental part of due process of law, guaranteeing citizens protection under the general rules that govern society​. In Sandefur’s view, due process of law means that the government may not limit our freedom without good reason. What constitutes a “good reason” is determined by reference to political and legal principles, not merely by legislative whims or self-interest. This view reflects the inherent overlap of “procedure” and “substance” in the understanding of due process of law. To be treated lawfully means to be treated in accordance with general, public principles (substantive) and through established procedures (procedural). Sandefur uses the examples of a vetoed tax bill and a bill establishing an official religion to illustrate the concept of substantive due process. In both cases, even if the procedural steps have been followed, the substantive aspect of the law can make it invalid. The same logic, according to Sandefur, applies to implicit or inherent limits on government power. If the legislature passes a statute that it lacks the authority to make, that statute cannot be considered law, and enforcing it would violate the citizen’s right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property except by due process of law​​.

In the end, regardless of whether the government is enforcing a law derived from legislation, or a mandate derived from some other government action, the rights to due process must be respected.  Anything short of that respect does serve to dilute “true law” and undermines the protection of the liberty of the people.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Winfield H. Rose
James Otis (1725-1783) Author of “Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved” pamphlet, 1763.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

“…that the King with and by the authority of parliament, is able to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the crown, and the descent, limitation, inheritance and government thereof” is founded on the principles of liberty and the British constitution: And he that would palm the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience and non-resistance upon mankind, and thereby or by any other means serve the cause of the Pretender, is not only a fool and a knave, but a rebel against common sense, as well as the laws of God, of Nature, and his Country…These are their bounds, which by God and nature are fixed, hitherto have they a right to come, and no further…The sum of my argument is, That civil government is of God…That this constitution is the most free one, and by far the best, now existing on earth: That by this constitution, every man in the dominion is a free man: That no parts of his Majesty’s dominions can be taxed without their consent: That every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature…” – James Otis, Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved, pamphlet, 1763.

James Otis, Jr. was born in and lived all his life in Massachusetts. He was a contemporary of both John and Samuel Adams and was a prominent and effective proponent of American independence. He lived from 1725 to 1783.

Known for his pamphlet “Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” published in 1763, he was very offended by the Writs of Assistance adopted by the British government in 1761. Otis may or may not have coined the phrase “Taxation without representation is tyranny” but he certainly believed and proclaimed it. According to the Smithsonian Magazine (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/transformative-patriot-who-didnt-become-founding-father-180963166/),

“As John Adams told it, the American Revolution didn’t start in Philadelphia, or at Lexington and Concord. Instead, the second president traced the nation’s birth to February 24, 1761, when James Otis, Jr., rose in Boston’s Massachusetts Town House to defend American liberty. That day, as . . . a rapt, 25-year-old Adams—listened, Otis delivered a five-hour oration against the Writs of Assistance, sweeping warrants that allowed British customs officials to search any place, anytime, for evidence of smuggling. . . . Otis denounced the British king, parliament, and nation as oppressors of the American colonies—electrifying spectators. ‘Otis was a flame of fire,’ Adams recalled years later. ‘American Independence was then and there born.…Then and there was the first…opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain.’”

We say Washington was the father of our country and Madison was the father of the Constitution. According to Adams, we likewise need to say that Otis was the father of our independence.

Tyranny was an issue for our revolutionary forefathers but it was not the primary issue. The primary issue was legitimacy or, more accurately, the lack of legitimacy. The lack of legitimacy created the tyranny under which our American ancestors were then living, and that lack of legitimacy was due to the absence of the consent of the governed. The absence of this consent could have been remedied by the British government’s granting their American colonies representation in Parliament but it was too arrogant and stubborn to do so. They paid for this mistake with the loss of their American empire.

Looking back with hindsight, one may ask why the British made this political blunder. Careful arithmetic would have shown the numerical threshold beyond which they should not go, and they could have granted the Americans a safe number of representatives in Parliament, thereby acquiescing to their demand and quieting the uproar. This would have been a practical solution, but the British were not interested in a practical solution. They adhered to the principle that the American colonists were neither citizens nor subjects but vassals without rights totally subject to rule from London.

One might also reply that each American colony had a legislative assembly, and that is true. But, according to the complaints against the British government Jefferson listed in the Declaration of Independence, by the 1760s those assemblies had been reduced to irrelevance.

We would be remiss if we did not remember that King George III had ascended the throne in 1760 at the age of 22 and that the French and Indian War (1754-1763) was underway at this time. This war and its aftermath created severe financial problems for the treasuries of both Britain and France which, in turn, then led to ill-fated attempts to raise taxes and ultimately to both the American and French Revolutions.

Not only had the French and Indian War been costly to fight, it left the British with a very long western frontier to defend, a frontier that extended all the way to the Mississippi River. This was the time of Daniel Boone when American settlers wanted to move westward past the Appalachians. Defending this frontier was going to be costly. Thereby came the need for tax measures such as the Stamp Act.

A line in the Otis quote at the beginning of this essay is especially informative:

“The sum of my argument is . . . That this constitution [the British constitution] is the most free one, and by far the best, now existing on earth: That by this constitution, every man . . . is a free man: That no parts of his Majesty’s dominions can be taxed without their consent: That every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature.”

Otis and many others correctly believed the existing British constitution, based on the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689, was “by far the best now existing on earth.” The problem was that King George III and Parliament had corrupted it (as Edmund Burke correctly observed) and thereby had intolerably violated the natural rights of their fellow citizens in America. When the British created their Commonwealth of Nations many years later, knowingly or not, they followed the principles Otis enunciated in 1763.

Winfield H. Rose, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Murray State University.

 

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: George Landrith
Careful Observance Upon Forming and Executing Laws: Principle of the Rule of Law, Not of Men

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The Rule of Law comprises a number of important legal doctrines designed to make our governmental system and our society more just and fair. It starts with the idea that we are all equal before the law and accountable to the same laws. But it also includes the concept that those laws should be made in public and not in secret; that the law should be evenly applied and not selectively applied, that all laws must be applied prospectively — meaning a law cannot punish behavior that occurred before the law’s existence; that government power cannot be exercised arbitrarily or capriciously, and that we should all have access to due process and an independent and fair-minded decision maker before our life, liberty or property can be taken from us.

For most of human history, most people have been ruled by individuals who had almost unquestioned power. For example, for much of Europe’s history, it was ruled by kings, who claimed “the divine right of kings” – meaning that no one on earth could question or challenge their rule. Such a ruler could imprison those he or she didn’t like or found annoying simply on a whim. And they had power to make laws that would be applied solely to those they didn’t like or had some grievance with.

Magna Carta officially ended the “Divine Right of Kings” by placing very modest limits on the power of the king. But modest limits on the arbitrary rule of men doesn’t qualify as the Rule of Law.

Fortunately, America’s Founders saw the Rule of Law as a foundational element of the society and nation that they sought to build. Thomas Paine in his seminal work, Common Sense, wrote that “in America, the law is King…” — meaning that there would be no king to rule over Americans. The law, as an impartial standard, would govern Americans.

Part of our national heritage in the Rule of Law means that we ought not care whether we like or dislike the accused, or whether we agree with the politics of the accused. We ought to be concerned only about the law and its equal and fair application. The Rule of Law is a major check against the abuses of government.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin once described his totalitarian view of the law as — “show me the man, and I’ll find the crime.” That is obviously not the Rule of Law. That is a prime example of the arbitrary and capricious rule of man.

While America has been an example to the entire world of the Rule of Law, it has not always been perfect in its application. But our commitment to the Rule of Law is noteworthy all over the globe and it has helped to make us “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

America cannot survive as a beacon of hope and a land of freedom and opportunity for all if the Rule of Law is sacrificed upon the alter of political expediency. Americans of all political stripes must demand that the government play by the rules, live within the limitations placed upon it by our United States Constitution, and honor and uphold the principles of the Rule of Law.

One informal test that can help us judge the relative health of the Rule of Law in our nation is: does the government treat us like subjects or citizens?

Sir Thomas More lived from 1478 to 1535 AD and was an English lawyer, judge, and author. He was a strong and heroic advocate of the Rule of Law. In 1535, More did not attend the coronation of King Henry VIII’s latest wife, Anne Boleyn as Queen. Not attending the coronation was not an act of treason and, in a letter, More had wished the King and his new bride much happiness. And while most of the nation had not attended, More’s absence angered the King because of his reputation and influence.

After a number of failed attempts to punish More for not attending the coronation, the King came up with a plan to entrap More. He demanded that More sign a statement that King Henry was the head of both the nation of England and the Church of England. More had made no statements against the King’s authority, but he was unwilling to sign such a statement because it required him to repudiate his Catholic faith.

More made it clear to the King that he was not refusing to sign because he challenged the King’s authority. He simply was unwilling to repudiate his faith. But this did not matter; the King had him arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London and eventually executed for treason.

A Man for All Seasons is a play and movie based upon Sir Thomas More’s life. In the play, the King pressures More to sign the statement and promises to pardon him if he will sign. More asks the King, I’ve acknowledged your right to rule and your Queen, “then why does your Grace need my poor support?”

The King’s response was, “Because you’re honest… and what is more to the purpose, you’re KNOWN to be honest. There are those … who follow me because I wear the crown; and those … who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I’m their tiger; there’s a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves. And then there’s you….”

Later, a friend of More’s tried to talk him into signing a statement to avoid the King’s wrath by saying, “Oh, confound all this…. Thomas, look at those names…. You know those men! Can’t you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship?” More responded, “And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?”

Later, Oliver Cromwell tried to bully More into signing the statement. More objected to being bullied and said, “You threaten like a dockside bully.” Cromwell responded, “How should I threaten?” More responded, “With justice.” Cromwell, then replied, “Oh, justice is what you’re threatened with.” Thomas More said, “Then I’m not threatened.” Obviously, More understood that a process focused on right and wrong and justice and fairness would not harm him.

Another interesting conversation in A Man for All Seasons shows why the Rule of Law must protect everyone’s rights — no matter how unpopular or disliked. More’s son-in-law, William Roper, while discussing the Rule of Law and More’s defense of it asked, “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!” More responded, “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” Roper responded, “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!” Sir Thomas More’s response is both insightful and correct:

“Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety’s sake!”

More was no fan of the Devil as he was a very religious man and was executed because of his commitment to his faith and refusal to bend to the will of the King. But his point was important and true — we cannot have laws and judicial processes that only protect those that we like or approve of. Even those we despise must be afforded the benefits of the Rule of Law or we do not have the Rule of Law.

Thomas Paine’s description of America as a place where the law is king will hopefully always be true. Our nation’s freedom depends upon it. Thus, Americans who value freedom must, as Thomas More did, uphold, support and champion the Rule of Law. There is no freedom without it.

George Landrith is the President of Frontiers of Freedom. Frontiers of Freedom, founded in 1995 by U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, is an educational foundation whose mission is to promote the principles of individual freedom, peace through strength, limited government, free enterprise, free markets, and traditional American values as found in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Eric C. Sands
Supreme Court of the United States, photo by Joe Ravi.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The United States Constitution does not say much about the Judiciary, listing it third among the articles dealing with the main institutions of government. For some, this implies that the Judiciary was intended to be last in order of importance and the most insignificant of the institutions overall. While the three branches were intended to be equal in terms of legitimacy and functionality, they were not equal in terms of power.  The Legislature wielded the awesome power of the purse and directed the affairs of government. The Executive held the only slightly less impressive power of the sword and executed the will of the Legislature. But what of the Judiciary? What power does it hold and what was its role in constitutional government intended to be?

One might be forgiven for thinking that Article III was something of an afterthought. There is a sense to the Article of being incomplete and not fully thought out. It begins by saying that the judicial power shall be given to a Supreme Court of the United States, but then leaves a lot unsaid. The Article never defines what the judicial power is or how it is used. It never explains the nature of the judicial power or how the Judiciary might go about using it. Its existence in the Article is a mystery. The Article then goes on to tell us only a little about the Court. Its size will be determined by Congress. Judges will be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Yet no qualifications are listed to be a Supreme Court Justice. There is no age requirement, no experience requirement. In fact, a person does not even have to possess a law degree.

The Article continues saying that the judges will hold their tenures for life on terms of good behavior, a provision justified to insulate judges from the whims of public opinion that is much more likely to sway the other branches of government. Following this, there is the Cases and Controversies Clause outlining what kinds of cases the Supreme Court can hear. This includes, controversially, cases under the equity power which is not clearly defined by the Constitution. A distinction between original and appellate jurisdiction comes next, followed by some clauses dealing with jury trials and trial for treason. And that is it. Compared to what preceded it in Article I and Article II, this is not much.

The lack of content in Article III, according to one of the Founders, was by design. It was a reflection on the nature of the institution and the more subservient role it played in American constitutional government. In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton gave a defense of the Judiciary and argued that the Court possessed neither force nor will, but merely judgment. This made the Court the “least dangerous” branch of government and the least threatening to the Constitution. According to Hamilton, “it proves incontestably that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power; that it can never attack with success either of the other two; and that all possible care is requisite to enable it to defend itself against their attacks.” This further adds to why the judges need lifetime tenures and such radical independence – it is the only way to ensure justice without the interference of the political branches of government or public opinion.

So, we see the task of the Supreme Court as interpreting the laws passed by Congress, exercising its judgment over what those laws mean and how they should be applied. But is this all? Not according to Hamilton and other Federalists. The Court also had a more fundamental duty to protect the Constitution. It preformed this function through the power of judicial review. Judicial review is the power of the Court to determine that government actions conflict with the Constitution and are, therefore, null and void. It was first used in a Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison, but was held to be a part of the Court’s power by many Federalists at the founding. Anti-federalists, such as Brutus, denied that the Court possessed this power and claimed that if it had been intended to give the Court such an extraordinary power, the Founders would have written it into the Constitution. The president cannot not even completely override a bill passed by Congress, so it would be incredible if this unelected body of judges could do what the president could not. If the Framers had intended judicial review, they would have enumerated it.

Federalists countered by saying that the power of judicial review was enumerated when Article III said that the judicial power shall be vested in a Supreme Court. What else could the judicial power be but the power of judicial review? Though it was not stated explicitly in the Article, it was clearly implied in its language. But there was an even stronger argument for judicial review. If the Court lacked this power, how would it play a role in the separation of powers and checks and balances? The Court would effectively be relegated to playing the role of an advisory body, making suggestions to the other branches about constitutionality but not having the power to compel anyone to listen. This would effectively destroy the purpose of an independent judiciary and render the Court not just weak but impotent. Thus, judicial review must be part of the design of constitutional government and a vital part of the principal of the judicial branch.

Eric C. Sands is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Berry College. He has written a book on Abraham Lincoln and edited a second volume on political parties.

Guest Essayist: Ben Slomski

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The delegates who met in 1787 for the Constitutional Convention faced a difficult task when it came to designing the nation’s executive branch. Americans of the time tended to look upon a strong executive with suspicion. This was a natural response, given the previous experience with the English monarchy. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was no independent executive. This lack of a strong executive turned out to be one of the central defects of the Articles. National authority was often just ignored by the states and disobedience towards democratically-enacted laws culminated in Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts. Delegates at the Constitutional Convention were challenged with creating an independent executive who would be powerful enough to enforce the laws effectively yet not so strong that he could overpower the other republican institutions of government. The result of this work was the American presidency.

The text of the United States Constitution recognizes the difficult nature of executing the law. Authority is placed in the president by the vesting clause in Article II, Section 1 which states that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” This should be contrasted with the vesting clause in Article I, Section I which grants certain legislative authority to Congress: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Congress only receives the legislative powers specifically granted to it in the Constitution. The executive power granted to the president, however, is not limited to certain powers “herein granted.” Some specific examples of the president’s executive power are given in Section 2. He is the Commander in Chief of the military, can pardon crimes against the U.S., and makes treaties with foreign nations, among other powers. The powers listed in Section 2 are not an exhaustive list but rather specific instances of the way in which executive power can be exercised.

Article II, unlike Article I, does not comprehensively detail the scope of the president’s executive power because it cannot be precisely defined. The president’s function is to execute the laws passed by Congress and to “preserve protect and defend the Constitution” as enumerated in the presidential oath of office. What is necessary to enforce the law and defend the nation depends on the innumerable variety of circumstances that will occur in human life. As human beings cannot predict every emergency that might occur, they cannot list every single circumstance in which the executive can act without restricting the president during an unforeseen crisis. Therefore, the Founders wisely left the executive power broadly defined so that the president can act in whatever situation that might arise.

The broad nature of executive power does not mean that the president’s power is unlimited or arbitrary. For the president to have constitutional power to do something, the act must be executive, meaning that it does not make law but carries out existing laws. The president cannot usurp legislative power from Congress just as Congress cannot interfere with the president’s execution of the laws. Presidents also cannot nullify congressional laws by refusing to execute them. The president’s broad power is constrained by the constitutional system in which it is placed. Senate approval is needed for the ratification of treaties and the confirmation of many presidential appointees. Congress can always restrict the president through the denial of funding or impeachment. The Supreme Court can review the constitutionality of executive actions in legal cases. The people retain the ultimate check of voting the president out of office. The president is neither a dictator nor a pawn of Congress.

The constitutional insight that there must be a powerful and independent president who is defined by the executive functions he must perform was expressed well by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 70. Here he wrote that:

“Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks: it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.”

Government is ineffective unless its laws are obeyed and individuals will not respect the law unless there is a strong enough executive to ensure there is sufficient force behind the laws. A powerful president is of course needed to command the military and defend the nation from invasion. It is equally important to ensure that the government is well-administered and that laws are enforced consistently and effectively.

The genius of the Constitution is that it reconciles the need for a powerful executive with the constraints of republican government. George Washington embodied this idea as the first president. He recommended legislative measures to Congress, vetoed bills on both constitutional and policy grounds, proclaimed American neutrality between France and Britain, and personally led federal troops to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. These energetic actions were not taken as the personal prerogatives of a king but rather as the exercise of constitutional power granted by the people to a republican servant. Washington understood the president to be the “Chief Magistrate” who must remain aware “of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the People of United America.” The executive’s power must be wielded with the humility and prudence required of a republican governing statesman.

Benjamin Slomski is Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Ashland University.

 

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner
In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses met in the Jamestown Church, the first elected legislative body in America.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

In advocating for establishing the Legislative Branch in the United States Constitution, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, writing under “PUBLIUS,” stated in Federalist No. 52:

“First. As it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the branch of it under consideration should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people. Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured…. It is a received and well-founded maxim, that where no other circumstances affect the case, the greater the power is, the shorter ought to be its duration.”

Madison and Hamilton explained how the Legislative Branch was fundamental to Americans remaining in control of their own government in FEDERALIST No. 57:

“The House of Representatives is so constituted as to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Before the sentiments impressed on their minds by the mode of their elevation can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to cease, when their exercise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised; there forever to remain unless a faithful discharge of their trust shall have established their title to a renewal of it.”

Binding the Legislative Branch to the people built upon the precedents from America’s colonial period.

The Royal Charter that established Jamestown in Virginia evolved from governance by the Charter holders into governance by the King’s Representative (Royal Governor) and his Advisory Council. When the settlers demanded their own voice, the Virginia House of Burgesses, in 1619, became the first democratically elected legislative body in America.

The House of Burgesses became a proving ground for what would become the U.S. House of Representatives. Drawing upon British tradition, revenue and spending bills originated in the House instead of the “upper chamber.” Drawing from British tradition, the members of the House held their positions for short periods of time, the better to be held closely accountable by those they represented.

Tying government closely to the people is foundational to America. The reason America is a “federal” system, and not a “national system,” is to preserve state and local government. This assures most public policy and public activity is closest to the people it serves and reflects their diversity. Serving a New York City neighborhood is very different from serving a rural community in Montana.

America’s diversity is embodied in our nation’s motto: “E Pluribus Unum” – out of many, one. Governing the nation of America is institutionalized in the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Today, America is governed by 87,576 local units. This includes 3,034 counties, 19,429 municipalities (cities, towns, villages), 16,504 townships, 13,506 school districts, and 35,052 special districts (such as water & sewer, fire, and conservation).

Except for Switzerland and Germany, European governments are national. Their policy and programs are based on “one size fits all.” National governments ultimately amplify regional and ethnic tensions. England’s Acts of Union with Scotland (1707) and Ireland (1801) spawned countless conflicts. Today, Scotland and Wales have separate Parliaments. Ireland divided itself into a Free State and Northern Ireland in the wake of years of violence (1921). England leaving the European Union in January 2020 reflected what happens when a weak parliament was dominated by a powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy.

America’s federal structure, emphasizing government closest to the people, was chronicled by the Frenchman, Alexis Clerel, the Viscount de Tocqueville.

“Democracy in America” was published in two volumes (1835 and 1840). It remains a foundational document describing how Americans benefit from local government.

“The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that wherever a number of men are collected it seems to constitute itself. The town, or tithing, as the smallest division of a community, must necessarily exist in all nations….”

“….local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.”

de Tocqueville recognized how Americans preserving local governance serves as a model for a better world:

“I believe that provincial [local] institutions are useful to all nations, but nowhere do they appear to me to be more indispensable than amongst a democratic people.

The only nations which deny the utility of provincial [local] liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the institution are the only persons who pass a censure upon it.”

Thanks to the strength of local government, America remains an inspiration for all those who seek free and open societies.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke immortal words about the eternal mission for all Americans: “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Citizens holding government accountable begins with knowing what their government, at all levels, is doing.

Two long-standing legal concepts provide the framework for citizens being eternally vigilant and government officials being consistently accountable: government documents should be public and government meetings should be public.

During the Virginia Ratifying Convention for the United States Constitution, Patrick Henry asserted public knowledge was the bulwark of protecting freedom, “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

“Where are your checks in this government?…The most valuable end of government is the liberty of the inhabitants. No possible advantages can compensate for the loss of this privilege.”

Patrick Henry’s linkage of protecting liberty to citizen access echoed James Madison’s commentary in Federalist 49:

“As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived, it seems strictly consonant to the republican theory, to recur to the same original authority, not only whenever it may be necessary to enlarge, diminish, or new-model the powers of the government, but also whenever any one of the departments may commit encroachments…it must be allowed to prove that a constitutional road to the decision of the people ought to be marked out and kept open.”

Madison raised concerns about those who aspire to unbridled power.

“The same influence which had gained them an election into the legislature, would gain them a seat in the convention. If this should not be the case with all, it would probably be the case with many, and pretty certainly with those leading characters, on whom every thing depends in such bodies…it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.”

Public access to view the proceedings of House and Senate began in December 1795.

The rapid growth of the Federal Government during President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” raised concerns about public access to Executive Branch documents and proceedings. Many of Roosevelt’s new agencies had unprecedented powers to create laws and regulations outside the reach of Congress. On June 11, 1946, the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) was enacted to re-establish balance between the Legislative and Executive Branches. The APA also outlined how the public would be informed and allowed to comment on Executive Branch actions:

  1. to require agencies to keep the public informed of their organization, procedures and rules
  2. to provide for public participation in the rulemaking process, for instance through public comment
  3. to establish uniform standards for the conduct of formal rulemaking and adjudication
  4. to define the scope of judicial review

The APA had its limitations as bureaucrats continually found ways to avoid compliance. A more explicit federal law mandating public access to unclassified government meetings, was the Government in the Sunshine Act which was enacted September 13, 1976. Similar “Sunshine Laws” were enacted among state and local governments. However, to this day, citizens still have to file lawsuits to enforce public access as elected and appointed officials fail to provide “adequate public notice” to hide questionable actions.

The practice of the public accessing of public documents began on December 2, 1766, ten years before the American Revolution. Sweden passed the “Freedom of the Press Act.” Among other things—it gave Swedish citizens access to uncensored government documents. This was the first “freedom of information” law in history.

The world’s first law requiring “publicity for official documents” was initiated by the Finnish-Swedish enlightenment thinker Anders Chydenius, a member of the Swedish Diet (Parliament).

“No evidence should be needed that a certain freedom of writing and printing is one of the strongest bulwarks of a free organization of the state, as, without it, the estates would not have sufficient information for the drafting of good laws, and those dispensing justice would not be monitored, nor would the subjects know the requirements of the law, the limits of the rights of government, and their responsibilities. Education and ethical conduct would be crushed; coarseness in thought, speech, and manners would prevail, and dimness would darken the entire sky of our freedom in a few years.”

Chydenius’ Freedom of Print Act was intended to vitalize political discussions. To achieve this objective, Chydenius asserted it was essential that the citizens had access to official documents in order to see how the state was run. Seven of the ordinance’s fifteen paragraphs were dedicated to detailing this public access.

While the Administrative Procedures Act in America mandated information access, it rarely happened. Formalizing “Freedom of Information Access” for American citizens took longer. The American Society of Newspaper Editors commissioned Harold L. Cross, legal counsel for the New York Herald Tribune, to investigate the issue of excessive government secrecy. Cross’s 1953 report was published as a book titled The People’s Right to Know.

Cross wrote that virtually every part of American government operated under what amounted to an “official cult of secrecy”; that this secrecy had become “a breeding ground for corruption; that it was leading to a rise in public mistrust in government; and that all of these things combined were doing serious damage to American democracy itself.” Cross’s 400-page report made the case that Congress must craft new legislation that gave American citizens greater access to the inner workings of their government. In the early 1950s, The People’s Right to Know became a manual for the blossoming “freedom of information” movement.

In 1955, former businessman John Moss (D-CA) began a 12-year effort to codify Cross’s recommendation by passing the Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

On June 20, 1966, it passed the House of Representatives (306 to 0). It was then sent on to President Lyndon Johnson.

Johnson opposed the legislation but allowed it to become law on July 4, 1966.

On this 4th of July, we should celebrate this milestone in the public’s power to observe government decisions and maintain checks on government power.

It reminds us that citizens must remain constantly vigilant to protect our God-given rights.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Patrick M. Garry

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The United States Constitution creates a government with three separate branches, each vested with different powers and responsibilities for different functions. This particular structure reflects the doctrine of separated powers. The Framers adopted this doctrine so as to diffuse government power and thereby protect individual liberty from government encroachment. Congress possesses the authority to make laws; the President has the duty of executing those laws; and the courts interpret and apply those laws in cases brought before the judiciary.

By creating three competing branches, the separation of powers scheme uses the power of each independent branch to check and restrain the power of the other branches. In this way, there is a self-executing structure built into the constitutional scheme that restrains any one branch from abusing its power to the detriment of individual liberty.

The Supreme Court has recognized the importance of the separation of powers principle. This principle, according to the Court, “is at the core of American ideology” and is “as fundamental as the vote or representative government.” Separation of powers provides a system of checks and balances, as well as a guard against improvident or impetuous government action. The separation of powers principle seeks to control government power by splitting it among three different functions and branches, with each branch confined to the exercise of its own function and not allowed to encroach on the functions of the other branches.

Separation of powers does more than just accomplish the negative function of preventing abuses of power; it also achieves a number of positive functions. These functions include allowing a wide-ranging political presentation of diverse interests, leading to a broad-based consensus across a diverse republic, as well as promoting the distinctive qualities associated with each branch. Separation of powers helps the government to be deliberative, representative, and accountable. It helps slow down the lawmaking process so that it can be responsive to all the various constituencies in a large democracy. Such a checks-and-balances system makes it more difficult for the government to act unless there is widespread agreement that it should do so.

The separation of powers principle reflects the Framers’ fear of centralized power, which in their experience had led to tyranny. In this respect, the Framers were very much influenced by the earlier writings of French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, who wrote that “when the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.” Throughout its deliberations, the Constitutional Convention remained steadfast in the belief that governmental power should be separated and balanced among the three branches of government, as recommended by Montesquieu.

The Framers foresaw that the separation of powers structure, by placing impediments in the path of the political process, would help to restrain the excesses of lawmaking. Although this structural bias in favor of the status quo would naturally defeat a few good laws, it would even more importantly prevent a number of bad ones.

The judicial enforcement of separation of powers was greatly weakened during the New Deal of the 1930s, when the courts acquiesced in the dramatic expansion of the federal executive branch’s powers and activities. To combat the Great Depression, the New Dealers in President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration significantly expanded the administrative state. This expansion contradicted traditional notions of separation of powers, since the newly empowered administrative agencies combined all three functions in their rulemaking and adjudicative activities. Contrary to the beliefs of the founding era, strong executive government was seen not as a threat to liberty but as a savior of society, and the agents of that saving power were the administrative agencies. But to enable those agencies to perform that role, the Court had to sanction the granting of wide, virtually undefined powers. The Court also had to approve the combination of all three functions within each individual agency. Not surprisingly, the rise of the administrative state meant the corresponding decline of the separation of powers principle.

As a result of the erosion of separation of powers during the New Deal period, the administrative state has grown to the point of being called the “fourth branch” of government. However, contrary to the idealistic hopes of the New Dealers, agencies are often rigidly bureaucratic and cravenly political. But out of perceived necessity for meeting the demands of modern society, the courts have accepted, as a constitutional matter, the administrative state. Moreover, it is perhaps not surprising that – the more the administrative state contradicts separation of powers principles – the more abuses of power and infringements on liberty occur.

Patrick M. Garry is professor of law at the University of South Dakota. He is author of Limited Government and the Bill of Rights and The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Adam Carrington
United States Constitution showing the first page with Article I, with the Bill of Rights and American Flag

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Abraham Lincoln concluded his famous Gettysburg Address with the hope that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Why would such a government perishing be so bad? After all, myriad regimes have started, fallen, and now are no more–no better than a footnote in history books. Moreover, a popular government, one so focused on the people, hasn’t been the norm for most of human history.

But we should not merely be looking for the most famous nor the most common governments. We should be looking for the best. Lincoln here does that. For he describes the essential components needed for a free society and a free government.

Lincoln summarizes America’s political principles through three phrases each focused on the people. Each builds off a central assumption about human beings, namely that they are inherently equal. Thus, the origin of political rule, the administration of political rule, and the purpose of political rule all must be grounded in the famous phrase of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”

For Lincoln, “Of the people” says that our government originates from the body of citizens. The people pre-existed the government and consciously created that government. This point matters greatly. In political philosophy, much is said about the nature and location of sovereignty–ultimate, unrivaled authority to rule. Lincoln here succinctly says that the people are sovereign, that political power originates with them. The authority of governments, by contrast, is delegated, derivative of the people’s power. Nor was the government the creation of one proto-king or a few elites. The people together were the source.

We here have a basis for freedom.  If the government created the people, then we would exist to serve it. But if the people establish the government, then that government must serve us. Or if one or a few had done so, the rest of us would be subject to him or to them. Our United States Constitution, which begins “We, the People,” makes clear the origin of the government’s power is from us.

“By the people” declares the means through which government exercises its power. The focus remains on the people. For a government by the people means that citizens administer the government they created. They do not merely leave it to others but engage in active self-rule. We do so in three main ways. First, we all can engage in discussion with each other in hopes of learning from and persuading with our neighbors. Second, do so  through voting for those who will directly exercise our power in office. Third, and related, we can self-govern by holding office.

This point also matters for a free society and a free government. The Founders understood that human nature struggled with a temptation to selfishness. Monarchy risked one man ruling for his own good at the expense of the rest. Aristocracy threatened a few elites wielding political power only to help themselves. A popular government sought to direct such self-interest toward the good of the greatest number. At its best, this popular rule by the people would pursue what is called the “common good.” The Founders knew that the people also could be selfish and thus that the majority could harm the minority. But they thought the majority will would mirror the common good more often than the whims of one or a few. And they put in place systems like representation, federalism, and separation of powers to mitigate such selfish tendencies from having free reign even in popular rule.

Finally, “for the people” states for whom the government acts. All governments are “for” someone within their borders. They make laws and enforce them with the good of this group in mind. In acting for the people, Lincoln assumes that popular government should be oriented toward the good of all its citizens. Here we see the underpinnings of the Constitution’s commitment to “promote the general Welfare” as described its Preamble. Just as rule did not originate with one person or a few, nor was it administered by one or a few, so our government would not seek the benefit of one or a few. Our belief that government exists to protect natural or human rights, summarized as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, forms the core of what Lincoln meant by government existing “for the people.” And in protecting those rights, we can rest secure in our freedom, exercising it in pursuit of a happy life.

Thus, we, too, should hope that this kind of government does not perish from the earth. We have been blessed in that government’s establishment by our ancestors and its maintenance by those who came before us. We have not sunk into despotism because we have not lost the grounding of political power and purpose in the people. At the same time, we always face the risk of losing this precious gift. It remains to us to keep our republic, guarding it from all foes external and internal. The task is up to us. We are the people, after all.

Adam M. Carrington is an Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. There, he teaches on matters of Constitutional law, American political institutions, and separation of powers. His writing has appeared in such popular forums as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, National  Review, and Washington Examiner. His book on the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field was published in 2017 by Lexington. Carrington received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Baylor University. He lives in Hillsdale with his wife and their two daughters.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier
Æthelstan, considered the first king of England, 895-939 AD. A sixteenth-century painting in Beverley Minster in the East Riding of Yorkshire of Æthelstan with Saint John of Beverley

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

“…for it is impossible to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of which hereditary government could begin… It is one step toward liberty, to perceive that hereditary government could not begin as an exclusive right in any family…With respect to the first of these heads, that of a family establishing itself with hereditary powers on its own authority independent of the nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism…It operates to preclude the consent of the succeeding generations, and the preclusion of consent is despotism.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government 1795.

While the King and Parliament were visible primarily through their Colonial Governors, they had been directly visible to Paine in England before his emigration to the colonies. Paine was familiar with hereditary succession and was opposed to that idea, as he later wrote in the Dissertation quoted above. King George III was the grandson of King George II; George III might have been George IV had not his father died in 1751, nine years before his grandfather died, making George III the heir to the Throne. George III ascended to the Throne at the age of 22.

The impact of the laws of Parliament and the King on the ordinary British citizen had encouraged Paine to publish his pamphlets critical of the “abuses and usurpations” enforced on British citizens there. Thus, while he had minimal direct knowledge of the American colonies’ political affairs, he had significant direct knowledge of the impact of the British political policies in Britain, giving his words in the colonial pamphlets a great deal of significance. The timing of his arrival and his ability to communicate effectively to the colonists while they were in an excellent position to declare independence were the keys to the impact his “Common Sense” pamphlet had on the colonies.

The first two chapters of Common Sense focused on the purpose of government, the English Constitution, the monarchy and hereditary succession, and how those factors made living under British rule difficult for all and intolerable for some. His pitch was emotional at a time of heightened emotions in the American colonies. On the first page, he states that “government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. We furnish the means by which we suffer.”

He states that “the design and end of government is freedom and security.” Paine argued that the British government was filled with both “monarchical and aristocratical tyranny.”

Paine presents scathing attacks on the monarchy with scriptural references very familiar to the colonists. Christian faith and tradition were strong in the colonies and all knew of the chaos of the era of Israelite Kings and how, in just three centuries, that chaos resulted in the destruction of the Temple and the exile. He states that “monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews.” He differentiates King David from other Israelite Kings in that David “was a man after God’s own heart.”

He attacks hereditary succession, stating that “all men being originally equals, no one by birth, could have a right to set up his own family, in perpetual preference to all others forever.” He observes that usurpation, rather than selection by lot or by election, has been the most common method of ascension to the throne, and that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. The then-common idea that hereditary succession preserves a nation from civil wars is quickly debunked. Monarchy and succession are a form of government leading to “blood and ashes.”

In Chapter 2, Paine leaves some hints for the institution of a republic and for the necessity of a “house of commons” in the future nation.

In Chapters 3 and 4, Paine turns toward the present state of affairs in the American colony. Here he builds a strong emotional case for “Independency.” He states that the 1775 British attacks on Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill made all attempts at reconciliation void and that “the period for debate is closed; arms must decide the contest.” He first supports the economic and trade arguments for separation. The British attempts to “tax without representation,” to reimburse the costs of British protection of the American colonies, are for the benefit of the colonies’ exclusive trade arrangements with Britain. By declaring independence, the American colonies would then be an open trade port to all nations.

In addition, severing the exclusive alliance with Britain would eliminate the risk that Americans might be enlisted into wars with Spain and France. Paine notes that only about 1/3 of the colonies are inhabited by English descendants, but that people fleeing tyranny from all of Europe have sought a new life in America. He states that “everything that is right or natural pleads for separation.”

Paine focuses on the fact that April 19, 1775 forever destroyed the ability of the colonies to reconcile with Britain. He asks, “can you still shake hands with the murderers?” He quotes Milton, “never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.”  Repeated petitioning has consistently failed. He observes that “there is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”

Paine makes a strong argument that laws, made by the people of America, should be King, not laws made by a King and Parliament thousands of miles distant, laws that reflect the King’s premise that “you shall make no laws but what I please!” He presents a plan for government after independence, a plan for representative government that was unlikely to be adopted, but that may have had some influence on the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.  Thomas Jefferson may have made note of Paine’s suggestion for “a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness” as he wordsmithed the Declaration of Independence.

Paine makes the case for America’s ability to build, supply, and maintain a Navy equal or superior to Britain’s Navy; that was possible due to the abundance of natural resources in the large, largely unexplored nation. America’s abundant natural resources also could be exported to all nations in exchange for gold and silver.

He argues that the current infant state of the colonies is advantageous for independence; it is easier to unite a small nation now than a large one later. An interesting point he makes about equal representation, which ultimately led to two Senators per state, resonates today; specifically, that unequal representation of large and small counties in Pennsylvania could have resulted in Pennsylvania’s laws being decided by only two counties in the state.

While the elected representatives to the Continental Congress were focused on applying reason and diplomacy to resolve the dispute with England, Paine understood the passions of the citizens and used his pen and press to stir their emotions to pressure their representatives to choose independency rather than reconciliation.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

Sources:

Stamp Act – Fact, Reaction & Legacy (history.com)

Britain Begins Taxing the Colonies: The Sugar & Stamp Acts (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

What Was the Olive Branch Petition? – History of Massachusetts Blog

Paine, Thomas.  Common Sense.  New York:  Fall River Press, 1995

John Adams looks back on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, autobiography, early 1800s (americainclass.org)

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

“But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense, February 14, 1776.

It would be easy to conclude that the Declaration of Independence had been in development for a decade and simply finalized in the summer of 1776. The 1764 Sugar Act and the 1765 Stamp Act were the first in a long series of “repeated injuries and usurpations” cited in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

In fact, over the decade, numerous reconciliation appeals were made to the King of England to redress colonists’ grievances; the colonists were British citizens and wanted to remain so. It took a decade for the Continental Congress to be convened. Although the colonial militia had effectively defeated the British armed force in April 1775, the militia suffered defeat on Bunker Hill in June 1775. Therefore, one of the first acts of the Second Continental Congress was to pass the “Olive Branch Petition” in July 1775, an attempt by the colonies to avoid escalation into a full-scale war.

The Olive Branch Petition expressed loyalty to the King to avoid a larger war. The British Army and Navy were formidable and no American Army or Navy existed. To declare war on Britain in 1775 would have seemed an irrational act for a group of independent colonies. The delegates to the Continental Congress knew world history and knew that the odds of military success were slim to none should the British government send its Army and Navy in overwhelming force to defeat America’s militia. Debates for and against independence were vehement over the subsequent months, but the general mood was against declaring independence.

As happens frequently in world history, a single, unexpected spark turns events. Casual observers of recent American history can identify such events in our lifetimes, including 9.11, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, among many others. So it was with the American Revolution.

That unexpected spark could not have been predicted. A man, Thomas Paine, arrived in America from England in November, 1774. He knew little about the American colonies and he was unknown among the members of the Continental Congress.

Paine’s personal and business life in England was unremarkable.  However, he engaged in what today would be called political activism; in the 18th century, publishing political pamphlets was the common method used by political activists. His political publishing activities in Britain enabled his introduction to America’s best known publisher then residing in Britain, Benjamin Franklin; Franklin encouraged Paine to strike out for America where his political activism might be put to better use – and where he might escape persecution by the British government.

Franklin’s letter of introduction proved invaluable in getting Paine immediately employed in the publishing business in Pennsylvania. His political activism in England, against a common adversary, the King, enabled Paine to rapidly understand the American issues and turn those issues into political pamphlets in the colonies. The 1775 battles in the Massachusetts colony, however, didn’t seem to move the needle politically; America’s Continental Congress, and most colonists, continued to seek Reconciliation, not Revolution. As Paine’s frustrations grew, he published a new pamphlet, distributed throughout the colonies in January, 1776. That pamphlet was called Common Sense.

Paine was not an intellectual philosopher. His writing style was directed towards the common man, of which he was one. Well over 100,000 copies of Common Sense circulated in the colonies. King George’s declaration that the American colonies were in open rebellion against the Crown arrived in the same month that Common Sense was published.

Paine had not been present during the preceding decade of colonial angst regarding the suppression of British rights in the American colonies.  However, the timing of his arrival in Pennsylvania, his recommendation by Benjamin Franklin, and his history of stirring political emotions in England against the King and Parliament proved beneficial. He arrived after the Boston Tea Party and the King’s enactment of the “Intolerable Acts,” and after the assembly of the First Continental Congress. Only months later, the battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill would stir the colonists’ passions more strongly against the dictates of a King on the other side of an ocean. “No taxation without representation” reflected the colonists’ views that the time for representative government of the people rather than rule by King had come.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

Sources:

Stamp Act – Fact, Reaction & Legacy (history.com)

Britain Begins Taxing the Colonies: The Sugar & Stamp Acts (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

What Was the Olive Branch Petition? – History of Massachusetts Blog

Paine, Thomas.  Common Sense.  New York:  Fall River Press, 1995

John Adams looks back on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, autobiography, early 1800s (americainclass.org)

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

In the grand scheme of social ideals, meritocracy reigns as one of the most impactful principles, fostering a society where individuals rise to prominence and power based on their abilities and achievements, rather than birthright or privilege. The principle of meritocracy underscores the very foundation of a fair society, where hard work, talent, and innovation are rewarded. It is pivotal in maintaining a free and prosperous society, and here’s why.

Firstly, meritocracy promotes equality of opportunity. In a true meritocracy, everyone has the chance to succeed based on their own merit regardless of background. This allows for a leveling of the playing field, granting each person the right to rise according to their abilities and efforts. A society that champions meritocracy encourages individuals to strive for their best, fostering a culture of hard work, resilience, and ambition.

Secondly, meritocracy fuels innovation and economic growth. When individuals are rewarded based on their talent and efforts, they are incentivized to innovate, create, and perform at their best. This, in turn, stimulates economic growth and prosperity. History is rife with examples of societies that flourished when merit was rewarded – from the rapid technological advancements of the Silicon Valley tech giants to the economic miracles witnessed in post-war Japan and Germany.

Thirdly, meritocracy ensures the most competent individuals lead. In a society where leadership roles are based on merit, the most qualified, skilled, and effective leaders rise to the top. This promotes better decision-making, efficiency, and performance in both public and private sectors, leading to overall societal improvement.

While the term “meritocracy” was not in use during the time of the Founding Fathers, their actions and beliefs make it clear that they championed the principles that underpin this concept. Through their personal examples and the institutions they established, they laid the groundwork for a society that values individual ability and achievement. It is this foundation that has allowed the United States to continually strive towards the ideal of a meritocracy, where everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed based on their own merits and abilities.

It is clear, however, that concept of meritocracy was implicit in their writings and actions. Meritocracy resonates deeply with the democratic ideals that the Founding Fathers held. Their approach to this concept, while not explicitly labeled as meritocracy, can be discerned through a careful examination of their actions, writings, and the institutions they established.

The Founding Fathers, including individuals such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, all demonstrated a belief in the power of individual merit. This belief was deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, a period of intellectual and philosophical development that greatly influenced their thinking.

George Washington, for example, rose to prominence not because of inherited wealth or title, but due to his leadership abilities and military acumen during the Revolutionary War. He was a model of the self-made man, a figure that would become emblematic of the American Dream, and his leadership was a testament to the power of merit.

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, held a belief in the natural rights of man. He stated that “all men are created equal,” indicating that everyone should have the same opportunities for success. This belief aligns with the principles of a meritocracy, which values individuals based on their achievements rather than their social status or wealth.

Benjamin Franklin was perhaps the most explicit proponent of meritocratic ideals. He was a vocal advocate for education, believing it to be the key to social mobility and individual improvement. Franklin’s establishment of public institutions like libraries and universities was a practical embodiment of his belief in the power of self-improvement and personal merit.

The Founding Fathers not only championed the concept of meritocracy in their personal lives but also institutionalized it in the formation of the American political system. The U.S. Constitution, which they crafted, has several meritocratic elements.

For instance, there are no hereditary offices in the U.S. government, meaning that one cannot inherit a position of power. This provision was a clear departure from the monarchical systems of Europe where power was often passed down through generations. Instead, public offices in the U.S. are filled through elections, with the aim of choosing the most qualified individuals, a clear nod to meritocratic principles.

The system of checks and balances, another cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution, is also implicitly meritocratic. It requires that individuals in power continually demonstrate their abilities and merits in order to maintain their positions. This system promotes accountability and discourages complacency, further emphasizing the importance of merit over inherited status.

In a society where positions and rewards are distributed according to merit, the concept of meritocracy reigns supreme. It’s a system that believes in the power of hard work, talent, and ambition, asserting that each individual, regardless of their background, has the potential to climb the societal ladder based on their capabilities. But what happens when we abandon this principle? How does it affect our political and economic landscapes?

Politically, abandoning meritocracy may lead to a shift in power dynamics, affecting the governance of a nation. In a meritocratic society, leaders are chosen based on their abilities, credentials, and proven track records. They have demonstrated their competence and capacity to lead, fostering a sense of public trust. If we abandon this principle, we risk ending up with leaders who might not possess the necessary skills or experience. There’s a potential for nepotism and cronyism to take root, as appointments might be influenced by personal relationships rather than professional competence. This could erode public trust and potentially destabilize political systems.

Economically, meritocracy is a key driver of innovation and productivity. When rewards and advancements are tied to performance, it encourages individuals to improve their skills, innovate, and work efficiently. Removing this incentive might lead to a decline in overall productivity. Furthermore, it could also result in an inefficient allocation of resources. If jobs and promotions are not given based on merit, then the most competent individuals may not end up in positions where their skills are best utilized. This inefficiency can slow economic growth and development.

Abandoning meritocracy also brings up concerns about fairness and social mobility. Meritocracy, at least in theory, offers an equal playing field, allowing individuals from any background to succeed if they have the ability and put in the effort. Without it, those from privileged backgrounds may have an unfair advantage, leading to increased social inequality and a decrease in social mobility.

Like so many other aspects of American society, the embedding of the principles of meritocracy within our political and economic systems have yielded enormous benefits.  Abandoning those principles would be foolish, and have terrible consequences in the near and long term.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The principle of equality, a cornerstone of democratic societies, is deeply rooted in the idea of “equal opportunity” – the notion that everyone should have a fair shot at success. This concept is fundamentally distinct from the ideology of “equal outcomes,” which guarantees identical results for everyone, irrespective of effort, talent, or innovation. Equality of outcome is a seductive concept; it promises a world without disparity or struggle. However, this notion undermines the core tenets of free markets, competition, and innovation that have been the driving force behind American society’s economic prosperity and advancement.

The Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal” signifies that all individuals are endowed with the same inherent rights and that they are equally worthy of respect and dignity. This phrase is generally interpreted as a call for equal treatment and opportunities, rather than a guarantee of identical results.

This profound statement, however, does not imply that all men will achieve equal outcomes. Rather, it signifies that all men are endowed with the same inherent rights and that they are equally worthy of respect and dignity. It is a call for fair treatment and equal opportunities, not a guarantee of uniform results.

The Constitution of the United States, a document drafted by forward-thinking individuals who appreciated the dangers of tyranny, does not promise equal outcomes. Rather, it guarantees equal rights and opportunities. This foundational text ensures that every citizen has the same fundamental rights, echoing the Declaration, that of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution is essentially silent on the matter of ensuring equal outcomes, a silence that underscores the drafters’ understanding of human nature and the importance of individual agency, meritocracy, and free market principles.

Renowned Constitutional scholars also reflect on this difference. They argue that the Constitution’s promise of equality under the law is not a guarantee of equal outcomes. Instead, it is a promise of equal treatment, a commitment to impartiality and fairness. Legal scholar Robert H. Bork, for instance, argued that “In terms of the Constitution, ‘equality’ refers to the equal protection of the laws,” which does not extend to ensuring uniform outcomes in life.

The free market system, an essential aspect of our society, thrives on the principles of competition, innovation, and consumer choice. The market is a dynamic system that rewards efficiency, innovation, and hard work. It is a platform where individuals can compete on a level playing field, leading to the creation of new products, improved services, and economic growth. A guarantee of equal outcomes would stifle this dynamism, extinguishing competition, and discouraging innovation.

In contrast, the concept of equality of outcomes rests on the notion that everyone should have the same level of material wealth and social standing, regardless of their individual efforts or abilities. This idea, seductive in its apparent fairness, is a cornerstone of many communist philosophies. However, in practice, it has often led to disastrous consequences, both economically and culturally.

Consider the Soviet Union, a nation that wholeheartedly embraced the principle of equality of outcomes. Despite initial hopes for prosperity and fairness, the Soviet economy was characterized by stagnation, inefficiency, and widespread poverty. The central planning that drove the Soviet economy disregarded the intricate web of individual desires, talents, and efforts that naturally guide economic activity. This resulted in a mismatch of supply and demand, with shortages of basic goods and services becoming the norm.

When the rewards of hard work and innovation are stripped away, the incentive to strive for excellence diminishes. A system that does not reward individual effort or skill discourages initiative and creativity. The Soviet Union suffered from this stifling of innovation, with its technology and industries lagging behind those of its Western counterparts.

The cultural implications of equality of outcomes are no less severe. When outcomes are predetermined, competition becomes a threat rather than a source of motivation. This breeds resentment and hostility, turning people against each other in a society that should foster cooperation and mutual respect. In the Soviet Union, the state’s intrusive control over every aspect of life led to widespread distrust and fear, further fracturing social unity.

Moreover, the pursuit of equality of outcomes often necessitates a powerful central authority to enforce redistribution. This can lead to the concentration of power in the hands of a few, ironically fostering a new form of inequality. In the Soviet Union, this led to an authoritarian regime marked by brutal repression and a disregard for individual liberties.

As former Congressman and Director of the Office of Management and Budget David Stockman noted in his book, “The Triumph of Politics”:

“[Those who believe in equality of opportunity] start with history and society as they are, and places the burden of proof on those who would use the policy instruments of the state to bring about artificial change. [Those who believe in equality of outcomes] start with an abstraction—a vision of the good and just society—and places the burden of defense on the bloody process. Implicit in the [former] is a profound regard for the complexity and fragility of the social and economic order, and a consequent fear that policy interventions may do more harm and injustice than good. By contrast, the activist impulses of the [latter] derive from the view that a free society is the natural incubator of ills and injustices.”

The pursuit of equality of outcomes in the Soviet Union and other similar regimes resulted in economic inefficiency, social division, and the undermining of individual liberty. These historical examples serve as a stark reminder of the potential dangers of such an approach.

Critics argue that the pursuit of equality of opportunity can still lead to significant disparities in outcome. This is undoubtedly true. However, it is essential to remember that the goal is not to eliminate disparity but to ensure that these disparities are not the result of arbitrary discrimination or unfair practices. Moreover, a certain level of inequality can serve as a motivating factor, encouraging individuals to strive for betterment, to innovate, and to contribute to society’s progress.

The principle of equality of opportunity, rather than equality of outcomes, promotes a healthier society. It encourages personal growth and accountability, rewards hard work and innovation, and respects individual liberty. This principle aligns with the Constitution’s guiding tenets and the Declaration of Independence’s profound assertion that “all men are created equal.”

In conclusion, a focus on equal outcomes can lead to unintended consequences, including stifled innovation, suppressed competition, and a disregard for individual liberty and choice. Conversely, a commitment to equal opportunity fosters a dynamic society where individuals are free to chart their own paths, innovate, and contribute to societal progress. The Constitution and our nation’s founding documents endorse this principle of equal opportunity, a principle that has been instrumental in shaping the American ethos of liberty, hard work, and individualism. This is the path we must continue to tread.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Patrick Garry
Signing of the Constitution - Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, painting by Howard Chandler Christy, on display in the east grand stairway, House wing, United States Capitol.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The principle of limited government greatly inspired the drafting of the United States Constitution. Indeed, the framers’ desire to restrain the new federal government was one of the primary design features of the Constitution. Not only was the U.S. Constitution the first written constitution to govern a democratic republic, but it was also the first constitution to be structured according to the goal of limiting the new government it was creating. Consequently, the notion of limited government was a uniquely American contribution to the science of political governance.

The failure of the Articles of Confederation—the first form of national government adopted following the War of Independence—gave rise to calls for a constitutional convention to draft a new design for a federal government. A main reason the Articles failed so quickly was that the national government it created was too weak—a weakness that reflected the deep-seated mistrust of central governments harbored by Americans in the wake of their experience with a British government that had used its power to deprive the American colonists of their liberty.

Although the first goal of the constitutional framers was the creation of a republican form of government which included a stronger national government than had existed under the Articles, the immediately subsequent goal was to build into the new constitution various structural limitations, preventing the federal government from overstepping its proper role. This belief in limited government stemmed from the framers’ opposition to the patterns of statism, absolutism, and totalitarianism existing in the eighteenth-century world. Consequently, within the Constitution, the framers designed an array of checks on federal power. These checks included, for instance, a separation of powers creating three separate branches of government, each of which could help check and restrain abuses committed by the other branches, as well as a federal government possessing only enumerated powers.

Even though the U.S. Constitution establishes a strong and independent federal government, it does so through a scheme of enumerated powers.  The federal government only possesses those powers specifically granted it by the Constitution. Unlike the state governments, which possess plenary power to begin with and which the state constitutions must then limit or restrain, the national government under the U.S. Constitution possesses only those powers specifically granted to it. If the Constitution does not grant a power, then the federal government does not possess that power.

The framers held a cautious and skeptical view toward concentrations of government power. The framers worried more about empowering a federal government that could use its power to deprive people of their liberty than about not giving that government enough powers to swiftly address any political or economic crisis that might arise. They were more concerned about a government doing something wrong than about a government with enough power to be able to always do what was right. Therefore, the scheme of limited government built into the Constitution served as a means of safeguarding liberty, since a government limited in power would be less able to exercise power in abusive or oppressive ways.

To the framers, the principle of limited government was an even greater protection for liberty than were the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights. This was because a limited government would be a general protection for all types of liberty, whereas the Bill of Rights protected only a few specified liberties. While individual rights protect against particular acts of government abuse, structural provisions like limited government protect against systemic and continuing government abuses resulting from a lack of effective limits on that power. Indeed, an impetus for passage of the Bill of Rights was the belief that the original Constitution did not do enough to limit the power of the new federal government.

For the first century and a half of the nation’s existence, limited government was widely supported as a constitutional principle. But in the 1930s, as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda greatly expanded the scope and authority of the federal government to fight the consequences of the Great Depression, a belief in limited government waned significantly, especially among liberal activists who wanted the federal government to assume a much larger role in shaping society.   Although the Supreme Court initially opposed this contradiction to the limited government principle, it eventually caved to political pressure and nearly abandoned this principle. As a result, the federal government has grown substantially since the 1930s. With its vast array of administrative agencies, the present federal government hardly seems reflective of the limited government principle originally embodied within the Constitution.

Over the past century, political pressures have pushed the expansion of the federal government, to a size and scope far beyond what the framers foresaw. This pressure can be seen whenever some crisis arises that appears as if it can only be solved by a national government unrestrained in the amount of debt it can accumulate. But as the framers foresaw, and as is so often witnessed today, a larger and more powerful federal government is also more prone to abuses and deprivations of liberty.

Patrick M. Garry is professor of law at the University of South Dakota. He is author of Limited Government and the Bill of Rights and The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
State flags on each state within its border inside of a map of the United States

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

“Sir, I contemplate the abolition of the state constitutions as an event fatal to the liberties of America. These liberties will not be violently wrested from the people; they will be undermined and gradually consumed. On subjects of the kind we cannot be too critical…Will it not give occasion for an innumerable swarm of officers, to infest our country and consume our substance? People will be subject to impositions which they cannot support, and of which their complaints can never reach the government.” – Melancton Smith, Delegate, First Provincial Congress in New York; June 27, 1788 Notes during days beginning the New York Ratifying Convention.

Melancton Smith is not a household name when considering the adoption of the United States Constitution. But he was well known to the members of the crucial 1788 New York ratifying convention. Through his writings, his ideas became well known beyond his state, even if his name did not. In the convention, Smith was aligned with Governor George Clinton, Aaron Burr, and the upstate Albany faction against John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and the downstate New York City faction. Clinton was a wily politician and powerful political figure in the state and, later, in the country. He was also a prominent and effective antifederalist leader, who traditionally has been thought to be the writer of a series of antifederalist essays appearing under the pseudonym Cato.

Smith, too, was a prolific critic of the proposed Constitution. Indeed, he was such an effective advocate in the state ratifying convention for the opponents of the Constitution that Alexander Hamilton and other federalists felt obliged to respond to his challenges and criticisms. Smith had been a lawyer and was a merchant, so his style was logical, and his substantive critique was moderate and pragmatic. He appears to have been the author of a series of antifederalist essays previously attributed to the Virginian Richard Henry Lee and published anonymously under the name “Letters from a Federal Farmer to the Republican.”

Like the essays by Cato (George Clinton) and Brutus (attributed to Judge Robert Yates), those of the Federal Farmer posed a real threat to the adoption of the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton replied to them directly by name in Nos. 67 and 68 of The Federalist, the only antifederalist authors whom he named expressly. But there was a difference. With some justification, Hamilton considered the Cato essays to be works of political expedience, and Governor Clinton to be swayed by personal concerns about looming restrictions on the powers of state governments, should the Constitution be adopted. He castigated Cato as presenting deliberate falsifications of the constitutional structure of the executive branch. Falling into passages of purple prose at times, Hamilton singled out Cato as an example, “This bold experiment upon the discernment of his countrymen, has been hazarded by the writer who (whatever may be his real merit) has had no inconsiderable share of the applauses of his party; and who, upon this false and unfounded suggestion, has built a series of observations equally false and unfounded.”

By contrast, the Federal Farmer received, reluctantly, some faint praise. Hamilton noted that the method of selecting the president had received little criticism. Referring specifically to Federal Farmer, he wrote, “The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit, that the election of the president is pretty well guarded.”

Smith eventually broke rank with the antifederalist opposition and voted in favor of the Constitution for practical reasons. By the time the convention voted, the requisite nine states had already approved it, so the Articles of Confederation had been supplanted. Then, the Virginia convention, where the result had been uncertain, voted narrowly to approve the Constitution. Virginia was the largest and wealthiest state. With Virginia out, there was reason to believe that the Constitution ultimately was not viable as a plan of union. With Virginia committed to the new charter, New York’s hand was forced, Smith believed. His defection helped the Constitution’s supporters gain a crucial 30-27 favorable vote, although the price was a letter that listed 25 proposed provisions in a bill of rights and 31 amendments to the Constitution, to be addressed through a second “general convention,” which never materialized.

Particularly because he was such a voice of moderation, Smith’s concerns about the threat of a far-away general government to the liberty of the people struck a chord. Moreover, his warnings were closely tied to the historical perceptions of Americans regarding Great Britain, including the charge that the people’s complaints would fall on deaf ears with a distant government, that such a government would tax and control them in ways that the people could not support, and, recalling sentiments from the Declaration of Independence, that such government would send in “an innumerable swarm of officers, to infest our country and consume our substance.”

Finally, his criticism simply “made sense.” Government close by is more likely to respond to local needs and to mirror local values than government in a remote location. It was a self-evident truth to classic republican writers that republics were homogeneous, with many shared traits and values among the people, and small in area and population. Although republics could be larger than pure democracies and exercise self-government through the principle of representation, the sacrifice that civic virtue often demanded under either system was rooted in notions of friendship and cultural affinity. Social science research has shown that the larger and more diverse the population of a polity is, the less civic engagement occurs. The result is that a ruling elite becomes distant from the general population, and self-government becomes a cherished fiction, a Platonic “noble lie,” more theoretical than real. Such homogeneity and small size have potential downsides of provincialism and inflexibility, of a “small-town” staidness, but there is a limit to the size of what truly could be characterized as a community.

Antifederalist writers made much of this connection among size, cultural affinities, civic virtue, and republican government. They repeatedly invoked the danger of “consolidation” under the new Constitution, that is, the fusion of the states into a single large unitary government, an empire, destined to become tyrannical. As Melancton Smith warned, that process of effective abolition of the state constitutional systems would not be a sudden event. Rather, it would be gradual but irresistible and inevitable, as the general government grew and expanded its powers ever more intrusively into traditionally local matters. “These liberties will not be violently wrested from the people; they will be undermined and gradually consumed.”

The potency of this republican challenge to the Constitution created an urgency for the charter’s supporters to respond vigorously. They used several arguments. Federalist writers commonly pointed to the limited powers which the Constitution vested in the general government in contrast to what they described as the vast reserved powers of the states. For example, James Madison used this tactic in The Federalist, No. 45:

“The powers delegated to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments, are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers of the several states will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.”

Another approach was to emphasize the effect of the natural rivalries of politicians fostered by the horizontal separation of powers in the structure of federalism. In the classic essay No. 51 of The Federalist, James Madison presented as a key feature of the Constitution the simultaneous separation and blending of powers in a system that guarded against oppressive government not by a myopic focus on civic virtue but on structures that enabled “Ambition…to counteract ambition.” “In a single republic [such as the several states], all the power surrendered by the people, is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against, by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people, is first divided between two distinct governments [state and national], and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other; at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

Still another was to go on the offensive and to point out that even most American states at the time barely qualified as classic republics in view of their large territorial spread and population, and to note concurrently that the state constitutions lacked various protections so dear to antifederalist writers. As to size of republics, antifederalists cited Montesquieu, but Hamilton rejoined in No. 9 of The Federalist that “the standards he had in view were of dimensions, far short of the limits of every one of these states. Neither Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, nor Georgia, can by any means be compared with the models from which he reasoned and to which the terms of his description apply.”

As to protections of liberty, Hamilton objected in The Federalist No. 84,

“The most considerable of the remaining objections is, that the plan of the convention contains no bill of rights. Among other answers given to this, it has been on different occasions remarked, that the constitutions of several of the states are in a similar predicament. I add, that New York is of the number. And yet the persons who in this state oppose the new system, while they profess an unlimited admiration for our particular constitution, are among the most intemperate partizans of a bill of rights.”

In similar vein, Madison asserted that the danger of factions, the bête noire of republican belief, was much greater in the states than in the union. Waxing metaphorical, he insisted in No. 10 of The Federalist,

“The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular states, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states: a religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it, must secure the national councils against any danger from that source: a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the union, than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire state. In the extent and proper structure of the union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease most incident to republican government.”

Finally, the Federalists pointed out the psychological tendency of voters to connect with local politicians. Hamilton described this in No. 17 of The Federalist:

“It is a known fact in human nature, that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object. Upon the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than his neighbourhood, to his neighbourhood than to the community at large, the people of each state would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments, than towards the government of the union, ….”

Madison echoed that analysis in No. 46 of The Federalist and challenged Smith’s assertion that the new government would infest the country with swarms of bureaucrats:

“Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion, seem to place it beyond doubt, that the first and most natural attachment of the people, will be to the governments of their respective states. Into the administration of these, a greater number of individuals will expect to rise. From the gift of these, a greater number of offices and emoluments will flow…. With the affairs of these, the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant; and with the members of these, will a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments.”

It is notable that the defenders of the Constitution at the time agreed that a distant government had systemic tendencies towards unresponsiveness and autocracy. They sought to blunt that criticism by defending their new “confederated republic.” As noted above, a significant part of that defense was that the general government’s powers were few and directed at truly “national” concerns which would arise in only unusual and occasional situations, whereas the states would deal with the everyday matters most directly and closely affecting the people. In hindsight, a fair observation is that many of the alarms the Antifederalists raised about an intrusive and overweening central government have materialized. The Federalists’ responses often appear quaint and unrealistic, perhaps even utopian, in light of events. Their own perceptions of human nature must have alerted them to the weaknesses of their positions and the veracity of the objections of calm and pragmatic critics such as Smith.

That said, Madison, Hamilton, and the other Federalists were not disinterested commentators. They were intent on completing their project of adopting the Constitution. As well, just because the Antifederalists appear prescient in their criticisms of the national government does not mean that their confidence in the republican attributes of state governments would have resulted in less control and regimentation of people’s lives. States and localities in fact do still control the main of people’s lives, just as the Federalists argued. Can it really be said that many state governments have not also “undermined and gradually consumed” the liberties of the people, that those governments have not created “an innumerable swarm of officers, to infest our country and consume our substance,” and that the people have not become “subject to impositions which they cannot support, and of which their complaints can never reach the government”?

We live in a country nearly one hundred times the population and four times the area of the United States when the Constitution was adopted. The principle of subsidiarity espoused by Melancton Smith in a republican constitution has the virtues of more direct popular participation and influence, more efficient implementation of political decisions, better reflection across broader domain of the diversity of local values and needs, and, hence, more immediate claims to political legitimacy. The many commentators on effective self-government who have warned over the centuries about the practical limits of republics in terms of area, population size, and cultural heterogeneity were keen observers of political systems. A devolution of more power away from the national government to the states and from the states to the localities well might be consistent with better republican government. Yet, with many current cities and metropolitan areas each exceeding the entire population of the United States in 1787, there will be further questions about how realistic it is today to expect republican government in anything but name even at the local level. Benjamin Franklin’s challenge remains, when he said about the nature of the government under the Constitution, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
King John signing Magna Carta, 1215. Depicted is a signature, though typically an official seal would be affixed. Illustration by James William Edmund Doyle, 1864.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

“I am an Enemy to Vice, and a Friend to Vertue. I am one of an extensive Charity, and a great Forgiver of private Injuries: A hearty Lover of the Clergy and all good Men, and a mortal Enemy to arbitrary Government and unlimited Power. I am naturally very jealous for the Rights and Liberties of my Country; and the least appearance of an Incroachment on those invaluable Priviledges, is apt to make my Blood boil exceedingly.” Silence Dogood, a pseudonym used by Benjamin Franklin in an opinion editorial, No. 2, published April 16, 1722 in the New-England Courant.

In the 1215 version of Magna Carta, King John acknowledged, “We have granted moreover to all free men of our kingdom…all the liberties below…” “Free men” were the knights, barons, and small class of free tenants of land, not the large majority of the population who were villeins or other serfs. There follows a long list of such “concessions,” some profound, others whose inclusion must have been due to some alarming event, or some quirk of history or contemporary custom or feudal practice. Whatever the reason, even fundamental matters, such as that no tax shall be imposed except by the common council of the kingdom, or that criminal convictions —at least for nobles and free men—must be through trial before a jury of peers, were cast as matters of the king’s grace. Perhaps that formulation was due to the fact that the barons were holding King John hostage until he agreed to their terms, and those barons wished to make the matter look like a voluntary arrangement. But what the king grants, the king can take away, which John promptly did by repudiating the charter once he was released.

By the time of the American drive for independence, the original Magna Carta had little legal effect in England, with only a few provisions remaining in force after the subsequent issuance of differing versions and the enactment of various English statutes that overrode most of those provisions. However, Magna Carta retained a mythical hold on Americans, who argued that they were not rebelling against their constitutional government but preserving their ancient rights as Englishmen against usurpations by the king and Parliament. Americans believed the Whig perspective that Magna Carta protected the right of common Englishmen against arbitrary royal government and placed the king under the ancient common law. The jurist Sir Edward Coke had been the most influential originator of this idealized interpretation during his political clashes with the Stuart kings early in the 17th century. Not everyone agreed, most certainly not James I and Charles I. A bill introduced in Parliament in 1621 to confirm Magna Carta as law failed.

Appealing as Magna Carta was symbolically as a written constitution that represented a contract between king and people, when Americans actually read it, they could not avoid the fact that the language of the charter assumed that the rights involved originally belonged to the king. Moreover, the king had granted the enumerated rights only to a select few. This stood in clear contrast to the dominant theory at the time of the American revolution that every person is endowed by God with certain rights. Those were inherent in such persons by the grace of God, not by that of the king.

The theory of universal natural rights inherent in each person was a distinct derivative of the much older theory of human law and relations controlled by universal higher moral laws or by principles of natural justice. It was distinct because it focused on the sovereignty of each person, independent of all others and connected to the exercise of the person’s own rational self-interest. It placed the individual at the center of social community and required, at least as a general theory, the consent of each to form a political commonwealth. Duties undertaken to others arose out of the free exercise of one’s right to consent to do so.

The more traditional approach of writers on natural law and natural justice had assumed the operation of a universal order external and antecedent to human society. It functioned concretely, as manifested in the physical universe and human society, and morally, through human reason. Each person was a part of both aspects of that order. Moral and, ultimately, legal duties to others could arise only in humans as creatures who have the capacity to participate in the moral structure of that order. From these natural duties arose rights to make it possible to meet those obligations. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguished between natural and conventional justice: “Political Justice is of two kinds, one natural, the other conventional. A rule of justice is natural that has the same validity everywhere, and does not depend on our accepting it or not.”

In a similar manner, the Roman philosopher and political leader Cicero, expressing a Stoic interpretation, repeatedly explored the connection among law, justice, nature, God, and reason. Just a few select passages from his book Laws suffice as examples. “Law is the highest reason, implanted in Nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite…. But in determining what Justice is, let us begin with that Supreme Law which had its origin ages before any written law existed or any State had been established.” Once it was established that there was a superintending structure of natural law commensurate in its essence with reason, Cicero explained how human beings can participate in that order, and can understand the duties created thereunder and exercise the correlative rights. “[T]hat animal which we call man, endowed with foresight and quick intelligence, complex, keen, possessing memory, full of reason and prudence, has been given a certain distinguished status by the supreme God who created him; for he is the only one among so many different kinds and varieties of living beings who has a share in reason and thought, while all the rest are deprived of it.” Such a momentous project is the work of an all-powerful and all-knowing superhuman mind. “[Natural] Law is not product of human thought, nor is it any enactment of peoples, but something eternal which rules the whole universe by its wisdom in command and prohibition. Thus they have been accustomed to say that Law is the primal and ultimate mind of God, whose reason directs all things ….” Finally, a human enactment, no matter the political system which created it, cannot truly be law if it conflicts with the higher natural law. “[N]either in a nation can a statute of any sort be called a law, even though the nation, in spite of its being a ruinous regulation, has accepted it. Therefore Law is the distinction between things just and unjust, made in agreement with that primal and most ancient of all things, Nature; and in conformity to Nature’s standard are framed those human laws which inflict punishment upon the wicked but defend and protect the good.”

Cicero has not been alone in distinguishing between a statute which is not truly law and one which is because of its conformance to justice represented by higher law. The distinction was clearly expressed by, among others, justices of the early Supreme Court. For example, in a colloquy between himself and Justice James Iredell, Justice Samuel Chase declared in 1798 in Calder v. Bull, “An ACT of the legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority.” The “first principles” to which Chase referred are those of natural law and natural rights, as shown by Iredell’s skeptical response: “It is true that some speculative jurists have held that a legislative act against natural justice must in itself be void, but I cannot think that under such a government any court of justice would possess a power to declare it so…. The ideas of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard; the ablest and the purest men have differed upon the subject, and all that the court could properly say in such an event would be that the legislature (possessed of an equal right of opinion) had passed an act which, in the opinion of the judges, was inconsistent with the abstract principles of natural justice.”

St. Paul acknowledged the universality of natural law and its connection to the God of all mankind. In his letter to the Romans, Paul explained that “When Gentiles who do not possess the law do instinctively what the law requires,” it proves that God’s universal law exists outside any particular received commands. Those Gentiles “show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them” on the day of judgment. In that manner, enlightened pagans such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero might have keen insight into the moral order created by God, and they would be judged the same as those who had received the declared law. They were accountable for their thoughts, words, and deeds under the natural moral law, although their ignorance of specific aspects of the declared law might not be held against them.

Then why was it necessary to have revealed law at all? Philosophers and theologians have long made clear that not all people possess equal capacity to understand what God has written on their hearts, but also that the reason of all humans is imperfect due to the human condition. Humans lack the omniscience of God and His perfect reason to comprehend the full extent of the natural law. Revelation is necessary both for those matters whose substance is beyond human understanding and, at least for some people, “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason,” in the words of Thomas Aquinas.

Alexander Hamilton in essay No. 33 and James Madison in essay No. 44 of The Federalist made similar arguments about a rather different matter. In Article I, Section 8, the United States Constitution expressly grants Congress the power to legislate regarding certain substantive matters. The question presented was why the Constitution also gave Congress the power to make all laws “necessary and proper” to carry into effect its other powers, when Congress already had the implied power to make such laws as a means for effectuating the ends specified in the Constitution. As Madison pointed out,

“Had the constitution [sic] been silent on this head, there can be no doubt that all the particular powers requisite as means of executing the general powers, would have resulted to the government, by unavoidable implication. No axiom is more clearly established in law, or in reason, than that wherever the end is required, the means are authorized; wherever a general power to do a thing is given, every particular power necessary for doing it, is included.”

Hamilton concluded that “it could only have been done for greater caution, and to guard against all caviling refinements in those who might hereafter feel a disposition to curtail and evade the legitimate authorities of the union.” In other words, the implied power to make such laws already existed under universally accepted and applicable principles of government. But the extent of implied powers is ill-defined and subject to considerable debate and uncertainty. The express enumeration, then, provides a more concrete statement less subject to manipulation and deception.

If the immutable laws of nature represent the work of the divine reason, good human laws are the result of human reason applied to concrete conditions and problems. But human laws are sometimes the product of passion, often temporary, rather than of reason, in denigration of the classic definition. Hamilton addressed this problem in essay No. 78 of The Federalist, where he characterized judicial review of legislation as itself an act of reason to control the ill effects of popular passions:

“This independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humours which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the people themselves, and which, though they speedily give place to better information and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the mean time, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.”

As Cicero taught earlier, the fact that these laws, enacted as the result of temporary public passions, may have been approved by the nation does not lessen their incompatibility with the Constitution and with reason.

Mob rule would be another, perhaps even more blatant, triumph of passion over reason than the arbitrary human law hastily produced by the legislature. That body had more of an opportunity to calm those passions or might at least blunt their force in the eventual statute. However, there is another side to be considered. What is mob rule? Does the uncoordinated broad refusal of the people to go along with an arbitrary statute qualify as such, in what has been dubbed “Irish democracy”? Is direct peaceful opposition by large numbers in the form of demonstrations and petitions? Is rioting and violent opposition? Is insurrection by destroying government property, tarring and feathering government officials, and shooting at soldiers? Or is even the last a legitimate form of opposition to allegedly arbitrary government, at least if those opponents eventually win and write the history books? After all, to the British in the 1760s and 1770s, Americans often engaged in mob rule by a violent minority faction, which then escalated to insurrection and, eventually, full rebellion in a civil war.

The Constitution is positive law, proposed by humans in Philadelphia and approved by assemblies of humans in the several states. The charter incorporates what the Supreme Court has accepted as universal principles of natural law, such as prohibitions of ex post facto laws or of  laws which interfere retroactively with the obligations and rights in contracts, take property without compensation or as mere redistribution for a private person’s benefit, deny basic protections of due process, burden one’s right of self-defense, or interfere with fundamental rights of conscience by abridging rights of free speech, assembly, press, and religion. If Thomas Paine is correct, and there is a natural right of self-government, the Constitution even protects that right, at least within broad bounds.

Still, even the Constitution is not at one with the immutable, constant laws of nature. What the human lawgiver gives, it can take away, just as King John did with Magna Carta. The Constitution can be amended, and nothing in its text prevents the nullification of the rights mentioned earlier. Nor is the discovery by the Supreme Court of unenumerated rights through flexible and creative interpretation of “liberty” under the due process clauses of the Constitution inherently immutable. Such discoveries can be reversed or neutralized by the Supreme Court itself, as happened recently with the retraction of the right of a woman to obtain an abortion, first discovered rather belatedly in 1973. Or a formal amendment can be adopted which overrides an earlier Supreme Court opinion, as has happened several times.

Nor does the Constitution address all principles of natural law and natural rights. It was not until adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865 that the Constitution took a clear position against slavery, although Western philosophers of ethics and politics and theologists had wrestled with that issue for millennia and had found slavery to be contrary to nature and natural law at least under many circumstances. Worse, the Constitution itself may conflict with natural law and natural rights. After all, a mere five years earlier, on the eve of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and other Northern politicians had advocated for another, far different 13th Amendment, one that would have expressly protected at the level of constitutional law that very same institution of slavery in the states where it then existed. Only the refusal of Southern radicals to accept the geographical limitation in that proposal and the force of the process already set in motion in the Southern states towards secession prevented its further consideration by Congress.

Another difficulty lies in this. To the extent that the Constitution’s text falls short of manifesting the immutable, constant laws of nature and the extent of natural rights, may the Supreme Court fill in those gaps? The Ninth Amendment does no more than state the obvious, that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not exhaust the scope of rights each person has. It provides no express license for the Supreme Court to substitute its judgment for that of the people or the people’s representatives. Moreover, as Justice Iredell objected in Calder, the commands of the natural law and natural justice are difficult to discern, especially in application to specific and varied circumstances, and have long been the object of philosophic speculation.

Of course, the people or their representatives should make law only in accordance with natural law. But the problem is precisely that they often are driven by self-interest and passion, not by the requisite reason. Nor are the people generally, or the legislators, inherently qualified as moral philosophers any more than the judges. This quandary requires inquiry into the role of private and public virtue in the promotion of proper self-government and the establishment of a political order and human law consistent with the natural law and the protection of each person’s natural rights.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Eric C. Sands
The United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence on an American Flag background

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

In a republic, it is common to refer to government action needing to be supported by the consent of the people. But what do we mean by the “people?” Certainly, this cannot mean the consent of every person in a political community since no such universal consent would ever be possible. Instead, a republican form of government relies on the consent of the majority in undertaking action and carrying out public policy.  This does not mean that the will of the majority is always right or just or that the majority cannot be tyrannical in how it exercises its will. There is no question that majorities can be as despotic as kings if given the ability to rule unchecked. The majority will, however, properly organized, limited, and directed within a constitutional framework will generally prove the most legitimate basis for good government.

No one makes this argument more effectively than James Madison, the architect of the large republic that can operate over a broad territory with a big population. This model, presented in Federalist 10, became the basis for the American idea of republicanism. In doing so, Madison argued that majority rule was not perfect, but it was better than any of the available alternatives. Majority rule is what allowed republican government to exist and what further allowed rule by the people. In short, the principle of majority rule is the basis of popular sovereignty and is tempered and moderated through the institutions of constitutional government. To be sure, not everyone agreed with Madison’s defense of majority rule. Some, like Thomas Jefferson, complained that rule by the majority left the rights of the minority insecure and presented the minority with few options in protecting their rights and liberties. A perfect example of this was the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798, which restricted immigration and speech in the United States.

Jefferson was called on to help prepare a protest against the acts, which he did in the famous Kentucky Resolutions. In the Resolutions, Jefferson argued for a narrow reading of the Constitution and embraced a states’ rights interpretation of the constitutional system. His major concern, though, was how the minority could protect itself from the majority within the constitutional system. His solution was to embrace the doctrine of state nullification. As Jefferson explained, “where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy; that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits.” Clearly, this was quite a radical doctrine and had important implications for the young republic. A number of prominent statesmen spoke out against Jefferson’s idea and predicted that nullification would become the death knell of the nation. In that they were not far wrong. Madison, for his part, helped prepare an alternative set of resolutions for Virginia, but was much less radical and said nothing about a power of nullification to protect the minority. The Alien and Sedition Acts showed that the majority’s will could sometimes be in error, but it was still the best way of organizing the voice of the people.

The challenge of nullification to the principle of majority rule came up again in 1832 when South Carolina nullified two tariff bills that it claimed were unconstitutional. Under the heavy influence of John Calhoun, South Carolina’s Nullification Proclamation announced that the acts “are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.” According to Calhoun and South Carolina, every state had the right to judge for itself the constitutionality of the laws of the country and to negate those laws if a state believed them to be unconstitutional. This was the only way of protecting the minority against the overreach of the majority and to make sure that minority rights and interests are taken into account.

But the nullifiers’ claims did not stop there. Backing up their doctrine of nullification was an appeal to secession. The Proclamation warned the national government that any attempt to change South Carolina’s nullification by force would leave the state with no choice but to leave the Union. An act of aggression against the state would be

“inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union; and that the people of this State will henceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States; and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.”

Eventually, South Carolina backed down on nullification, but the fact it had been raised again speaks to what a powerful challenge it was to the principle of majority rule. It is for this reason that Madison as an elder statesman prepared a response to Calhoun and a defense of majority rule. In 1833, Madison wrote in a letter that articulated his strong position on majority rule and how the extended republic makes majority rule possible and safe. As Madison wrote,

“Those who framed and ratified the Constitution believed that as power was less likely to be abused by majorities in representative governments than in democracies…and less likely in the larger than in the smaller communities, under a representative government, inferred also, that by dividing the powers of Government and thereby enlarging the practicable sphere of Government, unjust majorities would be formed with still more difficulty.” 

To men like Calhoun, and Jefferson, who would attack majority rule, Madison put the matter plain. Without majority rule, republican government was simply not possible. This made it clear that “while the Constitution is in force, the power created by it [in a popular majority] must be the legitimate power, and obeyed as the only alternative to the dissolution of all government.” Thus, it is, according to Madison, that majority rule under constitutional government is not to be preferred because it is perfect, but because it is the least imperfect.

Eric C. Sands is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Berry College. He has written a book on Abraham Lincoln and edited a second volume on political parties. His teaching and research interests focus on constitutional law, American political thought, the founding, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and political parties.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Josh Herring
John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis argues that education exists to inspire students’ affections so that they love good and hate evil. Such, the Western tradition has held time out of mind, is the route to being able to perceive the choices which lead one towards a happy life, and the choices which lead away from such an end. Lewis stands in agreement with both Aristotle and Kierkegaard in affirming that as rational creatures, human beings have the ability to make real choices.

It is this capacity for rational choice that makes the founding principle of “self-government” so vital for the flourishing of the American republic. James Madison famously wrote that the regime the founders and framers envisioned could only be maintained by a “moral people,” meaning that the American system of governance depends upon the majority of citizens practicing customs which train the heart and hands to love what is good. The founders were not naive; they knew the evil that resides in the human heart. And yet, their federalist system envisioned a people whose religious allegiance and moral training enabled them to choose right over wrong, good over evil, beneficial over harmful, in most cases. John Jay made the connection between a self-governing people choosing virtue and maintaining their freedom clear:

Let us also be mindful that the cause of freedom greatly depends on the use we make of the singular opportunities we enjoy of governing ourselves wisely; for if the event should prove, that the people of this country either cannot or will not govern themselves, who will hereafter be advocates for systems, which however charming in theory and prospect, are not reducible to practice. If the people of our nation, instead of consenting to be governed by laws of their own making, and rulers of their own choosing, should let licentiousness, disorder, and confusion reign over them, the minds of men every where, will insensibly become alienated from republican forms, and prepared to prefer and acquiesce in Governments, which, though less friendly to liberty, afford more peace and security…[1]

Such self-governance is necessary for the flourishing of a legal system within which the people can, through various hierarchical structures, vote to construct their society as they see fit. We have that capacity. Given this reality, the importance of self-government should be clear. We need citizens to value rule of law, to see and approve of the connection between natural law and civil law, to perceive the necessary goods of property rights and constitutional order for the American way of life to continue. Different regimes exist; it takes but a momentary survey of 20th century history to see fascism, communism, and dictatorship as counter examples of what is possible. How then do we inculcate the value of self-governance in the rising generation?

Self-governance becomes a question of education. And this is where the classical education renewal movement holds the seeds of restoring health and vitality to the American way of life. I propose three ways the classical education passes on the principle of self-governance to students. First, we teach students that humans exist as embodied souls, and as such hold intrinsic worth. As rational creatures of infinite value, their choices matter. But with those choices comes responsibility. Second, school is a place for students to learn that actions, words, and ideas have consequences. Choosing to study diligently throughout the term results in academic progress and completion of a course. Engaging in physical violence results in expulsion. Being a faithful, diligent student who participates in the great tradition leads to forming strong relationships with teachers (creating the teachers’ ability to write recommendations). Third, classical schools teach students to see the past as an inheritance they must receive, steward, and pass on. In so doing, students take ownership of the ideas, values, concepts, and skills that previous generations have developed. They then exercise those ideas to build a fulfilling life capable of reaching happiness. Through these concepts, long abandoned by mainstream education, the classical renewal movement offers hope to an America in need of rediscovering her first principles.

A self-governing citizenship is the only way to avoid Thrasymachus’s accusation in The Republic that “Justice is nothing but the will of the stronger.” If a people will not govern themselves, they will eventually cause their own destruction. But such an end is not inevitable. In families, in churches, in schools, and in all the variations of Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” which make up our society, the principle of self-governance is still taught, practiced, and exemplified. So long as we live aware of the value of our choices, we preserve our freedom. In losing that awareness, in living as if reality were consequence-free, we exchange freedom for bondage. Someone will rule over us, and for that to be ourselves, we must recover self-governance as a way of life.

Josh Herring is Professor of Classical Education at Thales College, where he oversees the development of the Classical Education teacher training program. He also serves as Director of Debate for the Thales Debate Network, and hosts The Optimistic Curmudgeon podcast. He tweets at @TheOptimisticC3.

[1]  John Jay. “Citizen of New York: An Address to the People of the State of New York” (April 15, 1788).

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer
“Washington as Statesman at the Constitutional Convention” a painting depicting George Washington presiding over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, by Junius Brutus Stearns.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The brilliance of the United States Constitution lies not just in its innovative governance structure but in its foundational principle: that it is a written contract allowing, under strict limits, a government to run under the authority of the American people within the states. This principle, in fact, was not an accidental development but a conscious response to the concerns and criticisms prevalent in the post-revolutionary era. One such concern was voiced in a 1778 letter disparaging the American constitutions as inadequate in their republican form, claiming they replicated the tyrannies America sought to escape. It is to this concern that John Adams, a pivotal figure in the nation’s founding, offered a compelling defense.

Adams replied in his first letter which was part of his three-volume response written from 1787 to 1788:

“There are in the productions of all of them, among many excellent things, some sentiments, however, that it will be difficult to reconcile to reason, experience, the constitution of human nature, or to the uniform testimony of the greatest statesmen, legislators, and philosophers of all enlightened nations, ancient and modern.” – A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America, Letter I, Volume I, Preliminary Observations, John Adams, Grosvenor-Square, October 4, 1786

Even though, through his letters, Adams’ initial response is directed to the American state constitutions of the time, through this lens, the U.S. Constitution that would come later can be seen not just as a foundational document of a nation, but as a meaningful dialogue with history, philosophy, and human nature itself. His profound assertion draws attention to the uniquely American synthesis of reason, experience, and an informed understanding of human nature that undergirds the U.S. Constitution.

Adams’ defense provides an insightful understanding of the Constitution’s design. The reference to “reason, experience, the constitution of human nature” underscores the importance of these elements in the design of the Constitution. He acknowledges that no political document, including the American constitutions, can be free from imperfections. Yet, he contends that the United States Constitution, by grounding itself in human reason and experience, offers a robust framework for the functioning of a republic.

The Constitution’s written nature, as Adams seems to imply, is central to ensuring its efficacy as a contract between the people and the government. A written constitution provides a tangible and constant point of reference, a standard against which the actions of the government can be measured. In the context of the American Revolution, a written constitution was particularly significant. It represented a break from the unwritten traditions and discretionary powers that characterized the monarchy America was rebelling against.

Moreover, the Constitution goes beyond merely setting the rules of governance. Its provisions for separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism were innovative measures to prevent the concentration of power – a direct response to the accusation of the American constitutions merely “repeating dictatorships.” These mechanisms ensure that no single entity within the government can dominate, thus safeguarding the people’s control over their government.

In the light of Adams’ emphasis on the “uniform testimony of the greatest statesmen, legislators, and philosophers of all enlightened nations, ancient and modern,” it is clear that the Constitution was not conceived in a vacuum. Instead, it was informed by a rich tradition of political thought. The Framers drew upon lessons from ancient Rome and Greece, Enlightenment philosophies, and contemporary political experiences. They sought to create a Constitution that would not only serve the immediate needs of the fledgling nation but also stand the test of time.

Moreover, they were influenced heavily by the country’s experience under the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first written constitution. Its deficiencies, including the national government’s inability to act during Shays’ Rebellion (1786–87), exposed the need for a more robust central government capable of direct taxation and regulating interstate commerce.

Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution embodies the principle that the ultimate authority rests with the American people. This principle is most evident in the Constitution’s opening words: “We the People…” It is the people who are giving the government its power and setting its limits. The Constitution, therefore, is not an instrument of the government to control the people, but an instrument of the people to control their government. This is the essence of the republican form that the 1778 critique claimed was lacking.

The Constitution’s authors were acutely focused on limiting the power of government and securing citizens’ liberty. They sought to strike a balance between authority and liberty, embodying the central purpose of American constitutional law. To achieve this, they adopted the doctrine of legislative, executive, and judicial separation of powers, checks and balances, and explicit guarantees of individual liberty.

Integral to the Constitution’s design is the principle of a social contract—a fundamental agreement between the government and the governed. This social contract places the Constitution within the Enlightenment’s philosophical tradition, drawing upon ideas from ancient philosophy, English common law, English political theory, and the European Enlightenment.

However, this isn’t the complete picture of the Constitution’s influence. To fully comprehend its breadth and significance, it’s essential to understand John Adams’ quote in context. His argument suggests a keen awareness of the complexities and potential pitfalls of constructing a republic, a challenge the Framers of the U.S. Constitution had to grapple with—an awareness no doubt gleaned from his years of political work in the Continental Congress, where he saw firsthand the perils of unbridled power, fostered a deep-seated commitment to the principles of decentralization and individual liberty. It was Adams who famously remarked that “power must never be trusted without a check.”

Adams’ involvement in the negotiations leading to the unanimous vote on the Declaration of Independence further honed his views on the balance of power. He witnessed the states banding together in a common cause, each contributing to the struggle for independence while retaining their individual identities and rights. The unanimous vote was a testament to the power of cooperative federalism, a principle that would later be enshrined in our Constitution.

In crafting the Constitution, Adams drew on these experiences to advocate for a system of government that balanced the authority of the federal government with the rights of states and individuals. He championed the idea of a strong central government, yes, but one that was kept in check by the rights of states and the liberties of the citizenry. It is this delicate equilibrium, so cherished by Adams, that has allowed our republic to flourish.

For Adams, and for us, the essence of American liberty lies in this balance. His experiences in the crucible of independence shaped a vision of government that valued both the collective strength of the federal government and the individual freedoms of its citizens.

The United States Constitution stands as a beacon of American political philosophy, embodying a profound understanding of human nature, reason, and the wisdom of past statesmen, legislators, and philosophers. It is the embodiment of a social contract, firmly rooted in the principle of popular sovereignty. Yet, it is also a testament to the profound challenges and complexities involved in crafting a republic that is both robust and responsive to the needs of its citizens. To fully appreciate its significance, we must heed Adams’s words and reconcile its provisions with the wisdom that can only come from experience.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Ben Slomski

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The idea of a constitution is an ancient one. The idea of a written constitution, however, is relatively new. To be sure, regimes have long created written documents and legal codes that outline the structure of governing authorities and protect certain rights for citizens and subjects. Yet before the United States Constitution, these written documents were not seen as fundamental for understanding what constitutes a regime. Before Americans chose to produce written constitutions, a constitution was understood in terms of the norms that make up a regime rather than the words written on any piece of paper.

Classical political thought recognized the need to study constitutions, but a regime’s constitution was the collection of formal and informal norms that made up a people’s way of life in a regime. In Aristotle’s Politics, he describes the regime (the Greek word politeia) as “an arrangement of a city with respect to its offices, particularly the one that has authority over all matters. For what has authority in the city is everywhere the governing body, and the governing body is the regime.” In other words, the constitution of a city was not a legally-binding written document outlining the powers and restrictions on officers. Instead, the constitution was the way the people of a regime lived and how they chose to organize their governing offices at a given time. Constitutions were much less a matter of fixed law and much more a matter of a people’s organic norms. Politics was inherently contingent as a regime would change in its nature whenever the people changed in their ways and how they chose to organize authority.

All of this changed with the United States Constitution. Certainly, the idea of a written document to serve as the fundamental law of government did not spring from the mind of James Madison in 1787 without any antecedents. Early settlers of the American colonies wrote documents outlining the governing principles for their new settlements, such as the Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact. The idea of a model constitution for a regime had been developing in modern political thought, such as in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. During the American Revolution, states began writing new constitutions even before the Declaration of Independence was published. The Continental Congress passed the Articles of Confederation as the first written constitution for the United States. The document produced by the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to correct the defects of the Articles, which was then ratified by the American people, was the culmination of these efforts.

The shift in thinking on the importance of a written United States Constitution cannot be understated. The implicit idea was that a written document outlining the new government’s fundamental principles and its structure could establish a legal and political framework to shape the informal norms by which the people constitute themselves. The Constitution would serve an educational role by informing citizens of the government’s organizing principles. Under a written constitution, politics could be at least less contingent than under the older notion of a constitution as there are written norms that can last across generations to shape political conduct. A written constitution does not guarantee any political outcomes, of course, as politics will always be subject to the individual choices of human action. The Constitution does, however, distribute authority and establish norms in a way that will make certain outcomes more likely. The Constitution establishes a lasting structure to guide politics because there are further principles embedded in the idea of a written constitution.

One of the central ideas behind writing a constitution down is that government’s power is not unlimited. Chief Justice John Marshall explains this well in the famed Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison:

“To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing; if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation.”

If the government’s power is absolute, then there is no reason to write down restrictions on government because it would be free to do whatever it wants. If limits on government authority are written down, then it is assumed that these limits will be upheld; otherwise, there was no point to writing the limits down. Marshall thus proclaims in Marbury that a written Constitution is “what we have deemed the greatest improvement on political institutions.”

The deepest assumption behind the idea of a written constitution is that all political power originally comes from the people. If government’s power came from within itself, then there would be no natural limits to what government can do and no need for written restrictions. Instead, governmental power is granted by the people and a constitution serves as a specific statement of what is granted and what authority the people retain for themselves. This delegation of power must be done in an explicit, concrete act by writing it in a public document approved by the people to embody their fundamental will. The written United States Constitution recognizes that the ultimate source of authority remains with the people who have enacted a document to last for ages so that future generations will share the blessings of this supreme law of the land.

Benjamin Slomski is Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Ashland University.

 

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Why Government?

Thomas Jefferson said it most succinctly: “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” We could end this discussion right there – the “appropriate role and purpose of government” is the “security, the protection of unalienable rights,” but we all know there is more to the story.

Americans today are losing touch with the concept of God-given, unalienable rights, some in fact firmly reject the idea, even the existence of such rights, believing instead that government is not only the protector of our rights, but also their source. America’s Founders rejected this concept out of hand. As Jefferson clearly stated, we “are endowed by [our] creator with certain unalienable rights.” He made a similar observation two years prior in his Summary View of the Rights of British America[i] and later in his 1785 Notes on the State of Virginia.[ii]

The Source of Rights

Today, however, when someone speaks of “natural law” or “natural rights” they should be asked to clarify whether they are referring to God-given natural rights or rights which accrue to humans “naturally” through a social contract or “the nature of things.” The use of the adjective “inherent” in describing rights, as George Mason did in the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights,[iii] lends itself to two different interpretations, the rights are either uniquely inherent to humans as creations of God or are uniquely inherent to humans as the apex species of evolution. Given this, I prefer “unalienable” to “inherent.”

Though a Christian (he authored “The Truth of the Christian Religion”), the Dutch political philosopher Hugo Grotius[iv] promoted the idea (borrowed from Cicero and others) that natural law was created by the natural order and was not, or at least not necessarily a creation of God. Natural law did not require God’s revelation but could be discovered simply and solely through human reason. While America’s Founders knew of and respected Grotius, particularly his famous 1625 On the Law of War and Peace (De Jure Belli ac Pacis), as we see will in the following quotations, they held to a theistic source for both natural law and natural rights.

But even America’s leaders had to remind their fellow citizens of this from time to time. Writing in reply to an essay from “The Farmer,”[v] Alexander Hamilton explained:

“The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms[vi] and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society…”To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature . . . . Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind: the Supreme Being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety . . . . The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”[vii]

Human beings have natural, unalienable rights which are incapable of being “be erased or obscured” by any act of man or government.

In his 1765 Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, John Adams insisted that our rights were “derived from the great Legislator of the universe.”

Virginian lawyer George Mason, arguing in the 1772 case of Robin v. Hardaway, (1 Jefferson 109) affirmed that:

“The laws of nature are the laws of God: A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to him from whose punishments they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey. Such have been the adjudications of our courts of justice.” [viii]

Other American Founders, such as John Dickinson, expressed similar views:

“Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness… We claim them from a higher source – from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power without taking our lives. In short, they are founded on the immutable maxims of reason and justice.”[ix]

Dickinson was an intriguing man, largely overlooked today. Born into a family with long-standing ties to the Quaker religion, Dickinson received an education in the law at the Middle Temple, London, before setting up his practice near Philadelphia. He inherited land holdings in both Pennsylvania and Delaware and became one of the richest men in both states.[x] In 1776, Dickinson represented Pennsylvania at the Continental Congress as it considered independence. His Quaker roots kept him from openly voting for independence (and inevitable war), so on the fateful day of July 2, 1776, Dickinson (along with Robert Morris) “absented himself” to give the Pennsylvania delegation a majority in favor of Virginia’s resolution for independence. Once the resolution for independence passed, Dickinson similarly refused to vote in favor of Jefferson’s Declaration, a decision which then forced his resignation from the Pennsylvania delegation. Once out of the Congress, Dickinson surprisingly joined the Pennsylvania militia as a Brigadier General, becoming one of only two members of the First Continental Congress who actively took up arms during the war. Dickinson capped his long public service career by representing Delaware at the Constitutional Convention.

In this statement on natural rights, Dickinson repeats familiar themes: rights originating with a Creator God, resulting from God’s natural law, and which “cannot be taken from us by any human power.”

James Wilson, one of six men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, after calling God “the promulgator as well as the author of natural law,” observed in his famous 1790 Lectures on Law:

“I here close my examination into those natural rights, which, in my humble opinion, it is the business of civil government to protect, and not to subvert, and the exercise of which it is the duty of civil government to enlarge, and not to restrain. I go farther; and now proceed to show, that in peculiar instances, in which those rights can receive neither protection nor reparation from civil government, they are, notwithstanding its institution, entitled still to that defence, and to those methods of recovery, which are justified and demanded in a state of nature.”[xi]

To protect and enlarge our natural rights, this becomes the “business” of civil government, or at least one of the responsibilities or duties of government.

The History of Rights (much abridged)

Rights, and the security thereof, had gradually become a central focus of Englishmen as they wrestled with two oftentimes opposing concepts: the divine (i.e., God-endorsed) right of kings on the one hand, and the unalienable, God-given rights of individuals on the other hand. Magna Carta became a waypoint in this investigation; forcing King John to subordinate his divine right and accept responsibility for protecting certain individual rights, including due process of law and trial by jury.

Magna Carta was soon ignored, but was eventually replaced by newer versions. In the 17th century, Magna Carta’s rights were supplemented by Parliament’s Petition of Right (1628) and the English Bill of Rights (1689). This growing focus on natural rights accompanied America’s settlers as they sailed for the colonies, being encapsulated in the first colonial charters as “liberties, franchises and immunities”[xii] of Englishmen. From there, rights were expanded and reinforced, expounded in a host of colonial documents, beginning with the Mayflower Compact and ending one hundred and seventy-one years later with the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Over this period, the colonists seldom passed up an opportunity to reiterate their essential rights. A partial list:

1620 – Mayflower Compact (Plymouth)

1636 – Code of Law (Plymouth)

1639 – Fundamental Orders (Connecticut)

1639 – Act for the Liberties of the People (Maryland)

1641 – Body of Liberties (Massachusetts)

1677 – Declaration of the People (Virginia)

1701 – Charter of Privileges (Pennsylvania)

1763 – The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (James Otis)

1764 – The Rights of Colonies Examined (Stephen Hopkins)

1765 – Declaration of Rights and Grievances (Stamp Act Congress)

1766 – An Inquiry into the Rights of The British Colonies (Richard Bland)

1772 – The Rights of the Colonists (Samuel Adams)

1774 – A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Thomas Jefferson)

1774 – Declaration and Resolves (1st Continental Congress)

1775 – Declaration on the Causes of Taking Up Arms (2nd Congress)

1776 – (January) Bill of Rights (New Hampshire Convention)

1776 – (June) Declaration of Rights (Virginia)

1776 – (July) Declaration of Independence (2nd Continental Congress)

1776 – (July) Declaration of Rights (Pennsylvania)

1776 – (September) Declaration of Rights (Delaware)

1780 – Declaration of Rights (Massachusetts)

1788 – Declaration of Rights (North Carolina)

1790 – Of the Natural Rights of Individuals -Lectures on Law (James Wilson)

1791 – The U.S. Bill of Rights

Natural law and the natural rights which spring from them are enjoying a resurgence in popularity of late, thanks to the scholarly work of men like John Finnis in Natural Law and Natural Rights (Clarendon Law Series, 2nd Edition; J. Budziszewski in Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law; Hadley Arkes in Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths of the Constitution; and others. As John Horvat explains, “the growing acceptance of natural law theory among frustrated Americans is shaking the legal field.”[xiii] This resurgence within the legal and scholarly communities appears to terrify some, however, natural law and natural rights are still ignored or misunderstood by the vast majority of Americans.

The Extent of Natural Rights

There is no known “inventory” of natural rights, at least none that all political philosophers or natural rights expositors over the millennia have agreed upon. The Founders knew of course of the Ten Commandments, which form the core of “the laws of Nature’s God.” If God commands “thou shalt not steal” it seems reasonable to derive from that “a right to acquire and retain property.” “Thou shalt not murder” denotes a “right to the preservation of one’s life.” But no Founding Father appears to have attempted an enumeration of all natural rights.  Indeed, as James Iredell explained at the 1788 North Carolina Ratifying Convention, such an enumeration, if used as the basis for a Bill of Rights:

“…would not only be useless, but dangerous, … it would be implying, in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the [enumeration] might be impaired by the government without usurpation; and it would be impossible to enumerate every one. Let any one make what collection or enumeration of rights he pleases, I will immediately mention twenty or thirty more rights not contained in it.”[xiv]

But a useful list of those essential rights the Founders collectively supported can nevertheless be gleaned from their writings. As Chester James Antieau explains:[xv] “the natural rights on which there was the largest agreement and the greatest significance were … freedom of conscience and religion, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, property, the right to govern and tax themselves, and freedom of communication.”

Some Founders also supported rights derived from the common law, such as the right to trial by jury, and freedom from warrantless searches, but such rights cannot be denominated as “natural” rights since they would have no rational basis in a hypothetical state of nature.

How Should Rights Be Secured?

The next question we must consider is: how should the government fulfill its responsibility of protecting our unalienable rights? Is a Bill of Rights necessary, or even appropriate?

James Madison and other Founders considered the Constitution itself to be a “bill of rights.” A constitution of limited and enumerated powers, carefully drawn, will protect individual rights by not providing the new government with the power or authority necessary to infringe on those rights. “For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 84.[xvi] While the Framers certainly felt they had created a limited power document, replete with checks and balances, history has shown the ambiguity of language to be the Framers’ downfall. The Anti-federalists saw “loopholes”; for instance, the power given the Supreme Court would allow the court to “mould the government, into almost any shape they please.[xvii] The Anti-federalists fumed over the absence of a Bill of Rights, “would it have consumed too much paper?” scowled Patrick Henry. When sent a copy of the Constitution to review, Jefferson replied by gently chiding his friend: “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences.” [xviii]And so a reluctant James Madison agreed to single-handedly champion the project.

The initial draft he submitted to Congress, borrowing heavily from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, contained several protections which did not survive the House and Senate “wordsmithing.” Madison’s treasured “rights of conscience” didn’t even make it through the House Committee on which Madison himself sat!. Despite these setbacks, Madison persisted and the document was finally sent to the states for ratification, achieving that on December 15, 1791, with Virginia’s acceptance. But would a Bill of Rights be enough?

In an October 1788 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Madison had warned that even a Bill of Rights might not be sufficient: “Repeated violations of these parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in every State. In Virginia I have seen the bill of rights violated in every instance where it has been opposed to a popular current.”[xix] “Tyranny of the majority,” the primary reason the Founders’ abhorred democracy. But infringements of rights do not require a majority, with the help of government even a minority can prevail.

When Governments Become Corrupted

Americans have recently witnessed how a government can be enticed to infringe upon our unalienable rights by a “popular current” arising from even a small minority faction. The revelation that officials in the Executive branch of the federal government colluded with media companies to silence the public expression of viewpoints they did not agree with shocks us, it is reminiscent of the Communist regimes under Stalin and Mao, not to mention the authoritarian governments in present-day Russia and China.

Jefferson believed that: “The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”[xx]

The Americans are the ultimate sovereigns in their republican form of government; government is their servant, not the reverse. Unfortunately, the American people, by and large, have abandoned the Founders’ view of both law and government.

If there is any good news here it is that at least some Americans, those who understand the societal sea-change being forced upon them, are willing to fight for protection of their unalienable rights. Welcome assistance comes from the present Supreme Court, which is currently staffed with a majority of justices who share an originalist and therefore Founders’ view of rights. But our trust in a temporary majority of originalist justices should be cautioned by the realization that future courts may not be so favorably apportioned. As Jefferson reminds us: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”[xxi]

So, it is to the Bill of Rights itself we must turn; is its language sufficient or too open to interpretation? Should we consider the words of the original Bill of Rights as unamendable, or should we be willing to clarify ambiguous 18th century language? Are we to accept our society’s present worldview confusion as inevitable or should we work to correct it?

These are the sort of questions we should be asking, and debating.

In his 1967 Inaugural Address, the great Ronald Reagan cautioned:

Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.  And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”[xxii]

If we want to continue to enjoy our natural, unalienable, God-given rights, and we wish our posterity to be likewise blessed, we must be prepared to fight for and defend them.

I will conclude with the words of Founder John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court under the new Constitution, who in 1777, while instructing (charging) a New York grand jury, reminded us:

“Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the constitution of his country and teach the rising generation to be free. By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated, and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.”[xxiii]

Note that, for (at that time) Judge Jay, reading the Constitution is not sufficient, it should also be studied, and diligently so. The goal, of course, lies not simply in the reading and studying; the goal is to pass along what you have learned to the next generation of Americans. Even then, the project is not complete; the rising generation requires this knowledge to be better equipped to defend and assert their rights, thus, hopefully, perpetuating a society of freedom and liberty.

John Jay would be proud of the commendable work Constituting America accomplishes in pursuing his charge.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at 

gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter @constitutionled.

[i] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffsumm.asp.

[ii] https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/jefferson/jefferson.html.

[iii] “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

[iv] A latinizing of his given name: “Huig van Groot.”

[v] Hamilton was replying to a series of essays, appearing from November 1774 to January 1775, written by “A W. Farmer, (loyalist Bishop Samuel Seabury, the first American Episcopal bishop), who had set out “to detect and expose the false, arbitrary, and tyrannical PRINCIPLES upon which the [Continental] Congress acted, and to point out their fatal tendency to the interests and liberties of the colonies.” To see the arguments Hamilton is “refuting,” the “Farmer’s” letters can be accessed at: http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/seabury/farmer/.

[vi] Sophisms: specious arguments for displaying ingenuity in reasoning or for deceiving someone. Dictionary.com.

[vii] Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775, New York.

[viii] https://cite.case.law/jefferson/1/109/.

[ix] John Dickinson, An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados, 1766.

[x] Interestingly, for a short period of time (November 1782-January 1783) Dickinson served as the President of both states.

[xi] http://www.nlnrac.org/node/241.

[xii] 1606 First Virginia Charter, at: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/first-charter-of-virginia-1606/.

[xiii] https://www.tfp.org/why-the-left-hates-and-is-terrified-by-natural-law/.

[xiv] https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/conv1788/conv1788.html, p. 192.

[xv] Chester James Antieau, Natural Rights And The Founding Fathers-The Virginians, 17 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 43 (1960), http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol17/iss1/4.

[xvi] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed84.asp.

[xvii] Brutus XI, in The Complete Anti-Federalist, Herbert J. Storing, ed., (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981) Volume Two, Part 2, 417-422.

[xviii] Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787.

[xix] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch14s47.html.

[xx] Letter to William Hunter, 11 March 1790., at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-16-02-0130.

[xxi] Thomas Jefferson, in a draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.

[xxii] This is the version Reagan uttered during his Inaugural Address as President on January 5, 1967, not the more familiar and edited version published afterwards. See: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/january-5-1967-inaugural-address-public-ceremony.

[xxiii] The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston, A.M. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890-93). Vol. 1 (1763-1781), p. 164., accessed at https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/johnston-the-correspondence-and-public-papers-of-john-jay-vol-1-1763-1781?html=true.

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
Thomas Paine, oil painting by Laurent Dabos, 1791.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Thomas Paine became an immensely popular figure during the American War of Independence, primarily on the basis of his works Common Sense, a pamphlet initially published anonymously in 1776, and a series of pamphlets collectively referred to as The American Crisis, published from 1776 to 1783. They were ringing defenses of the American cause, well-written in uplifting and patriotic language easily accessible to ordinary readers.

Yet, only a handful of mourners attended that same Thomas Paine’s funeral three decades later, he having estranged many American leaders by his attacks on the character of George Washington in an open letter published in 1796. As well, his many occasions of writing negatively about organized religion, especially in the three parts of the pro-deism Age of Reason, had alienated much of the American public.

In between, Paine lived in England, where he soon became the target of official displeasure after publishing vigorously anti-monarchist and anti-aristocratic tracts in the two volumes of Rights of Man. While these works were widely read in England, his enthusiastic support of the French Revolution cost him popularity. Fearing prosecution, he fled to France.

Paine was initially very well received in the revolutionary French Republic. He was elected to the National Convention and appointed to its committee to draft a constitution. However, he soon made himself unpopular with the radical faction and eventually was imprisoned and slated for execution. He was saved from a date with the guillotine by the fall of the radical leader Maximilien Robespierre and subsequently was released from prison by the intervention of the new American ambassador, James Monroe.

He stayed a few more years and met Napoleon Bonaparte, who spoke admiringly about him, at least until Paine denounced the future emperor as a charlatan. Not long thereafter, Paine decamped for the United States at the invitation of one of his more steadfast friends, President Thomas Jefferson.

What raised Paine to such heights of fortune was his talent for “plain speaking.” That was also a cause for his lows, when his direct style rubbed influential persons the wrong way. His works during the Revolutionary Period were said to have made independence inevitable by bringing the common people to the cause, the people who might not have understood some of the more refined philosophical arguments made by elite American intellectuals citing elite European and ancient intellectuals. His most famous work, Common Sense, sold 500,000 copies by the end of the war in a country of fewer than 3 million free persons, including children. Jefferson, comparing him to Benjamin Franklin as an essayist, opined that, “No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language.”

The first installment of The American Crisis began with a stirring call to action for a demoralized American army: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” Four days after its publication in a Philadelphia newspaper, General George Washington had the pamphlet read to his soldiers recovering near the Delaware River after a long retreat from New York. The following night, Christmas Eve, the army crossed that river during a winter storm and, on Christmas Day, won a resounding victory at Trenton, New Jersey.

Paine’s value as a propagandist was not just in the cause of revolution and independence. He was a committed republican, to the point that it alienated some of his erstwhile admirers. The purpose of the quoted document, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, was to reiterate  and develop the points about hereditary versus representative government made in Rights of Man. Having concluded that hereditary government was a form of tyranny, and even treason against successive generations, Paine rooted representative government in the inherent equality of human beings. The most significant right which flows from that equality is the right of property in oneself. If government is to be formed, as it must for the better protection of people in their persons and estates, each adult has the right to participate in that process on the principle of equality. If much of this sounds like the philosophy of John Locke, that should be no surprise, in light of the popularity of Lockean ideas at that time. But Paine made those ideas more accessible to ordinary people. Unlike many American state constitutions at the time, Paine rejected property qualification for voting. He did not address female suffrage, although his frequent reference to “man,” if used generically, did not foreclose that possibility.

In the minds of many 18th-century writers on politics, the problem of a general franchise and a purely elective government was the danger it posed of degenerating into a democracy. Paine did not reject such a democracy outright, although he considered it impractical for large political entities such as France and the United States. Those parts of the Dissertation could have fit comfortably in The Federalist. Others, such as the paragraphs addressing the nature of executive power and its formulation in the Constitution of 1787, sat less well.

Paine’s discussion of the importance of voting was consistent with classical American republicanism, which also considered the “republican principle” of the vote as the mainstay of liberty. As a matter of practical application, Paine emphasized the use of majority rule, whether exercised through direct democracy in a town or a representative body. As he wrote in the Dissertation, “In all matters of opinion, the social compact, or the principle by which society is held together, requires that the majority of opinions becomes the rule for the whole and that the minority yields practical obedience thereto.”

Paine was not nearly as agitated about the baleful influence of factions as James Madison was in The Federalist. That noted, Paine’s solution to the potential problem of majority dominance over a political minority was similar to Madison’s explanation in No. 10 of The Federalist about the relative lack of danger from an entrenched majority faction in Congress compared to town or state governments. Paine observed that political majorities change depending on the issues involved, so there is constant rearranging of the composition of whatever constitutes a majority. “He may happen to be in a majority upon some questions, and in a minority upon others, and by the same rule that he expects obedience in the one case, he must yield it in the other.” Like Madison at that time, Paine could not know about the subsequent emergence of organized political parties and party discipline over elected officials.

There is, however, a danger from straight majority rule, whether that rule is exercised through direct voting by whatever class of persons is qualified to vote or in a legislature composed of some class of persons deemed qualified to stand for public office and represent the people. No matter how many laudatory words 18th-century American republicans might put forth about voting and representation, consent of the governed, and majority rule, the temptation to vote for self-interest rather than the res publica, the general wellbeing of society, and to call forth the “spirit of party,” becomes irresistible. As has been noted by cynics, without additional protections “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what is for dinner.” Or, as the 19th-century New York lawyer and judge Gideon Tucker quipped, “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” Jefferson commenting in Notes on the State of Virginia on the structure of the Virginia Constitution of 1776, insisted “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” One of the great fallacies of modern political discourse is that we just need to get more people to vote to bring about a just society and to protect personal liberty.

Paine recognized the danger of party spirit and the need for a constitution to restrain the excesses of government, including of government by popular mandate. He decried the brutality of the French Revolution and noted, “[I]t is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, THUS FAR SHALT THOU GO AND NO FARTHER.” [All emphases in the original.] In addressing “party,” Paine was referring to self-interest, in this context the interest to gain and exercise unrestricted power. He opined that, “[h]ad a constitution been established [in 1793] … the violences that have since desolated France, and injured the character of the revolution, would … have been prevented.”

Instead, “a revolutionary government, a thing without either principle or authority, was substituted in its place; virtue and crime depended upon accident; and that which was patriotism one day became treason the next.” Lacking a constitution that protects inherent rights causes an “avidity to punish, [which] is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Paine’s insistence on a constitution as a check on government focused on the need for the type of protections found in the American system mainly in the Bill of Rights. A declaration of rights had to be more than a collection of meaningless slogans. It had to limit governmental action directly and expressly. Moreover, such limits were not a matter of political grace. “An enquiry into the origin of rights will demonstrate to us the rights are not gifts from one man to another, not from one class of men to another; for who is he who could be the first giver? Or by what principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving? A declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them. It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a detail of what the rights are; for every civil right has a natural right for its foundation, and it includes the principle of a reciprocal guarantee of those rights from man to man.” The Constitution likewise enumerates certain rights but expressly does not purport to provide an exhaustive list. As the Ninth Amendment declares, there are other rights retained by the people. It is disheartening to hear so often from law students that the Constitution “grants us rights,” an understanding of the nature of rights at odds with that of the people who drafted and adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

In the American system, the Constitution is not merely a collection of customs and traditions of political practice. It is a legal charter and has the essence of law enforceable, within limits, in courts of law. It is higher law in the sense that, in case of conflict between it and ordinary federal or state statutes, the Constitution prevails. But it addresses expressly only limited topics. Almost since the Constitution’s adoption, there has been debate about the authority of courts to look to other forms of higher law reflective of the principle of inherent rights to limit legislative authority, such as theories of natural law or natural rights. That debate continues, often in trying to define what the ambiguous term “liberty” means in the Constitution, for example, in relation to abortion, marriage, or gun ownership.

Another unresolved question is whether such higher law is superior to the Constitution itself. After all, the Constitution can be amended with the requisite supermajority votes prescribed in Article V of that charter. Suppose that a constitutional amendment were adopted that protected infanticide or that repealed the prohibition of slavery. Would infanticide or slavery, at that point constitutionally permissible, yet be consistent with natural law or natural rights? If the answer is “no,” it shows a recognition that certain rights inhere in each person as a matter of essence, not as a grant from a legislative majority or a constitutional supermajority. The religious skeptic in Paine might not allow him to go as clearly to the source of those rights as did the language of the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed with them by our Creator, but Paine would readily acknowledge the existence of such higher law.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The Declaration of Independence famously announced that all human beings not only are created equal, but are endowed by their Creator with certain “unalienable” rights. Among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These were, as the Declaration also held, self-evident Truths, even to someone like Thomas Jefferson, the document’s author, often described as irreligious, a Deist, or a lukewarm Christian. The phrasing was not unique to the Declaration, but differed slightly from the version by John Locke from whose writing this selection of “natural rights” was drawn. Locke had assigned “property” as the third category of natural rights, the most common formulation, also used, for example, in the Bill of Rights. Moreover, Locke had urged that property was the foundation of liberty and happiness, because of the property each had in his own person, and because government’s abusive power over property, such as through arbitrary taxation, threatened one’s personal liberty and happiness.

Humans derive their equality from being God’s creatures, king and commoner, master and slave, prince and pauper alike. This is essential Christian teaching. The Creator is not an impersonal force or one who has set in motion the laws of nature but otherwise sits back and watches that creation passively as if enjoying a model railroad layout. Rather, he has actively endowed each person with certain unalienable rights. Those rights exist for the purpose of each person’s flourishing as a human being. It is for that end also that governments are established, and on consideration of which the powers of rulers are inherently limited. There is a purpose for government and, by implication, for human law, all directed by the Creator.

There is, then, a normative test for all acts of government. Such acts must be directed only to this purpose and must not violate one’s sacred rights which are beyond the authority of others to transgress. Governmental legitimacy depends on conforming to those Truths. This constitutes the very basis of the social compact, the construct by which, through the consent of the governed, political society was established in the minds of Americans in the late 18th century.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase expressed these principles in 1798 in Calder v. Bull, about the constitutionality of a Connecticut law.

There are certain vital principles in our free Republican governments, which will determine and over-rule an apparent and flagrant abuse of legislative power; as to authorize manifest injustice by positive law; or to take away that security for personal liberty, or private property, for the protection whereof the government was established. An ACT of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority.”

Chase’s distinction between an act of government and a law defines an inherent quality in the latter. It is not enough that a particular statute was adopted by a properly constituted governmental entity in accordance with prescribed procedure. The statute’s substance must meet the standard of a “good” law. Government can bind people to obedience to its directives in two ways. One is through the law’s moral legitimacy, in that it promotes human flourishing and does not conflict with those natural rights. The other is through sheer power of enforcement. The former is stable. The latter is the path to suffering, discontent, and revolution, as set out in the Declaration’s list of grievances against King George.

The natural rights framework of external ethical limits on law builds on a long Western tradition of a universal higher moral law that obligates human lawmakers. Norms for judging a human law must exist outside the structure of that human law itself. The older tradition, going back to ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, conceptualized an order based on law, within which physical and metaphysical forces operated predictably and constantly. Laws imply a lawmaker. As a result, expositors of this approach always assumed a connection between natural law and some divine or morally perfect eternal existence.

There is, however, a difference, in that natural rights metaphysics focuses not on a classic universal order of creation of which humans and the moral laws to which they respond through their reason are a part. Rather, natural rights are inherent in the sovereignty of personhood of each adult derived from existence in a hypothesized state of nature. Some of those natural rights are surrendered as individuals choose to leave that state of nature and join a social compact to form a political society. Others, among them the rights listed in the Declaration, are retained even upon entry into political society.

In the version of John Locke and subsequent expositors of Lockean political philosophy, the decision to enter into such a social compact is made out of rational self-interest to gain better protection of one’s property in person and estate. The decision is made by free will consenting to be governed. Although Plato had written much earlier about government formed by such consent, the concept was insignificant in his work on the best government. It was the influence of the Renaissance and the secular ramifications of the Protestant Reformation that shifted the focus from humans as part of a universal order governed by divine reason and intelligible through our reason, to humans at the center of everything and controlling their destiny through their wills. The philosophic shift to a focus on rational self-interest as the ethical foundation of the state matured in the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively.

Yet even as the metaphysical cosmology of a divinely-directed order was challenged, there remained a significant problem. Where do these rights originate? Why do humans have rights at all, while horses, rhubarb, and iron ore did not? Why are some rights “unalienable”? Which rights? Some social contract theorists veered close to severing the entire matter from its ancient connection to divine morality. Thomas Hobbes’s version of the social contract laid out in Leviathan, a work best considered as an apologia of rational totalitarianism and glorification of the absolute State, is a prime example. The German philosopher Samuel Pufendorf, writing in the late 17th century, studied Hobbes. He was less anticlerical and less militant than Hobbes, but still deified the State by establishing it as a “moral person” charged with the ordering of rights and duties. His work became a source of legitimacy for European “enlightened despots” in the 18th century.

But old concepts die hard, especially if they reflect crucial foundational considerations. Locke quite overtly connected his theory of rights to God. Near the beginning of The Second Treatise of Government, Locke defined man’s liberty in his state of nature as governed by a law of nature that none may harm another “in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Why not? Because “men being the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker—all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business—they are his property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not another’s pleasure;…” Because of that essential equality, “there cannot be supposed any such subordination that may authorize us to destroy one another.” Neither may anyone, “unless it be to do justice to an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb or goods of another.”

The connection to God as Creator is as fundamental to the existence of inherent, natural rights in humans and the correlative duties owed to others as it is to the existence of a universal moral order within which humans live and which is the source of their duties and rights. Moreover, recognizing this relationship and the existence and unalienability of these basic rights is an exercise of reason itself. Hence, these are self-evident Truths to any rational being and need no further proof for Locke, Jefferson, or the Americans of the Founding Era more generally.

There are problems with this reasoning. It depends on assumptions that some may not share, such as a belief in the existence of God. Some may scoff at the idea of a pre-political “state of nature” as either an anthropological fact or even an appropriate political construct. Less intellectually rigorous individuals may get lost by its hyper-rationalism.

Certainly, there has been no shortage of critics. In Candide, the French philosopher and satiric writer Voltaire mocked the Enlightenment’s faith in reason and the propensity of his academic contemporaries to construct idealized systems for the progress of humanity based on those writers’ conception of self-evident truths in turn based on reason. The Scottish parliamentarian Edmund Burke, representing the views of many conservatives, reacted against the version of natural rights in the French Declaration of Rights as revolutionary and as delusional about the “monstrous fiction” of equality when viewed thorough the experience of “men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life.”

Liberal utilitarians reacted against the lack of concreteness of the doctrine. The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham derided it as “nonsense on stilts.” He described such rights as ambiguous and not empirically verifiable. He asserted that rights can only come from human law, not from “imaginary” natural law. Thus, to call “liberty” and such concepts natural “rights” was a perversion of language to Bentham. The idea that humans might possess rights beyond the control of human law was anarchic and directed “to excite and keep up a spirit of resistance to all laws—-a spirit of insurrection against all governments.”

Romanticism in the 19th century and its resultant European nationalism, especially in Germany, turned away from the Enlightenment’s optimistic universalism and refocused rights and law through a historical lens, the peculiar history and ancient customs of each national community. The Anglo-American movement of legal positivism taught that rights were the result of human law, and that the only criterion for law was that it was the command of a political sovereign. Thomas Hobbes would have approved. The Progressives of the 20th century reduced the notion of law to utilitarian legislation or administrative regulation, and characterized rights as whatever such legislation or regulation permitted. Formerly, such grants would have been described as “privileges.”

The current approach continues to retreat from the Founders’ self-evident Truths about the relationship among humans, their Creator, and their unalienable rights. All over the Western World, there is a trend away from the traditionally dominant view of God directly involved in human flourishing. The deification of the State continues.  With a few unorthodox exceptions, rights today are not viewed as something with which each individual is inherently endowed. Rather, rights increasingly are claimed to belong to certain groups, with a manichaean division of humanity into oppressors and victims, which reflects the Marxist origins of the approach. Unlike the economic classification of traditional Marxism, today’s groups are defined by characteristics of physical or psychological identity.

Rights today are those activities which the community or some elected or merely appointed official is willing to let people undertake. Rights fundamental to human vitality as social creatures, such as the right to interpersonal association and the liberty of moving about, are curtailed or prohibited by stoking fear and panic over contrived emergencies earlier generations would have scoffed at. At best, today we exercise rights at the sufferance of a majority of the community. We have none inherently, because everything is based on human will and consent. Today’s human rights declarations are simply lists promulgated by functionaries of, for example, the United Nations. The drafters of its Declaration of Human Rights consciously refused to include Jeffersonian language about the nature and source of rights in the document. One might be excused for being unimpressed by such lists overseen by a council composed of China, Cuba, Eritrea, and other habitual violators of essential human rights. What one human lawmaker can legitimately grant, a subsequent one can legitimately rescind. Before their War of Independence, Americans pointed to the Magna Carta of 1215 as a source of their ancient rights which the British government was said to be violating. But that tactic fell out of favor when it was discovered that the document repeatedly said that the king was “granting” those rights, not that people possessed them inherently.

Finally, there are today no Truths with a capital “T,” self-evident or otherwise, except, perhaps, an unassailable Truth that there are no Truths. In the past, skeptics claimed that our minds and reason are not sufficiently incisive to discern such Truths, and that, therefore, the best we can humbly do is to make utilitarian decisions on what is perceptible to us and appears to be the best result for our society at the time. These are truths with a small “t,” which can claim no inherent superiority over another society’s truths.

Today, following radical “critical studies” theory, “truth” is deemed a narrative imposed by oppressors to perpetuate power relations. In short, there simply is no Truth. Everyone can create his or her own truth. At the same time, in an ironic twist, no one (at least not those denounced as oppressors) may disagree or may challenge another’s truth, no matter how absurd such “truth” might appear to an observer. Not only may one not say that the emperor has no clothes. One must profess that the emperor is truly wearing clothes if he identifies his naked body as clothed. Who can really know? There is no “right” answer, because there is no objective reality. Plato weeps.

The result of such extreme subjectivism is the chaos it creates in society. To achieve a fulfilled life that balances both parts of human nature, the unique aspects which shape each individual and the character of humans as social creatures, people seek order. That is why revolutions always end, and Maoist plans for “permanent revolution” are merely dreams, albeit nightmarish ones. But when there is no inherent right or wrong, just competing random perceptions with no hope of shared objective reality, order comes about through the unrestrained exercise of power.

However, no government claims to act simply on the basis of raw power. The reason is that humans also have an innate attraction to ethics, although the extent of such innate moral sentiments has long been a topic of debate. Therefore, an ethical basis for government is quickly put forth, a justification for the duty to obey society’s rules. In the past, the ruler’s legitimacy might simply have been based on a claim that he is the embodiment of a divine entity, as was the case in many non-Western cultures. Today, “oppression theory” seeks to vest political legitimacy in the actions of those or which benefit those who are anointed the oppressed and to divest it from those stigmatized as the oppressors.

The contribution of Western political philosophy has been to desanctify the ruler, first by bringing him down to the rest of the community within a broader order governed by a universal moral law created and administered by God. The price for his rule was that he must not transgress against that moral law, which sought to protect the community from arbitrary exercises of power contrary to human flourishing. Though the conceptual structure later was secularized and redefined on the basis of rule by popular consent, the ruler still must not transgress against certain individual rights essential to humans and their flourishing. Those rights, too, are universal, and arise out of the universal moral law created by God.

The very longevity of such basic assumptions about the relationship among individuals, their rights, the rulers, the moral law, and God attests to their conformity with human nature and their connection to human flourishing. That longevity is evidence of their Truth. Indeed, it may be said, perhaps with some embellishment, that such Truths are self-evident. The words of the Declaration of Independence are expressions of optimism and hope. They will prove to be more significant and will outlast the current depressing fads of sanctifying or demonizing persons or actions based on arbitrary group identity, decoupling law and political action from ethical standards founded in a higher order, and rejecting the existence of an objective reality.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett
First page of Thomas Paine's pamphlet, The American Crisis, first edition, 1776.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Thomas Paine, in The American Crisis, December 19, 1776, Pamphlet 1, in his speech on “These are the times that try men’s souls” – not quitting in their fight for independence, writing how tyranny is not easily conquered, “Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but “to bind us in all cases whatsoever.”

The same principles that breathed life into Thomas Paine’s resistance to tyranny and justified the American Revolution also formed the basis of the American sense of justice in foreign policy after 1776. The American founders believed that the guides derived from the principles of the Declaration of Independence would better enable them to formulate policies that would satisfy the demands of interest and justice – that is, that would do justice to our own citizens by securing their rights, but would also do justice to foreign people by respecting their independence. In essays #17 and #18 we saw that, according to the principles of the American Founding, the American people have a right to domestic sovereignty and political independence; and because government has a moral obligation to secure the rights of its citizens, the government of the United States has a duty to preserve the nation’s political independence. These same principles provided further guides that would help American statesmen do a better job of securing justice for our nation and doing justice to others as well.

American statesmen believed, first of all, that when possible, peaceful means to resolve conflicts with other nations should be preferred. The founders practiced the doctrine of “peaceful appeals when possible” in the American Revolution itself, by making every possible appeal to the King for a peaceful resolution to the conflict before resigning themselves to an appeal to heaven. The manner in which Americans came to declare the British to be not only a foreign people but enemies was a long process involving many attempts to reconcile differences peacefully. After the “long train of abuses” detailed in the list of grievances against the British, for example, the Declaration of Independence emphasized that “in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.” In 1775 the Continental Congress had issued the “Olive Branch Petition” to King George III in 1775 in a last effort to persuade him to come to his senses, stop further bloodshed, and prevent the escalation of hostilities.[1] The appeal to the King was unanswered, and so the Americans were forced to make the “Appeal to Heaven” through a resort to arms and, eventually, by declaring independence.

Second, Founding-era statesmen believed that the United States should respect the equal right of other nations to political independence as much as possible. The right to political independence, derived from the fundamental “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” is a universal right, not an exclusive right of the people of the United States. This right to political independence, therefore, also means that the United States should respect the political independence and domestic sovereignty of all other nations as much as our own security will permit. Just as we expect other nations to respect the independence and domestic sovereignty of the United States as much as their sense of security will allow, we are also obligated to respect the independence of all peoples and their right to consent to their own choice of government, laws, and policies as much as our own sense of security will allow. We see this axiom expressed very clearly in James Kent’s Commentaries on American Law in 1826:

Nations are equal in respect to each other. . . . [T]his perfect equality, and entire independence of all distinct states, is a fundamental principle of public law. It is a necessary consequence of this equality, that each nation has a right to govern itself as it may think proper, and no one nation is entitled to dictate a form of government, or religion, or a course of internal policy, to another.[2]

The American founders believed that by following these two fundamental principles – preferring peaceful measures and respecting the independence and sovereignty of other nations, as much as possible – the United States would avoid giving just cause for war to other nations. This end would also be promoted by performing our engagements, fulfilling treaty obligations, paying debts, and showing little or no favoritism toward particular nations.

We can see these basic principles of American foreign policy thought displayed in many symbolic images. For example, the Gadsden flags popular during the American Revolution portrayed a rattlesnake with the words “Don’t tread on me” on them. This signified America’s willingness, like the rattlesnake, to leave others alone when not threatened; but it also showed the willingness of the United States to strike powerfully and quickly when “meddled with.” This also reflects the claim in the Declaration of Independence that “we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

[1] Continental Congress, “The Last Address of the People of America to the King,” 5-8 July 1775.

[2] James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 1826.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Robert Brescia
George Washington, presided over the first Continental Congress; Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War; first President of the United States; painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1796.

 

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” —George Washington

“It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute.” —James Madison

“We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.” —Ronald Reagan

Introduction

Peace through strength (PTS) – this is a recurring theme throughout the history of our great nation. It’s as old as ancient civilizations such as China’s Sun Tzu (author of The Art of War), and as new as today. I’ve heard people assert that the United States should only increase its military capabilities if it is attacked somewhere in the world. Others say that we shouldn’t augment our defensive or offensive strengths unless we are attacked on our homeland. That’s a relatively shortsighted strategy – the world is way too small for that to be effective. While some believe that you should only focus on military strength upon being attacked, either on the world stage or on our own turf, it is too late at that time to assemble and employ a suitable riposte.

Enter the strategy of peace through strength. It has been supported by several of our Founding Fathers and our U.S. Presidents from 1789 to today. The basic premise of PTS is that if the United States builds a military capability so great, with an extraordinary over-match ratio to potential attackers, that no nation on earth would dare to attack us because they know it would bring their swift and complete destruction.

By virtue of our PTS strategy, peace in our homeland would be achieved and maintained. If one accepts such a premise, then the next logical question might be, “to what extent do we need to arm ourselves to be that deterrent that we seek?” That would entail a constant comparative exercise, accomplished by thinktanks and large consultancies who monitor the military capacities of world nations.

A second, related question could be, “does this strategy only include conventional armaments or would it also include nuclear?” A third question might also be, “have we any empirical evidence that a PTS strategy was or is successful?” I might add a fourth question, but it has no matter-of-fact answer and that would be, “would super-arming our nation constitute a temptation for present or future political leaders to use that power for much the same reason that President Clinton claimed during his impeachment – “because I could.”

Historical Tie-in of Peace Through Strength

PTS is sometimes confused or interleaved with RealPolitik. RealPolitik is the result of a collision between Enlightenment ideas that our Founders espoused and the fast development of nation-states in the second half of the 19th century. On the one hand, we had political leaders who espoused ideologies and liberal type policies while, on the other hand, countries began the empirical quests for more power and domination, seeking colonies to aggrandize their positions on the word stage.

RealPolitik is a result of that strategic conflict and it is occasionally very tempting to associate PTS within it. The next evolution of these ideas extended RealPolitik and PTS into political realism. This happened when world nations began practicing international relations to try and justify their actions. We saw two generally oppositional ideas emerge: 1) policy actions and international relations are primarily concerned with the extension and growth of power and, 2) policy actions and international relations are the manifestation of a desire for national survival.

Summary and Conclusion

While not a subtle hint or a visible charge by our Founding Fathers for us today, PTS captures the American spirit of wanting to be protected against the bad will and actions of other nations. However, the reality of politics and national priorities in our times is such that we may not have the luxury of arming ourselves to the teeth, not to mention continuously updating our military arsenals with the latest technologies. We have nondiscretionary social entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security that must be paid up front. We also have a massive national debt that our politicians can’t seem to get a hold of. American politicians seem to have difficulty fending off involvement in foreign struggles. Consider President Bush’s war waged in Iraq because of his desire to reestablish U.S. world leadership after September 11, 2001. One close adviser revealed that the thinking behind the war was to show: “We are able and willing to strike at someone. That sends a very powerful message.” Consider President Obama’s co-invasion as well with NATO of Libya in 2011 – the stated rationale was to support Libyan rebels but then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, “Publicly, ‘the fiction was maintained’ that the goal was limited to disabling Colonel Qaddafi’s command and control. Given that decapitation strikes against Qaddafi were employed early and often, there almost certainly was a decision by the civilian heads of government of the NATO coalition to “take him out” from the very beginning of the intervention.”

My own conclusion is that the Founding Fathers had a period-appropriate notion of PTS, contextually supportive of the big ideas behind it, and resplendent with hope and faith for future peace. There are other strengths, however, that the United States possesses and nurtures which are undeniably elements of national prowess. These include our homeland values of courage, benevolence, individualism, economic opportunity, and generosity. These and other American values continue to attract many to our shores. Along with military superiority, they make us strong and resilient. That’s a certain broadening of the word strength in the term peace through strength.

Bob Brescia, Ed.D. of Odessa is a Teacher of Record for Ector County Independent School District, and an adjunct professor for Wilmington University. He previously served as the Executive Director for The John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute and served as the Head of School for Saint Joseph Academy in Brownsville. He is a board member at Constituting America in Dallas, a member of the Odessa Information & Discussion Group, and an Advisory Board member for Odessa’s Southwest Heritage Credit Union. He is the former chairman of Basin PBS television and the American Red Cross of the Permian Basin and former president of Rotary International – Greater Odessa. He is also a monthly columnist for the American Society for Public Administration in Washington, DC. Brescia has twenty-seven years of military service as a highly decorated Airborne Ranger Cavalry soldier, NCO, and commissioned officer in the United States Army. He received a Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude) in Civil Government from Norwich University, a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems and a Master of Arts in International Relations from Boston University – European Division, and a Doctor of Education in Executive Leadership with distinction from The George Washington University.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett
Declaration of Independence Signer James Wilson, a Framer of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Justice appointed by George Washington, and author of Lectures on Law.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The previous essay, #17, showed that, according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the people of the United States of America have a right, from the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” to establish their independence and thereby their national sovereignty. Those same principles, however, that establish the right of a people to independence and sovereignty, also impose a duty upon government to protect and maintain that independence and sovereignty once established. This essay will focus further on the principle of America’s national sovereignty upon preventing loss of independence to foreign or global governments acting as with binding authority in attempts to undermine the United States.

The duty of government to maintain national sovereignty and political independence arises from two arguments of the Declaration of Independence regarding the very nature and purpose of government. First, the Declaration of Independence asserts that it is the equal right of every people, sharing the same political principles, to form through consent a government laid on such foundations “as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.” The Declaration of Independence also asserts that “governments are established among men” for the purpose of protecting the natural rights of its citizens. These principles therefore impose a duty upon our government, because independence is necessary in order for us as a people to determine what must be done for national security, which is, in turn, necessary in order for our citizens to peacefully enjoy their natural rights in the pursuit of happiness. A nation must maintain its independence, therefore, free from the political control of any other nation, in order to remain master of its own fortunes. Only when it has such liberty can a nation freely and prudently determine for itself what is necessary for the preservation, security, and happiness of its own people.

The importance of maintaining political independence can also be seen in the writings of American Founder James Wilson, signer of the Declaration of Independence, framer of the United States Constitution, and one of the original Supreme Court Justices appointed by President Washington. In his important work Lectures on Law, Wilson clearly echoed the Declaration of Independence on the right and duty of maintaining independence:

The law of nations, properly so called, is the law of states and sovereigns, obligatory upon them in the same manner, and for the same reasons, as the law of nature is obligatory upon individuals . . . The same principles, which evince the right of a nation to do everything, which it lawfully may, for the preservation of itself and of its members, evince its right, also, to avoid and prevent, as much as it lawfully may, everything which would load it with injuries, or threaten it with danger.[1]

The right and duty of the United States to defend its national sovereignty was also articulated by American courts well into the nineteenth century. In Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon (1812), for example, Chief Justice Marshall wrote that “[t]he world [is] composed of distinct sovereignties, possessing equal rights and equal independence.” In light of those equal rights, Marshall continued:

The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it, deriving validity from an external source, would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction, and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction. All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories, must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source. [2]

In its larger sense, political independence especially means the liberty that a people or nation has by right to decide when to engage in war or continue in peace. George Washington understood well that to have full freedom regarding such decisions, the United States should have as little political connection with other nations as possible, by which they might have an undue influence in determining what actions we might – or must – take. This especially meant that we should avoid as much as possible engaging in permanent political or military alliances with other nations – a lesson the United States learned through the controversy over the French Treaties during the French Revolution in the 1790s. During this time, Americans were passionately divided over whether the treaties with the French (agreed to by Congress during the American Revolution) obliged the United States to assist France in its wars against other European nations during the French Revolution. The issue nearly embroiled the United States in the French Revolution against its will and contrary to the desire of Congress.

Reflecting on this challenge to American political independence in his Farewell Address, Washington wrote, “The Nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” The peace and sometimes the liberty of nations, Washington wrote, had frequently been the victims of such foreign attachments. This is especially so when “the policy and will of one country, are subjected to the policy and will of another” through permanent alliances. Washington understood, therefore, that having “command of one’s own fortunes” could hardly apply to a slave any more than to a people who “interweave [their] destiny with that of any part of Europe, [or] entangle [their] peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice.” Only when a people remains politically independent can it be free to select the means most conducive to its own safety and happiness; or, as Washington wrote, free to “choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.”[3]

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

[1] James Wilson, Lectures on Law, in Collected Works of James Wilson, edited by Kermit L. Hall and Mark David Hall, Volume I (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007), 529 and 536.

[2] Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon (7 Cranch 116 1812), The Founders’ Constitution, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_10s7.html (accessed January 5, 2010)(emphasis added).

[3] Washington, Farewell Address, 1796.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

 

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett
2nd Continental Congress Vote on Declaration of Independence by Robert Edge Pine

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder Actress Janine Turner

 

 

“That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate: Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.” – Thomas Jefferson in his pamphlet, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” July 1774, Williamsburg, Virginia.

This essay by Thomas Jefferson, written two years before Congress would declare American independence, contains many of the same arguments that would eventually justify the separation of Great Britain in 1776. Here Jefferson speaks of the natural rights of “a free people,” and calls the King a “servant” rather than the “proprietor” (or owner) of the people. As essay #9 of this study showed, Americans had been developing the idea that those who govern must do so for the good of the people, rather than use their subjects for their own good, and Jefferson’s argument in “A Summary View” echoes that sentiment.

It is also important to note that the quote from Thomas Jefferson’s “Summary View of the Rights of British America” reveals that the American Revolution involved more than the legal separation of the United States from Great Britain. It was at its core an ideological movement that was motivated by a political philosophy shared in common not only by the prominent movers of events but by Americans in general. This philosophy, commonly referred to as social compact theory, led to and supported the principles contained in the Declaration of Independence, which in turn expressed the principles upon which American national sovereignty and independence are justified.

The Declaration of Independence begins and ends with statements regarding the right of a people to establish and maintain their national sovereignty. The Declaration asserts that “one people” are entitled to assume a “separate” station from all others, and they derive this right – a right that is shared equally by all peoples – from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It begins with the claim that the “laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitle “one people,” when necessary, to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,” and “to assume among the powers of the earth” a “separate and equal station.” It ends with the claim that as “free and independent” states, the United States have dissolved “all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain,” and therefore “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do.”

The opening and closing paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, therefore, have this principle in common – for a people or nation to be “free and independent,” it must totally dissolve “all political connection between them” and other nations. The immediate purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to formalize our separation from Great Britain; but it also expressed a fundamental principle – to be truly free and independent (i.e., sovereign over its own affairs) the United States ought to have no political connection with any other nation.

Like individual liberty, national independence is necessary to allow one people, through their government, to decide for themselves how best to secure and exercise their individual liberty. The first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence therefore transposed the principle of individual liberty to apply to whole peoples and nations. Nations are described as having the right, by the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” to an equal station as “free and independent” states. And individuals are described as having the equal unalienable or natural right to liberty. The Declaration of Independence teaches us, therefore, that there is an inseparable connection between individual liberty and political independence – or what one might call “national liberty” – and it establishes this fundamental relationship in its very first paragraph.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Tom Hand
During the War of 1812, the American Flag over Fort McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to write what eventually became America’s National Anthem, the Star Spangled Banner. The flag hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

Citizenship goes well beyond being a citizen. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But it does not require citizens to do anything to maintain it. It confers a right but does not demand a responsibility.

Practicing good citizenship, doing things such as voting, serving your country, following the law of the land, and getting involved in your local community is that unstated, corresponding responsibility. It is that one overarching shared responsibility that gives people common ground and brings them and binds them together and makes cities and towns, rich and poor, men and women, and all races one nation.

So how does a nation inspire its citizens to voluntarily practice good citizenship? How does a nation get its people to do something that takes effort but is not required? What does it take to move citizens beyond “self” and towards the “whole,” beyond “me” and towards “us?”

It is really quite simple; it is love of country. It is human nature for one to treat better and care for more thoughtfully that which they love. It is no different with citizenship. For citizens of the United States, those that love the country best will serve it best. It was certainly the case during our founding era.

Amor patriae is Latin for love of country. It is a noble concept, but what does it mean and how is it manifested? Is it done by flying a flag from your front porch on Independence Day or singing a heartfelt Star Spangled Banner at a ballgame or cheering as America wins yet another gold medal at the Olympics? It is all that but so much more.

Men more eloquent than I have discussed it through the ages. Seneca, the great Roman philosopher, stated “Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.” Seneca is correct. In many facets of life, we justly love that which is ours, including and even especially, our country. This love of country is not determined by an individual’s wealth but runs deeper than that and transcends material property and wages.

Love of country requires an unselfishness that drives men to reach for a higher place and to love something greater than oneself as Katharine Lee Bates described in America the Beautiful.

O beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life!

Love of country amongst a people leads to a unity of purpose that is critical to a nation’s success. As George Washington noted in his Farewell Address, “The Unity of Government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main Pillar in the Edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home; your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty which you so highly prize.” Washington continues that we must be ever on our guard and “watching its preservation with jealous anxiety…and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our Country from the rest.”

Love of country is inspirational and creates pride deep within the soul for one’s homeland and those without this feeling are to be pitied. As Walter Scott lamented for such a man in The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself has said,

This is my own, my native land!

Love of country is a beautiful thing, but it can be a terrible beauty for it compels us forward down a path we may otherwise lack the courage to take as described in the sad Irish ballad The Patriot Game.

For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing.

It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,

And makes us all part of the Patriot Game.

Love of country can fade from the forefront of our minds and the United States, and its countless blessings, can be taken for granted. But sad is the man who would lose his country as Edward Everrett revealed in his short story The Man Without a Country. This poignant tale tells of Philip Nolan, a young American officer turned traitor who wishes to be rid of his country and is granted his wish.

Near the end of his life, Nolan, who has yearned for his wish to be reversed, scolds a young sailor for expressing disgust with the United States: “Remember boy, that behind all these men…behind officer and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country and that you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her boy as you would stand by your mother.”

Love of country was the single greatest influence upon our Founding Fathers as they formed our nation and our Constitution. But their love of country was not something they sought, it developed freely within each Patriot and love of country inspired each in his own way.

Love of country propelled George Rogers Clark down the Ohio to Kaskaskia and then across the frozen wilderness to capture Fort Sackville and Vincennes in 1779, securing the Ohio Valley for America.

Love of country led Daniel Morgan to gather a company of stalwart Virginia riflemen and lead them to Boston soon after the “shot heard round the world” was fired at Lexington and Concord and continue on to his memorable victory at Cowpens.

Love of country caused Nathanael Greene to leave his successful merchant business and Caty and the children and take up arms for a righteous cause and drive Cornwallis from Georgia and the Carolinas.

Love of country influenced John Adams, the Puritan Patriot from Boston, to forego his prosperous law practice and travel to Philadelphia and the First Continental Congress in 1774 to start the march towards nationhood, stating “Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I am with my country…You may depend upon it.”

And it was love of country that inspired George Washington, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies and arguably the man with the most to lose, to risk it all to lead a fledgling army in a war that seemed unwinnable. Later, when the nation he had helped bring forth was struggling under the Articles of Confederation, Washington again came to her aid to lead the Constitutional Convention and guide us as we learned how to govern in a Constitutional republic. The Indispensable Man did all this for love of country.

So why should love of country matter to us today? We must recognize that it birthed our country, it grew our country, and, without it, we could lose our country.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner
Two Treatises of Government by John Locke, first edition published in 1689, title page dated 1690.

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?” – Patrick Henry, in a speech delivered at St. Johns Church, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775

When and how should citizens confront abuses of power by their government?

This is a fundamental question that has shaped political discourse for centuries.

Patrick Henry, and the other colonial leaders who galvanized opposition to the predations of George III, drew upon English legal precedents and Enlightenment philosophy. They built their rebellion against tyrannical overreach on foundations laid by their English ancestors.

There has always been conflict between those who desire unbridled power and those they govern. Often this conflict was settled through force of arms. On June 15, 1215, it was settled by force of law.

Rebelling English nobles forced King John to sign a “Great Charter of Freedoms,” now known as the Magna Carta. The Charter became the basis for English Common Law and the laws of most English-speaking nations, particularly the United States.

While the Magna Carta focused on individual rights and the legal system (such as trial by jury), Clause 61 empowered citizens to rein in overreaching government. It created a Council of 25 barons to monitor and enforce King John’s compliance with the Magna Carta. This included controlling feudal payments to the Crown, and by implication how the Crown spent “public” funds and governed. Clause 61 included real sanctions: If John did not comply with the provisions of the Magna Carta, “the 25 barons were empowered to seize the King’s castles and lands until, in their judgement, amends had been made.

King John colluded with the Pope to undermine the Magna Carta, but his successors reissued it and it became a formal part of English law.

During the 13th through 15th centuries, Magna Carta was reconfirmed at least 32 times. The first item of parliamentary business was a public reading and reaffirmation of the Magna Carta.

The Stuart line of kings challenged the four-hundred-year Magna Carta balance of power to their peril. King Charles I asserted he would not be reined in by Parliament. This led to civil war and his beheading in 1649. During the post-Civil War Restoration, Charles II adopted a more passive approach to governing. However, James II ignored his elder brother’s compliance with Parliamentary restrictions which led to his being overthrown during the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688.

Parliamentary ascendancy, and ultimate permanent dominance under a “Constitutional Monarchy,” was buttressed by philosophical publications. These writings gave broader context to how power must be reined in and how it should be done under law.

In 1680, Henry Care published English Liberties. It established individual rights as bestowed at birth, not by government. Care formally asserts,

“each man having a fixed Fundamental Right born with him as to the Freedom of his Person and Property in his Estate, which he cannot be deprived of, but either by his consent, or some Crime for which the Law has Imposed such a Penalty as Forfeiture.”

He describes the balance of a reined-in government, “qualified Monarchy, where the King is vested with prerogatives sufficient to support Majesty; and restrained from power of doing himself and his people harm.”

Care supported his philosophical doctrine with a compendium of foundational political documents. He made the Magna Carta central to history and to the contemporary legitimacy of individual freedom and control of government overreach. English Liberties became very popular in British reform (Whig) circles and widely read among leaders in the American colonies.

Even more popular among colonial thinkers and activists was John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government published in 1689.

Locke’s Second Treatise describes the importance of a civilized society based on natural, God given, rights. It supports the social contract theory of the governed consenting to limited government in exchange for a secure and stable environment in which individual activity and commerce can thrive. It became the primary conceptual work defining traditional 18th and 19th Century Liberalism.

Locke’s Second Treatise was frequently cited in Colonial debates about George III’s taxes and other punitive measures that comprised the King’s overreach and over reaction to colonial freedom.

Locke describes the balance of power between an executive (or monarchy) which is a “Power always in being that must perpetually execute the law” and the legislature which is the “supreme power of the Common wealth…governments are charged by the consent of the individual, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them.”

Locke promotes the proposition that a full economic system could exist within the “state of nature.” Property predates the existence of government. Society should be dedicated to the protection of property. He expanded on Care’s “social contract” theory and explains how the “consent of the governed” may be withdrawn when power is abused, thus serving to rein-in government overreach.

The philosophy of Two Treatises is echoed throughout the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Bacon, Locke, and Newton – I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical & Moral sciences.”

The foundations of the Magna Carta, English Common Law, and the writings of Care and Locke birthed our nation. They guide and inspire citizen oversight and empowerment to this day.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

“Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom… to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – United States Constitution, Amendment 1

A key element in America’s quest for independence was the ire that certain colonists felt at being taxed without representation (an overly simplified view of decades of frustration at a variety of policies imposed by the British Crown on Colonial America without the consent of the citizens of the colonies). Part and parcel of this was the difficulty the citizens had in presenting those grievances to the crown (or parliament), and the perception that those who did voice concerns or opposition were singled out for punishment by the government.

So as the Constitution was being drafted, and further constraints were being placed on the power of government via the Bill of Rights, the founders included language in the First Amendment ensuring that citizens would retain a right to so petition the government when they were aggrieved—with a corresponding assurance found in the Fifth Amendment, that when such substantive petitioning is made, “due process” is accorded to the petitioner i.e., that a fair and just process is made available to the person or persons petitioning.

When most people consider this, they think about the right of individuals to advocate or otherwise speak their minds before legislators, i.e., to offer their opinions on legislation. But in an era in which policy is increasingly being delegated to the Executive Branch, it is important to examine how this right, or civic duty, is protected within the context of the “administrative” state.

When Congress passes a law, it is then up to the Executive Branch to interpret and enforce that law, to “administer” it, in other words, and thus the “administrative” state. The more vague that law might be (and sometimes not so vague), the greater leeway an agency has to interpret that law.

For example, Congress passes the Clean Water Act in 1972. In that law, they make it illegal to pollute a navigable water of the United States.  Because Congress failed to define words or phrases like “pollute” or “navigable” or “water of the United States,” they left it up to the Executive Branch to define them.

The right to petition then plays a singular role in this. The agency presents its proposal for how to define terms or, more broadly, how they plan on interpreting and enforcing any piece of legislation, and it then opens a process whereby the public can comment on their proposals.

This process is government by a law known as the “Administrative Procedure Act” (APA). The APA was passed by Congress in 1946 in order to standardize the petitioning/commenting process across the federal executive branch. Prior to that point, each agency had the discretion to create its own process, something that could make overly complicated the ability of citizens to exercise their right to petition for redress.

Now, with few exceptions, the process by which someone can “comment” on a “rulemaking” is the same regardless of whether someone is filing that comment with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or the Department of the Interior. A “rulemaking” is the standard term whereby an agency goes through the process or creating or amending the regulations that have been created out of congressional legislation. A “comment” is just that, the opinion filed by a person or group regarding that regulatory proposal.

At its most basic level, the process works this way: either Congress passes a new law, or amends a law, or the agency wants to make changes to existing policies, and they announce this in a daily publication called The Federal Register. They offer their proposal in something called a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” or, less frequently, an even earlier step called an “Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,” and tells the public how they can comment on those proposals.

Anyone can file a comment—and it has never been easier to do so.  Most agencies utilize an online portal called Regulations.Gov to both announce proposals and solicit for comments, and comments can be submitted online with a matter of clicks.

It is a system that the founding fathers would have enthusiastically applauded. Though many would have been horrified at the concentration of power in the Executive Branch, the idea that any citizen could, with the touch of a button, voice their substantive concern about a policy proposal would have heartened them at the same time. They just would have been concerned that not more people were aware of this.

As part of the APA, agencies are required to answer such “petitions” (when they are substantive) in the publication of their “final rule” i.e., the finalized regulatory policy—either demonstrating where they have made changes to the proposal in accordance with those substantive comments, or explaining why they didn’t make such changes. Failure to do so opens the regulation to court challenges, on the grounds that the new rule is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with the law.”

Even better, the APA doesn’t require that the citizenry wait until the agency makes a regulatory proposal in order to have changes to a rule made. Another aspect of the manifestation of the right to petition for the redress of grievances within the APA is the right to petition a regulatory agency to open up a rulemaking—again, with the agency being required to respond if they decide to not go through a new rulemaking process.

While the APA’s rulemaking process applies to nearly all agencies, agencies within the national security and defense spheres are generally recognized to be exempt, though some will engage in this “notice and comment” process when they have policy changes that they know will be controversial or otherwise of tremendous interest to the public.  Likewise, transactional decisionmaking and contracting are not open to this APA’s process (though citizens always have the right to comment on such issues with those agencies).

What is worth noting is that the deliberative process of the APA can be frustrating, especially to policymakers, and the citizenry needs to be on guard for when agencies attempt to sidestep the APA. Increasingly, agencies are turning to what they claim are quasi-rulemakings—smaller proceedings that these agencies claim are not subject to the full APA notice-and-comment process. These agencies create guidance documents and interpretation letters purporting to carry the full force of regulatory law, but aren’t subject to the full vetting that a rulemaking allows.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute refers to such activity as “regulatory dark matter”—and while in January of 2017 the President created an executive order to substantially rein in regulatory dark matter, the following administration undid that executive order almost immediately upon taking office in 2021.

Thankfully, Congress is becoming ever more aware of the problem of regulatory dark matter, and is working to hold the executive branch accountable.

In the end, given the size and scope of the modern administrative state in the U.S., the notice and comment process under the APA is of vital importance, and emblematic of the enduring importance of the right, or civic duty, to petition our government for a redress of grievances.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 


The New England Primer
was an educational book, first published in the colonies in the 1690s. For over 100 years, it was used by parents to teach their children to read. Even more than that, the selections of readings – which included plays and poetry – in the primer were meant to give lessons that taught children the importance of morality and virtue. The book was especially popular in New England colonies, where Americans had been enjoying a large degree of political independence from Great Britain and personal freedom in their individual lives. The importance of civic virtue in a republic, as taught by the lessons in the primer, were described by several prominent New Englanders at the time of the American Founding.

Samuel Williams, a professor at Harvard College, wrote about the importance of education in The Natural and Civil History of Vermont in 1794. “Among the customs which are universal among the people, in all parts of the state,” Williams wrote, “one that seems worthy of remark, is, the attention that is paid to the education of children.”[1] Williams continued:

“The aim of the parent, is not so much to have his children acquainted with the liberal arts and sciences; but to have them all taught to read with ease and propriety; to write a plain and legible hand; and to have them acquainted with the rules of arithmetic, so far as shall be necessary to carry on any of the most common and necessary occupations of life.”

In addition to be useful in their daily lives, this education was also meant to shape them into being good citizens.

“All the children are trained up to this kind of knowledge: They are accustomed from their earliest years to read the Holy Scriptures, the periodical publications, newspapers, and political pamphlets; to form some general acquaintance with the laws of their country, the proceedings of the courts of justice, of the general assembly of the state, and of the Congress, &c. Such a kind of education is common and universal in every part of the state.”

This education produces “plain common good sense” as well as “virtue, utility, freedom, and public happiness,” all of which are especially important among citizens in a free society. This view of the purpose of education was also expressed by an anonymous author in a Boston essay titled The Worcester Speculator No. VI in 1787. “If America would flourish as a republic,” he wrote, “she need only attend to the education of her youth. Learning is the palladium of her rights—as this flourishes her greatness will increase.”[2] The author continued:

“[I]n a republican government, learning ought to be universally diffused. Here every citizen has an equal right of election to the chief offices of state. … [E]very one, whether in office or not, ought to become acquainted with the principles of

civil liberty, the constitution of his country, and the rights of mankind in general. Where learning prevails in a community, liberality of sentiment, and zeal for the public good, are the grand characteristics of the people.”

As proven by the effectiveness of The New England Primer, the Worcester Speculator especially emphasized the usefulness of literature for inculcating virtue and morality in students. “If we would maintain our dear bought rights inviolate,” he wrote, “let us diffuse the spirit of literature: Then will self-interest, the governing principle of a savage heart, expand and be transferred into patriotism: Then will each member of the community consider himself as belonging to one common family, whose happiness he will ever be zealous to promote.”

Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania also wrote about the purpose of education in ways very similar to that of New England. In his A Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools and the Diffusion of Knowledge in Pennsylvania, Rush described the “influence and advantages of learning upon mankind.”[3]

I. It is friendly to religion, inasmuch as it assists in removing prejudice, superstition, and enthusiasm, in promoting just notions of the Deity, and in enlarging our knowledge of his works.

II. It is favorable to liberty. A free government can only exist in an equal diffusion of literature. Without learning, men become savages or barbarians, and where learning is confined to a fewpeople, we always find monarchy, aristocracy, and slavery.

III. It promotes just ideas of laws and government.

Rush was particularly concerned with the effect education – especially through the teaching of history – should have on the citizen in a free republic. “He must watch for the state as if its liberties depended upon his vigilance alone,” Rush wrote, “but he must do this in such a manner as not to defraud his creditors or neglect his family.” Rush continued:

“He must love private life, but he must decline no station, however public or responsible it may be, when called to it by the suffrages of his fellow citizens. … He must love character and have a due sense of injuries, but he must be taught to appeal only to the laws of the state, to defend the one and punish the other. He must love family honor, but he must be taught that neither the rank nor antiquity of his ancestors can command respect without personal merit. … He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.”

The lessons in morality and civic virtue these authors found most important in a free republic were promoted well by the fundamental education students received through The New England Primer well into the eighteenth century.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

[1] Samuel Williams, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1794, available at https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/lutz-american-political-writing-during-the-founding-era-1760-1805-vol-2.

[2] The Worcester Speculator, No. VI, 1787, available at https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/lutz-american-political-writing-during-the-founding-era-1760-1805-vol-1.

[3] Benjamin Rush, A Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools and the Diffusion of Knowledge in Pennsylvania, 1786, available at https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/lutz-american-political-writing-during-the-founding-era-1760-1805-vol-1.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
John Adams, author of “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” and principal drafter, Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

The direct and essential connection among education, civic virtue, and good republican government was a self-evident truth for many late-18th-century American political and religious leaders. There was far less agreement, however, as to what exactly constituted virtue, to what extent “the people” were capable of exercising civic virtue, and if one could count on virtue to restrain political leaders, either because the leaders themselves would possess a sufficient measure or because the people would use theirs to keep the leaders in check. During the debates in 1787 and 1788 over the adoption of the new federal constitution, civic, or public, virtue was a frequent topic of discussion. To opponents of the proposed government, it was axiomatic that, however virtuous the people might be, they would not be able to control corrupt factional leaders in a far-away central government. Supporters, in turn, scaled heights of flattering rhetoric to extol the strength of republican virtue among the American people.

Virtue might be the coin of the realm for good government in the minds of American republicans of the time, but there was no consensus about its proper alloy. To New Englanders, such as Adams, their Puritan heritage saw virtue in private frugality and sobriety, and public virtue in service and sacrifice for the common good. Moreover, public virtue necessarily arose from private virtue. “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics,” John Adams wrote to the historian Mercy Otis Warren in April, 1776. Moreover, republican government was essential to “true Liberty.”

However, man, being fallen, lacked virtue by nature. Virtue had to be taught, but that was a difficult project. Education, though necessary, was not sufficient. Coercion must always be kept near at hand. As John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in October, 1787, “I have long been settled in my own opinion that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Interest, will ever govern nations or Parties, against their vanity, their Pride, their Resentment, or Revenge, or their Avarice, or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.”

It should be noted that Adams, like many others of the founding generation of American republicans, distrusted pure democracy. In a letter in April, 1814, to the Southern agrarian philosopher John Taylor of Caroline, he wrote, echoing classical political thought,

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”

There were limits to the degree to which all people could be trained to civic virtue, limits which inhered in man’s corruption through the passions and in the frailty of the human mind to control them.

For Southern agrarian republicans, private virtue, even if successfully inculcated in the people, could not guarantee civic virtue in the halls of government. Adams’s assertion, “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics,” might well be true as far as it went. However, as John Taylor of Caroline wrote, “By expecting publick good from private virtue, we expose ourselves to publick evils from private vices.” The New England solution of using the strong hand of an intrusive government to control private vices was unpalatable to the Southern agrarian class. Instead, they agreed with James Madison in The Federalist No. 51, that there was a “need for auxiliary precautions.”

Those auxiliary precautions included a structure of divided powers where “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Good republican government could be fostered by relying not on the public virtue of either political leaders or a civically militant people, but on embracing the reality of conniving and power-hungry politicians whose mutual jealousies would check each other. In similar manner, political factions, that bane of good republican government, being driven by self-interest, would jockey for influence in constantly changing coalitions. Among factions, none would become entrenched, as there were no permanent allies or enemies, only permanent interests, to borrow from Lord Palmerston’s policy description of 19th-century British international relations.

National republicans, such as Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, rejected a fundamental premise that underlay other conceptions of civic virtue. Rather than treat virtue and passions or self-interest as antithetical, and fusing public virtue to private virtue, national republicans simply redefined that relationship. Some private vices were rooted in self-interest, such as the desire for fame, honor, or even wealth, but they could be harnessed to produce great public benefit and, therefore, should be considered civic virtues. Government could create incentives for persons to engage in such “good” passions to produce great public benefit.

Nor were all members of the American elite without doubt about the scope of virtue among the American people or about their capacity to attain a sufficient measure of it. John Adams, as prolific a writer on the connection between virtue and good republican government as lived at the time, warned in a letter in June, 1776,

“The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.—They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies.”

Whatever their differences about the meaning of virtue and about the capacity of private virtue to produce sufficient public virtue, the expositors of virtue politics generally agreed with Aristotle that education and training in private virtue were necessary to its practice. For most of them, only the broad distribution of land ownership rivaled virtue in promoting and protecting liberty and republican government. Thus, education to virtue was an essential task, even if the outcome was uncertain and incomplete. Education had to be grounded in religion and morality, as those were the sources of virtue. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, perhaps the greatest peacetime achievement of the Confederation Congress, codified this premise:

“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

President George Washington in his lengthy Farewell Address, published in September, 1796, gave a succinct rhetorical overview of the connection among religion, morality, virtue, and good republican government:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality     are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens….And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government….

Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.”

There was cause for optimism, as the American population had a high rate of literacy compared to that even of European countries. “Ours are the only farmers who can read Homer,” a self-satisfied Thomas Jefferson boasted in a letter to St. John de Crèvecoeur in January, 1787. Jefferson is well-known for his efforts in the founding of the University of Virginia in 1819, for the design of which he also developed architectural plans. His educational activism was not limited to creating a university. As early as 1785, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson laid out a plan to educate younger children of both sexes for three years at public expense, with higher grades open to the boys of parents who could afford the tuition and to a limited number of other boys selected on the basis of their intellectual capabilities. In Jefferson’s somewhat indelicate language to modern ears, “By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expence, so far as the grammar schools go.” His ambitious plan was not realized in any form in Virginia until after the Civil War.

Along with the general goals of imparting knowledge for its own sake and for practical pursuits, Jefferson saw education as a necessary process for republican government. Perhaps his best-known aphorism regarding the importance of education appeared in a letter he wrote to Colonel Charles Yancey in January, 1816, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” The antidote to such a doomed expectation was education. “The qualifications for self government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training,” Jefferson wrote to Edward Everett in March, 1824.

Other famous Americans echoed these sentiments. As supposedly worldly and skeptical as he was, Benjamin Franklin nevertheless advised, “A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district—all studied and appreciated as they merit—are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.” James Madison declared that the Constitution required “sufficient virtue among men for self-government.” Otherwise, “nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.” The old Son of Liberty, Samuel Adams, opined in a letter to James Warren in 1779, “If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great Security.”

None of the founding generation appear as convinced of the importance of education and religion to virtue and of virtue to liberty preserved through republican government as Samuel’s cousin John Adams. Despite his occasional doubts and pessimism, Adams was a staunch virtue republican. His writings are filled with quotable passages about the subject. A few will give the essence of his thoughts. Perhaps his best known, expressed in a letter in October, 1798, to officers in the Massachusetts militia, is “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This sentiment, embraced the then-common belief that the American experiment in self-government, more than aristocratic or monarchic systems, relied on virtue widely diffused among the general population, or at least among those who would have the privilege to vote or to hold public office.

In the same letter in 1776 in which Adams expressed concern about the state of virtue among his fellow Americans, he also wrote,

“Statesmen my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.”

To complete the causal chain, one may point to his 1765 Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, where he asserted, “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.”

These quotations are not merely a string of disjointed musings. The writers put practical efforts behind their firm and constant beliefs, beliefs shared by Americans generally. Jefferson’s contributions to education have already been noted. Adams was the principal drafter of the historically important Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. That charter declared that “the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality ….” Article V formally encouraged the development of publicly-funded primary and grammar (secondary) schools. To justify that effort, the section began, “WISDOM and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, [are] necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties ….”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer
United States Constitution showing the first page with Article I, with the Bill of Rights and American Flag

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Since the earliest days of the American founding, a bedrock principle of our republic has been the concept that government is an essential element in protecting and preserving individual rights. In the Declaration of Independence, principal author Thomas Jefferson wrote, “to secure… rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Building on this precept, in Federalist 51, James Madison talked about the tension between the necessity of government in protecting individual rights, but the need for the governed to work to constrain the powers of government:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Our republic is built on a simple, yet powerful, concept: we are endowed by our creator with certain “unalienable” rights.  We cede small measures of those rights to government in the form of powers, in order for the full-measure of our rights to be protected.

This leads to a fundamental axiom: whenever government is enlarged, individual rights are diminished. You cannot reconcile liberty with anti-liberty.

This gives us not only the basic structure of the federal constitution, but most state-based constitutions as well. The Articles of the United States Constitution lay out the powers of government—i.e., what measure of rights we have ceded to the government in the form of powers. The first eight amendments within the Bill of Rights represent further constraints on those powers in order to protect individual rights.

But then the last two amendments in the Bill of Rights, Amendments 9 and 10, make further declarations regarding the balancing of rights versus the powers of government.

The Ninth Amendment makes it clear that the rights of citizens aren’t limited to what is “enumerated” in the Bill of Rights, that their rights are essentially infinite, while the Tenth Amendment underscores this idea that the powers of government are created by the people giving up some measure of their rights—and anything not “delegated” to government is “reserved” by the people.

Further, while a New Deal-era Supreme Court dismissed limitations on federal power in cases like US v. Darby, even that court had to admit that when it comes to the Tenth Amendment, it states, “a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.” US v. Darby, 312 US 100, 124 (1941)

This tension underscores the fundamental beauty of our system—we are not a pure democracy (something our founders were rightly skeptical of).  As the saying goes, “democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for supper.”

We recognize that while the people can vote to make particular laws, those laws can only exist within the powers the people have delegated to government and they cannot be violative of the rights retained by the people. So while one group of people, even a majority of the people, might demand that government impose restrictions on certain kinds of unpopular speech, the First Amendment makes it clear that such restrictions would be unconstitutional (and one can say that the entire purpose of the First Amendment is to protect “unpopular” speech. “Popular” speech requires no such protection!).

How, then, do we assess this balance between the rights of people and the powers of government?

It starts with a basic inquiry.  All “just” law is born out of the intersection of the exercise of individual rights. One’s right to wave their hands around in a wild interpretative dance (the right to free expression) is limited the moment those hands cross the bridge of someone else’s nose, and violate their right to be secure in their person, free from harm. And when those rights come into conflict, it is the party that is more-aggrieved that the law is supposed to protect (and the law is supposed be more weighted on behalf of those less-able to advocate for themselves).

This presents our society with the need for “balancing tests” to determine where that line ought to be drawn: how is the right to free speech balanced against someone’s right to now be lied about (a harm to their reputation)? Or how is someone’s right not to be harmed by government’s force balanced against the rights of people in a community to not be harmed by that person’s violent actions?

When the public, either through legislation or via the courts, calls for a new law, a new balancing test, the Supreme Court has made it clear that such laws, such decisions, need to be made in a way to be the “least restrictive” way of achieving the government’s goals. This way the rights of the individual are still protected to the maximum extent possible.

While there remains considerable debate as to whether such balancing tests are a good thing, or whether there is harm in the long run from a series of ad hoc inquiries into that balance, in the end it is important to remember that the Constitution sets out essential bedrock principles in that regard. All that is not surrendered is retained, and we should remain vigilant each and every time we look to enlarge the power of government.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett
Signing of the Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull, displayed in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

August 1, 1776, Samuel Adams said in his Speech on American Independence,

“When the law is the will of the people, it will be uniform and coherent: but fluctuation, contradiction, and inconsistency of councils must be expected under those governments where every revolution in the ministry of a court produces one in the state. Such being the folly and pride of all ministers, that they ever pursue measures directly opposite to those of their predecessors…We shall neither be exposed to the necessary convulsions of elective monarchies, nor to the want of wisdom, fortitude, and virtue, to which hereditary succession is liable. In your hands it will be to perpetuate a prudent, active and just legislature, and which will never expire until you yourselves lose the virtues which give it existence…Our Union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.”

These words of Samuel Adams justifying the pursuit of American independence represent a view among patriots in Boston that rejected hereditary monarchy in favor of representative or republican government. Adams founded his arguments upon a belief that the legitimate purposes and limitations of civil government could be discerned from an understanding of the laws of nature and natural rights. This view of government, however, had been developing and spreading in the public mind – especially in Boston – for well over a decade prior to the Declaration of Independence.

Bostonians heard these arguments with growing frequency in sermons at their places of worship after the British began to impose oppressive taxes and regulations in the 1760s. Abraham Williams, for example, a Congregationalist pastor in Sandwich, Massachusetts, incorporated a teaching on the laws of nature in his Election Sermon in 1762.[1] Mankind needs government, Williams preached, in order to secure the blessings that God has bestowed upon them. “[W]hen Men enter into civil Societies, and agree upon rational Forms of Government,” Williams said, “they act right, conformable to the Will of God, by the Concurrence of whose Providence, Rulers are appointed…The End and Design of civil Society and Government, from this View of its Origin, must be to secure the Rights and Properties of its Members, and promote their Welfare.” Williams taught that rulers, therefore, must do good, not harm to their subjects. “ In all Governments, Magistrates are God’s Ministers, designed for Good to the People. The End of their Institution, is to be Instruments of Divine Providence, to secure and promote the Happiness of Society.”

The truth of this view, Williams argued, was conclusively demonstrated by the laws of nature. “The Law of Nature (or, those Rules of Behaviour, which the Nature God has given Men, the Relations they bear to one another, and the Circumstances they are placed in, render fit and necessary to the Welfare of Mankind),” Williams continued, “is the Law and Will of the God of Nature, which all Men are obliged to obey.”

Pastor John Tucker of Newbury, Massachusetts, continued to build on this argument in an election sermon in 1771, adding that according to the Laws of Nature, governors rule by the consent of the people. “All men are naturally in a state of freedom,” said Tucker, “and have an equal claim to liberty. No one, by nature, nor by any special grant from the great Lord of all, has any authority over another. All right therefore in any to rule over others, must originate from those they rule over, and be granted by them.” The idea of rule by consent through a social compact also implied that are just limits to what government may do, and also obligations that government must perform.

“Whatever authority therefore the supreme power has, to make laws, to appoint officers, etc. for the regulation and government of the state, being an authority derived from the community, and granted by them,” Tucker concluded, “can be justly exercised, only within certain limits, and to a certain extent, according to agreement.”

In his 1776 sermon titled “On the Right to Rebel against Governors” – another election day sermon in Boston – Samuel West argued that, according to the Laws of Nature, rulers who act contrary to God’s will that the rights of the people be secured from harm may be – and in fact should be – justly resisted and opposed by citizens. “[T]yranny and arbitrary power are utterly inconsistent with and subversive of the very end and design of civil government,” West preached, “and directly contrary to natural law, which is the true foundation of civil government and all politic law. West continued:

Consequently, the authority of a tyrant is of itself null and void; for as no man can have a right to act contrary to the law of nature, it is impossible that any individual, or even the greatest number of men, can confer a right upon another of which they themselves are not possessed; i.e., no body of men can justly and lawfully authorize any person to tyrannize over and enslave his fellow-creatures, or do anything contrary to equity and goodness. As magistrates have no authority but what they derive from the people, whenever they act contrary to the public good, and pursue measures destructive of the peace and safety of the community, they forfeit their right to govern the people.”

West’s argument that rulers who act without consent and contrary to the good of society are illegitimate aligns with many of the same arguments Samuel Adams made in his speech on independence. Adams’ message was widely agreed to in part because it was an argument Bostonians had been hearing and working toward putting into practice for well over a decade. It was a view that would be carried beyond Massachusetts as Americans in other states fought to win an then maintain American independence from British rule.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

[1] This and the following sermons are available from https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/lutz-american-political-writing-during-the-founding-era-1760-1805-vol-1.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett
Benjamin Franklin’s editorial cartoon entitled “Join or Die” depicting protection and unity of the colonies, May 9, 1754, Pennsylvania Gazette

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

One of the purposes of the Constitution of the United States, according to its Preamble, is “to form a more perfect Union.” It was a long road, however, for that Union to be more perfectly established as under the Constitution in 1787. Before the Constitution, the thirteen original states had agreed to a “firm league of friendship” through a compact known as the “articles of Confederation and perpetual Union.”

In July of 1776, the thirteen states engaged in an act of unity by unanimously declaring themselves “free and independent states” no longer under the political authority of Great Britain. Prior to that, in 1774, the thirteen American colonies took the first official steps toward becoming a formal Union through the Articles of Association, which established the Continental Congress and put them on the path to independence.

The pace at which the states moved from being colonies under the authority of the British Crown, to “free and independent states,” and then to the United States of America seemed to quicken and intensify under the pressure of events during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. But for decades prior, many Americans had been attempting to establish a formal union between the British Colonies in America, primarily for purposes of mutual defense and the protection of British economic interests among the American colonies. These early efforts ultimately made it possible for the states to formally unite as the United States of America. It was not an easy road, however, as many colonies saw their habits, manners, and economic interests as quite different from those of the other colonies. Pulling these vastly different peoples together as one would be a long, arduous task.

One man who made great strides in uniting the colonies for purposes of mutual defense was Benjamin Franklin. In his Autobiography, Franklin writes of a plan of Union he had proposed in 1754. Anticipating an approaching war with France (which did eventually become the French and Indian War of 1754-1763), the British authorized a congress of commissioners from the colonies to convene in Albany, New York to discuss defensive preparations. Franklin took the opportunity to draw up a more extensive plan by which the colonial defenses would be administered by a general government of the Union.

“I projected and drew a plan,” Franklin wrote, “for the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defense, and other important general purposes. … By this plan the general government was to be administered by a president-general, appointed and supported by the crown, and a grand council was to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies, met in their respective assemblies.”

Ultimately Franklin’s plan was rejected by the colonial assemblies, because under it the British retained too much political authority over the colonies, and by the British, because it seemed to grant too much independence and self-government to the colonies. Later, in 1788, Franklin would write,

“I am still of opinion it would have been happy for both sides of the water if it had been adopted. The colonies, so united, would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves; there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course, the subsequent pretense for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided.”

Despite the failure of Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union in 1754, it had an important impact on the public mind of American colonials. Franklin, as a well-known and highly respected public figure, was now identified as the leading advocate of colonial unity, inspiring others to consider the possibility of formal union in the future. Furthermore, to promote the Albany Plan, Franklin introduced one of the most important symbols of the American Revolutionary period in his famous “Join, or Die” slogan under the image of a snake cut into thirteen pieces.

Franklin designed the image and published it in his widely read newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. Almost two decades later, as the Acts of the British Parliament became more unjust and oppressive in the eyes of American colonists in the 1770s, Franklin’s “Join, or Die” image was revived and inspired many people to join with the patriots, thus making possible the Union that eventually emerged from the American Revolution.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Jay McConville

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Janine Turner

 

 

Republic or Democracy?

A distinction with a difference to the American Revolution.

People often use the term “democracy” when referring to the United States. The distinction between a republic, which is technically what we are, and a democracy seems lost on those who intermingle the terms as if they were synonyms. If you note that we are not a democracy, but a republic, you risk being mocked as strict constructionists overly wedded to technical definitions and unwilling to acknowledge the importance of popular sovereignty and the will of the people in our system.

This is unfortunate, as the question of whether we are a democracy or a republic is an important one, complex, and reliant on clear definitions of words and their use. Strictly speaking, the United States is a representative Republic, not a democracy. The distinction has a difference. It greatly influenced the American Revolution, and arguably saved the future Republic from ruin in its darkest days.

First, some definitions. Merriam-Webster (MW) defines democracy, a noun, as “a government by the people” characterized by “rule of the majority,” and as “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”[1] This, of course, does a pretty good job of describing what most of us believe our government is. We the People are sovereign, and we exercise that power through elections. So far so good.

As for “republic” the definition is similar, but with several important additional elements. Republic is also a noun, meaning (according to MW), “a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president,” and “a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.”[2]

From these definitions it is clear why there might be some confusion. A representative republic uses “democratic means” to manifest the consent of the governed. We vote for representatives, who vote on measures. Voting is democracy in action, but that does not make the United States a democracy. The measures that our representatives vote on are constrained by law and the Constitution. We do not have pure democracy or “rule by the majority” because we have constitutionally protected rights that cannot be voted away, operate under rule of law, and have, till recently, limited government with limited powers. We also have, however, an expanded voting population that is not limited by aristocracy, wealth, property ownership, or gender. Any citizen, over 18 years of age, can vote. One could say, therefore, that the United States is a democratic representative Republic.

While some might wish to believe so, the founders did not invent the concept of consent of the governed, nor was America the first democracy or republic. Discussion of such concepts had been going on for centuries and republics existed prior to the American Revolution. What the American founders did do was expand the definition of a republic so that it gave more power to the popular will of the people. They were merging, more completely, the idea of a law-based government with the concept of consent of the governed. While in retrospect we see their efforts as woefully incomplete, for the time it was a revolutionary step towards popular sovereignty. Many doubted such an expansion of representation could work over such a large population or territory.

The original text of the United States Constitution never mentions the word democracy, and only mentions republic as a form of government once in Article IV, Section 4 (“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”). Interestingly, that clause refers to the states, and not the federal government itself. Throughout the text the founders refer to the United States as the “union” or as the “United States” but never a republic or a democracy. The Declaration of Independence does not use either term at all.

That said, the structure laid down in the Constitution contains the elements that MW described, including a “chief of state,” and that power lies with a body of “elected officers and representatives” who vote on the laws that govern the nation. All these officials govern according to law.

That is a Republic, no doubt.

When asked by “Mrs. Powel” upon the passage of the Constitution in 1787 what we had created, Benjamin Franklin famously replied, “a Republic, if you can keep it.”[3]

It is in the phrase “if you can keep it,” however, where we find the true impact of the distinction between republic and democracy. As Richard R. Beeman, Ph.D. writes “we find ample evidence that democratic revolutions do not inevitably lead to national harmony.…We see that the expression of the ‘popular will’ can create a cacophony of discordant voices…In far too many places around the world today, the expression of the ‘popular will’ is nothing more than the unleashing of primordial forces of tribal and religious identity which further confound the goal of building stable and consensual governments.”[4]

What Franklin was concerned about, what he was so prescient about, was the difficulty in preserving the union. That concern was not an idle one, as the Revolution had proven. To keep the union together required a structure that limited conflict and cooled the passions of the mob yet provided ample enough rights and liberties to both the citizen and the to the former colonies to make them support and adhere to the union. Again, quoting Beeman, “the question that has plagued all nations aspiring to democratic government ever since: how to implement principles of popular majority rule while at the same time preserving stable governments that protect the rights and liberties of all citizens.”

In 1776 a stable union did not exist. What did exist was a loose confederation of militia forces and citizens from the thirteen colonies, operating under an ill-defined structure to which their commitment continually wavered. Support for the revolution was not, by any means, universal within these colonies, and the debate between revolution and compromise with Britain raged. To preserve the effort, the founders knew they had to promise both protections from mob rule and protections for popular sovereignty. That was not a trivial endeavor.

Alexander Hamilton wrote of the challenge in a letter to John Jay in November 1775. In that letter he addressed the “passions of men” which provided for a “great danger of fatal extremes.” Hamilton wrote:

When the minds of these are loosened from their attachment to ancient establishments and courses, they seem to grow giddy and are apt more or less to run into anarchy…. In such tempestuous times, it requires the greatest skill in the political pilots to keep men steady and within proper bounds…[5]

Hamilton was concerned about conflict between New York and New England, which threatened a united stance vis-à-vis England. To control intra-colonial conflict, he argued against too much popular sovereignty, i.e., too much democracy. He recognized the need to hold the passions of men at bay, and the skill needed to do that while continuing to keep the support of the colonies.

As the American Revolutionary War against Britain intensified, George Washington was plagued by irregular support from both the colonies and the Continental Congress. His ability to avoid catastrophic defeat is legendary. What perhaps was his greater brilliance was the ability to hold the forces together, keep the states from fighting each other, and channeling the passions of his fighting forces away from each other and towards the enemy. As his letter to the colonies from Valley Forge attests, the distributed nature of the revolutionary coalition put the future of the war in great jeopardy. “In a word, the United and respective exertions of the States cannot be too great, too vigorous in this interesting work, and we shall never have a fair and just prospect for success till our Troops (Officers & Men) are better appointed and provided than they are or have been.”[6]

Washington knew very well that a citizen force of volunteer militiamen, responding only to popular will, while appealing to the revolutionary impulse, was no substitute for a centrally commanded, resourced, trained, and managed force of professional soldiers. Once launched, support to the war had to be controlled by a chief executive and protected by a Congress of representatives whose laws mattered and lasted. Counter to popular legend, it was not the minutemen who won the war. Washington could never have achieved victory had he remained subject to the democratic vagaries of thirteen colonial assemblies guided only by majority rule. “Military necessity required American leaders to change their perceptions of standing armies and challenged their republican ideals of volunteer, part-time military service…ultimately it was the Continental soldiers that would secure victory…”[7]

That the colonies agreed to the creation of the Continental Army is a critical component of the success of the revolution. It is also remarkable given the antipathy they held against standing armies. James Madison, years later during the debates over the Constitution, exposed that antipathy, stating that a “standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” and that the “means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home…. armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”[8] Yet, despite that view, such a force was authorized by the fledgling republic, saving the effort and leading to victory.

Today, when a riot or mass protest occurs, people in the crowd can often be heard chanting, “this is what democracy looks like.” In a way they are correct, which is why we are a representative Republic.

John Adams famously wrote, in a letter to John Taylor in 1814, “…Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” In that same letter, he wrote, “the Athenians grew more and more Warlike in proportion as the Commonwealth became more democratic.”[9] The founders, students of history and great thinkers including those of ancient and classical history, knew the distinction. That they did, saved the new nation.

Our founding was saved by the skill of our “political pilots” to craft a compromise between popular will and the rule of law. We are democratic, but we are not a democracy. We the People are those whose consent is required, but the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land.

We would have never made it otherwise.

Jay McConville is a military veteran, management professional, and active civic volunteer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. His studies focus on improving health outcomes through food assistance policy. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he held multiple key technology and management positions within the Aerospace and Defense industry, including twice as President and CEO. He now works as a personal trainer and works to improve health and fitness through both his work and study. Jay served in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer, and has also been active in civic and industry volunteer associations, including running for elected office, serving as a political party chairman, and serving multiple terms as President of both his industry association’s Washington DC Chapter and his local youth sports association. Today he serves on the Operating Board of Directors of Constituting America. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government from George Mason University, and a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College. Jay lives in Richmond with his wife Susan Ulsamer McConville. They have three children and four grandchildren.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/republic

[3] Mrs. Powel was not just a random woman on the street. She was an influential and important member of society, close in association with George Washington. Read more of her interesting story here: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/elizabeth-willing-powel/

[4] https://constitutioncenter.org/education/classroom-resource-library/classroom/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it

[5] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-01-02-0099

[6] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/t-03706.pdf

[7] https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/militia-minutemen-and-continentals-american-military-force-american-revolution

[8] https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24671

[9] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Winfield Rose

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Other impacts of the Protestant Reformation derive directly from the teachings of John Calvin (1509-1564), a Frenchman by birth who spent most of his life in Geneva, Switzerland. The distinguishing characteristic of Calvinist Protestantism, as presented in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1535), is the doctrine of predestination, meaning that God has predestined or foreordained some people (called the “elect”) for salvation and others for damnation. This is part of eternal law and, as such, there is nothing anyone can do about it. It is an unchangeable decision made by God, not a matter of the potential believer’s free will. Knowing if one is among the elect is a problem, however. The psychological insecurity this caused was severe.

The German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1905. Written as a response to Karl Marx’s theory of economic determinism, Weber wanted to show that history could have a prime mover other than economics, namely religion, and argued that Calvinists searched for certainty of salvation in a God-given calling (a job or career), unceasing hard work, and the suppression of physical pleasure. In other words, one could know one was among the elect by working hard and saving and investing rather than spending one’s money and enjoying one’s self. This has come to be known as the Protestant or Puritan work ethic.

The argument continues that the Puritans brought this work ethic with them to North America and that it permeated the entire culture.[i]

Prof. Davis calls the Protestant or Puritan ethic “the beginning of the American dream,” saying

Political, social, and economic life in the late twentieth century bears scant resemblance to the Puritan way. Yet the religious doctrine of the Puritans had a profound influence on a central characteristic of our tradition – the American dream. For modern Americans, that dream is typically one that involves success measured in terms of material wealth. . . . To all appearances that dream of success has no connection with the religious views, values, and aspirations of the Puritans. It is possible, nevertheless, to uncover the seeds of the modern individual’s pursuit of private wealth in the seventeenth-century Puritan’s quest for salvation.”[ii]

Puritans on both sides of the Atlantic embraced the ideas of the covenant or social contract (government based on consent of the governed), natural rights, and resistance to unjust authority (which itself was a natural right). Before they disembarked from the Mayflower in 1620 the Pilgrims wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact, thereby creating the first written social contract in history. It was first published in London in 1622 and reads as follows in modern English:

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&.

Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620.”

Twenty-one years later our Puritan forefathers saw the need for a delineation of rights and adopted the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in 1641. This “was the first attempt in the colonies to restrain the power of the elected representatives by appealing to a fundamental document that lists the rights and duties of the people. The document . . . combined the early American covenanting tradition of the Mayflower Compact with an appeal to the common law tradition that crossed the Atlantic from Britain. The Massachusetts Body of Liberties contains ninety-eight sections. . . The most enduring part . . . is the preamble and the first seventeen sections . . .” The preamble reads as follows:

The free fruition of such liberties, immunities and privileges as humanity, civility, and Christianity call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeachment and infringement hath ever been and ever will be the tranquility and stability of churches and commonwealths. And the denial or deprival thereof, the disturbance if not the ruin of both.

We hold it therefore our duty and safety whilst we are about the further establishing of this government to collect and express all such freedoms as for present we foresee may concern us, and our posterity after us, and to ratify them with our solemn consent.

We do therefore this day religiously and unanimously decree and confirm these following rights, liberties and privileges concerning our churches, and civil state to be respectively impartially and inviolably enjoyed and observed throughout our jurisdiction forever.

Space limitations preclude including the 17 sections here but they can be accessed at https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-massachusetts-body-of-liberties/.

It is interesting to see how these ideas made their way back across the Atlantic to England. In 1644 a Scottish Presbyterian by the name of Samuel Rutherford published a book in London titled Lex Rex which contained all these ideas. The Puritan Revolution or English Civil War led by Cromwell lasted from 1640 to 1649  and gave birth to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, first published in 1651, which was based on the natural right to life and created a powerful state whose legitimacy derived from the consent of the governed to protect it.

This was followed by John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government which were published  in 1689 at the time of the Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights. Locke proposed that government emerges from the consent of the governed to protect the natural rights of life, liberty and property.

These ideas were picked up by the authors and signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

“The American Revolution might thus be said to have started, in a sense, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. It received a substantial part of its theological and philosophical underpinnings from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and much of its social theory from the Puritan Revolution of 1640-1660, and, perhaps less obviously, from the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Put another way, the American Revolution is inconceivable in the absence of the context of ideas which have constituted Christianity. The leaders of the Revolution in every colony were imbued with the precepts of the Reformed faith.[iii]

Winfield H. Rose, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Murray State University.

 

[i] Sanford Kessler, “Tocqueville’s: Christianity and the American Founding.”  The Journal of Politics, v. 54 #3, August 1992, pp. 776-792.

[ii] Sue Davis, American Political Thought: Four Hundred Years of Ideas and Ideologies. Prentice Hall, 1996,  p. 22. Emphasis added.

[iii] Page Smith, quoted in Amos and Gardiner, p. 3. Emphasis added.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Winfield Rose

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Christianity in the Roman Empire was first persecuted, then tolerated, and later adopted as the official religion. The latter development was to the long-term detriment of the faith because, as the Church adopted the structures and procedures of Roman imperial government, it became ever more corrupt, as had the Roman government itself during previous centuries.

The details of this process are beyond the scope of this essay, but suffice it to say at this point that by 1517 a young German monk by the name of Martin Luther (1483-1546) decided change was needed. He, therefore, wrote and tacked his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenburg and launched what came to be the Protestant Reformation, thereby fracturing western Christianity forever.

Professor Sue Davis correctly described this momentous event as follows: “When Martin Luther . . . posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg in 1517 he initiated a revolution in politics as well as religion.”[i]

The relevance of the Reformation to the American political system can be understood as follows. First, the Reformation divided a Europe that had followed one central faith for centuries into more than two distinct groups in that there was not one Protestant church/faith/denomination but four, to be followed by more later. These four were the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Anabaptists and the Anglicans in England.

These four groups not only differed from Catholicism, they differed from each other. It was, therefore, unfortunately inevitable that conflict would break out between them. On the continent this took the form of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) between German Catholics and Lutherans. There were religious civil wars in France between Catholics and Huguenots (French Calvinists). In England it was the Puritan Revolution/English Civil War, 1640-1649, between Anglicans and those called Puritans who wanted to reform the Church of England along Calvinist lines. This resulted in the regicide of King Charles I and the establishment of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell in 1649.

These wars had two significant impacts on what was to become the United States. First, many Europeans tired of the seemingly endless slaughter and religious persecution and desired to escape, thereby emigrating to North America and populating the English colonies.[ii]

Second, after flirting with bringing their sectarian conflicts with them, our forefathers decided to do otherwise, ultimately making religious freedom a part of the United States Constitution in its First Amendment. The American tradition of separation of church and state can be traced directly back to the conflicts spawned by the Protestant Reformation.

In addition, the Protestant Reformation forced a fundamental change in political philosophy. The Magna Carta and Aquinas’ Treatise on Law were minor tremors but the Reformation was a major earthquake in that it articulated a right of resistance to unjust authority.

Romans 13 had been the basis of governmental authority in both the church and state for centuries. Remember that Jamestown had been founded in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620, and that the King James translation of the Bible was published in 1611. The first seven verses of Romans 13 in that translation read as follows:

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.

Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

These powerful words formed the basis of the divine right of kings theory and, in part, the basis of the Pope’s authority in the Church. How could Luther resist the Pope and Church without disobeying Romans 13? He could do so when obeying a higher authority (God) required him to.

According to Luther, it is a sin to obey any authority that forces or tries to force people to do that which is ungodly, unjust, unrighteous, unlawful or, in other words, wrong. A Godly person simply cannot do such things without sinning. As Luther said, “Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders.”

About 150 years later this became “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” The British government was violating God’s law and the Americans had not only the right but the duty to resist. And they did.

Winfield H. Rose, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Murray State University.

 

[i] Sue Davis, American Political Thought: Four Hundred Years of Ideas and Ideologies.  Prentice Hall, 1996, p. 10.

[ii] I acknowledge that some came to the New World for personal and economic reasons rather than for religious and political reasons.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson working on the Declaration, a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1900

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Driving through Connecticut, you’ll see license plates with the words “Constitution State” inscribed at the bottom of the plate. But wait! Wasn’t the Constitution drafted in Pennsylvania, known as the Keystone State? And wasn’t Delaware, known as the First State, the first state to ratify the Constitution? So why is Connecticut called the Constitution State?

Connecticut did play an important role in the drafting of the United States Constitution, proposing the Connecticut Compromise, also known as the Great Compromise, breaking the impasse created by delegates who favored proportional representation by population and opposed by delegates who favored equal representation by state. Certainly a justifiable reason for Connecticut to call itself the Constitution State, for without that important compromise, a Constitution may never have been agreed upon by delegates from both large and small states.

However, that was not the reason for the adoption of the motto “Constitution State.”  John Fiske, a historian born in Hartford in 1842, stated that the Fundamental Orders of 1639, a social compact created among three towns in what later became the colony of Connecticut, was the first Constitution created in the United States.  The preamble to the document states that, to “maintain the peace and union of such a people, an orderly and decent Government should be established according to God.”

Ordered liberty, defined as “freedom limited by the need for order in society,” is a concept well known by our Founding Fathers. The roots of ordered liberty can be traced back thousands of years. Religious liberty was the motivation for the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620; all of them knew their Biblical history of freedom, anarchy, enslavement, totalitarianism, secession, and rejection.

Among other Biblical examples, they may have considered the Book of Nehemiah.  After the fall of Judah in 586 BC, the Israelites were exiled to Babylon. Beginning in 538 BC, groups of Israelites began returning to Jerusalem, which had been destroyed. Over the subsequent 100 years, the city had no effective government, no militia, and the protective walls of the city lay in ruins. In 432 BC, Nehemiah, an Israelite serving the Persian King in Babylon as Cupbearer, had become frustrated hearing from Israelites of the conditions in Jerusalem and received permission from the King to lead a group to Jerusalem to restore order. He had no expertise in construction management, the politics of government, or military tactics, yet, he quickly took command after arriving in Jerusalem and led the citizens to complete the wall of the city, to organize a formal government, and to organize a militia to defend the city.

Recognizing the need for ordered liberty in their new settlement, the Pilgrims, before landing at Plymouth Rock, drafted a compact for the new village they were about to create near current-day Boston; that document, the Mayflower Compact, reflected the Pilgrims’ commitment to God and to the English King.

Soon thereafter, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered by King Charles I in 1629. In 1630, an English lawyer, Roger Ludlow, arrived in Massachusetts and settled in Dorchester. He quickly became involved in Massachusetts political life and helped draft laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, after only five years in Dorchester, he and other Pilgrims, dissatisfied with religious conflicts in Massachusetts, left Massachusetts to establish a new religious community in what later became the Connecticut Colony. Ludlow settled in Windsor and others settled in the villages of Wethersfield and Hartford, all very close to each other. The three villages were self-governing, but had to unite to fight the Pequot Indians.

Recognizing the need to unite more formally, the three towns, led by Ludlow’s legal expertise, drafted the Fundamental Orders, a formal compact to establish the principles for an orderly confederation-style of government for the three towns. In a sermon that encouraged Ludlow to create the text of the Fundamental Orders, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, a founder of Hartford, dynamic preacher, and inspiration for the Fundamental Orders, said that “The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people. As God has given us liberty let us take it.” Hooker is considered by some to be the father of American democracy. His statement regarding the free consent of the people may have been the first expression in the colonies of a key principle that, more than 100 years later, would find its way into our nation’s founding documents.

Unlike many social compacts at the time, the Connecticut document recognized no allegiance on the part of the colonists to England, but in effect set up an independent government. The Fundamental Orders were intended to be a framework of government more permanent than a compact, and in essence, a constitution. Simeon E. Baldwin, a former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, defended Fiske’s view that the Fundamental Orders of 1639 was the first Constitution created in the United States by stating that

“never had a company of men deliberately met to frame a social compact for immediate use, constituting a new and independent commonwealth, with definite officers, executive and legislative, and prescribed rules and modes of government, until the first planters of Connecticut came together for their great work on January 14th, 1638-9.”

Whereas the Mayflower Compact was designed for a single community, the Fundamental Orders was designed for three communities, further evidence that it was a Constitution, much like the later United States Constitution designed to bring unity among 13 colonies. Also, some features of the Fundamental Orders prefigured the United States Constitution, even if not in exact form. The Orders provided for yearly elections conducted in accordance with Direct Democracy format, appropriate for smaller communities. An annual election was held, during which a Governor and six Magistrates were elected to serve a one-year term of office. Each town also elected two Representatives to a unicameral legislature which met each September in a legislative session. This prefigured the Representative Democracy to be devised in 1787, although the latter resulted in a bicameral legislature. Freemen had a right of petition; and a method was devised to tax each town to raise funds as required for administration of the government. Liberty of speech was emphasized in the Orders and “unseasonable and disorderly speakings” were discouraged. The office of the Secretary of State was officially established in the Fundamental Orders of 1639 and has continued to exist since that time, the oldest Office of the Secretary of State in the United States.

It wasn’t until 100 years later that the Connecticut legislature acted upon Fiske’s opinion about the Fundamental Orders being the first Constitution created in the United States. In 1959, the legislature officially designated Connecticut’s nickname to be The Constitution State. In anticipation of the upcoming bicentennial of the founding of the United States, in 1973 the Connecticut legislature mandated that Connecticut’s license plates should display the state slogan the assembly had adopted 14 years earlier.

Interestingly, Roger Ludlow, the primary architect of the Connecticut Fundamental Orders, grew weary of the challenges of colonial life, and returned to England in 1654, where he died and is buried.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

Sources:

Neh 1-Neh 7 NABRE – I. The Deeds of Nehemiah Chapter 1 – Bible Gateway

Microsoft Word – DocsOfCTGov.doc

Register and manual – State of Connecticut : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Roger Ludlow – Wikipedia

Are We the Constitution State? – Connecticut Explored (ctexplored.org)

Why is Connecticut Called the Constitution State? (unitedstatesnow.org)

History of Connecticut – Wikipedia

Windsor, Connecticut – Wikipedia

Mayflower Compact – Wikipedia

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

In The Federalist No. 6, Alexander Hamilton sought to refute the claim that commercial republics, such as the thirteen original united states, do not go to war with each other, and that, therefore, there was no threat of eventual disunion to be feared from the looser structure of the Articles of Confederation. He cited numerous historical examples, from ancient Greece to more modern times, to challenge that comforting assertion. Hamilton urged, “Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.” His approach was characteristic of many discourses and arguments in The Federalist. James Madison frequently referred to the history of ancient Greece, while Hamilton repeatedly looked to the fate of the Roman Republic and to the history of English constitutional practice. Other antagonists engaged in similar mode of argumentation in the debate over the fate of the proposed Constitution of 1787.

Indeed, that tactic was not limited to the debates over the Constitution. For example, John Adams extensively discussed the history of Italian republics in his multi-volume work on contemporary state constitutions, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, written from 1786 to 1788. After all, history is recorded human experience. The lessons that history might teach are drawn from the often-painful experiences and frequently tragic responses of those who went before us. The need to examine those experiences and debate their lessons was particularly acute when the undertaking was a new political order, Novus ordo seclorum, as the new motto placed on the Great Seal of the United States by the Confederation Congress promised. As Adams wrote to an acquaintance in connection with the publication of Defences, “They [the Italian republics] are the best Models for Americans to Study, in order to show them the horrid precipice that lies before them in order to enable and Stimulate them to avoid it.”

While history is the record of experience which subsequent generations can use as a primer in guiding their affairs, tradition (or custom) is the collective manifestation of that experience. It is “how things are done here.” Tradition sometimes is rejected because it is outdated for modern conditions, or at least appears to be so. But before rejecting tradition, it is wise to remember the precautionary principle captured in G. K. Chesterton’s Fence, an admonition best summarized as, “Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.” Tradition allows us to live in a social community without the chaos and inefficiency of having to learn anew each day how to organize complex human relationships.

The use of tradition to guard against rash, irrational, or oppressive political action has a long heritage. Reliance in ancient Roman republican constitutional practice on the mos maiorum, the tradition of the forefathers, sought to restrain arbitrary actions by ambitious politicians who might threaten the stability of the republic and the well-being of its citizens. Violations of tradition might have disastrous consequences. In Sophocles’s Oedipus Cycle, the Theban princess Antigone attempted to bury her dead traitorous brother in accordance with the ancient tradition rooted in divine commands. In doing so, she defied King Kreon’s decree to let the body be torn apart by animals. The deadly consequences of that decree for Antigone and for Kreon and his family is the stern lesson taught by the dramatist.

Another literary example is in Homer’s Iliad. The downfall of Troy results from the violation of the ancient Greek tradition of hospitality (xenia) by the Trojan prince Paris in running off with Helen, the wife of his host, the Spartan king Menelaus.

A more recent case in point is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution instigated in the 1960s in Red China by Chairman Mao. He urged radical Red Guards to destroy the “Four Olds,” old ideas, culture, customs, and habits. The disastrous result for the Chinese people was an exemplification of the chaos, misery, and suffering when the bonds of tradition are sundered, and societal fences are torn down irrationally.

American writers of the Founding appealed relentlessly to tradition to justify their actions. Their claims that the British government was violating their ancient rights as Englishmen by enacting statutes, such as the Stamp Act, might have been dubious politically and self-interested economically. Their references to Magna Charta might have been strained as a matter of history. Still, those arguments reflected an attitude Americans maintained throughout the period that theirs was a “conservative” reaction against dangerous constitutional usurpations that went against the very reason for government, namely, to protect human flourishing.

In the same manner, during the debates on the Constitution of 1787, the new charter’s supporters repeatedly rejected the argument that it was a radical anti-republican proposal. Instead, the writers of The Federalist Papers, particularly James Madison, claimed that the new document was built on the Articles of Confederation, with some modifications needed to correct the earlier charter’s most glaring deficiencies. Madison’s claim might have been in tension with the approach adopted early by the Philadelphia Convention of writing a new document rather than proposing amendments to the Articles. It might contradict some of his own positions in that collection of essays. But it was an argument frequently repeated in the state conventions. Indeed, the preamble to the Constitution itself declares that the object was to form a “more perfect Union,” not to create one.

The accumulated wisdom of those who have gone before us, which is reflected in living traditions, plays a particularly prominent role in law. “Law” is associated with constancy, predictability, and knowability. We speak of “laws” of physics, which means that the associated phenomena manifest themselves universally and regularly, that we can predict specific results from their applications, and that we can understand them through observation and reason, often expressed through the language of mathematics. Universal “law” in the context of human action is more speculative, but not entirely so. Discovering such law is predicated on observation and reasoned interpretation primarily of the experiences of people within one’s own culture at different times, but also of those of people in other cultures. Such universal prescriptions of “right” conduct, whether called natural justice, natural law, divine law, or something else, animate not just particular political decrees and legislation but also customs which direct how one should comport oneself more generally.

“Natural law” in that sense is a construct primarily of metaphysics, but also has clear connections to religion. It is an application of tradition to matters of government and politics, but it also has an inherent moral content, rooted in an external source. Consider, for example, the words of Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans that the Gentiles, who do not have the Mosaic law, nevertheless can in their nature act in accordance with the law because it has been placed on each person’s heart by God and is exercised through conscience.

Although natural law has an inherent moral content that exists independently of human practice, that content is best gleaned through investigation of how “things are done” over time and consistently, in other words, experience reflected in tradition. As Aristotle declared in Politics, “observation tells us that every state is an association, and that every association is formed with a view to some good purpose.” The manner in which something operates successfully over time is evidence that it acts in accordance with its true nature or essence.

In jurisprudence and juristic practice, the force of tradition is expressed in one form through the doctrine of stare decisis (“to stand by things decided”), the presumptive adherence to precedent in judicial decisions that promotes the stability and predictability which are the attributes of law. For example, a determination by the Supreme Court of what a provision of the Constitution means is binding on the lower courts. But even in matters heard by subsequent panels of the Supreme Court, the earlier Court’s holding is unlikely to be disturbed. Although this is not an invariable rule, the longer and more frequently that earlier precedent has been followed, the less likely the Court is to disregard it in a similar subsequent case. Many are the paeans that various justices have penned to the doctrine of stare decisis, although the cynic might say that the doctrine lasts only as long as it fits the author’s conception of the “right” result in a particular case. Adherence to precedent allows the courts to guard against the “dangerous innovations in the government,” the function to which Alexander Hamilton pointed in The Federalist No. 78 as the core purpose of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation.

Because the object of the ethical state is to provide the conditions for human flourishing, those political arrangements which are most successful at that endeavor are the best. Human law is useful to provide the order needed for individual flourishing within a community. But not just any law, only law directed towards that end. The philosophic speculations of Aristotle about the limits imposed by natural justice on the human lawgiver, and the intellectually rich and politically significant investigations of “natural law” by philosophers from the classical Cicero to the medieval scholastic Thomas Aquinas, to the more modern Francisco Suarez and Hugo Grotius address ways to establish an ethical basis for ordinary human law and a proper balance between liberty and order, individual and community.

“Order” can mean many things. Fundamentally, the word conveys stability, rules, and limits. Tradition, law, and order are essentially bound. The concept of natural law is founded on the idea of an orderly universe governed by stable laws of physics and, regarding human action, universal rules of morality. The preeminent expositors of natural moral law, the European scholastics of the Middle Age, lived and wrote in a highly ordered society, where everyone had a designated place in that feudal order. Moreover, it was understood that human society itself existed in a universal order governed by God.

The advent of modernity rejected the strict structural approach of a universal order of which each person was a part. Instead, the focus became on voluntary association and consent as the basis of society, and on individual natural rights, rather than duties and rights derived from one’s place in the “natural” order of things and persons. The problem with a focus on individual will and consent as the basis for individual action is that it invites atomization, subjectivism, moral relativism, and nihilism, concerns vividly raised many centuries ago by Plato in his discussion of the “democratic man” in The Republic. Unbridled liberty is chaotic and threatens to veer into license, as there exist no external standards that can claim inherent legitimacy based on higher moral authority or the moral force conveyed by tradition. Each person becomes a moral standard only onto himself or herself.

Yet the need remains for structure and stability in an orderly society, lest the relations among people devolve into a competition defined solely by power, resembling a Hobbesian state of nature of a war of all against all. The solution proposed by various “left” writers, from Rousseau to Marxist-Leninists of various stripes, of a government where the rulers embody a stylized “general will” of the collective in place of the expression of individual wills inevitably has led to dictatorship and oppression. To have that necessary stability, yet foster individual flourishing, there must be, as various Supreme Court opinions have pronounced, “ordered liberty” whose fundamental principles are protected under the Constitution. The difficulty, of course, lies in striking that balance, of achieving practically what otherwise is only an aspirational slogan.

The Framers of the Constitution and other Americans of that era understood all of this quite well. John Adams and the New Englanders came to this knowledge and conviction easily, based on their Puritan culture. Hard-headed and practical statesmen, such as Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, understood this from life experience in political and military conflict. Even those drawn to more utopian ideas and more naive idealism, such as Thomas Jefferson, were brought down to earth by revulsion at the excesses of the French Revolution set in motion by radical ideologies. Liberty and order, change guarded by tradition, were the guiding principles of the Founders, informed by the lessons of history and by their own experiences.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Signing of the Constitution - Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, painting by Howard Chandler Christy, on display in the east grand stairway, House wing, United States Capitol.

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

Our Founding Fathers did not create a government or craft a constitution to serve government’s interests or even their own narrow interests. They created a government that focused on securing the liberty of the American people and that strictly limited and checked the power of the federal government. They had a great deal of experience with government that existed for the primary purpose of advancing the interests of those who already had tremendous political power.

They had experienced the tyranny of the British Crown. In the Broadway play “Hamilton,” King George sings, “And when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love” and “when push comes to shove, I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.” While those exact words were not likely uttered by King George, that was what he did in practice. It also reveals the way so many rulers treated their subjects throughout history.

Our Founders specifically rejected this model of abusive and unlimited government. Virtually every government in recorded history either started out, or became first and foremost about increasing and preserving its own power, influence and prestige at the expense of its subjects. Rarely has government been focused on the citizen’s freedom and opportunity. That may be the rhetoric used to obtain or retain power, but it has rarely been the actual focus of government.

Every dictator in history has made promises of using the power that he sought for the benefit of the people. But virtually none of them have actually done it. It has always been a talking point, but not an action point. Whether it was Mao or Lenin, Hitler or  Mussolini, Castro or Chavez, or the Ayatollah, they all promised to create a more equal and just society, and to right past wrongs. But, of course, history records that they magnified and multiplied the wrongs and made society far worse. They created societies of increased brutality, misery, and poverty.

In contrast, America’s Founders wrote a constitution that limited the power of government — even though they knew that they would likely be the early presidents, cabinet secretaries, congressmen and senators. In other words, they wrote a constitution that limited their own power. That proves they were not cut from the same cloth as most of the rulers we read about in history books. They formed a government designed to limit and check governmental power, but keep the people as free as possible from government’s arbitrary edicts and mandates.

Some argue that one of the weaknesses of our Constitution is that it is difficult and sometimes cumbersome to get things done. But that wasn’t by accident. It was by design. Our Founders understood that government’s power to do evil and to compromise and abridge the natural rights of its citizens was far more significant than the likelihood that government power, if left unchecked, would be used to benefit the citizenry or preserve their freedoms.

So our Founders wisely placed limits on their own power. They did this because they wanted to create a society where the freedoms and the opportunities available to the citizenry were virtually unlimited. They did not see themselves as rulers and American citizens as their subjects. They saw themselves as having been temporarily entrusted with limited powers to govern, not rule; and they saw Americans as citizens, not subjects.

George Washington, the president of the constitutional convention where our Constitution was written, debated and passed, and our nation’s first president, refused to be called by the titles that many of the kings and powerful were called in Europe. He said “No” to being called His Highness, His Excellency, His Mightiness, His Elective Majesty, among others. He said his title should be “Mr. President.”

At that time, those of power and wealth had titles — Lord, Duke, His Grace, etc. In contrast, a person of common station, with no real societal power, was referred to simply as Mister. And that is the title that George Washington chose to emphasize that the government they were forming wasn’t there to benefit those who held office, but to guarantee freedom and opportunity to its people.

But it wasn’t merely George Washington who rejected the historical political power model of Europe. The Founders as a group wanted to build a society whose foundation included the principles of self-government, but that also didn’t subject our basic rights to the popular vote. Simply stated, the Bill of Rights makes it clear that even if the vast majority of Americans don’t like what you’re saying or writing, you have the right to say it or write it.

Even if the majority dislikes you, you have the right to due process and a fair trial if you’re accused of a crime. Even if the government wants your property and claims to need it for the public good, it may not take it from you without paying you for its value. The Bill of Rights, properly understood, is not a statement of rights as much as it is a firm prohibition against government and the majority trying to abridge our God-given rights. So our Founders crafted a government designed to empower the people through majoritarian processes, but also protected our rights — placing them beyond the power of a popular vote or the power of government to abridge.

If we think about the type of constitution that most people throughout history who have aspired to power would write, we would see few limits on their power and a great deal of limits on the people and their rights. But our Founders were very different and that made a huge difference in the sort of nation the United States of America became.

It was John Adams, our nation’s second president and a crucial Founder, who said in a letter, “We ought to consider, what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form.” [1] And the Founders did precisely that. They thought about what they wanted America to become — a land of freedom and opportunity for its citizens — and carefully crafted a constitution to accomplish that goal. This is proof positive that our Founders were very different from most of history’s politically powerful figures.

Our Founders understood the fundamental importance of limiting the power of government and leaving the people free to govern the details of their own lives. As James Madison said in the Federalist Papers, Number 51,

If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

Throughout history, governments had whatever powers they could get away with exercising — including genocide and murder of the masses. But our Founders designed a government that would be the foundation for a civil society of order and peace, but anywhere beyond that, government was forced to limit itself and its actions.

This has made all the difference and launched America to greatness. This approach made Americans the freest, most prosperous people in the world. People clamor to come to America from all over the globe because they see it as a shining city on a hill and as a land of opportunity. When the power of the government is constitutionally limited, the freedoms and opportunities of the people are maximized and the people thrive rather than merely survive.

Our Founders got it right — they didn’t build a government to benefit themselves or make government all-powerful. They carefully crafted a constitution that made Americans free, protected their rights, and made opportunity a key feature of the nation. That makes our Founders unique in history and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

George Landrith is the President of Frontiers of Freedom. Frontiers of Freedom, founded in 1995 by U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, is an educational foundation whose mission is to promote the principles of individual freedom, peace through strength, limited government, free enterprise, free markets, and traditional American values as found in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

[1] John Adams, Thoughts on Government, in a letter in reply to William Hooper 1742-1790, North Carolina Continental Congress Delegate and John Penn 1740-1788, North Carolina Continental Congress Delegate, April 1776. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/thoughts-on-government-2/

Further reading:

Papers of John Adams, volume 4, III Thoughts on Government, Massachusetts Historical Society

https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-06-04-02-0026-0004

The Works of John Adams, vol. 4. Part of The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. A 10 volume collection of Adams’ most important writings, letters, and state papers, edited by his grandson. Vol. 4 contains Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, and Defence of the Constitution. https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/adams-the-works-of-john-adams-vol-4

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Adam Carrington


Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

 

 

What are principles? We speak of them often in politics, history, philosophy, and other fields of study. We praise those who have them, or at least those with which we agree, and criticize those who lack them altogether.

Simply put, principles articulate a standard. This standard carries a certain authority, providing a measure by which to judge thoughts, words, and deeds.

We need principles to answer questions regarding the thoughts, words, and actions of ourselves and our fellow human beings. We want to know whether they are true or false, just or unjust, advantageous or not. Principles help us to know better what is and what should be.

First principles, then, answer not just any questions. They are first in two ways. One, they come first chronologically. We must address them before we can move on to other subjects dependent upon them. Second, first principles deal with the most important matters. In politics, they address the fundamental concerns of and set the essential standards for a political community.

The American Founding was an exercise in articulating, debating, and implementing political first principles. The Continental Congresses did so in debating with England and declaring independence. The Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia did so in crafting the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation. And state ratifying assemblies all engaged in debate and decision regarding this document, resulting in its ratification.

We should know the underlying questions and resulting principles animating these discussions, documents, and decisions. First, the Founders discussed who should rule: one king, a few aristocrats, or the people. This question itself rested on another, namely whether or not all humans were inherently equal and thus the place of consent in legitimate rule. It consequently touched on the institution of slavery, race, the role of women in society, and more.

Second, the Founders addressed the right ends or goals for rule. Do governments exist for the good of the ruler or of the governed? Should laws merely protect from harm or inculcate virtue? Where do rights ultimately come from, social convention, human statute, or natural law? These matters also required addressing linked issues such as the purposes of human life, the limits of education, and the relationship between religion and politics. It demanded a reckoning on the good and bad of human nature.

Third and finally, the Founders considered how to structure and run government. This point depended heavily on the answers to the first two sets of questions. Who ruled and for what purposes dictated much regarding the institutions and processes a just government involved. But those sets depended for their efficacy on this one. Government must be good at its job and limited only to that job. How the Constitution structured lawmaking and law enforcement mattered immensely to how well America’s governments would realize their intended goals and reflect the country’s ultimate rulers. Should we divide political power among state and national governments, thereby establishing a system of federalism? On what principles would that division be made and maintained? What about within particular governments? Should we have a separation of powers among independent institutions and, if so, based on what functions of political action? Moreover, what should the lawmaking process involve? How should we select judges? These and more the Founders debated and decided on the intellectual and practical road that led to our Constitution’s creation, ratification, and implementation.

In returning to this history and these principles, we must remember none of it started in 1787 or even 1776. The Founders partook of a discussion and a history stretching back throughout recorded human history, from Ancient Greece and Rome to Medieval Christendom and post- Reformation England. They knew this history and reacted to it in their own thoughts as well as deeds. In addition, they did not all perfectly agree with each other, whether about that history or about what should be done in their own time. Their debates helped refine the resulting principles, institutions, and practices that make up our history and continue to add definition to our own time.

Over the course of this series, we will explore the roots, debates, and reasoning of America’s first principles. Thus, we will enter the great discussion in which they made such a lasting and magnificent contribution. We will see something essential about our past and our present. In the process, we will learn better how to take these principles and apply them for our future. Please join us on that journey better to know our Constitution, our country, and ourselves.

Adam M. Carrington is an Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. There, he teaches on matters of Constitutional law, American political institutions, and separation of powers. His writing has appeared in such popular forums as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, National Review, and Washington Examiner. His book on the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field was published in 2017 by Lexington. Carrington received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Baylor University. He lives in Hillsdale with his wife and their two daughters.

Click here for First Principles of the American Founding 90-Day Study Schedule.
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
Signing of the Constitution - Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, painting by Howard Chandler Christy, on display in the east grand stairway, House wing, United States Capitol.


The United States Constitution is the product of a process which attempted to address perceived inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation in dealing with practical problems of governance. Its writers sought to provide practical solutions, shaped by their experiences. On that matter, it was irrelevant whether the Philadelphia Convention technically acted outside its charge from the states and the Confederation Congress and produced a revolutionary new charter, which argument James Madison disputed in The Federalist, No. 40, or whether the Constitution was a mere extension of the Articles and “consist[ed] much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS,” as he averred in essay No. 45.

There are numerous devices in the Constitution to frustrate utopian schemes. Most of them are structural. The drafters understood that utopian schemes were more likely to succeed in smaller and more homogeneous communities. Madison in The Federalist, No. 10, identified the problem as one of faction, where members of a community joined by a common passion to gain power. Derived from the natural inequalities among human beings, factions are a foreseeable part of society. While democracies are most susceptible to control by an entrenched faction, small republics are not immune. The danger somewhat abates across a state but is least likely to occur in the nation and within its general government. As he explained. Vividly:

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular states, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states: a religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it, must secure the national councils against any danger from that source: a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire state.

Madison continued along the same vein in essay No. 51, “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects, which it embraces, a coalition of the majority of the whole society could seldom take place upon any other principles, than those of justice and the general good …. And happily for the republican cause, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the federal principle.” [Emphasis in the original.]

In Madison’s view, emergence of a permanent majority faction was more concerning, as minority factions would be controlled through majority voting. Fortunately, the diversity of religious, economic, ethnic, and customary influences creates shifting alliances among various factions, none of which would become an established majority at the national level. This creates a protective moat for society against dangers from radical policies which one faction might seek to impose on the country. In addition, the structural balance of formal constitutional powers between the national government and the states, further prevents any utopian faction in one state from readily spreading to another. This “federal” structure is enhanced by what Madison considered to be the adoption within the Constitution of the principle of subsidiarity, that is, that most political matters would be handled at the lowest level of political units, rather than by Congress.

In essay No. 51, Madison also explained another protection against a radical utopian faction gaining hold of the national government, the separation of powers. That separation consists of two parts in the Constitution, namely, provisions which guarantee to each of the branches a degree of immunity and independence from the other, as well as provisions which create a blending and overlapping of functions and require the different branches to collaborate to create policy. Examples of the first group of provisions are the control each branch of Congress has over its membership and the immunity of its members from prosecution for debates in Congress; the President’s privilege to withhold information from the other branches protected under, among other sources, the “executive power” clause; and the Supreme Court’s tenure during “good Behavior.” Examples of the second are the Congress’s power of the purse, the requirement that both chambers agree to the same legislation, the President’s qualified veto over legislation, and the Court’s power of judicial review. These protections help guard against rash policies and, as Alexander Hamilton phrased it in The Federalist, No. 78, “dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.” Moreover, many state constitutions incorporate similar principles of separate, yet overlapping, powers.

Leaving aside the unelected judiciary, the selection process for these positions supports the protection against radical utopian factions. Much of the operation of the political system under the Constitution, as distinct from its substantive powers, is ultimately founded in the federal system of states. Madison addressed the complex interrelationship between national and federal characteristics of the Constitution in The Federalist, No. 39. The people elect the House of Representatives, and representation is apportioned among the states on the basis of population, which are “national” characteristics. However, the states respectively determine the qualifications of the voters through their control over the electoral franchise for their own legislatures. Moreover, each state is guaranteed at least one seat, so even the population basis of the House is qualified by the existence of the states. The Senate is organized on the basis of the equality of the states in their corporate political capacities, a “federal” characteristic, and members originally were elected by the state legislatures. The president is selected by a body which is based on allocations of electoral votes among the states through a combination of population and state equality. Moreover, these electors are selected by the state legislators. As Madison explained in essay No. 39, the eventual election of the president was expected to be made by the House of Representatives, but on that occasion voting by state delegations.

The state-centric nature of these operative aspects of the constitutional structure helps diffuse power among various constituencies within a state and among different states. House members today are typically elected in single-member districts, whose constituents might be quite diverse from district to district. As originally envisioned, presidential candidates were selected by electors through a national, or at least regional, frame of reference. With the advent of modern political parties and the demographic changes over the past century, the president today is elected by a national constituency. Still, having to gain the endorsement of one of the two major political parties by having to appeal to different types of constituencies complicates the efforts of a radical faction’s candidate to gain sufficient power to orient the nation’s policies in a utopian direction. Political pragmatism and compromise is the inertia within the system.

One might add to these constitutional rules others of a more institutional origin. One such device which protects against utopian projects by a majority faction is the Senate’s “filibuster” rule. Another is the collection of arcane parliamentary procedures in the houses of Congress which can be used to derail or moderate legislation. Yet another is the committee structure and, at least in the past, the seniority system for chairmanships when powerful committee chairmen could frustrate the demands of the majority.

The problem with this presentation of a system of machine-like operation under clear constitutional rules that create a carefully-calibrated balance among various political actors, all while allowing government to function, yet protecting minority rights and guarding against dangerous utopian tendencies, is that it flatters irrationally. Seeing the political system only through the technical functioning of the rules is slanted and presents what one might call a “utopian” view. In fact, a hard look at the current system is needed to see how differently it operates.

At the level of national versus state governments, both consume a vastly greater percentage of Gross Domestic Product than a century ago, never mind two centuries ago. The national government’s share in particular has increased manifold. The national debt is at a record peacetime high in relation to GDP. The current use of debt by all levels of government would make the schemers in the state governments of the 1780s blanch. Congress today uses its legislative powers over interstate commerce, taxing, and spending to intrude into the most local and personal activities. Madison’s explanation in essay No. 39 of The Federalist that the national government’s jurisdiction extends to only a few enumerated ends, while the states have “a residual and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects” seems quaint and quizzical. Indeed, the very concept of residual state sovereignty has been neutered through Congress’s use of its taxing and spending powers, just as the Anti-federalists predicted and Hamilton attempted to refute in essays No. 32 and 33 of The Federalist. Prodigious government grants of money are a lifeline for much academic research, and those funds are readily applied to advance utopian projects by their recipients. As to legislation at the state and local levels, the ubiquity of laws far surpasses that of the earlier time, a product perhaps of a more complex society or the fact that legislating has become a full-time occupation for many politicians today.

As to the separation of powers, the contrast between the Constitution’s text and the operation of the system is if anything, starker. The proliferation of “alphabet agencies,” unencumbered by doctrines of separated functions, make rules, enforce them, and adjudicate violations of those rules in formally civil, but functionally criminal, proceedings. Those rules, adopted by generally unaccountable “independent” commissioners, administered by career functionaries, and virtually immune from judicial challenge, constitute the vast majority of the American corpus juris. There has been significant research into the political tactic of “regulatory capture,” whereby private entities, be they businesses, unions, or ideological “NGOs” (Non-Governmental Organizations) effectively take control of regulatory agencies. The danger with the last of these is that they often pursue utopian agendas behind the label “public interest,” rather than the more prosaic economic benefits to which the first two usually direct themselves.

There has been a concomitant expansion of executive power. The growth of the White House budget for various in-house offices, agencies, and directors which often parallel the domains of the formal constitutional departments, yet are independent of them, is one measure. As well, vast delegations of authority by Congress to the executive branch occurred as early as the Woodrow Wilson administration. The Supreme Court took some desultory steps against such delegations during the 1930s. Justice Felix Frankfurter warned about the expansion of executive power in his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer, the famous Steel Seizure Case in 1952. Yet the Supreme Court has not struck down such a delegation in nearly a century. Some of this delegation, as well as broad ritualistic claims of inherent executive authority, arose in connection with war or other emergencies. Unsurprisingly, those powers continued during peace. A claim of discretionary power to act in emergencies inevitably produces more claims of emergencies. As shown by quite recent history, similar displays of broad executive power and uncontrolled administrative governance are part and parcel of state and local systems, as well.

As to constitutional barriers to utopianism provided by the electoral structure, or institutional barriers through the filibuster, one must wonder about their continued efficacy. Gerrymandering of districts has produced many “safe” partisan districts, where primary elections control the eventual outcome. Primary elections—or local party caucuses—attract the most ideologically committed participants. Such gerrymandering has been blamed for the election of candidates committed to ideologically pure, but practically harmful, utopian policies.

The mobility of American society and the advances in communications technology and entertainment have challenged Madison’s basic assumption about the diversity of interest groups rooted in different geographical areas. The electorate has become much more homogeneous and “national,” so that a nation-wide electoral majority might degenerate into an ideological faction similar to what Madison described was the danger in a local democracy. Candidates, too, are less dependent on the moderating influences of party organization. One need only to consider the emergence of billionaire-politicians and celebrity-politicians who can use their money or status to capture a party’s nomination and, subsequently, the office, without the support of the party’s established apparatus. Institutional restraints, such as the filibuster, have been weakened and are threatened with elimination, which would further undermine protections against a bare majority faction in Congress imposing utopian projects on the country.

Madison dismissed the dangers of a minority faction controlling Congress because of the “republican principle” of majority vote. But a minority faction driven by utopian fervor is much more likely to coalesce than a majority, and Madison’s faith in the vote is too blind to that danger. It has long been established that an ideologically committed organized minority can control an unorganized majority in politics or otherwise. The large economic or psychological benefits of a policy to the members of the minority outweigh the proportionally smaller costs to each member of the majority. With the increased and hidden power of unelected entities described earlier, the danger becomes more acute. One example should suffice: Before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump challenged leaked, unsubstantiated claims by American intelligence agencies that Russia had hacked the 2016 election. Senator Charles Schumer then warned President Trump, “You take on the intelligence community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Schumer was not alone in that prognosis. The specter of the hidden intelligence apparatus undermining the president in pursuit of an ideological objective has been raised many times over the past decades and is in direct conflict with the constitutional order.

In similar manner, the doctrine of judicial review has increasingly been used to advance constitutional novelties. The Constitution provides a formal amendment process, based on broad super-majoritarian approval that is, in Madison’s description, partly federal and partly national. It requires broad consensus in Congress and among the people or legislatures of the states. There has also developed an informal amendment process which retains elements of popular approval and consensus. For example, when Congress passes a law, the president signs it, and there is no successful constitutional challenge brought to the law in the courts, continued and open adherence to that law by the people over time makes that law’s political essence part of the constitutional fabric. A similar development occurs if a significant number of states pass laws respecting a particular matter of state control, if those laws do not conflict with a clear constitutional provision. A constitutional challenge to such well-established laws years later ordinarily should be rejected, because, as Hamilton stated, the purpose of judicial review is to prevent sudden popular passions from passing laws which violate established constitutional rules and threaten individual rights.

In that sense, judicial review is “conservative.” Judicial review is not intended to have five unelected judges decree a novel constitutional order by overturning long-established laws. That is the function of lawmakers in legislatures or constitutional conventions. Yet, the Supreme Court at times has taken on that function by discovering fanciful, previously unheard-of constitutional meaning in ambiguous clauses. These discoveries typically reflect the views of a narrow socio-political elite more than those of the citizenry at large. An ideologically committed minority faction is thus able to impose its utopian vision on the majority.

One can easily come up with more examples of current functional weaknesses and dysfunctions in the constitutional system described by the writers of The Federalist. The Anti-federalists broadly predicted many of the current developments, although it is to be doubted that their proposals, to the extent they had any, would have worked better to preserve the republican nature of the original order. Nor is it to be understood that all changes are necessarily bad. One might well agree with the social benefit of some of the constitutional innovations from the Supreme Court, yet be concerned about the way in which those changes came about. One might accept that some of the actions of the unelected agencies have been for the public good, yet worry about the threat to republican self-government posed by the bureaucratic state of self-declared “experts.” One might favor certain policies enacted into law by Congress, yet question the desirability of a system which increasingly micromanages life from thousands of miles away.

There are many ominous signs which suggest that we have lost our republican form of government as envisioned by the Framers. What we have left, it often appears, are certain trappings and rituals, much as happened with the Roman senate and other republican institutions during the Roman Empire and beyond. Perhaps the classic expositors of republics were right, that such a form of government cannot exist over a large area with many diverse groups of people. Perhaps Madison’s faith in the representative system was shaped by an implicit acceptance of the Aristotelian assumption that self-government was possible only in a community small enough that one could speak of “friendship.” There was much debate among classic writers about the size limits of community. One person did not make a polis. With 100,000, one no longer had a polis. At the time of the Philadelphia Convention, the largest state, Virginia, had a population over 800,000, including slaves. The next largest, Pennsylvania, had under 500,000. The debate over proper-sized districts for the House of Representatives, the most “republican” part of the government, settled the number at 30,000 residents per representative. The Anti-federalists challenged this ratio as too high and unrepublican by pointing out that in Pennsylvania’s state legislature, the ratio was one representative for each four to five thousand residents. Madison replied in essay No. 55 that the House of Representatives would only deal with national matters which do not require particular knowledge of local affairs or connection to specific local sentiments. Today, each congressional district approaches the then-population of Virginia, and the Congress regularly passes laws which have profound local effects. Whether or not Aristotle was correct about the precise limits of “community,” surely it beggars belief to say that today’s congressional districts are republican in anything but name.

Long tenures in office were another danger, according to republicans. The Articles of Confederation limited the number of terms a member of Congress could serve. The Constitution does not. Hence it is common for representatives to spend decades in office, which results in part from the difficulty of ousting incumbents in large districts gerrymandered to protect them. It is problematic to claim that such effective life tenures are “republican.”

Another important role in republican systems is played by various non-governmental social associations, such as the family, religious institutions, unions, and charitable groups. The 18th-century Anglo-Irish philosopher and politician Edmund Burke centered his theory of constitutional stability on the vitality of such institutions, which represent tradition and continuity and thereby guard against radicalism and turmoil. Burke was quite familiar to Americans for his vindications of their political claims before and during the Revolutionary War. He contrasted the stability of the English constitutional system with the situation in France. He was horrified by the violence of the French Revolution which grew from its utopian radicalism. It is inevitably the object of totalitarian governments to destroy or subjugate such intermediary institutions which threaten the power of the state over the people.

One must consider, then, some uncomfortable topics. To what extent has the American family structure been undermined by divorce, single parenthood, and various incentives created through the welfare state? How significant are religious institutions in the life of Americans today compared with preceding generations? With the exception of public employee unions, how significant are labor unions today? The same question must be asked about the vitality of local business associations and related service clubs, which played such significant roles in communities in the past.

The great Northwest Ordinance of 1787 declared, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” This goal reflects the inculcation of private virtue which the different groups of American republicans agreed were a necessary basis for the preservation of republican government, even if some argued that it was not a sufficient basis. Are educational institutions fulfilling their task of teaching the heritage, morals, and substantive knowledge upon which the founding generation staked the success of their republic, or has the radicals’ long march through those institutions corrupted that mission?

Is the current dynamic of identity politics leading us to a dangerous tribalism which tears the social bonds necessary for a stable and peaceful community? If factions are the bane of republican systems, will the stress of this anarchic impetus ultimately lead to a collapse into the tyranny which the Anti-federalists feared?

If freedom of the press is needed for “republican form of government,” are the media providing useful information to the public or at least performing their self-appointed task of bravely and indiscriminately “speaking truth to power”? Or have they become so ideologically blinded to convince themselves of the righteousness of their quest to indoctrinate the public, that they have vindicated Thomas Jefferson’s indictment of the press in his 1807 letter to John Norvell, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle….The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

Many of these dysfunctions were spawned by utopian schemers who without thought or hesitation cast aside rules and institutions forged in human experience. They failed to heed G.K. Chesterton’s warning in his parable of the fence built across a road not to tear it down until one clearly understands why it was erected in the first place.

As explored over these 90 sessions, the Constitution’s drafters constructed a framework of republican government and the means to preserve it. The structural components of the system, functioning as intended, assist that task. However, the Framers understood their own fallibility and the fragility of their creation. The Constitution is just a parchment. To give it life requires the attention of a civically militant citizenry committed to the preservation and functioning of its parts. That is the politics of the true “living constitution.” And, as has been said, politics is downstream from culture. The French philosopher Joseph de Maistre pungently observed, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Although his comment was about Russia, it would have particular relevance for a republic. Likewise, in his famous aphorism, Benjamin Franklin did not just say to Mrs. Elizabeth Powel that the convention had produced a republic. He added, wittily but ominously, “if you can keep it.” The question is whether the American people continue to be up to the challenge.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Essay #1 – INTRODUCTION

~*~

Essay #2 – Principle of government exists to secure liberty of the people rather than government existing to benefit itself. “We ought to consider, what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form.” – John Adams, Thoughts on Government, in a letter in reply to William Hooper 1742-1790, North Carolina Continental Congress Delegate and John Penn 1740-1788, North Carolina Continental Congress Delegate, written spring 1776 in reply to NC delegates Hooper and Penn requesting Adams’ considerations on republican government for America upon gaining independence from Great Britain.

~*~

Essay #3 – Principle of regard for history, order, and tradition.

~*~

Essay #4 – Further on drawing from history, order and tradition in the formation of America’s founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution of the 1700s. In 1639, a new colony, Connecticut, later a state gaining the motto “The Constitution State,” was founded by Reverends Thomas Hooker and John Davenport. Along with others, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were drafted, forming what is considered the first constitution in America. “…so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connecticut and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established…General Assemblies or Courts…Court of Election…Magistrates…liberty of speech…Governor…promote the public good and peace of the same…maintain all lawful privileges of this Commonwealth; as also that all wholesome laws that are or shall be made by lawful authority here established, be duly executed…” – segments from the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, January 1639.

~*~

Essay #5 – Principle of classical history discussed by the American founders for the purpose of applying its lessons toward a new and different governing system devoted to freedom and independence.

~*~

Essay #6 – Further on the principle of classical history discussed by the American founders for the purpose of applying its lessons toward a new and different governing system devoted to freedom and independence. In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties was written by a Puritan minister, Nathaniel Ward, considered the first bill of rights in America, continuing influences gained from those such as Magna Carta and others in the 1600s and into the 1700s for American law to come, and recognizing one is born with rights no government may take away. “The free fruition of such liberties, immunities and privileges as humanity, civility, and Christianity call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeachment and infringement hath ever been and ever will be the tranquility and stability of churches and commonwealths. And the denial or deprival thereof, the disturbance if not the ruin of both. We hold it therefore our duty and safety whilst we are about the further establishing of this government to collect and express all such freedoms as for present we foresee may concern us, and our posterity after us, and to ratify them with our solemn consent…” – With enumerated sections, in its original English spelling, the document was entitled, A Coppie of the Liberties of the Massachusets Collonie in New England, December 1641.

~*~

Essay #7 – Classical history and significance of republican government as adopted by the United States and its influence during the American Revolutionary War.

~*~

Essay #8 – Principle of constitutional restraints to prevent the undermining of interests of the entire Union. The Founders’ Join or Die efforts to protect the new Union of colonies to become a United States with state governments and one federal government with limits, resulted in Benjamin Franklin’s editorial cartoon running May 9, 1754 in his Pennsylvania Gazette, a picture of a snake cut in pieces representing the colonies. It served as a warning to join together or be destroyed by opponents of America. During tumultuous events of the French and Indian War, fighting the Stamp Act, and working toward independence from Britain, Americans agreed on protecting the Union.

~*~

Essay #9 – Principle of natural law opposition to tyranny that binds a free people together and cannot disjoin them.When the law is the will of the people, it will be uniform and coherent: but fluctuation, contradiction, and inconsistency of councils must be expected under those governments where every revolution in the ministry of a court produces one in the state. Such being the folly and pride of all ministers, that they ever pursue measures directly opposite to those of their predecessors…We shall neither be exposed to the necessary convulsions of elective monarchies, nor to the want of wisdom, fortitude, and virtue, to which hereditary succession is liable. In your hands it will be to perpetuate a prudent, active and just legislature, and which will never expire until you yourselves lose the virtues which give it existence…Our Union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.” – Samuel Adams, Speech on American Independence, August 1, 1776.

~*~

Essay #10 – Further on principle of appropriate role and purpose of government in protecting liberty of the citizenry and the function of running their own government.

~*~

Essay #11 – Principle of educating based on ethical, philosophical self-evident truths of good government, designed for a free people, recognized as important for acquiring civic virtue. when the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. the exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their controul with a wholsome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. this is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” – Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Charles Jarvis, Monticello, September 28, 1820.

~*~

Essay #12 – Principle of educating based on ethical, philosophical self-evident truths of self-government and a good system of government for the country, designed for a free people, recognized as important for securing and continuing the blessings of liberty for future generations of Americans. The New England Primer, published in 1690, served as the main textbook through the nineteenth century. It was used to educate Americans on virtue, morals, and how to read.

~*~

Essay #13 – Principle of civic duty, civic engagement. In a letter, John Adams wrote from Philadelphia to his wife, Abigail, April 26, 1777. Battle weary, Adams stated as he closed, “Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it.” Adams hoped future Americans would accept responsibility to preserve what was being established in his day. Declaration of Independence grievance: “He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.”

~*~

Essay #14 – Principle of civic duty to petition their own government for a redress of grievances.

~*~

Essay #15 – Principle of civic duty to rein in overreaching government. “They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?” – Patrick Henry, speech delivered at St. Johns Church, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775 (“Give me liberty” quote was attributed to Patrick Henry, believed originally from William Wirt).

~*~

Essay #16 – Principle of citizenship, love of country. “The Unity of Government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main Pillar in the Edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home; your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness” – George Washington, Farewell Address, first published September 19, 1796 in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser and given the date September 17, 1796.

  • Principle of Citizenship and Love of Country by Tom Hand, Creator and Publisher, Americana Corner; West Point Graduate; Serves on the Board of Trustees, American Battlefield Trust and the National Park Foundation’s National Council.

~*~

Essay #17 – Principle of America’s national sovereignty. “That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate: Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.” – Thomas Jefferson in his pamphlet, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” July 1774, Williamsburg, Virginia.

~*~

Essay #18 – Further on principle of America’s national sovereignty upon preventing loss of independence to foreign or global governments acting as with binding authority in attempts to undermine the United States.

~*~

Essay #19 – Principle of peace through strength. “Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?…It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry, speech delivered at St. Johns Church, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775 (“Give me liberty” quote was attributed to Patrick Henry, believed originally from William Wirt).

  • Principle of Peace Through Strength by Robert Brescia, Board Director, Past Chairman, Basin PBS Television; Top Leadership Roles in Education, Corporate Business, Nonprofit, and Defense; Twenty-Seven Years of Public Service as an Airborne Ranger Cavalry Soldier, NCO, Commissioned Officer, U.S. Army; Appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, State Board for Educator Certification.

~*~

Essay #20 – Principle of foreign policy based on a standard of freedom and independence. Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, December 19, 1776, Pamphlet 1, speech on “These are the times that try men’s souls” – not quitting in their fight for independence, writing how tyranny is not easily conquered, “Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but “to bind us in all cases whatsoever.”

~*~

Essay #21 – Principle of Creator-endowed unalienable rights.

~*~

Essay #22 – Principle of natural law as the foundation for constitutional law.government by election and representation has its origin in the natural and eternal rights of man” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

~*~

Essay #23 – Principle of appropriate role and purpose of government upon protection of unalienable rights, unchangeable, inherent, natural rights. The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. – Alexander Hamilton in his pamphlet, The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775, New York.

~*~

Essay #24 – Principle of a written United States Constitution that is the supreme law of the land, designed for the preservation of liberty for each generation of future Americans since its ratification. “…a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices…” After high winds blew the ship off course landing the Pilgrims hundreds of miles off their destination, the first American document designed for self-governing, called the Mayflower Compact, was signed November 21, 1620 (November 11, old calendar) aboard the Mayflower ship at Cape Cod, what is now Massachusets. With an understanding, from experience about tyrannical rule, the early American settlers knew the importance of good governing and that a document to form it should be written for doing so themselves at the place they landed. Forty-one men signed the agreement that would help lay the framework for the new nation’s future Constitution.

~*~

Essay #25 – Further on the principle of a written United States Constitution, a contract allowing, under strict limits, a government to run under the authority of the American people within the states. “There are in the productions of all of them, among many excellent things, some sentiments, however, that it will be difficult to reconcile to reason, experience, the constitution of human nature, or to the uniform testimony of the greatest statesmen, legislators, and philosophers of all enlightened nations, ancient and modern.” – John Adams in his 1787-1877 A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America, Letter I, Volume I, Preliminary Observations, Grosvenor-Square, October 4, 1786, part of a three-volume response sparked by a 1778 letter degrading American constitutions as not enough in republican form for the people to remain in control but were only repeating dictatorships America was trying to escape. Adams argues this is not the case.

~*~

Essay #26 – Principle of self-governing. “Let us also be mindful that the cause of freedom greatly depends on the use we make of the singular opportunities we enjoy of governing ourselves wisely; for if the event should prove, that the people of this country either cannot or will not govern themselves, who will hereafter be advocates for systems, which however charming in theory and prospect, are not reducible to practice. If the people of our nation, instead of consenting to be governed by laws of their own making, and rulers of their own choosing, should let licentiousness, disorder, and confusion reign over them, the minds of men every where, will insensibly become alienated from republican forms, and prepared to prefer and acquiesce in Governments, which, though less friendly to liberty, afford more peace and security…Receive this Address with the same candor with which it is written; and may the spirit of wisdom and patriotism direct and distinguish your councils and your conduct.” – John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in his pamphlet, A Citizen of New York: An Address to the People of the State of New York, April 15, 1788.

~*~

Essay #27 – Principle of decision making by the majority within a constitutional framework.

~*~

Essay #28 – Principle of law and order based on immutable, constant laws of nature and of nature’s God rather than the arbitrary will of any human ruler or mob rule. “I am an Enemy to Vice, and a Friend to Vertue. I am one of an extensive Charity, and a great Forgiver of private Injuries: A hearty Lover of the Clergy and all good Men, and a mortal Enemy to arbitrary Government and unlimited Power. I am naturally very jealous for the Rights and Liberties of my Country; and the least appearance of an Incroachment on those invaluable Priviledges, is apt to make my Blood boil exceedingly.” Silence Dogood, a pseudonym used by Benjamin Franklin, No. 2, April 16, 1722, New-England Courant.

~*~

Essay #29 – Principle of decentralized government where power is on the local level with each individual American and the states. “Sir, I contemplate the abolition of the state constitutions as an event fatal to the liberties of America. These liberties will not be violently wrested from the people; they will be undermined and gradually consumed. On subjects of the kind we cannot be too critical…Will it not give occasion for an innumerable swarm of officers, to infest our country and consume our substance? People will be subject to impositions which they cannot support, and of which their complaints can never reach the government.” – Melancton Smith, Delegate, First Provincial Congress in New York; June 27, 1788 Notes during days beginning the New York Ratifying Convention.

~*~

Essay #30 – Principle of limited government. “With respect to the words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” – James Madison in a letter to James Roberts, Jr on April 20, 1831.

~*~

Essay #31 – Principle of equality over equity, equal opportunities instead of guaranteed outcomes which cannot be guaranteed unless free market choices, competition, product development and improvements are extinguished.

~*~

Essay #32 – Principle of meritocracy.

~*~

Essay #33 – Principle of representative government under direction of the people rather than king rule, a principle applied by the American Founders in the United States Constitution. “But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense, February 14, 1776.

~*~

Essay #34 – Principle of representative government over a hereditary system. “…for it is impossible to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of which hereditary government could begin… It is one step toward liberty, to perceive that hereditary government could not begin as an exclusive right in any family…With respect to the first of these heads, that of a family establishing itself with hereditary powers on its own authority independent of the nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism…It operates to preclude the consent of the succeeding generations, and the preclusion of consent is despotism.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government 1795.

~*~

Essay #35 – Principle of free government and free society, entrusted to the hands of the American people, never confiscated by a tyrannical government system working to control rather than serve the citizenry.

~*~

Essay #36 – Principle of separation of powers, involving checks and balances on those powers: maintaining separation for any power of office held in order to prevent development of tyranny, to prevent concentration where power is built up into one place which prevents checks or restraints by the people. The first grievance in the Declaration of Independence where the king refused to pass laws; The first of the seven Articles of the United States Constitution, Articles I, II, and III, show separate branches of governing and their powers including how they are chosen.

~*~

Essay #37 – Principle of duty of the American people to continually observe government decisions and maintain checks on government power.Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies. It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the eastern to the western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt…The most valuable end of government is the liberty of the inhabitants. No possible advantages can compensate for the loss of this privilege.” – Patrick Henry, speech before the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788.

~*~

Essay #38 – Principle of a Legislative Branch, first within a system of government closest and as local to the people as possible with a limited federal government and strong local and state governing so that the people remain in control of their own government, with the Legislative Branch having been listed first in the Constitution for this purpose and to show it as the most important, then the Executive, then the Judiciary.

~*~

Essay #39 – Principle of an Executive Branch, a strong executive but a role accountable to the people, the legislature, which seats a president and not a king, and the Executive Branch is controlled by the Legislative Branch which is closest to the people. The Executive Branch is listed second in the Constitution after the Legislative Branch.

~*~

Essay #40 – Principle of a Judicial Branch, forming a Supreme Court and having the least amount of power of the three branches and no legislative power. The third branch of United States government, the Judicial Branch, is listed last in the Constitution after the Legislative and then Executive Branch.

~*~

Essay #41 – Principle of rule of law, not of men; careful observance of the formation and execution of laws.

~*~

Essay #42 –Principle of consent of the governed, that government without consent is overreaching its appropriate bounds, having moved from governing to tyranny. “…that the King with and by the authority of parliament, is able to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the crown, and the descent, limitation, inheritance and government thereof” is founded on the principles of liberty and the British constitution: And he that would palm the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience and non-resistance upon mankind, and thereby or by any other means serve the cause of the Pretender, is not only a fool and a knave, but a rebel against common sense, as well as the laws of God, of Nature, and his Country…These are their bounds, which by God and nature are fixed, hitherto have they a right to come, and no further…The sum of my argument is, That civil government is of God…That this constitution is the most free one, and by far the best, now existing on earth: That by this constitution, every man in the dominion is a free man: That no parts of his Majesty’s dominions can be taxed without their consent: That every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature…” – James Otis, Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved, pamphlet, 1763.

~*~

Essay #43 –Further on the principle of rule of law: difference between a mandate and a law, Founders’ warnings against arbitrary laws or mandates handed out as having the force of law which dilute the meaning of true law and order that protect the liberty of the people.

~*~

Essay #44 – Principle of justice for all.

  • Principle of Justice for All by Andrew Langer, President, Institute for Liberty; Chairman and Founder, Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement.

~*~

Essay #45 –Principle of equal justice under the law.

~*~

Essay #46 – Principle of a political system with criminal and civil law, enacted by a legislative body, and accessible to all American citizens. “…it ought not to be overlooked, that such an additional accumulation of power in the judicial department would not only furnish pretexts for clamor against it, but might create a general dread of its influence, which could hardly fail to disturb the salutory effects of its ordinary functions…There is nothing, of which a free people are so apt to be jealous,, as of the existence of political functions, and political checks, in those, who are not appointed by, and mde directly responsible to themselves.” – Joseph Story, United States Supreme Court Justice appointed by James Madison, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With A Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution. Published in 1833.

~*~

Essay #47 –Principle of due process of law.

  • Principle of Due Process of Law by James C. Clinger, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Murray State University; Past President, Kentucky Political Science Association.

~*~

Essay #48 – Principle of innocent of any crime until proven guilty.

~*~

Essay #49 –Principle of freedom of a person under the protection of habeas corpus.

~*~

Essay #50 –Principle of courts with justices who hold their offices during good behavior; importance of the phrase “during good behavior” for public servants. “Every man ought to be amenable for his conduct, and there are no persons so proper to complain of the public officers as the representatives of the people at large. The representatives of the people know the feelings of the people at large, and will be ready enough to make complaints. If this power were not provided, the consequences might be fatal. It will be not only the means of punishing misconduct but it will prevent misconduct. A man in public office who knows that there is no tribunal to punish him may be ready to deviate from his duty; but if he knows there is a tribunal for that purpose, although he may be a man of no principle, the very terror of punishment will perhaps deter him.” – James Iredell, U.S. Supreme Court Justice placed by George Washington, North Carolina Ratification Convention, July 24, 1788.

~*~

Essay #51 –Principle of no unreasonable searches or seizures.

~*~

Essay #52 –Principle of right to a speedy trial by a jury of peers, public, impartial, without cruel or unusual punishments, as part of the judicial system. “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Thomas Paine, 1789.

~*~

Essay #53 –Principle of a Grand Jury indictment of capital crimes before a person may be held to account.

~*~

Essay #54 – Principle of no passage, federal or state, of ex post facto laws of bills of attainder so that an individual is not held guilty of a crime and inflicted a punishment without a trial, to prevent abuse of the law.

~*~

Essay #55 – Principle of republican and limited form of government, representative through American citizens voting in free and frequent elections.There are however some things deducible from reason, and evidenced by experience, that serve to guide our decision upon the case. The one is never to invest any individual with extraordinary power; for besides his being tempted to misuse it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest power long in the hands of any number of individuals. The inconveniences that may be supposed to accompany frequent changes are less to be feared than the danger that arises from long continuance.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

~*~

Essay #56 – Principle of free, fair, independent elections involving preservation of the electoral college.

Principle of Free, Fair, Independent Elections Involving Preservation of the Electoral College by Tara Ross, Nationally Recognized Expert on the Electoral College, Author of Why We Need the Electoral CollegeThe Indispensable Electoral CollegeHow the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob RulePrager University video, Do You Understand the Electoral College?

~*~

Essay #57 – Further on principle of representative government only under authority of the American people.

~*~

Essay #58 –Principle of establishing justice through the rule of law.

~*~

Essay #59 – Principle of one nation under God.

~*~

Essay #60 – Principle of maintaining freedom and independence through an armed citizenry, right to protect one’s person and property by the personal keeping and bearing of arms. “to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms.” – Richard Henry Lee, Federal Farmer XVIII, January 25, 1788.

~*~

Essay #61 – Principle of peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith…Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements…Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” – George Washington, Farewell Address, first published September 19, 1796 in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser and given the date September 17, 1796.

~*~

Essay #62 – Principle of civil over military authority – protection against corruption, foreign or domestic attempts to divide and destroy America. The way is plain, says the anonymous Addresser. If War continues, remove into the unsettled Country; there establish yourselves, and leave an ungrateful Country to defend itself. But who are they to defend? Our Wives, our Children, our Farms, and other property which we leave behind us. or, in this state of hostile separation, are we to take the two first (the latter cannot be removed), to perish in a Wilderness, with hunger, cold and nakedness? If Peace takes place, never sheath your Swords Says he until you have obtained full and ample justice; this dreadful alternative, of either deserting our Country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our Arms against it…what can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the Army? Can he be a friend to this Country? – George Washington, Speech to the Officers of the Army at Newburgh, in response to petitions for the United States military to protest in mutiny. March 15, 1783.

~*~

Essay #63 – Principle of unity as Americans, preventing faction or division through election only of representatives who understand the United States Constitution and are willing to uphold it. “They were likewise sensible that on a subject so comprehensive, and involving such a variety of points and questions, the most able, the most candid, and the most honest men will differ in opinion…Although many weeks were passed in these discussions, some points remained, on which a unison of opinions could not be effected. Here again that same happy disposition to unite and conciliate, induced them to meet each other; and enabled them, by mutual concessions, finally to complete and agree to the plan they have recommended, and that too with a degree of unanimity which, considering the variety of discordant views and ideas, they had to reconcile, is really astonishing…Reflect that the present plan comes recommended to you by men and fellow citizens who have given you the highest proofs that men can give, of their justice, their love for liberty and their country, of their prudence, of their application, and of their talents. They tell you it is the best that they could form; and that in their opinion, it is necessary to redeem you from those calamities which already begin to be heavy upon us all.” – John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in his pamphlet, A Citizen of New York: An Address to the People of the State of New York, April 15, 1788.

~*~

Essay #64 – Principle of strong defense capability to protect the United States against the danger and severity of treason.

~*~

Essay #65 – Principle of appropriate role and purpose of government upon protecting the people from violence and fraud. “I do believe that men of genius will be deterred unless possessed of great virtues. We may well dispense with the first characters when destitute of virtue I should wish them never to come forward–But if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end: nor would I wish to put a man of virtue in the way of temptation. Evasions, and caballing would evade the amendment. Nor would the danger be less, if the executive has the appointment of officers. The first three or four years we might go on well enough; but what would be the case afterwards? I will add, that such a government ought to be refused by the people–and it will be refused.” – George Mason, Farrand’s Records, Federal Convention, Saturday, June 23, 1787, regarding provisions against fraud and corruption regardless of an invasion’s origin slowly eroding the United States.

~*~

Essay #66 – Corruption and the Constitution: Principle of Constitutional Law and a Foundation of a Virtuous and Moral People

~*~

Essay #67 – Principle of private property ownership of land to encourage self-reliance for maintaining and strengthening individual liberty and American independence.

~*~

Essay #68 – Principle of individual free enterprise.

~*~

Essay #69 – Principle of individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of one’s own happiness, to make and reach one’s own goals.That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression; and besides this there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence; while in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclusive rights.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

~*~

Essay #70 – Principle of freedom of speech in a marketplace of ideas.

~*~

Essay #71 – Principle of Money With Intrinsic Value and Standards of Weights and Measures, Printing Money. “And since a Plentiful Currency will be so great a Cause of advancing this Province in Trade and Riches…I cannot think it the Interest of England to oppose’ us in making as great a Sum of Paper Money here, as we, who are the best Judges of our own Necessities, find convenient. And if I were not sensible that the Gentlemen of Trade in England, to whom we have already parted with our Silver and Gold, are misinformed of our Circumstances, and therefore endeavour to have our Currency stinted to what it now is, I should think the Government at Home had some Reasons for discouraging and impoverishing this Province, which we are not acquainted with…” – Benjamin Franklin, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency, Benjamin Franklin, April 3, 1729.

~*~

Essay #72 – Principle of making personal contracts.

~*~

Essay #73 – Principle of free market trade, industry, innovation and competition.That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called.” – Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792.

Essay #74 – Principle of Private Property Ownership To Sustain Liberty, Encourage Commerce and Independence. “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own… That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties.” Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792.

~*~

Essay #75 – Principle of freedom of the press. “Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech” – Part of an article by Benjamin Franklin, under the pseudonym Silence Dogood, a name he used due to threats against free speech. Franklin wrote it on freedom of speech and of the press; it published in a newspaper: No. 8 on July 9, 1722, The New-England Courant.

  • Principle of a Free Press by Patrick Garry, Professor of Law, University of South Dakota; Author, Limited Government and the Bill of Rights.

~*~

Essay #76 – Principle of keeping the fruits of one’s own labor. “A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.” – Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792.

~*~

Essay #77 – Defending Liberty and Rights in Property Through the Fruits of One’s Own Labor

~*~

Essay #78 – Principle of Freedom of Religion.Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do;…that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;…and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:…Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or Ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief;” – Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786.

~*~

Essay #79 – Principle of freedom of assembly.

  • Principle of Freedom of Assembly by Scot Faulkner, Served as Chief Administrative Officer, U.S. House of Representatives and as a Member of the Reagan White House Staff; Financial Adviser; President, Friends of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

~*~

Essay #80 – Principle of civil discourse to keep representative government, unhindered freedom of speech in the airing of grievances. “To suppress Enquiries into the Administration is good Policy in an arbitrary Government: But a free Constitution and freedom of Speech have such a reciprocal Dependence on each other that they cannot subsist without consisting together.” – Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737, printed by Benjamin Franklin, later reprinted in the Barbados Gazette, 1738, and attributed to Andrew Hamilton, a Pennsylvania Colonial Representative, and lawyer who defended John Peter Zenger who was arrested for criticizing the government, as having possibly been the author of the article.

~*~

Essay #81 – Principle of a nation’s longevity upon consisting of public and private virtue. Religious freedom, assembling, speaking freely and defending the nation’s liberty. “While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determind to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick Virtue. I do verily believe, and I may say it inter Nos, that the Principles & Manners of New England produced that Spirit which finally has establishd the Independence of America; and Nothing but opposite Principles and Manners can overthrow it.” – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, Philadelphia, February 12, 1779.

~*~

Essay #82 – Principle of Constitutional Limits on the United States Government To Tax. “How then will it be possible, under these circumstances, to endure this Tax which is laid upon us by Parliament? –Add to this, that it will drain the Province of the little Cash left among us, which at present barely serves for a Medium of Trade…And if you should be active in bringing this Tax upon yourselves, at it will inevitably destroy our constitutional Privileges, so it will perpetuate to the latest Posterity, a most despicable Opinion of the civil Principles of their Ancestors…But should your Representatives be instructed by you, (which God forbid!) by a solemn and public Act to promote the Operation of this Law, you will implicitly declare that you resign that inestimable Right; and, in Consequence of such Resignation, you may next expect a Tax on your Lands; and after that one Burthen on the Back of another, till you are reduced to a State of the most abject Poverty…The Effects I presage are dreaded far and wide. –Would to God our Terror was merely panic, and that the Disagreeableness of the Act arose only from its Novelty. –But our Fears are founded on Reason and universal Experience…Consider gentlemen, that the least infraction of your Liberties is a Prelude to Encroachments…Indolence –Indolence has been the Source of irretrievable Ruin –Languor and Timidity, when the Public is concerned, are the origin of Evils mighty and innumerable” –A letter authored only using the initials W.B. “To the Inhabitants of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay,” concerning the Stamp Act, appeared in The Boston-Gazette and Country Journal, October 7, 1765.

~*~

Essay #83 – Principle of freedom of association, undissolved and unweakened, either to associate or not associate and neither under coercion or force. “…there must be Associations of Men of unshaken Fortitude. A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy.” – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, Philadelphia, February 12, 1779.

~*~

Essay #84 – Principle of Free Thought and Speech. “The freedom of speech is a principal Pillar in a free Government: when this support is taken away the Constitution is dissolved, and Tyranny is erected on its Ruins.” – Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737, printed by Benjamin Franklin, later reprinted in the Barbados Gazette, 1738, and attributed to Pennsylvania Lawyer and Pennsylvania Colonial Representative as having possibly been the author of the article.

  • Principle of Free Thought and Speech by Tony Williams, Author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America; Senior Teaching Fellow, Bill of Rights Institute; Constituting America Fellow.

~*~

Essay #85 – Principle of distinguishing between purpose of federal, and governments of the states: maintaining the Union while preventing federal encroachments on the states and individual Americans. Though we might give to such a government certain powers with safety, yet to give them the full and unlimited powers of taxation and the national forces would be to establish a despotism, the definition of which is, a government in which all power is concentrated in a single body. To take the old Confederation, and fashion it upon these principles, would be establishing a power which would destroy the liberties of the people… It was seen that the necessary powers were too great to be trusted to a single body; they, therefore, formed two branches, and divided the powers, that each might be a check upon the other…The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendency over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation. – Alexander Hamilton, Speech, Compromises of the Constitution, June 20, 1788..

 

Essay #86 – Principle of secure borders.

  • Principle of Secure Borders by Guest Essayist: Kevin Portteus, Professor of Politics, Director of American Studies, Lawrence Fertig Chair in Politics, Hillsdale College.

 

Essay #87 – Principle of a United States Constitution prescribing within itself the only lawful methods of amendments by its keepers, the American people.

~*~

Essay #88 – Upholding the Principle of Amending the United States Constitution by the American People, Its Rightful Keepers.

~*~

Essay #89 – Further on principle of free civil discourse and public debate without censorship – American government based on opportunities to discuss political and policy issues by reflection and choice rather than by accident and force. And what a Compliment does he pay to our Understandings, when he recommends measures in either alternative, impracticable in their Nature?…for if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and , dumb and silent we may be led like sheep, to the Slaughter. – George Washington, Speech to the Officers of the Army at Newburgh, the Newburgh Address, March 15, 1783.

~*~

Essay #90 – CONCLUSION

Guest Essayist: Christopher C. Burkett, Associate Professor of History and Political Science; Director, Ashbrook Scholar Program, Ashland University.

-*-

Principle of constitutional limits on the United States government to spend taxes collected from the people with prompt payment of public debt.

90-Day Study 2023

Essay #1 – INTRODUCTION

~*~

Essay #2 – Principle of government exists to secure liberty of the people rather than government existing to benefit itself. “We ought to consider, what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form.” – John Adams, Thoughts on Government, in a letter in reply to William Hooper 1742-1790, North Carolina Continental Congress Delegate and John Penn 1740-1788, North Carolina Continental Congress Delegate, written spring 1776 in reply to NC delegates Hooper and Penn requesting Adams’ considerations on republican government for America upon gaining independence from Great Britain.

~*~

Essay #3 – Principle of regard for history, order, and tradition.

~*~

Essay #4 – Further on drawing from history, order and tradition in the formation of America’s founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution of the 1700s. In 1639, a new colony, Connecticut, later a state gaining the motto “The Constitution State,” was founded by Reverends Thomas Hooker and John Davenport. Along with others, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were drafted, forming what is considered the first constitution in America. “…so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connecticut and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established…General Assemblies or Courts…Court of Election…Magistrates…liberty of speech…Governor…promote the public good and peace of the same…maintain all lawful privileges of this Commonwealth; as also that all wholesome laws that are or shall be made by lawful authority here established, be duly executed…” – segments from the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, January 1639.

~*~

Essay #5 – Principle of classical history discussed by the American founders for the purpose of applying its lessons toward a new and different governing system devoted to freedom and independence.

~*~

Essay #6 – Further on the principle of classical history discussed by the American founders for the purpose of applying its lessons toward a new and different governing system devoted to freedom and independence. In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties was written by a Puritan minister, Nathaniel Ward, considered the first bill of rights in America, continuing influences gained from those such as Magna Carta and others in the 1600s and into the 1700s for American law to come, and recognizing one is born with rights no government may take away. “The free fruition of such liberties, immunities and privileges as humanity, civility, and Christianity call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeachment and infringement hath ever been and ever will be the tranquility and stability of churches and commonwealths. And the denial or deprival thereof, the disturbance if not the ruin of both. We hold it therefore our duty and safety whilst we are about the further establishing of this government to collect and express all such freedoms as for present we foresee may concern us, and our posterity after us, and to ratify them with our solemn consent…” – With enumerated sections, in its original English spelling, the document was entitled, A Coppie of the Liberties of the Massachusets Collonie in New England, December 1641.

~*~

Essay #7 – Classical history and significance of republican government as adopted by the United States and its influence during the American Revolutionary War.

~*~

Essay #8 – Principle of constitutional restraints to prevent the undermining of interests of the entire Union. The Founders’ Join or Die efforts to protect the new Union of colonies to become a United States with state governments and one federal government with limits, resulted in Benjamin Franklin’s editorial cartoon running May 9, 1754 in his Pennsylvania Gazette, a picture of a snake cut in pieces representing the colonies. It served as a warning to join together or be destroyed by opponents of America. During tumultuous events of the French and Indian War, fighting the Stamp Act, and working toward independence from Britain, Americans agreed on protecting the Union.

~*~

Essay #9 – Principle of natural law opposition to tyranny that binds a free people together and cannot disjoin them.When the law is the will of the people, it will be uniform and coherent: but fluctuation, contradiction, and inconsistency of councils must be expected under those governments where every revolution in the ministry of a court produces one in the state. Such being the folly and pride of all ministers, that they ever pursue measures directly opposite to those of their predecessors…We shall neither be exposed to the necessary convulsions of elective monarchies, nor to the want of wisdom, fortitude, and virtue, to which hereditary succession is liable. In your hands it will be to perpetuate a prudent, active and just legislature, and which will never expire until you yourselves lose the virtues which give it existence…Our Union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.” – Samuel Adams, Speech on American Independence, August 1, 1776.

~*~

Essay #10 – Further on principle of appropriate role and purpose of government in protecting liberty of the citizenry and the function of running their own government.

~*~

Essay #11 – Principle of educating based on ethical, philosophical self-evident truths of good government, designed for a free people, recognized as important for acquiring civic virtue. when the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. the exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their controul with a wholsome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. this is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” – Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Charles Jarvis, Monticello, September 28, 1820.

~*~

Essay #12 – Principle of educating based on ethical, philosophical self-evident truths of self-government and a good system of government for the country, designed for a free people, recognized as important for securing and continuing the blessings of liberty for future generations of Americans. The New England Primer, published in 1690, served as the main textbook through the nineteenth century. It was used to educate Americans on virtue, morals, and how to read.

~*~

Essay #13 – Principle of civic duty, civic engagement. In a letter, John Adams wrote from Philadelphia to his wife, Abigail, April 26, 1777. Battle weary, Adams stated as he closed, “Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it.” Adams hoped future Americans would accept responsibility to preserve what was being established in his day. Declaration of Independence grievance: “He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.”

~*~

Essay #14 – Principle of civic duty to petition their own government for a redress of grievances.

~*~

Essay #15 – Principle of civic duty to rein in overreaching government. “They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house?” – Patrick Henry, speech delivered at St. Johns Church, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775 (“Give me liberty” quote was attributed to Patrick Henry, believed originally from William Wirt).

~*~

Essay #16 – Principle of citizenship, love of country. “The Unity of Government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main Pillar in the Edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home; your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness” – George Washington, Farewell Address, first published September 19, 1796 in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser and given the date September 17, 1796.

  • Principle of Citizenship and Love of Country by Tom Hand, Creator and Publisher, Americana Corner; West Point Graduate; Serves on the Board of Trustees, American Battlefield Trust and the National Park Foundation’s National Council.

~*~

Essay #17 – Principle of America’s national sovereignty. “That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate: Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.” – Thomas Jefferson in his pamphlet, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” July 1774, Williamsburg, Virginia.

~*~

Essay #18 – Further on principle of America’s national sovereignty upon preventing loss of independence to foreign or global governments acting as with binding authority in attempts to undermine the United States.

~*~

Essay #19 – Principle of peace through strength. “Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?…It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry, speech delivered at St. Johns Church, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775 (“Give me liberty” quote was attributed to Patrick Henry, believed originally from William Wirt).

  • Principle of Peace Through Strength by Robert Brescia, Board Director, Past Chairman, Basin PBS Television; Top Leadership Roles in Education, Corporate Business, Nonprofit, and Defense; Twenty-Seven Years of Public Service as an Airborne Ranger Cavalry Soldier, NCO, Commissioned Officer, U.S. Army; Appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, State Board for Educator Certification.

~*~

Essay #20 – Principle of foreign policy based on a standard of freedom and independence. Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, December 19, 1776, Pamphlet 1, speech on “These are the times that try men’s souls” – not quitting in their fight for independence, writing how tyranny is not easily conquered, “Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but “to bind us in all cases whatsoever.”

~*~

Essay #21 – Principle of Creator-endowed unalienable rights.

~*~

Essay #22 – Principle of natural law as the foundation for constitutional law.government by election and representation has its origin in the natural and eternal rights of man” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

~*~

Essay #23 – Principle of appropriate role and purpose of government upon protection of unalienable rights, unchangeable, inherent, natural rights. The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. – Alexander Hamilton in his pamphlet, The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775, New York.

~*~

Essay #24 – Principle of a written United States Constitution that is the supreme law of the land, designed for the preservation of liberty for each generation of future Americans since its ratification. “…a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices…” After high winds blew the ship off course landing the Pilgrims hundreds of miles off their destination, the first American document designed for self-governing, called the Mayflower Compact, was signed November 21, 1620 (November 11, old calendar) aboard the Mayflower ship at Cape Cod, what is now Massachusets. With an understanding, from experience about tyrannical rule, the early American settlers knew the importance of good governing and that a document to form it should be written for doing so themselves at the place they landed. Forty-one men signed the agreement that would help lay the framework for the new nation’s future Constitution.

~*~

Essay #25 – Further on the principle of a written United States Constitution, a contract allowing, under strict limits, a government to run under the authority of the American people within the states. “There are in the productions of all of them, among many excellent things, some sentiments, however, that it will be difficult to reconcile to reason, experience, the constitution of human nature, or to the uniform testimony of the greatest statesmen, legislators, and philosophers of all enlightened nations, ancient and modern.” – John Adams in his 1787-1877 A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America, Letter I, Volume I, Preliminary Observations, Grosvenor-Square, October 4, 1786, part of a three-volume response sparked by a 1778 letter degrading American constitutions as not enough in republican form for the people to remain in control but were only repeating dictatorships America was trying to escape. Adams argues this is not the case.

~*~

Essay #26 – Principle of self-governing. “Let us also be mindful that the cause of freedom greatly depends on the use we make of the singular opportunities we enjoy of governing ourselves wisely; for if the event should prove, that the people of this country either cannot or will not govern themselves, who will hereafter be advocates for systems, which however charming in theory and prospect, are not reducible to practice. If the people of our nation, instead of consenting to be governed by laws of their own making, and rulers of their own choosing, should let licentiousness, disorder, and confusion reign over them, the minds of men every where, will insensibly become alienated from republican forms, and prepared to prefer and acquiesce in Governments, which, though less friendly to liberty, afford more peace and security…Receive this Address with the same candor with which it is written; and may the spirit of wisdom and patriotism direct and distinguish your councils and your conduct.” – John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in his pamphlet, A Citizen of New York: An Address to the People of the State of New York, April 15, 1788.

~*~

Essay #27 – Principle of decision making by the majority within a constitutional framework.

~*~

Essay #28 – Principle of law and order based on immutable, constant laws of nature and of nature’s God rather than the arbitrary will of any human ruler or mob rule. “I am an Enemy to Vice, and a Friend to Vertue. I am one of an extensive Charity, and a great Forgiver of private Injuries: A hearty Lover of the Clergy and all good Men, and a mortal Enemy to arbitrary Government and unlimited Power. I am naturally very jealous for the Rights and Liberties of my Country; and the least appearance of an Incroachment on those invaluable Priviledges, is apt to make my Blood boil exceedingly.” Silence Dogood, a pseudonym used by Benjamin Franklin, No. 2, April 16, 1722, New-England Courant.

~*~

Essay #29 – Principle of constitutional law and a foundation of a virtuous and moral people.

~*~

Essay #30 – Principle of one nation under God.

~*~

Essay #31 – Principle of consent of the governed, that government without consent is overreaching its appropriate bounds, having moved from governing to tyranny. “…that the King with and by the authority of parliament, is able to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the crown, and the descent, limitation, inheritance and government thereof” is founded on the principles of liberty and the British constitution: And he that would palm the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience and non-resistance upon mankind, and thereby or by any other means serve the cause of the Pretender, is not only a fool and a knave, but a rebel against common sense, as well as the laws of God, of Nature, and his Country…These are their bounds, which by God and nature are fixed, hitherto have they a right to come, and no further…The sum of my argument is, That civil government is of God…That this constitution is the most free one, and by far the best, now existing on earth: That by this constitution, every man in the dominion is a free man: That no parts of his Majesty’s dominions can be taxed without their consent: That every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature…” – James Otis, Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved, pamphlet, 1763.

~*~

Essay #32 – Principle of decentralized government where power is on the local level with each individual American and the states. “Sir, I contemplate the abolition of the state constitutions as an event fatal to the liberties of America. These liberties will not be violently wrested from the people; they will be undermined and gradually consumed. On subjects of the kind we cannot be too critical…Will it not give occasion for an innumerable swarm of officers, to infest our country and consume our substance? People will be subject to impositions which they cannot support, and of which their complaints can never reach the government.” – Melancton Smith, Delegate, First Provincial Congress in New York; June 27, 1788 Notes during days beginning the New York Ratifying Convention.

~*~

Essay #33 – Principle of limited government. “With respect to the words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” – James Madison in a letter to James Roberts, Jr on April 20, 1831.

~*~

Essay #34 – Principle of equality over equity, equal opportunities instead of guaranteed outcomes which cannot be guaranteed unless free market choices, competition, product development and improvements are extinguished.

~*~

Essay #35 – Principle of meritocracy.

~*~

Essay #36 – Principle of representative government under direction of the people rather than king rule, a principle applied by the American Founders in the United States Constitution. “But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense, February 14, 1776.

~*~

Essay #37 – Principle of representative government over a hereditary system. “…for it is impossible to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of which hereditary government could begin… It is one step toward liberty, to perceive that hereditary government could not begin as an exclusive right in any family…With respect to the first of these heads, that of a family establishing itself with hereditary powers on its own authority independent of the nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism…It operates to preclude the consent of the succeeding generations, and the preclusion of consent is despotism.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on the First Principles of Government 1795.

~*~

Essay #38 – Principle of free government and free society, entrusted to the hands of the American people, never confiscated by a tyrannical government system working to control rather than serve the citizenry.

~*~

Essay #39 – Principle of separation of powers, involving checks and balances on those powers: maintaining separation for any power of office held in order to prevent development of tyranny, to prevent concentration where power is built up into one place which prevents checks or restraints by the people. The first grievance in the Declaration of Independence where the king refused to pass laws; The first of the seven Articles of the United States Constitution, Articles I, II, and III, show separate branches of governing and their powers including how they are chosen.

~*~

Essay #40 – Principle of duty of the American people to continually observe government decisions and maintain checks on government power.Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies. It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the eastern to the western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt…The most valuable end of government is the liberty of the inhabitants. No possible advantages can compensate for the loss of this privilege.” – Patrick Henry, speech before the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788.

~*~

Essay #41 – Principle of a Legislative Branch, first within a system of government closest and as local to the people as possible with a limited federal government and strong local and state governing so that the people remain in control of their own government, with the Legislative Branch having been listed first in the Constitution for this purpose and to show it as the most important, then the Executive, then the Judiciary.

~*~

Essay #42 – Principle of an Executive Branch, a strong executive but a role accountable to the people, the legislature, which seats a president and not a king, and the Executive Branch is controlled by the Legislative Branch which is closest to the people. The Executive Branch is listed second in the Constitution after the Legislative Branch.

~*~

Essay #43 – Principle of a Judicial Branch, forming a Supreme Court and having the least amount of power of the three branches and no legislative power. The third branch of United States government, the Judicial Branch, is listed last in the Constitution after the Legislative and then Executive Branch.

~*~

Essay #44 – Principle of establishing justice through rule of law – guarding against gradual erosion of law and order into chaos to break down America’s system of self-governing, eventually ushering in tyranny to control the people rather than protect liberty by protecting the rule of law. “…you seem…to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an Oligarchy. our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. they have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps. their maxim is ‘boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,’ and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective controul. the constitution has erected no such single tribunal knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time & party it’s members would become despots.” – Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Charles Jarvis, Monticello, September 28, 1820.

~*~

Essay #45 – Principle of rule of law, not of men; careful observance of the formation and execution of laws.

~*~

Essay #46 – Further on the principle of rule of law: difference between a mandate and a law, Founders’ warnings against arbitrary laws or mandates handed out as having the force of law which dilute the meaning of true law and order that protect the liberty of the people.

~*~

Essay #47 – Principle of justice for all.

  • Principle of Justice for All by Andrew Langer, President, Institute for Liberty; Chairman and Founder, Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement.

~*~

Essay #48 – Principle of equal under the law.

~*~

Essay #49 – Principle of a political system with criminal and civil law, enacted by a legislative body, and accessible to all American citizens. “…it ought not to be overlooked, that such an additional accumulation of power in the judicial department would not only furnish pretexts for clamor against it, but might create a general dread of its influence, which could hardly fail to disturb the salutory effects of its ordinary functions…There is nothing, of which a free people are so apt to be jealous,, as of the existence of political functions, and political checks, in those, who are not appointed by, and mde directly responsible to themselves.” – Joseph Story, United States Supreme Court Justice appointed by James Madison, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With A Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution. Published in 1833.

~*~

Essay #50 – Principle of due process of law.

  • Principle of Due Process of Law by James C. Clinger, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Murray State University; Past President, Kentucky Political Science Association.

~*~

Essay #51 – Principle of innocent of any crime until proven guilty.

~*~

Essay #52 – Principle of freedom of a person under the protection of habeas corpus.

~*~

Essay #53 – Principle of courts with justices who hold their offices during good behavior; importance of the phrase “during good behavior” for public servants. “Every man ought to be amenable for his conduct, and there are no persons so proper to complain of the public officers as the representatives of the people at large. The representatives of the people know the feelings of the people at large, and will be ready enough to make complaints. If this power were not provided, the consequences might be fatal. It will be not only the means of punishing misconduct but it will prevent misconduct. A man in public office who knows that there is no tribunal to punish him may be ready to deviate from his duty; but if he knows there is a tribunal for that purpose, although he may be a man of no principle, the very terror of punishment will perhaps deter him.” – James Iredell, U.S. Supreme Court Justice placed by George Washington, North Carolina Ratification Convention, July 24, 1788.

~*~

Essay #54 – Principle of no unreasonable searches or seizures.

~*~

Essay #55 – Principle of right to a speedy trial by a jury of peers, public, impartial, without cruel or unusual punishments, as part of the judicial system. “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Thomas Paine, 1789.

~*~

Essay #56 – Principle of a Grand Jury indictment of capital crimes before a person may be held to account.

~*~

Essay #57 – Principle of no passage, federal or state, of ex post facto laws of bills of attainder so that an individual is not held guilty of a crime and inflicted a punishment without a trial, to prevent abuse of the law.

~*~

Essay #58 – Principle of republican and limited form of government, representative through American citizens voting in free and frequent elections.There are however some things deducible from reason, and evidenced by experience, that serve to guide our decision upon the case. The one is never to invest any individual with extraordinary power; for besides his being tempted to misuse it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest power long in the hands of any number of individuals. The inconveniences that may be supposed to accompany frequent changes are less to be feared than the danger that arises from long continuance.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

~*~

Essay #59 – Principle of free, fair, independent elections involving preservation of the electoral college.

~*~

Essay #60 – Further on principle of representative government only under authority of the American people.

~*~

Essay #61 – Principle of a United States Constitution prescribing within itself the only lawful methods of amendments by its keepers, the American people.

~*~

Essay #62 – Upholding the Principle of Amending the United States Constitution by the American People, Its Rightful Keepers.

~*~

Essay #63 – Principle of maintaining freedom and independence through an armed citizenry, right to protect one’s person and property by the personal keeping and bearing of arms. “to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms.” – Richard Henry Lee, Federal Farmer XVIII, January 25, 1788.

~*~

Essay #64 – Principle of peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith…Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements…Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” – George Washington, Farewell Address, first published September 19, 1796 in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser and given the date September 17, 1796.

~*~

Essay #65 – Principle of civil over military authority – protection against corruption, foreign or domestic attempts to divide and destroy America. The way is plain, says the anonymous Addresser. If War continues, remove into the unsettled Country; there establish yourselves, and leave an ungrateful Country to defend itself. But who are they to defend? Our Wives, our Children, our Farms, and other property which we leave behind us. or, in this state of hostile separation, are we to take the two first (the latter cannot be removed), to perish in a Wilderness, with hunger, cold and nakedness? If Peace takes place, never sheath your Swords Says he until you have obtained full and ample justice; this dreadful alternative, of either deserting our Country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our Arms against it…what can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the Army? Can he be a friend to this Country? – George Washington, Speech to the Officers of the Army at Newburgh, in response to petitions for the United States military to protest in mutiny. March 15, 1783.

~*~

Essay #66 – Principle of unity as Americans, preventing faction or division through election only of representatives who understand the United States Constitution and are willing to uphold it. “They were likewise sensible that on a subject so comprehensive, and involving such a variety of points and questions, the most able, the most candid, and the most honest men will differ in opinion…Although many weeks were passed in these discussions, some points remained, on which a unison of opinions could not be effected. Here again that same happy disposition to unite and conciliate, induced them to meet each other; and enabled them, by mutual concessions, finally to complete and agree to the plan they have recommended, and that too with a degree of unanimity which, considering the variety of discordant views and ideas, they had to reconcile, is really astonishing…Reflect that the present plan comes recommended to you by men and fellow citizens who have given you the highest proofs that men can give, of their justice, their love for liberty and their country, of their prudence, of their application, and of their talents. They tell you it is the best that they could form; and that in their opinion, it is necessary to redeem you from those calamities which already begin to be heavy upon us all.” – John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in his pamphlet, A Citizen of New York: An Address to the People of the State of New York, April 15, 1788.

~*~

Essay #67 – Principle of strong defense capability to protect the United States against the danger and severity of treason.

~*~

Essay #68 – Principle of appropriate role and purpose of government upon protecting the people from violence and fraud. “I do believe that men of genius will be deterred unless possessed of great virtues. We may well dispense with the first characters when destitute of virtue I should wish them never to come forward–But if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end: nor would I wish to put a man of virtue in the way of temptation. Evasions, and caballing would evade the amendment. Nor would the danger be less, if the executive has the appointment of officers. The first three or four years we might go on well enough; but what would be the case afterwards? I will add, that such a government ought to be refused by the people–and it will be refused.” – George Mason, Farrand’s Records, Federal Convention, Saturday, June 23, 1787, regarding provisions against fraud and corruption regardless of an invasion’s origin slowly eroding the United States.

~*~

Essay #69 – Principle of distinguishing between purpose of federal, and governments of the states: maintaining the Union while preventing federal encroachments on the states and individual Americans. Though we might give to such a government certain powers with safety, yet to give them the full and unlimited powers of taxation and the national forces would be to establish a despotism, the definition of which is, a government in which all power is concentrated in a single body. To take the old Confederation, and fashion it upon these principles, would be establishing a power which would destroy the liberties of the people… It was seen that the necessary powers were too great to be trusted to a single body; they, therefore, formed two branches, and divided the powers, that each might be a check upon the other…The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendency over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation. – Alexander Hamilton, Speech, Compromises of the Constitution, June 20, 1788.

~*~

Essay #70 – Principle of private property ownership of land to encourage self-reliance for maintaining and strengthening individual liberty and American independence.

~*~

Essay #71 – Principle of secure borders.

  • Principle of Secure Borders by Kevin Portteus, Professor of Politics, Director of American Studies, Lawrence Fertig Chair in Politics, Hillsdale College.

~*~

Essay #72 – Further on principle of private property ownership to protect liberty and encourage commerce, independence, personal growth and wealth without a requirement of royal or other position of gain. “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own… That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties.” Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792.

~*~

Essay #73 – Principle of individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of one’s own happiness, to make and reach one’s own goals.That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression; and besides this there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence; while in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclusive rights.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

~*~

Essay #74 – Principle of individual free enterprise.

~*~

Essay #75 – Principle of money with intrinsic value and standards of weights and measures, printing money. “And since a Plentiful Currency will be so great a Cause of advancing this Province in Trade and Riches…I cannot think it the Interest of England to oppose’ us in making as great a Sum of Paper Money here, as we, who are the best Judges of our own Necessities, find convenient. And if I were not sensible that the Gentlemen of Trade in England, to whom we have already parted with our Silver and Gold, are misinformed of our Circumstances, and therefore endeavour to have our Currency stinted to what it now is, I should think the Government at Home had some Reasons for discouraging and impoverishing this Province, which we are not acquainted with…” – Benjamin Franklin, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency, Benjamin Franklin, April 3, 1729.

~*~

Essay #76 – Principle of making personal contracts.

~*~

Essay #77 – Principle of free market trade, industry, innovation and competition.That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called.” – Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792.

~*~

Essay #78 – Principle of keeping the fruits of one’s own labor. “A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.” – Property, an essay by James Madison, March 29, 1792.

~*~

Essay #79 – Principle of defending liberty and rights in property through the fruits of one’s own labor.

~*~

Essay #80 – Principle of constitutional limits on the United States government to tax. “How then will it be possible, under these circumstances, to endure this Tax which is laid upon us by Parliament? –Add to this, that it will drain the Province of the little Cash left among us, which at present barely serves for a Medium of Trade…And if you should be active in bringing this Tax upon yourselves, at it will inevitably destroy our constitutional Privileges, so it will perpetuate to the latest Posterity, a most despicable Opinion of the civil Principles of their Ancestors…But should your Representatives be instructed by you, (which God forbid!) by a solemn and public Act to promote the Operation of this Law, you will implicitly declare that you resign that inestimable Right; and, in Consequence of such Resignation, you may next expect a Tax on your Lands; and after that one Burthen on the Back of another, till you are reduced to a State of the most abject Poverty…The Effects I presage are dreaded far and wide. –Would to God our Terror was merely panic, and that the Disagreeableness of the Act arose only from its Novelty. –But our Fears are founded on Reason and universal Experience…Consider gentlemen, that the least infraction of your Liberties is a Prelude to Encroachments…Indolence –Indolence has been the Source of irretrievable Ruin –Languor and Timidity, when the Public is concerned, are the origin of Evils mighty and innumerable” –A letter authored only using the initials W.B. “To the Inhabitants of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay,” concerning the Stamp Act, appeared in The Boston-Gazette and Country Journal, October 7, 1765.

~*~

Essay #81 – Principle of freedom of speech in a marketplace of ideas.

~*~

Essay #82 – Principle of free thought and speech. “The freedom of speech is a principal Pillar in a free Government: when this support is taken away the Constitution is dissolved, and Tyranny is erected on its Ruins.” – Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737, printed by Benjamin Franklin, later reprinted in the Barbados Gazette, 1738, and attributed to Pennsylvania Lawyer and Pennsylvania Colonial Representative as having possibly been the author of the article.

~*~

Essay #83 – Principle of freedom of association, undissolved and unweakened, either to associate or not associate and neither under coercion nor force. “…there must be Associations of Men of unshaken Fortitude. A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy.” – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, Philadelphia, February 12, 1779.

~*~

Essay #84 – Principle of freedom of the press. “Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech” – Part of an article by Benjamin Franklin, under the pseudonym Silence Dogood, a name he used due to threats against free speech. Franklin wrote it on freedom of speech and of the press; it published in a newspaper: No. 8 on July 9, 1722, The New-England Courant.

  • Principle of a Free Press by Patrick Garry, Professor of Law, University of South Dakota; Author, Limited Government and the Bill of Rights.

~*~

Essay #85 – Principle of freedom of assembly.

  • Principle of Freedom of Assembly by Scot Faulkner, Served as Chief Administrative Officer, U.S. House of Representatives and as a Member of the Reagan White House Staff; Financial Adviser; President, Friends of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

~*~

Essay #86 – Principle of civil discourse to keep representative government, unhindered freedom of speech in the airing of grievances. “To suppress Enquiries into the Administration is good Policy in an arbitrary Government: But a free Constitution and freedom of Speech have such a reciprocal Dependence on each other that they cannot subsist without consisting together.” – Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737, printed by Benjamin Franklin, later reprinted in the Barbados Gazette, 1738, and attributed to Andrew Hamilton, a Pennsylvania Colonial Representative, and lawyer who defended John Peter Zenger who was arrested for criticizing the government, as having possibly been the author of the article.

~*~

Essay #87 – Further on principle of free civil discourse and public debate without censorship – American government based on opportunities to discuss political and policy issues by reflection and choice rather than by accident and force. And what a Compliment does he pay to our Understandings, when he recommends measures in either alternative, impracticable in their Nature?…for if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led like sheep, to the Slaughter. – George Washington, Speech to the Officers of the Army at Newburgh, the Newburgh Address, March 15, 1783.

~*~

Essay #88 – Principle of freedom of religion.Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do;…that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;…and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:…Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or Ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief;” – Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786.

~*~

Essay #89 – Principle of a nation’s longevity upon consisting of public and private virtue. Religious freedom, assembling, speaking freely and defending the nation’s liberty. “While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determind to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick Virtue. I do verily believe, and I may say it inter Nos, that the Principles & Manners of New England produced that Spirit which finally has establishd the Independence of America; and Nothing but opposite Principles and Manners can overthrow it.” – Samuel Adams, in a letter to James Warren, Philadelphia, February 12, 1779.

~*~

Essay #90 – CONCLUSION

~*~

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett


History furnishes plenty of examples, especially in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, of revolutions that attempted to create Utopian societies. From the French Revolution, which attempted to completely recreate society in every way in the name of equality, to the Russian Revolution, which attempted to recreate the human mind by erasing all concepts of the “private” and the “individual,” these Utopian experiments all have one thing in common: they either ignore or reject the idea of unchanging human nature, or claim that human nature is malleable or perfectible and can be reinvented. The American Founders would argue that this is why they have all failed, or will fail, in the end.

To be sure, the Founders understood from their own experiences and actions that change – and sometimes revolution – is necessary to bring about political, social, moral, and economic progress to make life better and more just for human beings. But the Founders had the prescience to see the danger of being too radical and abandoning all tradition and experience for the sake of some untested visionary idea of a perfect society. James Madison, in The Federalist No. 14, urged his fellow Americans to be open to the new – one might say “experimental” – aspects of the proposed United States Constitution. “Hearken not to the voice,” Madison wrote, “which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish.” On the other hand, Madison acknowledged that there are some wholly new aspects of the proposed form of government. “But why,” he continued, “is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?” To embolden his fellow citizens to attempt this experiment, Madison appealed to the example of the American Revolution itself:

Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course.

Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist No 31, also wrote on the need to combine a degree of boldness with prudence in revolutions. “Caution and investigation are a necessary armor against error and imposition,” Hamilton wrote.

But this untractableness may be carried too far, and may degenerate into obstinacy, perverseness, or disingenuity. … The moment we launch into conjectures about the usurpations of the federal government, we get into an unfathomable abyss, and fairly put ourselves out of the reach of all reasoning. Imagination may range at pleasure till it gets bewildered amidst the labyrinths of an enchanted castle, and knows not on which side to turn to extricate itself from the perplexities into which it has so rashly adventured.

Though the Founders understood the need for “experimentation” in order to make society better, they also understood that such experiments must be undertaken with a kind of prudence and judicious awareness of the realities and limitations imposed by human nature. In The Federalist No. 10, James Madison addressed those who believe that faction can be eliminated entirely from society, and reminds them that the causes of faction are rooted in human nature. To achieve a truly faction-free society, one must either eliminate or change human nature, which, in either case, would require a tyrannical government to accomplish. Madison reminded us again in The Federalist No. 51 that human nature should temper our expectations for establishing successful Utopian regimes. “But what is government itself,” Madison asked,” but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

In The Federalist No. 37, Madison reflected on how the Constitutional Convention in 1787 combined political innovation tempered with prudence and a due regard for experience to create the proposed Constitution. The mode in which the Constitution was written – by a body of 55 delegates from twelve states over the course of three and a half months – was itself an experiment in constitution making. Madison observed, “The novelty of the undertaking immediately strikes us. … The most that the convention could do in such a situation, was to avoid the errors suggested by the past experience of other countries, as well as of our own; and to provide a convenient mode of rectifying their own errors, as future experiences may unfold them.” Madison conceded that the proposed Constitution was not perfect; nor would it establish a perfect form of government. But Madison argued against letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and acknowledged that the imperfections arose, in part, from the realities of human nature and of imperfect human beings. As Madison wrote:

Would it be wonderful if, under the pressure of all these difficulties, the convention should have been forced into some deviations from that artificial structure and regular symmetry which an abstract view of the subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on a Constitution planned in his closet or in his imagination? The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

Hamilton echoed this sentiment as well in The Federalist No 85. Hamilton addressed those who would reject the proposed Constitution because it was imperfect. “‘Why,’ say they, ‘should we adopt an imperfect thing? Why not amend it and make it perfect before it is irrevocably established?’” Hamilton’s response invoked, again, the realities of human nature:

I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed. The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and union, must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?

In summary, to paraphrase Hamilton from The Federalist No. 6, though it is reasonable for us to aim at progress through prudent change and experimentation, one must be far gone in Utopian speculations to believe that human beings can ever achieve a completely perfect society. History has vindicated the Founders’ advice on this through many examples of Utopian experiments that have resulted in tyranny, oppression, and death for many people.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


Utopianism appears to be inbred in the human brain—the desire for the perfect life, however a person might define that. Parents tell children to “follow their dreams.” Adults, too, often follow suit. Examples abound, from the ‘49ers of the California Gold Rush, to the “drop-out” hippie communes of the 1960s, to current athletes and entertainers. From print publications to electronic media, the protagonists of many stories—fictional or true—are those who “followed the beat of their own drum.”

This human trait is admirable and is something which marks us as more intellectually complex than brute animals. Aristotelian understanding of “happiness”—eudaimonia—is that quest for a fulfilled and flourishing life, to be “truly human.” One might never fully attain that state, or, Aristotle advises, one might not fully comprehend it until one is close to death. Even the failure of such a quest, though, can teach valuable lessons. A person might end the journey to become a singer, once she realizes that the agitation among the neighborhood’s cats stem from the sounds she emits. Instead, perhaps a new dream to become a talent agent forms to motivate her. Looked at another way, even if her utopian vision fails completely, it likely affects only her and perhaps a few around her.

By contrast, utopianism at the level of societies is much more dangerous to human flourishing. At that scale, failure, such as the collapse of a polity, affects multitudes in a profoundly existential manner. The ship of state requires a calm hand at the wheel. Phronesis, the classical virtue of practical wisdom, must control, not utopian passion. The statesman must have the clear ability to make the moral and practical choices which conduce best to the well-being of the community.

Still, there lurks the unsatisfied yearning to achieve, or to return to, the perfect society. It is the psychological desire to return to a Garden of Eden and a state of perfect innocence. From a Neo-Platonic perspective, which influenced the writings of St. Augustine and other early Christians, this yearning might reflect the human soul’s longing to attain union with the ultimate Good, or God.

Writers since ancient times have dabbled in philosophic creation projects of ideal societies. Plato’s 4th-century B.C. Politeia (The Republic), his prescription for a government run by a “guardian class” of philosopher-kings, is an early example. Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia about an ideal society dwelling on an idyllic island, is another. More recently, Karl Marx’s writings about the process of historical transition which ultimately would end class strife through the establishment of a classless, communist society, dazzled many acolytes. Common to these three particular works, it should be noted, was opposition, in some manner or another, to private property. Another commonality was a degree of hostility to the traditional nuclear family structure.

At least the first two of these works are not necessarily to be taken at face value. The revolutionary changes which would be necessary to establish Plato’s ideal republic conflict with fundamental philosophic views he expressed in other writings. Moreover, he was quite clear about the inevitability that the project would fail due to the passions which are part of human nature. His work is a warning at least as much as it is a blueprint.

More’s work is satirical through and through, from the book’s title (a play on two similar sounding Greek words meaning no place—Utopia—and perfect place—Eutopia), to the names of various places and persons within the work, to the customs of his island’s denizens. It was satire of English society, but also a warning about societies unmoored from Christian ethics.

Along with utopian philosophies have come utopian projects. The Plymouth Rock Colony of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620 was organized initially along communist principles of land cultivation. The disastrous economic consequences from that brief, two-year experiment threatened the very existence of the colony. Fortunately, the misstep was soon corrected. A similar fate awaited Robert Owen’s utopian “socialist” colony New Harmony, Indiana, which turned from a prosperous religious settlement when sold to Owen in 1825 to an economic shambles by 1828. The religious predecessor had also held property in common, but within a tightly-knit religious community. Owen’s associates lacked any strong bonds of community. As one contemporary commentator noted, “There are only two ways of governing such an institution as a Community; it must be done either by law or by grace. Owen got a company together and abolished law, but did not establish grace; and so, necessarily, failed.” He might have added one additional approach, the use of relentless force.

Often, these utopian communities are driven by a fervent vision of a new type of society founded on religious principles. They seek to create an earthly community close to God. Besides the Pilgrims, the Shakers and other charismatic groups come to mind. Others, like the Owenite socialists are motivated by more secular ideologies. Sometimes, an odd brew of messianic zeal and political ideology is blended, as in the “apostolic socialism” of Jim Jones’s People’s Temple in Guyana. These groups eventually adapt their dogma to the complexities of human nature and the real-world challenges of social living, as the Pilgrims and the Latter Day Saints did. Or, they disintegrate, as was the fate of the Owenites and the Shakers. Tragically, some come to a violent end under the thrall of a toxic “prophet,” as did the unfortunates of the People’s Temple.

Another factor which contributes to the instability of utopian projects is the scale of the venture. The communities previously mentioned were comparatively small. The Aristotelian ranking of associations from the family to the clan to the polis encompasses ever greater numbers. As those numbers increase and the members’ relationships to each other become more distant, the bonds become looser. Human nature is, essentially, selfish. Self-interest is not necessarily bad. Killing an attacker to save one’s own life has long been recognized as the most fundamental of natural rights. However, another human characteristic, more developed than in lesser species, is altruism.

Altruism, and one’s willingness to incur burdens for the benefit of another, is most pronounced in regards to those whom we “know.” The bonds of love are strongest towards immediate family members. They are also present, but less intensely, towards the extended family. Beyond that lie the still significant bonds of friendship about which Plato and Aristotle mused at length. Aristotle considered the highest form of friendship that which is maintained not for what one might get out of it, but, instead, what is done for the benefit of the other. He also considered friendship as the key measure of proper self-government in the polis. At some point, however, the number of residents within the community might grow too big for the mutual interactions required to maintain friendship. As that number grows, the psychological tension between self-interest and true altruism inevitably favors the former.

For example, a “communist” approach to work and reward can succeed within a family, perhaps even an extended one of longstanding relationships. Trouble arises when the relationships are not familial. To eliminate this inequality of sentiment, utopian societies seek to undermine or abolish the family and other voluntary affinity groups, which itself is doomed to fail and simply accelerates the group’s collapse. A large utopian society, whose members are not bound together by religion or by rules derived from long-established customs which reflect the traditional ordering within stable communities, requires increasingly brutal force to maintain commitment to the utopian project. Pol Pot’s devilish regime in Cambodia nearly half a century ago is a notorious example of this, as memorialized in the chilling movie The Killing Fields.

No matter how intellectually promising and rationally organized the effort is, human nature and passions will derail the utopian project. Plato laid the problem at the feet of eros—passionate love and desire—which upends the controlled marriage and mating program his ultra-rational utopia required. Among the rulers, nepotism and greed manifest themselves. It is hardly shocking that Fidel Castro acquired a wealth of nearly $1 billion at the time, all the while exhorting the unfortunate subjects in his impoverished nation to sacrifice for la Revolución. The inevitable failings of the system set off a hunt for scapegoats, those wreckers who do not show the requisite zeal and who harbor counterrevolutionary or other heretical views.

Within societies which are not openly pursuing some political or religious utopia, there may nevertheless be strong currents of utopianism. In our time and place, the extreme emphasis on risk avoidance is a utopian quest. It has resulted in a bloated legal and administrative apparatus as smaller and more remote and dubious risks are targeted. Economic and social costs are ignored as a health and safety security state takes shape. Those who dissent from the secular millenarian orthodoxy are liable to be marginalized or cast aside like religious heretics. Individual rights of association, religion, providing for oneself and one’s family, and bodily autonomy are subject to the guesses and whims of unelected credentialed “experts.” Yet these measures, when pursued robotically for some ideal beyond what practical wisdom would advise, fail or produce only marginal benefits, often at great cost. Even if they are abandoned, the damage has occurred.

In a related manner, there has been a decades-long quixotic quest to create emotional placidity. While not socially harmful if done on an individual, voluntary basis, compelled “treatments” have been a favorite of ideologues to deal with dissenters. The Soviet Union was infamous for its psychological analyses steeped in Marxist utopianism and its use of political dissent as “red flags” of psychological “deviance.” But the problem festers closer to home, as well. From state-applied electric shock therapy and lobotomies in the past, to the modern approach of psychotropic drugs, a therapeutic totalitarianism has been spreading. Those who dissent, especially parents who balk at such drug use or at school “safe zone” counseling done behind their backs, are liable to find themselves ridiculed or worse.

The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention were educated in classic writings and western history. They were not naïfs about human nature or politics. They understood lessons from the failures of regimes and the dangers of utopian projects, as did their opponents in the debate over ratification. Moreover, their own experience from the Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation, and service in their state governments had inured them to utopian speculations. Illustrative of the skepticism is a letter Alexander Hamilton wrote even as the struggle for independence still hung in the balance in 1781, “there have been many false steps, many chimerical projects and utopian speculations.” He noted that the most experienced politicians were Loyalists. He was registering his complaint about the lack of political sophistication among his co-revolutionaries in the conduct of the war, the adoption of the Articles, and the drafting of state constitutions.

That is not to say that the supporters and opponents of the United States Constitution lacked political and philosophic bearings. Most had a sense of what they wished to achieve, set within a coherent broader philosophic framework. The historian Forrest McDonald, in his far-reaching and detailed analysis of the framing of the Constitution, classifies the delegates into two groups, “court-party nationalists” and “country-party republicans,” analogous to the British Tory and Whig parties, respectively. Among the best-known such nationalists were Washington, Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert Morris. Among the notable republicans were Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, Luther Martin, and Edmund Randolph. Others were more difficult to label. McDonald places James Madison in between the two groups and somewhat harshly judges the latter “an ideologue in search of an ideology.” He claims that by temperament Madison thought matters through to the detail and preferred “the untried but theoretically appealing, as opposed to the imperfections of reality.” Yet, he also concedes Madison’s willingness to abandon politically untenable positions as needed.

A third group, whom McDonald considers arch-republican ideologues, did not attend for varied reasons. They included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Sam Adams, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry. Some of these outsiders and other opponents of the Constitution presented more consistently “principled” arguments, but it is always easier to attack someone’s work than to provide a comprehensive and workable alternative.

None of the groups at the convention had a majority. Moreover, they were not ideological in the modern sense of positing a single abstract moving cause for all human action in the private and public realms. The closest might be the idea that humans act from self-interest. But there was nothing like Marxist economic determinism or Freudian psychoanalysis or current Marxism-derived Critical Race Theory. The various broader theories of government delegates favored still resulted in differences which must have seemed intractable, at times. Some delegates left out of frustration that their ideas about the proper constitutional order were not sufficiently realized.

But most held on and difficult compromises were eventually reached. Even the matter which deadlocked the convention for weeks and threatened more than once to tear it apart, namely the structure of Congress and the mode of representation, ultimately was resolved mostly in favor of the small states through Roger Sherman’s Connecticut Compromise. So was the controversy over Congress’s powers. The small-state proposal of an enumeration of specific powers supplemented by an enabling clause was adopted over a more national position favored by Madison that Congress would have power to address all issues which affected the nation where individual states would be “incompetent to act.” The slavery question was generally avoided. The concept was simply euphemized, rather than expressed. Specific issues, such as the fugitive slave clause and the three/fifths clause to apportion representatives and direct taxes were borrowed from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and a failed amendment to the Articles of Confederation. Whatever might have been the hearts’ desires of various philosophically committed members, compromise prevailed. The result was a system which was partly federal and partly national, as Madison laid out the particulars in Number 39 of The Federalist.

As remarked in previous essays, the authors of The Federalist emphasized the influence of experience, not idealism, on the convention’s deliberations, and the process of compromise, not purity, which resulted in a plan suited to the practical demands of governing. Aside from Hamilton’s noted aphorism in Number 6 of The Federalist, “Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries,” the authors repeatedly drew on experience under the Articles of Confederation, the state constitutions, and earlier European and ancient systems. That was, of course, also what the convention had done. In Number 38, Madison mocked the variety and inconsistency of objections and their often vague and general nature. While his sarcasm disparages the constructive and systematic efforts of opponents such as the “Brutus” essays by New York’s Robert Yates, Madison’s specific examples illustrate the spirit of pragmatism at the convention. He declared “It is not necessary that the [Constitution] should be perfect: it is sufficient that the [Articles are] more imperfect.” In Number 41, he acknowledged, “…that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least the GREATER, not the PERFECT good; ….” [Emphasis in the original.]

Perhaps the best summation of the pragmatism which steered the delegates as they proceeded with their work was voiced by Benjamin Franklin. He rose on the day of the final vote and implored his colleagues, “Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution. Because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good….I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger


The year 1776 was notable not only for the Declaration of Independence, but also for the publication of a notable work of scholarship that represented a dramatic change in not only the economic systems of the world but also the shape of the governmental arrangements of the United States, Britain, and other nations. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by a Scottish academic, Adam Smith, was published at about the same time that the Continental Congress, thousands of miles away, considered a resolution to declare independence from Great Britain.[i]

Smith’s work is today largely considered an economic monograph extolling the virtues of capitalism, but in its own day its contribution was somewhat different. The word “capitalism” was not in wide use at that time. “Economics” was not considered an identifiable academic discipline or focus of study. Smith’s university teaching career was largely concerned with what was then called “natural philosophy.” In the Wealth of Nations, Smith suggested the free exchange of goods and services could promote not only material wealth, but also improve human well-being in a more general sense.

In making these arguments, Smith took the opportunity to attack human contrivances that thwarted free exchange. Slavery and colonialism were also criticized, and an extensive critique of the economic thinking and practices known as mercantilism became a central focus of the book.   Mercantilism was a fundamental basis for colonial rule, and the opposition to mercantilist practices was part of the justification for the American Revolution. Similarly, the breakdown of mercantilism as a defensible basis for imperial control of territory led to British willingness to permit its colonies to gain their independence.

Mercantilism was an economic system that contended that national wealth was promoted by government interventions to encourage trade and investment in certain industries and enterprises. In particular, mercantilist advocates believed that the government should conserve national reserves of gold (and sometimes silver), which were used in international trade for goods and resources that could not be found within a nation. If a country controlled colonies, purchases could be made without using gold, thus sparing reserves that could be used for essential international transactions. The colonial power would dictate the permissible terms of trade in which its colonies could participate, usually compelling the colonies to trade only with the mother country or with other colonies within the same empire. Transactions with other countries would be forbidden or subject to very high tariffs.

Before the revolution, the American colonials chafed at the terms of trade dictated by the British. In 1774, the British imposed the Intolerable Acts as a punitive measure in response to the Boston Tea Party and other protests. The protests in the American colonies were largely demonstrations against some of the taxes (e.g., the Stamp Act) and the exclusive monopolies over many import enterprises given to the East India Company. That same year, the First Continental Congress enacted the Articles of Association as a trade boycott against the British. Many American colonial enterprises, including that owned by John Hancock, circumvented British trade restrictions by doing business with Dutch firms and other colonies. In the Declaration of Independence, two of the complaints prominently noted were the claims that the British were “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world” and “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.”[ii] These complaints were common among colonial people throughout the world, not only within the British Empire but within the colonies of all the imperial powers.

After the revolution, the Founders made strategic choices that affected the international trade practices that the new nation would follow.   Tariffs and trade restrictions were still permissible, but procedural constraints limited their use. Within the United States Constitution, the Founders established a particular process by which taxes, including tariffs, would be enacted. Only Congress could approve taxes, and all money bills would originate in the House of Representatives, the only offices at that time filled through popular election.[iii] Foreign entanglements presumably could be minimized by the requirement that all treaties must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the present members of the Senate.[iv] The Senate was filled with representatives of the states originally chosen by the legislatures of the states. The requirement that a two-thirds vote of the members of the Senate consent to a treaty guaranteed that any treaty that took effect would have broad support among the various states. A measure that had the support of a simple majority of the general population would not be sufficient. A super-majority of the members of the representatives of states in the Senate was required. It is important to note that the equal representation of states in the Senate is one aspect of the Constitution that was regarded so essential that it could never be changed through constitutional amendment.[v]

British colonialism continued long after the American Revolution, but its economic underpinnings gradually eroded over time. Shortly after the end of the Napoleonic wars, Britain imposed a high tariff on imported agricultural products. This was reversed in 1846 with the repeal of the so-called “Corn Laws,” beginning a general trend toward freer international trade and away from protectionism.[vi] There was a short-term return to protectionist practices in the 1930s after the United States enacted the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, but Britain returned to a freer trade position after World War II.[vii]

Suffrage within Britain expanded throughout the nineteenth century, and the British found it harder philosophically to defend its dictating of the terms of trade with its colonies without granting them a voice in their own affairs. These denials of both economic and political freedoms seemed particularly unfair when the colonized peoples differed racially, ethnically, religiously, and culturally from the British. In fairness, it should be said that the British, more so than many imperial powers, did permit colonial peoples to elect the members of their representative assemblies and to retain the use of their native languages in schools and government offices.[viii] In general, the British colonies fared better economically than the colonies of many other European nations.[ix]

In terms of geographic territory, the British Empire reached its peak around 1920, but it had already loosened its control over many of its colonies and some, such as the United States, had already gained their independence. After World War II, many British colonies and protectorates separated from British control, even though most remained within the British Commonwealth. The Bretton Woods Accord established the American dollar as the primary currency to be used in international exchange. The British faced pressure from both its allies and from international organizations, such as the United Nations, to decolonize. New international economic institutions, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor organization, the World Trade Organization, encouraged trade liberalization. A few pieces of territory remain British colonies in far-flung parts of the globe, but the old empire has been dismantled as the economic and political basis for its existence has disappeared.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. Dr. Clinger teaches courses in state and local government, Kentucky politics, intergovernmental relations, regulatory policy, and public administration. Dr. Clinger is also a member of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board and a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association. He currently resides in Hazel, Kentucky.

[i] Smith, Adam, and Edwin Cannan. The Wealth of Nations. New York, N.Y.: Bantam Classic, 2003.

[ii] Declaration of Independence

[iii] United States Constitution, Article I, Section 7

[iv] United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 2

[v] United States Constitution, Article V

[vi] O’Rourke, Kevin H. 2000.  “British Trade Policy in the 19th Century: A Review Article.”  European journal of Political Economy 16:: 829-842.

[vii] de Bromhead, Alan, Alan Fernihough, Markus Lampe, and Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke. 2019. “When Britain Turned Inward: The Impact of Interwar British Protection.” American Economic Review 109 (2): 325–52.

[viii] Lange, Matthew, Tay Jeong, and Charlotte Gaudreau. 2022. “A Tale of Two Empires: Models of Political Community in British and French Colonies.” Nations & Nationalism 28 (3): 972–89.

[ix] Lange, Matthew, James Mahoney, and Matthias vom Hau. 2006. “Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies.” American Journal of Sociology 111 (5): 1412–62.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Jay McConville


“I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befall this country, than to be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge.” (Anti-federalist Papers, Brutus No. VIII, 1789)[1]

Many Americans have a warm spot in their hearts for the British, by which they usually mean the quaint English people in the television shows they watch. For example, BritBox, the subscription service that features United Kingdom (UK) television shows, reported over 1 million U.S. subscribers by the first quarter of 2022, after only five years of operation.[2] Blessed with a rich history, a culture that often exudes sophistication, and a command of the language that (unfortunately) escapes most Americans, the UK is regarded highly by most Americans as our friend, our partner, and our kindred spirit in culture and world affairs. We share a language and history, of course, as the original U.S. states were British colonies. That early relationship was fraught with conflict, so our positive current alliance is better traced to our partnership fighting tyranny in World War I, II, and the Cold War. Many Americans also trace their lineage to the UK, or one of its former colonies or territories, so this tiny island nation is a favorite vacation spot for Americans. One British Airways survey found that “[t]hree in ten Americans said the UK is their favourite country and one in seven said they would move to Britain if they had the chance.”[3]

Yet the little nation that Americans love so much was once the most powerful, fierce, dominating, and wealthy empire on the earth. In fact, “by the end of the 19th century, the British Empire comprised nearly one-quarter of the world’s land surface and more than one-quarter of its total population.”[4] The number of current countries that were once part of its colonial empire are too numerous to list here, but included varying levels of control over much of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Kenya, Hong Kong, and South Africa just to name a few. The empire was built on economic adventurism, naval power, military domination, and colonial control. It developed over several hundred years, accelerating when the British led a coalition to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. It was later victorious in both World War I and II, ending competition for European hegemony from their industrial rival Germany. Yet colonial revolts, including the independence of India in 1947, proved too much to sustain and by 1956, with the Suez crisis, the empire was in full collapse. With the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the once great empire was no more.

Why this occurred is the subject of many books, movies, and academic papers. Boiled down, however, the decline can be traced to the consequences of an extended empire, the costs of maintaining military forces in those lands, unsustainable debts, and the eventual loss of the privileged economic position of the British pound sterling. In summary, the UK had failed to notice or heed the warnings Brutus provided to the United States, encapsulated in the quote above.

Brutus, an anonymous American writer opposed to the adoption of the United States Constitution, was the nom de plume used by the author (or authors) of the Anti-federalist Papers. These papers paralleled the Federalist Papers, arguing against adoption, fearing the federal government was being set up as too powerful. While, as we know, the Constitution was eventually adopted, the Anti-federalists did much to influence its final form, and Brutus’ papers provide, even to this day, important reminders of the dangers of a too-powerful central government.

What do the Anti-federalist Papers of Brutus tell us about what happened to the British Empire, and how do those warnings apply to the United States today?

While the Anti-federalists had many concerns, the most germane to these questions are those articulated in Brutus No. VIII. That paper, published in 1789, continued the argument that the Constitution’s “necessary and proper” clause (Article I, Section 8) gave the federal government too much power. That article begins, “The Congress shall have the power” and then lists the enumerated powers of the federal government. The Anti-federalists believed that clause meant, as per Brutus in the earlier paper “Brutus No. VI” (1787), the federal government “had no other limitation than the discretion of the Congress” and this could, in the future, “destroy all the power of the state governments.”[5] Germane to these questions then, are the enumerated powers that give the national government the ability to raise, borrow, and spend money, and specifically to maintain standing military forces. Brutus warned that these unlimited powers threatened the economic future of the country and the sovereignty of the people. Such an exclusive power would amount to “unlimitted authority and controul over all the wealth and all the force of the union.” Standing armies, he argued, drain the nation’s resources, and since they held allegiance to the military command and not the Constitution, might, in a crisis, overthrow an elected government. He quotes a British Member of Parliament (“Mr. Pulteney”[6]) to summarize the concern: “I have always been, and always shall be against a standing army of any kind; to me it is a terrible thing, whether under that of a parliamentary, or any other designation; a standing army is still a standing army by whatever name it is called…” (Brutus No. VIII)

True, in the end, the British Empire was not brought down by a military coup, but instead by the economic burden of their global military responsibilities, including efforts to maintain their extended colonies and the cost of two world wars. These expenditures drained the treasury and turned the once powerful nation into a debtor – just as Brutus had warned America’s Founders could happen here.

Riding on its military might, the British Empire had at one time enjoyed economic dominance unparalleled in history. The British pound sterling was the world’s primary “reserve currency” in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. This gave the British huge economic advantage, as their currency was held in large quantities by governments and banks across the globe. Those who wished to conduct international trade had to buy British pounds to pay foreign entities, make international investments, and participate in other global economic activities. But a reserve currency is also called an “anchor” currency, as it is chosen due to the economic stability of the nation that issues it. That stability relies on the ability of that nation to pay its debts. Exhausted by war and the military cost of its empire, the pound sterling lost that status to the U.S. dollar in 1944, when allied leaders decided to link world currencies to the U.S. dollar. At the end of World War II, British debt had reached 200 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This debt, worsened by poor economic policies and domestic spending, eventually led to Britain seeking debt relief from the International Monetary Fund in 1976. The WWII loans from the United States were only paid off in 2006.[7] After WWII, the United States, which had limited its military adventurism (with notable exceptions) up to that point, had eclipsed the British Empire.

Of note, while there was no coup, viewers of the TV show “The Crown” and history buffs also know that one – this time in 1968 and in response to the ongoing and precipitous decline of the empire – was nearly initiated by a group of British military, business, and political interests led by Lord Mountbatten[8], who had held multiple high positions in the British military, including first sea lord, admiral of the fleet, chief of the United Kingdom Defense Staff, and chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee[9]. While, thankfully, that did not happen, planning for it had commenced. By 1968 the Empire was through.

Fast forward to today, and we see that Brutus’ concern is once again important to consider here in the United States. America now holds the privileged position as the world’s top reserve currency. The U.S. dollar accounts for 59 percent of reserves held by central banks across the world, which is mostly held in cash or U.S. bonds. Nations across the globe use the U.S. dollar to conduct international financial activity, which accrues great benefit to our economy. Yet, the debt for those bonds exceeds $13 trillion[10] and the total U.S. National Debt stands now at nearly $31 trillion, or $243,000 per taxpayer and 123 percent of our GDP.[11]

It is hard to imagine anyone wants to follow the example of the British Empire, yet our military costs have continued to grow year after year, including massive expenditures for bases around the world, and most recently involvement in the Global War on Terror and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are now, additionally, a primary funding source of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression, committing $54 billion.[12] The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the House in July 2022, included a record $850 billion in total defense spending. (The Senate received the bill in August 2022.[13])

This is in addition to the high levels of domestic spending on such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, various transfer programs, as well as funds for operating the departments of the federal government. The President’s budget request for 2023, still being considered by Congress, is over $5 trillion. That request includes over $300 billion in interest payments on the national debt alone, a burden that is rising rapidly and which will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. One Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimated that the U.S. taxpayer will pay over $8 trillion in interest on the debt between 2023 and 2032.[14] That is just interest, not principle, and equals over $25,000 for every one of America’s 325 million inhabitants.

The question is whether we can continue to maintain this level of debt spending, or whether, in the words of Brutus, Congress is well on the way to creating a “national debt, so large, as to exceed the ability of the country ever to sink.” (Brutus No. VIII). Should we continue down that path, the ability to meet this debt will eventually come into question. Should we, like the UK, damage the full faith and credit that the world holds in our ability to do so, and we lose our reserve currency dominance, the repercussions could be severe. It is something that we need to think carefully about.

In the words of Brutus, “I take it for granted, as an axiom in politic, that the people should never authorise their rulers to do any thing, which if done, would operate to their injury.”

Most Americans cannot imagine a massive decline in our world position, nor that this nation is at any risk from a coup or revolt against the federal government. One is reminded, however, of the wise words of Ronald Reagan, who, like Brutus, warned us that freedom and liberty are not the default for any nation. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”[15]

There have been many efforts to reign in the power of the Congress to borrow and spend, whether on domestic programs or military forces. The Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, one that Brutus would no doubt support, is proposed year after year, and almost passed in 1995 and 1997, failing to achieve the required two-thirds majority by just one vote.[16] It failed again in 2011. The amendment threatens the ability of Congress to exercise the power that most concerned Brutus, and thus the very people who it controls will have to agree to it for it to pass. Power is seldom, if ever, relinquished voluntarily. So far, that has not happened, and spending continues apace.

Brutus was prescient in his warnings about the central government’s power to accrue debt. The British Empire provides an example of what can happen when a strong central government takes on military and foreign affairs commitments that make that debt unsustainable. So far, the United States has been able to handle its debts and remains an economic powerhouse. The question that is yet to be answered is whether we will maintain this position in the future, and what will happen if we do not.

Jay McConville is a military veteran, management professional, and active civic volunteer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he held multiple key technology and management positions within the Aerospace and Defense industry, including twice as President and CEO. He served in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer, and has also been active in civic and industry volunteer associations, including running for elected office, serving as a political party chairman, and serving multiple terms as President of both his industry association’s Washington DC Chapter and his local youth sports association. Today he serves on the Operating Board of Directors of Constituting America. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government from George Mason University, and a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College. Jay lives in Richmond with his wife Susan Ulsamer McConville. They have three children and three grandchildren, and are expecting a fourth in September.

[1] “Brutus VIII.” New York Journal 1789-06-15 : Rpt. in The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. Vol. 15. Ed. Gaspare J. Saladino and John P. Kaminski. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1984. 335-38. Print, as featured in ConSource: https://www.consource.org/document/brutus-viii-1789-6-15/

[2] Thiede, Joshua (2022). BritBox Eyes American Expansion, but Plans to Avoid Content Becoming ‘Transatlantic Pudding’. The Streamable (29 June 2022). https://thestreamable.com/news/britbox-eyes-american-expansion-but-plans-to-avoid-content-becoming-transatlantic-pudding

[3] Kitching, Chris (2014). Brits? You’re all uptight, obsessed by tea, the royals and family trees, say Americans… and no, we can’t understand Geordie accents either, DailyMail.com (5 October 2014). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2781088/What-Americans-think-Britains-revealed-survey.html

[4] Augustyn, Adam ed. (n.d.) British Empire: Dominance and dominions. Britannica online https://www.britannica.com/place/British-Empire/Dominance-and-dominions

[5] “Brutus VI.” New York Journal 1789-06-12 : . Rpt. in The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. Vol. 15. Ed. Gaspare J. Saladino and John P. Kaminski. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1984. 110-17. Print., as quoted in https://consource.org/document/brutus-vi-1789-6-12/20191125163602/

[6] Actually, William Pulteney, a prominent British Member of Parliament who served in the early 1700’s.

[7] Wikipedia (n.d.) History of the British National Debt, retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_national_debt#cite_note-Ferguson,_Civilization,_p309-9

[8] BBC (2019). Lord Mountbatten: Did Prince Philip’s uncle attempt to lead a coup against Harold Wilson’s government? History Extra, BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed (29 November 2019). https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/lord-mountbatten-did-prince-philip-uncle-attempt-lead-coup-harold-wilson-government-crown-true/

[9] Britannica (2022). Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten, Britannica online, (21 June 2022). https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Mountbatten-1st-Earl-Mountbatten

[10] Best, Richard (2022). How the U.S. dollar became the world’s reserve currency. Investopedia, (24 June 2022). https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex-currencies/092316/how-us-dollar-became-worlds-reserve-currency.asp

[11] US Debt Clock.org, retrieved 18 August 2022 from https://usdebtclock.org/

[12] Hennis, Ade (2022). The U.S. has sent billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine – Breaking it all down. Market Realist (11 August 2022), https://marketrealist.com/p/how-much-money-has-the-us-sent-to-ukrainie/

[13] United States Congress, H.R.7900 – National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, 117th Congress (2021-2022), retrieved 18 August 2022 from https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/7900

[14] Interest costs on the national debt set to reach historic highs in the next decade, May 31, 2022, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, blog, retrieved from https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/05/interest-costs-on-the-national-debt-set-to-reach-historic-highs-in-the-next-decade

[15] Reagan.com (2018). Ronald Reagan Freedom Speech. Reagan.com, (31 August 2018), retrieved August 18, 2022 from https://www.reagan.com/ronald-reagan-freedom-speech

[16] Govtrack (n.d.). H.J.Res. 1 (104th): Balanced Budget Amendment, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/104-1996/s158 and Istook, Ernest (2011). Considering a Balanced Budget Amendment: Lessons from History, Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/considering-balanced-budget-amendment-lessons-history

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Thomas Bruscino


Relating the American experience to the rise and fall of empires is trickier than it looks. Empires are complicated morally and historically—none more so than the British Empire—and the United States has its own complicated understanding of its relationship with empire.

“Empire” is no longer a morally neutral term. Most people these days believe “empire” is something universally or exclusively bad. And why wouldn’t people believe that? While it is true that the simplistic Marxist critique of imperialism as late-stage capitalism has had much to do with the bad rap for empires, that does not let empire off the hook. Part of the reason the Marxist view took hold was because most empires have been rapacious and exploitative, if not genocidal. Nowhere was that more evident than in the scramble for Africa, when European powers carved up the continent with little effect but suffering and despair for the local populations. Similar results of empire could be seen throughout the Americas and Asia.

However, not all empires are created equal. Even if we agree all empires are in general bad, some empires are way worse than others, just as some bad empires have had some positive effects. In Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, the Middle Eastern radicals sarcastically ask, “What have the Romans done for us?” The question eventually turns to: “Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, [and peace], what have the Romans ever done for us?”

The line is funny because it is an unexpected contradiction in truths. But it could also be read as a commentary by British actors on the post British empire world. This is not the place to sort out the net positives and negatives of the British empire, nor to explain why the empire eroded over the course of the twentieth century. Here it is only to recognize that the British empire did help bring a measure of order and stability to the international system that certainly was not good for all, but was also more liberal and beneficial than the alternative empires of the time.

In the years around World War II, the British gave up their empire, leaving the question of who would provide order in the international system. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed over who would fill that gap. Interestingly, neither side called themselves an “empire.” In fact, both sides accused the other of imperialism.

The Soviet fall left the United States as the world’s great superpower, and responsible, in some measure, for providing order and stability lest some other, more pernicious power rise and impose a less favorable order on the world. Americans have struggled with what to do in that role. The country has not hesitated to intervene all around the world, often with lethal force, but it has consistently shied away from picking up an explicitly imperial mantle. Even when the United States joined the European and Japanese imperial scrambles around the turn of the twentieth century, Americans, including expansionists like Theodore Roosevelt, generally avoided the word “empire” for describing their foreign policy ambitions.

Frustrated by America’s inconsistency as a great power, some contemporary critics have encouraged the United States to embrace its role as an explicit empire for good. Eager to make their point, the critics have appealed to the language of the Founders, who often did use “empire” to describe the American experiment.

But that is too simple. The Founders used “empire” in specific ways. In many cases, they meant it roughly as a synonym for the country. Federalist 1 stated that the proposed Constitution was about, “the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

When the Founders did use empire to describe the expansion of the United States, they added important modifiers. Thomas Jefferson’s was the most famous, “we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self-government.”

Note the common theme. This “most interesting” of empires, this “empire for liberty,” was unique because it was about self-government and freedom internally. If “empire for liberty” sounds now like an oxymoron, that is because it always was. It was an experiment, a new type of empire, built around trying to balance the necessary and inevitable tension between exerting great power and modeling freedom. To make it work, and to revise historian Walter McDougall’s framing, described in his book, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776, the promised land always required the crusader state, and crusader state had to remain the promised land.

It is the inheritance of that tenuous balance that has made subsequent Americans uncomfortable with the word “empire.” That is a good thing. The ugly empires of the nineteenth century clearly were not, and were not trying, to be promised lands of freedom. Without that constraint those empires overreached and fell.

The power and influence of the United States in the world has always strived to be something different. Whatever else that can be said about American expansion and intervention overseas, and there is plenty of room for critique, it has most often been constrained by Americans themselves. Whether through idealistic objectives set by governments in power, contentious domestic politics, or the vocal opposition of small minorities or brave lone voices, the United States has never expanded or intervened without the reminder that such activities threaten the soul of America itself. “She might become the dictatress of the world,” John Quincy Adams said in his famous address on July 4, 1821, but “She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

From Canada and Mexico, Cuba and the Philippines, Vietnam, and all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq, that reminder has always been there, embedded by the Founders in the American system, meant to constrain all-too-human ambitions of domination. If the United States is to avoid imperial overreach, its people must continue to remember that America’s “glory is not dominion, but liberty,” and always reach accordingly.

Thomas Bruscino is Associate Professor of History in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the United States Army War College. He holds a Ph.D. in military history from Ohio University and has been a historian at the US Army Center of Military History in Washington, DC and the US Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, and a professor at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies. He is the author of A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along(University of Tennessee Press, 2010), and Out of Bounds: Transnational Sanctuary in Irregular Warfare (CSI Press, 2006), and numerous book chapters. His writings have appeared in the Claremont Review of Books, Army History, The New Criterion, Military Review, The Journal of Military History, White House Studies, War & Society, War in History, The Journal of America’s Military Past, Infinity Journal, Doublethink, Reviews in American History, Joint Force Quarterly, and Parameters.

The views and opinions presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


The beauty of the American Constitution, as originally conceived, was that its authors recognized the inherent dangers of concentrated power at the highest levels of governance, and created a structure that both constrained the federal government’s powers while at the same time enumerating that the balance of those powers would be retained by state governments (and, by extension, local governments, since most local governments are creations of state governments), and the people.

The American Founders did this because they recognized that the bulk of public policy decision making was best left to levels of government that were closer to the people—those levels of government better understood problems in individual communities and local governments, and governance, were more easily controlled by citizens within those jurisdictions.

But in the wake of World War I, also known as “The Great War” or the “War to End All Wars, there came a call for greater international cooperation by governments, if not some kind of outright “global government” and out of those calls came, first, the League of Nations, and then, after the League of Nations failed to prevent World War II, the United Nations.

The First World War was commonly referred to as “The Great War” because of the war’s truly devastating scale—in terms of both lives lost, and people injured, as well as the impact it had on infrastructure. In fact, across the globe, you can still see the impact the war had on the surrounding environment. As a result, there was a call by leading nations to create some kind of instrument of global cooperation, and disarmament, to prevent just that kind of war from happening again: a “League of Nations.”

And the League of Nations met with limited success, in spite of the fact that the United States didn’t join even with President Woodrow Wilson’s advocacy for just such a league. But because the league failed to grasp geopolitical realities, such as what the sanctions on a post-World War I Germany might have on that nation’s ongoing politics, that body failed to prevent the Second World War from occurring.

It was during World War II that the concept of the United Nations was born—with the cooperation of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. In 1945, as the war was drawing to a close, the leaders of the Allied powers agreed that following the war’s end, that such a body would be developed. In June of 1945, just after Germany surrendered, the UN Charter was created. In October of 1945, two months after Japan surrendered, the Charter was made real.

To be clear, the United Nations is not a “world government” though there are some who would like it to be. Clark Eichelberger, a 20th century peace activist and advocate for both the League of Nations and the UN, wrote in the Annals of the American Academy of Political Science in 1949 that:

“World government has evolved and will evolve through the United Nations… the United Nations is the beginning of the process we need.”

But in the last seven decades, despite great efforts on the part of some to make a global government manifest, this has not occurred. The UN has no power to tax, no power to directly regulate. Any interference in inter-governmental disputes or in civil conflict can only come with either the agreement of local governments, or, in rare occasions, with the decision of voting members of the United Nations.

When it comes to involvement of the United States, the U.S. relationship with the UN is similar in most respects to how the deals are made with most foreign agreements, i.e., through the Constitution’s treaty powers.  Essentially, from a constitutional perspective, the involvement of the U.S. in the UN is not dissimilar from other bilateral, between the U.S. and one nation, or multilateral, between the U.S. and more than one other nation, international agreements.

In fact, the only way for the United States to be “legally obligated” to cooperative policy decision making by the UN is for Congress to ratify whatever policy United States diplomats are considering signing or have signed. While those obligations are to our partners at the UN, the “legal” portion of it has to do with the agreement the U.S. government has with its people i.e., to only be bound, internationally, through ratified treaties.

This is because those international agreements, once ratified, become U.S. law, and enormously difficult to disentangle once put into place.  Take the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for example. Though not an agreement through the UN, it bound U.S. trade policy for decades, and became enormously difficult to reform, despite the negative impacts many in the United States were seeing.

In contrast, the Kyoto Protocols on climate, a climate policy agreement negotiated via the UN, was never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Many in the U.S. had deep and abiding concerns about the impact the policy obligations of Kyoto could potentially have on the U.S. economy. So, while the United States, under President Bill Clinton, signed the Kyoto Protocols, and there were many things that the Clinton administration could do to advance the goals of Kyoto (because of the size of the administrative/regulatory state and the powers that the Executive Branch has in terms of interpreting or re-interpreting existing federal environmental laws), the United States was not bound by the Kyoto protocols, as they would be within a treaty.

Central in all of this is the issue of “sovereignty.” By definition, when the United States, or any nation for that matter, enters into a treaty, they are giving up some measure of that nation’s sovereignty in favor of international cooperation usually as a result of the combination of negotiation and compromise.

As was demonstrated by the withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union, multinational cooperative governance can have huge implications for individual member nations and their citizens—something British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had warned about when the EU was created. The further removed from the local population that government control becomes, the more onerous the burdens those governments can impose. With that comes a real difficulty in forming policies that reflect what local populations need and takes steps to protect those populations from harm.

It could be said that Prime Minister Thatcher was echoing the concerns raised by her predecessor in office, Winston Churchill, who, despite being instrumental in the creation of the UN, had concerns of his own.  As reported by the New Republic in 1949:

“Churchill, as he confessed at The Hague in May, 1948, never accepted the concept of the United Nations. He feared the consequences of ‘a system where there was nothing between the supreme headquarters and the commanders of the different divisions and battalions.’ He wanted a world organization made up of representatives of regional associates.”

Thankfully, given protections that the U.S. Constitution affords, the people of the United States can rest assured that their sovereignty will be protected from a United Nations becoming the kind of multinational governmental behemoth that the EU became.

This is due, in no small measure, to the United States Constitution’s mandates about the Senate’s advise and consent role in terms of treaty ratification—if the foreign relations team of a U.S. president were to fail at their job or to be seriously compromised in some measure in terms of international negotiation, and as a result the U.S. were to give up a great deal of its independence, its sovereignty, it is left to the Senate to ensure that the interests of the people of the United States are protected, and that the agreement should not be ratified.

It is important to also note that Congress has a vital role to play in terms of internationally cooperative military activities. The UN has no standing army, another aspect of its existence that makes it fall short of a “world government.” It relies on its member nations in order for it to engage in any military action, usually under the auspices of “peacekeeping.”

The President is obligated to inform Congress of any military action that falls short of a “war”—and the President has 90 days before Congress must take action on whether to continue such operations.

In terms of ongoing “peacekeeping” operations, such as those that occurred in the Balkans during the 1990s after the collapse of the Yugoslavian government, Congress also has the power to give or deny funds to such efforts. If Congress doesn’t want U.S. military personnel involved in a specific peacekeeping mission, then Congress can specifically block the Executive Branch from spending funds on that mission.

In terms of the relationship between the United States and the United Nations, the obligations of the U.S. are not entirely different than any other treaty-governed relationship that the U.S. may be obligated to.  The issues of sovereignty and compromise remain the same—and the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch in terms of the power to negotiate and the power to ratify are maintained.  But, as always, it remains left to the people to ensure that both branches protect the interests of the American people in the long term.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett


In the previous essay we saw the causes in the Twentieth Century that led to the creation of international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations Organization. In this essay we look at why the American Founders and Framers would counsel a prudent caution against unlimited commitment to and reliance on international organizations for dealing with foreign affairs.

First, the Founders would remind us that, in committing our national resources to promoting the good of the world community through international organizations, we must not lose sight of the fact that our government has a paramount obligation to secure the rights and vital interests of the United States and its citizens. These are what James Madison called “the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” in The Federalist No. 10. This fundamental obligation of our government is expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which claims “that to secure these rights” – the natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, among others – “governments are instituted among men.” The Preamble to the United States Constitution reaffirms the fundamental purpose for which our government was designed; the American people ordained our Constitution to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity.”[1] The American Founders would therefore caution against the view – as held by leaders such as Woodrow Wilson – that America’s highest obligation is to put our immediate interest aside in order to promote the good of the world community, an end that is most effectively achieved through our commitment to international organizations.

Some of the American Founders might have conceded the idea that international organizations could be useful to bring nations to a more common understanding of what justice among nations should be like. However, they would also caution that reliance on international organizations for this purpose could potentially lull us into abandoning the necessary discernment, vigilance, and prudence of determining the motives and measures of other nations – and possibly even the willingness to resort to force when necessary for our defense. A reliance on international organizations could beguile us into believing that all nations now behave rationally and can be trusted to resolve problems by dialogue alone. In other words, reliance on international organizations can give us the comfortable feeling that we have reached “the End of History,” and that modern nations have evolved beyond the motives and means of the Twentieth Century. However, plenty of real-world examples – the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for example – show the naivete of this view. Furthermore, we might be tempted to forget that The United Nations is made up of nations with governments or regimes that are fundamentally hostile to the principles of justice upon which the United States was founded. Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius in The Federalist No. 6, reminds us that so long as human beings are capable of being “ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious,” and so long as governments are administered by human beings, there will always be nations inclined to go to war for a variety of reasons. As Hamilton writes:

The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable…Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion – the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class … have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to personal advantage or personal gratification.

Even commercial republics and democracies – though founded on the principle of popular rather than monarchical rule – are prone to conflict amongst themselves. Alexander Hamilton might say, therefore, that “one must be far gone in utopian speculations” to assume that nations would actually put aside their own interests and govern cooperatively through the United Nations Organization for the good of the whole. Such an assumption would be dangerous and potentially destructive to the “permanent and aggregate interests” of the citizens of the United States.

The third concern the Founders might caution us about is that in committing the United States to the authority of international organizations, we might inadvertently relinquish our domestic sovereignty and our political independence from other nations. We might also lose our liberty as a nation to decide things like what our real obligations are to other nations, and when, how, and why we should act when dealing with foreign policy issues. These considerations are what led the U.S. Senate to vote against membership in the League of Nations in 1919.

This is a lesson President George Washington learned very well in the 1790s. The United States had signed a treaty of mutual defense with France in 1778; however, as the French Revolution turned into terror, the new French regime claimed that the treaty obligated the United States to assist them in their war against monarchical regimes throughout Europe. The treaty threatened to embroil the United States in a European war, effectively stripping the United States of its political independence and the liberty of choosing when, and when not, to go to war. From this example, Washington learned several lessons that should caution us against over-commitment to treaty-based international organizations today. “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” Washington wrote in his Farewell Address. “Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” Washington understood that maintaining our political independence and national liberty is vital so that “we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.”

It is vital to maintain this political independence so that government may best choose how to fulfill its fundamental Constitutional duty of securing the rights and liberties of its citizens. This leads to a final word of caution regarding American commitment to international organizations. The American people, through their Constitution, have vested control over foreign affairs in Congress and the President. Congress, for example, is vested with the power of declaring war, and the President is vested with the authority to act as Commander in Chief of the country’s military forces. Because the American people have granted these powers, they have entrusted the American government with the responsibility of dealing with foreign policy issues for the security of our rights. According to the U.S. Constitution, however, the American people did not authorize our government to “delegate” that responsibility or those powers to another governing body, including international organizations – especially ones comprised of nations that abhor the very principles of justice for which the United States stands.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

[1] Emphasis added.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett


The United Nations Organization was officially established in 1945, but its conception arose much earlier. In the early Twentieth Century there was a growing worldwide movement calling for an international organization to work out military and arms limitations agreements among the “civilized” nations of the world – namely, European nations.

In the aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations was finally established with the lofty goal of preserving world peace. In reality, its purpose was to bring together the “democratic” (i.e., “civilized” or “historically advanced”) nations to work together regarding territorial disputes and colonial possessions through negotiation rather than resorting to war. However, the United States Senate rejected membership in the League of Nations on the grounds that it would strip our nation of some degree of its domestic sovereignty and its independence in choosing foreign policy actions. The League limped ineffectively through the 1920s and met with several failures in the 1930s, including failure to prevent the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Italian war in Ethiopia. The League of Nations closed down with the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and officially disbanded in 1946.

Franklin Roosevelt, however, revived the idea of an organization of United Nations for the purpose of waging the war against the Axis Powers. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill drafted the text of the Declaration by United Nations in 1941, and the following year it was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the U.S.S.R, the Republic of China, and twenty-two other nations. The official UN Charter was approved by 51 member states in San Francisco in April 1945, just after Roosevelt’s death.

As with the League of Nations, the object of the United Nations was to allow countries to settle international disputes through discussion rather than war. Near the end of World War II, Roosevelt seemed to believe that such a forum would be useful and necessary to continue peaceful cooperation between the United States and the U.S.S.R. This was reaffirmed under President Harry Truman after World War II as tensions began to develop between the two countries and eventually developed into the Cold War. The Soviet Union, however, used the United Nations for political posturing against Western “capitalist” and “colonial” nations. Still, some Americans believed that the United Nations was a vital tool for allowing dialogue between the Western nations and the Soviet Union as a means to avoid nuclear conflict.

Many Americans were inclined to withdraw from foreign affairs after World War II, but the developing atomic threat from the Soviet Union and specter of sprawling communism inclined the United States back toward active engagement in world affairs through the United Nations. The United States joined the UNO because, unlike under the League of Nations, participation is UN policies is, for all intents and purposes, optional; this means that no nation permanently gives up its domestic sovereignty or its independence in choosing foreign policy actions. On the other hand, this means that the United Nations has no real “teeth” in terms of coercive power; member states comply or not from a kind of international “peer pressure” in order to save face. For example, the UN’s International Court of Justice issues judgments in international disputes in accordance with its understanding of international law, but its decisions are binding only on those nations that recognize its authority and jurisdiction. This is one cause of the general ineffectiveness of the United Nations in preventing conflict in its nearly eighty years of existence. Its lackluster record is also a result of the structure of the UN’s Security Council, which consists of fifteen member states – five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and ten non-permanent members. Each of the five permanent member states has an absolute veto power and can immediately block any proposed policy (see Essay #20 on the defects of the United Provinces of the Netherlands).

The American Founders would have some words of caution about involving the United States in international organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, which we will discuss in the next essay.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: David B. Kopel


In 1949, after more than 20 years of fighting, the Chinese Communist Party overthrew the Republic of China. The party’s chairman, Mao Zedong, became dictator, and ruled until his death in 1976. Mao’s regime was the most murderous in history. His regime killed over 86 million people—more than Hitler and Stalin combined.

In 1966 Mao initiated “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” It started as a campaign against the more pragmatic elements of the Chinese Communist Party—such as leaders who a few years before had forced Mao to retreat from an agricultural collectivization program, the Great Leap Forward, that had caused the deadliest famine ever.

Incited by Mao, the Cultural Revolution began with the most privileged students—the children of the top communist party officials—at the top universities. They rioted, rampaged, and looted, first on-campus and then beyond. They started by killing or torturing teachers, and then moved on to the general public. Soon, the rage mobs of ultra-Maoists spread nationwide. Anyone’s home could be invaded and looted, and anyone could be murdered or tortured. The police were forbidden to interfere—or even to fight back when the mobs assaulted the police.

As the Cultural Revolution continued, things got even worse. The Cultural Revolution ended only when Mao died.

The Americans who created the United States Constitution could not know about the tyrants who would arise in the twentieth century. They did know of bad men who had tried to seize absolute power, such as Julius Caesar in the Roman Republic, or King James II of England. Yet the worst of English kings or Roman emperors were mild in comparison to the totalitarian Mao regime.

The American “people did not establish primarily a utility-maximizing constitution, but rather a tyranny-minimizing one.” Rebecca I. Brown, Accountability, Liberty, and the Constitution, 98 Columbia Law Review 531, 570 (1998). This essay describes some of the provisions of the U.S. Constitution that aim to thwart absolutism and totalitarianism. The information about China under Mao is based on David B. Kopel, The Party Commands the Gun: Mao Zedong’s Arms Policies and Mass Killings, Chapter 19.D.3 in Nicholas J. Johnson, David B. Kopel, George A. Mocsary, E. Gregory Wallace & Donald E. Kilmer, Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights and Policy (Aspen Publishers, 3d ed. 2022), pp. 1863-1966. Additional citations are available therein.

The Preamble to the Constitution states:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The principles and the results of the Mao regime were the opposite. For example, starting in 1972-73, the people were ordered to condemn the “reactionary” ideas of Confucius, such as “the people are the foundation of the state,” and “depositing riches in the people.” As described below, the Mao regime cultivated injustice, domestic violence, the welfare of the ruling class at the expense of the people, and the eradication of liberty. The regime did “provide for the common defense” in the sense that China was not invaded in 1949-76, other than in some border clashes with the Soviet Union.

The U.S. Constitution creates three distinct and independent branches of government:

“All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Art. I, §1.

“The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Art. II, §1.

“The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Art. III, §1

Under the U.S. Constitution, the three branches of government check and balance each other, as power is set against power. In a communist regime, there are no checks on the party’s will. All political power belongs to the party. Under Mao, “at the top, thirty to forty men made all the major decisions. Their power was personal, fluid, and dependent on their relations with Mao.” Andrew J. Nathan, Foreword, in Li Zhusui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao xi (Tai Hung-Chao trans. 1994).

“The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states.” Senators are to be elected every “six years” and the President every “four years.” Art. I §§2-3; Art. II §1.

There have been no elections since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized power in 1949. Although the party calls the nation it rules the “People’s Republic of China,” the name is a lie. In a “republic” where “the people” rule, the people elect government officials. In the People’s Republic of China, the party rules because the military keeps the party in power. It is reasonable to infer that the CCP knows that if free elections were held, the CCP would lose.

Particular types of “power” are granted to each of the three branches of government. Arts. I §8, II §§2-3, III §2.

The three branches of United States government are granted certain powers by the people. The branches of government may exercise the particular powers expressly granted by the Constitution, as well as some incidental powers that are implied by the express grants. No branch of government, and not even the U.S. government as a whole, has all possible powers.

A communist regime claims unlimited power over everything. Mao acknowledged no legal limit on himself. The practical limit was the difficulty of one man imposing his absolute will on hundreds of millions. The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s method for eliminating everything and everyone that impeded his power.

Congress creates law by passing a “bill,” in compliance with certain procedures. Art. I §7.

The Mao regime was not based on law. As Mao told the very sympathetic American journalist Edgar Snow, “We don’t really know what is meant by law, because we have never paid any attention to it!” Li Cheng-Chung, The Question of Human Rights on China Mainland 12 (1979) (statement to Edgar Snow 1961).

During the 1950s, there were some efforts to create normal legal codes, but these were abandoned once the Great Leap Forward into full communism began in 1958. In contrast to the Hitler regime, which issued many statutes and regulations, the Mao system relied mainly on edicts from the communist leadership, the Party Center. There were many exhortative propaganda campaigns based on slogans.

The party-controlled national newspaper, the People’s Daily, was read to peasants and workers in frequent, mandatory political instruction meetings, which often consumed the rest of the day after work. In effect, the latest article in the People’s Daily was the official source for people to learn how to behave without getting in trouble with the authorities. As different factions within the CCP gained ascendency, the edicts changed frequently. So doing what had been mandatory on Monday could be punished on Friday.

“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Art. I §9.

When a court issues a writ of habeas corpus, whoever is holding an individual prisoner must appear in court and prove to the court that the detention of the prisoner is lawful. In communist regimes, there is no recourse for individuals who are arbitrarily imprisoned or sent to slave labor camps.

Neither the federal government nor the states may enact any “ex post facto law.” Art. I §§9-10.

In other words, a criminal law cannot retrospectively punish an act that was lawful at the time it was committed. Just the opposite under Mao and all communist regimes. For example, in the 1956 Hundred Flowers period, people were encouraged to frankly express their views about perceived shortcomings of the CCP. Later, persons who had done so were imprisoned or sent to slave labor camps.

Likewise, during the first several months of the Cultural Revolution, young people from all over China were given free train tickets to see Chairman Mao speak at mass rallies at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. This was an exception to the normal rule that a person could not travel away from his or her village.

A few years later, when factional politics within the CCP had changed, 3.5 million people who had attended one of the 1966 rallies were given other free tickets: one-way transportation to forced labor in the countryside.

Throughout the Mao era, people were often punished for acts that had been lawful at the time, such as expressing non-communist political opinions in the 1930s.

“The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected; and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.” Art. II §1.

The President’s salary and expense accounts are set by Congress. Mao, in contrast, treated himself to whatever he wanted. In Beijing he lived in the former palace of the emperors, with his own private swimming pool and beach. He had fifty more fortified palaces around the country.

The special Giant Mountain (Jushan) farm supplied fine foods daily to the portly Mao and the others at apex of the CCP food chain. When Mao was away from Beijing, which was most of the time, daily airplanes delivered food from Jushan. The élite CCP leadership in the provinces had similar arrangements for special food, while the masses starved.

Mao enjoyed the company of many beautiful young concubines, procured for him by government employees.

During the Cultural Revolution, everyone had to buy a book of his sayings, Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, popularly known as “The Little Red Book.” Mao decided that he was entitled to royalties from all the forced book sales, and he became the first millionaire in Communist China.

As explained by a former vice-president of communist Yugoslavia, all communist governments eventually replace the old wealthy class with a new class of reactionary despots. Property that was nationalized in the name of “the people” becomes the property of the most privileged at the top of the inner party, the “all-powerful exploiters and masters.” Milovan Dijilas, New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System 47 (1957). The same point is made in George Orwell’s book Animal Farm (1945).

“The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Art. II §4.

The constitutional system of elections makes a president removable by the people every four years. In addition, a president may be removed during his term if he is impeached by the House and then convicted by the Senate. In 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned when facing certain impeachment and conviction because of his crimes, including the coverup of an attempted burglary, directed by Nixon’s staff, of the Democratic National Committee office at the Watergate office complex.

But there was no way to remove Mao, even when, as in the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, the majority of the people, and even the majority of the CCP elite, thought that he was leading the nation into ruin. Like a bad Roman Emperor, Mao could only be removed by force.

In 1971, Mao began plotting to get rid of defense minister Lin Biao. Lin’s son began organizing a coup against Mao. The plan was to bomb Mao’s train in September 1971, when he would be returning from a trip to southern China to shore up support from the army generals there for Mao’s plan to remove Lin.

But Mao, knowing he was widely hated, often changed his travel plans at the last minute, as a security precaution. This time, the last-minute change saved his life. Lin Biao and his family tried to flee to Mongolia, dying in a plane crash on September 13, 1971.

“The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.” Art. III §1.

“The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury.” Art. III §3.

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.” Amendment VI.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to jury trial, with fair trial procedures, such as the right to counsel, public proceedings, and the right to cross-examine witnesses. Federal judges hold their positions until they choose to retire, and they cannot be removed for political reasons.

Under Mao, “judicial reform” purged judicial officers and ensured that a puppet judiciary would never err on the side of lenience against dissidents. Courts ceased to exist as independent finders of fact. They became administrative processing units for predetermined sentences. Entirely under the thumb of the CCP, judges merely pronounced the severe sentences that CCP officials had already decided. In cases where the law was not clear, judges were required to follow the Central Party line. According to the CCP official newspaper, People’s Daily, the accused were “presumed to be guilty. . . . Giving the accused the benefit of the doubt is a bourgeois weakness.”

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Amendment I.

No government-established religion, and free exercise of religion

As soon as the communists seized power, they began suppressing some religious organizations and bringing the rest under state control. Religious organizations could exist only as entities subordinate to and directed by the CCP. Soon, the government began to attempt to exterminate religion entirely. While atheism was the official communist belief, the party recognized that religion made people harder to control, as the faithful recognized a higher power than the CCP.

Today’s China is little different. Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, and Falun Gong face the worst persecution. Christian denominations are allowed to exist only as state-controlled entities.

Mao despised religion. When Tibet’s Dalai Lama visited Mao in Beijing in 1954, Mao told him, “I understand you well. But of course, religion is poison. It has two great defects: It undermines the race, and secondly it retards the progress of the country. Tibet and Mongolia have both been poisoned by it.” Dalai Lama, My Land and My People 117-18 (2006).

Mao always wanted to be the center of attention. He didn’t like the Chinese national anthem, March of the Volunteers, which had been adopted by the CCP in 1949. It had originally been a song for people of all political persuasions who fought the Japanese invasion of China of 1933-45. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao put the national anthem author in prison, where he died. Although Mao did not formally change the national anthem, for almost every occasion that the national anthem would be played, Mao made the state media (the only media) instead play a song about him, The East Is Red.

“The East Is Red (Dongfang hong):
From China comes Mao Zedong.
He strives for the people’s happiness,
Hurrah, he is the people’s great saviour!
Chairman Mao loves the people,
He is our guide to building a new China.
Hurrah, lead us forward!”

For schoolchildren, a soon-to-be pervasive new song was composed in 1966: “Father is dear, mother is dear, But not as dear as Chairman Mao.”

Under German regime of the National Socialist German Workers Party (“Nazi” for short), people were required to say “Heil Hitler” rather than “Good morning” or “Hello.” The same became true with “Long Live Chairman Mao”—literally, “Chairman Mao ten thousand years” (Mao zhuxi wansui). One man was executed for saying that Chairman Mao would not actually live ten thousand years.

With Mao’s blessing, the military (the “People’s Liberation Army,” PLA) began establishing a new religion for China. Starting in the latter part of 1967, most nonwork time was taken up by mandatory nightly assemblies where people had to discuss their personal behavior in light of Mao Zedong Thought. Then came the 1968-69 campaign of “Three Loyalties” and “Four Boundless Loves” that everyone was supposed to feel for Chairman Mao.

Statues and shrines of Mao were erected everywhere. Busts or pictures of Mao were mandatory home religious items.

Although there was good money to be made, painters often declined the opportunity to paint a Mao icon, since the artist would be scrutinized and punished for the slightest inadvertent sign of insufficient veneration.

Upon arising in the morning, everyone had to face their home Mao shrine and “ask for instructions.” The day ended with “reporting back in the evening.” Mao replaced the “kitchen god” of Chinese folk culture. In other aspects Mao was portrayed as the sun god.

Life was structured around Mao and his words. Before every meal, people had to say grace: “Long live Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.”

Maoist life encompassed the body as well as the mind. Instead of normal sports, the new exercise routine was “quotation gymnastics”—a set of group exercises in which participants shouted Mao quotes related to the motions. For example, in the third set of exercises, the leader would yell “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” The exercisers would make nine thrusting and stabbing motions with imaginary bayonets.

Even more common were “loyalty dances,” in which individuals or groups stretched their arms to show their “boundless hot love” for Mao, sometimes worshipping him as the sun. The PLA enforcers labeled any nonparticipant in the Mao rites as an “active counterrevolutionary.”

People began reporting miracles such as healing of the sick and attributing them to Mao. Communist temples were erected, based on the historic model of ancestral temples. When buying a Mao item in a store, one could not use the common word for buying, mai; instead one would use the polite verb actress Jiang Qing, previously reserved for the purchase of religious items.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press

When the communists were fighting to overthrow the Republic, they promised freedom of speech for everyone. As soon the Communists seized power, all nongovernment newspapers were closed.

All radios were confiscated, so no one could hear news from the outside world. The confiscation of radio transmitters ensured that people could not communicate with each other at a distance.

All mail was surveilled, and the contents were put in the secret files that the government kept on everyone.

Once people saw what communist rule was like, many people burned their book collections, because possession of a book—even an apolitical book—that was not based on communist ideology might result in the owner being labeled a “counterrevolutionary” and sent to a slave labor camp.

During the Cultural Revolution, the rage mobs pillaged libraries and burned books in huge outdoor bonfires, reminiscent of similar book burnings in Nazi Germany. The Nazi book burners mainly targeted books by Jewish authors, but Mao’s mobs were more ambitious. Any book that was not communist—such as books of ancient poetry—was put to the torch. Many rare historic manuscripts were destroyed.

Mao’s fourth wife, the former actress Jiang Qing, took a special interest in the performing arts. In China, opera had always been entertainment for the masses (as it was in the United States in the nineteenth century) and not solely for a highly educated audience (as it is in the U.S. today). Madame Mao banned all classical works of performing art. The only works that could be performed were post-1949 “model” pieces of crude communist propaganda. That amounted to five operas, two ballets, and one symphony. In the privacy of her palaces, Madame Mao enjoyed a much broader selection of entertainment, including private screenings of Western movies.

During the Cultural Revolution, simply being educated, or an intellectual, or able to speak a foreign language could be cause enough to be killed, tortured, or put into forced labor.

From about March 1968 to April 1969, even the most mundane conversation had to be centered on Mao. If a peasant walked into a store, the clerk was supposed to say “keep a firm hold on grain and cotton production,” and the peasant would reply “strive for even greater bumper crops.” If the customer was a student, the clerk would say “read Chairman Mao’s books,” and the student would answer “heed Chairman Mao’s words.” As one historian observes, “The Cultural Revolution is perhaps the time in the twentieth century when language was most separated from meaning. . . . If you do not mean what you say, because what you say has no meaning beyond the immediate present, then it is impossible to imbue language with any system of values. . . . This led to the overall moral nullity of the Cultural Revolution during its most manic phase.” Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World 209 (2004).

Or as George Orwell wrote about a fictional totalitarian government very similar to communism, “The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness.” George Orwell, Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak, in 1984 (1990) (1949).

Right to petition the government for redress of grievances

Of course there was no such right in Mao’s China, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Sending the government a critical petition would lead to every signer being imprisoned, tortured, sent to slave labor camp, or executed.

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Wang Rongfen, who was studying German at the Foreign Languages Institute, observed the similarities between Mao’s first Cultural Revolution rally for a crowd at Tiananmen Square and Hitler Nuremberg rallies. She sent Chairman Mao a letter: “the Cultural Revolution is not a mass movement. It is one man with a gun manipulating the people.” He sent her to prison for life. In prison, she was manacled full-time, and the manacles bore points to dig into her flesh. She had to roll on the floor to eat. She was released in 1979, three years after Mao’s death, with her spirit unbroken.

Right of Assembly

The textual right of assembly is related to the implied right of association. As the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized, the right of association is implied by the other First Amendment rights, and is necessary to their exercise.

Under the CCP, no associations could exist except those under government control. No assemblies on political matters were allowed, except those demanded by the government.

But when Premier Zhou Enlai died in January 1976, huge, spontaneous, and unauthorized crowds assembled to mourn him. The crowds considered him relatively less totalitarian and oppressive than Mao. Unlike the Tiananmen rallies of the early Cultural Revolution, which originated from the top down, the crowds that gathered to mourn Zhou expressed people power. “The country had not witnessed such an outpouring of popular sentiment since before the communists came to power in 1949.” Li Zhusui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao 611 (Tai Hung-Chao trans. 1994).

While there were demonstrations at over 200 locations throughout the country, the flashpoint was in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which saw the largest spontaneous demonstration ever in China. On April 4, Tomb-Sweeping Day (Qing Ming), a traditional day for honoring one’s ancestors, an immense crowd gathered at the Monument to the People’s Martyrs in Tiananmen Square. Erected in 1959, the monument honored Chinese revolutionary martyrs from 1840 onward.

That night, the Tiananmen assembly was attacked by the Capital Militia Command Post (a/k/a the “Cudgel Corps”). According to one report, it later took hundreds of workers to scrub off all the blood.

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Amendment II.

The Second Amendment ensures that the government will never have a monopoly of force. As Americans knew from recent history in Europe and from ancient history, people who were first disarmed were often tyrannized later.

The Chinese Communist Party was aware of similar lessons of history. In a 1938 speech, Mao explained, “Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. . . . According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army.” Problems of War and Strategy (Nov. 6, 1938).

In 1949, one of the new regime’s “first acts” was “to confiscate weapons.” Jung Chang & Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story 424 (2005). Homes were inspected to “search for forbidden items, from weapons to radios.” Frank Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957, at 45-46 (2013).

By ensuring that all the people could be armed, the Second Amendment aimed to ensure that the militia would be drawn from all people. If the government were allowed to disarm people, then instead of a general militia of the people, there would be a “select militia” of the government’s favorites and toadies. At the Virginia Convention for ratifying the U.S. Constitution, George Mason had warned that a select militia would “have no fellow-feeling for the people.” (June 14, 1788).

As the U.S. Supreme Court noted, in England, the despotic Stuart kings in the seventeenth century had used “select militias loyal to them to suppress political dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents.” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 592 (2008). Further, said the Court, the Second Amendment was enacted in part to assuage fears that the U.S. government “would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia.” Id. at 588.

Under Mao, a select militia was the instrument for forcing most of the population into de facto slavery. In the 1958-62 Great Leap Forward, the select militia became the instrument that caused the deaths of over forty million people from famine.

In a nation of over 600 million people, the select militia comprised fewer than 2 percent of the population. Unlike in the American system, militia arms were not personally owned but were usually centrally stored and guarded.

According to a political refugee interviewed in Hong Kong in the 1950s, in a farm commune of 15,000 families, there would be about 1,500 militiamen, chosen from the politically correct, who would have rifles. Of these there was “a further selection of 150 super-reliable men whose rifles are always loaded.” Suzanne Labin, The Anthill: The Human Condition in Communist China 104 (Edward Fitzgerald trans., Praeger 1960) (1st pub. in France as La Condition Humaine en Chine Communiste (1959)). “Otherwise ammunition is kept at a central armoury guarded day and night by special police armed with machine-guns. As an extra precaution the personnel of this guard is changed every two months.” Id. A hundred and fifty always-armed males could control 15,000 families.

“They would turn out to be crucial in enforcing discipline, not only during the frenzy to establish communes, but throughout the years of famine that lay ahead.” Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, at 182 (2010). “[L]ocal militia were a critical ingredient in the CCP’s consolidation of power in the countryside.” Elizabeth J. Perry, Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship, and the Modern Chinese State 182 (2007).

“The militia movement and a small corps of trained fighters brought military organization to every commune. All over China farmers were roused from sleep at dawn at the sound of a bugle and filed into the canteen for a quick bowl of watery rice gruel. Whistles were blown to gather the workforce, which moved in military step to the fields. . . . Party activists, local cadres and the militia enforced discipline, sometimes punishing underachievers with beatings.”

Dikötter, Famine, at 50. “Militiamen spearheaded the countless mobilization campaigns that were the hallmark of Mao’s rule. They enforced universal participation by all members of the factory or village, dragged out or designated targets of struggle [persons targeted for persecution], and monitored mass meetings.” Perry, at 191.

A case study of the remote village of Da Fo, located on the North China Plain, details the operation of the select militia. There, guns had been confiscated in 1951 (later than the general confiscation in 1949, perhaps because of the village’s isolation). Over the course of the war against the Japanese invasion and then the final phase of the civil war (1945-49), the high-quality leaders of the Da Fo communist militia had been moved elsewhere, to positions of greater responsibility. The militiamen left behind were the dregs of society. “Villagers remember them as poorly endowed, uneducated, quick-tempered, perfidious hustlers and ruffians who more often than not operated in an arbitrary and brutal political manner in the name of the Communist Party.” Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao’s Great Leap Forward: Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village 329 (2008).

There were no rules against them exploiting or coercing peasants. To the extent that the national government provided subsidies, the militia took them. The Da Fo militia had 30 guns and kept the crop fields under a four-man armed guard day and night, to prevent peasants from obtaining food.

“The militia was a repressive institution, and Mao needed it to press the countless rural dwellers who were resisting disentitlement by the agents of the people’s commune.” Id. “These men were practically the perfect candidates to tear apart civil society and destroy human purpose. . . . [T]hey had a lot in common with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, with Ceauşescu’s militias in Transylvania, and with the Janjaweed in the Darfur region of Sudan. In rural China of the late 1950s, as in these other killing field environments, such men were backed by state power.” Id. at 330.

The militia and the communist party cadres carried large sticks they used to beat the peasants. The frontline enforcers were under orders from their superiors to administer frequent beatings, and those who failed to do so were punished. “A vicious circle of repression was created, as ever more relentless beatings were required to get the starving to perform whatever tasks were assigned to them.” Dikötter, Famine, at 299.

Without the select militia, “surely the famine’s death rate would not have been so high.” Thaxton, at 331. Because of the select militia, peasants suffered “socialist colonization, subhuman forms of labor, and starvation.” Id. at 334.

Tibet

The Chinese Communist army invaded eastern Tibet in 1949 and central Tibet in 1951. At first, they ruled relatively mildly, while they worked hard at building a transportation infrastructure for permanent military occupation. But in 1956, the Chinese announced gun registration, which the Tibetans accurately foresaw as a step towards gun confiscation. In 1957, the CCP demanded that Tibetans surrender all their firearms.

Tibet was a universally armed nation. Every man was expected to have a firearm and be proficient with it. The Tibetan Buddhist monasteries had large arsenals. Even the poorest beggar would at least have a large knife.

As the Dalai Lama later recalled, when he heard about the gun confiscation order, “I knew without being told that a Khamba [Eastern Tibetan] would never surrender his rifle — he would use it first.” Roger Hicks & Ngakpa Chogyam, Great Ocean 102 (1984) (authorized biography).

The historically fractious Tibetan tribes united in a national resistance movement, the Chushi Gangdruk. For a while, they drove the Chinese out of most of Tibet, and liberated hundreds of thousands of square miles.

Yet although the Tibetan volunteers were, man-for-man, vastly superior fighters to the Chinese conscripts, the Chinese eventually wore down the Tibetan resistance through sheer force of numbers, just as centuries before barbarians in Europe had overwhelmed the Roman Empire’s legions.

The Tibetan resistance movement did make it possible for 80,000 Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, to escape to India and Nepal, where they have kept the Tibetan Buddhist religion alive, free of CCP domination, and have continued to inform the world about the CCP’s colonialism and genocide in Tibet.

“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Amendment III.

Unlike some of the bad monarchs in England and France, Mao did not force families to let soldiers live in their homes. Rather, Mao forced people to live in soldiers’ homes, as prisoners under constant armed guard.

Starting in the Great Leap Forward, the government seized all farmland and forced people into communal labor. In many communes, families had to leave their homes, live in sex-segregated barracks, and eat in mess halls. Husbands and wives were allowed one short conjugal visit per week. This was consistent with Marxism, which boldly demanded “Abolition of the family!” Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto 24 (Samuel Moore & Friedrich Engels trans. 1888) (1848).

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” Amendment IV.

Starting in 1955-56, the CCP ordered that people allow home inspections at any time. This was part of a household registration system that also required people to reside in the registered place permanently, unless they were given government permission to move. People could travel only when issued a permit, had to register when staying somewhere else overnight, had to register their own house guests, and had to report on the content of conversations with guests.

All postal mail could be secretly opened by the government, its contents recorded in the government’s secret files on every person, to accumulate material for potential later use against the writer.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s mobs, the “Red Guards,” searched house-to-house for concealed arms, books, religious items, gold coins, and evidence of disloyalty. If something was found, the victims were tortured. “Every night there were terrifying sounds of loud knocks on the door, objects breaking, students shouting and children crying. But most ordinary people had no idea when the Red Guards would appear, and what harmless possessions might be seen as suspicious. They lived in fear.” Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976, at 86-90 (2016). Many people pre-emptively destroyed their books and artwork, lest the Red Guards discover them. Ordinary thieves posed as Red Guards to get in on the looting.

“[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Amendment V.

The prohibition of “double jeopardy” means that if a person is tried for alleged crime and acquitted, the government cannot prosecute the same person a second time for the same offense. This was irrelevant under Mao, since persons who were accused were always convicted the first time.

While the Fifth Amendment forbids compelled self-incrimination, self-incrimination was mandatory under Mao. If an arrested person did not confess to whatever crimes she was accused of, she would be tortured until she did.

The Takings Clause means that government must pay compensation when it takes a person’s property. But under Mao, property could be taken at any time. Some people had no property at all. For example, starting with the Great Leap Forward in 1958, the peasants forced to live in barracks on the collective farms were not allowed to own even a spoon.

The communists had won the revolution in part because they had promised to give land to the peasants. The communists did so in the years immediately after the revolution. Then starting in 1958, the land was taken by the government. The peasants were turned into serfs—forbidden to leave the land and forced to labor under armed guard to produce crops, most of which the government would take without compensation.

In the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s rage mobs roamed the streets, attacking women for bourgeoise behavior such as wearing dresses or having long hair. Poor street peddlers, barbers, tailors, and anyone else participating in the non-state economy were attacked and destroyed. Many of them were ruined and became destitute.

“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Amendment VIII.

The system of bail allows a person who has been arrested for crime to be released from jail pending trial, if the person posts a bond to ensure that he will appear in court for trial. Under communism, once a person is arrested, the person may simply “disappear,” never to be seen in public again.

While the Eighth Amendment prohibits torture, torture was a common tool of the Mao regime. Soon after the communists seized power in 1949, their “land reform” program encouraged peasants to torture and then kill small farmers and landlords. If Mao decided that a high-ranking official was now an enemy, he would have the official tortured in front of an assembly of the communist elite.

In the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s rage mobs roamed the streets with leather belts with brass buckles, which they used to beat their targets senseless, often inflicting severe injury. Sometimes the victims were forced to lick their blood up from the street. Any pedestrian could be accosted by Red Guards, ordered to recite quotations from Chairman Mao, and then tortured on the spot for not having memorized enough of them.

The Cultural Revolution also brought a savage campaign of genocide and torture of the minority Mongol population, living in north-central China. Ethnic minorities in other border regions received similar treatment.

A new round of purges began in 1969 and ran through 1971, based on a supposed “May Sixteenth” conspiracy from 1966. This was the date that a circular had announced the creation of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, which would publicly unleash the Cultural Revolution several days later. Supposedly, May 16 was also the debut of a secret plot against Premier Zhou Enlai. Although Zhou was himself a member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, there were others in the group, including Mao’s wife, who hated him and plotted against him. Whatever the intrigue at the top, the persecution of “May Sixteenth elements” did not target Madame Mao but instead large numbers of people who had no plausible connection to any conspiracy; they were tortured into confessing to having joined a conspiracy that they had never heard of before they were arrested.

Meanwhile, in rural areas, where the Cultural Revolution was less intense, the local militias, aware of all the killing and torture going on in the towns and cities, decided to demonstrate their loyalty by going on their own spontaneous murder and torture sprees.

The victims were not participants in Cultural Revolution politics. Rather, the targets were the “Four Types”—who since 1949 had always been easy targets for attack. These included former landlords, anyone who had owned a small business before the revolution, anyone who was claimed to be a noncommunist, and any “bad element” who had supposedly deviated from the CCP orthodoxy of the moment.

Victims were typically denounced in public show trials that everyone in the village had to attend. Some victims were executed in plain sight to spread terror. Execution methods involved firearms, beating and torturing people to death (always common under Mao), or imaginative procedures, such as marching victims off a cliff.

“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Amendment IX.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Amendment X.

The U.S. constitutional system is based on the sovereignty of the people. The people delegate some powers to the federal government, via the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment makes it clear that the Bill of Rights is not an exclusive list of the people’s retained rights. The Tenth Amendment affirms that the people and their state governments retain all powers that were not delegated to the federal government.

Under communism, the people have no “retained” rights or “reserved” powers. The omnipotent sovereign is the communist party. Under Maoism, the only purpose of human existence was to serve Mao.

Dave Kopel is Research Director of the Independence Institute; an Adjunct Scholar with the Cato Institute, in Washington; and adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Denver’s  Sturm College of Law. His website is www.davekopel.org. He is a regular panelist on Colorado Public Television’s “Colorado Inside Out” and a columnist for the Reason magazine on the Volokh Conspiracy law blog.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett


Mao Zedong’s bloody “The Cultural Revolution” led to the violation of life, liberty and property for millions of people. Though Mao claimed this was a revolution to promote communism and purge China of capitalism, it was also a manifestation of the kind of tyrannical faction that James Madison and other Framers of the United States Constitution warned about.

Mao’s Revolution was grounded upon a rejection of the tradition that human beings have natural rights as individuals, substituting instead the idea that people are, can, and should be simply “programmed” to behave as government desires with the right kinds of physical and psychological measures. According to Maoist ideology, human beings have absolutely no natural rights – including the right to life and property – that must be respected.

The American Founders, including Federalists and Anti-federalists, foresaw the kind of unspeakable horrors that could be unleashed when the idea of individual natural rights is rejected and abused by government or powerful leaders. As Anti-federalist Brutus wrote, Americans deeply believed that “all men are by nature free. No one man, therefore, or any class of men, have a right, by the law of nature, or of God, to assume or exercise authority over their fellows…This principle, which seems so evidently founded in the reason and nature of things, is confirmed by universal experience.”

Brutus understood very well that human beings, when entrusted with power, are prone to abuse that authority for their own purposes. “Those who have governed, have been found in all ages ever active to enlarge their powers and abridge the public liberty,” Brutus wrote. “This has induced the people in all countries, where any sense of freedom remained, to fix barriers against the encroachments of their rulers.” Brutus points out that the state constitutions at the time provided many of these “barriers” in the form of “due process of law” as protection for the individual natural rights of citizens.

For the security of life, in criminal prosecutions, the bills of rights of most of the states have declared, that no man shall be held to answer for a crime until he is made fully acquainted with the charge brought against him; he shall not be compelled to accuse, or furnish evidence against himself—the witnesses against him shall be brought face to face, and he shall be fully heard by himself or counsel.

Constitutional barriers also protected the individual natural right to private property. As Brutus writes, “For the purpose of securing the property of the citizens, it is declared by all the states, “that in all controversies at law, respecting property, the ancient mode of trial by jury is one of the best securities of the rights of the people, and ought to remain sacred and inviolable.”[1]

Federalist James Madison also believed that for government to be just it must protect the individual right to private property. In The Federalist No. 10, Madison wrote about how the different kinds and degrees of property people acquire, hold, and use are a reflection of human nature. “The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate,” Madison wrote, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for government to impose by force a universal uniformity of opinion (as Mao had attempted to do in the Cultural Revolution). “The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results.”[2]

For James Madison, “property” meant more than just ownership of material things and goods, such as “a man’s land, or merchandize, or money.” In a larger sense, Madison wrote:

[A] man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.[3]

Just as the physical property one owns is acquired through physical labor, the opinions we hold – especially our religious opinions – are the products of the labor of our minds. And Madison, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that the human mind is made free by nature – or, as Jefferson put it, “Almighty God hath created the mind free.”[4] To violate the rights of property in either sense – as Maoist ideologues attempted to do during the Cultural Revolution – is to deny the natural freedom of the human mind.

Anti-federalists and Federalists understood that one of the best means for preventing abuses of natural rights is to find a way to prevent all political power from being held in the same hands. As Brutus wrote, “When great and extraordinary powers are vested in any man, or body of men, which in their exercise, may operate to the oppression of the people, it is of high importance that powerful checks should be formed to prevent the abuse of it.”[5] Federalist James Madison agreed: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”[6] As we have discussed in earlier essays, Madison and the Federalists believed that the best way to keep power diffused was to separate powers through a combination of modes of election, qualifications for office, and different terms in office for the various branches of government. All of these constitutional barriers – from mandatory due process of law to the manner in which powers are separated – help to provide checks against the kinds of actions taken by Mao and his Revolutionaries with regard to violations of the individual natural rights of life, liberty, property, and religious liberty, and make the kinds of bloody “purges” of the Cultural Revolution less likely under a well-constructed Constitution.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

[1] Brutus II.

[2] The Federalist No. 10.

[3] James Madison, “Property,” 29 March 1792.

[4] Thomas Jefferson, “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom” in Virginia, written 1779, enacted 1786.

[5] Brutus XVI.

[6] The Federalist No. 47.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett


In 1966, Mao Zedong launched what was known as “The Cultural Revolution.” This bloody period in China’s history lasted for more than a decade. Mao’s objective in calling for the revolution was to purge the People’s Republic of China of the bourgeois and capitalist elements that had allegedly infiltrated the government and produced a series of failures and setbacks in the communist nation’s development. In reality, it was an attempt by Mao, who was Chairman of the Communist Party of China, to reclaim social and political control in the country.

Mao created several radical groups to wage war against conservative and traditional groups within China. Groups of “Red Guards” went on the offensive to destroy precious artifacts in an effort to eliminate all memory of traditional Chinese culture. This also included attempts to eliminate all remaining traditional religious belief in the country, as it had been based, to a certain extent, on the idea that religious opinions were private and personal. To accomplish this, many historical and religious sites were destroyed by Mao’s revolutionaries.

Mao also called for the taking of all remaining private property from his “cultural” (i.e., political) enemies. In order to “cleanse the class ranks,” many people were sent to “the countryside” to work in “reeducation camps” (that is, concentration camps far removed from the eyes of people in the larger cities, at which hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of people were tortured or killed). The Cultural Revolution finally ended with Mao’s death in 1976.

The terrible abuses of natural rights during Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” remind us of the importance of the United States Constitution, which explicitly guarantees the due process of law before anyone can be deprived of life, liberty, or property. The Constitution also enshrines the fundamental idea of individual freedom, perhaps most importantly in the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty. And the separation of powers, and checks and balances written into the Constitution, make it less likely that any single so-called “Great Leader,” such as Mao, can carry out such brutal schemes of oppression and widespread murder. In the next essay, we will look at the wisdom of the Federalists and Anti-federalists affirming the importance of these ideas.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Jeanne McKinney


Reeling in the remarkable victory of breaking free of Britain’s tyranny, America’s leaders had a duty to preserve their hard-won independence. The American Revolution had set about in motion the notion that the “People” should have a voice in their own government, in their own destinies. The idea of individual rights and protection of those rights by a system of laws and guarantees was a breaking, out-of-the-box plan. Never-in-history had a government like that been constructed. The delegates (many who were Founding Fathers) attending the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787 set about to do that. They wrote the Constitution.

James Madison wrote the document, yet there was input from other Founding Fathers. This patriotic group of leaders included Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Jefferson had authored the Declaration of Independence, and John Adams put his pen to the Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the United States of America. Patrick Henry provided input supporting the inclusion of the Bill of Rights.

Did any of these delegates want any chance of their America to be overrun by tyranny again? Absolutely not. They were familiar with tyrannical regimes of the past and surely noted their failures. They also had to envision any oppressive absolute power ideologies that the future may usher in.

“Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God” wrote Thomas Jefferson.

“Tyranny is a constant in human history,” says Walter R. Newell in his book “Tyrants.”

Newell analyzed three forms of it, writes author Peter Leithart.  https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2016/03/three-forms-of-tyranny/

“Garden Variety” tyrant (most common in ancient history). Men who claim ownership of an entire country to use for “their own pleasure and profit and to advance their own clan and cronies.”

“Reforming tyrant.” These individuals are “unconstrained by law or democracy.” Honor, wealth, and power are their obsession. They act to improve their society by the unobstructed exercise of their unlimited authority. Think Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Nebuchadnezzar, Louis XIV, Napoleon etc… In a position of absolute power, they used violence for specific aims.

“Millenarian tyrant” is Newell’s third class of tyrants, pens Leithart. Here lies modern-day globalists that are fueled to impose an oppressive “millennial blueprint” on the masses in which the individual “will be submerged in the collective and all privilege and alienation will be forever eradicated.” Think Robespierre, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Gaddafi, and modern-day jihadist terrorists.

These types of tyrants are masters of the veil of illusion. They are experts in the craft of propaganda. They appear “to raise up the downtrodden, to end exploitation, to create a society in which men would no longer use their fellow men as tools for their own enrichment or domination,” says Warren H. Carroll in his book, “70 years of the Communist Revolution.”

Just look at fall of democracy in Afghanistan in August 2021. The country now lies under a brutal tyrannical regime. The Taliban promises to eradicate any former law or policy that does not conform to their interpretations of strict religious Sharia law. Their interpretations of Islam are their own, using a religious shroud to justify evil beheadings, the stoning of women, and random executions in front of families. This band of violent insurgents who overran the seat of government in Kabul, claim their death-marked regime is ‘what the people want.’ Now, the Afghan people have no voice. All the news stations in Afghanistan (as of the date of this writing), are under Taliban control for propaganda purposes.

For twenty years, American troops stopped the terrorists’ plans, helping to protect Afghanistan’s form of democracy. Afghan people experienced pockets of freedom like never before. They had a chance to vote, for girls to attend schools, and for their voices to be heard. Now, Afghan citizens live in fear and many in hiding, left behind while the world watched, aghast, as the Taliban executed a lightning -quick campaign towards power. Yes, an unprotected country can be toppled in merely weeks.

Tyrants blind people to the truth of who they are, which is an elite ruling class who holds all the cards. They demand you suppress your own individual interests and limit achievement for the “good of the nation.” “They” know what’s best for you even when it is not.

Hitler’s fascist Germany did not ‘know best.’

Although Hitler had not revealed the full extent of his totalitarian aims before he came to power, as Führer (“Leader”) of the Third Reich, he attempted not only to control all political power but also to dominate many institutions and organizations that were previously independent of the state, such as courts, churches, universities, social clubs, veterans’ groups, sports associations, and youth groups. Even the German family came under assault, as members of the Hitler Youth were told that it was their patriotic duty to inform on anti-Nazi parents. (Britannica)

His government was marked by a radical authoritarian dictatorship, that imposed stringent government controls on the economy and oppressed opposition. Fascists reject free and competitive elections. Instead, Hitler sported an aggressive nationalism to his Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) party, poisoned by extreme racism. Yet, Hitler brainwashed followers justifying his evil violence with lies of being a superior race. He created a police state to handle those who opposed; his own countrymen were killed and tortured.

Hitler’s regime conducted the most prolific and inhuman genocide of the Jewish people in history. His raging Anti-Semitism spurred the Holocaust and will forever haunt generations of the earth. Hitler forced his way to absolute power, to become a murderous madman marked by the notorious sign of the swastika. In the end, it all came tumbling down and he fell from Aryan god and fascist king to a shriveling coward hiding in his underground bunker who took his own life.

America’s Founding Fathers emplaced critical safeguards in the governing Constitutional documents preventing any tyrant from using the law of the land to gain absolute power.

The American quest for stability, security, and liberty.

“If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done.” – Thomas Jefferson

Tyranny will never provide stability, because oppressed masses will eventually rebel. As the Founders created the Constitutional structure for a newly formed republic called America, they set about to assure a balance of power in the governance. This helped facilitate a secure and stable system of operating within a framework of laws that ensured individual liberties and rights. The United States Constitution was ratified by 11 of the original states in 1778 and by all 13 original states by 1790. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791.

The first three articles establish the three branches of government, Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Articles four through seven of the Constitution describe the relationship of the states to the Federal Government, establish the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and define the amendment and ratification processes. (National Archives)

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution/what-does-it-say

In this 3-part governmental environment – there could be no Hitler without an overthrow of the republic. It could come in the form of a swift coup or the slow, but steady integration of oppressive ideologies. Our Founders knew well the feel of imperialism, yet had not experienced socialism, communism, fascism, or radical Sharia law. They were inspired, forward-thinking men in revolutionary times, out to eradicate tyranny in any form to occupy their land of inheritance.

Modern-day socialists and communists set out to break and degrade the laws of the republic nation, one by one. Those who decry the Constitution as invalid or outdated are traitors and enemies of America. The concept of freedom will never be outdated.

The Constitution: A steely defense against tyranny.

Anyone with a mind to implant tyranny over the American people will hit a military wall trying to do away with or overthrow the Constitution…American men and women who wear the uniform and go to war swear an oath to protect and defend the revered United States document.

The Oath of Enlistment (for enlisted):

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

The President of the United States swears an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, which is the solid foundation our government stands upon. Members of Congress are similarly bound to uphold the Constitution. Yet, we see it happening every day, as “factions” threaten the early delegates’ great plan for a free self-governing people.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote the Federalist papers, a collection of 85 articles and essays to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution. In #10 of the Federalist papers, Madison discussed the “factions” that pose a threat to a republic.

Factions, Madison explained, are groups “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions out for political power put their own interests first, not the common good.

Then Madison acknowledged that “the public good is often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Failed regimes remind and warn. 

According to Hitler, democracy undermined the natural selection of ruling elites and was “nothing other than the systematic cultivation of human failure.” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, maintained that the people never rule themselves and claimed that every history-making epoch had been created by aristocrats. (Britannica)

America denounces Goebbels’ obvious lie with 232 years of an enduring constitutional republic creating a nation others look up to and many try to copy.

An enduring question for Americans is this: How do we protect ourselves from tyranny?

These wayward political pundits ignore the failures of the Fascists, Communists, Marxists, or radical Islamists that have tried to conquer the world. It is vital to fix Congress to restore the Founders’ ideal of a republican government. We must stop the crushing of individual exceptionalism and the degradation of guaranteed rights and protections. There must be a halt to anti-constitutional propaganda, and violators of constitutional law must be prosecuted.

What all tyrants of history fail to recognize is the power of the human will. Individual will is given by God to all mankind to make his own choices. Our wills do not savor being suppressed by others who sit on thrones, the Oval Office, or Congress who think they ‘know best’ for everyone and peddle ‘sameness.’ For that alone, the writers of the Constitution have adhered to the designs of God. They gave the American people the opportunities to grow the individual, to expand great potential, to gain knowledge, and to magnify the human experience.

Freedom can only exist in a framework of laws that supports it. The Constitution, if followed, will continue to prove itself on the world stage to survive the attacks of tyranny, which continue to threaten.

Jeanne McKinney is an award-winning writer whose focus and passion is our United States active-duty military members and military news. Her Patriot Profiles offer an inside look at the amazing active-duty men and women in all Armed Services, including U.S. Marine Corps, Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard. Reporting includes first-hand accounts of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight against violent terror groups, global defense, tactical training and readiness, humanitarian and disaster relief assistance, next-generation defense technology, family survival at home, U.S. port and border protection and illegal immigration, women in combat, honoring the Fallen, Wounded Warriors, Military Working Dogs, Crisis Response, and much more. Starting in 2012, McKinney has won multiple San Diego Press Club “Excellence in Journalism Awards,” including eight “First Place” honors, as well as multiple second and third place recognition for her Patriot Profiles published printed articles. Including awards for Patriot Profiles military films. During the year 2020, McKinney has written and published dozens of investigative articles in her ongoing fight to preserve America the Republic, the Constitution, and its laws. One such story was selected for use in a legal brief in the national fight for 2020 election integrity.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Winfield H. Rose


Thanks to the grace of God, the United States is descended from the English political tradition. The last verse of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” comes to mind: “I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” This applies to countries as well as people, and here the two roads are absolute monarchy and constitutional monarchy.

England chose the less-traveled road of constitutional monarchy and “that has made all the difference.” This goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215, the accession of King James I in 1603, the Mayflower Compact of 1620, the English Civil War of 1640-1649, the regicide of King Charles I in 1649, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. In the midst of these very important events was the founding of Virginia, the first permanent English colony in the New World, in 1607, and then Plymouth colony in 1620, eventually to be followed by the other eleven.

These events have in common these principles: (1) the power of the king or government is not absolute but subject to law; and (2) the legislature is the law-making body of the realm and holds the power of the purse.

Fearing for his life, King James II fled to France in December, 1685 whereupon Parliament declared an abdication, that is, the throne was vacant. Parliament then functioned as a constitutional convention by drafting and adopting the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and inviting Mary, the elder daughter of James II, and her Dutch husband William of Orange to assume the throne as joint monarchs subject to the conditions stipulated in the Bill of Rights. Mary and William agreed and did so. This is called the Glorious Revolution, and indeed it was glorious because at this time England became a constitutional rather than an absolute monarchy.

Accordingly, the English government henceforth was divided into three interlocking, interdependent parts: the Crown, the Lords Temporal and Spiritual, and the people represented by the House of Commons.

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu was a wealthy, intelligent and energetic Frenchman born near Bordeaux on January 18, 1689 during the reign of Louis XIV and at the very time the Glorious Revolution was unfolding in England. In 1728 he left France to travel abroad. After visiting Italy, Germany, Austria, and other countries, he went to England, where he lived for two years and was greatly impressed with the English political system.

After his return to France in 1731 he began work on his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws, one of the most important and best-known works ever written on political philosophy, published in 1748. This book is a comparative study of three types of government: republic, monarchy and despotism, and it is clear he detested despotism.

Montesquieu’s Book XI is titled “Of the Laws Which Establish Political Liberty With Regard to the Constitution” and reads, in part, as follows: “ . . . constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it,  . . . To prevent this abuse, it is necessary … that power should be a check to power. . . . When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

“Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be subject to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined with the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.

“There would be an end to everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.” (emphasis added)

It should be clear, then, that, while John Locke was the intellectual father of the Declaration of Independence, Montesquieu was the intellectual father of the United States Constitution. The twin principles of separation of powers and checks and balances permeate it from beginning to end. This includes not only the national government itself but all the state governments and the principle of federalism which defines the relationships between them.

In the 47th Federalist Madison says, “The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this invaluable precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recommending it most effectually to the attention of mankind.”

Madison fully develops the idea in his 51st Federalist: “ . . . the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.  . . . This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.” (emphasis added)

The economic situations in the United States and Germany in the early 1930s were uncomfortably similar while the political situations were, though similar in certain respects, different in others. Both countries were suffering from an economic depression with high unemployment and high inflation, plus the hopelessness and despair that went with them. Germany was alienated not only from its administration in office but also from its entire political system, and there was much unrest.

The American people were substantially alienated from their administration in office but not from their entire political system. It was, however, on trial. There was no guarantee it would survive. No one knows what might have happened if Franklin Roosevelt had not been elected in 1932 but he was elected and, as Washington was not Napoleon,  Roosevelt was not Hitler.

There were several important differences between the United States and Germany at this time. One was that the American political system based on Montesquieu’s principles of separation of powers and checks and balances had been in operation for 140 years and had solidified into a strong tradition. Those holding positions in the three branches were dedicated to those principles and  that tradition and were not egomaniacs interested in one-man rule.

We remained on the road less traveled, thank God, but Germany did not. Their tradition was authoritarian, one-man rule and they reverted to it—and made it infinitely worse and more evil—on January 30, 1933, when Hitler took power. Ideas and traditions matter.

Winfield H. Rose, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Murray State University.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Winfield H. Rose


How the catastrophe of Nazism occurred in Germany remains a question for the ages. It had no single cause, but resulted from a unique conjunction of traditions, events and personalities.

Christianity had existed in Germany for centuries. The Germans had a great civilization based on literature, philosophy, architecture, music and science. But they also had a strong military/warrior tradition going back at least to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D. This slaughter of Roman troops was one of the worst military defeats Rome ever suffered and established the Germans as fierce fighters.

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) following the Protestant Reformation caused great loss of life and virtually destroyed Germany. Two centuries were needed for Germany to recover. A great tragedy of this period is the discrediting of European Christianity. Protestants and Catholics did not come to love and respect one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.  After killing each other by the thousands, they decided Christianity and its values were no longer relevant and cast them aside. This was facilitated during the next two centuries by the emigration of many German Christians to the United States, thereby making the remaining population less religious and more secular.

As bad as the religious wars of the 17th century were, England and France retained their national identities whereas Germany did not. For two centuries the national identity of Germany was, at best, unclear and, at worst, lost – except in the minds of two men, one a politician and one a musician. Richard Wagner the musician was born in 1813 and Otto von Bismarck the politician was born in 1815 while the Congress of Vienna was meeting. Both desired German restoration and worked to achieve it.

Three short, successful wars under “iron” Chancellor Bismarck in the 1860s and 1870s enabled him to unite Germany politically and found the autocratic Second Reich in 1871 under Kaiser Wilhelm I. After Bismarck’s dismissal and death, it became even more autocratic under Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Thus, in contrast to France, Britain and the United States, there was no democratic tradition in Germany. German culture included an extreme deference to authority and to authority figures. When Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) established his own one-man rule, Germans were used to it.

The 19th century saw the wars of the charismatic conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), the philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and the composer Richard Wagner who died in 1883. All these except Marx, who was so radical he was expelled from the country, contributed to the strange mix that was to become National Socialism.

Hegel used the term “alienation” to describe a profound disconnect between what we see as real and what we desire as ideal and wish to be real. The greater the disconnect (dissonance, difference), the greater the alienation. It includes unhappiness, sorrow, grief, depression, anger, rage and, very importantly, a compulsion to seek remediation.

To remedy alienation, Hegel exalted the state over the individual and glorified Germanic civilization as the culmination of history, thereby advancing the secularization of society and encouraging and solidifying the natural human ethnocentrism and racism of the German people.

One could say Wagner took up where Hegel left off. Wagner’s musical dramas are set in a mythical, distant and glorious past which has been lost and begs to be restored. What Bismarck did politically, Wagner did culturally – and that was to create a German state (Reich) for Germans.

Nietzsche’s part in this tragic progression was the ideas of “transvaluation of values,” “beyond good and evil,” “God is dead” and “Superman.” The first three terms jointly mean the rejection of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman (Western) civilization and values, the rejection of divine and natural law and the redefinition of good and evil (evil is good and good is evil).

Nietzsche differed from Hegel in that, while Hegel thought German civilization was the best possible and the best ever seen, Nietzsche regarded it with scorn and contempt, calling it a “supreme abortion (miscarriage)” which needed to be replaced with a master race of Ubermenschen or “Supermen” who would be as superior to present humans as present humans were to apes. Thus, Nietzsche removed the moral and ethical restraints of civilization and thereby enabled the German people to descend into barbarism in pursuit of mythical glory.

It cannot be determined exactly how much of this history and philosophy Hitler actually knew and understood, but it is safe to say he grasped the basics. Nietzsche had a younger sister who set up a small museum in his memory. There is a picture of Hitler visiting that museum and admiring a bust of Nietzsche (Dagobert D. Runes, Pictorial History of Philosophy, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959, p. 301). It is well known that Wagner was Hitler’s favorite composer and that he frequently played Wagner’s music on a phonograph. Wagner was intensely anti-Semitic and did not accept Jews as true Germans; neither did Hitler, as is well known.  Add to this the popularity of eugenics and social Darwinism and you have a very toxic civic culture.

World War I and its aftermath put the final pieces in place for the rise of Hitler. Hitler himself served in the war and was wounded. He was obsessed with Germany’s defeat and restoration.

The abdication of the Kaiser required by President Woodrow Wilson created a severe leadership vacuum in Germany. The Allied wartime blockade of Germany’s North Sea ports was continued to June 1919, thus disrupting spring planting and worsening Germany’s already dire famine.

The Treaty of Versailles was a disaster. Germany was not allowed to participate and the war guilt and reparations clauses were especially onerous, thereby giving Hitler rallying cries of which he later made extensive use. At its signing, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch said, “This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.” He missed it by three months.  The Weimar Republic which followed and its constitution were seen as imposed by foreign powers and therefore illegitimate.

Inflation was severe. It was said that, before the war, you took your money to shop in a purse and brought your goods home in a wagon but, after the war, you took your money in a wagon and brought your goods home in a purse. The significance of the postwar German economic collapse cannot be overstated.

Hitler exploited the economic collapse of the 1920s but was also “lucky,” if that’s the right word, insofar that there was a model leader in nearby Italy who, according to the conventional wisdom of the day, was showing the world how the postwar European catastrophe could be overcome.  That leader was “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, who came to power in 1922 and became Hitler’s prototype autocrat.

The failed “Beer Hall Putsch” of 1923 provided another stroke of luck for Hitler. While he could have been incapacitated or executed, he was imprisoned only for a few months, a short time but long enough to dictate Mein Kampf.

Yet the most vile aspect of Hitler’s reign was his scapegoating of, German Jews. Human beings are always tempted to avoid accepting responsibility for our failures; they are always, people tend to think, the fault of someone else. And Hitler was the worst temptation. Jews and anti-Semitism had existed in Europe for centuries. They had been blamed for outbreaks of the plague and other calamities, so why not, Hitler thought, blame them for Germany’s present troubles?

Finally, Hitler had great oratorical ability and used it to bring all these factors together into the mass movement known as National Socialism (Nazism). Germany had fallen apart and saw itself as the ravished victim of evil forces. Hitler offered change, hope, order, prosperity and restoration. The German people were quick to climb on board but, to their eternal grief and shame, eventually learned they had made a Faustian bargain with the devil. Their slogan was “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer,” one people, one empire, one leader, but what they got was defeat, destruction and everlasting infamy.

Winfield H. Rose, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Murray State University.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings — on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society. – President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Ann Arbor, MI, May 22, 1964

In America in 1964, the seeds of the later discontent of the 1960s were being planted. The nation had just suffered an horrific assassination of an enormously charismatic president, John F. Kennedy, we were in the midst of an intense national conversation on race and civil rights, and we were just starting to get mired in a military conflict in Southeast Asia.

We were also getting into a presidential election, and while tackling poverty in America wasn’t a centerpiece, President Johnson started giving a series of speeches talking about transforming the United States into a “Great Society”—a concept that was going to be the most-massive series of social welfare reforms since Franklin Roosevelt’s post-depression “New Deal” of the 1930s.

In that time, there was serious debate over whether the federal government even had the power to engage in what had, traditionally, been state-level social support work—or, previously, private charitable work. The debate centered around the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause, the actionable part of the United States Constitution building on the Preamble’s “promote the general welfare” language, saying in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 that, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;” (emphasis added)

Proponents of an increased federal role in social service spending have argued that “welfare” for this purpose means just what politicians today proffer that it does: that “welfare” means social service spending, and that because the Constitution grants Congress this power, such power is expansive (if not unlimited).

But this flies in the face of the whole concept of the Constitution itself—which is the idea of a federal government of limited, carefully-enumerated powers. The Founders were skeptical of powerful, centralized government (and had fought a revolution over that very point), and the debate of just how powerful, how centralized was at the core of the Constitutional Convention’s debates.

Constitutional author (and later president) James Madison said this in Federalist 41:

It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’’ amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases.

In 1831, he also said, more plainly:

With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

This was, essentially, the interpretation of the clause that stood for nearly 150 years—only to be largely gutted in the wake of FDR’s New Deal programs. As discussed in the essay on FDR’s first 100 days, there was great back and forth within the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the New Deal—with certain members of the court eventually apparently succumbing to the pressure of a proposed plan to “stack” the Supreme Court with newer, younger members.

A series of cases, starting with United States v. Butler (1936) and then Helvering v. Davis (1937), essentially ruled that Congress’ power to spend was non-reviewable by the Supreme Court… that there could be no constitutional challenge to spending plans, that if Congress said a spending plan was to “promote the general welfare” then that’s what it was.

Madison was right to be fearful—when taken into the context of an expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause, it gives the federal government near-unlimited power. Either something is subject to federal regulation because it is an “item in or related to commerce” or it is subject to federal spending because it “promotes the general welfare.”

Building on this, LBJ moved forward with the Great Society in 1964, creating a series of massive spending and federal regulatory programs whose goal was to eliminate poverty and bring greater equity in social service programs.

Problematically, LBJ formed a series of “task forces” to craft these policies—admittedly because he didn’t want public input or scrutiny that would lead to criticism of the work his administration was doing.

Normally, when the executive branch engages in policymaking, those policies are governed by a series of rules aimed at ensuring public participation—both so that the public can offer their ideas at possible solutions, but also to ensure that the government isn’t abusing its powers.

Here, the Johnson administration did no such thing—creating, essentially, a perfect storm of problematic policymaking: a massive upheaval of government policy, coupled with massive spending proposals, coupled with little public scrutiny.

Had they allowed for greater public input, someone might have pointed out what the Founders knew: that there was a reason such social support has traditionally been either the purview of local governance or private charity, that such programs are much more effective when they are locally-driven and/or community based. Local services work because they better understand the challenges their local communities face.

And private charities provide more effective services because they not only have a vested interest in the outcomes, that vested interest is driven by building relationships centered around faith and hope. If government programs are impersonal, government programs whose management is far removed from the local communities is far worse.

The end result is twofold:  faceless entitlement bureaucracies whose only incentive is self-perpetuation (not solving problems), and people who have little incentive to move themselves off of these programs.

Thus, Johnson’s Great Society was a massive failure. Not only did it not end poverty, it resulted in a devastating perpetual cycle of it. Enormous bureaucratic programs which still exist today—and which, despite pressures at various points in time (the work of President Bill Clinton and the GOP-led Congress after the 1994 election at reforming the nation’s welfare programs as one example), seem largely resistant to change or improvement.

The Founders knew that local and private charity did a better job at promoting “the general welfare” of a community than a federal program would. They knew the dangers of expansive government spending and the power that would accrue with it. Once again, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said in New York v. United States (1992), the “Constitution protects us from our own best intentions.”

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Patrick Garry


Numerous economic downturns and crises plagued America during the first one hundred fifty years of its existence. The nineteenth century witnessed repeated depressions. Undoubtedly, the Great Depression of the 1930s amounted to the most severe economic crisis ever experienced in the United States. As with all previous crises, however, the country recovered from the Great Depression and lifted the rest of the world into an age of greater prosperity.

Economically, America has transcended the Great Depression, and did so relatively quickly. Constitutionally and politically, however, the Great Depression still haunts the United States. This haunting legacy arose because of actions the federal government took in response to the world-wide economic events of the 1930s. The New Deal agenda pushed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Democratic Party permanently changed the nature and role of the federal government, as well as the public’s expectations and demands on that government.

Contrary to one hundred and fifty years of political and constitutional experience, the New Dealers decided to combat the Great Depression by concentrating huge amounts of power within the executive branch of the federal government, leading to the bureaucratic behemoth that now characterizes the administrative state. This administrative state has produced a government in which individual citizens have little voice or control, thereby leaving that government with little accountability to the public. The administrative state has produced staggering, incomprehensible deficits that will at some point leave some future generation with an insurmountable burden. Because of its size, its distance from individual citizens, and its unaccountable bureaucrats, the administrative state has also spawned a deepening culture of political corruption within the federal government. None of these occurrences, however, would have surprised the constitutional Framers, who tried very diligently to protect against such occurrences.

The United States Constitution was a unique document. It created an exceptional form of government, unknown in the rest of the world at that time. Among its many exceptional features, one of the most important was its power-limiting feature. Although the Constitution established a strong national government, it also imposed an array of limitations on that power to prevent the federal government from becoming so strong that it could threaten the liberty of its citizens. As the Framers foresaw, a government without adequate controls could easily accumulate the kind of power that would then insulate that government from public accountability, providing the conditions rife for corruption and abuses.

Three characteristics of the U.S. Constitution that would later be ignored and even contradicted by the New Deal promoters are: first, the Constitution’s enumerated power scheme, in which only the powers specifically outlined in the Constitution are granted to the federal government; second, the separation of powers scheme, in which the power of each branch of the government – e.g., executive, legislative and judicial – is checked by the other branches; and third, the federalism scheme of the Constitution, in which the power of the federal government is limited by the role and power of the states. By concentrating unprecedented powers in the federal executive branch, the New Deal violated the federalism and the separation of powers dictates of the Constitution. And by giving to that newly empowered central government new and unprecedented authority over subject areas not enumerated in the constitutional delegation to the federal government, the New Deal violated the enumerated powers scheme of the Constitution.

Not only did this constitutional contradiction swell the size and power of the federal government beyond the wise forecasts of the Framers, it also restricted then the vibrancy of self-government in the United States. As the Framers foresaw, self-government thrives when the public engages in its government and actively directs that government. But as the Framers also foresaw, such engagement requires accountability – and accountability is best achieved when government is closer and more open to the public. This closeness and openness characterize state and local governments, but it was just those governments that the New Deal restrained by giving such vast powers and authority to the federal government.

Many of the problems with the federal government today would never occur in families or small business or state or local governments. That is because in those venues there is a greater transparency and accountability. While there might be corruption in state governments, it is nowhere near the scale of corruption at the federal level. The Framers knew this; and therefore to save the federal government from itself, the Framers imposed limitations on the power of that government, because the Framers knew the temptations for excess and abuse that would be created by unlimited power.

The Great Society programs of the 1960s and 1970s replicated the New Deal arguments for more power to be concentrated in the federal executive branch. And not surprisingly, many of the Great Society programs have descended into corruption and waste. The federalism revolution waged by the Supreme Court in the 1990s tried to revive the Constitution’s limited government scheme. Even President Bill Clinton in 1996 admitted that “the era of big government was over.” However, with the 2008 recession, the Affordable Care Act and the covid pandemic, big government came roaring back with a vengeance. Whether this unintended turn in America’s constitutional history can be meaningfully addressed, whether a lasting reform of the New Deal and Great Society distortions of constitutional structure power can be achieved will depend on America’s lasting commitment and embrace of the Framers’ wisdom.

 Patrick Garry is professor of law at the University of South Dakota and is the author of Limited Government and the Bill of Rights and The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams


The average government textbook explains that the American constitutional order has three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial which make up the reason for the three branches of government in the foundational principle of separation of powers. Drawing on Enlightenment thinker, Montesquieu, James Madison wrote in Federalist #51 that it was “admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own.”

The Founders feared that tyranny would result when the separation of powers was violated and one branch of government became too powerful.  “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Scholars have used the terms imperial presidency, imperial judiciary, and imperial Congress to describe a dangerous accumulation of power in one of the branches.

All of this constitutional analysis should remind us that an unofficial fourth branch of government—the administrative state, or simply, the bureaucracy—amassed an incredible amount of regulatory power throughout the course of the twentieth century and into this century. Indeed, if one were to examine a chart of all the regulatory agencies, it would be hard to find an area of American daily life that is not regulated in dozens of ways throughout the day.

The reason for the regulatory agencies makes a certain amount of sense in an advanced industrial society and economy. All Americans want to fly in safe airplanes, drink clean water, and know what they are eating.

The administrative state began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with similarly good intentions. Corruption was rife as trusts had undue influence in Congress and the state legislatures. Reformers wanted to create more non-partisan governance with the creation of a civil service freer from the spoils system of the two parties.

Most importantly, the progressives at the turn of the century sought to change the nature of American government from the Founders. Legislative politics and the separation of powers principle, they believed, was too messy and often an impediment to regulating an advanced industrial economy. They wanted rule by objective administrative experts who would apply their academic and scientific expertise for rational, efficient government resulting in progress and an ordered society.

The result was a great expansion of the administrative state. The Interstate Commerce Commission, Food and Drug Administration, and the Federal Trade Commission were only some of the executive agencies that Congress created to regulate and rationalize the economy and society during the Progressive Era. President Woodrow Wilson and Congress continued this trend during World War I with several wartime agencies to manage mobilization efficiently.

The New Deal in the 1930s saw a dramatic increase in regulatory power of the federal government. Among these were numerous executive agencies Congress established during the Great Depression to achieve FDR’s goals of relief, recovery, and reform. These were consistent with the progressive vision of rational and orderly rule by experts. The Federal Communications Commission, National Labor Relations Board, and the Securities & Exchange Commission were only some of the agencies comprising the New Deal administrative state.

The Supreme Court initially thought the administrative state was running amok. In Schechter v. U.S. (1935), the Court ruled that the National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional in part because Congress had delegated too much authority to the executive branch and violated the separation of powers. However, FDR appointed several justices to the Supreme Court, and it soon endorsed the administrative state for decades. In the 1984 Chevron decision, the Court went so far as to assert that courts should defer to administrative agencies interpreting their powers in congressional laws.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Great Society and administration of President Richard Nixon created more executive agencies to regulate additional parts of the economy and society. The bureaucracy was greatly expanded with a wide variety of anti-poverty agencies and environmental agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency. The administrative state became so large and powerful that one of the factors in the rise of the modern conservative movement culminating in the ascension of Ronald Reagan to the presidency was the promise of cutting the size of the federal government and thus the bureaucracy.

The rise of the bureaucratic administrative state was problematic for a number of reasons. First, it dramatically increased the scale and scope of federal government well beyond that envisioned by the Founders. Second, it substituted rule by the people and their representatives in Congress for rule by unelected experts in the executive branches. Third, at times, administrative agencies were allowed to set their own rules, enforce them, and decide and rule on disputes thereby amassing the power of all three branches of government.

James Madison and the Framers of the United States Constitution were right to separate the powers of America’s government into three branches. They understood that an accumulation of too much power in a single body would endanger liberty and republican government by violating the principle of a separation of powers as an important check on human nature.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
Pres. Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. He influenced Pres. Woodrow Wilson & other progressives to follow. All three 1912 Democratic presidential election candidates claimed to be progressives.


At a Townhall meeting in Hayward, California in 2010, then Congressman Peter Stark conceded: “Yes, the Federal government can do most anything in this country.” This statement would be shocking news to the likes of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, even “big government” Alexander Hamilton. A government which can “do most anything” is certainly not the government the Framers tried to create in 1787. If Congressman Stark was right, the “limited and enumerated powers” government that Madison believed they had designed no longer existed. If a limited government no longer exists in the United States, there has to be a reason, a cause for such a dramatic change.

The cause, in one word, is “progressivism.” Progressives have worked diligently, mostly quietly, to bring us to the point where “the Federal government can do most anything in this country,” and particularly where the federal court system is willing to elevate the progressive political agenda to the status of constitutional law.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive essay on progressivism, books, books and more books are devoted to that subject; but to proceed we must have a common understanding of what progressivism is and what progressives believe with which to compare to the principles of the United States Constitution.

prə-grĕs′ĭ-vĭz″əm, noun, “A political ideology that favours progress towards better conditions in society.”[i]  “As a political movement, progressivism purports to advance the human condition through social reform based on advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization.”[ii]

Who doesn’t want to better the human condition? to improve our standard of living? Who would object to such a lofty goal? If that is the goal, how does a society work toward bettering its social, economic and humanitarian conditions? “The devil’s in the details.”

“In the United States, progressivism began as an intellectual rebellion against the political philosophy of Constitutionalism as expressed by John Locke and the Founders of the American Republic, whereby the authority of government depends on observing limitations on its just powers. What began as a social movement in the 1880s[iii], grew into a popular political movement referred to as the Progressive era; in the 1912 United States presidential election, all three U.S. presidential candidates claimed to be progressives.”[iv]

The winning progressive of the 1912 presidential election, Woodrow Wilson, is credited with coining the phrase “Living Constitution,” which holds that the Constitution must be reinterpreted frequently to keep it “relevant” to modern times. But to fully understand progressivism’s effect on the presidency, we must go back to America’s first acknowledged progressive President: Theodore Roosevelt.[v] Roosevelt’s approach to presidential power was that“[t]he executive power [is] limited only by specific restrictions and prohibitions appearing in the Constitution or imposed by Congress under it constitutional powers.”[vi] In other words, there are no limitations to presidential power except those specifically mentioned in the Constitution or acts of Congress. To Roosevelt, the Constitution vested the President with near unlimited power.

But Roosevelt and progressives who followed him ran into twin obstacles: the U.S. Constitution and the principle of majoritarianism. The Constitution created a limited-and-enumerated-powers government and required respect for the law, law created by legislative majorities. Majoritarianism requires 51 percent or better support for a policy to become law. Progressives have never been in a majority in the United States – only a small percentage of Americans, about 12 percent of American adults, [vii] today consider themselves “progressive.” But progressives have one trait in abundance: an unwavering belief they are right, and patience for the “long fight.”

Their first objective was to dismantle the restrictions placed on the federal government by the Constitution, and then, knowing that would not be sufficient, to mold the federal judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, into a body willing to look beyond the law in favor of societal “progress,” a court system willing to follow the philosophy of Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall: “You do what you think is right, and let the law catch up.”[viii] Until recently, they had succeeded famously in both respects.

What do Progressives believe? Although there are political parties called “Progressive” in other countries, notably countries where socialism is ascendant, there is no Progressive Party in the United States. Wikipedia identifies the Democratic Party as the current embodiment of progressivism in the United States.[ix] But within the Democratic Party there are “classical liberal,” moderate democrat, environmental and other factions. Progressives, while making great inroads, are still a minority. Research by Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution in 2018 found that 44 percent of Democrats identified as a “progressive,” compared to 29 percent in 2016 and 26 percent in 2014.[x]

Bottom line: there is no single acknowledged platform or list of progressive beliefs. But here’s my view after considering multiple sources.

Utopianism. If there is one thing that distinguishes progressivism from other forms of political philosophy, it is an unflinching belief in the perfectibility of man and society. Human society has myriad problems; but progressivism holds that they can all be solved if we simply work together – and implement the solutions progressives have come up with. Mankind is innately good and those infrequent deviations when men and women do wrong should be handled carefully and gently – incarceration is usually a last resort (unless politics get involved; witness the January 6th prisoners).

Atheism/Agnosticism. Although a progressive form of Christianity has reportedly emerged in the last few years (focusing on the so-called “Social Gospel”), progressives typically have no use for God, divine revelation, divine providence, or the concept of original sin.

Universalism/Globalism. Progressives believe a single, one-world government is the perfect vehicle to bring about progressive ends as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Statism. Progressives view government as a tool, perhaps the best tool to achieve the perfect society. While they tout “freedom from government interference” they do not hesitate to use the power of government to achieve their societal ends.

Collectivism/Cooperation. Progressivism holds to a diminished view of individualism and private property, replaced by the need for everyone to cooperate to achieve progressive goals, to include forced “cooperation” if necessary.

Historicism. Historicism is a belief that history must be understood in context, and if the proper progressive-anointed context is not present in the traditional way of teaching certain history, the history must be re-interpreted in the “correct” context (the 1619 Project being the perfect example).

Enhanced Group Rights, Diminished Individual Rights. A diminished view of free speech, for example, replaced by limitations on speech in pursuit of “harmony,” “non-offensiveness” and an obsession with “disinformation.” British police arrested someone recently because their repost of a post on Facebook caused someone “anxiety.”[xi]

Social Justice. “Social Justice” is measured by equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Social Justice is of paramount importance to the progressive, and the full strength of government should be employed to achieve it. “Too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands.”

Living Constitution. As has been quoted, progressivism is at least partially a response to constitutionalism, the idea that a written constitution both empowers and limits the power of the government it creates. But progressives do not abandon the Constitution altogether when they encounter its limits, they simply re-interpret the document to remove the limits. “Progressivism insists that the principled American constitutionalism of fixed natural rights and limited and dispersed powers must be overturned and replaced by an organic, evolutionary model of the Constitution.”[xii]

A typical response of a progressive to being told that something can’t be done for constitutional reasons was voiced in 2010 by Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi: “If the gate Is closed, we will go over the fence, if the fence is too high, we will pole vault in.”[xiii]

Use of the Courts

In a 1912 speech, Theodore Roosevelt complained that the courts often obstruct the will of the people in an unproductive manner. I’m not sure which “people” Roosevelt was talking to, but if you believe this, how do you overcome it? You populate the courts with progressive judges and justices. When you can’t seem to get the Supreme Court to see things your way, you employ a little “arm twisting” such as the famous “Court Packing” threat of FDR.

Perhaps the most compelling proof that progressives see the court as the mechanism for enacting policy preferences which don’t stand a chance in the democratic process was the recent “full-court press” used to try to prevent the confirmation of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court. But even this theater was over-shadowed by the apoplectic reactions that followed the Dobbs decision, in which a conservative-majority court returned the issue of abortion to the democratic process in each state. This, predictably, has led to demands to “pack the court” and return the court to the progressive policy-factory it once was.

Use of the Public Schools

Progressive educator John Dewey, typically called the “father of modern public education,” wrote: “I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform… a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of the individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.”[xiv] (Emphasis added.) Today, it is safe to say, progressives dominate the U.S. public school systems.  They control the curriculum, administration, library book selections and of course the actual teaching that goes on in most classrooms. According to the Center for American Progress, the public school system is graduating more progressives each June.[xv]

The Constitution’s Challenges to Progressivism

Originalism. There is no question that the Founders intended the Constitution to be interpreted as they understood it. In an 1824 Letter to Henry Lee, James Madison insisted that:

“I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security for its faithful exercise.”

Thomas Jefferson’s view was similar:

“On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

“But the Founders didn’t have to contend with the global threat of climate change” is the frequent retort today. “Certainly, the Constitution must be adapted to deal with this modern threat.” So, who best to “adapt” the Constitution to modern conditions? Why, nine unelected judges in black robes, of course. We certainly can’t leave such an important issue to democracy now, can we?

Checks and Balances. Leaving aside the myth that the Framers created three “co-equal” branches of government,[xvi] the framers did imbed certain safeguards against a single branch of government assuming unwarranted power. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”[xvii] Unfortunately, many of these “checks and balances” have been systematically disassembled by the Supreme Court. For a list of the court decisions which have essentially shredded the Constitution’s limits on governmental power see here or read: The Dirty Dozen, How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, 2008, by Robert A. Levy and William Mellor.

Separation of Powers. This doctrine is another traditional restraint on the accumulation of unintended power which has been at least partially dismantled by the Supreme Court. The 1989 decision in Mistretta v. U.S. found that:

“… our jurisprudence has been driven by a practical understanding that in our increasingly complex society, replete with ever changing and more technical problems, Congress simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives. Accordingly, this Court has deemed it “constitutionally sufficient” if Congress clearly delineates the general policy, the public agency which is to apply it, and the boundaries of this delegated authority.” (Emphasis added.)

In other words, the non-delegation of powers doctrine held by John Locke and others of the Founding Era would be ignored, the people not consulted, and Congress simply given this ability to delegate. Making matters worse was the opinion in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.,[xviii] The Supreme Court declared that federal courts should defer to the decisions of Executive Branch agencies when those agencies interpret the guidance in a statute if the “agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction [emphasis added] of the statute.” Some of these unsupported agency rules are challenged in court and overturned, and Congress has the power to overturn them as well, but a legal challenge is an expensive process, a quarter of a million dollars or more, so not every improper rule is challenged.

The Failures of the Progressive Vision

Progressivism came about as a challenge to constitutionalism. It should be clear by now that progressivism and constitutionalism simply cannot coexist; one must yield.

The basic problem with progressivism is that there is no end state, no way to tell whether progressive policies have worked; until the nebulous, undefinable state of “perfection” is reached, there can be only a steady, monotonous march onward toward “progress.”

Progressivism has brought us a federal government that can regulate every aspect of business, whether it deals with interstate commerce or not; a Code of Federal Regulations exceeding 180,000 pages; $2 Trillion in additional costs to U.S. businesses due to regulation compliance, a cost passed on to customers of those businesses; 4,500 plus federal crimes (compared with four in the original Constitution); the unwarranted taking of private property; in short: a government “that can do most anything in this country.”

Constitutionalism yielded during the Warren Court years and made somewhat of a comeback during the Rehnquist Court. What is disturbing to progressives now is the prospect of a new conservative court rolling back the “progress” progressives have made over the last 40-60 years. If there is reason for hope for constitutionalism today it lies in the present Roberts Court, placed during the Trump administration, with a 6-3 conservative to progressive balance. If the court can survive the progressives’ “full-court press” to change this balance, America might begin to see more of the progressive agenda to dismantle the original intentions of the United States Constitution, dismantled in the years ahead.

For further reading:

Progressivism

America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism, 2021, by Ronald Pestritto.

Excuse Me, Professor, Challenging the Myths of Progressivism, 2015, Lawrence W. Reed.

Progressivism, A Primer on the Idea Destroying America, 2014, by James Ostrowski.

Plundered, How Progressive Ideology is Destroying America, 2012, by Michael Doffman.

How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, 2006, by Richard Epstein.

The Progressive Era, Liberal Renaissance or Liberal Failure, 1965, Arthur Mann, ed.

The Supreme Court

Supreme Disorder; Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court, 2020, by Ilya Shapiro.

Judicial Tyranny, 2014, by Mark Sutherland.

Storm Center, the Supreme Court in American Politics, 2011, by David Obrien.

Packing the Court, The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court, 2009, by James Burns.

The Dirty Dozen, How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, 2008, by Robert A. Levy and William Mellor.

Men In Black, How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, 2005, by Mark Levin.

Courting Disaster, How the Supreme Court is Usurping the Power of Congress and the People, 2004, by Pat Robertson.

The Tempting of America, 1990, by Robert Bork.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter @constitutionled.

[i] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism

[iii] Some writers identify the Progressive Era as 1880 to 1920; I contend the Progressive Era never stopped.

[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism

[v] Roosevelt was President from September 14, 1901 to March 4, 1909.

[vi] Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, ed., Stephen Brennan (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), 304–10

[vii] Accessed at https://news.gallup.com/poll/141218/americans-unsure-progressive-political-label.aspx Note, 54%of respondents were “unsure” whether the progressive label fit them.

[viii] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/914008

[ix] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism#Progressive_parties_or_parties_with_progressive_factions

[x] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/29/659665970/as-more-democrats-embrace-progressive-label-it-may-not-mean-what-it-used-to

[xi] https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/man-arrested-for-causing-anxiety-on-facebook/.

[xii] Bradley D. S. Watson, accessed at: https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/11/how-progressives-rewrote-american-history/

[xiii] Nancy Pelosi, accessed at: https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/if-the-gate-is-closed-we-will-go-over-the-fence-if-the-fence-is-too-high-we-will-pole-vault-in

[xiv] John Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed, School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80

[xv] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/public-opinion-snapshot-millennials-are-a-progressive-generation/

[xvi] It is an irrefutable fact that the powers of the Congress eclipse those of either of the other two branches.

[xvii] James Madison, Federalist 47.

[xviii] Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984)

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey


Good government produces good administration, Publius has written. Good administration is what we need from the executive branch, charged as it is with carrying out the laws enacted by the legislature within the framework of the supreme law of the land, the United States Constitution. A good executive must act with energy. To enable executives so to act, the offices they occupy must have unity, duration, adequate provision in terms of money and personnel, and competent powers. Publius therefore defends the Framers of the Constitution in their establishment of a presidency unlike the consular system of Rome, which assigned domestic policy to one consul, foreign (and especially military) policy to another. The American president serves as chief administrative officer for domestic policy as well as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Congress may not manipulate his salary and the president can exercise the power to veto Congressional legislation, thereby maintaining his independence of judgment. He is, then, neither a monarch nor a legislator but a republican executive.

In Federalist 71, Publius presents the reasons for and the institutional means to enable duration in office, “the second requisite to the energy of the executive authority.” There can be no substitute for character, for “the personal firmness of the executive in the employment of his constitutional powers.” Nor can there be any substitute for “the stability of the system of administration which may have been adopted under his auspices” as a consequence of that firmness of character. But no person can exercise such character or carry out such a system without an institutional framework which permits him to do so.

As always, Publius shows the link between the Constitution’s institutional arrangements and human nature. “It is a general principle of human nature that a man will be interested in whatever he possesses, in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it; will be less attached to what he holds by a momentary or uncertain title, than to what he enjoys by a durable or certain title.” The firmness of the man must be reinforced by the firmness of the office. In regimes whose executives serve at the whim of the legislature, as in many parliamentary systems, why would any person of character take the executive office seriously? Better to be a power broker in the parliament than the hapless holder of fly-by-night executive powers, powers that will not last if you exhibit the slightest hint of independence. And if you accepted such an office, why risk anything to defend powers which are not truly yours to wield? Such an institutional arrangement undermines civic courage, inclining the one who suffers under it, “too little interested in it to hazard any material censure or perplexity from the independent exertion of his powers, or from encountering the ill-humors, however transient, which may happen to prevail, either in a considerable part of the society itself, or even in a predominant faction in the legislative body.”

This defect had already been on display under the Articles of Confederation, which did not separate executive power from the legislative branch. The Americans who wanted to retain the Articles regime against the proposed Constitution were “inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best recommendation.” They want representative government to mirror Athenian-style direct democracy as much as possible, to have it register the opinions and even the passions of the people and their elected legislators. Publius considers such notions as “very crude,” with regard both to the ends and especially the means of government.

The Declaration of Independence set down the just purpose of American government as securing the safety and happiness of the American people, a purpose justified by their natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. Much of that is “self-evident,” the Declaration says. Publius agrees: “It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the PUBLIC GOOD.” But as those same people themselves acknowledge, having learned it from experience under the Articles regime, they do not “always reason right about the means of promoting” the public good, “beset as they continually are by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.”

If self-government is therefore dangerous, “the republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom” the people “intrust the management of their affairs.” Characteristically, Publius attempts to firm up the chance that the distinctively human characteristic, reason, will have the greatest possible authority in government while acknowledging the impassion—Christian would say ‘fallen’–character of human beings.

There will, then, be circumstances “in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have anointed to be the guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.” Thus to serve the people “at the peril of their displeasure” takes “courage and magnanimity.”

It is important to pause and appreciate the moral structure of Publius’ argument, here. He wants to see the rule of reason in the United States—to the extent possible, given human frailty. The Constitution generally, and a four-year, renewable presidential term in particular, provides an institutional framework for such rule. But neither the rule of reason nor the defense of the Constitution can survive without two other virtues that array themselves against popular passion. Civic courage is easy to understand and to appreciate, if not commonplace. We have all seen examples of men and women, even children, who have refused to buckle under ‘peer pressure.’ Magnanimity is less well understood.

Magnanimity literally means greatness of soul: in Latin, magnus means great, large; anima means soul. The classic description of the great-souled individual comes from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics IV.3. The great-souled man, Aristotle writes, “deems himself worthy of great things and is worthy of them.” This means that he possesses all the cardinal virtues—courage, moderation, justice, and prudence—to a very high degree. Accordingly, he stands ready to withstand the demands of others, however intensely they may clamor, when he sees that those demands are cowardly, immoderate, unjust, or imprudent. He can take the heat, and he can do it without resentment.

A republican regime undergirded by a democratic civil society will test him. He can pass that test, but without a firm institutional foundation on which to stand he will be physically overwhelmed by the majority tide, helpless to resist “the humors of the legislature.” The Articles of Confederation government had folded executive and judicial power into the legislature, giving inadequate support for reason, courage, or magnanimity—the finest human characteristics. “To what purpose separate the executive or the judiciary from the legislature,” as the new Constitution had done, “if both the executive and the judiciary are so constituted as to be at the absolute devotion of the legislative” branch? The powers would then be separated in name only, with the legislature “exert[ing] an imperious control over the other departments,” unbalancing the apparently balanced powers of the federal government as framed by the Constitution.

This is exactly what has been happening under the Articles. The same thing will happen again unless the president enjoys a stable tenure in office. In view of this, “it may be asked whether a duration of four years would answer to the end proposed,” whether such a duration of a presidential term will suffice to resist attempts by legislators to dominate the system. Publius does not pretend that he knows the answer, since a four-year term was untried in previous American governments and the lifelong term of a European monarch—in principle if not always in practice as stable a provision as can be had—was highly undesirable. It is nonetheless reasonable to think that a four-year presidential term “would have a material influence upon the spirit and character of the government.”

Why? Because any person “endowed with a tolerable portion of fortitude” should see that there is “time enough” before the current term expires, and the prospect of re-election draws near, for the people and their legislative representatives to have calmed down and to be ready to assess the president with equanimity. True enough, this would mean that he might not dare to resist popular disapproval so readily as his term drew to an end, but for most of the time he would be able to hold steadily to his constitutional duties and best judgment. At the same time, unlike a monarch, a president won’t stay in office long enough “to justify any alarm for the public liberty.” Which is not to say that his enemies won’t try to raise such alarms.

Publius’ understanding of the presidency not only departs from the conception of executive power which prevailed under the Articles, it also contradicts the new conception of the presidency advanced by the Progressives, more than a century later. President Woodrow Wilson rejected the United States Constitution as an antiquated and constricting product of a bygone era, and equally rejected its moral foundation in the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. In place of natural right, he substituted historical right, claiming that the course of events, guided by divine Providence, provided the true moral light for humanity. In view of this continuing historical progress, the Constitution must be reconceived as an ‘elastic’ or ‘living’ document, to be reinterpreted by political leaders such as himself who placed themselves on the cutting edge of that progress. In place of magnanimity, Wilson substituted compassion, not so much a virtue as a sentiment, one intended to carry the people along on a tide of emotion with slogans like ‘I feel your pain.’ The president, then, should serve not so much as the executor of Congressional legislation within a stable constitutional framework but as the principal leader of the nation, the person who senses where public opinion should go next, appealing more to their passion than their prudence in the hope of induing the people to follow him to that ever-new, ever-higher destination.

As a result, the Progressives raised expectations to unfulfillable heights, grafting their own unusual brand of moving-target ‘constitutionalism’ onto the old Constitution, with predictably confusing and self-contradictory results that have persisted to this day.

Will Morrisey is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College, and Editor and Publisher of Will Morrisey Reviews.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


At the 1896 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, a former Congressman from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, gave a stirring oration in favor of the party’s “pro-silver” political platform. Filled with passion and a near-revolutionary fire, the speech concluded with a warning to those who wanted the United States to maintain a gold standard for the dollar, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Bryan underscored this patently religious analogy by posing at its conclusion with his arms outstretched like someone nailed to a cross. The convention erupted in pandemonium. The ecstatic reaction of the delegates resulted in the “Boy Orator of the Platte River” receiving the party’s nomination for president of the United States at age 36, the youngest major party nominee ever. He became the Democrats’ presidential standard bearer twice more, in 1900 and 1908, again the only major party nominee to do so. He lost each time.

In addition to the Democratic Party nomination, Bryan received that of the more radical, mostly rural-based Populist Party, which favored federal government intervention in the economy. The Populists split after the 1896 election, with most supporters voting for Democrats, while others, typically urban workers, drifted to the Socialist Party. Although historians have long debated the direct influence of the Populist Party on the Progressive movement of the turn of the 20th century, there are clearly identifiable connections between them in regards to economic and political reforms. One difference, however, is in their class identification. The Populist movement was working class and agrarian. The Progressive reformers were upper-middle class urbanites, many from the Midwest. Related to that difference was the greater support for Progressivism among intellectuals and “scribblers,” which produced a more coherent political program and a stronger ideological framework. Ultimately, this produced far greater political success for the Progressive agenda—and more lasting repercussions.

As that passage from the “Cross of Gold” speech suggests, Bryan had a strong evangelical and Calvinist bent. He had a religious conversion experience as a teenager and in his entire life remained a theological conservative who preached a social gospel. His resort to religious imagery and apocalyptic language was not uncommon among Progressives. Theodore Roosevelt could thunder to the assembled delegates at the Progressive Party convention in 1912, “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord,” as his enraptured supporters marched around the hall, singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and similar spirited hymns.

Those Progressives who were more skeptical of religion nevertheless had similarly messianic visions of reform which would deliver the country from its ills and lead to the Promised Land. The forces for change would be a democratized political structure invigorated by mass participation; a concerted program to attack the root causes of societal dysfunctions, from poverty to alcohol, narcotics, gambling, and prostitution; laws to prevent exploitation of the large urban working class; and, most fundamental, a rational system of policy-making controlled by a strong executive and a stable bureaucracy of technological and scientific experts. As presidential nominee Woodrow Wilson announced in his campaign platform in 1912, “This is nothing short of a new social age, a new era of human relationships, a new stage-setting for the drama of life.” Certainly nothing picayune or transitory about that!

The first of those goals was accomplished over time with the popular election of Senators through the 17th Amendment, and through the adoption by many states of the initiative and referendum process, primary elections for nominations for public office, more expanded “home rule” for localities, and non-partisan elections for local offices. Further, the half of American women excluded from the franchise received it through the 19th Amendment, adopted in 1920. On the other hand, by the late 1920s, the Progressives’ nativism eliminated the previous practice in a number of states of letting non-citizen immigrants vote.

The second came in the form of state laws against vice. Lotteries became illegal. Prostitution, which was ubiquitous at the turn of the 20th century typically in the form of brothels, was already against the law; those laws began to be enforced more vigorously. Another of America’s periodic movements to ban alcohol got under way. Because state laws often proved unable to control interstate markets of vice made possible through easier modes of transportation, the federal government became involved. Narcotics were regulated through taxation under the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. The interstate transportation of lottery tickets was prohibited in 1895 through a federal law upheld by the Supreme Court in Champion v. Ames in 1903. The Mann Act, or White Slave Traffic Act of 1910, prohibited taking a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. That law was upheld by the Supreme Court in Hoke v. United States in 1913 and extended to non-prostitution private dalliances in Caminetti v. United States in 1917. After 27 states declared themselves “dry,” and others adopted “local options” to prohibit alcohol, temperance groups, especially those connected to upper-middle class women’s organizations, succeeded in having the 18th Amendment adopted in 1919. That national ban on production, sale, and transportation of alcohol for drinking was quickly followed by enabling legislation, the Volstead Act, that same year.

The third area of social reform was advanced through the adoption of maximum hour laws, minimum wage laws, unionization protections, and anti-child labor laws around the turn of the 20th century. Some such efforts, especially by Congress, initially came a cropper before the Supreme Court as violations of the United States Constitution. They fared better during the next wave of Progressivism under President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.

The fourth, a government and society directed by an unelected technocratic elite of policy-making experts, lay at the heart of the Progressive movement. It proved to be a long-term project. To understand the “Progressive mindset” requires a closer examination of two men, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Croly. There were other influential intellectuals, such as Walter Lippmann (who wrote A Preface to Politics in 1913, among many other works) and Brooks Adams (who was a grandson of President John Quincy Adams and wrote A Theory of Social Revolution that same year), but Wilson and Croly were renowned.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was dour, humorless, and convinced of the fallen nature of all but the elect few. For human progress to flourish, he postulated the need for strong leaders with proper principles who would provide the discipline and vision for the moral guidance of the weak at home and abroad. Calvinist in appearance, outlook, and family background (his father and grandfather having been Presbyterian ministers), he embodied the caricature of a Puritan divine. Those traits also made him a perfect Progressive.

Before becoming president of the United States, Wilson was a professor at Princeton University, later becoming its president. He also was elected governor of New Jersey. During his academic tenure, he wrote several influential books which set forth his criticisms of American constitutional structure. His proposed solutions cemented his bona fides as a Progressive.

Wilson was strongly influenced by 19th century German intellectual thought, especially Hegel’s views of the State as the evolutionary path of an Idea through history, and by contemporary adaptations of Darwinian theories to social science. Indeed, so enamored was Wilson of German philosophy and university research that his wife, Ellen, learned the language just to translate German works of political science for him.

Wilson enthusiastically embraced the nascent ideology of the State. He characterized that entity as organic and contrasted it with what he described as the mechanical nature of the Constitution with its structure of interacting and counterbalancing parts. As he wrote in Constitutional Government in 1908, “The trouble with [the Framers’ approach] is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.”

The “organic” State tied to the people in some mystical union must not be shackled by a fusty piece of parchment with its artifice of checks and balances. An entirely new constitutional order must be created that reflects the inevitable ascendancy of the State in human affairs. If that was not a realistic option due to reactionary political forces or sentimental popular attachments, the parchment must be broadly amended. During Wilson’s first presidential term, constitutional amendments to authorize a federal income tax and to elect Senators by popular vote were approved.

Beyond formal amendment of the Constitution, the various components of the government had to be marshaled into the service of Progressivism. Thus, Congress must pass far-reaching laws that increase state power at the expense of laissez-faire individualism. The result was a series of federal regulatory laws in union-management affairs, antitrust, child labor, tax, and—through the creation of the Federal Reserve system—banking. That activism was replicated in many states. The era of big government had arrived.

As usual, the Supreme Court took longer. Though the Court upheld various particulars of Progressive legislation, the organic theory of the state was not embodied forthrightly in its decisions until the later New Deal years and the post-Second World War emergence of the “Living Constitution” jurisprudence. Adherents to the Progressive deification of the State, then and now, have sought to remake judicial doctrine by untethering it from formal constitutional structure in favor of ideological dogma. Their efforts have focused on an expansive interpretation of Congressional powers, disregard of the prohibition against excessive delegation of power to bureaucracies, and a transformation of the Equal Protection Clause into a contrivance for “positive” equality. On that last point, success has been slow in coming. But since every political entity necessarily has a constitution, for Progressives it is beyond cavil that their “organic state” requires a progressive living constitution, one that prioritizes social justice and secures equality of condition. Exempting, perhaps, the governing elite.

That left the Presidency. Wilson’s early work, Congressional Government from 1885, reflected his contempt for American separation of powers and urged constitutional change to a parliamentary-style system with centralized power and an expanded federal bureaucracy. He dismissed the president as a mere “clerk of the Congress.” Over the next two decades, his perceptions about the Presidency changed significantly. Wilson regarded the administrations of Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt as exemplary. His last major work, Constitutional Government, published in 1908, focused on the Presidency as the engine for change.

Wilson’s eventual views of the Presidency were thoroughly 20th century. He treated the formal constitutional powers of the office as minor matters and regarded its occupant as increasingly burdened by obligations as party leader and as executor of the laws and administrator of Congressional policies. That burden had become impossible for a single man, a refrain frequently heard before and since. This fact of political life would only become more pressing with the inevitable—and welcome—evolution to a more powerful and controlling State.

Therefore, a president will and must leave the performance of those duties increasingly in the hands of subordinates. The appointment of trusted officials was more important than the selection of wise men of different opinion to give him counsel, as George Washington did, or of leaders of prominent factions within the party coalition, as was the practice of, among others, Abraham Lincoln. Instead, as Wilson wrote, presidents must become “directors of affairs and leaders of the nation,—men of counsel and of the sort of action that makes for enlightenment.”

Theodore Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit” construct of the Presidency was the new model. The traditional chief executive dealt with the congressional chieftains to influence policy as it emerged within those chambers in response to the broadly-felt needs of the times. Instead, the modern president would bypass the ordinary channels of political power and appeal to the public to shape policy to his creative vision. Wilson wrote, “The President is at liberty, both in law and in conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit….” This Nietzschean conception of the Presidency as a vessel for its occupants to exercise their will to power is quintessentially fascist. The focus on the charismatic and messianic leader as the ideal of government and the vehicle for progress to a utopian just society is a hallmark of American progressivism to this day and has also characterized the more virulent forms of collectivism. There are telling appellations:  Il Duce Mussolini, Der Fuehrer Hitler, Vozhd Joe Stalin, El Líder Castro, and North Korea’s Kims (Great Leader, Dear Leader, and Respected Leader). All convey the same meaning. Personality cults inevitably accompany Progressive-style leaders.

Wilson’s descriptions of the Presidency and the reality of political practice had a core of truth, lest his prescriptions not be plausible. To get to those prescriptions, however, he set ablaze many constitutional straw men. Though he paid lip service to the Constitution’s framers’ sagacity, he understated their practical appreciation of the office. Alexander Hamilton wrote several Federalist Papers that extolled the need for energy and accountability in the Presidency which he argued were furthered by the Constitution’s structure of the unitary executive. Through his Pacificus Letters, Hamilton became the foundational advocate of a theory of broad implied executive authority on which later presidents relied, including Wilson’s model, Theodore Roosevelt. George Washington shaped the contours of the Executive Branch by his actions within the purposely ambiguous contours of presidential powers under the Constitution. There were serious debates in the Washington administration about the nature of the president’s cabinet and the constitutional relationship between the president and the officers, debates that were generally resolved in favor of presidential control over those officers.

Wilson decried what he saw as a lack of accountability in the Constitution’s formal separation of powers. Yet it was his system where the president is “above the fray,” while little-known and uncontrolled subordinates carry out all manner of critical policies without, allegedly, his awareness. Events over the past two years have amply demonstrated the flaws of rule by credentialed, but unaccountable “experts” at all levels of government. Their decrees, too often based on misunderstood or even fabricated “evidence” and produced in a closed culture implacably hostile to dissent, affected Americans in profound economic, psychological, and social ways. Long-cherished individual rights were brushed aside, selectively, by this pretended clerisy through appeals to the greater health of the society and the common good, appeals which were frequently shown not to affect the behavior of the elite elect. All the while, politicians sought to deflect responsibility onto those bureaucrats.

Herbert Croly was perhaps the most important intellectual of Progressivism, next to Wilson. That seems odd, given the tortuous language and convoluted emotive passages that characterize his work. The Promise of American Life, published in 1909, is Croly’s most significant contribution to public debate, one that supposedly so influenced Theodore Roosevelt it is said to have been the catalyst for Roosevelt’s return to politics as a third-party “Bull Moose” presidential candidate in the 1912 election. Whereas Wilson dealt with constitutional structure and politics, Croly focused on political economy.

In Promise, Croly described himself and his vision as Hamiltonian. But it painted as “Hamiltonian” something that Alexander Hamilton would have foresworn. Croly argued for organization of the economy through coordination among large nationalized corporations, powerful and exclusive labor unions, and a strong and activist central government. This was the classic corporatist model of “rationalizing” the economy. It embraced the essence of fascist political economy and, with some tinkering, of socialist and Progressive systems. Whereas Hamilton proposed to use government incentives to unleash the entrepreneurial and inventive spirit of Americans to create wealth which ultimately would benefit all, Croly wanted the national government to throttle such entrepreneurial opportunity in favor of large entities, enhance the powers of the few, and use public policy to legislate a welfare state for the poor. However, haphazard social welfare legislation would be inadequate. As noted, the program had to be comprehensive of the whole of society. Independent small businesses, as elements within traditional American republicanism, were the bane of Progressive true believers in mass organization. Theirs would be a coalition of the wealthy few, an administrative elite, the working class, and the mass of poor against the broad middle.

Another book, Progressive Democracy from 1914, extended Croly’s Progressive canon. It rested on the usual Progressive premises, such as the omnipotent, all-caring, and morally perfect Hegelian God-state that would be the inevitable evolutionary end of Progressive politics. It posited the notion—so common in Progressive and other leftist theory—of stages of human social and political development that have been left behind and whose outdated institutions are an impediment to ultimate progress. Hence, Croly insisted, the Constitution’s structure of representative government and separation and division of powers needed to be, and would be, changed. Unlike the societal realities of the late 18th century which had produced American republicanism in the form of representative government within a federal structure, “In the twentieth century, however, these practical conditions of political association have again changed, and have changed in a manner which enables the mass of the people to assume some immediate control of their political destinies.”

The new political mechanism was direct democracy, the most authentic expression of popular will. It was beloved of leftists of all stripes. At least in theory. However, Croly considered reforms such as the initiative, referendum, primaries, and popular election of Senators to be misdirected and inauthentic if they were used only to restrict government power and to correct government abuses. As such, they were still shackled by old conceptions about the primacy of individual rights and by the suspicion of powerful government that had characterized the earlier period of Jeffersonian republicanism. “If the active political responsibilities which it [direct democracy] grants to the electorate are redeemed in the negative and suspicious spirit which characterized the attitude of the American democracy towards its official organization during its long and barren alliance with legalism [the Constitution as a formal system of checks and balances that controls the actions of the political majority], direct democracy will merely become a source of additional confusion and disorganization.”

There were, then, bad and good direct democracy. The good form was one that produced the proper, Progressive social policy, and accepted the dominance of powerful state organs which could accomplish that policy: “Direct democracy…has little meaning except in a community which is resolutely pursuing a vigorous social program. It must become one of a group of political institutions, whose object is fundamentally to invigorate and socialize the action of American public opinion.” Note some key words: A political system must be measured by “meaning,” such as the quintessentially Progressive “Politics of Meaning,” long associated with manifestos of the American Left. “Vigor” and “action,” two words that were markers of Progressive ideology and rhetoric at the personal, as well as the political, level. Wilson, the two Roosevelts, and John and Robert Kennedy strove mightily to present themselves as embodying those very characteristics, often to hide physical limitations. Finally, “social” or “socialize,” as the antidote to the traditional American insistence on the rights of individuals that were derived from sources outside the State and which trumped the demands of the collective.

In that “good” form, popular participation was, in effect, a thermometer to measure the temperature of the public’s support for an activist political program. Croly advised, “A negative individualistic social policy implies a weak and irresponsible government. A positive comprehensive social policy implies a strong, efficient and responsible government….A social policy is concerned in the most intimate and comprehensive way with the lives of the people. In order to be successful, it must rest on the basis of abundant and cordial popular support.” Instead of a structure constrained by the text and the received traditions of fundamental law, government would be limited only by vague measures of its policies’ popularity.

Despite Croly’s perfunctory disclaimer, popular participation was to be little more than a plebiscite on actions to be taken by a legislature otherwise unrestrained by the formal structures of the “Law.” “The government must have the power to determine the Law instead of being circumscribed by the Law,” he wrote in Progressive Democracy. As Croly—and Wilson— recognized, legislatures would not be up to the task of supervising such an increasingly intrusive paternalistic State. Hence, a powerful administrative apparatus was required. That signature component of the modern regulatory state—the vast, unelected bureaucracy—was necessarily beyond the control of the people. True, it might be a dictatorship of the technocratic elite, but it would be a benevolent one, we are assured, always loyally and selflessly laboring for our weal.

But like H.G. Wells’ society of Eloi and Morlocks in The Time Machine, the Progressive state was not as benign as its propagandists depicted it on the surface. The Progressives had a strong Darwinian bent. If Woodrow Wilson identified the State as an organism governed by the biological laws of Darwin, those laws raised some uncomfortable topics. Evolution and change are the constants of such a system; evolution requires adaptation to change. But in the State, unlike nature, adaptation could not be left to chance but must be directed rationally. Where survival of the fittest was the rule, only the fittest could rule. That the government was not under more direct control of the people was due to what Croly euphemistically described as the small size of the fund of social reason.

In view of that scarcity of social reason, Croly explained, “[the] work of extracting the stores of reason from the bosom of society must be subordinated to the more fundamental object of augmenting the supply of social reason and improving its distribution.” This was a task critical to the success of government unconstrained by the old Constitutional structures. “The electorate must be required as the result of its own actual experience and unavoidable responsibilities to develop those very qualities of intelligence, character, faith and sympathy which are necessary for the success of the democratic experiment.”

While Croly proposed that education would provide the means of human progress and the nurturing of social reason among the mass of people, there were those who were unfit for such efforts. Croly, like Woodrow Wilson and unlike William Jennings Bryan, believed in the need for state regulation of marriage and reproduction to combat crime and insanity and to promote the propagation of the truly fittest. When he was governor of New Jersey, Wilson signed a law of just such tenor that targeted various “defectives” for sterilization. Therein is mirrored one of the traits commonly attributed to the progressive intellectual. He professes to idolize humanity and the principle of popular government, but he despises humans and distrusts individual autonomy and political choice.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


In the previous essay, the Stalinist era of Soviet history was juxtaposed against the concerns of the Founders as discussed in the Federalist Papers. In this essay, that same era is examined within the context of the United States Constitution as adopted and ratified, and to look at the “failures” of the Stalin regime vis a vis America’s system of constitutional governance.

But it might be a mistake to call Stalin’s reign “a failure,” per se. Certainly, it was a failure insofar as the adherence to democracy or the protection of individual rights. One can also say that aspects of Soviet policy as compared to the revolutionary goals of improving the lives of “the people” were abject failures.

But in terms of doing what Stalin and his comrades were intending to do regarding creating a state in which power was concentrated in the hands of a few? They were brutally successful at that. In fact, it was only Stalin’s death in 1953 at the age of 74 that brought an end to his proximate reign, and it was the chaotic aftermath in the wake of Stalin’s death (and the power struggle that ensued) that brought some reforms to the Soviet Union. It wasn’t any greater adherence to some kind of principle of individual rights and limited government.

Keeping in mind that the Soviet Union did have a series of “constitutions”—including one in 1924 and another in 1936, as Stalin had truly consolidated his power. While these constitutions claimed to guarantee some measure of rights (as well as outlining a series of social and economic entitlement programs), they left intact other political machinations guaranteeing one-party rule and the concentration of power in the hands of very few.

In fact, it was after the passage of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 that some of the bloodiest, most-horrifying years of Stalin’s reign began. The so-called Great Purge not only swept up millions of innocents, it also swept up many of the architects of the 1936 Constitution itself!

Two of the most-basic differences between our constitutional system and the Soviet system are the adherence to basic concepts of due process rights, as well as the assurance of open debate and the protection of dissenting views. The denial of both within the Soviet Union allowed for the government to use the military and secret police to brutally repress conflicting views as well as killing and imprisoning millions more in both secret prisons as well as a system of forced-labor prisons known as the “Gulag.”

The head of the secret police under Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, was noted for saying, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

In other words, we don’t need due process or a rule of law. If we want to arrest someone or otherwise suppress dissent, we can simply make them disappear by accusing them of a crime, and because we don’t need to actually prove that crime, they can be taken away.

It is worth noting that two American socialist activists, John Reed and Emma Goldman, both of whom were eager supporters of the 1917 Revolution (and were attempting to bring similar revolutionary fervor to the United States), became privately disillusioned with the direction of the post-Soviet era under first Lenin and then Stalin—most notably because of the lack of democracy in practice and the suppression of dissent.

Under the American system, power is diffused, checked and balanced.  Under the Soviet system, especially under Stalin, power is concentrated—and the politics of the CPSU (Communist Party Soviet Union) ran through every element of daily life, with the Politburo (a central committee of the highest-ranking members of “The Party”) making policy and dictating that policy through the ranks of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Setting aside the secret police, at the time known as the NKVD (and later the KGB), the politics of communism (and adherence to party doctrine) also played a role in military command.

Under our system, the military is meant to be entirely free from the political machinery of our system—our military personnel are supposed to advance on their own merit, the military is an instrument of policy, and the guidance of that policy is balanced between the legislative and executive branches. The President is Commander-in-Chief, but only Congress can declare war, for instance.

During the Soviet era, not only was the military largely under the direction of the Premier (the Soviet leader, also known as the General Secretary) and the Politburo, but each individual unit was given a “political officer,” known as a “Zampolit,” who would ensure that Marxist-Leninist dogma was injected into military affairs, as well as recommend advancement or punishment for military members depending on their adherence to that dogma.

It is also worth noting that the abuse of power by the NKVD and the interference by the Politburo in military affairs led to Field Marshal Gregoriy Zhukov’s support of Nikita Khrushchev in his bid for power following Stalin’s death, since Zhukov was deeply concerned for what might happen should Beria, the head of the secret police, gain greater power under Stalin’s successor, Georgy Malenkov.

In the end, it is not only our Constitution, but the perspective in how we approach government and governance in the United States, that fundamentally sets us apart from any communist or socialist system—whether under Stalin or Krushchev or Brezhnev, or in Maoist China or Castro’s Cuba or North Korea led by a Kim.

We approach governance from the perspective that rights are naturally occurring in man and that power flows from the citizenry to the government, whose powers are carefully enumerated and tightly constrained. These other systems believe that government grants rights to their citizens, and that absent action by that citizenry, it is assumed that the government retains all power to act.

There were no checks on power in Stalin’s USSR—millions died or suffered as a result of it.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer
Interior, Gulag Museum in Moscow, used during the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin’s reign killing millions of innocents.


The reign of Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953 made real just about every fear the Federalists and Anti-federalists discussed regarding concentrated power and government run amok during the debates over the adoption and ratification of the United States Constitution.

Through the entirety of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were constantly debating the balancing of interests, and the push/pull between a central government strong enough to both defend the nation of several states and address the common needs of those states, yet not so powerful as to run roughshod over the rights of those states and the residents therein.

Interestingly enough, the fact that our Founders were able to so openly debate the nature of the early American experiments in governance is completely alien to what occurred in the post-revolutionary transition from the formerly tsarist Russia into the Soviet Union first under Vladimir Lenin and then under Stalin.

Unlike the open debates of our Founders, and the reliance on the consensus-building governance of the American political system (built, as it was, on the examples of the liberalized British system), when the Tsar was overthrown and the soviet government established in Russia, the Bolsheviks immediately set-out to remove or otherwise neutralize opposition voices and consolidate power—and did so using a combination of military power and adopted post-tsarist secret police that could use force and intimidation to back-up any effort at domination.

So while Jay, Madison, and Hamilton could agree and disagree with one another in very public discussions, and the three of them could have ongoing conversations regarding the elements of the Constitution with their allies and opponents, Stalin’s system left it up to a handful of men to, literally, dictate the course of the Soviet Union in the years (and then decades) after the Russian Revolution of 1917—and then support their decisions with either direct military force or the force of their secret police, the NKVD.

The post-Revolution Bolsheviks had outlawed alternative political parties (even alternative factions of socialism, like the “Mensheviks,” the other dominant socialist viewpoint in during the 1917 Revolution), the dissemination of information was through the central government, and a vibrant system of “informing” on ones fellow Soviet citizens was created, in which people could be arrested upon the scant denouncing of their neighbors—or because the denounced said or did something that the central government did not like.

In Federalist 46, Hamilton summed up the general fear of constitutional skeptics in the late 18th century:

“The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition… That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.”

Interestingly enough, Madison had answered his own question earlier in Federalist 46 when he wrote:

“The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted.”

But for a nation in which power is concentrated in the hands of very few, where dissent is suppressed beyond the point of imprisonment, and where that power is undergirded with both direct military force and the anxiety produced by the specter of secret police, there is no opportunity for “plans of resistance” or any concerted correspondence.

Worse, “dissent” could take many forms—and not even have to be proved, in order for punishment to be meted out. Stalin used his military to massacre civilians and put political pressure on Soviet republics and non-republic satellite states. And between Stalin and the head of the NKVD (the Secret Police), Lavrentiy Beria, millions more were simply “disappeared.” Beria is famous for the quote, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” a statement that will be discussed in the essay on Stalin and the protections guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

The Founders were rightly skeptical of what could happen when government power was not hemmed in by lawful constraints—and what happens when people are not able to debate and exercise true dissent. The warnings debated in the Federalist Papers were made manifest in the brutality of the Soviet Union’s Stalinist era and, frankly, through the oppressions of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, and other socialist leaders.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty, as well as Chairman and Founder of the Institute for Regulatory Analysis and Engagement. IFL is a non-profit advocacy organization focused on advancing free-market and limited government principles into public policy at all levels. IRAE is a non-profit academic and activist organization whose mission is to examine regulations and regulatory proposals, assess their economic and societal impacts, and offer expert commentary in order to create better public policies. Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for more than 25 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, spoken to audiences across the United States, and has taught at the collegiate level.

A globally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the challenges of squaring public policy priorities with the impact and efficacy of those policies, as well as their unintended consequences. Prior to becoming President of IFL and founding IRAE, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association. As President of the Institute for Liberty, he became recognized as an expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

Andrew has had an extensive career in media—having appeared on television programs around the world. From 2017 to 2021, he hosted a highly-rated weekly program on WBAL NewsRadio 1090 in Baltimore (as well as serving as their principal fill-in host from 2011 until 2021), and has filled in for both nationally-syndicated and satellite radio programs. He also created and hosted several different podcasts—currently hosting Andrew and Jerry Save The World, with long-time colleague, Jerry Rogers.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: J. Eric Wise


The Red Army from the time of its formation through its incarnation as the Soviet Army and to the time of its collapse was forever fighting wars. From 1917 to 1922 the Red Army fought numerous civil wars for Soviet dominance of Russia, as well as the Polish-Soviet War to mop up the residual Polish state following the First World War.

But by 1922, the Soviet communists realized that a large army taxed the ambitions of the new Soviet state and so reduced the Red Army to a standing army of 800,000.

Leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, would take this small army and build it to a strength of 29 million at the end of the Second World War. This massive army would after the Second World War become the Soviet Army which would be reduced to a leaner 11 million man army.

As the burden of maintaining a large land army grew, the Soviet Army shrunk to between 2.8 and 5.3 million. The final collapse of the Soviet Union occurred when the cost to the people of the Soviet Union of maintaining and equipping this army left them without consumer goods and in some cases necessities.

What is the key lesson of Stalin’s expansion of the military?

The first lesson, one supposes, is that war is not merely an instrument of the state but an instrument of the military. Stalin’s Soviet Union was perpetually at war. The Red Army battled Ukrainian insurgents, and was involved in the Spanish Civil War, the war in China, and fought with Japan. Before joining the Allies in the Second World War, the Soviet Army invaded Poland, partitioning it with Germany, and invaded Finland, with worse than mixed results. By the time of the German invasion of Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army was 6,000,000 men or more of whom a majority of whom were captured or killed by the invading army. The Red Army and then the Soviet Army served as a base of power for Soviet tyranny. And war was a means for the Red Army and the Soviet Army to demonstrate their importance to tyrannical power.

What can we as Americans learn from it?

Following the First World War, the United States promptly de-mobilized. The material prepared for war was scrapped and the United States Army was quickly reduced to a small corps of officers and enlisted men around which a larger army of citizen soldiers could later be built.

When the Second World War arrived, on December 7, 1941, the United States Armed forces numbered about 1.8 million. Four years later, in at the end of the war in 1945, the United States armed forces numbered approximately 12 million.

Following the Second World War, the United States armed forces were again demobilized, and by 1950 the core strength of the United States Army was about 600,000 men. With mobilization for the Korean War and the Vietnam War the armed forces of the United States numbered between 2.6 and 3.5 million. And following the Cold War the United States armed forces came down in strength to about 1.5 million men, the level it has remained for almost three decades.

President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address of a growing “Military-Industrial Complex” which threatened the liberties and prosperity of Americans. He meant that the military and the industries that supplied it had become their own interest group in American politics. The military and the industries supporting it promoted policies, and yes, wars, which served the interest of the military and the interests of power.

Abraham Lincoln, in his Lyceum Address, noted that “We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory…” He meant, among other things, that the United States is blessed to have a territory protected by two oceans and to have very little in the way of neighboring military threats.

It was this territorial advantage, as was noted in Federalist 29, which allowed the United States unlike European powers, to dispense with standing armies.

It is important to take pride in the patriots that serve our country in uniform. It is equally important to not conflate that pride with an empty nationalism that needlessly feeds a large military, a lesson Joseph Stalin teaches us.

Eric Wise is a partner in the law firm of Alston & Bird.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Stephen Tootle


World War I, known as the “Great War” by contemporaries, tested whether a Constitution written in the 18th century could handle problems presented by the 20th. President Woodrow Wilson found himself frustrated by the constraints put upon him by the Founders—just as the Founders intended. By limiting the powers of the executive branch and creating structures rooted in pluralism, the foundational wisdom baked into the United States Constitution limited President Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to undermine and undo our political, diplomatic, and constitutional traditions. Although the executive branch has broad authority in foreign policy and during wartime, its powers are not limitless. Those constitutional limits became even more important when a war was global in scope and America had a President who resisted them.

President Wilson came into the presidency hostile to the idea of enacting the Constitution as written or intended.[1] Unlike any previous President (save perhaps Andrew Jackson when grumpy), Wilson believed that the only limit on presidential power was “his capacity” and that his control of foreign policy was “absolute.”[2] After his election in 1912, he could test those theories in earnest. When the Great War began in 1914, Wilson thought he had discovered a way to use the war to transform the world for the better.

According to Wilson, all wars could be prevented with a world association to protect borders, ensure government control of arms manufacturing, and prevent aggressive war for territorial gain.[3] Believing that he could create world peace, Wilson stretched his constitutional wartime powers to their limits. His administration imprisoned political opponents, censored authors, closed newspapers, commandeered whole sectors of the industrial and agricultural economy, and planned for a future peace agreement at odds with our history, politics, culture, and Constitution.

Wilson’s plan (according to him) required the mandate of the American people in the 1918 congressional elections. With that in mind, he explicitly attacked his opponents and asked Americans to “sustain” him and “say so in a way which it will not be possible to misunderstand.”[4] They answered, but their answer did not sustain him. Republicans took both houses of congress.

Undaunted by this rejection, Wilson negotiated the Treaty of Versailles and went to the Senate for its ratification. Congressional hearings revealed the unworkability and radicalism of the treaty. Americans had some common-sense questions about ditching their traditions. Would Americans be obligated to automatically fight and die in wars anywhere and everywhere to protect any border? Would the people and Congress no longer have a say in the declaration of war? Would foreign nations have sovereign authority over American foreign policy? Could foreign nations preclude the United States from maintaining military preparedness or anticipating threats? Would an international body interfere with the individual rights of Americans? As in any debate, good points mixed with frivolous and absurd ones as the politicians with varying interests delayed ratification. The treaty may have been ratified if Wilson had consented to protecting the Constitution, but he would not.  Wilson had said he would “consent to nothing” and that “the Senate must take its medicine.”[5] But that was simply not the case. Under the Constitution, the Senate would have its say.

President Wilson could command armies and negotiate the peace treaty, but the Constitution and its adherents ensured that he could not rule as a king or a dictator. The legislature—reflecting the conflicting interests and passions of the American people—used their constitutional powers to prevent Wilson from enacting his plans. In his last days in office Wilson lamented, “Men thought I had all the power. Would to God I had such power.”[6]

Modern readers may recoil at the abuses of the Wilson administration during the war, but someone with a broader global perspective should understand that the proper question should be, “Why were they not worse?” The pluralism inherent in our Constitution does not prevent evil from existing in the world—doing so would require

abolishing freedom– but it does check the spread of evils. Would-be dictators claiming the righteousness of their causes will always claim it is worth it to sacrifice our commitment to pluralism in the service of a grand solution to a grand problem. Our Founders understood that perfection in governance is an impossibility, but as Wilson’s example shows, even the would-be dictators can have their abuses limited. Despite Wilson’s machinations to the contrary, the Constitution limited his ambitions and left the United States standing firmly on its old foundation while the Old World Order collapsed.

Stephen Tootle is a Professor of History at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California and Honored Visiting Graduate Faculty in History and Government at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. His writings have appeared in National Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Claremont Review of Books, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and other publications. He gives talks on politics and political history for the Ashbrook Center and the Bill of Rights Institute and is the co-host of The Paper Trail Podcast, a weekly public affairs podcast published by the Sun-Gazette.

[1] https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-new-freedom/

[2] https://nationalsecurity.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Constitutional-Government-Chapter-III_-The-President-of-the-United-States.pdf

[3] Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), 132.

[4] Woodrow Wilson, in John Morton Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), 154-155.

[5] McDougall, 142.

[6] McDougall, 145.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Thomas Bruscino


Federalist Papers 6 and 7 are at first glance an odd place to go when it comes to explaining the onset of World War I. Their topic is the threat of internal war among the states absent the adoption of the unified federal republic in the Constitution. But the fundamental principles expressed, especially that the “causes of hostility among nations are innumerable,” will resonate with generations of World War I students who have tried to catalogue the many causes of the Great War.

Publius’s point is that independent states will disagree about much and eventually fight over something. That was especially true in the semi-united states, with their close proximity to one another, the unclaimed and disputed lands to the west, their uneven economic power, and their shared and unshared debts. What is worse, in order to get an advantage in these disagreements, the states might enter into smaller alliances with each other or with European powers, thus becoming “prey to the artifices and machinations of powers equally the enemies of them all.”

Even the broadly democratic and commercial nature of the states would not help, despite the claims of “visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the States, though dismembered and alienated from each other. The genius of republics (say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.”

If true, asserts Publius, then that should be true of all states, not just republics. But it wasn’t true. “Has it not, on the contrary, invariably been found that momentary passions, and immediate interest, have a more active and imperious control over human conduct than general or remote considerations of policy, utility or justice?”

There they are in Federalists 6 and 7, the many causes of the Great War laid out in principle: security and proximity, economic competition, domestic politics, imperial rivalries, confusing alliance politics, and honor and passion (in monarchies and democracies alike). Publius even anticipated and rejected the arguments of people like Ivan Bloch and Norman Angell that rational calculations about the destructiveness of warfare, especially in the interconnected modern economic world, would or should forestall war.

Given these great truths, Publius argued that the best hope for stopping war among the American states was to unite them under the proposed federal constitution. It did not always work—rebels literally drew states into a war against the nation. But it mostly worked. The overwhelming majority of the disputes among American states have not led to war.

Which leads to another question: was the proposed solution viable for the rest of the world’s nations? Did they just need to be gathered together in some sort of “Confederative Republic” to ensure peace?

In principle, maybe, and the principle is as far as Publius goes for the wider world. The Federalist Papers focused on the principles behind the best government for the United States, and on this issue they weren’t even sure the federal republic would work, let alone for the far more divided wider world. The Constitutional system Publius proposed was exceedingly fragile. That is why the principles elucidated in the rest of the Federalist Papers went far beyond the causes of war between states.

Perhaps that truth best resolves the seeming paradox of how Woodrow Wilson, an explicit critic of the Constitutional system, came to advocate for a seemingly Publius-like worldwide “Confederative Republic” in the League of Nations. Wilson wanted lasting peace among nations, and he believed that it was only possible if nations gathered together under a cooperative worldwide government of sorts. On its face, it appears that Wilson agreed with the principles of the Federalist Papers, but only on this narrow issue. But the Founders believed that the American Constitutional Republic only had a chance of preserving peace among the states if all of the principles undergirding it, those expressed across the Federalist Papers, remained in place.

Which brings us to Federalists 74 and 75, on the treaty making power of the president under the Constitution. For reasons explained in those documents, the executive needed a strong role in making treaties. As is often the case in the Federalist Papers, Publius argued for more expansive federal, and in this case, executive, power. But that was only because the countering argument gave exclusive power to the legislature. Publius never imagined that treaty making, or any other power, would go exclusively to the executive. There must be balance, or the whole fragile experiment would collapse.

This balancing principle, so essential to the Federalist Papers and the Constitution, Wilson could never abide. He wanted the power for himself. In this instance above all others, his reach exceeded his grasp. The Senate did not approve his treaty. The United States never entered the League.

The American decision to reject the League has been treated as a missed opportunity to preserve the fragile peace earned at Versailles. But Wilson was the master of his vision’s undoing, precisely because in envisioning the League he rejected the principles of the Federalist Papers. His League was not a balanced constitutional republic, but rather an oligarchy with the trappings of democracy, requiring the enlightened leadership of a few great men. First among those men, of course, would be Woodrow Wilson himself.

The League of Nations never had a chance to maintain peace, not because the United States foolishly rejected Wilson’s new utopian vision, but because the balanced American constitutional system saw it for what it was: an unbalanced system simultaneously so offensive to sovereign states and utterly toothless as to magnify all the worst rivalries among nations. It was the Old World Order made worse, with monarchies replaced by totalitarian dictatorships. Publius, in all of the Federalist Papers, knew better than to try that. Would that Woodrow Wilson have listened.

Thomas Bruscino is Associate Professor of History in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the United States Army War College. He holds a Ph.D. in military history from Ohio University and has been a historian at the US Army Center of Military History in Washington, DC and the US Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, and a professor at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies. He is the author of A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along(University of Tennessee Press, 2010), and Out of Bounds: Transnational Sanctuary in Irregular Warfare (CSI Press, 2006), and numerous book chapters. His writings have appeared in the Claremont Review of Books, Army History, The New Criterion, Military Review, The Journal of Military History, White House Studies, War & Society, War in History, The Journal of America’s Military Past, Infinity Journal, Doublethink, Reviews in American History, Joint Force Quarterly, and Parameters.

The views and opinions presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
Domenica del Corriere, Italian newspaper, drawing by Achille Beltrame depicting Gavrilo Princip assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria & his wife Sofie, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, June 28, 1914.


Supporters of the proposed United States Constitution of 1787 frequently warned that there was no mechanism under the Articles of Confederation to prevent what they saw as the inevitable commercial rivalries between the states from escalating into armed conflict. Such rivalries had begun to appear through protectionist trade laws enacted by various states. Another event was the dispute between Virginia and Maryland over fishing and navigation in Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. The end, the Federalists charged, would surely be the dissolution of the union into some number of quarreling confederations.

The Anti-federalists had several responses. First, Number IX of the Articles authorized Congress, on petition by any state, to provide for the appointment of a court to resolve any conflict between that state and another. Second, they pointed to the Mount Vernon Conference of 1785 which had settled those very divisive claims between Virginia and Maryland. Third, they declared that it was fanciful to claim that republics, especially those with commercial relations as close as those within the Confederation, would go to war with each other. The history of republics wagered against such eventualities, they asserted. As William Grayson, a moderate opponent of the Constitution, put forth at length before the Virginia ratifying convention, the states were bound by mutually reinforcing commercial bonds and interests. He sarcastically described the Federalists’ panicky and hyperbolic claims as predicting that Pennsylvania and Maryland would attack like Goths and Vandals of old, and that “the Carolinians, from the south, (mounted on alligators, I presume), are to come and destroy our cornfields, and eat up our little children!” Such specters were “ludicrous in the extreme.” Others repeated Grayson’s contentions even more forcefully, often combined with sneering attacks on the writers of The Federalist.

Alexander Hamilton, among others, rejected Grayson’s dismissal of the danger. In essay No. 6 of The Federalist, he asserted that immediate national interests, including economic advantage, are more likely to precipitate war than more general and remote objects, such as justice or dominion. He asked rhetorically,

“Have republics in practice been less addicted to war than monarchies?…Are not popular assemblies frequently subject to the impulses of rage , resentment, jealousy, avarice, and of other irregular and violent propensities?…Has commerce hitherto done any thing more than change the objects of war? Is not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power and glory? Have there not been as many wars founded upon commercial motives, since that has become the prevailing system of nations, as were before occasioned by the cupidity of territory or dominion?”

It was as to these questions that Hamilton invoked the guide of experience for answers.

That experience he found in the history of Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage. All of them he classified as republics, the last two as commercial republics. He detailed the numerous ruinous wars in which they engaged. Moving forward in time, he then indicted the commercial republic of Venice for its wars in Italy and the 17th-century commercial Dutch Republic for its wars with England and France. Britain came in for scorn as particularly bellicose for commercial advantage. Worse yet, Hamilton charged, the king was at times dragged into wars he did not want, by “the cries of the nation and importunities of their representatives,” so that there have been “almost as many popular as royal wars.” He singled out wars for commercial advantage between Britain and France and Britain and Spain. One of those wars between Britain and France overthrew a network of alliances which had been made two decades earlier. He acidly asked, “Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct, that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?”

In addition to commercial incentives for war, Hamilton pointed to personal motives of rulers and other prominent individuals, or to intrigues hatched by influential advisers, as prompting wars between republics. Thus he blamed the Peloponnesian War, so disastrous to Athens, on the personal motives of the great statesman Pericles. England’s ill-advised war with France Hamilton assigned to the machinations of Henry VIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, and his pursuit of political influence.

Whatever the merits of Hamilton’s predictably slanted analysis of specific historical events, his message was that political theory disproved by experience is not a sound basis for public policy. A more recent scenario which fit his skepticism about pacific republics was the Great War from 1914 to 1918, which led to the collapse of the 19th-century European political order and to revolutionary political and social change. The antagonists were the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey against the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia. The latter group was eventually joined by Italy, Japan, and the United States. Of the major participants, Germany, Britain, France, and the United States were commercial and industrial powerhouses. They were also outright republics or had sufficient political power vested in parliamentary bodies to qualify as quasi-republican constitutional monarchies. Each also had substantial overseas territories, Britain by far the most. Of the rest, Russia and Japan were rising industrial and commercial nations. In particular, Germany and Britain had considerable commercial interaction, but it likely was exactly that commercial and colonial competition which the British saw as a threat. The prewar German naval buildup did nothing to calm British nerves.

There was also a complicated system of alliances which emerged shortly before the war. This reshuffling of international arrangements changed the dynamics of the relatively stable post-Napoleonic international order in Europe which had even survived disruptive processes of unification in Germany and Italy and disunion in the old Austrian Empire. True, there had been revolutionary tremors and limited wars, such as between Prussia and Denmark, and Prussia and Austria, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Skillful diplomacy, in particular by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, had prevented any conflict of an existential nature from arising. Bismarck had isolated France after 1871 through alliances with Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, first through the Three Emperors’ League, and then through the Triple Alliance of 1882 and the Reinsurance Treaty of 1887. Relations with Britain were preserved through family relationships and Britain’s preoccupation with her empire overseas. He had also smoothed frictions between the rival empires, Russia and Austria-Hungary, through the Congress of Berlin in 1878, and among various colonial powers through a conference in the same city in 1884.

Even after Bismarck was forced out of office, it appeared that strengthened international legal norms would prevent wars. International arbitrations settled disputes. Two Hague Conventions, the London Naval Conference of 1909, and the London Conference of 1912 convinced “the right kinds” of Europeans that large-scale war was anachronistic. The foreign offices of the various governments, staffed with forward-looking and educated internationalists, surely would extend the great-power stability of the 19th century’s Concert of Europe. Ignored was that these multinational conferences and conventions left some number of participants dissatisfied and nursing grudges. This was particularly true for the Balkan countries. While trying to establish their independence from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, they warred with the Turks, the Austro-Hungarians, and each other and resented their fates being controlled by larger powers. Over time, these perceived affronts to national honor during a time of heightened national consciousness overrode the rational self-interest served by commercial considerations. Moreover, various treaties and diplomatic agreements overlapped and indeed conflicted with each other. Alliances increasingly shifted around, which begot international uncertainty during an age of domestic demographic changes, increasing political militancy, and unequal industrial and technological prowess.

This new system of alliances had another potentially destabilizing element. It allowed the relatively weaker participants to act like big players on the international stage, counting on their more powerful allies to back them up. Instead, the bravado and exaggerated sense of national honor of less important states dragged the major powers into a disastrous conflict. Everything changed when a Bosnian Serb nationalist, supported by secret nationalist societies and Serbian military intelligence, assassinated the reform-minded presumptive heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914.

After some delay, during which it was hoped that the assassination might become just another deplorable act that would result in an appropriate punishment for the captured perpetrators, the Austrians responded. Having received some halting assurances from the German government that they would back Austria-Hungary’s response to Serbia, the Austrians sent an ultimatum to the Serbs. Serbia only partially accepted the Austrian demands, mobilized its army, and briefly sent troops into Austro-Hungarian territory. In quick response, Austria began partial mobilization of its army and, on July 28, 1914, declared war on Serbia.

At this stage, the conflict might yet have become another limited skirmish. But the Russian government, some of whose ministers had been informed of the plot ahead of time and whose military intelligence likely helped the plotters, had promised the Serbs that Russia would come to Serbia’s aid against any attack by Austria-Hungary. When Austria-Hungary began partial mobilization, Russia within two days ordered full mobilization of its forces. Fearing the large number of Russian troops, Austria-Hungary in turn mobilized fully. Germany, coming to her ally’s assistance, did likewise on July 31, 1914. At the same time, Germany issued a demand of neutrality to Russia. When Russia failed to acquiesce, a state of war existed on August 1. France, pursuant to a treaty with Russia from 1892, had rejected German demands for neutrality and had ordered a general mobilization the previous day. On August 3, 1914, Germany declared war on France. Britain, pursuant to her treaty obligations to France under the Triple Entente of 1907, declared war on Germany on August 5, 1914, after the latter ignored Britain’s demands for withdrawal from occupied Belgium. Italy, as was her wont during 20th-century wars, initially refused to stand by her treaty obligations to Germany and Austria-Hungary and eventually switched sides to the Entente.

The war took on a dynamic of its own. Occasional peace feelers went nowhere, in part because of objections by military leaders. There was, however, another equally significant hurdle, namely, political opposition based on the respective publics’ sentiments that their sacrifices demanded something more than a muddled armistice. It must be remembered that the war initially was very popular and welcomed with an almost giddy celebration of patriotic zeal by the citizenry of the combatants. Hamilton’s observation about monarchs having “continued wars, contrary to their inclinations, and sometimes contrary to the real interests of the state” due to public pressure, was being realized.

The Great War, infelicitously dubbed “the war to end all wars,” ended in the collapse of the Ottoman, Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian monarchies. It also severely damaged the British and French empires around the world. The revolutionary chaos it unleashed and the national resentments its end ignited soon produced totalitarian movements and another world war. The tens of millions killed in those wars and the even higher number murdered by those ideological totalitarian regimes during the 20th century are a grisly monument to man’s potential to do evil, often cheerfully. The war should have put paid to the conceit that the world of human self-interest and passion can be readily subordinated to a legal artifice designed by a cadre of internationalists. Such idealism sounds marvelous in a university faculty lounge or in a graduate seminar in international relations, but, as Margaret Thatcher observed, “The facts of life are conservative.”

As fundamental challenges to the post-World War II United States-led international order have arisen over the past two decades, much debate has erupted over what system will replace it. The current conflict in Europe has once again tested the notion that commercial relations will make war obsolete. Russia has been dissuaded neither by Western economic pressures and commercial ostracism nor the military aid by NATO to Ukraine from taking a course of action which her government and people see, rightly or wrongly, as important to their national identity. One hopes that these broader fundamental geopolitical changes, such as the apparent emergence of a multi-polar international order, do not lead to the type of destruction World War I caused a century ago. But such hopes must rest on diplomacy based on experience, not on smug nostrums about pacific republics or the bonds of commerce.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Samuel Postell


The United States Constitution created many precautions against disunion and faction, but did not provide a failsafe solution; throughout the antebellum period statesmanship, compromise, and institutional development secured union until slavery and secession shattered the union.

As was argued in the last essay, the framers embraced the principle of union and framed a representative system to combat faction and disunion. As the Anti-federalists became increasingly weak after the ratification of the Constitution, Washington’s administration pursued policies to bolster union.

The Constitution created institutions meant to draw the country together and to prevent factions from controlling governmental power as was done under the Articles of Confederation. Publius argued that the Constitution embraced a number of improvements from modern political science to perfect republican government and cement union. The tools from modern political science were enumerated in Federalist 9:

a. The regular distribution of power into distinct departments.

b. the introduction of legislative balances and checks.

c. the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior.

d. the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election.

e. the ENLARGEMENT of the ORBIT within which such systems are to revolve, either in respect to the dimensions of a single State or to the consolidation of several smaller States into one great Confederacy.

However, Publius argued that there were further Constitutional precautions to retain the “excellencies of republican government” and “lessen or avoid” its imperfections. Throughout The Federalist, Publius explains additional precautions woven into the constitutional structure. He points to “auxiliary precautions” to act as a sort of safety net to ensure that the violence of faction is limited if it penetrates any branch of the federal government. The term “auxiliary precautions” echoes an earlier formulation in James Madison’s essay Vices of our Political System written at the behest of George Washington before the Federal Convention. In that essay, Madison argues that the Articles allowed minority factions to overrun the state governments. The essay made the distinction between the great desideratum[1] (creating a sovereign neutral and powerful enough to stop injustice without becoming tyrannical) and the auxiliary desideratum (getting the noblest characters to be elected, rule, and act according to proper motives). Thus, the most important object of the Constitution is the creation of an impartial and limited federal government to secure rights, and a secondary object is to ensure that the system is administered by virtuous citizens. Although Madison argued that creating a limited impartial government was fundamental, the framers believed that no free government could be maintained without proper administration from good rulers. The auxiliary precautions of the Constitution attempt to mitigate the harm that a faction might inflict if it gains power.

As was argued in the last essay, an important aspect of securing an impartial government is distributing and maintaining the partitions of power, which requires that weak branches be fortified and strong branches be weakened. When Publius considers the branch that most needs fortified against, he settles upon the legislative because it was often the legislatures that dominated the state governments under the Articles. In Federalist 48, he arrives at the conclusion that “in a representative republic, where the executive magistracy is carefully limited both in the extent and duration of its power; and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired by a supposed influence over the people with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude; yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions, by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department, that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.” Notice the similarity between Publius’ description of a legislature in Federalist 48 and a faction in Federalist 10. A legislature has a “supposed influence over the people,” it is a joint assembly which gives it the convenience of “concert,” it is numerous and can become impassioned through proceedings, yet it is small enough to make plans to “approach its passion.” In other words, the legislature gives a faction the power to exact its designs if it can properly organize itself. Publius therefore sought to limit it with auxiliary precautions such as a bicameral house with short terms, staggered elections, and two relatively large bodies. Note that Publius’ assessment is almost the opposite of Alexis de Tocqueville’s, who fears a soft despot seizing executive power and capitalizing from the lack of civic virtue among the people.

Despite Publius’ fears about the legislature, throughout Washington’s first term it became clear that the legislature was too weak to organize itself and pursue an agenda; instead of driving legislation, it looked to the president. For instance, in 1791 Congress called upon Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton to help frame economic legislation. The House spent several days debating the propriety of considering Hamilton’s economic plans but did not bother drafting or proposing any of its own. The numerous House of Representatives was so unorganized and heterogeneous that it was not capable of creating any bills to put on the floor for a vote. Perhaps Publius underestimated the natural strength of the legislature in large republics. Did he not understand the distinction between this federal legislature set over a large sphere and encompassing a variety of interests and the state legislatures encompassing small territories with homogenous interests under the Articles?

By Thomas Jefferson’s presidency the congress was no less dysfunctional. It was consensus that Congress was weak and it looked to the presidency or the cabinet to drive federal policy. How different was this arrangement from the oligarchies in the state legislatures Madison criticized under the Articles? How much safer were minority rights from factions under this Constitution where the executive wielded such power?

Why was the Congress so weak? President Jefferson noted that representatives “are not yet sufficiently aware of the necessity of accommodation and mutual sacrifice of opinion for conducting a numerous assembly.” An anecdote puts Jefferson’s criticism a bit more sharply: after Jefferson’s message in December of 1805 was referred to the committee of the whole, it took almost a full session to determine a single resolution. After the message was referred to the Committee of the Whole, a section on harbor defense was approved and turned to committee. The Committee on Defense determined measures, and then on January 23 the report was taken up by the Committee of the Whole. The Committee on Defense decided on a sum for harbor defense, the Committee of the Whole disagreed, then appointed a committee of two to call upon the president for more information. In February the discussion was resumed. The House passed two resolutions: one sum for harbors and one sum for gunboats. A committee was then appointed to draft a bill in accord with these resolutions. On April 15, the committee began its debate on the bill to appropriate the money for harbor defense. The process in 1805 led four different committees to discuss two resolutions for defense over the course of five months: and that was just one plank of a bill, considering one part of the president’s annual message, in just the House of Representatives! James Sterling Young notes that the biggest problem was that “Any legislator had the privilege of bringing forward, at any moment, such measures as suit his fancy; and any other legislator could postpone action on them indefinitely by the simple expedient of talking.”

In addition to institutional problems, the representatives lacked the revolutionary unity common at the time of the Founding. One representative noted, “The more I know of [two senators] the more I am impressed with the idea how unsuited they are ever to co-operate, never were two substances more completely adapted to make each other explode.” On one hand a New England representative claimed of his Southern colleagues that they were “accustomed to speak in the tone of masters” and that the Westerners had “a license of tongue incident to a wild and uncultivated state of society. With men of such states of mind and temperament, men educated in New England could have little pleasure in intercourse, less in controversy, and of course no sympathy.” A Southern representative remarked of his New England colleagues that “not one possesses the slightest tie of common interest or of common feeling with us.” In addition to feelings of discord, there were physical altercations brought about by the pains of living in common boarding houses. An incident is recorded in Miss Shields’ house when John Randolph, “pouring out a glass of wine, dashed it in [Rep. Willis] Alston’s face. Alston sent a decanter at his head in return, and these and similar missiles continued to fly to and fro, until there was much destruction of glassware.”

How were we to call ourselves a republic if the representative branch could not govern themselves at their own tables, let alone within the chambers of Congress? In Publius’ lifetime as in our own, Congress needed to develop institutional tools to overcome its weakness and become a functional branch of government. This was necessary if the ambition of the legislature was to become sufficient to check the ambition of the executive branch and preserve our republican form of government.

Throughout the Antebellum Period, Congress developed institutional tools which allowed it to enact legislation without relying solely on the executive branch for direction. The most important institutional changes from the American Revolution through the Antebellum Period were rules, committees, coalitions, compromise, and statesmanship through oratory. Although I will not have the length to discuss each development in depth, I will cover some of the most important developments in Congress throughout the Antebellum period.

Henry Clay was the most seminal figure in developing the institutional reforms which allowed Congress to assume the role of legislative leader. On November 4, 1811, Clay was elected Speaker of the House on his first day as a member and on the first ballot. He won seventy-five votes, while William Bibb won thirty-eight, and Nathaniel Macon won three. Mary Parker Follett remarks that “Clay was elected more than any other Speaker as leader of the House. Never before and only once since has a member been distinguished with the honor of an election to the chair upon his first appearance in the House.” The caucus that met before electing Clay Speaker was clear about its intentions. One of Clay’s partisans asserted that the House was in need of a Speaker who would “bridle” John Randolph. Another member said that “he (Randolph) disregards all rules.” Another man asserted that the Speaker “must be a man who can meet John Randolph on the floor or on the field, for he may have to do both.” Clay would eventually do both. One of Randolph’s favorite tactics was to bring his hunting dogs to the chamber where he would use them to intimidate other members and cause disruptions when proceedings were not to his liking. One of Clay’s very first acts as Speaker was to institute a rule barring animals from the chamber during business. In 1826 the two men dueled after Randolph insulted Clay, but both missed their marks, and unhurt met each other halfway to shake hands (something that the two could never manage to do politically).

Clay’s early rules were a sign of his prerogative as legislative leader: he believed that the majority in Congress, elected by a majority of the people, should be equipped with the tools to govern. This principle animated him throughout his congressional career, but also required that he attain more power as Speaker to silence the minority. Mary Parker Follett claims that Clay’s leadership aimed at producing order. She writes, “The new principles set forth during Clay’s long service were: first, the increase of the Speaker’s parliamentary power; secondly, the strengthening of his personal influence; and thirdly, the establishment of his position as a legislative leader.” Clay drew criticism as he increased his power but it was also clear that he was capable of passing policies that advanced the country into the boom of the industrial revolution.

The most radical change in the House of Representatives during the antebellum period was a change that still characterizes it today: the creation of standing committees to expedite business and develop policy expertise. Between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, the House increasingly relied on standing committees to debate and amend measures. As this reliance on standing committees steadily expanded, the House’s relationship with standing committees changed: measures were first referred to committee for consideration and only after being reported by committee were they debated by the full House. This expedited the law-making process because the Committee of the Whole allowed any member to debate on any bill and delay the majority; a liberty that the minority would slowly lose through the Clay Speakership. But how much did the committee structure grow during the Antebellum period? At the time of the Founding the House of Representatives had only one standing committee and relied on ad-hoc committees. By 1810 the House had 10 standing Committees. In 1816 the Senate established 12 permanent committees. By the Civil War the House had 39 standing committees and the Senate had 22.

The new developments in Congress ensured that independents like John Randolph would play an increasingly smaller role in policy-making and that coalitions would play an increasingly greater role. Henry Clay believed in a system animated by coalitions because he believed that such a system provided the opportunity for compromise and energy within the legislature. According to Clay, a coalition-led process of deliberation and choice, as opposed to a member-centered process, meant that creating consensus and collapsing distinctions about factious issues would be more common, and policies of pressing concern would be passed expeditiously. However, in organizing the Congress Henry Clay empowered it to act more efficiently. Did this new energetic Congress exceed the limitations Publius intended for the Federal Government?

In the early 1830s John Calhoun argued that the policies enacted by the energetic Congress harmed the interests of the minority; further, he argued that the people of a state should be able to nullify a federal law if its people deemed it oppressive. He argued that the energetic Congress, passing tariffs that harmed southerners and using federal funds for roads that empowered manufacturers at the expense of farmers, had wielded unchecked power to favor Northern interests. He wrote, “The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.” He argued that the state of South Carolina should be able to nullify and ignore the Federal Tariff laws on imports. However, South Carolina never nullified the federal tariff; Andrew Jackson threatened to use the army to collect tariffs and congress passed a Force Bill allowing him to do so, and Henry Clay passed a Compromise Tariff which would reduce the tariff over time to appease the state of South Carolina.

The Southerners deemed tariff laws oppressive, but nothing stoked the flames of disunion more than Congressional action upon slavery in the territories. Although South Carolina never effectively nullified the federal tariff, over the next thirty years the Southern states developed a constitutional theory of secession to combat the power of Congress which they deemed oppressive of their property rights and economic interests. In 1850, Jefferson Davis declared in the Senate, “every breeze will bring to the marauding destroyers of southern rights the warning ‘Woe, woe to the riders who trample them down!’” He argued that Congress had used its power to the detriment of Southern interests, and that they deserved extra protection for slavery or they may secede from the union. Of slavery, he argued, “This is the most delicate species of property that is held: it is the property that is ambulative; property which must be held under special laws and police regulations to render it useful and profitable to the owner.” When Abraham Lincoln was elected, Jefferson Davis argued that Lincoln’s hostility toward the expansion of slavery allowed the Southern states to secede from the union. He argued “Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it.”

As Dr. Eric Sands articulated for this study, in his essay on the Civil War and consequences of secession, Lincoln argued that secession was unconstitutional and threatened the principle of self-government. He argued that there could be no form of republican government if the losers of an election were free to secede in order to avoid the consequences of unpopular political beliefs. He said that the union was Perpetual; he argued that the Constitution intended that the union endure forever, and that the doctrine of secession was contrary to the most fundamental premise of the Constitution.

However, Davis and others argued that over the course of the Antebellum Period, the federal government had expanded its Constitutional power and used those powers oppressively toward the interests of the slave states. Lincoln argued that Davis was wrong; States were not sovereigns under the Constitution, and the common interests of union superseded their individual interest in the expansion of slavery and the protection of slaves as property.

Despite the philosophic differences, it is clear that as Congress lost the ability to collapse differences through virtue and statesmanship, and promote union through compromise, the union was destined to dissolve. The framers admitted that this was the case; that representative self-government relied upon a functional representative branch of government that protected and advanced the interests of citizens. Is our Congress capable of compromise, statesmanship, and advancing our common interests today? Perhaps the tools that quelled disunion throughout the Antebellum period could help solve our congressional crisis today.

Samuel Postell serves as Executive Director of The Center for Liberty and Learning at the Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas. Mr. Postell graduated from Ashland University with undergraduate degrees in Politics and English. He earned his master’s degree in Political Thought from the University of Dallas and is working on his dissertation to complete his Ph.D. Mr. Postell is writing a book on Henry Clay and legislative statesmanship, a subject about which he frequently writes and publishes. He has also conducted studies for Ballotpedia and has frequently contributed to Law and Liberty and Constituting America. At Founders Classical Academy he teaches courses on Government and Economics, and has taught courses on American Literature and Rhetoric.

[1] Desideratum is Latin, meaning “thing desired.”

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Samuel Postell


In his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln argued that “the Union is much older than the Constitution.” What did Lincoln mean when he spoke of the Union? The Declaration of Independence explains that the Americans were “one people” because they were providentially, philosophically, and hence politically united. In addition to referring to the Americans as one people, it also references the American people using the collective “We.” Furthermore, the document calls itself a “unanimous” declaration of the “united” States of America. The authors saw the separate colonies as previously united, and unanimity implied that they were “of one mind.” In short, the Declaration expressed that the Americans were one people capable of governing themselves. Because the Americans were united as one people and were arbitrarily ruled by another, the Declaration asserts that they have a duty to assert their independence by appealing to their Creator and natural laws of justice. Therefore, the principle of union, the rallying cry of Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and George Washington, is one of the bedrock principles of the American founding.

Whereas the Declaration expresses the existence of unity at the time of the founding, many of the Federalist Papers contemplate the importance of a strong or firm union. For example, Federalist 9 asserts in its first line that “A FIRM Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection.” Additionally, Federalist 10 asserts that “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.” In other words, at the time of ratification, one of the most salutary effects of the United States Constitution was that it bolstered the existing unity between the American people and thereby combated faction and disunion. As discussed in previous essays, in Federalist 9 and 10, Publius argued that the particular kind of union created by the Constitution was the key to subverting the violence of faction, the primary vice of the political system under the Articles of Confederation.

But union was not only an important principle at the time of the signing of the Declaration and the ratification of the Constitution. The Declaration sets forth “self-evident truths” that are meant to guide the American people through time. The principles explicitly enumerated are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” However, in Washington’s Farewell Address he emphasized the principle of “union” as that which secured the principles of the Declaration. In the Farewell Address, Washington counseled the American people: “The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize.” He told the people that “it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.” In other words, Washington argued that union was the principle that secured the self-evident truths for which the Americans had fought in the Revolutionary War. According to Washington, the principle of union was necessary to secure the rights to life and liberty as well as the freedom to pursue happiness. Washington believed that if union failed, then the American experiment failed, and if the American experiment failed, then the prospect of liberty and self-government everywhere was in danger. Therefore, he urged the people to cherish the principle of union.

But why cherish union? Washington believed that patriotism and a dedication to union were necessary to preserve the blessings of the Revolution. For example, when he wrote to a society of Quakers who refused to defend the country in war, he told them that religious liberty was contingent upon the maintenance of the union. He wrote, “We have Reason to rejoice in the prospect that the present National Government, which by the favor of Divine Providence, was formed by the common Counsels, and peaceably established with the common consent of the People, will prove a blessing to every denomination of them. To render it such, my best endeavours shall not be wanting.” In the Farewell Address, Washington argued that the people ought to remain dedicated to the principle of union because “Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections.” In other words, Washington argued that America was the common country of North, South, East coast, and unsettled West. Patriotism was a necessary virtue for men of all sections and all religious sects. Washington worried the rights for which men fought and died in the Revolution may be short lived without the virtue of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the principle of union.

Furthermore, Publius argued that the Americans were destined to become united. In Federalist 2, Publius argued that “Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of Government.” But what kind of government was necessary? Publius argued that “It is well worthy of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interests of the people of America, that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, than that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to each the head of each, the same kind of powers which they are advised to place in one national Government.” Publius believed that if the Constitution and the principle of union was rejected, then they would become like the “petty republics of Greece and Italy… kept in a state of perpetual vibration, between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.” Publius foresaw that unless the Constitution be ratified and the principle of union secured, the country would become a loose confederacy like the European Union instead of a firm band of friends. Instead of creating a system of petty republics on the basis of confederacy, Publius argued that the Constitution would create a great republic on the basis of union. The Federalists argued that the constitutional union was fitting because the Americans had a common destiny, a common philosophy, and a common goal.

But why should the sections, which had different and contradictory economic interests, agree to subject themselves to a common government which would wield power? Isn’t it true that one section would, upon election, sometimes be given the opportunity to abuse their fellow country-men in different quarters, comprising different interests? Publius dealt with this problem in two ways. First, he argued that the American people were more similar than different. Second, the principle of federalism allowed the states to embrace their particular interests through state law, while allowing the federal government to legislate according to the “great and aggregate interests” of the country.

Publius argued that among the sections, the people were homogenous in their principles and character, even if they embraced different economic interests across the sections. He argued that Providence had prepared the American people for union. He wrote, “It has often given me pleasure to observe that Independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, wide, spreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a wide variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants.” Publius also remarked that “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence.” In short, Publius argued that “This country and this people seem to have been made for each other.” In Federalist 2, Publius admitted that among the sections there were “slight shades of difference.” However, he argued that the common character and principles of the Americans trumped the consequential differences of economic interest across the sections. Furthermore, Publius and the Federalists believed that the American people would triumph over their differences through their common councils, given enough time.

However, Publius argued that the principle of federalism allowed for harmony in cases where the diversity of state interests clashed; by limiting the federal government to specific and enumerated purposes, the Constitution embraces the “slight shades of difference” among the states. For example, in Federalist 10, Publius makes a distinction between “local circumstances” and “national objects.” He argued that the representative must balance his attention to the local concerns of constituents and the “permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” He remarked that “the federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and the particular, to the state legislatures.” In other words, Publius believed that a limited government, embracing the principle of federalism, could unite American citizens in common matters while allowing the citizens of states to legislate according to their particular circumstances, habits, and interests.

But what was the alternative to union? One unpopular alternative among the Anti-federalists was the creation of a confederacy consisting of equal powers for each section of the union. In Federalist 5, Publius argued that the creation of a sectional confederacy was both impracticable and unwise. He predicted that the different sections would become jealous of the most powerful, and would scheme against their neighbors. Rather than cooperation, there would be competition between the sections. Rather than trust, there would be skepticism. Publius writes, “Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good will and kind conduct more speedily changed, than by invidious jealousies and uncandid imputations.”

So, what was Publius’ solution to the different passions and interests that tended toward disunion? Publius’ most famous solution is the creation of the extended republic wherein the factions are multiplied, dispersed, and allowed to drown one another out. But also important is the way in which power is divided. The division of power is best explained in Federalist 51, where Publius explains that in the Constitutional system “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Publius first sought to quell factious differences by diminishing them through the extended sphere, but then sought to vent factious passions through the system of representation. The Constitution controls the violence of faction in a number of ways (the most important of which is the creation of an enlarged sphere, or a large republic), but here are four general ways the Constitutional system intended to deal with the difficulty of sectional faction by allowing “ambition to counteract ambition”:

  • First, the Constitution divides power between the state and federal government which allows local interests to pursue their ends without interfering with the self-government of other localities. The federal government and local government, each jealous of their powers, will compete for sovereignty through the courts and public forums.
  • Second, when federal legislative power is exercised, it is divided. This means majority factions cannot easily exact their designs because a bill must pass both houses.
  • Third, the Senate’s mode of election and representation are meant to balance the power of more populous states in the House.
  • Fourth, Publius imagined that representatives would “enlarge and refine public opinion” meaning that the representative would be less susceptible to the passions of local or sectional factions.

The Constitutional system successfully combated sectional faction under the pressures of the slavery question and Congress proved capable of balancing factious interests until states from the south rejected the Constitutional system and seceded from the union. In the next essay, I will consider how the Constitution and the Congress successfully combated the tendency toward disunion throughout the Antebellum period.

Samuel Postell serves as Executive Director of The Center for Liberty and Learning at the Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas. Mr. Postell graduated from Ashland University with undergraduate degrees in Politics and English. He earned his master’s degree in Political Thought from the University of Dallas and is working on his dissertation to complete his Ph.D. Mr. Postell is writing a book on Henry Clay and legislative statesmanship, a subject about which he frequently writes and publishes. He has also conducted studies for Ballotpedia and has frequently contributed to Law and Liberty and Constituting America. At Founders Classical Academy he teaches courses on Government and Economics, and has taught courses on American Literature and Rhetoric.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Eric Sands


The Civil War was the greatest trauma to affect the United States in its history. The horrors of that conflict and the issues it brought to light continue to haunt the nation today and scholars continue trying to make sense of the turmoil that gripped the nation. One of the residual problems left over from that era is the doctrine of secession, or the ability of a state to rescind its membership in the Union and leave by itself or with other states. This, of course, is what eleven states tried to do in 1861 precipitating the bloody, awful war that followed. But is there a “right” of secession in the United States Constitution? How would a right of secession square with prevailing ideas of the Union? What response can be given to states claiming a right to secede from the Union? These and other questions required serious consideration in the 1860s and were answered most clearly by Abraham Lincoln.

The argument for secession begins with a claim that the states are the constitutive elements of the American political system. The states “made” the Union and thus never relinquished their essential sovereignty when the Constitution was formed. Under this view, the states were the parties to the original social contract that gave rise to the Union and thus are the entities that most legitimately judge whether the terms of that contract have been honored. When Southerners began to perceive that the terms of the contract were being violated over the slavery issue in the 1850s, a movement grew for the Southern states to withdraw their consent to be governed and to “peacefully” leave the Union to form their own political organization. In total, eleven states joined this movement and created the essential breach that inaugurated the Civil War.

President Lincoln was thrust into the role of defender of the Union and had to meet the secessionist argument head on. In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln criticizes the secessionists for putting too much emphasis on the Constitution in articulating their understanding of the Union. According to Lincoln, the Union did not originate with the Constitution. Instead, “the Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured and the faith of all the then thirteen states expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778.” Finally, the quest for “a more perfect” Union was embodied in the Constitution in 1787.

The Union, therefore, according to Lincoln, was perpetual. “Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever.” The essence of secession is thus suicide, and it is inconceivable that the Founders would have incorporated such a concept into the constitutional system. No association of states could hold together if some of them were free to leave whenever the mood struck them. Moreover, secession would not leave the Union “more perfect;” it would leave the Union less perfect, which is not consistent with the intentions of the Constitution set out in the preamble. Accordingly, it cannot be said that the Founders endorsed something like secession in the constitutional system.

Even more, secession ignores the Declaration of Independence and the first words of the Constitution. The Declaration, when speaking of the need to separate from Great Britain, does not talk about colonies or states doing the separating. The language of the Declaration is that “one people” must separate. Clearly, then, the act of separating is not a function of state sovereignty but an act of popular sovereignty, a Union of people that has been forged in shared struggle and oppression and now seeks to liberate itself from tyranny. Likewise, the first words of the Constitution are not “we the states” but “we the people.” It is the people forming a new government out of their sovereignty, not the sovereignty of the states. The states, of course, are to be partners in this new government and significant roles are delineated to them in the constitutional system. But power is ultimately held by the people, the Union is made up of the people. The people may thus dissolve the Union if they ever chose to do so, but the states may not.

Lincoln reinforces these points in his Message to Congress in Special Session. He calls secession “sugar-coated rebellion” and denies any revolutionary character to it. Instead, it is a “sophism” deriving its “currency from the assumption that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State – to each State of our Federal Union. Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.” The original thirteen became a Union before completing their separation from Great Britain. And the others came into the union from a condition of dependence. Thus, the reverence given to “states” is based on mist and shadows and does not match this history of the American regime. In short, the states only possess those powers granted to them by the Constitution, and this does not include the power of secession.

Eric C. Sands is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Berry College.  He has written a book on Abraham Lincoln and edited a second volume on political parties.  His teaching and research interests focus on constitutional law, American political thought, the founding, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and political parties. 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


“[T]he theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”  –The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2

In addressing the inequities of 19th century European society, two German philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, building on the writings of ancient Greek philosophers in creating classless and egalitarian societies and the philosophies undergirding experimental communal living in the 19th century (inspired by philosophers like Charles Fourier), first articulated the political and economic system we now know as “communism” in their “Communist Manifesto.”

At the time of publication of the Communist Manifesto’s first edition (1847), there had been scant movement around the world toward liberal democracy (political systems that value liberty and the protection of individual rights for all citizens)—there had been our own revolution in the United States, liberalization in the United Kingdom, and a series of revolutions in France that had seen the nation swing from monarchy to republic to empire to monarchy, back and forth for decades.

As such, tremendous inequality remained among the populations of most European nations—and, perhaps not ironically, it was the year after the Communist Manifesto was first published, in 1848, that there was a series of revolutions in nations across Europe. In no uncertain terms, they cannot be characterized as communist revolutions, but much more in the vein of classical liberalism, rejecting monarchies and hierarchical societies for those that more highly valued individual rights.

Nonetheless, to the uninitiated, the ideas enshrined in the Communist Manifesto can be tremendously alluring—the idea of a society without classes, where all goods and property are owned in common, where the balance between work and life can be described as “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” a statement written by Marx in his 1875 work, “Critique of the Gotha Programme.”

The concept of abolishing private property is a pernicious enough sentiment. But coupled with the idea of the community picking and choosing what some individual’s abilities are as well as determining what that individual’s needs are, and you have a political and economic philosophy that, when put into action in a society, inevitably leads to both oppression and poverty.

Bound up in Marx’s 1875 statement is the essence of force and coercion.  Regardless of whether it is the “state” acting (and in Marxist philosophy, the state-centered transition phase between capitalism and communism is “socialism”), or the communistic society, you’re talking about force—the state determines what your “abilities” are, and you are forced to give of those abilities to society at large, regardless of your own feelings in the matter.

At the same time, the idea that the society then determines what your needs are, and that you’re unallowed to own property of your own, means that they can use the heavy hand of coercion to achieve their goals.

Moreover, the abolition of private property hamstrings the ability of a society to achieve economic prosperity and promotes political instability. Richard Pipes in his seminal work, “Property and Freedom,” looked at societies across history and, looking at how those societies protected private property, demonstrated the interrelationship between the protection of private property and the successful longevity of a nation. Peruvian economist and political scientist Hernando DeSoto, in “The Mystery of Capital” engages in something similar, but instead of looking through history, he looks at more recent examples around the world.

If you own your own private property, you can both use it to invest in some entrepreneurial idea, and you can utilize the property itself to support yourself and your family. Because you have a reliance on legal systems to protect that property, you can have hope in your future, and that hope creates that political stability.

The contrast is straightforward: if you don’t protect private property, if your society is centered on coercion and giving up your individual rights to the collective, this leads to oppression and economic stagnation. It is why just about every society founded on the principles outlined in the Communist Manifesto has failed, and others only remain because of brutal oppression or because they’ve adopted certain measures of state-sponsored capitalism.

Our own United States Constitution creates a classless society, starting with the idea that there is total equality among citizens. All of the rights (enumerated and unenumerated) apply to everyone, regardless of income level, race, etc. More importantly, it is predicated on the idea that those rights pre-exist the government, and aren’t bestowed by that government, that the Constitution itself is a restraint on government power and not the other way around.

Bound up in this is the 5th Amendment to the Constitution: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law… nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

This is a stark and fundamental departure from Marx and Engels—as opposed to abolishing private property, our Constitution makes it clear that government can only take private property from individuals provided that three things happen:

(1) The property is being taken for a legitimate public use.

(2) That due process is accorded to the property owner.

(3) That if 1 and 2 are adhered to, that “just” compensation is given to the property owner.

Setting aside instances in which these three tenets are abused by government, from a constitutional perspective, this is a clear departure from communist philosophy.

And it undergirds other rights as well. Keep in mind, the several constitutions of the Soviet Union, for instance, protected things like free speech. But since the constitutions of the USSR didn’t protect private property, that right was held cheaply since the state could just confiscate the presses of a critical press and threaten the journalists themselves if they didn’t adhere to the “party line.”

The same can be said of other individual rights: freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right to keep and bear arms. Besides outlawing most private gun ownership outright, the state could use their coercive powers to keep these other individual rights “in check.”

By guaranteeing rights, and recognizing that power flows from the people to their government and not the other way around, and that regardless of who you were all adults had the same rights, our Founders created the classless society Marx dreamed of. It was the flawed vision of Marx and Engels that failed, because they didn’t understand how their approach could be fundamentally abused and used to oppress, that spawned a nightmare.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Jay McConville


When I was a boy, I loved baseball. Unfortunately, having been born in Queens, New York, my chosen team was the NY Mets who, at that time, were the laughingstock of the major leagues. I still have faint memories of my father agonizing over their 89 losses in 1968, which, as bad as it was, was their best year since joining the league in 1962. At no time during those years had they finished better than ninth.

Then something amazing happened. In one of the greatest sports upsets in history, the 1969 “Amazing Mets” rose from the depths of the standings to become World Series Champions. I still remember that final game and cheering for all my favorite players. Yet, while they played amazing baseball, credit for the miracle season is most often given to Gil Hodges, the team’s manager. Joining only in 1968, he had quickly established a common vision for the team. His leadership enabled them to overcome their past, silence their critics, and play like champions. As announcer Curt Gowdy said during the last inning of the ’69 series, one word described the Mets: “inspired.”[1] It was Gil Hodges who inspired them, and his common vision put them on the road to success.

“From day one, spring training, Gil Hodges had a plan…He made each and every one of us better,” said outfielder Cleon Jones. Pitching Ace Jerry Koosman added, “Gil Hodges had one set of rules. There weren’t two sets of rules, and we each had to abide by those rules. That was a way of drawing teammates together.”[2] It worked, and the laughingstock team became World Champions.

You might wonder what this story has to do with the United States Constitution. Well, maybe not much. There is one thing, however, that I think it shows. An inspirational vision and a clear mission are critical to the success or failure of any organization. Successful leaders unlock the potential of others by articulating such a vision, one that can be shared by all and that is fair and equal across the board. History also tells us that the wrong vision, the wrong mission, can lead to disaster.

The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution established our nation’s vision and mission. The brilliant leaders who crafted those documents united a diverse people, established the most successful nation in history, and changed the face of government forever.

The vision so beautifully articulated in our founding documents was that all men were sovereign over themselves and equal before the law, and that because of this innate human value, governments were instituted among them only by their consent. It was a vision that had been long in the making. Thomas Jefferson, tasked by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration in June 1776, had studied the writings of the Greeks, the Magna Carta (1215), English Common Law, Coke’s Institutes of the Laws of England (1600-1615), John Locke, and Montesquieu (1689-1755), among others. Like James Madison, John Adams, and the other Founders, he knew the importance of individual sovereignty in guarding against the depredations of the state. The vision in the Declaration was a bold assertion of those rights. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights…”[3] His phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which was lifted from John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690) (“life, liberty, and estate”)[4], established that forever more the individual would be sovereign, protected from the tyranny of government by the fact of his humanity.

While Jefferson did not attend the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that vision was certainly reflected in the Constitution’s checks and balances, controls on federal power eventually acceptable to both Federalists and Anti-federalists alike. The critical nature of these was most famously, and most articulately, laid out in Federalist 51, and James Madison’s famous words: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”[5] Madison, a Federalist, advocated for a strong central government, yet recognized the risk in power being concentrated in the hands of fallible men.

Later, the Bill of Rights was added, providing ten amendments to further clarify the vision of a free and sovereign citizenry. The Anti-federalists insisted that those amendments be included, to document for all time the limited scope of government. This unifying vision survives to this day, enshrined in the due process protections in the 14th Amendment, and reflected in many Supreme Court decisions limiting the government’s reach.

That vision was both positive and unifying, and it brought our young nation together. The then national motto, adopted in 1782, reflected the belief that the individual was the core of the nation. E Pluribus Unum (from many, one) ushered in a dramatic change in the nature of governance. There was no king, no emperor, and no aristocratic class to rule. “We the people” were sovereign and independent, yet also tied together in a common pursuit.

And what was that pursuit? Equal in importance to the vision was a unifying mission: to achieve “a more perfect Union.” This would be accomplished by establishing “Justice,” insuring “domestic Tranquility” providing for the “common defense,” promoting the “general Welfare,” and securing “the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”[6] Articulated in the Constitution’s preamble, that is a mission worth serving, and one that hundreds of millions have pledged their lives to.

It is informative to contrast America’s vision and mission to that articulated in another extremely impactful document, the “Communist Manifesto.”[7] First published in London in 1848, it was translated into multiple languages, and, importantly, released in Russian in 1863. Like the United States’ founding documents, the manifesto ushered in a revolution in governance, which took hold first in the Soviet Union in 1917, and then spread throughout the world. While written mostly by Karl Marx, “its economic analysis was strongly influenced by [Friedrich] Engels’s ‘practical experience of capitalism’ in his family’s cotton firm…in 1842-44.”[8] It is therefore important to note that the world was experiencing extreme upheaval during the 1840s. Major social, political, and economic strife fed the development of the text, which explains some of its dark character. The serf societies were ending, farmers were moving to cities in response to the budding industrial revolution, the European aristocracy was losing its power to a rising class of business entrepreneurs, while everywhere workers struggled to find a place in new, rapidly changing, and often soul-deadening, industries. As historian of the manifesto, George Boyer, writes, “despite its enormous influence in the 20th century, the Manifesto is very much a period piece…It is hard to imagine it being written in any other decade of the 19th century.” Regardless, its impact was global and long-lasting. The 1917 Soviet Revolution adopted Marxism as its guiding vision, which eventually led to a rapid expansion of communism in the 20th century.

Yet what was that vision? Was it to inspire great things, like that of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution? No, it was not. The Communist Manifesto[9] inspired, in a word, tyranny. A review of some of its text demonstrates why.

First, there was no message of equality of all men. The document focuses on class conflict, and the struggle of one class to destroy the other. “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.” The mission would only be achieved when “they” (the bourgeoisie) were destroyed.

Second, there was no commitment to individual sovereignty (life, liberty, and especially property) seen in the U.S. documents. “The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at” and “…you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Gone was the concept of unalienable rights.

Third, the vision did not inspire unity, but instead served as a justification to use raw power to achieve dominance, power that would be wielded by the state. “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest by degrees all capital from the bourgeoise, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class…”

And finally, the power of the state was to be absolute, and the revolution violent. “Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property…”

In contrast to E Pluribus Unum, consent of the governed, equality before the law, protection of individual life, liberty, happiness, and property, and limits on the tyrannical impulses of government, the Communist Manifesto provided vision and mission focused on class conflict, rule by force, destruction of the opposition, the end of property rights and individual rights, all to be instituted by the unlimited “despotic” power of government.

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has done extensive research documenting the damage done by tyrannical communist governments. They cite 100 million deaths at the hands of these regimes over only a 100-year span. Inspired and enabled by the Communist Manifesto, these regimes destroyed societies in a quest of a property-free utopia that was unachievable. In so doing they imprisoned, tortured, banished, and killed over a hundred million of their own citizens, while foisting war and chaos on the world. Thirty years after the fall the Soviet Union, “millions of people worldwide — one-fifth of the world’s population — still live under communist tyranny.”[10]

It has become somewhat fashionable to say that communism, or “socialism,” is a good idea (or theory) that could work if we just implemented it correctly. The Communist Manifesto gives lie to that claim. The vision is destruction, the mission tyranny. The result predictable. How many more need to die before we finally accept this fact?

It is also fashionable to criticize the United States for our failure to live up to our vision and mission. We are beset, and have been since our founding, with a multitude of problems and challenges. Slavery, social upheaval, war and civil war, domestic strife and crime, poverty, natural and manmade environmental disasters, depressions, recessions, and so much more. Have we failed in our mission? I think it is important to remember the 1969 Mets. In that miracle year, they gave up 1,217 hits, including 119 Home Runs, let in 541 runs, batted only .242, struck out 1089 times, and lost 62 Games. Yet they were World Champions.

Our shared mission is to “promote a more perfect union.” The word “more” is important. Our mission is not a utopian dream of perfection, instead it inspires us toward progress. Progress, not perfection. The road may be twisted and rocky, but we are well along it to establish justice, peace at home and abroad, improve the general welfare and pass the blessings of our liberty onto our future generations. Each generation’s task is to make our nation “more perfect.” For all our faults, our unifying vision and mission have set us apart among nations and made us the example for others to emulate.

What we need now is to trust in that vision, not abandon it for one proven toxic and deadly.

We need to rededicate ourselves to creating a more perfect union, not descend into the politics of resentment and strife found in the Communist Manifesto.

As future President, Calvin Coolidge, said in his “Have Faith in Massachusetts” speech in 1914, “We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people – a faith that men desire to do right, …a reconstructed faith that the final approval of the people is not given to demagogues…but to statesmen ministering to their welfare, representing their deep, silent, abiding convictions.”[11]

E Pluribus Unum, Consent of the Governed, All Men Created Equal, and a More Perfect Union.

Jay McConville is a military veteran, management professional, and active civic volunteer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he held multiple key technology and management positions within the Aerospace and Defense industry, including twice as President and CEO. He served in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer, and has also been active in civic and industry volunteer associations, including running for elected office, serving as a political party chairman, and serving multiple terms as President of both his industry association’s Washington DC Chapter and his local youth sports association. Today he serves on the Operating Board of Directors of Constituting America. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government from George Mason University, and a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College. Jay lives in Richmond with his wife Susan Ulsamer McConville. They have three children and two grandchildren.

[1] Team of Destiny – The Final 3 Outs of the 1969 World Series, New York Mets, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyDiuRDf918

[2] The Greatest Season: The 1969 Miracle Mets Trailer, MyMar Entertainment and Media, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSh9XcgVrt0

[3] Declaration of Independence: A Transcription, National Archives, retrieved from https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

[4] Bernstein, William (2004). The birth of plenty: How the prosperity of the modern world was created, McGraw Hill

[5] The Federalist No. 51, [6 February 1788], Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0199. [Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 4, January 1787 – May 1788, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962, pp. 497–502.]

[6] Constitution of the United States, Constitution Annotated, United States Congress, retrieved from https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/

[7] Hutchins, Robert Maynard ed. (1989). Great books of the western world: Marx. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.

[8] Boyer, George (1998). The historical background of the Communist Manifesto. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 12, No. 4, Fall 1998, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.12.4.151

[9] All quotations from Hutchins (1989), pp. 413-434

[10] Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, https://victimsofcommunism.org

[11] Coolidge, Calvin (1914). Have faith in Massachusetts. Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation,  https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/have-faith-in-massachusetts/

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams


Even decades after the fall of the Soviet Union and collapse of other communist states, the old canard that communism is a great idea that has never really been tried refuses to be thrown into the dustbin of history along with its failed regimes. Sympathizers with Marxist views cling to this belief despite all contrary evidence over the past century.

To give the view its due, however, the belief rests upon the presupposition that communism has only been introduced into largely agrarian societies rather than the advanced industrial societies rife with the class conflict and consciousness envisioned by German philosopher and communist Karl Marx. Therefore, orthodox Marxism has never truly been introduced by a violent revolution of the oppressed proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, this is because Marx’s progressive view of history and scientific socialism was simply wrong on several points and his theory had numerous flaws, particularly in its understanding of human nature.

The communists who followed Marxism believed that human nature is good and perfectible, and that human beings were capable of building utopias once oppressive institutions were destroyed and the internal contradictions of capitalism resulted in revolution. The Greek etymology of the word utopia means “no place.”

The American Founders were influenced by ancient and Christian thought that understood human nature to be imperfect (due to vice or sin) but capable of virtue. They consequently established a republican United States Constitution that controlled the government as well as the governed while protecting liberty. Separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, bicameralism, and regular elections are proof that the Founders sought to limit the vagaries of human nature.

The other mistake of communism is the belief that humans are only shaped by an economic determinism and class conflict. This is an absurd reductionism. Human beings are much more complex creatures and are driven by politics, culture, religion, community, ties of kith and kin, and providing for their families rather than just economic inequality and alienation.

In Federalist #10, James Madison acknowledged that factions formed as a result of differences over property. The divisions over property were based upon “the diversity in the faculties of men” and their passions. He understood therefore that they would always exist. Madison noted that a zeal for political opinions, religious views, and a host of other things in society also divided people.

Madison stated, “There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.”

The answer was that neither of these was desirable. So, Madison offered the alternative of controlling or mitigating the effects of factions by expanding the sphere of the republic and allowing differing views to flourish. Communists instead chose to destroy liberty and sought to force the people to have the same opinions through cult of personalities, cultural revolutions, reeducation and indoctrination, and rewritten history.

Communism has always been imposed by a small revolutionary intellectual vanguard upon a mostly unwilling peasantry. The Russian Revolution, for example, occurred when only perhaps two percent of the population was employed in industry, and Russian Marxist Vladimir Lenin himself was frustrated that the peasantry did not demonstrate any class consciousness. They were often strongly attached to the Tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church. Widespread opposition to the Bolshevik regime in the wake of the Russian Revolution resulted in a bloody civil war that left millions dead and the opposition summarily crushed.

Moreover, communism has never been led by the proletariat after the state “withered away” in Marx’s terminology. Instead, the communists formed one-party dictatorships and police states with unlimited power that were much more oppressive than the regimes they overthrew. Indeed, they unleashed unimaginably horrific genocides. Perceived enemies of the state and their families were executed and thrown into the gulag. Communist states starved people to death by the millions.

Contrarily, one of the main principles of the American Revolution was the transformative concept of popular sovereignty where the people rule. Elites certainly comprised the leadership of the American Revolution in the halls of legislatures and conventions and one cannot ignore slavery, but Founders created a republic in which the people elected representatives and could serve in different levels of government themselves. The Declaration of Independence was anchored in the principle of popular rule and right to overthrow a tyrannical government that violated their rights.

Marxism also got several things spectacularly wrong about humans as economic actors. Most fundamentally, people want to enjoy a higher standard of living and consumer goods rather than wanting to overthrow the free enterprise system. The massive food lines experienced by the people living under communism while party apparatchiks ate caviar in their summer dachas bred a lot more resentment than capitalist inequality.

In advanced capitalist societies, workers have generally enjoyed the protections of the social safety net—such as pensions, 401(K)s, Social Security, unemployment, health benefits—provided by employers and tax-supported welfare states. While these government programs expanded the purposes and scope of government beyond that envisioned by the Founders, they are much less intrusive than communist states. Moreover, industrial regulations have provided workers with numerous safety and health protections. Workers have also organized into labor unions to bargain or strike for better wages, hours, and working conditions or control over the shop floor. All these developments have negated scientific socialism.

Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto during some of the worst ravages of early industrialization including oppressed workers, unsafe and unhealthy conditions in factories and mines, great danger of mutilation and death, widespread environmental degradation, and great poverty and squalor in industrializing societies. In the twentieth century, those problems characterized communist regimes instead of modern capitalist societies. Meanwhile, capitalism has plainly lifted billions out of poverty through dynamic growth, innovation, and widespread prosperity.

Communism was responsible for an estimated 100 million deaths. It suppressed human flourishing in the arts and sciences by extinguishing liberty, created widespread suffering with decrepit economic systems, imposed crushing police states, and destroyed the institutions of civil society. Most of the American Founders understood that such utopian schemes were doomed by their flawed understanding of human nature, self-governance, and civil society. The American founding vision built a constitutional order with self-governance and a healthy civil society that allowed individuals to thrive.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger


The American Constitution was crafted in a deliberate way to prevent the failures of the government under the Articles of Confederation and to stop the harmful events that the Founders could see abroad and throughout history. Of particular concern was the need to empower the president to execute the law in a faithful manner. At the same time, the United States Constitution would limit executive power in order to prevent the rise of a dictator. Such safeguards have not always been found in the constitutions or governmental structures of other nations, and ambitious political figures, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, have taken advantage of every opportunity to amass more and more power, often at great cost to their own countries and also to the detriment of neighboring states.

The Articles of Confederation provided for virtually no executive authority. The American Constitution took another approach, both authorizing executive power but also constraining its exercise with a combination of institutional checks and balances. With the exception of the power to veto bills passed by Congress, which appears in Article I, the bulk of the presidential powers listed in the Constitution are found in Article II. This article is much more brief than the text of Article I, which applies to legislative powers, and approximately half of the text of Article II deals with qualifications for office and the manner of election, rather than powers and duties of the office. Some observers may infer from the small amount of verbiage in Article II compared to Article I that the legislature holds far greater power than the executive. In fact, James Madison wrote in Federalist #51, “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”[1] Other observers believe that while the actual text of Article II is terse, the specifically listed powers are broad, and additional powers may be implied from those that are explicitly stated. Within Article II, the president of the United States is “vested” with executive power. There has been considerable debate on whether that vesting refers to holding the explicit powers that are later listed, or whether this provides authority to carry out general powers that are deemed to be executive. What “executive” action actually entails is not completely clear. The word “executive” is derived from the Latin words ex sequi, which in English means to follow or to carry out.[2] This suggests that an executive, including a president, is primarily a follower acting on behalf of someone or something else. Nevertheless, many Americans think of the modern president as more of a leader than a follower.

The first powers listed in the first clause of Article II authorize the president to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States. It also indicates that the president “may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices.”   Notably, the Constitution does not say that the president can tell principal officers what to do. The president is also given the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment. The president is not given clemency powers for state offenses.

The second clause of Article II authorizes the president “to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law.” By law, the Congress may “vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

These provisions, commonly known as the advice and consent clause, have been at the center of various controversies during American history. The clause indicates that the president may appoint “officers” of the United States, but it does not define what an officer is. Furthermore, while the clause explicitly provides for presidential appointment, it nowhere authorizes the president to remove the appointees that he has appointed.[3] As a practical matter, the federal courts have concluded that the president has at least some removal power implied by the executive powers vested in Article II,[4] but there have been a number of disputes about this question resolved somewhat inconsistently by the Supreme Court in cases such as Myers v. United States,[5] Humphrey’s Executor v. United States,[6] and Seila Law, LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.[7]

The Constitution also gives the president the power to “make” treaties, subject to the approval of two-thirds of the senate, but it is not specific about the enforcement of treaties or their termination. During the War of Independence, the United States entered into a treaty allying itself with France. A few years later, after the French Revolution had become brutal and bloody, President George Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality, effectively voiding the treaty. This was controversial in its time, since the Constitution did not seem to authorize that sort of unilateral action, and also because there were many prominent figures in government, such as Thomas Jefferson, who were at least initially sympathetic to the French Revolution. In support of Washington’s action, Alexander Hamilton penned seven letters for publication making the case for the neutrality proclamation. Using the pen name, Pacificus, Hamilton sparred with James Madison, with whom he had written many of the Federalist Papers. Madison, writing under the name Helvidius, was recruited to oppose Washington’s position by Jefferson, who was then serving as secretary of state.[8]

Article II also imposes obligations upon presidents, as well as confers powers. Presidents are required to inform Congress “from time to time” of the State of the Union. The chief executive is also obliged to recommend, for the consideration of Congress, such measures which the president deems as “necessary and expedient.” When Congress is not in session, the president is authorized to call a special session of one or both houses of Congress. The president is also empowered to receive all foreign ambassadors. This has been construed to mean that the president has exclusive authority to recognize foreign governments.

Finally, Article II also demands that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” This appears to be a broad, encompassing authority and responsibility to carry out federal law, even those that are not supported by the president. While there is some inherent discretion in all enforcement, the president does not have any general authority to dispense with laws enacted by the legislature, as was the case in some monarchical systems.

The Constitution also constrains the chief executive and all other officers by providing for their impeachment and removal for the offenses of “Treason, Bribery, and other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” This suggests that no executive can flout the law without consequences. It also provides for a means of removing an officer without resorting to a coup or assassination.

Many countries do not so carefully curb the powers of their executives, or they lack the will or the ability to enforce these constraints. In France in 1799, the newly established government, called the Directory, fell to a coup which was encouraged from within. The plural executive body was joined by a bicameral legislature made up of a Council of Five Hundred and a Council of Elders. One director, Abbe Emmanuel Sieyes, plotted a coup that would force out most of the directors and lead to the creation of a consulate, headed by a military leader as first consulate while he exerted actual control. Although not Sieyes’ first choice, the popular and successful General Napoleon Bonaparte was selected to serve as first consul. The general’s brother, Lucien Bonaparte, served as president of the Council of Five hundred, as expected to assist the coup. The coup succeeded in sweeping away the Directory, but Napoleon was not content to serve Sieyes’ interests. Very quickly, Napoleon rather than Sieyes was firmly in control, with no internal dissent permitted.[9]

Napoleon was not curbed by constitutional constraints upon his executive power. He suppressed the critical press and created his own propaganda machine.[10] The emperor was able to use his military to crush internal dissent, stop brigandage, and thwart foreign invasions.[11] Unconstrained by prior legal limitations on his conduct, the emperor designed his own legal system, the Code Napoleon, and imposed it upon his own nation. Ultimately, Napoleon’s own limitless ambition led to his undoing, but not until thousands had died in his pursuit of conquest. Of course, the United States has also had its own constitutional crises, most notably in the Civil War, which also cost much in blood and treasure. But under the Constitution, the United States has been freed of the folly of a dictatorship led by a single tyrant. The Constitution’s limits on the executive have thus far staved off that calamity.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. Dr. Clinger teaches courses in state and local government, Kentucky politics, intergovernmental relations, regulatory policy, and public administration. Dr. Clinger is also a member of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board and a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association. He currently resides in Hazel, Kentucky.

[1] The Federalist Papers, Number 51

[2] Rohr, John A. 1997. “Public Administration, Executive Power, and Constitutional Confusion.” International Journal of Public Administration 20 (4/5): 887

[3] Tillman, Seth Barrett. 2010. “The Puzzle of Hamilton’s Federalist No. 77.” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 33 (1): 149–67.

[4]  Prakash, Saikrishna.  2006.   “New Light on the Decision of 1789,”    Cornell Law Review. 91:1021-1078.

[5] 272 U.S. 52

[6] 295 U.S. 602,

[7] 140 S. Ct. 2183

[8] Young, Christopher J . 2011. “Connecting the President and the People: Washington’s Neutrality, Genet’s Challenge, and Hamilton’s Fight for Public Support.” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (3): 435–66.

[9] Rapport, Michael. 1998. “Napoleon’s Rise to Power. (Cover Story).” History Today 48 (1): 12–19.

[10] Dwyer, Philip G. 2004. “Napoleon Bonaparte as Hero and Saviour: Image, Rhetoric and Behaviour in the Construction of a Legend.” French History 18 (4): 379–403.  See also Forrest, Alan. 2004. “Propaganda and the Legitimation of Power in Napoleonic France.” French History 18 (4): 426–45.

[11] Devlin, Jonathan D.  1990.  “The Directory and the Politics of Military Command: The Army of the Interior in South-East France.”  French History,  4 (2):, 199–223.   See also Brown, Howard G. 1997. “From Organic Society to Security State: The War on Brigandage in France, 1797-1802.” Journal of Modern History 69 (4): 661-695.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger


The United States and France had complicated and seemingly inconsistent relations in the years preceding and shortly following the American Revolution. In the 1750s, the American colonists and the British military fought the French in the French and Indian War. But in the 1770s, the French provided invaluable assistance to the American cause in the fight against the British in the War of Independence. During that war, the newly formed United States entered into a treaty allying itself with France, but after another revolution broke out in France in the 1790s, America’s first president, George Washington, issued a neutrality proclamation, effectively negating the treaty.

While the revolution raged in France, American politicians staked out positions of support or denunciation of the increasingly bloody regimes that replaced the government that had aided their cause in the fight for independence. A few years later, a new government and a new powerful figure, Napoleon Bonaparte, ruled over France. His rule made a considerable mark in the United States, for he was responsible for ceding enormous territory to the new nation in what has become known as the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. A few years later, the wars Bonaparte stirred up in Europe carried over to the western hemisphere in what is known now as the War of 1812, in which Americans once again fought the British, the primary enemy of France in that era.

The foreign affairs of these two nations are not so much the focus of this essay as they are illustrations of the implications of domestic events in each nation. During these years, the new nation of the United States and the relatively old nation of France each experienced dramatic changes in their constitutional development. These developments left the United States with an energetic yet institutionally constrained executive leading the government of a federal republic. In France, an emperor dominated the political scene of a unitary state in which the executive controlled both the legislature and the judiciary. This essay will explore how and why two nations with such intertwined histories took such divergent paths.

In 1984, the political scientist, Donald S. Lutz, published an article reporting his findings from research that examined which European authors were most frequently cited in the writings of America’s founders both before and after the revolution. The author most commonly cited was Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, the author of a book published in English under the name The Spirit of the Laws.[1] In that work, Montesquieu developed a modern theory of what we now call the separation of powers. Montesquieu also made a case for an independent and secure court system, not subject to the will of the executive, the legislature, or any particular private interest. Montesquieu had significant impact in the design of the federal constitution, as well as the constitutions of many American state constitutions. He also had considerable influence in Britain. Ironically, his influence in his native France was not as deep or long-lasting as his impact abroad.

The first American national charter, The Articles of Confederation, did not display any interest in a separation of powers. The government established a unicameral legislative body which could, by committee, appoint one of their number as a president with little power.[2] There were no courts for the central government. State courts would handle legal disputes within their states’ boundaries, and the confederation congress would hear cases involving boundary disputes between states.[3] All of this changed with the ratification of the new constitution. While there was some overlap and sharing of functions between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, to a great extent these institutions were kept separate, establishing a check against the mischief that might temporarily prevail in a single branch. The specific details of those checks will be discussed in the next essay. Suffice it to say now, that the institutional design of the constitution took into account the issues about which Montesquieu had written approximately a half century earlier.

In the Federalist Papers, the design of the United States Constitution was defended before a skeptical audience. James Madison, author of Federalist Paper #38, argued that no matter what flaws could be found in the new constitution, it was surely superior to the Articles of Confederation. In Madison’s words,

It is a matter both of wonder and regret, that those who raise so many objections against the new Constitution should never call to mind the defects of that which is to be exchanged for it. It is not necessary that the former should be perfect; it is sufficient that the latter is more imperfect. No man would refuse to give brass for silver or gold, because the latter had some alloy in it. No man would refuse to quit a shattered and tottering habitation for a firm and commodious building, because the latter had not a porch to it, or because some of the rooms might be a little larger or smaller, or the ceilings a little higher or lower than his fancy would have planned them. But waiving illustrations of this sort, is it not manifest that most of the capital objections urged against the new system lie with tenfold weight against the existing Confederation?[4]

One particularly noteworthy aspect of the new framework was provision for a president heading an executive branch of government. According to Alexander Hamilton, the constitution provided for “energy” in the executive through both the powers assigned to the office and the manner in which the officeholder would be selected. In Hamilton’s words, “The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers.”[5] Under the Constitution, there is one chief executive, consistent with the unity principle. The president would serve fixed, four-year terms, consistent with the duration precept. Whether the support for the executive would be adequate would largely depend upon the appropriations of money by Congress. Hamilton believed that the powers vested in the president in Article II of the Constitution were “competent,” although at various times in history this claim has been challenged.

The political transformation of France took a different course. In 1789, while the American constitution was being drafted, France was a somewhat centralized monarchy, but with considerable autonomy exercised in its provinces. A National Assembly served as a constituent assembly, but it was unable to handle some pressing economic and political problems that were growing in the 1780s. The financial costs of war, including the American Revolution, had made the government almost bankrupt, despite the general trend of economic and population growth that the country enjoyed in prior decades. Crops failed in much of France in 1788, and prices for food and many other items spiraled up dramatically. The comptroller general of finances, Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, proposed a substantial tax increase on the upper classes to cover the budget deficit, but the National Assembly refused to approve this proposal, instead calling for the gathering of the Estates-General, which had not met since 1614. The Estates General was a body representing the clergy, the aristocracy, and the commoners. When the Estates General met in Versailles, the Third Estate, representing the commoners, declared itself the National Constituent Assembly and began to write a new constitution. King Louis XVI reluctantly accepted the new body and urged the nobles and the clergy to join it. Behind the scenes, the king sought out armed forces to oppose it.[6]

The new constitution did provide for some separation of powers in which the assembly was preeminent, but the king could appoint and remove his own ministers. The nobles lost their titles and hereditary privileges, and the franchise was extended to most adult men. The provinces lost much of their power to eighty-three newly created departements, which were roughly equal in size and uniform in their organization. Each departement was further divided into districts, cantons, and communes. Originally, each departement elected its own officials, but eventually these units became tools of the central government.[7]

The Assembly declared that all church property was at the “disposition of the nation.” The government then issued bonds, called assignats, that were secured by the value of the land. Later, all property owned by emigrants to France were also declared to be national lands. These securities were tradable, and functioned for a while as a paper currency.   As the volume of assignats increased, so did inflation. By 1790, the Assembly required all sitting priests and bishops to take an oath of submission to the government. The bishops overwhelming refused to do this, but about half of the parish priests took the oath. Many clerics left the country, and about two-thirds of the country’s military officers resigned their commissions. As dissent became more prevalent, the government attempted to control the press. More radical factions began to subvert the role of the elected assembly, arguing that demonstrations, petitions, and public protests were superior methods of expressing the will of the people.[8]

Though his powers were limited, the king was still formally the head of state until August of 1792. The country was facing armed resistance from without and within, and more radical elements were gaining power.  After militants stormed the royal palace in Paris, the Assembly suspended the king. Immediately afterward, more than half of the Assembly’s deputies fled the city. As Prussian troops advanced toward the capital, French troops marched out to face them. With much of the elected government gone and most of the military absent from the city, mobs took over the city’s prisons, held sham trials, and killed over a thousand inmates, almost half the local prison population. A National Convention was held, which had as its first order of business the determination of the fate of the king. The Convention unanimously ruled that the king was guilty of treason, and by a much closer vote ordered his execution. Later his Austrian-born wife, Marie Antoinette, was also sent to the guillotine. With each bloody act, the revolution generated more resistance, and as more officials fled the government, or were imprisoned for their perceived disloyalty, the more radical the remaining officeholders became. Ultimately, some of the more blood-thirsty of the revolutionaries, such as Maximilien Robespierre, fell out of favor and were executed themselves without trial.[9]

After Robespierre’s death, the National Convention designed a new, somewhat more conservative constitution in 1795. This new government had a bicameral legislature and a plural, five-member executive called the Directory. Each director was supposed to serve one-year terms. The short duration of the Directory and the plural nature of its membership were not in keeping with Hamilton’s views regarding an ideal executive branch. The new government was beset with dramatic inflation and serious military threats, as well as challenges from radical dissidents. The legislature ultimately forced out four of the five directors. The new directors looked to form a new kind of constitution to provide stability in 1799. This new constitution provided for three ruling consuls, but only the first held substantial power. The constitution was approved by plebiscite. As first consul, the directors eventually chose a young, military hero who had managed to lead French armies to victory despite a depleted officer corps and a mass of enlisted soldiers who were recruited through a very unpopular conscription process. This person’s name was Napoleon Bonaparte. He was initially named consul, but soon made clear that he wished to exceed his constitutional limits. By 1804, Napoleon was named emperor by several government agencies and subsequently was approved as emperor in a national plebiscite.[10]   Napoleon was to wield more concentrated power than any extant monarch in the world. His rise to power demonstrates both the failure of France’s constitutional design and its commitment to enforce constitutional provisions.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. Dr. Clinger teaches courses in state and local government, Kentucky politics, intergovernmental relations, regulatory policy, and public administration. Dr. Clinger is also a member of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board and a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association. He currently resides in Hazel, Kentucky.

[1] Lutz, Donald S. “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought.” The American Political Science Review 78, no. 1 (1984): 189–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/1961257.

[2] Articles of Confederation, Article IX

[3] Articles of Confederation, Article IX

[4] The Federalist Papers, Number 38

[5] The Federalist Papers, Number 70

[6] Encyclopedia Britannica, French Revolution.  https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution. Accessed July 10, 2022.

[7] Encyclopedia Britannica, Restructuring France.  https://www.britannica.com/place/France/Restructuring-France.  Accessed July 10, 2022.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Adam Carrington


World history displays many instances of political rule by one person. We can point to ancient instances such as Julius Caesar or modern ones like Joseph Stalin. Napoleon Bonaparte ranks among the most famous of these men. He rose in the ranks of the French army during the 1790s by showcasing his brilliant military mind on the battlefield. He then expanded beyond a generalship to become France’s First Consul starting in 1799, then its Emperor beginning in 1804. Only his eventual defeat at Waterloo finally stopped his ever-increasing power.

Napoleon’s success in particular may tempt some to support the political rule of one. Unencumbered by others, this man first conquered France, then nearly did so to the rest of Europe. He instituted a legal code in his name that formed the basis for the modern French bureaucracy (and influenced many other governmental systems). One might see his example and think that one man can get much done if given the authority. We may not see Napoleon as acting justly. However, if the right man with the right principles got his power, then he could do much good.

We should resist this temptation. Our American system of government rejected rule by one man or even by one institution filled with men for a reason. Revisiting those reasons reminds us of the wisdom of that choice.

First, we must remember the famous quote of Lord Acton, a Nineteenth century British politician and historian. He declared, “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The reason power tends to corrupt is not merely the enticement it holds to do ill. James Madison in Federalist #51 noted that men were not angels. He made sure to include in that appraisal those persons who hold governmental office. Power corrupts because human beings are fallible. They possess in themselves the temptation to abuse authority, to help themselves and their friends while hurting their enemies. The more power they can wield, the harder to resist the allure of using it for nefarious ends. Thus, one might better say that power reveals and nurtures corruption, a point the American Founders understood well and sought to address.

Our system of government does so by taking political power and dividing it in two ways. First, we divide government powers within a government. We call this mechanism separation of powers. We give one institution the power to make laws, another to enforce them, and still a third the authority to interpret and apply laws to legal disputes. The Founders hoped that this system would make for effective government that did good things. They also hoped the system would moderate the excesses of human nature. It would do so less by trying to remake human beings, something the Founders thought impossible and itself a temptation to exercise too much corrupting power. Instead, they hoped that they could channel human ambition, human love for power, in ways that offset one another. The branches would exercise checks and balances on their sister institutions. If one person or group gained too much authority, the others possessed means to keep us from falling into rule by one man or one group of persons.

But the rejection of one-man rule went beyond stopping moral vice from reigning. The Founders understood that brilliant humans come along from time to time. We were blessed during their time with a reservoir of such brilliance beyond a normal generation of human beings. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison only scratch the surface of the number of great men who lived, thought, and acted in America’s fight for independence and her subsequent struggle to establish a lasting republic.

However, despite their best intentions, none of the Founders got everything right. They each had blind spots intellectually, as all humans do. Some even had moral ones to accompany the intellectual. However, we suffer little from those blind spots in our form of government. We do not because we do not have one founder. We have many. While some political communities had a first, sole lawgiver, we had the Continental Congresses and the delegates to the Convention of 1787. The Bible says that “iron sharpens iron.” So these men sharpened one another’s ideas, refining them in constructing our principles and our institutions. By that combined wisdom, they built a more just and a more lasting system of government. They did so in a way a Napoleon, ruling alone, could not.

That all said, we did have one man who towered above the rest during our Founding. That man was George Washington. He commanded our armies to victory in the Revolutionary War. He served as the unanimous choice of the country to be our first president. He could have been a Napoleon. He might have established himself as the only ruler of the country, making our system dependent on his person. He did not. Instead, he focused his mighty efforts always to build a system of government. He fought for principles that would outlive him and his generation. And, when he had finished his part of these tasks, he did what many found unthinkable: he gave up power. He returned to his home a citizen while the republic continued to operate without him.

This greatness we never saw in Napoleon. Upon his death, Napoleon is reputed to have said about France, “they wanted me to be their Washington.” In other words, they wanted him to exercise power, then willingly give it up for the country’s sake. This he did not do. It seems his own ambitions made such a choice impossible for him.

Each year, we celebrate our independence on the 4th of July. Let us express our thanks that we did not and do not live under a Napoleon, that we have and continue to reject rule by one person. And let us further celebrate our one indispensable man, the one who ruled and gave up that rule so his country would last. Let us celebrate our anti-Napoleon, our George Washington.

Adam M. Carrington is an Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. There, he teaches on matters of Constitutional law, American political institutions, and separation of powers. His writing has appeared in such popular forums as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, National Review, and Washington Examiner. His book on the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field was published in 2017 by Lexington. Carrington received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Baylor University. He lives in Hillsdale with his wife and their two daughters.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter
Storming of the Bastille 1789 by Jean-Pierre Houël, French Revolution


While the drafting of the Constitution of the United States and the French Revolution overlapped, some of the wisdom and differences in the two revolutions help to explain a U.S. Constitution that is designed to prevent regime failure.

One element different between the two revolutions was geographic. Our American Revolution took place on our soil, far away and across the pond from our monarchy rulers, while the French Revolution took place within the country.

More fundamentally, the desired objectives were different in the two revolutions, and that in turn contributed to the ways in which the American Constitution contained provisions to address. The French focused on replacing or changing the existing government. The Americans, on the other hand, wanted to break away and form a government removed from Great Britain. With that in mind, starting with the Declaration of Independence, through the Revolutionary War, and culminating in the Constitution in 1787, the founding fathers inserted wisdom into the form of government and the United States Constitution to help prevent failures they observed in French government.

Learning also from the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation, which were ratified in 1781 and remained in effect until the Constitution was ratified in 1789, the designers of the Constitution insisted upon branches and a robust system of checks and balances, something lacking in the French structure. The Federalist Papers #51 makes this of vast importance for consideration of the Constitution (emphasis added):

“TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. Without presuming to undertake a full development of this important idea, I will hazard a few general observations, which may perhaps place it in a clearer light, and enable us to form a more correct judgment of the principles and structure of the government planned by the convention. In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others. Were this principle rigorously adhered to, it would require that all the appointments for the supreme executive, legislative, and judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain of authority, the people, through channels having no communication whatever with one another. Perhaps such a plan of constructing the several departments would be less difficult in practice than it may in contemplation appear. Some difficulties, however, and some additional expense would attend the execution of it. Some deviations, therefore, from the principle must be admitted. In the constitution of the judiciary department in particular, it might be inexpedient to insist rigorously on the principle: first, because peculiar qualifications being essential in the members, the primary consideration ought to be to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications; secondly, because the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them. It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices.”

Conclusion

The United States Constitution’s wisdom is shown in many ways, including with the checks and balances that exist in the Constitution. The careful drafting in 1787 has helped to ensure a continued Constitution that has separations of powers built in and that has ensured that, unlike France and the uncertainty of its revolution and subsequent history, our grand experiment continues 235 years later.

Daniel A. Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: J. Eric Wise


The motto of the French Republic is Liberté, égalité, fraternité, meaning liberty, equality, brotherhood.

What’s not to like?  Pass the baguettes and butter.

It is derived from the motto of the French Revolution, which has a little something extra: Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort.

Now, wait a minute.  That means liberty, equality, brotherhood or death.

The French Revolution distinguished itself in the final category of its motto. No sooner had the First Republic been created than an eruption of accusations of treason, anticlerical sentiment, massacres and public executions took place. Not satisfied to overturn the ruling caste that had governed from Versailles, and the chateaus and churches of France, the revolutionaries set about to kill them.

In France 1793, no less than 16,000 death sentences were handed down, and 10,000 were sent to prison to die there, in most cases without a trial. Ou la Mort became the Terror. Little explanation is needed as to why “ou la mort” is now gone from the national motto.

The United States took a very different path. That is not to say there were not hard feelings. When the fighting ended and the American Revolutionary War came to a close in 1783, some 70,000 loyalists were expatriated to Britain and the remaining North American British colonies in places like coastal Quebec Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.  But they were not killed.

They were not even really persecuted. Always hungry for people, as soon as the loyalists left, the United States made efforts to recruit them back, supposing their industry and connections, harnessed in a spirit of reconciliation, could aid the new nation in finding its feet.

So, we ask ourselves, what was the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution that one should culminate in a river of blood and another in practical reconciliation and a compact, the United States Constitution, which has remained the charter of the new nation for 250 years?

The first place to look is the Declaration of Independence. The principles of the Declaration had percolated in American thought for 100 years or more before their expression in that revolutionary document.  As Calvin Coolidge noted in his famous July 4 speech,

“A very positive echo of what the Dutch had done in 1581, and what the English were preparing to do, appears in the assertion of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Connecticut, as early as 1638, when he said in a sermon before the General Court that—‘The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people.’ ‘The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.’”

The American Revolution was rooted not in deduction from mere abstract principle but by a process of induction from a practice spanning several generations. No understanding of the principles of equality and rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness could be easily twisted into a murderous rage as would happen in France.

We see this in the words of Federalist #1:

“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

The meaning of the abstract principles of the Declaration of Independence was universally understood to impose a requirement of deliberation, not execution of enemies, on the new government. It was so understood because that was the habit of the American people to think of it that way. They would no sooner leave the house without their pants than think to solve a political problem other than by organizing, deliberating and deciding by some method of majority rule.

The new Constitution which was to be adopted constituted a second appeal to necessity. The Articles of Confederation had been, truly, an abject failure. The country was unable to control debtor and creditor contests and its economy was moribund, a victim of both the violence of these disputes and the weakness of its central government.

However, the new nation chose not to turn upon itself and its various perceived internal enemies but to debate over a new Constitution, to be ratified by consent through a new ratification process, that was not contemplated by the Articles of Confederation, and in fact violated its express terms. In Federalist #40, Publius emphasizes the need to alter and abolish the dysfunctional government by a process of consent rather than force.

From this spirit, a new government was brought forth based on the notion of deliberation and consent, structured around mechanisms to harness the baser incentives of men to promote the habits of deliberative government.

When Benjamin Franklin identified the new form as “a republic, if you can keep it” he implied that the continual fostering and renewal of the habits of deliberative government was the spirit of the American Revolution and the essential ingredient for the continued success of the United States.

J. Eric Wise is a partner in the law firm of Alston & Bird.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams


At first glance, the American and French revolutions seem to be closely connected in an “age of democratic revolutions.” The sister revolutions seemed to challenge and undermine monarchy in favor of popular self-rule and liberty. More fundamentally, however, the revolutions’ contrasting views of human nature shaped differing political philosophies, regimes, and cultures.

The American Founders’ thinking about human nature and government was guided by differing strains of thought from ancient philosophy, the English tradition, the British Enlightenment, and Protestant Christianity. As a result, they developed a realistic understanding of vice and virtue, sin and goodness. As James Madison wrote in Federalist #51, “What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

The French revolutionaries followed the thinking of the more radical French Enlightenment and particularly that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau believed that humans were naturally good and perfectible but were corrupted by social institutions including absolute government, the churches, and urban society; human beings would only be free and enjoy their natural equality by tearing down those institutions.

As the Declaration of Independence indicated, the American Founders believed the Lockean idea that humans had natural rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and were capable of governing themselves in a republic. However, their corruptible nature meant that checks and restraints were necessary. As Federalist #51 asserted, “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

Influenced by the thinking of Montesquieu and by their experience under the Articles of Confederation, the Founders built in numerous auxiliary precautions into their United States Constitution to divide and constrain power and protect against human ambitions and passions. They included the principles of separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and bicameralism in constructing their novus ordo seclorum, a “new order for the ages.” But it was a new order built upon the history, experience, and wisdom of the past.

The French revolutionaries created a very different kind of government and consequently had a different outcome. They sought to break with the corrupt government and religious institutions of the past that preserved the privileges and wealth of the royal government, the feudal nobility, and the clergy. The monarchy survived for only a few years after 1789. It was limited by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and then by a republican constitution until Louis XVI was executed in early 1793. The national legislature was a government lacking a system of constitutional separation of powers and other principles. Instead, the one-house legislature served effectively the only branch of government that would surmise the “general will” of an enlightened people.

For statesmen like the British Edmund Burke, who wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France, the outcome was all too predictable early in the French Revolution. The violence erupted almost immediately as revolutionaries tore down the corrupt institutions of the past. The revolution began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, attacking that symbol of political repression. Paris quickly became an armed camp while in the countryside, peasants went on a rampage against nobles and their feudal privileges murdering them, burning down their estates, and destroying their titles in the Great Fear that fall.

After closing the monasteries and plundering their wealth, the government made the clergy agents of the state with the 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy. In 1792, the revolutionaries broke into jails and murdered thousands of priests, nuns, and nobles in an orgy of bloodshed and drownings.

Hundreds of thousands died in a French civil war when government suppressed revolts in the Vendee, and millions died across Europe when the French revolutionaries went to war to spread the fire of revolution to tear down oppression everywhere.

Finally, Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety guillotined some 3,000 “enemies” in Paris and had as many as 50,000 executed throughout France during the Reign of Terror from 1793-1794. It was not an aberration but rather a logical outcome of the violence directed against the old regime from the start of the revolution.

American Founders and citizens were deeply divided about the French Revolution in the early republic. Most Americans initially praised the French Revolution as an outgrowth of the American Revolution. Toasts were made, parades were held, and tri-color hats were doffed.

However, the American reaction to the French Revolution contributed to the growing political and ideological divisions in the early republic that led to the development of political parties in the United States. Federalists and Democratic-Republicans split over the foreign policy issue.

Thomas Jefferson, who was an observer and sometimes participant in early revolutionary events in France as a diplomat, was the most ardent supporter of the French Revolution. Taken by radical French Enlightenment thinking, he enthusiastically praised the execution of Louis XVI as a “criminal” and wrote his shocking “desolation letter” while turning a blind eye to the Terror.

Jefferson shockingly wrote with no small amount of hyperbole: “The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest….[and] rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it is now.”

Other Founders were more sober in their assessment. Alexander Hamilton wished, “Would to heaven that we could discern in the Mirror of French affairs, the same humanity, the same decorum, the same gravity, the same order, the same dignity, the same solemnity, which distinguished the course of the American Revolution.”

On the other hand, John Adams had also been a diplomat in France and other European countries during the 1780s and was less swept up in revolutionary currents in France. Adams’ political writings through the 1780s focused on constitutional balance in the separation of powers. As early as 1790, he predicted that the unicameral French legislature “must involve France in great and lasting calamities” since it was rooted in a flawed understanding of human nature and political philosophy.

The American and French Revolutions left a contrasting legacy for the modern world. The American Revolution and the principles of natural rights republicanism and constitutionalism served as an exceptional model for the world. The French Revolution unleashed the forces of secular nationalism that shaped the violent European twentieth century.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Andrea Criswell


When in the course of human life, it becomes necessary for a mother to dissolve the political bands between a child and their selfish ways, and to take full responsibility for civilizing her child and assume her powers within her home, the separate and equal station which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a deep realization occurs, if she is not willing to bring virtue and civility to the next generation, no one will. This is the beginning of a republic, in each home. Ironically, this scenario leads the reader to believe that the mother is our government and the child is her citizens, and yet it is the other way around. The greatest attribute of the Constitution of the United States of America reflects her citizens as the parents, the givers of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

How do people collectively provide for themselves liberty? An infrastructure, a culture valuing self-government is the only way. A republic at the core. As a human bears the image of their Creator in spirit and their parents in physical appearance, a republic mirrors its founders in the design of practical infrastructure as well as the “DNA” of heart and motive. In America, this “DNA” was the balance between tyranny and anarchy. Resembling homeostasis in the body, the boundaries given to the government by the Founders exemplified the potential for health for its people. Such is a republic, who welcomes this balance, not admonishing correction nor romanticizing chaos, experiences health and well-being.

Welcoming balance, the United States Constitution stands as a reminder that homeostasis can be achieved, not effortlessly, but attainable. It requires maturity to sustain the direction and maintain the right course. It requires self-government of individuals. Abstaining from the vices of power, the people directed by the Founders’ words stay the course. Imperfect men, who could not right all wrongs, understood that a virtuous nation required leadership from virtuous citizens. Three men considered, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Taylor of Caroline, were willing to protect the ramparts against the tyranny of England, for during their lifetime a government was born, one that would require maturing so that all its members, male and female, light skinned and dark skinned, Christian and non-Christian would find freedom on the same soil.

John Adams understood the unique situation in which they found themselves – to choose their own government. He passionately stated, “While I live, let me have a country, a free country.” It was this vision that defined his life. And yet, he was a Federalist, believing that “the greatest dangers to any polity came from unbridled democracy and an unrestrained aristocracy capable of becoming an oligarchy.” (1) He wanted a strong executive branch to steer the nation like a parent. In his “Discourses on Davila,” he recognizes both the need and the concern for ambitious men. As a republic, the people would parent, and yet Adams wrestled with the need for a strong head. Adams believed that America needed ambitious, determined men held in check by humility, to lead.

Thomas Jefferson understood that real power flows from the consent of the governed, as stated in The Declaration of Independence. A government, whose precedent is fundamental law, would simply reflect the will of the people. Without precedent, no other government in history had modeled natural law. So therefore, a prerequisite of government needed to be established, one in which divine law was part of the culture and understood by all. Believing that America needed a limited government, Jefferson’s greatest contribution was precision rhetoric, clearly communicating that the government would be limited through the state constitutions and the ratifying of the Constitution.

John Taylor of Caroline entered public service to uphold republican values. He did not agree with fixed social order, rather in popular sovereignty, the right each man possessed to govern himself. He was most concerned with a decline of virtue because of power, and held character as the sole anchor for the advancement of America. For Taylor, the laws of nature suggested political equality, and therefore all men were created equal. Defending freedom, Taylor focused on ending tyranny through his Anti-federalist semantics. Historically, there are those born to “hold a post” for others, while in their own right still very flawed. To his own demise Taylor profited from slavery, and while he considered it an evil, he did not consider ending slavery as part of popular sovereignty. Holding the post, Taylor believed America needed to be led by the laws of nature, sustaining personal sovereignty, and yet he did not have the revelation of sovereignty for all.

Disregarding the vision of Adams, the precision of Jefferson and the focus of Taylor would be to disregard the imperfect men who helped pen our most perfect document. The providential boundary lines of the Constitution recognize the need for a strong executive, legislative and judicial branch, all three balancing one another, and the Bill of Rights as the reminder that Congress shall not behave like an immature child. Although these men did not end slavery, they helped form the republic that would empower a people to do so. In the words of John Francis Mercer, a delegate to the Federal Convention from Maryland, said on the floor of the Convention, “It is a great mistake to suppose that the paper we prepare will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the government and interest in maintaining it that is to govern them. The paper will only mark out the mode and the form. Men are the substance and must do the business.” (2) Remarkable men, upholding a remarkable document, necessary then and now.

Andrea Criswell is a wife and mother of four, who teaches homeschool students in northwest Houston. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Asbury Theological Seminary, she teaches Christian Worldview classes, high school biology and a love for the United States Constitution. 

1. Taylor, James. “John Adams: Life Before the Presidency.” Miller Center, https://millercenter.org/president/adams/life-before-the-presidency. Accessed 20 May 2022.

2. Corwin, Edward S. “Thomas Jefferson and the Constitution.” CORE, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/217205672.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2022.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
"A republic, Madam, if you can keep it."


Nations rise and nations fall. Some would call this the cycle of life, writ large; others would simply offer that nothing is certain beyond death and taxes, certainly not the perpetuity of a nation. We are 235 years into this experiment in self-government we call the United States, and we’ve outlasted the average age of a republic, barely.[i] Some would thus suggest we are living on borrowed time. Are we? The Roman Republic lasted nearly 500 years (509 BC to 27 BC). Is it likely or even possible that ours will as well?

Alexander Fraser Tytler, aka Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813) was a Scottish historian and professor at the University of Edinburgh. He identified stages which all societies will inevitably experience. A society will proceed “from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.” Not a very encouraging prediction.

If this is a true prediction of the life of a society (and I don’t suggest it necessarily is) it is tempting to place our American experiment somewhere on this timeline, perhaps we are currently progressing “from abundance to selfishness.” Whether America is “past its prime” has been the subject of debate for quite a while.

Certainly, there are clear signs of decline in America, but is this part of a predictable, inevitable cycle or is this a merely transitory observation?

America’s Founders certainly hoped their work would not be short lived. At the Constitutional Convention, John Dickinson had drafted an address to the delegates – which he appears to have never delivered – reminding them that: “We are not forming plans for a Day Month Year or Age, but for Eternity.” An eternity? Really? Would the proposed new plan of government they had labored over for four months even be given a chance at life? Nine states would have to ratify; would they?

A Republic, if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin’s immortal retort, suggests the Founders believed a republic was incapable of “keeping” itself, that human effort was required; but what sort of effort? By whom? How often?  So much uncertainty.

One point they seemed to be in agreement on, one ingredient they believed was necessary for a nation’s longevity was virtue, both public and private. The Founders said this innumerable times in innumerable ways. A sampling:

“…[N]o free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, Section XV [1776].

“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions.” John Adams to Mercy Warren, 1776.

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788.

“[A] free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue.” Samuel Williams, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, 1774.

“It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.” Richard Henry Lee to Colonel Martin Pickett, March 5, 1786.

“It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?” George Washington, Farewell Address.

But before we go further, let’s ensure we have a common definition of the word “virtue.”

Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the go-to guide for founding era definitions, contains ten different definitions of “virtue.” The one I believe the Founders most often had in mind, the third in Webster’s list, read:

Moral goodness; the practice of moral duties and the abstaining from vice, or a conformity of life and conversation to the moral law. In this sense, virtue may be, and in many instances must be, distinguished from religion. The practice of moral duties merely from motives of convenience, or from compulsion, or from regard to reputation, is virtue as distinct from religion. The practice of moral duties from sincere love to God and his laws, is virtue and religion. In this sense it is true,”

If this “moral goodness” or “virtue” was so important to the success of a popular government, how was it to be instilled or created in the people?

First, by inspiring it in the people: “The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people, in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.” John Adams, to Zabdiel Adams, 1776.

Second, through the education of children:

Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates … to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them.” John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776.

“A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district–all studied and appreciated as they merit–are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.” Benjamin Franklin.

“It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.” Noah Webster, On Education of Youth in America, 1790.

Since private and publick Vices, are in Reality, though not always apparently, so nearly connected, of how much Importance, how necessary is it, that the utmost Pains be taken by the Publick, to have the Principles of Virtue early inculcated on the Minds even of children, and the moral Sense kept alive, and that the wise institutions of our Ancestors for these great Purposes be encouraged by the Government. For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.” Samuel Adams letter to James Warren, November 4, 1775.

Some parents took their educational responsibility quite seriously: “Our Little ones whom you so often recommend to my care and instruction shall not be deficient in virtue or probity if the precepts of a Mother have their desired Effect, but they would be doubly inforced could they be indulged with the example of a Father constantly before them.” Abigail Adams to John Adams, May 7, 1776.

Third, through their churches:

“It is the duty of the clergy to accommodate their discourses to the times, to preach against such sins as are most prevalent, and recommend such virtues as are most wanted. If publick spirit is much wanted, should they not inculcate this great virtue?” John Adams, Novanglus, no. 4.

Virtue was perishable; it needed to be continually “refreshed”: “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.

But even the best-laid plans to inculcate virtue in the people were not expected to have complete success, and the design of government must account for this: “A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired.” Alexander Hamilton. “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 2 December 1829. Even the most virtuous among them was to be watched for signs of moral decay: “The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.” James Madison, Federalist No. 57, 1788.

Americans today have lost sight of the idea of virtue; it is not taught in public schools, our government would like to count on it, but seems afraid to even mention the word, and our churches are fast joining the ranks of those who insist all truth is relative including moral truth. Violent crime is generally rising, private property disrespected and voices in the public square are becoming increasingly strident. If John Adams was right, that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” there will come a time in this country, perhaps not long off, when the Founders’ Constitution will simply prove ineffective in governing us. There is still time to avoid that outcome, but it will require the conscious efforts of patriots across this great land.

“A people may prefer a free government; but if from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when directly attacked; …they are more or less unfit for liberty.” John Stuart Mill

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter @constitutionled.

[i] Alexander Fraser Tytler, aka Lord Woodhouselee, calculated the average term of a republic to be 200 years.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
John Adams, author of “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” and principal drafter, Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.


“Virtue” and “republic” have long been connected to each other among philosophers of politics. The connection was frequently asserted in the rhetoric of Americans during the founding. Indeed, it was while states were writing constitutions that these ideas were more rigorously investigated and an increasingly sophisticated understanding emerged. The most widely read source on the experiences of republics and the importance of virtue was Plutarch’s Lives, which contained the biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen. Many intellectuals also read primary sources, such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Polybius, and interpreters of those sources, such as Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and various 18th century English political essayists. These investigations led to a political conundrum. Most Americans believed that mankind’s actions were driven by base desires, such as avarice, gluttony, and lust. Yet the success of republics had always been said to rest on public virtue, the requirement that the rulers and the people overcome their passion for personal gratification and act for the benefit of the community, “res publica.” Moreover, the wisdom received from ancient writers postulated that public virtue was derived from private virtue. The task became to reconcile this tension between private passions and republican virtue.

Three ideological theories of republicanism emerged, with attendant differences in their conceptions of private and public virtue and the connection between them. These three conceptualizations had significant geographic roots. One was an American version of classic republicanism, which might be called puritan republicanism. It is “positive” republicanism. The proponents looked to the firm hand of government to promote both aspects of virtue, private and public, and to insure their continued interrelation. It was founded in the religious tradition and political experience of New England communities, although its influence was not confined there. One of the best exponents of that tradition and its republican significance was John Adams.

Another was agrarian republicanism, which coalesced somewhat later, and was rooted in the experience of the South, especially its largest and wealthiest state, Virginia. Agrarian republicans also accepted the need rigorously to inculcate private virtue, but they were less optimistic about the conviction that private virtue assured public virtue. At the very least, they were skeptical that sufficient public virtue might be realized among those who would gain political influence. That skepticism was particularly acute when the matter became who would control the distant general government and thus be most removed from effective supervision by the people.

Best, then, not to rely on virtue among the rulers, but to look for other means to limit their ability to cause harm to the republic. If private virtue of the ruler or the people was inadequate to assure public virtue, the rulers’ self-interest must be channeled to serve the public good. James Madison worked out these ideas in his constitutional ideology, which found its way into basic structures in the United States Constitution. Madison was not alone, and he was not the most rigorous expositor of agrarian republicanism. That title goes to John Taylor of Caroline.

A third approach was national republicanism, represented by Alexander Hamilton as its most prominent ideological proponent and George Washington as its leading public figure. In many ways their views complemented those of the agrarians that private virtue was a necessary but also a regrettably flawed guardian of the success of republics. However, there was a crucial difference. Government would have a much more active role in using incentives to create conditions through which republican virtue of the public sort might be fostered. Moreover, republican virtue was not limited to those connected to the land, but extended to those engaged in commercial and even manufacturing enterprises. Hamilton, after all, was not part of the landed gentry, like Adams, or the Southern planter class, like Taylor. National republicanism was based in the emerging commercial centers, especially those of the mid-Atlantic states.

John Adams’s major work on constitutional government and republicanism was A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, a treatise on the emerging American constitutionalism with its emphasis on checks and balances of governmental powers. But Adams was also a prolific writer of letters to numerous correspondents. Many years before he wrote in his 1798 response to the Massachusetts militia, “Our government was made only for a moral and religious people,” he wrote to the chronicler of the period Mercy Otis Warren that republican government could survive only if the people were conditioned “by pure Religion or Austere Morals. Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” Sounding the theme of positive classic republicanism, he continued, “There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honor, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real liberty.” [Emphasis in the original.]

In light of man’s fallen nature and his helpless soul’s inclination to sin, a firm hand was needed. Hence, three New England states had an official church, the Congregational Church, heir to the Puritans. Moreover, a Stoic virtue of private simplicity and public duty was cultivated, not the least by intrusive sumptuary laws. Such laws, passed in the name of protecting the people’s morals and sometimes dressed up in broader cloaks of liberty and equality, restricted various luxuries and excessive expenditures on jewelry, clothing, victuals, and entertainment. Adams, in his 1776 book Thoughts on Government, touted the benefits of such laws, “[The] happiness of the people might be greatly promoted by them….Frugality is a great revenue, besides curing us of vanities, levities, and fopperies, which are real antidotes to all great, manly, and warlike virtues.”

The historian Forrest McDonald, in his invaluable book Novus Ordo Seclorum, provides details about the constitutional and statutory sources of such laws. For example, Article XVIII of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights urged a “constant adherence” to “piety, justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality [which] are absolutely necessary to preserve the advantages of liberty.” Legislators and magistrates must exercise “an exact and constant observance” of those principles “in the formation and execution of the laws.” None other than John Adams had drafted that document in the Massachusetts convention. Other states had similar provisions. At the Philadelphia Convention, George Mason of Virginia sought to grant Congress the power to enact sumptuary laws, but his proposal was defeated.

Adams also lauded laws that resulted in the division of landed estates, because he perceived such laws as promoting relative equality of property ownership. Adams termed it the “mediocrity of property” on which liberty depended. This sentiment, drawn from an ancient republican pedigree, put him in good company with American republicans of other stripes. Indeed, “agrarian republicans” were, if anything, even more militant than Adams in their adoration of land ownership as the bulwark of republican virtue and personal liberty. Thomas Jefferson spoke for most Americans in his 1785 book Notes on the State of Virginia, when he declared that “those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God if ever He had a chosen people, in whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.” He expressed similar views in other writings. During the debate over the subsequent Louisiana Purchase during his administration, Jefferson was able to overcome his constitutional qualms with the satisfaction that the United States had acquired sufficient land to guarantee its existence as a republic of yeoman farmers and artisans for many generations hence.

As a theorist of agrarian republicanism, Jefferson was thin gruel compared to John Taylor, a Virginian planter, lawyer, and politician, who served off-and-on as Senator. To distinguish his branch of the family, Taylor is usually referred to by his birthplace, Caroline County. The aphorism “That government is best which governs least,” has often been attributed to Jefferson, although it appears first in Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau in 1849. If, however, one might at least grant Jefferson the same sentiment, this aphorism even better describes Taylor’s philosophy. In particular, his 1814 book An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States sets out a systematic philosophy for land as the basis for personal happiness and republican vitality. Land gives its owners sustenance and trains them to self-reliance, which produces independence, which, in turn, is the source of liberty. A key to maintaining that independence is the right to keep arms.

The (mostly) Southern agrarian republicans shared with their (mostly) New England classic republican compatriots a belief that widely-shared land ownership is most conducive to private virtue. However, they parted ways on the connection between private and public virtue as crucial to the survival of republican government. Taylor wrote, “The more a nation depends for its liberty on the qualities of individuals, the less likely it is to retain it. By expecting publick good from private virtue, we expose ourselves to publick evils from private vices.” While a republican system, as a whole, is strongest when it rests on a broad base of a virtuous and civically militant citizenry, it is risky to rely only on that condition to produce virtuous politicians. Homo politicus is better known for seeking power for personal gain and influence over others than for personal sacrifice and care for the general welfare. As described by the modern school of “public choice” theory, politicians are self-interested actors, whose actions are best explained by their number one goal, to get re-elected. In addition, the puritan approach of an intrusive government which would police private behaviors raised red flags for the agrarians.

Taylor and other agrarians distrusted government generally, but the more removed from direct and frequent popular control officials were, the greater the danger to the republican form. The good news was that sufficient public virtue could be produced even if, for whatever reason, private virtue was lacking in those who would govern. To that end, it became incumbent on those who framed constitutions to recognize the inherently self-interested nature of politicians and to harness that self-interest through constitutional structures which would simultaneously authorize and limit the power of government officials of all types. Politicians would “do the right thing” not because they were sufficiently trained to private virtue, but because it would serve their own self-interest in preserving their positions.

Taylor’s prescription was not novel. The Scottish philosopher David Hume began his 1742 essay, “Of the Independency of Parliament,” by declaring, “Political writers have established it as a maxim that, in contriving any system of government and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. By this interest we must govern him and, by means of it, make him, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition, cooperate to public good.” The works of the charismatic and often controversial Hume were well known to educated Americans.

James Madison expressed these sentiments in a famous passage in Number 51 of The Federalist:

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be

connected to the constitutional rights of the place…. In framing a government

which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this:

you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next

place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the

primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the

necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Those “auxiliary precautions” were the structural checks and balances in the Constitution.

Various historians have noted the importance of Taylor’s contributions to American political theory, even lauding him as in some ways the best which America has produced. Although his vision was republican, it may better be characterized as a branch of classical liberalism or liberal republicanism. Note that the term “liberal” does not have the current political connotation. Unlike today’s version, the classic liberalism emerging during that period was directly tied to the individual’s liberty to live free from state-enforced mandates beyond the minimum needed for social stability.

Taylor was not the first skeptic about the classic Aristotelian and Ciceronian connection between private and public virtue reborn in the puritan republicanism of John Adams. The history of 18th-century Anglo-American ideas reveals influential predecessors, such as Bernard de Mandeville and, as mentioned earlier, David Hume. Mandeville wrote his satirical Fable of the Bees in 1705, a famous parody of English politics of the time. In the poem, he describes a thriving colony of bees, where each individual bee seeks to live a life of luxury and ease, a sentiment not disagreeable to Taylor’s Southern planter class. But this prosperous existence comes to an end when some of the bees begin to denounce the personal corruption caused by luxury and to call for a life of simplicity and virtue to be imposed. Many bees die, their hive becomes impoverished, and they live in a hollow tree, “blest with Content and Honesty.” He concludes,

Bare Virtue can’t make Nations live,

In Splendor; they, that would revive

A Golden Age, must be as free,

For Acorns, as for Honesty.

In short, personal vices, such as greed and ambition, generate public virtue of industriousness and prosperity. Similar ideas also infused the writings of an important contemporary of the American founders, the political economist Adam Smith.

Even more than Taylor, it was the adherents of an emerging “national republicanism” who agreed with Mandeville, Hume, and Smith. Although all persons are driven by their passions, not all passions are the same. Some, especially those who already have material riches, might be gripped by a simple desire for fame or honor, or by love of country. Moreover, a properly constructed constitution, produced by those few motivated by such nobler passions, might harness the baser passions of lesser politicians towards the public good. The men who met in Philadelphia for the specific purpose of drafting the Constitution might qualify as men whose primary, if not sole, passions were fame and love of country. For most, no immediate financial gain or personal political success was to be gained. Indeed, contrary to the progressive theory advanced in the early 20th century by the historian Charles Beard that economic self-interest was the driving force behind the Constitution’s adoption, it is well-established that delegates voted in favor of proposals which would, if anything, hurt their financial interests.

Such “good” passions, although they manifested a self-interest, also produced the public virtue necessary for republican government. It produced policies for the general welfare and in the interest of the public. The problem, of course, is that all politicians—and, indeed, bureaucrats of all kinds—routinely claim to be driven by a passion for public service, and that their policy proposals are in the public interest. A multitude of unelected non-governmental organizations and litigious law firms also claim the title “public interest.” Alas, to consider, for instance, who benefits from pay-outs in the typical class-action lawsuit, the reality rarely matches the professed public virtue. One never hears a politician say that a policy, no matter how nefarious and self-rewarding, is done for anything other than the noblest public purpose. Rare even is a politician as honest as the 19th-century New York Tammany Hall leader George Washington Plunkitt. He famously distinguished between “dishonest” and “honest” graft and was frank about his practice of the latter. Dishonest graft meant working solely for one’s own interests. Honest graft was to work for one’s own wealth, while simultaneously furthering the interests of one’s party and state.

The big problem, then, for the national republicans was to constrain those politicians who would in fact hold political offices for a longer time and with less-defined objectives than those who drafted the Constitution. George Washington had long and carefully cultivated the public image of the man driven solely by a passion for honor. Whatever his motives in his private actions, such as, for example, acquiring huge tracts of land, Washington in his public life appears to have been driven by his concern about the public’s perception of him as a man of honor. Forrest McDonald and numerous other historians have painted the picture of a man who might be said to have “staged” his public life. Washington was deeply affected throughout his life by Joseph Addison’s play Cato about the Roman republican statesman Marcus Porcius Cato (“the Younger”). Cato, a committed Stoic, was famous for his unrelenting honesty.

But Washington was a rare specimen of homo politicus. The national republicans’ plan for more run-of-the-mill politicians was similar to that of the agrarians, to rely on one measure of citizen virtue and another measure of constitutional structure to produce public virtue from politicians driven by private passions. Unlike the agrarians, they were convinced that a strong national government must be a part of that structure. On that point Hamilton and at least the 1787 version of Madison could agree. Hamilton and the national republicans parted ways with Madison, and with Jefferson and the more resolute agrarian republicans such as Taylor, by enthusiastically embracing the role of manufacturing and banking in promoting public virtue.

Jefferson’s ideal republic of yeoman farmers and artisans, comprising a large middle class possessed of a rough equality of means, had little room for manufacturers, and none for bankers and other jobbers dealing in phantom “wealth.” Manufacturing, when combined with commerce, the fear went, would necessarily soon lead to two anti-republican results. One was a love for material luxury; the other was a life of drudgery for the impoverished masses. The history of the ancient Roman Republic was a vivid cautionary tale. Taylor and the agrarians accepted the benefit of commerce within their preferred system of political economy, because it facilitated the export of products from the agricultural South and the importation of manufactured goods from abroad. But, in a preview of the South Carolina Nullification Crisis of the 1820s and ‘30s, this required free trade. Like most Southerners, Taylor was a committed free trader and suspicious of any national government regulation of economic matters, especially tariffs.

The agrarians’ fear of manufacturing tied into a general belief among political writers going back to antiquity that political systems evolve and, ultimately, decay. Entropy is inevitable in politics as much as physics. Agriculture may be the most desirable occupation, but, sooner or later, the limited productive land area is fully occupied, as New England was discovering. People would flock to cities where manufacturing would become their occupation. As Adam Smith described the effect on people, “the man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are, perhaps, always the same … generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become ….” This fate stood in sharp contrast to that of the farmer, artisan, and merchant, who must possess broad knowledge and understanding of many activities. If this process was inexorable and made those human brutes unfit to practice private virtues, it also made the demise of the republic inevitable. Even Benjamin Franklin believed in the dangers from this progression, which puts his remark to his interlocutor, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” in yet another light. It also explains the urgency which Jefferson and other agrarian republicans felt about the westward expansion of territory and the opening of western land to agricultural settlement needed to forestall this threat to republican governance.

At the conclusion of the passage quoted above, Adam Smith extended a saving hand. After all, he was not opposed to either manufacturing or banking as sources of wealth. The evils of a poor and brutish urban working class would happen, “unless the government takes some pains to prevent it.” Smith had his views of what that might be. In any event, Hamilton, as an enthusiastic believer in Smith’s ideas, agreed that wealth was not fixed, and that even a personal profit motive can contribute to the public welfare. Investing in new processes and useful products and services is a public benefit. Thus, actions of the manufacturer and even the banker exemplify public virtue, whether or not they are driven by self-interest. He, like Adam Smith, believed that private wealth-producing activities qualified as private virtue. While others might not go that far, Hamilton successfully advocated the connection between such activity and the public virtue needed to maintain republican government.

Having established that manufacturing and banking could be “virtuous” in the public sense, there remained the need to foster them in order to ameliorate the conditions of poverty which would threaten republican government. After all, if enough wealth is created for all, “poverty” ceases to be objective and becomes relative. A rising tide floats all ships. At least from a material standpoint, owning a car and various electric and electronic devices today, living in an abode with air conditioning, and having clean water, basic sustenance and medical care, are vastly better than the experiences of past generations.

Hamilton and his supporters believed that their strong national government was the best mechanism to adopt policies which would foster the growth of wealth. Hamilton’s later program in his four reports to Congress between 1790 and 1795 on the public debt, a national bank, and manufactures, laid out in considerable detail his plans to that end. These sophisticated reports were a monument to Hamilton’s intellect and experience applied to the economic problems of the early United States.  They had such potency, and were so hotly contested, that they precipitated the First American Party System of Federalists and Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans and made Hamilton in effect the dominant figure of American politics in the 1790s.

It should be noted in conclusion that all republicans—classic puritan, agrarian, and national—opposed democracy. Even those delegates and political leaders who at one point had been most favorable towards broad public participation and involvement in politics, were shaken by Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts. That event in 1786 had created much tumult and political chaos and was put down by an army raised by the state. It was very much on the minds of the attendees at the Philadelphia convention. Some of the most vociferous detractors of the Constitution as insufficiently “republican” were also the harshest critics of democracy. For them, Shays’ Rebellion exposed the danger of relying on private virtue to provide the public virtue necessary for republican self-government. James Madison spoke for them all when he opined in Number 10 of The Federalist about the inadequacy of democracies to promote public virtue:

[Such] democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have

ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property;

and have, in general, been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their

deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronised this species of government,

have erroneously supposed, that, by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in

their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and

assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution


“For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” writes Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 84. “[B]ills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.”

“The Constitution can stand alone as a ‘Bill of Rights’” was Hamilton’s clear message here. Many of America’s Founders held to that view and the Founders were no slouches, so we would expect to find some substance to the claim. If the Framers indeed designed a United States Constitution of “limited and enumerated” powers, as Madison claimed in remarks during the Virginia Ratifying Convention, where was the fear of government infringement on individual freedoms to be found?

Indeed, in several places in the Constitution we find particular individual rights given explicit protection. For instance, in Article 1, Section 9 we find Congress specifically denied power to create bills of attainder, ex post facto laws and suspend the “Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.” Similar restrictions against the states are found in the next section of Article 1. The states are further required to protect your right of contract in the same section. In Article 3, we find the fundamental right of trial by jury preserved for “all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment.” “All Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States” are guaranteed/protected in Article IV. But what do these consist of? The Constitution gives us no clue and, while the Supreme Court had an opportunity to provide an answer in the past[i] they demurred, so we are left to ponder the extent of this protection. As regards congressmen and congresswomen, a limited form of freedom of speech, at least while engaged on the floor of Congress, is found in Article 1, Section 6, where a companion protection from arrest is also located.

But that is about it as far as specific individual rights protections are concerned in the seven articles which make up the original Constitution. Where is the explicit protection of speech, or religion, of conscience, of the right to keep and bear arms, etc.? Hamilton’s answer of course would be: “where is the government given power in the Constitution to intrude upon any of those rights? The weight of Hamilton’s and Madison’s argument must rest then on the Constitution actually being, and, more importantly, remaining, a limited powers document. It is quite clear from the journals of early Congresses that congressmen routinely considered the Constitution to limit the powers of government.

The 1st Congress refused to approve a loan to a glass manufacturer in Georgetown after some members charged it was unconstitutional. A member in the 3rd Congress (1794) proposed $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Third-term Congressman James Madison rose to object, saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” The 4th Congress (1796) turned down a request for relief to the citizens of Savannah, GA, after a fire burned down nearly a third of the city. On his last day as President in 1817, James Madison famously vetoed what today we would call an Infrastructure Bill,[ii] stating: “it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers [of the Constitution].

Has Madison’s view persisted? The following should be shielded from sensitive eyes.

Beginning principally in the Progressive Era and accelerating in the New Deal Era, the effort to expand the powers of the federal government has enjoyed great success. In 2010, then Congressman Peter Stark of California famously declared that “Yes, the federal government can do most anything in this country.” The picture has not improved much in the last twelve years.

Thanks to decisions in 1936[iii] and 1937,[iv] the Supreme Court gave Congress the power to spend money on anything it could justify in its own “mind” as supporting the general welfare of the United States.  Madison warned in 1792 that this sort of interpretation of the General Welfare Clause would turn the “limited powers” Constitution into an indefinite one subject [only] to particular exceptions.”[v] The 1937 Supreme Court had a different idea and today, Madison’s observation that “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government[vi] is considered a quaint relic of a bygone era.

In 1942,[vii] the federal government was given the power to regulate nearly all aspects of business in the U.S. since only a miniscule connection to “interstate commerce” was necessary. In 1968,[viii] the Court cleared the way for Congress to delegate its exclusive law-making power[ix] to executive branch agencies. This has resulted in a veritable flood of “regulations with the force of law” which impact our individual lives in myriad ways and the compliance of which are estimated to add $2 Trillion dollars to the cost of doing business in this country, a cost passed on to you and me in the form of increased prices for goods and services.

The Anti-federalists warned of the immense power being given this new central government,[x] yet I doubt they foresaw the magnitude of the federal power-grab we continue to experience today. Even the addition of a discrete Bill of Rights in 1791, while affording important individual rights protections, has not been enough (what does “shall not be infringed” mean?) Hamilton’s hope that the Constitution could stand alone as a Bill of Rights was hopelessly utopic. A Bill of Rights has proved absolutely necessary, but not alone sufficient to curtail the continuing federal power grab.

In conclusion, for the U.S. Constitution to have stood alone as a protector of individual, God-given, unalienable rights, as Hamilton wished, was in hindsight incredibly naive. One important feature of the original document needed to survive: limited powers, and it didn’t. Various groups with a decidedly different view of the purpose of government, assisted by a Supreme Court which from time to time shared their view, have successfully changed the fundamental nature of our wonderful Constitution from one of limited and enumerated powers to one of near plenary power. Taking advantage of the ambiguity of words and the concept of a “Living Constitution,” these forces have succeeded in creating a government which today intrudes into nearly every aspect of our private and corporate lives. The “demise” of the Tenth Amendment has been widely recognized by both Left and Right.[xi]

What is to be done? Must we simply acknowledge this sea change in the Founders intent to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and learn to live with Leviathan? That is certainly one option – one allowing us to live relatively peaceful if increasingly controlled lives. The other response requires action, commitment and purpose. We must rouse ourselves and our neighbors, educate society to the problem we face and the inevitable endstate should we remain on this path, and proceed methodically to repair the damage to this inspired document. The Supreme Court can be an ally in this project, if an originalist majority can be kept in place long enough to reverse key decisions. But that could take decades, perhaps scores of years. The more logical approach is one the document itself gives us: amendment.

Congress will never take action to reduce the immense power they have been given by the aforementioned SCOTUS decisions; that much, I hope, we can agree upon. But a carefully worded amendment defining “commerce” and placing limits on the interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause could. No power-reducing amendments will ever emanate from the Congress and be sent to the states for ratification. So, we face precisely the situation Colonel George Mason of Virginia warned of on September 15, 1787, as the delegates considered the, at that time, single method of amending the Constitution. “No amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive (Madison writes in his Notes), as he (Colonel Mason) verily believed would be the case.” Adopted “nem con” (i.e., unanimously) was a second method of proposing amendments: the states could meet in convention to consider and propose amendments.

It seems to this writer that the solution to the problem of Leviathan is at hand, given us expressly for the situation we now face: congressional intransigence. Will we grasp it or allow individual freedoms to inexorably slip away?

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

[i] Notably in what became known as the Slaughterhouse Cases.

[ii] https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-3-1817-veto-message-internal-improvements-bill.

[iii] United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936).

[iv] Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937).

[v] “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions. It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated, is copied from the old articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason as less liable than any other to misconstruction.”

[vi] James Madison, Speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794.

[vii] Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).

[viii] Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361 (1989.

[ix] “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

[x] https://mises.org/library/antifederalists-were-right

[xi] https://mises.org/power-market/who-killed-10th-amendment.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Eric Sands
United States Constitution showing the first page with Article I, with the Bill of Rights and American Flag


The Constitutional Convention has been referred to as the “Miracle in Philadelphia” and there is a great deal of justice to that label. The delegates to the convention faced long odds in reaching compromise on a new form of government. But in many respects, writing the United States Constitution was only half the battle; the delegates then had to get it ratified. This proved to be a difficult task and required the assistance of some of the leading minds in the country to convince the American people to accept the new document.

These proponents of ratification were known as Federalists and included men such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (collectively known as “Publius”), James Wilson, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, John Marshall, and Benjamin Franklin. These men were nationalist in their orientation and believed that a stronger national government was a necessary corrective for the defects in the Articles of Confederation. Opposing these Federalists were the Anti-federalists who argued against ratification, or at least counseled serious modifications to the Constitution’s design. Among the most prominent Anti-federalist writers were Patrick Henry, Melancton Smith, and authors writing under pseudonyms such as Cato, Brutus, Centinel, and Federal Farmer. These men advocated for a confederal form of government where most of the power would be held in the hands of the states.

The Anti-federalist arguments generally fell into two categories. The first was pursuing structural changes in the Constitution itself to limit the power of the national government. During the public debates, Anti-federalists raised numerous objections to the Constitution and pointed out that the power being ceded to the national government was a danger, not just to the states, but to the people. The Anti-federalists, for example, argued that too much power was being given to the president and that he could become a monarch. This was especially true given his infinite re-eligibility. The Anti-federalists complained that the Constitution blended powers too much and needed to adhere to a much stricter principle of separation of powers. They feared that the Supreme Court would become an all-power government tribunal and proposed presidential commissions that could overturn bad judicial decisions. Congress’ power was seen as too extensive and needed to be scaled back. Limits needed to be put in place governing Congress’ control over the state militias and federal elections, and there was an overarching fear about how much power Congress might subsume under the necessary and proper clause. Finally, the Anti-federalists harbored deep suspicions that a republican form of government could work over a territory and with a population as large as the United States. Conventional wisdom of the day held that republics could only be successful in a small territory with a small and relatively homogenous population. A republic on the scale of the United States had no historical precedent and the Anti-federalists believed it could not work.

As enlightened as some of the Anti-federalist objections to the Constitution were, structural changes were not in the cards. All the Anti-federalist amendments introduced at the ratifying conventions were defeated. A large part of this defeat was owing to the efforts of the Federalists to get their defenses of the Constitution into print and the larger number of newspapers that supported ratification. However, the Anti-federalists had a second category of arguments that proved far more successful. These arguments revolved around the lack of a bill of rights in the Constitution. The lack of a bill of rights seemed to them to be particularly egregious given how much power was being given to the national government. Thus, in numerous essays, the Anti-federalists complained about a need for specific protections like freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, petition, and possession of arms. Most of these rights were guaranteed to the people at the state level, so it made little sense that the people’s rights should be less secure at the national level.

Federalists initially countered these arguments in a couple of ways. In Federalist 84, for example, Hamilton argued that the Constitution should be allowed a trial period before alterations were made. There may be several things the American people want to change five or ten years down the road, so make the changes then when a judgment can be made about whether they are necessary. Second, the structure and design of the Constitution already protected rights through separation of powers, checks and balances, enumerated powers, and republicanism. Any attempt to infringe on personal rights would never be able to survive this gauntlet of obstructions. Finally, a bill of rights could endanger rights because it would only include certain specified rights, leaving others unprotected. It would also imply that rights come from government and that it alone chooses which rights to recognize.

Despite this defense of not including a bill of rights in the Constitution, the American people remained unpersuaded, and the Constitution stood a real chance of not being ratified because of this defect. Eventually, however, the Federalists gave in, and several of their most prominent members made promises that a bill of rights would be on the agenda of the First Congress. With this promise in place, ratification moved forward, and eleven states initially joined the Union (Rhode Island and North Carolina did not ratify until later).

The first national elections were a disaster for the Anti-federalists with them winning only a few seats in the House and the Senate. The landslide victory for the Federalists had cooled Federalist opinion about the need for amendments. Some speculated that the promise made to the people could be safely ignored, while others argued that some vague, superficial amendments would likely suffice. James Madison, however, stood up for a bill of rights. Having made a personal campaign pledge to produce a bill of rights to his constituents, Madison made repeated efforts to get the bill on the legislative agenda. When that did not work, he presented a formal proposal of amendments he thought should be introduced into the Constitution. Still, Federalists were not enthusiastic about his proposal and likely would have never allowed the bill to move forward had Madison’s not received Washington’s endorsement, which Washington articulated in his inaugural address. Once the federal revenue system was completed, the Federalists finally got around to Madison’s amendments.

Anti-federalists, though few and far between, used the opportunity to start making their own proposed amendments to change the structure of the Constitution. But they were voted down every time, with antagonism between the two sides becoming so heated that congressmen challenged each other to duels. In the end, Madison’s patience and his willingness to compromise helped move the amendments along. Congress did not adopt all the amendments, and the language of others was altered, but that was the price Madison had to pay to see the amendments submitted to the states. On December 15, 1791, enough states ratified the Bill of Rights to formally make the ten amendments part of the Constitution.

Eric C. Sands is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Berry College. He has written a book on Abraham Lincoln and edited a second volume on political parties. His teaching and research interests focus on constitutional law, American political thought, the founding, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and political parties. 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Tom Hand
Fifth, Second and First Constitutional Amendments with gavel


The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, better known as the Bill of Rights, are what allow us to enjoy many of the day-to-day blessings of our great country. Freedoms easily taken for granted are enshrined in these revisions to the original document. While the Constitution shaped our government, the Bill of Rights shaped our lives.

These amendments include both individual freedoms such as the right to keep and bear arms, free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to worship as we please, as well as restrictions on the power of the federal government.

You might wonder why these basic freedoms had to be added to the Constitution after it was created rather than being front and center in the debates at the Constitutional Convention. The reason can be found in considering the mission of the convention.

Specifically, when the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, the delegates’ primary goal was to fix the weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation and, thereby, form a system of government that would allow the country to flourish.

Consequently, most of the discussion at the convention focused on the form of government and how it would operate, not on the individual rights of the people. Although the representatives met from May 14 to September 17, no motion to adopt a Bill of Rights for the citizens of the country was introduced until September 12 when George Mason of Virginia did so.

Mason’s suggestion was quickly dismissed and, looking back, it seems surprising that something as crucial as a bill of rights was not subject to lengthy debate. However, we must keep in mind each state already had their own constitution, many of which contained a bill of rights.

As James Madison noted in his essay Federalist 46, the new federal constitution did not eliminate those rights granted by the states. Since personal rights already existed at the state level, Madison argued there was no need for the federal government to guarantee them as well.

From a more practical standpoint, the delegates needed to get home. They were not full-time politicians who made their living on the government payroll. They were mostly doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and farmers. Time away from home cost them money and, quite naturally, after being in hot, steamy Philadelphia for four months, they did not want to extend the convention for several more weeks to discuss such a contentious topic.

Soon after the proposed Constitution was circulated to the state legislatures for approval in late 1787, it came under criticism for several perceived faults, but primarily for its lack of a bill of rights. The group opposing the new Constitution became known as “Anti-federalists” and were led by Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and George Mason.

Gerry published a widely circulated letter, dubbed “Hon. Mr. Gerry’s Objections,” in which he stated his reasons for not supporting the new Constitution. As he saw it, “the liberties of America were not secured by the system” and it was flawed “without a bill of rights.”

Alexander Hamilton responded in Federalist 84 that “the constitution is itself in every rationale sense, and to every useful purpose, a bill of rights.” He added that by ratifying the Constitution “the people surrender nothing, and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations.”

There was also concern that, by listing only certain rights, it could be implied that those were the only ones guaranteed by the new Constitution and any others not mentioned were not. In other words, explicitly stating any rights might actually reduce our freedom.

Although the proposed document was quickly ratified by five states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut), it bogged down in other state legislatures primarily due to the absence of a bill of rights. In Massachusetts, the impasse was broken when Anti-federalists, led by John Hancock and Samuel Adams, agreed to ratify the proposed Constitution on the condition that a bill of rights would soon follow.

The Federalist minorities in the Maryland and Virginia assemblies facing similar opposition, also agreed to establish a bill of rights rather than risk delaying the ratification of the Constitution. This spirit of compromise kept the process moving.

On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to approve the proposed Constitution. As a result, Congress formally ratified it on September 13, 1788, with an enactment date of March 4, 1789. One hurdle had been cleared.

The challenge now was to craft a bill of rights that would be acceptable to the thirteen states. James Madison of Virginia, an early opponent of a bill of rights and a member of the House of Representatives, eventually changed his position on the matter and led the effort to develop one that would satisfy the Anti-federalists.

Madison’s initial effort recommended nine changes to the body of the new Constitution rather than additional articles. However, the Federalists saw this attempt to modify the original text they had so recently ratified as a mistake. They argued these changes might undermine the credibility of the new document.

Instead, the House of Representatives, swayed by the arguments of Roger Sherman, agreed to place all amendments at the end of the Constitution. On September 25, 1788, after much debate, the House and Senate jointly agreed to twelve proposed Articles as additions to the document and forwarded them to the states for their approval.

On December 15, 1791, Articles Three through Twelve were ratified by Congress and became the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, our Bill of Rights. Interestingly, Article Two dealing with Congressional pay raises was not approved until 1992 as the 27th Amendment and Article One dealing with the number of seats in the House has never been approved.

So why should the Bill of Rights matter to us today?

Quite simply, life as we know it in the United States of America would not be the same without the rights stated in our first ten amendments. Try to imagine a country without religious freedom or the right to say what we want. Or a place where the government could search your home without cause or deny you due process of law.

The Bill of Rights matter to all of us every day we live in this great country of ours. We must know and understand our rights as Americans, or we can never hope to preserve them. It is truly our shared responsibility.

If you want to learn more about your Bill of Rights, I suggest reading Akhil Reed Amar’s book The Bill of Rights. Published in 1998, this book is an excellent account of our Bill of Rights, including the history behind their creation, how the interpretation of them has evolved, and how they are linked to one another.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page, Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
Signing of the Constitution - Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, painting by Howard Chandler Christy, on display in the east grand stairway, House wing, United States Capitol.


Shay’s Rebellion was a “wake-up” call for all Americans. The armed closure of a duly constituted court was a drastic step. But these were drastic times. The war with Britain, though favorably concluded for the Americans, had left the economies of the states in shambles. The Confederation Congress found itself powerless to intervene. By the summer of 1786, farmers were unable to find a market for their crops or meet their tax obligations; without hard cash they were unable to make their mortgages or loan payments. The courts, with little recourse but to uphold the law, were foreclosing on farmers who only a few short years before had been fighting for their country’s independence. On August 31, 1786, ex-Revolutionary War Captain Daniel Shays, now himself a bankrupt farmer, lead an armed mob to the Northampton, Massachusetts court and forced it to close. But Massachusetts was not alone: Pennsylvania’s James Wilson observed that “The flames of internal insurrection were ready to burst out in every quarter.”  Mutinies of soldiers in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania fed the anxiety. Political cartoons began to appear in American newspapers mocking Congress. Leading men began calling for amendments to, or even replacement of, the Articles of Confederation.

In April 1786, Rufus King wrote to Elbridge Gerry: “We are without money or the prospect of it in the Federal Treasury; and the States, many of them, care so little about the Union, that they take no measures to keep a representation in Congress.”[i]

Three years before, Henry Knox had complained to Gouverneur Morris: “As the present Constitution is so defective, why do not you great men call the people together and tell them so; that is, to have a convention of the States to form a better Constitution.”[ii]

Finally, the pleas for change were heard, there would be a “Grand Convention” to “fix things” once and for all. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were elated. Their quiet work behind the scenes had paid off.

In Hamilton’s view “The fundamental defect is a want [lack] of power in Congress.”[iii] He had tried numerous times to have the Articles amended, to no avail. George Washington complained of “a half-starv’d, limping Government.”[iv]

Madison was determined not to waste the opportunity the convention afforded. First, he would place the Articles under his scholar’s microscope and identify each of its defects. Madison was in a unique position to undertake this analysis: he had represented Virginia from 1780-1783 in the Confederation Congress and had seen from that vantage its inherent weakness. Following this, he had served the next three years in the Virginia Assembly, seeing the problems caused by the Articles from that perspective. Returning once again to a seat in the Confederation Congress in the Spring of 1787, Madison sat down at his desk before setting out for Philadelphia and wrote “Vices of the Political System of the United States.” These would become the “cautions” that a new government must avoid. Hopefully it would become a government actually empowered to govern.

All but the last of the twelve “bullet points” Madison set down in “Vices” were accompanied by elaborating commentary. For instance: “Failure of the States to comply with the Constitutional requisitions,” the first complaint, was explained as an “evil” which “has been so fully experienced both during the war and since the peace, [which] results so naturally from the number and independent authority of the States and has been so uniformly exemplified in every similar Confederacy, that it may be considered as not less radically and permanently inherent in, than it is fatal to the object of, the present System.”

While Madison was careful to identify the “effects” of the deficiencies of the Articles, he did not focus on its numerous structural defects:

  • The Articles created only a unicameral Congress. In 1774, the Continental Congress had simply “come together” without much thought of being a permanent fixture. Governments of history had often included a Senate, but where would the authority to add a Senate to the Congress come from, even if the advantage was obvious? By 1787, however, all of the states had adopted bi-cameral legislatures in their state constitutions. While this example was adopted by the convention, it is generally regarded as one of many compromises. (See Article 1)
  • There was no Supreme Court. With Congress lacking the authority to create a supreme legal body, conflicts between states were assigned to ad hoc committees to resolve. Without an enforcement arm, committees were limited to recommending solutions, relying on the good will of the states to carry out their recommendations. (See Article 3)
  • There was no true chief executive function. Beyond keeping order in the Congress, the President had little power to do much else. Enforcing the laws passed by Congress? Not in the President’s obligations. (See Article 2)
  • The amendment process effectively guaranteed no amendments. The Articles required state unanimity before an amendment was adopted. In practice, this proved self-defeating since in every case a single state could (and did) object and thus the suggested amendment came to a grinding halt. (See Article 5)

All of these defects were corrected in the new Constitution.

The standard meme today is that the Articles were discarded in their entirety and a “brand-new” document substituted. But while the structure of government adopted at the Grand Convention was indeed new, not every feature of the Articles was abandoned; the following clauses and provisions were retained, some nearly verbatim:

  • The “privileges of trade and commerce” enjoyed by the citizens of each state were preserved, reworded as the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution. (See Article IV, Section 2)
  • The power to extradite fugitives. (See Article IV, Section 2)
  • The “Full faith and credit clause.” (See Article IV, Section 1)
  • “Freedom of speech and debate in Congress” was retained as was immunity from arrest. (See Article I, Section 6)
  • The prohibition against treaties, confederations, or alliances between the states without the consent of the Congress. (See Article I, Section 10)
  • Congress’ exclusive war-declaring power. (See Article I, Section 8)
  • Congress’ exclusive authority to issue letters of marque and reprisal and punish “piracies and felonies commited (sic) on the high seas.” (See Article I, Section 8)

At the Virginia Ratification Convention on June 5, 1788, Edmund Pendleton would sum up the Articles thusly: “Our general government was totally inadequate to the purpose of its institution; our commerce decayed; our finances deranged; public and private credit destroyed: these and many other national evils rendered necessary the meeting of that Convention.”

The genius of fifty-five “demigods” would find solutions to the various defects of the Articles of Confederation, would create the “more perfect union” the men sought and that America deserved, yet all this genius depended on one final institution: a virtuous people. As John Adams reminds us: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[v] If this constitutional republic is to survive, if the republic is to be “kept,” the result is in the hands of “We the People.”

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

[i] Rufus King to Elbridge Gerry, April 30, 1786

[ii] Henry Knox to Gouverneur Morris, Feb 21, 1783.

[iii]  Alexander Hamilton to James Duane, 3 Sept. 1780.

[iv] George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, 18 Jan. 1784.

[v] To the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, October 11, 1798.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
Articles of Confederation, George Washington, 1787


At the end of the Revolutionary War, many Americans had great hopes for a politically and economically prosperous future for their independent nation. In June 1783, General George Washington took a moment to reflect on the state of America and offer some advice to his fellow citizens to preserve its future.

In his Circular Letter to the States, Washington wrote that the “lot which Providence has assigned us” was blessed with “the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all, the purse and benign light of Revelation.” For Washington and others, the American founding occurred during an “auspicious period.”

The reality of the 1780s, however, rarely matched such optimism. The economy suffered a recession at a time of heavy public and private debt. The states passed tariffs on each other’s trade and nearly went to war over these trade disputes. Several states violated the 1783 peace treaty. They violated the property rights of Tories and the rights of conscience of religious dissenters with unjust laws.

The Articles of Confederation offered few solutions to the problems that plagued the new nation. The national government lacked the power to tax or regulate interstate trade. The principle of separation of powers was largely absent as the government did not have an independent executive or judiciary nor a bicameral legislature. The national government failed to respond militarily to crises such as Shays’ Rebellion.

While most acknowledged that the new republic suffered problems of governance, they differed as to the proper remedies to those difficulties and the exact character of the national Union. These contrasting views were seen in the Confederation period, at the Constitutional Convention, and during the ratification debates between Federalists and Anti-federalists.

The Anti-federalists, admitted throughout the period, the Confederation government had a few problems. Nevertheless, they thought that a few reforms were sufficient to solve the problems. The proposed New Jersey Plan at the Constitutional Convention added greater powers of taxation and trade regulation to national powers but did little to alter the basic framework of government.

The Anti-federalists defended this basic line of thinking and opposed the significant increase of powers in the national government in the new Constitution. For example, the first letter of Brutus warned that the proposed government was dangerously consolidated and threatened the liberties of the people. They believed that they were the real “federalists” because they supported the principle of federalism with a better balance between state governments and the national government.

Brutus was concerned that the Constitution would destroy the Confederation and thereby change the very nature of the Union. The Necessary and Proper Clause and the National Supremacy Clause, Brutus explained, granted virtually unlimited powers to the national government and effectively annihilated the state governments as they were “barely necessary to the organization of the general government.” Brutus also appealed to Montesquieu’s view in Spirit of the Laws that republican governments can only survive in small territories.

The Federalists, on the other hand, sought to expand the powers of the central government and argued that a stronger government would actually do a better job than the Confederation government at protecting liberty. They defended the new government and believed that the powers of government had to be redistributed in favor of the national government.

James Madison was one of the leading voices of the Federalists who propagated this new view. Before the Convention, Madison penned the Vices of the Political System, which detailed the evils that beset the Confederation. He thought, “The great desideratum in Government is such a modification of the sovereignty as will render it sufficiently neutral between the different interests and factions to control one part of the Society from invading the rights of another, and, at the same time, sufficiently controlled itself from setting up an interest adverse to that of the whole society.” In other words, the main goal was to empower the national government without creating a tyranny.

With this in mind, Madison developed the Virginia Plan that laid the basis for debates early in the Convention. While he did not get everything he had wanted in the Constitution, Madison was one of the main proponents of the Constitution as one of the three authors of the Federalist essays under the pseudonym Publius and at the Virginia ratifying convention.

In Federalist #39, Madison explained, “The proposed Constitution, therefore, even when tested by the rules laid down by its antagonists, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both.” He thought this delicate balance would help make possible a government in a large republic. In his innovate political science in Federalist #10 and Federalist #51, Madison argued that liberty would be better protected in a large republic because contending interests would prevent unjust factions from introducing majority tyranny.

The vigorous deliberation during the American founding demonstrated that while the founders on both sides of the argument concurred on the ends of government, they differed on the best framework of government to achieve those ends. Americans have continued to debate the relationship of the national government and the states according to the federal principle throughout the history of the country to the present day.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Tom Hand


The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was our nation’s first constitution and essentially served as the basis for our government from 1777 to 1789. It was created by the thirteen original states to help them unify their war efforts against England and was the precursor to our present Constitution.

In June 1776, soon after the Second Continental Congress appointed the Committee of Five to draft the Declaration of Independence, Congress also established a committee to craft a document by which this new country would be governed. Comprised of one delegate from each colony and chaired by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, these thirteen men presented their initial draft to Congress on July 12, 1776.

They named it the Articles of Confederation, suggesting a fairly loose coalition rather than one united entity. Although the states agreed to form a national government, they were not willing to cede any of their individual rights or powers to it.

After much debate and five different versions, the Articles were finally approved by Congress on November 15, 1777, and immediately sent to the various states for their ratification. Although official approval of the document required all thirteen states to ratify it and the thirteenth state (Maryland) did not do so until February 2, 1781, the Articles effectively guided Congress’ action from 1777 onward.

The Articles stressed the rights of the individual states more than the power of the central government. As Article II states, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated.”

Additionally, the states viewed this association as a group of co-equals and there was no consideration given for the size, wealth, or population of the various colonies. As articulated in Article V, “In determining questions in the United States in Congress Assembled, each state shall have one vote.”

Article IX entrusted several responsibilities to the Confederation Congress such as dealing with Indian nations and foreign affairs to include making treaties, declaring war, and making peace. However, the Article also required “nine states assent” to virtually anything Congress wanted to do. Given the sessions were lightly attended by the delegates, quorums were often difficult to attain which made passing any new legislation even more challenging.

Interestingly, Article XI expressly allowed for the addition of Canada to our confederation if that colony so chose. That fact indicates how precarious was England’s hold on our northern neighbor in the minds of Americans in the 1770s. Finally, as Article XIII states “the Union shall be perpetual” which meant that joining the compact was permanent and there was no recourse for leaving the Union.

The Articles of Confederation as approved created an amazingly weak central government. One might ask why the states would take the time to form a national government at all if the one they designed was powerless and ineffective. It is important to remember state sovereignty was paramount to virtually all political leaders in early America.

As the move towards independence gained traction in 1776, states codified freedoms in their own state constitutions that had been denied to them under King George and Parliament. With each state already guaranteeing liberties to all citizens, there was no need or desire to create a powerful entity at the federal level to ensure them.

This extreme focus on state’s rights is understandable when one considers how the original colonies had been established. Rather than the eastern seaboard being populated by the English all at once, the various colonies had been settled separately and independent of the others. Naturally, each colony jealously guarded its autonomy.

The inherent weakness of the federal government, and the danger that posed, became clear as the American Revolution got underway. Although its provisions authorized the central government to regulate and establish an Army, it lacked the power to enforce its decrees. While Congress could request funding and troops from the states, all money and men would only be forthcoming if the states agreed to the requests. Not surprisingly, most requests were ignored.

This lack of funding and men almost proved the undoing of the Continental Army which, of course, would have meant the end of our effort to win independence. As General George Washington wrote to George Clinton from Valley Forge in February 1778, “For some days past, there has been little less than a famine in camp.” He went on to write, “When the fore mentioned supplies are exhausted, what a terrible crisis must ensue.”

Unfortunately, funding for the army only got worse after we secured our independence. With the threat from England largely ended, the national army shrank to a skeletal force that attempted without much success to protect the western borders from Indian attack. Additionally, because of this military impotence, the United States could not compel England to abandon its forts in the Northwest Territory as called for in the Treaty of Paris.

The Articles also expressly denied Congress taxation authority. Consequently, the central government was constantly short of cash and unable to pay its bills. Congress printed more money, but this only served to devalue the currency. To make matters worse and national finances more confusing, the individual states had the right to print their own currency as well.

Another flaw was the lack of an executive branch. Although the men who presided over the Continental Congress were called “President,” they had no power, and many served in that position for less than a year. Most delegates had seen too much of King George and monarchy to be willing to entrust significant authority in one central figure.

These issues aside, the Articles of Confederation deserves some credit. For one thing, it was our first constitution, and with it we survived the American Revolution and six years beyond.

The Articles also granted the Confederation Congress the authority to establish an efficient system for expanding the new nation. Its provisions for new territories and how to settle them as seen with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 proved to be a boon in the decades that followed.

So why should the Articles of Confederation matter to us today? Perhaps the greatest blessing of the Articles was its flaws. Our nation’s leaders were able to see and learn early on what we needed in a central government for our country to succeed.

While we feared a powerful Federal government, we realized one that was powerless would ensure our demise. The recognition that we needed to balance these two concerns led to the changes our Founding Fathers incorporated into our Constitution.

If you want to learn more about the Articles of Confederation, I suggest reading “We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution” written by George Van Cleve. Published in 2017, it is an excellent account of the troubles resulting from the weakness of the Articles and how those troubles led to the creation of our Constitution.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page, Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
U.S. Bill of Rights


Before I begin this discussion, I should like to highlight two books which cover this topic quite well, in far more detail than I can include here: The First American Constitutions, by Willi Paul Adams, first published in 1973 in Germany, later, in 2001 in the U.S., and The Origins of American Constitutionalism, published in 1988 by Donald S. Lutz. Both are well-written, well-documented and well-worth your time.

We tend to view the American War for Independence in simplistic terms: parliament overreached; the colonies balked, declared their independence, fought a war to secure that independence, and went on to establish a unique written Constitution “of the people, by the people and for the people.” But as any historian knows, the story is more complicated. While the later part of the 1700s, at least in America, was indeed dominated by the War for Independence, “[t]he last three decades of the eighteenth century were a time of extraordinary political experimentation and innovation,” [i] writes Donald Lutz, and the American Revolutionary War “just happened” to occur during that extraordinary time.

The U.S. Constitution has at various times and by various writers been called the product of the Enlightenment, Classical Greek philosophy, Protest theology, the Hebrew Republic, English common law and English Whig political theory, and some of its roots can easily be traced to these predecessors; but many overlook its connections to the first state constitutions. “The early state constitutions contributed significantly to the development of [the] constitutional principles [found in the U.S. Constitution].”[ii]Anyone who will lay the Federal Constitution side by side with the State Constitution of Massachusetts (adopted in 1780) and with the State Constitution of New York (adopted in 1777) will be startled by the extent to which the members of the Federal Convention not only followed the principles, but used the exact phraseology of those State documents.”[iii]

By 1787, when fifty-five men met in Philadelphia to “render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of the Government and the preservation of the Union,”[iv] all but two of the thirteen states had already set in place a new state constitution.[v] Of those fifty-five men, almost half (26) had served in their state legislatures, including participating in the drafting of their state’s new plan of government.

References to numerous state constitutional provisions were made during the “Grand Convention.” One of the last being on September 12th, just five days before the Constitution was completed and signed.  Virginia delegate, George Mason, rose to point out that the absence of a Bill of Rights in the draft they were then considering was a matter of great concern. “It would give great quiet to the people (to have a Bill of Rights); and with the aid of the State declarations, a bill might be prepared in a few hours.” Colonel Mason, you may recall, had been the chief architect of the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776; thus, he was eminently qualified and experienced to draft yet another declaration.  But Mr. Roger Sherman of Connecticut then rose to point out that “The State Declarations of Rights are not repealed by this Constitution; and being in force are sufficient.” A motion was made to establish a committee to draft a bill of rights, but the motion failed 0-9, and the delegates went on to put the final touches on the document they had labored over for four long months.

But let’s step back a bit in time and review what prompted this “extraordinary political experimentation and innovation.”

Rising tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies had led to the suspension of state assemblies in Massachusetts, New York, Virginia. Other Royal Governors simply fled their posts. Leaving a society without government and/or leadership invites anarchy. Thomas Jefferson complained of this in the Declaration of Independence:

He (i.e., the King) has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

Without their state assemblies in operation and to mitigate “the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within,” Committees of Correspondence, Committees of Inspection and Committees of Safety became shadow state governments. Eventually, provisional assemblies were formed and these sought advice from the Continental Congress, which began meeting in September 1774.

The State of New Hampshire figures prominently in America’s constitutional history: their ratification of our U.S. Constitution on June 21, 1788, was the ninth and final ratification necessary to put the document into effect. The subsequent ratifications, by Virginia, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island, only ensured those states would be participants in the new union rather than bystanders. But few Americans today know that New Hampshire was also the very first colony to enact a new constitution, on January 5th, 1776, a full seven months before the united colonies declared their independence in Philadelphia. New Hampshire had asked the Congress for permission to do so in the Fall of 1775, even suggesting that Congress draft a standard state constitution that each state would then adopt. Congress debated this but decided that there were so many differences in the state governments that had evolved over a hundred or more years that a “one size fits all” approach would simply not work. Congress finally gave New Hampshire and South Carolina the “go-ahead” on November 3rd, 1775.

South Carolina followed New Hampshire’s lead with a new provisional constitution of their own on March 26, 1776. On May 4th., Rhode Island unilaterally declared its independence from Great Britain without finding it necessary to establish a new plan of government; their original charter, stripped of its monarchical references, would serve adequately.

Two days later, Virginia began the fifth in a series of conventions.  Meeting in Williamsburg, the delegates approved a Declaration of Rights on June 12th and their new constitution on June 29th.

Noting the actions of New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Rhode Island, and perhaps trying to “get ahead of the curve,” the Continental Congress on May 10th approved a circular to the thirteen colonies encouraging any of the colonies who had not yet done so to form new provisional governments. After adding a preamble on 15 May, the circular was sent. [vi] On July 2, 1776, the same day Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence was approved in the Congress, New Jersey ratified its new constitution.

All but one of the remaining states approved new constitutions within a year: Delaware (September 11, 1776), Pennsylvania (September 28, 1776), Maryland (November 8, 1776), North Carolina (December 14, 1776), Georgia (February 4, 1777), and New York (April 20, 1777). Connecticut, like Rhode Island, decided its existing charter provided an adequate government. Other than Rhode Island and Connecticut, Massachusetts became the last state to adopt a new constitution, in 1780.[vii]  In the years that followed, several states updated or replaced their provisional constitutions.

As each colony-turned-state began drafting their new constitution they drew upon, in Virginia’s case for instance, the experience of more than 100 years of self-governance. Each colony had an elected assembly, either unicameral or bicameral, a court system, and a Royal Governor appointed by the King but usually also advised by a Governor’s Council. By 1773, however, the aforementioned committees were governing towns and counties, and soon nearly all the colonies had established provincial congresses acting outside royal authority.[viii]

Despite their practical experience in governing, the states found constitution-making from scratch a relatively new, untested process. What features of their colonial government should they retain, which should be modified or abandoned altogether? Hanging over all this constitution-making were the Articles of Confederation. For nearly four years (November 1777 – March 1791) the Articles lacked the unanimous consent they needed to be in official operation, yet there was a war afoot; no time to wait for Maryland to come on board; Congress had no choice but to act as though the Articles were ratified. How well would these new state governments work with the Confederation Congress?  Not well at all as it turned out. But the blame should be placed on the Articles, not the states.

The Continental Congress continued to function as a rudimentary, unicameral central government under the Articles of Confederation, yet in 1776-77, as the states drafted their new plans of government, the confederation’s more glaring deficiencies were yet to be revealed. What did the states come up with?

  • First, what should we call this thing? Although the nomenclature shift from “charter” to “constitution” was slow and inconsistent, eventually all states settled on some variation of that term; Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina termed their initial document “The Constitution or Form of Government”; Pennsylvania: a “Plan or Frame of Government”; Delaware: “The Constitution or System of Government”; Georgia: “Rules and Regulations for the Future Government of the State.”
  • Division of the government into three distinct branches (most of the thirteen State constitutions had this feature). Virginia’s constitution reads: “That the legislative and executive powers of the State should be separate and distinct from the judiciary.”[ix]
  • Checks and balances. “They had encountered evil or unfortunate conditions in the past, in their royal and State governments; and they planned now to avoid a renewal of those conditions by adopting theories to fit the circumstances. So far from intending each of the three branches to be wholly coordinate, they decided to curb any excess of power in any one branch by balancing it with an effective power in another. Where they had experienced an evil in an omnipotent Legislature, they checked it; where they had actually felt the oppression of a too strong Executive, they checked him; where they believed a Court had been too independent, they checked it.”[x]
  • The Franchise. Generally, men (and in some states, women) who owned a certain minimum amount of property could vote. Pennsylvania enfranchised any male who paid taxes.
  • Elective Government. All states established direct popular elections for at least the Lower House of the legislature, with annual elections being the rule. Ten states also chose annual elections for the Senate, whether by the people or the lower house. Eleven states instituted annual elections of the governor, in three states directly or indirectly by the people, in the others by the legislature. Interestingly, South Carolina set a net worth requirement for their governor, the only state to do so.
  • The Legislature. While most colonies had operated with a unicameral legislature up until independence, often augmented by a Governor’s council, all but one state chose a bicameral legislature for their new constitutions, with Pennsylvania being the lone exception (Pennsylvania joined the bicameral states fifteen years later).
  • The Executive. In a rejection of powerful royal governors appointed by the King, the states, at least Initially, made their governors almost powerless. Although problems created by a weak executive soon became apparent and were slowly corrected, “[b]y 1787, only four states had executives worthy of the name.[xi]
  • The Judiciary. Most states instituted an appointed judiciary, often appointed by the Governor (four states) or the Legislature (seven states).
  • Consent of the governed. In all but one state, the new constitution was simply put in effect as though it were a simple law. There were some murmurings, but the citizens generally accepted this “constitution by fiat.” But to be fair to the legislatures involved, they felt themselves to be representatives of the people.

Many states kept the other major features of the governmental structure that served them for so many years. One example from Delaware: “The sheriffs and coroners of the respective counties shall be chosen annually, as heretofore.”

So, what can rightfully be called innovations in the state constitutions? I’ve encountered few that could be called truly radical, but Delaware’s Constitution provides some examples:

  • A Declaration of Rights preceded the Constitution (Virginia led the way in this).
  • In Delaware alone were elected officials impeachable up to 18 months after leaving office.
  • Delaware’s Article 26 prohibited slavery, one of the first states to do so constitutionally.
  • No firearms were allowed to be carried at any election.
  • There was to be no establishment of any one religious sect in preference to another.
  • “No clergyman or preacher of the gospel…shall be capable of holding any civil office in this State.” (other states incorporated this feature as well).
  • The oath before assuming office in Delaware read: “I, ___, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”

What of the various state bills or declarations of rights?  How did they compare with what eventually became the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights?

Beginning with Massachusetts, the Anti-federalists began insisting that their vote for ratification would only materialize if there were a “gentleman’s agreement” that both amendments and articles for a future bill of rights would be accepted and submitted with the ratification instrument. When he arrived at the first Congress under the new U.S. Constitution, James Madison set to work reviewing these submissions from the states and incorporating those with the greatest appeal. It should come as no surprise to find parallels between the state Declarations and what became the U.S. Bill of Rights. But there were exceptions – suggestions that were either rejected by Madison or rejected by the Congress after Madison included them in his draft to the Congress. Notably, several verbatim quotes from Virginia’s Declaration of Rights were rejected by the Congress after appearing in the draft.

In summary, as Willi Paul Adams concludes: “The most significant accomplishment of the American Revolution, apart from the military achievement of independence, was the successful establishment of republican, federal, and constitutional government in a territory so extensive by European standards that conventional wisdom considered only monarchical government suitable for such an empire.”[xii]

Donald Lutz takes a different view: “[t]he (U.S.) Constitution … successfully created a new constitutional system appropriate to new political circumstances, it conserved what was best and central in the earlier American constitutional tradition, and it bult upon and in many important respects derived from state constitutions.”[xiii](emphasis added)

While the American states were intended to be experiments in government, and they have in many respects played that role over our 230+ years, there was still remarkable similarity in the thinking of the drafters of the early state constitutions as they considered what were the ingredients to “good government.” The fact that Massachusetts operates today from their 1780 Constitution, albeit with 120 amendments, remains a testament to the wisdom of America’s founding generation.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

[i] Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism, Louisiana State University Press, 1988. p. 97.

[ii] Donald S. Lutz, Ibid. p`. 99.

[iii] Charles Warren, Congress, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court. 1925

[iv] Resolution of the Confederation Congress, February 21, 1787.

[v] Rhode Island decided to retain the structure of government described in their Royal Charter although the linkage to the British government had of course been severed. Rhode Island operated from this modified charter until 1842.

[vi]Resolved, That it be recommended to the respective assemblies and conventions of the United Colonies, where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs have been hitherto established, to adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular, and America in general.”

[vii] Giving Massachusetts the distinction of having the longest continuously-operating constitution in the world today.

[viii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_government_in_the_Thirteen_Colonies

[ix] Virginia Constitution, 1776, Article 1, Declaration of Rights, Sec. 5.

[x] Charles Warren, Congress, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court. 1925, p. 24

[xi] Donald S. Lutz, Ibid. p. 106

[xii] Willi Paul Adams, The first American Constitutions, 2001, p. 5-6.

[xiii] Donald S. Lutz, Ibid. p. 109

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Adam Carrington
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


We don’t always get it right the first time. Sometimes, experimentation then leads to true success. Those statements prove true for many situations, professional and private. The Founders experienced both with their first forays into constitution-making in the 1770s and the 1780s. Those efforts included the Articles of Confederation, our first national constitution. Our current Constitution replaced it after a short, tumultuous time.

Here, though, we will focus on the efforts made at the state level. The former colonies needed their own governing documents to set the conditions for rule. These first efforts saw some success and some need for serious improvement.

First, these constitutions got the source of rule correct. The constitution for North Carolina (1776), opened by declaring, “That all political power is vested in and derived from the people only.” New Hampshire (1776) based its constitution’s power on the “free suffrages of the people of said colony.” This reasoning aligned with another document from 1776, the Declaration of Independence. That work of the Second Continental Congress declared that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This point itself derived from the Founders’ commitment to human equality, expressed by the fact that no person should rule another without pre-conditioned agreement.

Second, these constitutions in general got the purpose of government right. Massachusetts’ constitution (1780), penned by John Adams, said the purpose of government resided in the power “to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying, in safety and tranquillity, their natural rights and the blessings of life.” This reasoning, too, aligned with the Declaration of Independence. It declared that all human beings possessed “unalienable rights,” meaning claims on others that no one else could infringe. It then said that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Government exists because we have these rights but cannot adequately enjoy them due to threats from others. Political society forms to offer protection of these rights for their better use by each person.

Third, however, these state constitutions tended to struggle to rightly structure their institutions. In particular, they correctly sought a government organized around the concept of separation of powers. WE must understand this point before saying how they struggled with it. This theory said that government power is based on the rule of laws. However, law requires three functions to rule properly.

First, one must make law—the legislative power. Some may say we could stop there. However, that would leave government inadequate to its task. We know that merely saying what someone should do does not always get obedience. Sometimes people will disobey the law even when they know it. Think of many of us on highways with speed limits. That brings in the second task of government under the rule of law. A government must enforce those made laws—the executive power. Executive power brings coercive force to bear in service of the laws, to make sure people obey them and thus do not infringe on rights. Third and finally, a tribunal must exist to interpret and apply the law when disputes arise regarding it—the judicial power. People may know the law but not agree on whether someone broke or followed it. That factual question is what juries often decide in trials. People may agree on what happened but disagree about the wording of the law in relation to what happened. Judges make these calls, trying to apply the law’s words faithfully to the actions in a case before him or her. Together, these three powers ensure the law rules, both our constitutions and the statutes made under them.

Most state constitutions affirmed separation of powers. Article VI of the Maryland constitution’s declaration of rights (1776) said, “That the legislative, executive and judicial powers of government, ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other.” However, many states structured their separation of powers to make the legislative power too strong and the other branches too weak. Doing so did not deny separation of powers on paper. But it did so in practice.

States such as Pennsylvania and Virginia in particular created very weak executives. They quickly came under the control of the state legislatures. James Madison saw this problem in the 1780s. Having seen what happened with state constitutions, Madison wrote in Federalist 48 that, “The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” In some sense, legislative dominance was natural. Legislative power made the laws that other branches must then carry out. That gave it an advantage. Also, in a popular government, people would see themselves more in the numerous, lawmaking legislature than the much different executive or judicial branches.

We must not underestimate the problem with separation of powers failing in practice in these states. The Founders knew and said that any combination of legislative, executive, and judicial power together led to tyranny. It did so because it allowed one entity to take over the laws and start using them as it wished. The law then became a tool for human beings to oppress one another, not a guide and restraint to rule over them.

Thankfully, not all constitutions fell prey to this problem. New York’s 1778 constitution, for example, gave a strong executive that maintained independence from that state’s legislature. It became an example members of the Constitutional Convention looked to for constructing our American President. In other ways, our Founders learned from the other states’ mistakes in how they constructed the national Constitution. They put in a system of checks and balances to work alongside separation of powers. These checks gave each branch ways to limit the power of the other branch. Ambition would check ambition, as Madison would write in Federalist 51. Sometimes, these checks even meant giving a little of one branch’s power to another. Thus, the president’s veto power is a legislative power to make laws. But it helps protect that office against legislative encroachments. Even the powerful Congress possesses the impeachment power, lest a president or judges usurp their power or the Constitution’s.

Thus, we can be thankful we no longer have the state constitutions of the 1770s and 1780s. They needed improved upon. But we also should thank them for the good they did. They set out the proper origin and purpose of government, a commitment we only reinforced through our subsequent history. And they taught us how to structure our government better. They gave us the experience that showed how to separate governmental powers to support the rule of law and by it human equality and liberty.

Adam M. Carrington is an Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. There, he teaches on matters of Constitutional law, American political institutions, and separation of powers. His writing has appeared in such popular forums as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, National Review, and Washington Examiner. His book on the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field was published in 2017 by Lexington. Carrington received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Baylor University. He lives in Hillsdale with his wife and their two daughters.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger


The federal, or United States Constitution, drafted during a hot summer in Philadelphia in 1787 was not the only constitution written in that time period, nor was it the first. Earlier, as the former American colonies became newly formed states, they adopted new constitutions that would later influence other states and even the form of the federal Constitution. These documents became the first statements of how republican government would be framed and put into practice.[1] According to Akhil Reed Amar, within these constitutions were “certain overarching elements that are now so commonplace that we forget how truly revolutionary they were in 1776: writtenness, concision, replicability, rights declaration, democratic pedigree, republican structure, and amendability.”[2]

Most of the new constitutions roughly resembled the colonial charters that they replaced. Connecticut and Rhode Island even retained their colonial charters with only minor modification. But some states began a serious effort to craft their own, unique constitutions which would both empower and constrain state government as well as protect the rights and liberties of their people. New Hampshire drafted its constitution even before independence was declared, and several others followed suit while the revolution was being fought.[3]

Many of those early state constitutions were hastily drafted under adverse conditions. The threat of approaching British troops forced some constitutional conventions to adjourn and reconvene multiple times.   Some states’ constitutional framers were not completely convinced that the revolution would be successful.[4] According to Article 26 of New Jersey’s constitution of 1776, “if Reconciliation between Great Britain and these Colonies should take place, and the latter be again taken under the Protection and Government of the Crown of Great Britain, this Charter shall be null and void, otherwise to remain firm and inviolable.”

There were certain commonalities in the various constitutions, but a number of unique features in particular states. All states provided for some separation of powers which would become a distinctive feature of both state and federal governments. Most states provided for a fairly weak executive, although in many respects the chief executive, almost always referred to as a governor, was more powerful than any executive in the national government under the Articles of Confederation. Many states did not provide for a veto for their governor, and some gave veto authority to a plural body, sometimes called a council of censors.[5]

Most state legislatures were bicameral, although both Pennsylvania and Georgia established a single chamber in their initial constitutions.   There were usually property requirements to hold office in the legislature, with stricter requirements for members of the upper chamber. The lower chambers’ members were directly elected by the voters. This was usually the case for the members of the upper chamber, which today in every state is called a senate, but in Maryland the senators were chosen indirectly with voters selecting electors who would then select the members of the senate. A few states later adopted this method, and a few for a short time used electors to select their governor.   Direct election of the governor was established in only five of the original thirteen states’ initial constitutions. In the remaining states, the legislature would select the chief executive.[6] Under the initial state constitutions, judges were either appointed by the legislatures or by the governor with approval of the legislature or at least the senate. The legislature was generally permitted to change the compensation of judges at will, thus diminishing the courts’ reputations for independence.[7]

The terms for almost all offices in the early constitutions were very short. With one exception, all states limited the length of lower legislative house members’ terms to one year. South Carolina had two-year terms. Most states’ senators served terms of one or two years, as did most governors and many judges. These brief terms were a primary check on the behavior of public officials.[8]

The early state constitutions established suffrage requirements for state voters. Most states required property holding requirements, but those varied dramatically from state to state. Property requirements might also vary for the electors of different offices. To vote in elections for the lower legislative chamber, Pennsylvania and North Carolina offered the franchise to all freemen who paid taxes. To vote for members of the state senate, North Carolina required ownership of fifty acres of land. New Hampshire imposed a poll tax. New Jersey had a minimum property requirement of fifty pounds value that applied to suffrage for all state office.[9] These voter qualification requirements had implications for voting in elections for the federal House of Representatives, once the U.S. Constitution took effect, since Article I, Section 2 stipulates that the voters for the U.S. House of Representatives “shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”

Some, but not all, of the new constitutions included a bill of rights or a declaration of rights. Some of the language in these declarations was largely precatory, with admonitions that state government “ought” not to do certain things, such as impose excessive bail. Other language seems to impose more of a binding commitment on the government. Some of the rhetoric is fairly sweeping, such as the declaration in the Virginia Declaration of Rights that all men are “born free.” The absence of a bill of rights in the federal Constitution was a contentious issue during its ratification. But that issue was resolved with the passage of the first ten amendments. These state declarations became a model for the Bill of Rights, although there were notable differences between the first state declarations and the federal Bill of Rights. The state declarations usually referred to rights to jury trials, the free exercise of religion, and the right to bear arms. The very first state constitutions did not refer to a general freedom of speech, although later constitutions did. Notably, most state constitutions did not include a state equivalent of the federal Establishment Clause.[10] Some constitutions, in fact, authorized state government to support religious institutions[11] and several authorized religious tests for holding certain public offices.[12] The initial constitutions of the original thirteen states did not mention slavery as an institution, although a few rhetorically declared that the British monarch had enslaved the American colonies. Provisions defending, limiting, and abolishing slavery within different states would appear in subsequent constitutional revisions in the coming years.[13]

Some of the early state constitutions were hastily written and did not even provide a provision for amendment. Thus, constitutional changes took place through wholesale re-writes of the documents. Many states drafted entirely new constitutions in the first few years of the republic, and more constitutions were written and ratified as new states were added to the union. Many of those constitutions borrowed from the existing constitutions of other states. For example, about 70% of the 1792 constitution of the new state of Kentucky was taken almost word for word from the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790.[14] Of course, many features of the federal Constitution borrowed somewhat from the state constitutions. Most early state constitutions or amendments were adopted through a legislative process. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was one of the first to require approval by voters. In that instance, the document was voted upon by local towns and townships. Today, most states require a public referendum to approve new constitutions or constitutional amendments.[15]

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Dr. James Humphreys for his comments on an earlier draft of this essay. Any errors are the responsibility of the author.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. Dr. Clinger teaches courses in state and local government, Kentucky politics, intergovernmental relations, regulatory policy, and public administration. Dr. Clinger is also the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board and a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association. He currently resides in Hazel, Kentucky. 

[1] Adams, Willi Paul.. The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era / Willi Paul Adams; Translated by Rita and Robert Kimber; with a Foreword by Richard B. Morris. Expanded ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; 2001.

[2] Amar, Akhil Reed.   The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840.  Basic Books,

2021.

[3] Adams, loc cit.

[4] Squire, Peverill.  The Evolution of American Legislatures: Colonies, Territories, and States, 1619-2009.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.   p.83

[5] Squire, loc cit., p. 87

[6] Lutz, Donald S. “The Theory of Consent in the Early State Constitutions.” Publius 9, no. 2 (1979): 11–42.

[7] Tarr, G. Alan.  “Contesting the Judicial Power in the States.”   Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 35, no. 2 (2012): 643-661.

[8] Lutz, loc cit.

[9] Lutz, loc cit.

[10] Lutz, Donald S. “The State Constitutional Pedigree of the U.S. Bill of Rights.” Publius 22, no. 2 (1992): 19–45.

[11] Vincent Phillip Muñoz, “Church and State in the Founding-Era State Constitutions.”   American Political Thought  4, (Winter 2015):1-38.

[12] Wilson, John K. “Religion Under the State Constitutions, 1776-1800.”  Journal of Church and State.  32, no. 4 (1990): 753-773.

[13] Herron, Paul E. “Slavery and Freedom in American State Constitutional Development.” Journal of Policy History 27, no. 2 (2015): 301-336.

[14] Ireland, Robert M.  “The Kentucky Constitution.”  Clinger, James C., and Michael W. Hail.  Kentucky Government, Politics, and Public Policy. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2013.

[15] Tarr, 2000

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Ken has spent more than two decades working at the highest levels of national policy and communications. He serves as the policy translator for the firm’s communications strategies to ensure that complex issues in areas such as healthcare, transportation, technology, homeland security, and many others, are understandable and actionable for clients’ intended audience(s).

Prior to joining the firm, Ken served as Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee where he served under then-Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska. Ken also served under Committee Chairman John McCain. Ken joined the Committee after serving as an attorney in the Issues and Appeals Division of the law firm Jones Day, and also as Senior Law Clerk to the Honorable Donald Ivers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans’ Claims.

Ken is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and Capital Law School in Columbus, Ohio. He is a proud-native of Cleveland, Ohio, and he is married with two teenage children.

In 2000, Keith realized his vision for a multidimensional communications strategy firm that not only focused on the public relations needs for clients but also designed growth strategies for companies and organizations ranging from small start-up businesses and nonprofits to multinational corporations.

Keith believes that every organization has a story to tell. When the story is told well and strategically, that organization will be better equipped to reach its goals.

A 27-year veteran with top-level experience advising, designing, and managing some of the largest campaigns in US history, Keith has worked for governors, members of Congress, and served in the White House under the first Bush Administration. His work has taken him around the world to dozens of countries and almost every state in the nation. Among other roles, Keith has served as Special Assistant to the Vice President of the United States, Special Assistant to the Governor of New Jersey, consultant to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), consultant with top-secret security clearance to national security agencies, and campaign manager to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in the 2012 presidential campaign.

Among his many career achievements, Keith has worked for six presidential campaigns, managed the messaging priorities for HHS at the request of the Secretary, and orchestrated both the Medicare Part D prescription drug enrollment campaign and the HHS Prevention and Value Driven campaign.

Keith has significant experience working with the media and has been a frequent source of commentary for national news outlets, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News, NPR, and others.

Keith is married to his wife Courtney and holds a B.A. in History from the College of Wooster.

From a very early age, music was an integral part of Wil Gravatt’s life. Wil’s mother worked for the legendary Capitol Records; and he was exposed to the sounds of the Beatles, Janis Joplin, Buck Owens, and Waylon Jennings to name a few. His first love was the drums; teaching himself to play and forming his first band when he was only 14. More of a rocker in the early years, Wil switched to country music in his late teens while in college. He bought an acoustic guitar and taught himself to play by listening to BB King, Bruce Springsteen, and others.

Wil released a solo record “Ready to Cross That Line” in the late 90’s to critical acclaim. In the early 2000’s Wil put together a band of high-caliber musicians and started performing many energetic shows to a packed house at the now-defunct Whitey’s in Arlington, VA. Eventually they released “Live at Whitey’s.” It’s a staple of the collection of many country music fans.

In 2005 and 2009 the band was invited by Presidents Bush and Obama to perform at their respective Inaugural Balls – quite an honor for any band. The Wil Gravatt Band has shared the stage with Robert Earl Keen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pat Green, Little Big Town, ZZ Top and myriad other renowned artists. Based in Washington, DC they continue to perform 75+ shows a year to long-time fans and new recruits to their unique brand of high-energy Honky Tonk music.

The band features former Danny Gatton sideman Steve Wolf on bass, Gary Crockett on drums and vocals, Jimbo Byram on steel guitar, Bobby Spates on fiddle, and Wil on vocals and guitar. A new album of original music recorded in Nashville is slated for release in late 2016.

Peter Roff is a longtime Washington, D.C. writer and commentator whose work has appeared in U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, and other publications. He appears frequently on radio and television and holds fellowships with several public policy organizations. He can be reached by email at RoffColumns@GMAIL.com. Follow him on Twitter @PeterRoff.

At one time the political director of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, Mr. Roff planned and directed political education programs that trained tens of thousands of candidates for public office and political activists. Prior to his years at GOPAC, he spent nearly five years as executive director of Americans for Tax Reform, the organization that created the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.”

Leaving politics in the late 1990s, he began a new career as a journalist, spending five years as the senior political writer for United Press International.

While at UPI he regularly filled the wire with breaking news and analysis, working on some of the biggest political stories of the 20th century including the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack and the election of George W. Bush in one of the narrowest political contests in U.S. history.

A frequent commentator on politics and public issues, Mr. Roff has appeared on a variety of radio and television programs including “CBS News Overnight,” “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” “The Dennis Miller Show,” “Hannity & Colmes,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” “C-SPAN’s Washington Journal,” and even once appeared as himself on the hit ABC comedy “Spin City.”

Mr. Roff’s observations have been quoted in major publications including USA TodayThe New York Times, the online version of The Wall Street JournalThe Washington Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and National Review.

A 1988 graduate of The George Washington University, Mr. Roff has lived in Northern Virginia for much of the last 25 years along with his children and his beagle Watson.

Nashville songwriter Steve Dean has co-written six number one hits, including the most played song on country radio in 2007, “Watching You” for Rodney Atkins, the Grammy nominated “It Takes A little Rain” for The Oak Ridge Boys, “Southern Star” for Alabama, “Round About Way” for George Strait, “Walk On” for Reba McEntire and “Heart’s Aren’t Made To Break” for Lee Greenwood.

Among Steve’s musical influences are The Beatles, The Byrds, The Eagles, Buck Owens,
Johnny Cash, and Roger Miller.

Steve’s songs have been recorded by LoCash Cowboys, Joe Nichols, Dierks Bentley, Lee Ann Womack, Waylon Jennings, The Roys, Pure Prairie League, John Michael Montgomery, Point of Grace, Conway Twitty and others.

Steve has earned eight BMI Songwriter Awards, two BMI Publisher Awards, two BMI 2 Million Air Awards and three BMI 1 Million Air Awards.

Steve’s song “Walk On” is on the Grammy winning CD, Reba’s Greatest Hits Volume 2.
Steve’s song “Expecting Good Things”, is the title track to Jeff and Sheri Easter’s Grammy nominated CD “Expecting Good Things”.

As a singer/songwriter, Steve lets his audience in on a behind the scenes look at, and a unique opportunity to hear the stories surrounding the inspiration for and why these songs were written.

Mark Rodgers is the Principal of The Clapham Group, a company that seeks to influence culture upstream of the political arena. Mark served as the third-ranking Republican leadership staffer in the U.S. Senate for six years overseeing strategic planning and strategic communications. He also served as a high profile chief of staff to Senator Rick Santorum, working on Capitol Hill for a total of 16 years. He was known on the Hill for his work on such issues as poverty alleviation and global AIDS, as well as protecting life at its most vulnerable stages. Mark is a published writer and a speaker at large and small gatherings on the topics of faith and public life, culture and caring for the least of these. His work over the years has involved consulting with some of the largest foundations in the world, Fortune 500 companies, internationally known music artists and filmmakers, and even famous comic book creators. He is a published writer and a speaker on the topics of faith and public life, culture and caring for the least of these.  His work over the years includes outreach to “culture creators,” and he has worked closely with artists from diverse fields including computer gaming, graphic novels, film and music.  Mark is also a social entrepreneur, and enjoys finding ways to help people “do good while doing well.”

He earned a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from Penn State, and attended Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. Mark is married to Leanne, and together they have four children and four grandchildren. Mark resides in Burke, Virginia.

Gail MacKinnon joined the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in November 2017 and is the current Senior Executive Vice President for Global Policy & Government Affairs. A skilled senior executive with experience in public policy advocacy, issues management, and strategy development, Gail oversees the MPA’s government relations portfolio and policy agenda, as well as its international advocacy and policy, including in the APAC and EMEA regions.

Previously, Gail served as Executive Vice President, Government Relations for Time Warner Cable, where she led all aspects of federal, state, and local government relations for the telecommunications company. She positioned the company as a trusted advisor to government leaders on a range of public policy issues; including video reform, cybersecurity, tax, and privacy.

Prior to her role at Time Warner Cable, Gail was Senior Vice President of Government Relations at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. She has held senior positions at Viacom, CBS Inc., Telecommunications Inc., and Turner Broadcasting. She began her career on Capitol Hill, serving as Legislative Director for Congressman Jack Fields (R-TX).

In 2016, Gail helped co-found WE Capital, a consortium of women in the Washington, D.C. business community investing in female-led startups focused on social impact work. She was named one of Washingtonian’s Most Powerful Women in 2019. Gail received a Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.

Born and raised in Dallas Texas, Moses Uvere was the first born to Patience and Gabriel Uvere, immigrants who came to America to seek “the American Dream.” Being brought up by parents from a different country, Moses witnessed firsthand what “the American Dream” was all about and the struggle to achieve a better life. Living in poverty-stricken areas Moses had an up-close view of growing up poor, sharing clothes with his brothers, wearing hand-me-downs, and not getting much during the holidays. Moses was an active kid who always played sports and was a fine football prospect in high school where his career was cut short. Due to the fact that his mom left the family, he the eldest of the four had to grow up quickly to help his dad raise his two little brothers and his little sister. “The things in my life didn’t break me, but made me the man I am today.” Music had always been a part of his life and after being in the group minority authority for a few years, Moses struck out on his own. He met up with Dustin Cavazos who produced his first release, From Worse to Better. (2008) The album is a reflection of past experiences that he has seen and lived. A few years later, (2011) Uvere signed a record deal with Universal / Motown producer Geoff Rockwell under the imprint of chaos creative and released an album entitled Mind the Gap which received critical acclaim. Following that album, Uvere had his highest-profile release yet with Never Been Better which led him to be in front of 13.9 million people (according to anchor marketing), with his latest release Kingdom of the Fallen. The album reached the top 100 of the iTunes charts and was followed up with a performance at the historic Klyde Warren Park as the first Christian hip hop artist in its history to be invited as a headliner. Each project of his musical offerings was influenced by artists such as Kanye West, Common, Pigeon John, Issac Hayes, and Musiq Soulchild. He is a husband, a father of three, and currently the Lead Pastor at the Vine of Life in Garland, TX.

Shane Tews is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on cybersecurity issues, including privacy and data protection, next-generation networking (5G), the Internet of Things, international internet governance, digital economic policy, information and communications technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse, cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens, and emerging technologies. She is also president of Logan Circle Strategies, a strategic advisory firm.

She is vice chair of the board of directors of the Internet Education Foundation; chair of the Internet Society’s Washington, DC, chapter; member of the board of SeedAI; chair of the board of directors at TechFreedom; and chair of the Dynamic Coalition on the Internet of Things of the Internet Governance Forum.

Previously, Ms. Tews served as co-chair of the Internet Governance Forum USA. She was a member of the board of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the Information Technology Industry Council, and Global Women’s Innovation Network. She also managed internet security and digital commerce issues as vice president of global policy for Verisign. She began her career in the George H. W. Bush White House as a deputy associate director in the Office of Cabinet Affairs and later moved to Capitol Hill as a legislative director for Rep. Gary Franks (R-CT).

Ms. Tews studied communications at Arizona State University and American University, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in general studies with an emphasis on communications and political science.

Experience

  • Logan Circle Strategies: President, 2014–present
  • Vrge (formerly 463 Communications): Outside Policy Consultant, 2015–19
  • 463 Communications: Principal and Chief Policy Officer, 2012–15
  • Internet Education Foundation: Vice Chair, Board of Directors, 2011–present; Member, Board of Directors, 2004–11
  • Verisign: Vice President of Global Public Policy and Government Relations, 2001–12
  • Distilled Spirits Council of the United States: Vice President for Federal Affairs, 1997–2001
  • Citizens for a Sound Economy and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation: Director of Government Relations, 1995–97
  • Office of Congressman Gary A. Franks (R-CT), US House of Representatives: Legislative Director, 1992–95
  • The White House: Deputy Associate Director, Office of Cabinet Affairs, 1991–92
  • US Department of Transportation: Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, 1991; Staff Assistant to the Secretary of Transportation for Scheduling and Advance, 1989–91

Education

BA, public relations and political science, American University
Attended Arizona State University

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams


The Americans of the founding period were a strongly Protestant people of various denominations including dissenting Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists. Some historians have estimated that Protestants made up over 98% of the American population. Their Protestantism was characterized by a strong dissenting tradition against religious and civil tyranny as well as a strong streak of individualism.

Their Protestantism—especially the Puritan tradition—was also exemplified by appeals to the natural law in its covenant theology that was consistent with Lockean social compact theory. Covenant theology caused Americans to view themselves as a Chosen People of a new Israel who formed a covenant with God. The natural law of covenant theology was consistent with both reason and revelation as they reconciled their reason and faith in the natural law and natural rights philosophy of the American Revolution.

The American founders drew from a variety of traditions in arguing for their natural rights and liberties. Ancient thought from Greece and Rome, the English tradition, and the ideas of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers combined with Protestantism for a rich tapestry. While the Enlightenment provided a strong influence on the founders, the contribution of their religious beliefs has often been downplayed or ignored. The average American colonial farmer or artisan may not have read John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government or ancient philosophy, but they heard dissenting religious ideals and Lockean principles from the pulpit at religious services.

Toward the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson had cause to reflect on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, a document which later influenced the United States Constitution. He wrote to Henry Lee in 1825 about the purpose of the Declaration:

“This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent…it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day.”

The “harmonizing sentiments” of the 1760s and 1770s supported a natural law opposition to British tyranny in the American colonies. James Otis was one of the earliest articulators of natural law resistance. In 1764, he wrote, “Should an act of Parliament be against any of his natural laws, which are immutably true, their declaration would be contrary to eternal truth, equity, and justice, and consequently void.”

In 1774, Thomas Jefferson expressed the same sentiments in his Summary View of the Rights of British America. In the pamphlet, he wrote that God was the author of natural rights inherent in each human being. The Americans were “a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate… the God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”

A year later, a young Alexander Hamilton wrote a pamphlet, Farmer Refuted, in which he eloquently described the divine source of universal rights. “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

These “expressions of the American mind” were common formulations of natural rights that influenced the Declaration of Independence. The four mentions of God in the document demonstrate their understanding of the divine, but it also showed that God was the author of good government according to natural law.

First, the Declaration appeals to the “separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” This first mention of God is that of Protestant and Enlightenment natural law. They saw God as the author of truth in the moral order of the universe. This moral order defined their thinking about republican self-government.

Second, the Declaration asserts that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” God is the Creator and author of natural rights in this formulation. Since rights are from a higher authority, no earthly power can violate an individual’s inherent rights. Interestingly, God here acts as a supreme legislator who makes the natural law and grants natural rights.

Third, the Declaration appealed to “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.” God is a judge who authored the idea of justice and who judges human actions. God here represents the judicial branch of government.

Fourth, the Declaration stated that, “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Americans believed that God was a providential God who intervened in human affairs and protected his Chosen People. This conception of God represents the executive branch of government.

The Declaration of Independence was a reflection that the American natural rights republic was rooted in the natural law. Reason and divine revelation supported the natural law that shaped a good government built upon the understanding of human nature and the rights given to human beings by God.

In Federalist #1, Alexander Hamilton explained the entire purpose of establishing free government based upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He stated that Americans had the opportunity and responsibility to form good government by “reflection and choice,” not by “accident and force.” The United States was founded uniquely upon a set of principles and ideals.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln had occasion to reflect upon the principles of the American Founding. Using a biblical metaphor, he thought that the Declaration of Independence was an “apple of gold” because it contained the foundational principles of the new country. The Constitution was the “picture of silver” framing the apple with the structures of republican government, thus preserving the purpose of the Declaration. In the mind of Lincoln—and those of the Founders—an inextricable link bound together the two documents in creating a free government.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: J. Eric Wise


Everything comes back to the Declaration of Independence. In a way, the seeds of the Federalist Anti-federalist dispute in the framing of the Constitution were sown in the Declaration.

The Declaration of Independence established the basis of just government as consent as against the divine right of kings. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them.”

Consent leads to forms of majority rule, although it must be a reasonable and restrained majority which respects the rights of the minority. Consent requires some kind of deliberation for the sake of forming consensus, and public deliberation over a proposed charter leads to disputes for and against.

But that is not the sole connection. The Declaration of Independence establishes a right of revolution. Whenever a government becomes abusive of the ends of just government it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. Revolution is an extra-legal right. The oppressions of King George – “[a] Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant” – entitled the colonists to rebel, illegally.

The Declaration of Independence – a “unanimous Declaration of thirteen united States of America” – also stated that “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”  A new nation was born that was having a hard time saying clearly whether it was one nation or many. Babes lisp, and so it was with the young United States.

The first charter of the United States was entitled the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Confederation comes from the Latin con meaning “with or together” and foederare meaning treaty or league. Again, the early babble of United States suffered some polysemy. It was a union that was perpetual but also a treaty of several states.

The Articles of Confederation, as a practical matter, were inadequate. Among other things, the new government was unable to enforce its laws directly and the scope of its powers was narrow, particularly in commercial and financial matters. The result was a chaos of creditor-debtor disputes and a moribund economy that began to threaten the viability of the United States. Both France and Britain anticipated the collapse of the new United States, and were eager to pick up the pieces.

A convention was called in 1787 to repair the defects of the Articles.  The convention produced a proposal for an entirely new charter, the Constitution, to replace the Articles. The Constitution would have many new features, including drawing its authority directly from the people rather than a compact of states, exclusive coinage and bankruptcy power, and a radically new executive power embodied in a president of the United States. It also proposed that it would be deemed adopted when ratified by only nine states.

This last proposal flatly contradicted the Articles. The Articles required a unanimous vote of its member states for amendment. Like the revolution the proposal for a new Constitution, though an appeal to ballots and not bullets, was illegal.

The ground for the adoption of the Constitution was similar to that of the Revolution, an appeal to the “necessity” and (echoing the Declaration) the “law of nature and nature’s God.” The Articles were incompetent and had to be “thrown off” to for the “preservation” the country. Federalist 43.

In politics it is important to pick the name of your movement.  If you do not, your political adversaries will pick it for you. The proponents of the new Constitution, led by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, took the name Federalist. Opposition to the new Constitution was labeled Anti-federalist, locking in rhetorical disadvantage.

Anti-federalists argued with some alarm that the new Constitution permitted the national government to resort to force. Federalists argued that the states were protected from invasion by the Federal power by their militias and from domestic insurrection or invasion by the new federal government. Federalist 28.

The Anti-federalists argued that the confederal form should have been preserved. The Federalists argued that the proposed government was “partly federal and partly national.” Federalist 39.

Anti-federalists argued that the convention did not have the authority to adopt the Constitution. The Federalists argued that the new Constitution was “necessary.” Federalist 40.

Anti-federalists argued that the proposed Constitution was too difficult to amend, and that it should be amended whenever a department of the government exceeds its authority. Federalists rebutted that frequent appeals to the people would undermine the authority and reasonableness of the new government. Federalist 49.

Anti-federalist argued that the judiciary was too independent.  Federalists argued that the new Constitution’s judiciary was its least dangerous branch, and that unconstitutional judicial decisions could be ignored. Federalist 78.

The Federalists prevailed, but experience has at times exposed weaknesses in the Federalist’s arguments. The federal government has overtime supplanted the states in their power. Appeals to the people to amend their Constitution have not just become infrequent, but have ceased almost altogether: The Constitution has not been amended “soup to nuts” in more than 50 years. And this has happened as the judicial power has expanded under the doctrine of a “living constitution” to displace the amendment function; this raises the question whether the Constitution can continue to be the people’s document if the courts, and not they, are its author in key respects.

J. Eric Wise is a partner in the law firm of Alston & Bird.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Tom Hand
Declaration of Independence painting by John Trumbull depicting the five-man drafting committee, left to right: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress. The original hangs in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.


The Declaration of Independence was America’s first and, arguably, greatest document. It not only laid out the reasons why we should leave the British Empire but also eloquently explained a different set of rules by which a nation should be governed. The background leading to the creation of this document is critical to understanding its content.

At the end of the French and Indian War (or Seven Year’s War) in 1763, the British Empire’s treasury was depleted due to the terrible expense of the war. Although it had been fought in several parts of the world, King George and Parliament decided to recover much of the cost on the backs of their American subjects.

Parliament enacted the Stamp Act (taxes on most printed materials) in 1765 and then the Townshend Act (taxes to fund royal officials, as well as language reinforcing Parliament’s right to tax the colonies) in 1767. While Parliament felt it reasonable that the colonies share of the cost of the recent war, the colonists felt quite different.

To understand where the Americans were coming from, it is important to understand that for much of our early history the British Empire had neglected their American colonies. As a result, Americans had developed a strong independent streak. Out of necessity, our early leaders created their own assemblies and learned how to govern themselves.

Colonial officials reasoned that since the colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, that legislative body did not have the right to levy taxes on them. Not surprisingly, tensions rose over the course of the next few years as the Americans resisted and found ways to avoid paying these new taxes.

Following the Gaspee Affair in 1772 in which colonists burned a British ship, and the Boston Tea Party in 1773 when the Sons of Liberty threw a shipload of tea into Boston Harbor, Parliament attempted to assert its authority with a series of bills known in America as the Intolerable Acts (in England they were called the Coercion Acts).

They essentially stripped Massachusetts of most of the freedoms it had enjoyed since its founding. The harshness of these acts first surprised and then outraged people in all thirteen colonies. People reasoned if England could do that to one, they could do it to all.

To address this crisis and craft a response, colonial leaders convened the First Continental Congress in September 1774. They met in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, and delegates attended from 12 of the 13 colonies; Georgia chose not to attend. They decided to impose a boycott on British goods and send King George a list of their grievances, but their petition fell on deaf ears.

As one month led into the next in 1775, matter grew worse. On April 19, American militiamen first fought British regulars at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and on May 10 colonial leaders convened the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Most of the representatives still hoped for a reconciliation with England. After all, most still thought of themselves as English. Their ancestors had come over from England, their laws were based on English laws, and we spoke the same language.

Not surprisingly, the first point of business for Congress was to try to forge a reconciliation with England, and John Dickinson led this effort. Because most colonists viewed Parliament and not the King as the real problem, they sent a second petition, the so-called Olive Branch petition, directly to King George in July 1775. They soon found out they did not have a sympathetic ear with the King.

On August 23, in reaction to the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, Parliament passed the Proclamation of Rebellion which formally declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. By the time Congress’ petition arrived at court in late August, King George refused to even receive it, and the chance for reconciliation was essentially at an end.

Notified in late 1775 of these developments, John Adams and others who saw independence as the only choice for the colonies began to agitate for it. Then, in January 1776, Thomas Paine, an Englishman newly arrived in America, published a pamphlet called “Common Sense” which advocated for complete independence from England. His timing was perfect.

Much like Harriett Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” crystallized the abolitionist movement in the 1850s, Paine’s pamphlet presented to the American people a sound and well-reasoned argument for why separation from England made sense. Ideas that only months before were almost too extreme to discuss were now seen as the best alternative. The table was now set for the great debate to reach its inevitable conclusion.

The discussions were intense, but by late June enough progress had been made toward securing the votes that Congress formed a “Committee of Five” to draft a resolution declaring independence. This committee which included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Jefferson wanted Adams to draft the document. However, Adams insisted that Jefferson do the writing with Adams editing it as needed.

On July 2, the Congress approved the Lee Resolution, introduced by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, calling for independence from Great Britain. The Committee of Five promptly submitted its declaration document to Congress which they approved, after several modifications, on July 4. Thus, in the minds of the delegates, and soon in the eyes of the world, our nation was born.

The words contained in the Declaration of Independence were some of the most revolutionary ideas ever printed. When Congress approved the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” they were going where no government had gone before.

The preamble further declared that “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Given that, in 1776, hereditary monarchies ruled all the nations of the earth, this too was a radical doctrine.

The Declaration of Independence also listed 27 grievances the King had committed against his subjects in America, essentially justifying our decision to separate from England.

These complaints ranged from “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly” to “He has made Judges dependent on his will” to “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.” Taken together, they made a compelling case for leaving the British Empire.

Ultimately, the American colonists in 1776 were left with two choices. They could either completely submit to the authority of Parliament and the Crown, becoming vassals of England, or declare complete independence and thereby control their own destiny. Time has shown that they chose wisely.

So why should the background to the Declaration of Independence matter to us today? It is important to know that our Forefathers tried to reconcile with the mother country and that rebellion was not our preferred choice.

We also must recognize the intensity of the debate and the widely varying opinions regarding the proper course of action to take and understand that our Forefathers agonized over their decision.

Finally, we must appreciate that these words revolutionized the way that not only Americans but also the rest of the world viewed the role of government and the very concept of where the right to govern originates.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page, Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


Prior to the drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution, our founders had nearly two hundred years of colonial governance from which to draw lessons regarding both the proper, and the improper, management of such territories, and the best way to add new lands to a governmental structure.

Among the threads that run through the Constitution, the assurance of fair and equal treatment of all citizens and the necessity of “due” process as a way to protect those citizens’ rights is repeated in a myriad of ways.

When it came to colonization and settlement, the founders could draw on the history of Great Britain’s management of the colonies (and, in many cases, their mismanagement) to ensure that the deficiencies in British governance could be corrected and their mistakes not repeated.

A central problem was consistency in the development of colonies and the application of British law. Colonial charters, the documentation actually allowing British subjects to establish colonies in North America, could be granted by the King (directly) or by the King’s officers, and they were granted to both corporate entities and groups of individuals.

But these charters could also be revoked, and most colonial charters were, at some point or another, revoked and reinstated by the Crown.

If Americans were going to settle the western portions of the recently-unionized states, they would have to be guaranteed, under the law, that the same kinds of arbitrary actions that plagued British colonial governance would not be continued by an American government.

Not all were even in agreement about such expansion (that became encompassed in the 19th century as the Monroe Doctrine. An Anti-federalist, writing under the name Brutus I in response to the Federalist papers written by James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton under the pseudonym Publius, voiced deep concern about American empire building.

Jonathan Marshall, writing for Inquiry Magazine in 1980 (and republished in The Journal of Libertarian Studies) wrote:

“[T]he Antifederalist world view was profoundly shaped by their abhorrence of “empire”-that is to say, the rule of a vast territory by a strong, consolidated government. In rejecting the Federalist dream of a glorious American empire, they challenged the notion that the confederated states had to mimic European empires to safeguard their independence. Ultimately, the Antifederalists insisted, empire could be achieved only at the expense of their most cherished and hard-won prize: liberty.”

That skepticism is certainly shared when viewed in the context of another failure of British rule—the abandonment of the principle of “salutary neglect.” Discussed at length by one of the earliest historians of the American Revolution, Dr. David Ramsay (a revolutionary-era politician and physician), the concept is straightforward: the best way for a colony to prosper is for the parent nation to take a “light touch” in terms of direct governance, to let the colonists themselves make decisions and solve problems.

As the American colonies grew more powerful and determined to make decisions on their own, the British crown became more determined to bring them to heel. This only served to frustrate and anger the colonists, and eventually led them to declaring themselves free and independent states.

The Constitution addresses these concerns squarely—most clearly in Article IV, Section 3, more commonly known as the Admissions Clause.

The clause has two parts—the first, granting power to Congress to admit new states. The second, a restriction on that power, saying that Congress cannot create a new state by dividing the territory of an existing state or by joining two states together, without the consent of the legislatures of those states.

Both are essential to the practice of good governance. The people of the United States and potential states, i.e., territories know that there is one body with the power to admit states into the Union. It cannot be done or denied arbitrarily by a President, or the President’s bureaucratic functionary.

The second clause is almost more important than the first since it essentially prevents a state from being punished or the federal government otherwise abusing its powers by tearing apart states or forcing them to join with other states against their will. There has to be agreement from that state’s duly elected legislative representatives.

It is, essentially, another form of Due Process, protecting the rights of these citizens from arbitrary or capricious behavior on the part of the Federal Government.

Interestingly enough, though not outlined in the Constitution, the process for newly-settled lands to become states has largely been codified over time. Public lands are declared U.S. territory. Through a variety of means, the people in that territory vote to declare their intent to become a state, and then Congress passes an “enabling act” legislating that the territory becomes a state.

One aspect of this, for many of the states that entered after the middle of the 19th century, was to declare that all “unappropriated public lands” within those territories to be the property of the United States itself.  This was a way of “clearing title” to those lands for the purpose of encouraging further settlement (clear title, as the property rights scholars Hernando DeSoto and Richard Pipes have both written, is an essential element of strong protection of private property). It is also the reason why, as a percentage of a state’s territory, so much more land is owned by the federal government west of the Mississippi River (which has had huge implications for the balance of power between federal and state governments for the last half-century).

The British government had both successes and failures when it came to their management of the North American colonies. The authors of the Constitution learned from those mistakes and crafted clear language to safeguard against making them again.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Tom Hand


The Colony of Virginia was established at Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607 as a for-profit venture by its investors. To bring order to the province, Governor George Yeardley created a one-house or unicameral General Assembly on July 30, 1619.

This body of men was comprised of an appointed Governor and six Councilors, as well as 22 men called burgesses (a burgess was a freeman of a borough in England). Most importantly, the burgesses were elected by the eligible voters (free white males) in the colony, thus making this General Assembly the first elected representative legislature in British America.

In 1642, Governor William Berkeley split the legislature into two houses initiating a bicameral assembly, with the elected representatives in the newly created House of Burgesses and the appointed Councilors of State meeting separately.

It was here, the leading men of Virginia met and debated the great issues of the day. Until the 1760s, this legislative body largely determined how the colony would be governed, including how its citizens would be taxed.

This began to change in 1765 when Parliament passed the Stamp Act which imposed a tax on paper products such as newspapers, pamphlets, and legal documents. Importantly, it represented the first time Parliament placed a direct tax on the colonies in North America.

This revenue grab did not go over well with the colonists who were used to controlling their own internal affairs. The debates and the documents that flowed from the House of Burgesses after that act spearheaded our nation’s drive for independence from England.

On May 29, 1765, Patrick Henry introduced a series of resolutions known as the Virginia Resolves. These declarations essentially denied Parliament’s right to tax the colonies since the citizens in America did not have representation in England.

By late June, many newspapers throughout the colonies had printed these resolutions which inflamed the passions of people. The “no taxation without representation” sentiments led to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, marking the first time the colonies joined forces against the Mother Country.

The years passed and the relationship with England continued to deteriorate as the Mother Country introduced more burdensome legislation. In 1774, after Parliament passed the Boston Port Act which closed the port of Boston, the House of Burgesses again voiced their opposition in a series of resolves. The result was that Governor Lord Dunmore dissolved the assembly.

However, the Burgesses would not be denied their right to assemble and immediately convened in a public house called the Raleigh Tavern. Here, they called for a series of five Virginia Conventions to meet in defiance of the governor.

It was at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, that Patrick Henry gave his most famous speech by concluding, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, God Almighty! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

In addition to Patrick Henry (Burgess from 1765-1776), the men who passed through the House of Burgesses was a group that had an outsized influence in the founding of our great nation. Its alumni list is a “Who’s Who” of Founding Fathers:

George Mason (Burgess from 1758-1760) who wrote the Fairfax Resolves in 1774 which denied Parliament’s authority over the colonies, and in 1776 formulated Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, a precursor to our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.

Thomas Jefferson (Burgess from 1769-1774) whose 1774 paper A Summary View of the Rights of British America clearly expressed our grievances against King George and, of course, he authored our landmark Declaration of Independence in 1776.

George Washington (Burgess from 1758 to 1775) who commanded our Continental Army in the American Revolution, was our first President, and became the Father of our Country.

With the advent of the new Virginia Constitution in 1776, the House of Burgesses was finally dissolved. In its place, the new state government formed an elected Senate and an elected House of Delegates, which continues to govern the Old Dominion today. In 1780, Virginia moved its capital to Richmond, ending Williamsburg’s long run as the center of politics in America.

Sadly, the unity of these deeply patriotic men ended within a few years of achieving our independence in 1783. Defeating the British had been a cause on which all the former Burgesses could agree. With that task accomplished, they began to splinter over how to run the United States.

The Articles of Confederation under which the country operated provided a weak central government and allowed the states a great deal of autonomy. This system did not vest any taxation authority in the central government or allow for a federal standing army or navy. Many worried our new nation could not survive without a stronger federal authority.

Consequently, leaders organized a convention for the fall of 1787 to meet in Philadelphia to address issues with the Articles. Known at the time as the Philadelphia Convention but to posterity as the Constitutional Convention, the delegates did more than fix the Articles; they designed our new Constitution.

Former Burgesses like George Washington who saw the need for a strong central government were called Federalists. They argued that without this change the nation would be virtually defenseless in the face of foreign aggression. Additionally, the numerous currencies and laws of the thirteen states would tend to destabilize the nation, possibly leading to its dissolution.

Those former Burgesses that opposed the new Constitution, Anti-federalists like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, worried that creating a powerful central authority would simply replace the tyranny of the king with a different tyrant. These men preferred local control and felt states should be governed as each one saw fit.

By 1796, a mere thirteen years after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the nation had divided into two deeply antagonistic political parties. These men, once so unified in thought and action when they were fighting for our freedom, were never able to bridge the divide regarding the proper direction for America after that freedom had been secured.

So why should the history of the House of Burgesses matter to us today?

In its day, many of the men who assembled there later assembled on the national stage to lead our country. Throughout the crisis with England, it was an eloquent and vocal proponent for American liberty and many of the ideas found in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were first debated and refined in their meetings.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page, Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

 

 

 

Guest Essayist: Tom Hand


When the English began to settle North America in the 1600s, the leaders of the various colonies had different motives. While all colonies exercised their authority in the King’s name, they were not created in the same mold, and some had more autonomy than others. In fact, there were three different types of colonies: royal, self-governing, and proprietary.

Royal colonies were owned and completely administered by the Crown. The Governor and his Council were appointed by the King and these lands existed simply to generate wealth for England. Although few land grants began as a royal colony, by the American Revolution, eight of the thirteen colonies were this type: Virginia (converted in 1624), New Hampshire (1679), New York (1685), Massachusetts (1691), New Jersey (1702), South Carolina (1719), North Carolina (1729), and Georgia (1753).

Self-governing colonies were formed when the King granted a charter to a joint-stock company which set up its own independent governing system. These organizations were essentially corporations formed to make money for the investors.

Like the entrepreneurs of today, a few men came up with an idea, presented it to their friends and associates, and asked them to invest in their plan. Their organizations had wide latitude to appoint leaders and run their business as they wished. Virginia, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were all initially established as self-governing colonies.

However, these colonies soon found out that their independence was on a short leash. If the colony was poorly administered like in Virginia or if the people proved troublesome like in Massachusetts, these dominions were converted into a royal colony with all the restrictions that came with it. By the time of the American Revolution, only Rhode Island and Connecticut, retained their original self-governing charter. The King always had the final say.

Proprietary colonies were land grants given by the King to one or a few favored men called proprietors. They in turn were to administer these areas for the Crown but in a manner to be determined by them. The proprietors appointed the Governor and his Council, determined the laws (but they had to be approved by the Crown), and ran the territory as they saw fit. While the King had the ultimate authority, the rule of the proprietors resembled that of a monarch.

Maryland was an example of a proprietary colony. It was established by Cecil Calvert in 1632 upon receiving a land grant from King Charles I. Lord Calvert, also known as the 2nd Baron Baltimore, wanted to develop a land where Catholics could openly profess their faith without fear of retribution.

After several starts and stops, settlers for this new colony finally arrived in 1634. The colony prospered and in 1649 Maryland passed the Maryland Toleration Act, the first law establishing religious tolerance in British North America. Although Lord Calvert never visited Maryland, the Calvert family managed the province well and never had their charter revoked.

Not surprisingly, these proprietary colonies which operated without a great deal of input from England, were not as anxious to sever ties with the Mother Country as those with more stringent controls. For example, the Pennsylvania Assembly had to replace five of its initial nine delegates to the Second Continental Congress to get a majority of delegates to be in favor of independence.

Delaware, which was another proprietary colony, had to send an extra delegate, Caesar Rodney, on a midnight 80-mile ride to Philadelphia to break the tie in their delegation so the state could vote for independence. By the time of the American Revolution, only Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania remained as proprietary colonies, none of which were hot beds of rebellion.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should the way in which colonies were organized and governed matter to us today?

The three types of colonies with their different systems of government generated varying attitudes towards English rule and our independence. Understanding these conflicting feelings helps us to better appreciate why not all Americans wanted to break from the Mother Country.

What we see is that those colonies left to govern themselves were fairly content living under English rule and not as anxious to break from England. In retrospect, England may have been wiser to allow all the colonies to operate with more autonomy and to manage them in a less oppressive manner.

SUGGESTED READING: If you are interested in a deeper dive into this subject, Colonial America: A History to 1763 is an excellent book on background, founding, and development of the thirteen British North American colonies. It was written by Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard and originally published in 1992, but it was updated in 2011.

PLACES TO VISIT: The statehouse in Annapolis, Maryland, is an incredibly beautiful building and a great example of architecture from our colonial era. It is the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use and is the only statehouse ever used as the nation’s capitol. Seeing it and the rest of this historically significant seaside city would be well worth your time.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page, Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Adam Carrington


In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” He contrasts these persons with him who “hears these words of mine and does not do them.” This latter man built his house “on the sand.” When rain and storms come, the first house stands firm while the second, not only falls, “but great was the fall of it.”

Americans must ask upon what kind of foundation they built their political house. What first principles created us, define us, and thus should continue to guide us going forward? Some have posited that our rightful foundation rests on a literal rock—Plymouth Rock. By saying so, they mean that the Puritans who came to New England in 1620 defined our Founding and should prescribe our tomorrow.

These persons point to the Mayflower Compact, the charter those settlers signed as the basis for their political community. This document clearly displays the political ends which these Puritans pursued and the means they established in that pursuit. We must declare them and then assess them. We thereby must ask whether this foundation of Plymouth Rock in 1620 is in fact our own as Americans in 2022.

The Compact says that it seeks to “plant” a colony. More importantly, it states what it intends to do in establishing that political community. It first lists “the Glory of God.” It follows with the “advancement of the Christian Faith,” then the “honour of our King and Country,” and, finally, their “better ordering and preservation.” Together, these make up the ends of their political community.

We must see in the first purpose the overarching one, the final end to which all others in the Compact strive. The Puritans were defined by a faith that placed God’s glory the highest in priority and all-comprehensive in its pursuit. Thus, they must advance the Christian faith, increasing who glorified God. Their honoring king and country also assumed a religious element, since they saw King James as a Christian prince and England as a Christian nation. Their honor was a mere reflection of God’s glory. Even good ordering and preservation linked back to God’s glory, since the Compact says they will so do in “furtherance of the ends aforesaid.”

Clearly, the foundation laid on Plymouth Rock required a particular kind of religious subscription by all citizens and officers in the colony. To be a rightful citizen, one must be a rightful believer. Did Americans who wrote the Declaration of Independence and ratified the United States Constitution build on this foundation or on another?

The Founders did not deny the importance of God in general or the Christian faith in particular. The Declaration of Independence mentions God no less than four times. God authors the laws of nature. He is the Creator who “endows” human beings with equal rights. The Declaration also calls God the “Supreme Judge of the world,” to whom they make the ultimate appeal for the justice of their revolution. Finally, the document concludes by a “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”

But the Founder’s God took a different approach to religious practice than did the one whose glory the Puritans pursued. The Puritans demanded as a political act of citizenship on earth uniform practice aligned with citizenship in Heaven. In other words, religious liberty as we understand they rejected as hostile to the proper ends of good government.

Our Constitution, while not contradicting the Declaration, made sure that religious liberty helped define the political implications of God. The Constitution denied all religious tests for holding national office. Its First Amendment rejected the establishment of a national church as well as protecting the free exercise of religion for all. The purpose of human life might be to glorify God. But our politics would leave wide sway for persons to come to that conclusion on their own. Our laws would let persons who so decided additional liberty to consider how exactly to glorify God. Our laws would not enforce the advancement of Christianity. But we would permit its spread and protect the right of its adherents to share, to persuade throughout the land. We must also say, then, that it protected the right of conscience for even those who rejected this view of God or the existence of God altogether.

Thus, we understand that our foundation owes some influence to Plymouth Rock. Yet we cannot call it our perfect and complete foundation. We did not follow its ends in the exact same way. Instead, the Mayflower Compact influenced the Founding even more in the additional means it posited to run its political community. To achieve their ends, they wrote they would “Covenant and Combine ourselves together in a Civil Body Politic.” They founded a political regime on the basis of consent, of the willing agreement of their citizens. No outside tyrant imposed their ends upon them. In the same way, our Constitution opens that “We, the People,” did “ordain and establish” the Constitution for the purposes written therein.

Moreover, they said this new political community would, “constitute and frame…just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices.” They committed themselves to the rule of law, not the fiat of human beings. These Puritans also declared that rightful laws should contain two qualities: justice and equality. They must pursue the good and do so equally for all. Our Founding agreed. The Constitution’s Preamble gives one of its purposes as “to establish justice.” The Declaration’s commitment to equality informs so much of the Constitution, but especially the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, which says that no state shall deny any person the equal protection of the laws.

Thus, we see ourselves on a different foundation than that laid on Plymouth Rock. Ours did not deny God but recognized Him as one of political and religious liberty. At the same time, we took much in the means from Plymouth, especially consent of the governed and just as well as equal laws. Was this foundation on a true rock or did we build a sandy foundation doomed to a great fall? We find the answer in the experience of the last 250 years. America endured. More than endured, it thrived. It rose to become a beacon of human equality and liberty, the “last, best hope” as Abraham Lincoln once called it. Its true foundation rested on those commitments—human equality and liberty—as understood through the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Those principles still hold out the promise of provision, provision of a strong foundation against all storms, internal or external. It does; but only if we continue to build wisely and faithfully upon it.

Adam M. Carrington is an Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. There, he teaches on matters of Constitutional law, American political institutions, and separation of powers. His writing has appeared in such popular forums as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, National Review, and Washington Examiner. His book on the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field was published in 2017 by Lexington. Carrington received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Baylor University. He lives in Hillsdale with his wife and their two daughters.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

 

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams


Throughout U.S. history, Americans have appealed to the idea that the country is a “city upon a hill” and exceptional in its natural rights republican principles and constitutional government. These ideas were present at the time of the American founding as the founders had a sense of destiny and an understanding of the unique historic moment.

The concept of a “city upon a hill” originated with Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity” sermon aboard the Arbella. He described the purpose of establishing a godly society to work towards the common good, just government, and civic virtue. Winthrop’s thinking about a “city upon a hill” was influenced by covenant theology: “We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” The same ideals about a religious and civil covenant with God and each other were present in the Pilgrims’ “Mayflower Compact.”

Pilgrim and Puritan thinking about a “city upon a hill” focused on establishing a pure church that was free of the perceived corruptions of the Anglican Church as well as creating a civil commonwealth on biblical principles. While they were very specific to colonial Massachusetts, they influenced the founders’ purpose to create a republic based upon natural rights and liberties. American exceptionalism thus enlarged to a national vision at the time of the founding.

After the Constitutional Convention, a vibrant political debate centered on the proposed Constitution and addressed larger political principles upon which the American republican regime was to be built. This deliberation took place in newspaper essays, pamphlets, state ratifying conventions, and in public spaces such as taverns. It was one of the greatest debates about human nature, political principles, and government the world has seen.

The debate revealed significant differences of political philosophy among American statesman as noted by numerous historians and political scientists. While the Federalists, who supported the new Constitution, and Anti-federalists, who opposed it, acknowledged that the Articles of Confederation had deficiencies that needed to be remedied, they differed significantly on the character of the changes that were needed.

The Federalists wanted a more energetic government than had existed under the Articles of Confederation because they believed it would promote better governance and thereby protect liberty. Of particular note, they argued for a stronger executive and independent judiciary under the principles of separation of powers and national supremacy.

On the other hand, the Anti-federalists admitted that the national government needed greater powers to regulate trade and to tax, but they were deeply concerned about a powerful executive, a corrupt Senate, and an imperial judiciary or perhaps a cabal of those branches acting tyrannically against the liberties of the people and the powers of the states.

This great deliberative moment during the American founding belies the fact that the opposing sides of the debate shared several fundamental republican tenets in common. They believed in popular sovereignty and representative government, limited government, federalism, separation of powers, the liberties of the people, and other essential constitutional principles even if they differed over the best means to achieve them in the framing of the constitutional order.

The Federalists and Anti-federalists also shared common roots in their thinking about government and human nature. They were influenced by ancient history and philosophy, Enlightenment ideas, the English tradition and colonial experience, and Protestant Christianity. Their Protestantism contributed to their thinking about resistance to tyranny, religious and civil liberty, and American exceptionalism.

The Federalist has several references to American exceptionalism. Most notably, in Federalist #1, Alexander Hamilton famously stated, “it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.” The American opportunity to discuss those principles of government by “reflection and choice” was not merely a coincidence. Many of the founding generation thought it a sign of divine providence in their creation of a virtuous constitutional republic.

James Madison demonstrated this belief more directly in Federalist #37, when he wrote, “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently & signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.” Similar words were written by George Washington and others reflecting on the unlikely victory of the American Revolution and the founding.

The Anti-federalists were also pious Christians whose religious views shaped their understanding of the republican experiment in America. Brutus (widely assumed to be New Yorker Robert Yates) wrote his first essay about the danger of a large republic and struck a chord of Puritan covenant theology. Much like John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill,” Brutus wrote that if Americans were faithful and built a virtuous republic, they would be blessed. “[If] you will lay a lasting foundation of happiness for millions yet unborn; generations to come will rise up and call you blessed.” If they established a despotism or tyranny that destroyed liberty, they would be punished and, “posterity will execrate your memory.”

President Washington used the occasion of his First Inaugural Address to advance the republican principles of free government and free society in the new nation. He stated, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” This assertion of American exceptionalism made the American experiment in liberty a sacred obligation not only for the destiny of America but as a model of republican government for the world.

Abraham Lincoln would echo these dutiful sentiments at Gettysburg when he said, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom –and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


During the Middle Ages, a distinct separation of church and state existed, at least in theory. The pope in Rome and his bishops and priests throughout Western Christendom took care to protect the souls of the people. The emperors, kings, and other secular nobles protected the physical safety of their subjects. The subjects would “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

In fact, matters were more ambiguous, because popes frequently called on secular rulers for protection, and the latter looked to the former to confirm the legitimacy of their rule in the eyes of God and their subjects. Moreover, the ecclesiastical rulers, including the pope, also exercised sovereign political control in various territories and sat in the political councils of others. The emperors and other nobles, in turn, frequently sought to control the appointment of ecclesiastical officials within their domains and, in the case of the king of France, to control the selection of the pope himself.

With the split in Western Christendom caused by the Reformation, and the emerging concentration of power in single political rulers in national kingdoms and lesser principalities, two significant changes occurred from the medieval order. Those changes are important for understanding what led to the Mayflower Compact.

First, in the struggle over who had supreme authority in the physical world, emperors or popes, kings or bishops, the balance shifted decisively in favor of the secular rulers. A secular ruler might become the head of a religious establishment, as happened in England beginning with Henry VIII. Less drastically, the ruler might ally with the bishops to control the authority of the pope in matters temporal or secular, as happened to the Church in France. Or, under the doctrine of cuius regio, eius religio (“whose realm, their religion”), the religion practiced by the prince became that of his subjects. The last was the situation in most German states after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 ended the initial wave of religious wars between Lutherans and Catholics.

The second change was the renunciation among a number of Protestant dissenters of the episcopal structure of the Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. Whatever might have been the dissatisfaction of Anglican and Lutheran theologians with Catholic doctrine, practices, and administration, the dissenters viewed those established Protestants as merely paler imitations of the Church of Rome. Building on the teachings of the lawyer John Calvin in Geneva, they emphasized salvation through faith alone and living in a community of the faithful governed by themselves or by some elected elders.

In Scotland, these dissenters formed the Presbyterian Church. In England, the Calvinist dissenters became the “Puritans.” They sought to purify the Church of England from various Catholic practices and doctrines while continuing to associate their congregations with the official church. Their goals seemed within reach after the English Civil Wars in the 1640s. They were well represented in the Rump Parliament and among the military leaders, such as Oliver Cromwell and John Lambert. The Anglican majority proved too immovable, however, and, after the Restoration, many Puritan leaders left England. Another group, however, believed that the Anglican Church was hopelessly corrupt, and that the only available path to personal salvation was through separation. This group has become known as the “Pilgrim Fathers,” although they referred to themselves by other names, such as “Saints.”

Both groups of English dissenters established settlements in New England not far apart. Their theological differences, however, kept them separated for decades. Not until 1690 was the Pilgrims’ Plymouth colony absorbed by the much larger Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The two groups shared certain characteristics, which contributed to the development of American constitutional theory. It is part of American mythology that Europeans came to English North America in search of religious freedom, which they joyfully and readily extended to all who joined them. The matter is much more nuanced. While such toleration might well describe the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania and the Catholic colony of Maryland, both of which were formed later, the Pilgrims and Puritans had a different goal. Theirs was to establish their respective visions of a Christian commonwealth, the City of God in the New World. Having left England for a wilderness because of despair over the allegedly corrupt nature of the Anglican Church, never mind the Catholic one, neither group was inclined now to welcome adherents of such beliefs to live among them. Religious freedom, indeed, but for individuals of like beliefs in a community gathered together for mutual assistance in living life according to those beliefs. Conformity in community, not diversity of doctrine, was the goal. God’s revealed law controlled, and governance was put in the hands of those who could be trusted to govern in accordance with that law.

The two groups also shared another characteristic, alluded to above: voluntary community. The individual alone could find salvation through studying and following the Bible. As an inherently social creature, he could, of course, join with others in a community of believers. The basis of that community would be consent, individual will, not an ecclesiastical order based on apostolic succession. Some years after arriving in the New World, the Massachusetts Bay Puritans in the Cambridge Platform of 1648 declared that “a company of professed believers ecclesiastically confederate” is a church, with or without officers. This was the origin of the Congregational Church, founded on a clear separation from all forms of hierarchical church government.

The congregation would govern itself according to the dictates of its members’ consciences and the word of God, while in the secular realm it would be governed under man’s law. What would happen, if man’s law, and the teachings of the established church, conflicted with the word of God, as the believers understood it? What if, to resolve such conflicts, that religious community left the existing secular realm? A political commonwealth of some sort is inevitable, as most political theorists claim. That is where the experience of the Puritans and the Pilgrim separatists differed.

The Puritans formed their Massachusetts Bay Colony on the same basis as the Virginia Company had been formed to settle at Jamestown two decades earlier. It was a joint stock company, somewhat analogous to a modern business corporation, formed by investors in England. The company’s charter provided a plan of government, which included meetings of a General Court composed of the freemen of the Company. The charter failed to specify where these meetings were to occur. English custom was that such shareholder meetings took place where the charter was kept. Some historians have written that the charter was surreptitiously taken from the company’s offices and spirited to the New World, thereby making Boston the site of the General Court. That is a suitably romantic story of intrigue and adventure, indeed. More prosaic is that the change in locale occurred through the Cambridge Agreement of 1629 between the Company’s majority, composed of its members seeking to establish a religious community in Massachusetts, and the minority which was interested in the possibilities of commerce and profit. The majority was permitted to take the charter and thereby secure a de facto independence from English authorities for a half-century. The minority received certain trade monopolies with the colony.

The formation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, like the Virginia Colony’s, was based on voluntary association and contract. Once the mercantile interest of the English investors was severed, the charter provided a political constitution for the colony’s governance. But the political consequence was the by-product of a commercial enterprise. The best example of an organic constitution created by consent of a community’s members for the express purpose of self-government was the Mayflower Compact concluded almost ten years earlier.

After vigorous attempts at suppression of them by King James I for their separatist beliefs, many Pilgrims fled to the religiously more tolerant United Provinces of the Netherlands. Eventually, however, English pressure on the Dutch induced the Pilgrims to leave their temporary domicile in Leyden. Having procured a ship and picked up additional travelers in England and a license from the Virginia Company to settle on its land, a group of Pilgrims embarked on their journey westward to their future Zion.

Upon reaching the New World in late November, 1620, at what today is Provincetown, Massachusetts, they discovered to their dismay that they had arrived a few hundred miles north of the Virginia Company’s boundary. Many of the 101 passengers aboard their small ship, the Mayflower, were ill, supplies were dwindling, and bad weather loomed. The group eventually decided to land on the inhospitable coast, rather than continue to sail to their allotted land. Before they did so, however, 41 men signed the Mayflower Compact on November 21, 1620, under the new calendar. It must be noted that fewer than half of the men were Pilgrims. Many were “adventurers,” a term of art which referred to individuals sent over by the Company of Merchant Adventurers to assist the colony, tradesmen and men such as the military leader, Myles Standish. The Company had lent money to the settlers. Repayment of those loans depended on the colony’s success.

Not having the luxury of a drawn-out convention meeting under agreeable conditions, the settlers made the Mayflower Compact brief and to the point, but also rudimentary. In significant part, it declared, “Having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the christian [sic] faith, and the honour of our King and country, voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; [we] …combine ourselves…into a civil body politick, for furtherance of the ends aforesaid ….” Framing “just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, … as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony …,” was left to another day.

The Mayflower Compact is a political application of the voluntary consent basis of religious congregation which the Pilgrims accepted. There was renewed interest in social contract theory as the ethical basis of the state, as an alternative to the medieval theory of a hierarchical political order created by God. Both approaches, it must be noted, were also used by defenders of royal absolutism in the 17th century. Bishop Robert Filmer in his Patriarcha adapted Aristotle’s connection between the family and the state as social institutions and Cicero’s correlation of monarchy and the Roman paterfamilias, to present the monarch as having whatever power he deems needed to promote the public welfare. To give his contention a more appealing, religious basis, Filmer wrote that God gave Adam absolute control over the family in Genesis, thereafter to the three sons of Noah, and finally, as the nations grew, to monarchs.

Thomas Hobbes used contract theory in his work Leviathan to justify royal absolutism. Humans seeks to escape the abysmal state of nature, where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” because a state of war exists of all against all. To gain physical and psychological peace, the desperate people enter into a covenant with a powerful ruler. In return for the ruler’s protection and a life of security, they agree to surrender whatever rights they may have had in the state of nature as the ruler deems it necessary. One exception is the right to life.

One might view the Mayflower Compact as an iteration of the Hobbesian covenant. Indeed, the early governance of the colony at times seemed like a military regime, an understandable state of affairs considering the existential danger in which the residents found themselves over the first few years. Alternatively, one might consider the arrangement as simply a settlement within the existing English state, like any town in England. After all, the Pilgrims expressly avowed themselves to be “the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James,” declared that their voyage, in part, was for the “honour of our King and country,” and noted that they were signing during “the reign of our sovereign Lord, King James.”

One might, however, view the Mayflower Compact as a glimpse into the future, to the work of the social contract theorist John Locke a half-century later. The Pilgrims had removed themselves from an existing commonwealth whose laws they found oppressive. Their persecution over their religious faith was a profound breach of the Lockean social contract under which government was created as a useful tool better to protect a person’s personal security and estate. One remedy for such a breach was to leave political society. For Hobbes, this would have been impossible, because it would have placed the individual back in the intolerable state of nature. For Locke, however, the state of nature of human society was not as forbidding. Locke had more of that Whig confidence in man’s goodness. Government was just a way to deal with various inefficiencies of the state of nature in promoting human flourishing, rather than a Hobbesian precondition to such flourishing.

Solitary contemplation and Bible study allowed one to recognize the glory of God and to deepen one’s Christian faith, a journey made more joyful by joining a religious congregation of believers. In similar manner, joining together in a “civil body politick” as set forth in the Mayflower Compact aided in achieving those objectives. Dealing efficiently with quotidian matters of the physical world permitted more contemplation of the spiritual. Happily also, despite all the challenges the New World presented, it had sufficient bounty to give sustenance to the saints in the new Zion, to “lead the New Testament life, yet make a living,” as the historian Samuel Eliot Morison summarized it.

The singular importance of the Mayflower Compact was in the foundation it provided for a theory of organic generation of a government legitimized by the consent of the governed. Self-government became realized through a contract among and for those to be governed. Later American constitutional theories about the people as the source of legitimacy for government had to deal with the practical difficulty of having many thousands of people in each of the already existing political arrangements called “states.” American writers sought to get around that difficulty by having state conventions rather than ordinary legislatures approve the Constitution, a logically rather precarious substitution. Still, the Mayflower Compact set a readily understood paradigm.

A more troubling lesson drawn from the New England colonies, is to recognize the unsettling connection between seeking religious freedom for oneself and prohibiting the same for others. It requires confronting the tension between community and individuality, law and liberty. The right to associate must include the right not to associate. The right to worship in association with other believers must include the right to reject non-believers. To what extent might the rights of the majority to create their “civil body politick” as an embodiment of their City of God on Earth override the rights of others in that community to seek a different religious objective, or no religious objective at all? Massachusetts Bay provided one answer. New settlers were limited to those who belonged to their approved strain of Puritanism. Dissenters were expelled. Those who failed to get the message of conformity were subject to punishment, such as four Quakers who were publicly executed in 1659 after they repeatedly entered the colony and challenged the ruling authorities. The Pilgrims at Plymouth were more accommodating to others, if grudgingly so, because their original settlers had included a substantial number unaffiliated with their iteration of Christianity.

The framers of American constitutions had to face those issues, and tried to balance these interests through concepts such as free exercise of religion, establishment of religion, and secular government. The problem is that such terms are shapeshifters which allow users to project diverse meanings onto them. These difficulties have not disappeared.

Both the organic creative aspect of the Mayflower Compact and its theocratic imperative were found in other constitutional arrangements in New England. The “Fundamental Orders” of the Connecticut River towns in 1639, a basic written constitution, set as their purpose to “enter into…confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also the discipline of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said gospel is now practiced among us ….” As in Massachusetts Bay, justice was to be administered according to the laws established by the new government, “and for want thereof according to the rule of the word of God.” The Governor must “be always a member of some approved congregation.”

The colonies of Providence and Portsmouth in today’s Rhode Island, established in the 1630s, had similar founding charters as the Mayflower Compact, because they, too, were formed in the wilderness. A distinctive aspect of those colonies was that they were founded by Puritan dissenters, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, respectively, who had been expelled from Massachusetts Bay. Shaped by their founders’ experiences, these colonies allowed freedom of conscience and did not establish an official religion in the manner of other New England settlements.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

 

Guest Essayist: Adam Carrington


In the last essay, we discussed the British political system of the 17th century. That system consisted of King and Parliament, supposed to share rule but really locked in a battle for supremacy. While the division of power between them originally consisted of their number—the one king as well as few Lords and the many Commons in Parliament, the division between legislative and executive power grew up in the midst of the English Civil War.

King and Parliament did not fight this war merely for which institution would wield more power. A religious dispute arose, lighting the fires of war as well. In this religious dispute, we see much with which to compare to the American Constitution and the Republic that operates through it.

Every society holds some things in common. Short of total communism, they do not hold everything communally, but divide everything between personal ownership and the common stock. This division includes more than land or stuff. It includes principles. By what a society holds in common, they thereby define who they are and what they should do as a people.

For 17th century English society, people considered religion an essential glue holding them together. They saw God and His commands as essential to right believing and right living. They saw those commands as stretching to public actions pertaining to law and custom. Therefore, they assumed as necessary some king of religious uniformity. A common God understood by a common theology and common church helped to make England one nation. The English Reformation, with King Henry VIII declaring a national church apart from Roman Catholicism, only bolstered the link between national identity and religious conformity. There was a Church of England with dissenters often punished and forced to attend the official state religious body.

This history also bolstered the position of the king within England’s national religion. The Act of Supremacy (1534) had named Henry VIII “Supreme Head of the Church.” Since then, for theological reasons, English monarchs have taken the slightly different title of “Supreme Governor of the Church of England.” Still, the monarch stands as the head of the church.

This view has a utopianism to it. It hopes for uniformity of practice religiously to create a kingdom that conforms to God’s rules here on earth. It sees a unity in the king that helps to bring about this conformity through his or her governing of the Church of England. We see in here some remnants of the old divine right of kings. As God set him on the throne, so the king must made sure right religion reigns so long as he does reign, too.

The civil war saw armies with competing theologies, even as they fought under the banner of Crown or Parliament. The Cavaliers and the Roundheads, as they were called, fought over issues such as religious rites and how to structure church government. So violent did this conflict go that, in 1649, King Charles I was beheaded after a questionable trial by a small portion of Parliament.

America took a different track, both regarding religion and the king’s role related to it. In the United States Constitution, our First Amendment had two clauses related to religion. The first protected its free exercise, the second forbade the national government from making any law regarding establishing a religion. There would be no “Church of America” like existed across the pond. Moreover, the Constitution forbade any religious test be required to hold federal office.

Taken together, these provisions set up a baseline of religious liberty for all. State establishments and tests did continue in some places, including an established Congregational church in Massachusetts as late as 1833. However, even most states quickly adopted similar provisions in their own laws and constitutions.

This position took an anti-utopian stance. It saw religion as something that cannot hold us together because we must leave the individual conscience free to worship or not worship God as that person sees fit. No coercion should fall on the dissenters from majority belief.

This point mattered for the president. He would never be head of a church. He would never protect doctrinal purity. This point, again, connected with the lack of divine right. The people set him up to rule, not his birth. He would rule for four-year terms, not for life.

But our presidents do take some role in religious expression. George Washington’s Farewell Address warned of the need for religious belief among the people. That belief would shore up national morality among the ultimate human rulers, We the People. It would aid in public and private happiness, in the ruling of self that is a prerequisite to running a popular government.

Moreover, since Washington, most presidents have published proclamations or given speeches that thank or make requests of God. John Adams warned in 1798 that our Constitution was made for a religious people and the need to cultivate those beliefs, consistent with human liberty. Perhaps the greatest speech ever given on American soil, Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, consisted of an extended meditation on God’s will in the American Civil War and an affirmation of God’s goodness in the midst of so much hardship and bloodshed.

These appeals to religion should be seen, not as coercions to make one believe, but as encouragements, as attempts at persuasion. In that, we have come a long way from the English Civil War. Much divides us that people think we must hold in common these days. But we continue to hold the right to believe as we see fit and to act on those beliefs within reason, within not hurting others. We can thank our Constitution for that and be thankful for a president who is chief executor of the laws, not governor of an American church.

Adam M. Carrington is an Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. There, he teaches on matters of Constitutional law, American political institutions, and separation of powers. His writing has appeared in such popular forums as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, National Review, and Washington Examiner. His book on the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field was published in 2017 by Lexington. Carrington received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Baylor University. He lives in Hillsdale with his wife and their two daughters.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Adam Carrington


When Americans speak of the Civil War, we of course have our own conflict (1861-1865) in mind. However, the term “civil war” does not name one conflict in world history. It categorizes a certain kind of conflict. Many political communities have suffered from civil wars. Such conflicts pit one portion of a country against another in armed battle.

Human beings often turn civil wars into the worst of conflicts. They do so because of why civil wars occur. People will invade other countries for money, for glory, for responding to a slight, perceived or real. Civil wars nearly always become conflicts about what a country is. Combatants spar over what principles truly define the country and who rightfully belongs as citizens within it. Our civil war centered those questions around the issue of slavery.

England had its own civil war two centuries before America’s. From 1642 to 1651, with little respite, Englishmen formed armies and killed each other in ugly, pitched battles. They did so over competing visions of England. These competing visions divided along two lines. The first was political, a battle over the English constitution regarding who should rule the country and through what kinds of institutions, especially the institutions of the king and the Parliament. The second was religious. Devoutly Christian persons on both sides, and those caught in-between, desired that England adhere in true fashion to the true God.  But, as with the constitution, they did not come to the same answers. In this essay, we will examine the political differences and compare them to America’s constitutional system. In the following, we will take up the religious question of the English Civil War in relation to the American experiment.

To understand the political question of England, we must delve into the history and development of how countries organized themselves politically. In ancient and medieval times, political thinkers divided all good forms of political rule into three camps: the rule of the one (monarchy), the rule of the few (aristocracy), and the rule of the many (polity). Many of the same men extolled the good of a fourth option they referred to as the “mixed regime.” This form of government involved sharing powers among some combination of the one, the few, and the many. They intended this mixture to ensure that a country would receive the good qualities of each pure governmental form and suppress potential vices that could turn monarchy to tyranny, aristocracy to a wealth-obsessed oligarchy, or a polity into a mob-terrorizing democracy (democracy was a negative term at the time).

The English system in the 17th century had developed into one that shared power between the king and the parliament. In so doing, it incorporated the rule of all three groups. The monarch represented the rule of one, Parliament’s House of Lords the rule of the few, and Parliament’s House of Commons the rule of the people.

Such a system is impossible under our form of government. It first is so because of our principles. Kingship and aristocracy, in their pure form, begin with human inequality as the basis for ordering a political society. So, the sharing of rule comes between equals and un-equals within the country. However, our Declaration of Independence states as a “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” This equality means no person can rule another without consent. No person can rule another unless the ruled can set limits on the ruler and even remove and replace him from time to time.

We legalized our commitment to equality in several places in the United States Constitution. Most notably for this issue, Article I, Sections 9 and 10 deny both the state and the national government from bestowing a “title of nobility.” The Constitution thus forbids the creation of a legal caste, a codified aristocracy who then receives special treatment by the law. Therefore, we cannot have a “House of Lords” because no lords, or dukes, or any other such legally titled persons reside among us. We cannot have a king because no hereditary right to such a position can exist for us. Our system of elections reinforced this point. Our Congress and our president both come into office by means of elections. These elections prove that “We, the People” exercise the ultimate or sovereign power through these officers, not act as subjects under their independent fiat. Our rejection of a king was of particular vehemence on this point, not wishing to elevate one man in such a way above his fellow citizens.

But the British system has evolved dramatically from this earlier setup. The English Civil War pitted Parliament against the English King, each with an army fighting for its claims. Instead of sharing power, both sought to rule outright, with the other subservient. They thus sought to make easier the exercise of the worst vices of each system. During this time, for example, we continued to see English monarchs claim their rule based in some form of divine right. God placed them on the throne and that meant something akin to absolute power in relation to parliament and English subjects.

America’s system, again, rejected these kinds of arguments. For one, we rejected the divine right of kings because of our commitment, discussed above, to human equality. Thomas Jefferson famously said that no person was born with spurs or with a saddle, the former then knowing he had a natural right to ride the latter. Human equality meant no legally born kings to subjects. Instead, the people, again, created offices to which they delegated their sovereign power to rule. That difference is why, in American history, persons often called presidents “kings” to disparage them (Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln are two examples).

For another, Americans intentionally divided power among its political institutions in a way different from that which enveloped the English in the 17th century. They did not divide by who ruled, since the people ruled entirely. They divided by governmental function. They divided these functions and thus institutions into three, not England’s two: a Congress to make laws, a president to enforce them, and a judicial system to decide disputes based on the law. This separation of powers has proven far more consistent and effective over its history.

The English system, in fact, partly followed America’s route even before America existed. Parliament more and more took the lead for making laws—the legislative power. The monarch still possessed the power to veto legislation parliament passed, keeping such bills from becoming law. However, the monarch took the lead on matters we now would call executive and judicial. The king enforced the laws. He did so through ministers and other officers who arrested and restrained persons or collected taxes. The king enforced the law through his judges. Thus, England has had one court named The King’s Bench. During the commonwealth period (1649-1660), England acted as a government without a king. But they failed to truly form a government of, by, and for the people, succumbing to a de facto king in Oliver Cromwell. By 1660, England returned to a mixed regime of sharing power between Parliament and monarchy.

Over time, our president fared much better than England’s monarch. Our president only has grown in power over the centuries. He has done so as each officeholder has cultivated his role as representative of the people. As the legitimacy of rule by kings faded, though, so did the real political powers of the monarch. Vetoing legislation, for instance, is now virtually unthinkable. The British courts occupy a firmly independence existence. Parliament eventually gained total supremacy, a fate made nearly certain by the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. Due to that dominance, the English system lacks a true separation of powers. The Prime Minister in the House of Commons occupies the real role of executive head. Meanwhile, the British king or queen now occupies a figurehead position. TV shows like “The Crown” argue for the virtues of this circumstance. They claim it allows for the monarchy to represent the country as a whole, to reside above partisanship, and to guide softly by manner, gesture, and example. But this mostly covers up a loss of political power near total in scope.

Thus, the modern British government has moved nearly all real political power, not just into Parliament, but into its House of Commons. Legislative and executive power both reside therein, with the Prime Minister doing both. Our system maintained its separation by keeping a strong executive with real powers distinguished firmly from the legislative branch. In doing so, we built a system both popular in basis and workable in execution. We maintained our independent executive power by making him not a creation of divine right but of the sovereign people. And that will continue, so long as the Constitution continues to rule the United States of America.

Adam M. Carrington is an Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College. There, he teaches on matters of Constitutional law, American political institutions, and separation of powers. His writing has appeared in such popular forums as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, National Review, and Washington Examiner. His book on the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field was published in 2017 by Lexington. Carrington received his B.A. from Ashland University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Baylor University. He lives in Hillsdale with his wife and their two daughters.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

By Jay McConville

America is the great nation that it is because we revere and honor the memory of brave souls who gave their lives to preserve it. Let the memory and sacrifices of those who have come before, for liberty purchased at such an immeasurable price for future generations, be forever written in our hearts.

“Whether we observe the occasion through public ceremony or through private prayer, Memorial Day leaves few hearts unmoved. Each of the patriots whom we remember on this day was first a beloved son or daughter, a brother or sister, or a spouse, friend, and neighbor.” (President George Herbert Walker Bush, Proclamation 6442—Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 1992)

Regardless of one’s faith tradition, one must acknowledge that the Bible is one of the greatest books in all human history. Many expressions we use daily come from it, and people often use biblical phrases without ever knowing it. In Jeremiah, from the Old Testament, one such memorable phrase relates to the covenant that God made with Israel. Jeremiah 31:33 (NIV) reads, in part, “I will put my law in their minds and will write them on their hearts.” This is repeated in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews (10:16, NIV), which reads, “I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”

While biblical scholars may disagree on the specific meaning of this verse, it is generally believed to indicate that the laws, in this case from God, are followed not merely out of obedience, but because we accept them as part of us at a much deeper level. Those with the laws written in their hearts live those laws as part of their very being.

I am partial to President H.W. Bush, who I quoted above, for personal reasons. He was my Commander-in-Chief during the war, that I was part of as an Army Officer, Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Like hundreds of thousands of others who served then, and millions and millions who have served in other conflicts, I had raised my hand and taken an oath to defend the United States Constitution. While military oaths differ, every military member, regardless of rank, swears “that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…” That defense of the Constitution, for some, includes making the ultimate sacrifice.

Memorial Day is unlike any other holiday, in that it remembers those who died to write the laws of the U.S. Constitution in our hearts and on our minds. On this special day, all Americans remember those who have, as was movingly described by President Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address (1863), given the “the last full measure of devotion” so that the ideals reflected in the U.S. Constitution would endure. As Lincoln said, those who gave that last full measure, did so “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Constituting America’s mission is to educate, empower, and inspire. We do this by teaching the relevancy of the U.S. Constitution and the principles of self-governance inherent in our founding documents. That relevancy is more than just the legal principles of the Constitution, or even the ideals detailed in our founding documents. It comes from the meaning and significance that those principles and ideals promote in how we live our lives, both as individuals and as members of the national community. Those we remember on Memorial Day made the ultimate sacrifice for those principles and ideals, and lived them to the fullest, ensuring our nation would endure. From Bunker Hill to Gettysburg, Antietam to the Ardennes, from Iwo Jima to Seoul, and Ia Drang to Mogadishu, as well as many other places and battles known and unknown, Americans have bravely sacrificed their lives to preserve the freedoms we all enjoy. The memory of each of those who died lives in the hearts of all patriots, and their sacrifice ensures that the Constitution lives there along with them.

So, on this Memorial Day, as we celebrate with friends and family, enjoy the emergence of summer, and bask in the bounty that we have been blessed with, let us rededicate ourselves to remembrance, so that those who died to make us free live forever in our hearts and on our minds. Let us also educate new generations about the sacrifices that have come before, so that what was purchased at such great price will inform how we live today, and how we persevere in days to come. Let us all dedicate ourselves, as those who died did, to the preservation of our great nation, and let us inspire all future generations to do the same.

As President Calvin Coolidge wrote on May 30, 1923, it is “to the spirit that places the devotion to freedom and truth above the devotion to life, that the nation pays its ever enduring mark of reverence and respect.”

The Constitution is more than just a legal document. It is the embodiment of what makes America the great nation that it is. Hundreds of thousands of brave souls have died to preserve it. Let their memory always be in our hearts, and let the Constitution be written there also. We must never take for granted what has been bequeathed to us by generations past. Let the Constitution be part of our being. In that way we will honor those who died to make it so.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” (President John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961)

Jay McConville is a military veteran, management professional, and active civic volunteer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he held multiple key technology and management positions within the Aerospace and Defense industry, including twice as President and CEO. He served in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer and has also been active in civic and industry volunteer associations, including running for elected office, serving as a political party chairman, and serving multiple terms as President of both his industry association’s Washington DC Chapter and his local youth sports association. Today he serves on the Operating Board of Directors of Constituting America. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Government from George Mason University, and a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College. Jay lives in Richmond with his wife Susan Ulsamer McConville. They have three children and two grandchildren.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


There have been few times as crucial to the development of English constitutional practice as the 17th century. The period began with absolute monarchs ruling by the grace of God and ended with a new model of a constitutional monarchy under law created by Parliament. That story was well known to the Americans of the founding period.

The destructive civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, known as the War of the Roses, ended with the seizure of the throne by Henry VII of the Welsh house of Tudor in 1485. The shifting fortunes in those wars had shattered many prominent noble families. Over the ensuing century, the Tudor monarchs, most prominently Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, consolidated royal power. Potential rivals, such as the nobility and the religious leaders, were neutralized by property seizures, executions, and dependence on the monarch’s patronage and purse for status and livelihood. Economic and social change in the direction of a modern commercial nation-state and away from a feudal society where wealth and status were based on rights in land had already begun before those wars. This change was due to financial necessities and a nascent sense of nationalism arising from the Hundred Years’ War between the English Plantagenet kings and the French house of Valois. Under the Tudors, England’s transition to a distinctly modern polity with a clear national identity was completed.

When Elizabeth died childless, the Tudor line came to an end, and the throne went to James VI Stuart of Scotland, who became James I of England, styling himself for the first time, “King of Great Britain.” On the whole, James was a capable and serious monarch but had strong views about his role as king. His pugnaciousness brought him into conflict with an increasingly assertive Parliament and its allies among the magistrates, especially his Attorney General and Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke. The need for revenues to pay off massive debts incurred by Elizabeth’s war with Spain was the catalyst for the friction. James was well educated in classic humanities and had a moderate literary talent. He wrote poetry and various treatises. He also oversaw the production of the new English translation of the Bible. As a side note, I have found it amusing that, 400 years ago, James warned about the dangers of tobacco use.

It was James’s political writing, however, which irked Parliament. He was a skillful defender of royal prerogative and seemed to derive satisfaction from lecturing his opponents in that body about the inadequacies in their arguments. James was able to navigate relations with Parliament successfully on the whole, mostly by just refusing to call them into session. But his defense and exercise of his prerogatives, his claim to rule as monarch by the grace of God, and his pedantic and irritating manner, coupled with the restlessness of Parliament after more than a century of strong monarchs, set the stage for confrontation once James departed this mortal coil.

Parliamentary authority had accreted over the centuries through a process best described as punctuated equilibrium, to borrow from evolutionary biology. Anglo-Saxon versions of assemblies of noble advisors to the king existed before the Norman Conquest, in accordance with the customs of other Germanic peoples. William the Conqueror similarly established a council of great secular and ecclesiastical nobles of the realm, whom kings might summon if they needed advice or political support before issuing laws or assessing taxes. This rudimentary consultative role was expanded when the council of English barons gathered at Runnymede in 1215 and forced King John to agree to a Magna Carta. A significant provision of that charter required the king to obtain the consent of his royal council for any new taxes except those connected to his existing feudal prerogatives. This was a major step in developing a legislative power which future parliaments guarded jealously.

In 1295, Edward I summoned his Great Council in what the 19th-century English historian Frederic William Maitland called the Model Parliament because of the precedent it set. This Great Council included not just 49 high nobles, but also 292 representatives from the community at large, later referred to as the “Commons,” composed of knights of the shire and burgesses from the towns. Edward formalized what had been the practice off and on for several decades at that point. Another constitutional innovation was Edward’s formal call for his subjects to submit petitions to this body to redress grievances they might have. This remains a vital constitutional right of the people in England and the United States.

The division of the Great Council into two chambers occurred in 1351, with the high nobility meeting in what later came to be known as the House of Lords and the knights and burgesses meeting in the House of Commons. Within the next few decades, parliaments increasingly insisted that they controlled not just taxation, but also the other side of the power over the purse, expenditures. They faced some hurdles, however. Parliaments had no right to meet, and kings might fail to summon such a gathering for years. Also, these bodies were in no sense democratic. The Lords were a numerically small elite. Due to property restrictions, the Commons, too, represented a thin layer of land-owning gentry and wealthy merchants. The degree to which bold claims of parliamentary power succeeded depended primarily on the political skill of the monarch. Strong monarchs, such as most of the Tudors, could either decline to call parliament into session or push needed authorization through dint of their standing among powerful and respected members of those bodies. A politically adept king could secure those relationships through a judicious use of his patronage to appoint favorites to offices.

During the rule of James I, parliamentary opponents of the king increasingly expressed their displeasure through petitions to redress grievances. English parliaments also manipulated the process as a tool of political power against the king. While those petitions might in fact come directly from disgruntled constituents, they were often contrived by members of Parliament using constituents as straw men to initiate debate in a way which suggested popular opposition to the monarch on a matter. These were political theater, albeit sometimes politically effective. Even if such a petition were granted by Parliament when in session, relief would have to come through the king or his officials, an unlikely result.

After the death of James I, relations between king and Parliament deteriorated further under his son. More affable than his father, Charles I was also less politically astute. As adamant as his father had been about protection of royal prerogative, Charles made too many political missteps, such as arresting members of Parliament who opposed various policies. Much of his political trouble arose from England’s precarious financial situation, partly due to misbegotten and unpopular military campaigns precipitated by Charles’s foreign minister, the Duke of Buckingham. When Parliament proved uncooperative, he attempted to finance these ventures and various household expenses through technically legal, but constitutionally controversial, workarounds.

One constitutional theory held that taxes, especially direct taxes on wealth or persons, were not part of the king’s prerogative. Rather, such taxes were “gifts” from the people. As with other gifts, the king might ask but could not compel. The people could refuse. It was impractical to ask each person. Instead, the Commons collectively could vote to grant such a gift to the king. The king had the prerogative, however, to enforce feudal obligations, collect fees, or sell property to raise funds. When Parliament in 1626 refused to vote taxes to pay for the military expeditions, Charles instead imposed “forced loans” on various individuals. Although such loans were deemed legal by the courts, this constitutional legerdemain was exceedingly unpopular and failed to produce significant income. Worse for the king, Parliament adopted the Petition of Right in 1628, which, in part, reaffirmed Parliament’s sole power of taxation. Charles at first agreed, but soon reneged. He dismissed Parliament and reasserted his power at least to collect customs duties. The Petition would prove to be significant eventually for another reason, because it also asserted certain rights which the king could not invade.

Charles then ruled without Parliament. To pay for his expenses, he resorted to various arcane levies, fees, fines, rent assessments, and sales of monopoly licenses. Still, he ran out of funds by 1640. Needing money for a military campaign against the Scots, he called Parliament into session. The first session proved unproductive, but he summoned another Parliament, which met in various forms for most of the next twenty years and became known collectively as the Long Parliament. Friction between Charles and Parliament led to civil war, a military coup by General Oliver Cromwell and other officers of the New Model Army, the trial of Charles by a “Rump Parliament” purged of his supporters by the Puritan military, and the regicide in 1649.

Following the execution of Charles, the Rump Parliament abolished the monarchy and proclaimed England to be a “Commonwealth.” Deep political divisions remained. If anything, executing who historians consider one of the most popular English kings undermined the legitimacy of the Commonwealth with the people. Cromwell finally dismissed the Rump Parliament forcibly in 1653, after scorning them with the splendidly pungent “In the name of God, go!” speech the likes of which would not be heard today.

The Protectorate established later that year did not smooth relations between Parliament and Cromwell. In essence, this was a military dictatorship, and even the absence of royalists in the Commons and the interim abolition of the House of Lords did not prevent opposition to him. The two Protectorate Parliaments also were dissolved by Cromwell when they proved insufficiently cooperative, especially in matters of taxation, and too radically republican for Cromwell’s taste, having dared to challenge the Lord Protector’s control over the military.

Although the Protectorate’s military government was an aberration in English history, it produced some notable constitutional developments. The Instrument of Government of 1653 and the Humble Petition and Advice of 1657 collectively are the closest England has come to a formal written constitution. They created a structure of checks and balances which captured the trend of the English system from an absolutist royal rule to a limited “constitutional” monarchy. Although these two documents eventually were jettisoned by the “Cavalier Parliament” after the Restoration, they became a model for resolution of a subsequent constitutional crisis.

The Instrument provided the basic structure of government for the Protectorate. It was drafted by the radical republican Puritan General John Lambert and adopted by the Army Council of Officers in 1653. It was based on proposals which had been offered in 1647 to settle the constitutional crisis with Charles I, but which the king had rejected. The Instrument set up a division of power among the Lord Protector, a Council of State, and a Parliament that was to meet at least every three years. The last had the sole power to tax and to pass laws. The Protector had a qualified veto over the Parliament’s bills. However, he had an absolute veto over laws which he deemed contrary to the instrument itself. Moreover, Parliament could not amend the Instrument. Although these provisions put Cromwell in the position of final authority over this “constitution,” the proposition that Parliament was limited by a higher law contradicted principles of Parliamentary supremacy. It anticipated the later American conception of the relationship between a constitution and ordinary legislative bodies. The Humble Petition and Advice was adopted by Parliament in 1657. It proposed some amendments to the Instrument, among them making Cromwell “king” and creating the “Other House,” a second chamber of Parliament, composed of life-term peers. Cromwell rejected the first and accepted the second.

After Cromwell’s death in 1658, and the resignation of his son Richard as Lord Protector the following year, the Protectorate ended. This created a political vacuum and a danger of anarchy. In the end, one of Cromwell’s trusted leaders, General George Monck, led elements of the New Model Army to London to oversee the election of a new “Convention Parliament.” Though Monck had been personally loyal to both Cromwells, he was also a moderate Royalist. The new Parliament technically was not committed either to the Commonwealth or the monarchy. However, it was controlled by a Royalist majority, and popular sentiment was greatly in favor of abolishing the military government and restoring the monarchy. Monck sent a secret message to Charles II for the prince to issue a declaration of lenity and religious toleration. After Charles complied, Parliament invited him to return as king.

Although the new king also fervently believed in his divine right to rule and proceeded to undo the Protectorate’s laws and decrees through his friends in Parliament—which again included the restored House of Lords—he was savvy enough not to stir up the hornet’s nest of Stuart absolutism too vigorously. A period of relative constitutional calm ensued, although Whig exponents of radical theories of popular sovereignty and revolution could still find their works used against them as evidence of treason and plotting.

Upon Charles’s death in 1685, the crown went to his brother, James II, an enthusiastic convert to Catholicism. When he and his wife, Mary of Modena, had a son in 1688, it presented the clear possibility of a Catholic dynasty, a scenario which repelled the Anglican hierarchy. Even more objectionable were James’s exertions at blunting the Test Acts and other laws which discriminated against Catholics and Protestant dissenters from the established Anglican Church. The main tool was his dispensing power, a prerogative power to excuse conformance to a law. But, at the likely instigation of the Quaker, William Penn, he also issued his Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in 1687, a major step towards freedom of worship. The Declaration suspended penal laws which required conformity to the Anglican Church.

James’s Anglican political supporters began to distance themselves from him, and seven Protestant nobles invited the Stadholder of the United Netherlands, William of Orange, to bring an army to England. The Glorious Revolution had begun. James initially planned to fight the Dutch invasion, but lost his nerve and tried to flee to France. He was captured and placed under the guard of the Dutch. William saw no upside to having to oversee the fate of James, who was his uncle and father-in-law. To rid himself of this annoyance, he let James escape to France.

With James gone, William refused the English crown unless it was offered to him by Parliament. At the behest of a hastily gathered assembly of peers and selected commoners, William summoned a “Convention Parliament.” The throne was declared vacant due to James’s abdication. The Convention Parliament drafted and adopted the Declaration of Right. The following day, February 13, 1689, they offered the crown to William and Mary together as King and Queen, with William alone to have the regal power during his life. After accepting the crown, William dismissed the Convention Parliament and summoned it to reconvene as a traditional parliament.

The Convention Parliament was another milestone in the development of Anglo-American constitutional theory and built on the earlier Protectorate’s Instrument of Government. The process instantiated the radical idea that forming a government is different than passing legislation, in that the former is, in the later phrasing of George Washington, “an explicit and authentic act of the people.” The opponents of the Stuarts had long claimed that all power was derived originally from the people. However, parliaments had challenged the king’s supremacy with the claim that they represented the estates of nobles and commons, and that the people had vested all constitutive power in them. But, if the people were truly the ultimate source of governmental legitimacy, how could they permanently surrender that to another body? This debate was carried on among the Whig republican thinkers of the era, such as the radical Algernon Sidney and the moderate John Locke. It raised knotty and uncomfortable issues about revolution. Those very problems would occupy Americans for several decades from the 1760s on in the drive toward independence and the subsequent process of creating a government.

There was no concrete condition that William and Mary accept the Declaration, but the crown was offered on the assumption that the monarch would rule according to law. That law included the provisions of the Declaration, once the reconvened parliament passed it as the Bill of Rights in December, 1689. Until then, the Declaration had no force of law, not having been adopted by Parliament as a legislative body and not having received the Royal Assent. This has been the process of the unwritten English constitution. As with the various versions of the Magna Carta and other famous charters and proclamations, an act of Parliament is required to make even such fundamental arrangements of governance legally binding. The English Bill of Rights is, mostly, still a part of that unwritten constitution, although some provisions have been changed by subsequent enactments.

The English Bill of Rights built on the Petition of Right to Charles I in 1628 and the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 in expressly guaranteeing certain rights. Among them were protections to petition for redress of grievances, to have arms for self-defense for Protestants, against cruel and unusual punishments or excessive bail or fines, and for trial by jury. Moreover, it protected members of Parliament from prosecution for any speech or debate made in that body. Many of these same protections appeared in American colonial charters, early American state constitutions, the petitions of state conventions ratifying the Constitution, and the American Bill of Rights. At first glance, the failure to protect religious liberty seems to be a glaring omission. However, anti-Catholic feelings ran high, and, contrary to James II, the Anglican majority was not in the mood for religious tolerance. As to Protestant Nonconformists, their religious liberty was recognized in the Toleration Act of 1689.

The Bill of Rights also made it clear that the monarch holds the crown under the laws of the realm, thereby rejecting the Tudor and Stuart claims of ruling by divine grace. This postulate was a crucial step in the evolution towards a “constitutional” monarchy. Following the approach of the Protectorate’s Instrument of Government, the Bill of Rights provided that laws must be passed by Parliament, although the monarch had an unqualified power to withhold consent. One must note, however, that this veto power has not been exercised since 1708 by Queen Anne. An attempt to do so by a British monarch today might trigger a constitutional crisis.

As a reaction against the perceived Catholic sympathies of the Stuarts and, in James II’s case, his actual Catholicism, the Bill of Rights very carefully designated the line of succession if, as happened, William and Mary died childless. That line of succession was limited to what were traditional Protestant families. To make the point clearer, the Bill of Rights defiantly debarred anyone who “is … reconciled to, or shall hold communion with, the see or church of Rome, or shall profess the popish religion, or shall marry a papist …” from the throne. The last prohibition likely was due to the habit of the Stuart kings to marry devout Catholic princesses, and an understandable concern over the influence that such a spouse might have in spiritual matters. On that point, too, the English experience affected later American developments, with the protection of religious freedom in the Bill of Rights and the prohibition of religious test oaths in the Constitution.

In addition to the importance of these historical antecedents to American constitutional development, the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution demonstrate an uncomfortable truth. When the ordinary means of resolving fundamental matters of governance prove unavailing, those matters will be resolved by violence. Constitutional means work during times of relative normalcy, but on occasion the contentions are infused with contradictions too profound for compromise. It is an axiom of politics that politicians will seek first to protect their privileges and second to expand them. The increased demands by parliamentarians for political power inevitably clashed with the monarchs’ hereditary claims. Both sides appealed to traditional English constitutional custom for legitimacy. With their assumptions about the source of political authority utterly at odds, compromise became increasingly complex and fleeting. It was treating a gangrenous infection with a band-aid. Radical surgery became the way out. The American Revolution in the following century, and even the American Civil War of the century thereafter, showed evidence of a similar progression, with the two sides operating from fundamentally contradictory views of the nature of representative government and proper division of power between the general government and its constituent parts.

The Glorious Revolution resolved the contest over these conflicting views of legitimate authority and the proper constitutional order between king and Parliament. The earlier Commonwealth with its Protectorate was an abortive step in the same direction. It failed due to the political shortcomings of the military leaders in control. Although further adjustments would be made to the relationship between monarch and parliaments, the basic constitutional order of a limited monarchy reigning within a political structure of Parliamentary supremacy was set. The new constitutional arrangement became a model for political writers of the 18th century, such as the Baron de Montesquieu. American propagandists of the revolutionary period readily found fault with the British system. Once they turned to forming governments, however, Americans more dispassionately studied and learned from the mother country’s rocky path to a more balanced and “republican” government in the 17th century. Both sides in the debate over the Constitution regularly used the British system as a source of support for their position or to attack their opponents.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

 

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


Though the words attributed to King Louis XIV are apocryphal (they don’t appear in print attributed to him until decades after his death), they present a chilling picture of the danger of absolute monarchy to individual freedom, and it should come as no surprise that the French had a revolution, and then a series of power struggles, starting at the end of the 18th century and for almost a century after.

In the wake of our own revolution, our founders, and then those who became the architects of our constitutional republic, were rightly worried about the descent from a free people into monarchy, and the further descent from monarch, to absolute monarch, to despotism.

As historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote, “The power to do good meant also the power to do harm, the power to serve the republic also meant the power to demean and defile it,” and in the proximate sense of the founding, they had history from which they could draw. In 1974, Professor Raoul Berger wrote, “the Framers were steeped in English history; the shades of despotic kings and conniving ministers marched before them.”

But they could also look to the reign of King Louis XIV—his consolidation of power, his undermining of the potential for opposition, and his creation of a civil service corps personally loyal to him—to see the dangers of centralized executive power.

Law professor Jonathan Turley has written extensively about this, especially with regards to our present executive branch and its largely unaccountable administrative state, saying:

“The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.”

What Professor Turley is saying is that without adherence to the system of checks, balances, and a diffusion of sovereign power, this lack of transparency and increased autonomy is dangerous to individual rights.

In Federalist 68, 69 and 70, Alexander Hamilton further discusses the concerns (both real and imagined) with a strong governmental executive in making the case for the Constitution’s constraints against a President’s powers.  In Federalist 70, he invokes the ghosts of Imperial Rome:

“Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.”

While Hamilton was referencing Rome, he could also have been talking about the excesses of the court of Louis XIV in France—and also warning against the converse, the dangers of a weak president.

The key was to weigh the powers of a reasonably strong executive, and executive branch, against the checking powers of the other two branches. This was the focus of both Federalist 68 and 69, in which Hamilton details how the President, as envisioned by the proposed Constitution, differs markedly from monarchs, and monarchies, of all kinds.

It starts with the simple—in Section 1 of Article II, the President’s term is limited to four years, and with the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951, the President was limited to two terms in office.  So, unlike a king, a president’s time in power is limited.

Then, the engineering of a presidency balanced between strength and limitation gets more complicated. The President can appoint senior officials including cabinet members and Supreme Court justices, but these positions have to be confirmed by a vote of the Senate. So again, unlike a king, the President cannot merely pick individuals who are personally loyal to him—they have to be picks that will satisfy a majority of the members of the Senate as well.

The President is commander-in-chief of the United States Military. But the President cannot declare war; only Congress can. Yes, the President can engage in limited military action, if such a response is immediately necessary, but if this action is going to go more than several months, Congress must have its say. Congress also controls the budget. This is an enormous check both on the power of a President to wage war, and also on the President’s ability to engage in other policymaking.

Most importantly, unlike most monarchies absolute or otherwise, Congress has the power to remove a President from office via an impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” King Louis XIV expended a great deal of energy in working to ensure that his aristocracy could not undermine his regal powers and to make sure that France did not descend into civil war.

In America, the power of impeachment works to ensure that a President doesn’t abuse his office—either by abusing the rights of American citizens or by using his office for his personal enrichment.

The founders were deeply troubled by centralized power, especially the idea that an absolute monarch could become a tyrannical despot. While ensuring that a President could do his job, they created a constitutional system that checked the strong powers of the executive branch.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer
1598 Edict of Nantes which granted extensive religious freedom.


In 1992, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, succinctly and eloquently summed up the essence of our federalist form of government:

“federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.” New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 181 (1992)

Power is diffused among branches and levels of government, so that no one branch can become any more powerful than any other—and the architects of our government were purposeful in this construction.

They did so because they were inherently distrustful of overly centralized power, because they knew that power could be abused, especially the power of an executive, probably the greatest threat to individual liberty. Both Federalist 69 and Federalist 70 focus on the dangers of concentrated or overly powerful chief executives, and how that power ought to be reined in, and while Federalist 69 spends a tremendous amount of time focusing on the English monarchy (and Federalist 70 looks at Ancient Rome), the Federalist’s authors (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay) were well-aware of the recent history of France’s Bourbon monarchs, especially King Louis XIV, the self-proclaimed “Sun King.”

Louis XIV had been coronated when he was only 4, and while contemporaneous observations noted only a casual interest in ruling while he was a boy, when he assumed true personal rule of France in 1661 (following the death of Cardinal Mazarin, the king’s Chief Minister), he worked to ensure that his regal power was both consolidated and secure—building on the tutelage of his mother, Queen Anne, and having witnessed the chaos of a series of French civil wars (The Fronde) as a boy.

These civil wars were of deep concern to him—from both a standpoint of his personal safety and from the standpoint of ensuring his power.  Louis, in turn, began to enact a series of reforms to strengthen his role as an “absolute monarch.” While there was a legislature, and there were ministers, Louis served to create a royal civil service corps that were loyal to the crown itself, while at the same time making requirements of both the titled and military aristocracy that served to weaken their power over time.

By making the privileges of aristocracy dependent upon presence and participation at court, the king took both the political and military aristocrats away from their estates—placing them under direct scrutiny of the king and those closest to him, while frustrating any efforts that could undermine Louis’ hold on power (or present a military threat to him).

While it is apocryphal, given the concentration of power by the monarch, the king is reported to have said, “I am the state!”

It is interesting to note that all three of the Federalist’s authors viewed this concentration of power with deep skepticism, but for widely different reasons.

James Madison, one of Thomas Jefferson’s closest friends, shared Jefferson’s affinity for the French generally, but of the three authors of the Federalist essays was probably the most-skeptical of concentrated power from a political perspective, and would have seen the concentration of power as not just a threat to individual rights but also as politically unsound in the long term, something that was proven right decades after Louis XIV’s rule, when the French people revolted.

In contrast, Alexander Hamilton, the author of Federalists 69 and 70, believed in greater concentration of power in the federal government, as well as greater concentration of power in the executive branch. That being said, Hamilton was no fan of the French, and ultimately tried to start a war with the French, despite their assistance to America during the Revolution.

But it was John Jay whose antipathy toward the French monarchy was deeply personal—and who certainly had no love for King Louis XIV.

Jay was raised as a Huguenot, a French protestant sect. The Huguenots were persecuted for a very long time by the French government, until the 1598 Edict of Nantes granted them extensive religious freedom.

But in October 1685, King Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleu, which revoked the freedoms granted nearly a century earlier (Louis may have done this to placate the Catholic Church, whose political power he had also been trying to diffuse). Persecution of the Huguenots began anew, and John Jay’s great-grandfather sent his wife and children to England to avoid being targeted. As a result, Jay’s great-grandfather had his property confiscated, and he eventually joined his family in England.

When Jay was born in America, he was raised in Rye, New York, and educated in a French Huguenot church school in the next town, New Rochelle named for La Rochelle, a Huguenot center in France.

There is no doubt that his family’s experience colored his own views of the relationship between a central government and the rights of citizens, especially when it came to the freedom to worship and the right to enjoy private property. Interestingly enough, Hamilton, too, had at least one Huguenot ancestor, a grandfather, and this may have contributed toward his antipathy toward the French as well.

To be certain, whether based upon familial experience or an overall approach to political philosophy (and most likely a combination of the two), the authors of the Federalist saw that the political machinations and concentration of absolute monarchic power during the reign of King Louis XIV as something to not just avoid, but to actively work against.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


Two noted maxims of Roman constitutional law contained in the code of Justinian’s 6th century Corpus Juris were, “What pleases the prince is law,” and, “The prince is not bound by the law.” These are classic expressions of sovereignty. They locate the ultimate power and authority to make and enforce law in one identifiable person. They reflect the full imperium of the Roman emperor and create a contrast with the earlier Roman republic, when a similarly complete dominance was exercised only outside the city, by proconsuls in the provinces.

Yet there was another maxim in the Corpus, “What touches all must be consented to by all.” This suggests that the ultimate authority rests not in the governor, but in the governed. In the Roman republic, actions were taken in the name of the Senate and People of Rome. That idea was symbolized by the SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus) which was prominently displayed even on the standards of the imperial Roman legions. There is an obvious tension between these maxims. One might locate in that tension the beginning in Western political thought of the lengthy and ongoing debate over the nature of sovereignty.

One of the most influential expositors of the concept was the 16th century French jurist Jean Bodin. In his Six Livres de la République (Six Books of the Commonwealth), published in 1576, Bodin defines sovereignty as the power to make law. Political society, like other human organizations, is hierarchical. Someone must make the rules. Thus, sovereignty must exist as a precondition for a state. Sovereignty, Bodin insists, must be indivisible. And it must be ultimate and absolute. While his preferred sovereign is a monarch, that is not requisite. As a student of the classics, he asserts that all political constitutions are monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic. As a man of the Renaissance, he believes in scientific epistemology. But, before one can effectively study a country’s laws, one must know the source of those laws, which is in one identifiable man or body of men.

The appeal of such a theory to a strong ruler is clear, and there were few rulers of the early modern period as absolute in power and self-assured of his sovereignty as Louis XIV of France. The “Sun King” ruled from 1643 to 1715, said to be the longest recorded of any monarch in history, although during his minority France was governed under the regency of his mother, Queen Anne. He took over sole rule in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the political and diplomatic virtuoso Cardinal Mazarin who had been the de facto ruler of France for a couple of decades. Louis’s famous dictum, “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the State”), may well be apocryphal, but it summarizes his view of government.

Louis certainly was not alone in that regard. The Early Modern Period saw the rise of the nation-state and, as an essential component, the absolute monarch ruling by divine right. By the reasoning of various defenders of the new order, an absolute monarch as sovereign was as natural as the rule by the paterfamilias over the family and the rule of the pope over the community of believers. While Martin Luther and other early Protestant leaders might challenge the second analogy, they had no problem with the bigger point. On its way out was the old divided feudal structure, based on personal covenants of fealty, with power divided between popes and emperors, emperors and nobles, and nobles and freeholders. The conflict between King John and the nobles at Runnymede, which culminated in the Magna Carta of 1215, was an anachronism. More representative of the new order of things was King Henry VIII’s campaign of arrest and execution of English noblemen and seizure of noble estates. In similar manner, the walk by Emperor Henry IV over the wintry Alps in 1077 to Canossa to beg forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII and have his excommunication lifted, would be seen as rather odd. Instead, there was that same King Henry VIII first making himself head of the Catholic Church in England and, soon thereafter, head of the new Church of England.

Historians have speculated about the many possible causes of the rise of the modern nation-state. It is difficult to pinpoint any one cause, or even to distinguish between causes and symptoms. Was it the increased sophistication of weaponry and the changed structure of military operations, which eroded the relative equality of power among various nobles because of the greater expense of the new technologies and the larger armies drawn from commoners? Was it the growing influence of commerce due initially to the greater affluence and stability of society in the 12th and 13th centuries and then, ironically, to the economic recovery in the 15th century after the prior century’s population collapse from pestilence and famine due to the colder climate of the Little Ice Age? Was it the result of the decimation of the nobility due to the many wars among nobles, such as that between the House of York and the House of Lancaster in the English War of the Roses in the 15th century? Was it the European expansion and exploration in the Age of Discovery, enabled by European technological superiority, the expense of which could only be undertaken by comparatively large states and which, in turn, brought great wealth to their rulers? Was it simply, as Niccolo Machiavelli might declare, due to Fortuna and the virtu of dynamic statesmen with which a particular political entity was favored?

Whatever the reason, every ruler, it seemed, wanted to be what Louis XIV became. Timing was not uniform. England under the Tudors became the domain of an absolute monarch a few generations before France did, but also lost that status well before France did. The German princes operated on a smaller scale and were well behind France in their pretensions to absolute rule; indeed, the Holy Roman Empire never coalesced into a nation-state. But the common thread for these rulers, other than in various city states and in a few oddities such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Swiss Confederacy, and the United Provinces of the Netherlands, was that they claimed to exercise full sovereignty in fact.

The existence of the aforementioned oddities presented a problem for theorists such as Bodin. The confederated natures of such realms and their distributions of power among various political organs vexed him. His solution was simple. He either just assigned such divided governments to a pure system or declared them not to be true states. Thus, he characterized the intricate constitution of the Roman Republic as a democracy. The Holy Roman Empire, with its imperium in imperio, that is, a purported dual sovereignty, was not really a state, but a chimera of one.

Along with Bodin, another influential author of the doctrine of sovereignty was the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose major work on the topic was Leviathan. As Bodin had done, Hobbes declares sovereignty to be indivisible and absolute. But Hobbes goes further. His approach is more pragmatic and more rigorous than Bodin’s. Hobbes analyzes sovereignty less in terms of authority to make law, but rather in the ruler’s power to coerce others. That is the essence of the old Roman imperium, to command. For Hobbes, the sovereign’s legitimacy arises from the consent of the governed rooted in the social contract. That contract results from the human psychological need for peace. Mankind’s desire for survival impels humans to escape the brutal Hobbesian state of nature with its war of all against all. Human nature is both rational and self-interested. Hence, humans seek the safety of the political commonwealth and the strength of its organized coercive power.

Hobbes’s view of the relationship between subject and ruler is best described as covenantal, and his reference to an Old Testament creature is not coincidental. There is no equality of bargaining and equality of relationship as in a typical contract. The subject agrees to obey unconditionally, and the ruler provides protection and peace. To do that, the ruler must have unquestioned power to bend all persons and all institutions to his rule. The sovereign can act in accordance with established law or contrary to it. Church-state divisions are no longer an issue. The secular sovereign controls the ecclesiastical bodies, as Henry VIII controlled the church. It need hardly be added that a divided state or a system of distributed powers would be an abomination for Hobbes, as it would undermine the commonwealth’s stability and raise the likelihood of a return to the state of nature.

The Bodinian and Hobbesian approbation of undivided sovereignty in an absolute ruler sits rather ill at ease with certain assumptions about the American system. The drafters of the United States Constitution deliberately sought to create a system of balanced powers divided between the general government and the states and among several branches of the general government. The supporters of the Constitution frequently discussed the division between the general government and the states in terms of sovereignty, particularly the residual sovereignty of the states, in their efforts to assuage the concerns and blunt the criticisms of their opponents during the ratification debates. James Madison and others even argued that the Constitution was in many ways just a novel and workable modification of the confederal structure of the Articles of Confederation.

The Anti-federalists were not persuaded and, like Bodin and Hobbes, insisted that sovereignty was indivisible and that, within a union, imperium in imperio was impossible. Either the states were the sovereigns, as under the Articles of Confederation, or the general government was. While the framers may have attempted to “split the atom of sovereignty,” in the vivid words of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the effort was bound to fail. Either the states would control the general government or the latter would control the former. For the Anti-federalists, the teleological direction of the Constitution was clear: The general government would inevitably diminish the states to mere administrative appendages and become a tyranny.

This controversy over the nature of sovereignty in the Constitution has continued. Is there, indeed, an identifiable sovereign at all under the Constitution, with the split in authority among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, as well as between the House of Representatives and the Senate? This does not even consider the role of what is, in the evaluation of some, the true sovereign: the wholly extraconstitutional vast bureaucracy with its essentially unreviewable combined rule-making and rule-enforcing power.

That question also leads to another controversy. To counteract the criticism that the Constitution was a path to oligarchic rule at best, and outright dictatorship at worst, the Constitution’s supporters made frequent references to the power of the people to participate in various political processes. In similar manner, there arose the claim that, in the United States, unlike even in Britain, “the people are sovereign.” In 1776, George Mason asserted in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, “That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; …” Although he also expressed caution about this principle, James Madison in Number 49 of The Federalist accepted Thomas Jefferson’s dictum that, “the people are the only legitimate fountain of power,” and acknowledged that, at least, in certain unexplained extraordinary matters, the people should decide directly.

But how do “the people” exercise indivisible and ultimate authority and power? Leave aside various inconvenient facts, such as the usual exclusion of large groups of “the people” from the political system, the often low fraction of eligible voters who actually participate, the ability of unelected bureaucracies or courts to frustrate the political decisions reached, and the dubious premise that “the people” have acted when the vote is, say, 51% in favor and 49% opposed. As the experience of ancient Athens and Rome shows, it is not possible for “the people” to gather in one place. As an interesting side note, modern technology makes such an event less implausible, but even with the capacities of a premium Zoom version, it might be difficult to get a couple of hundred million of “the people” to participate in policy-making. It is a far cry from an 18th-century New England town meeting, and even there, a majority assumes a power over a minority.

Moreover, aside from the Constitution’s optimistic reference to “We, the people of the United States,” every part of that document is about entities other than the people making laws and coercing individuals to obey those laws. Indeed, “the people” did not adopt the Constitution. Nor can they amend it. Technically, there is not even a guaranteed right in the document for “the people” to vote, as the states control the qualifications for voting in the first instance. True, here or there across the American constitutional landscape, one might spot an exemplar of popular sovereignty. Some states provide for direct participation by voting on ballot initiatives and referenda to make law, and there remain in some localities the afore-mentioned town meetings. One might even point to jury nullification as another example. But all of these are well outside the norm.

This dissonance between declarations of popular sovereignty and the reality of governments nevertheless has led some writers to try to reconcile them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that the people cannot act individually to legislate. Instead, their particular interests are collectivized and transformed rather mystically into the community’s “general will.” For Rousseau, the community is an actual, albeit incorporeal, entity with a will. That general will is expressed in laws through some legislative body. This seems to be a well-perfumed version of the Roman empire’s old constitutional sleight of hand that the people are the ultimate source of political authority but have ceded their sovereignty to the emperor.

Rather than resolve these tensions, one might distinguish between “theoretical sovereignty” and “practical sovereignty.” In a system whose claimed legitimacy is based on consent of the governed and which purports to base the legitimacy of its actions on some degree of popular participation, one might indeed posit a theoretical grounding on “the people” as the unlimited sovereign. The then-future Supreme Court justice James Wilson, a prominent lawyer and intellectual who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, wrote in his law lectures that a constitution originates from the authority of the people. “In their hands, it is as clay in the hands of the potter: they have the right to mould, to preserve, to improve, to refine, and to finish it as they please.” But that is not how government operates in practice. It is certainly not how the Constitution was adopted and how it has actually been amended.

Just as the high-minded assertion in the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal” states a Christian view of us all as God’s children or perhaps a still-aspirational secular equality before the law, “popular sovereignty” or “consent of the people” is a useful philosophic device to communicate the difference between a government and a bandit. It establishes a conceptual basis, perhaps a noble lie, for political obligation, that is, why one is obligated to obey the commands and coercions of the former, but not the latter.

The more difficult and practically relevant investigation is where in our constitutional system does the practical sovereignty lie. Who really governs, makes the rules, and coerces obedience? There indeed is no clear Bodinian sovereign in the Constitution’s formal dispersal of power. Despite Alexander Hamilton’s expansive views of executive power in The Federalist and his subsequent Pacificus letters, the President’s constitutional powers fall well short of a monarch’s, as Hamilton wrote, as well. Even Louis XIV, despite his pretensions, found out that his word was not everyone’s command. He did ultimately acknowledge on his deathbed, “I depart, but the State shall always remain.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier


In Federalist 31, using references to math and science, Hamilton says that, “IN DISQUISITIONS of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. But in the sciences of morals and politics, men are found far less tractable; yielding to some untoward bias, they entangle themselves in words and confound themselves in subtleties. Strong interests, passions, and prejudices may degenerate into obstinacy, perverseness, or disingenuity.”

In Federalist 37, Madison says, “In some, it has been too evident from their own publications, that they have scanned the proposed Constitution, not only with a predisposition to censure, but with a predetermination to condemn.” On the other hand, (The Federalist Papers) “solicit the attention of those only, who add to a sincere zeal for the happiness of their country, a temper favorable to a just estimate of the means of promoting it. A faultless plan was not to be expected.  The most that the convention could do in such a situation, was to avoid the errors suggested by the past experience of other countries, as well as of our own; and to provide a convenient mode of rectifying their own errors, as future experiences may unfold them.”

Madison notes that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention sought to find the best combination of features in the construction of government that would provide “stability and energy in government with inviolable attention due to liberty and to the republican form. They sought to avoid those features that they believed would risk the destruction of their proposed government as quickly as was that of the Republican government of Florence in the early 16th century.

In the turmoil of Florentine politics, Machiavelli believed that Republican government was necessary for good government, but that many who sought to be autocratic rulers had different ideas of what good government looked like. Machiavelli observed that those opposed to good government under a Republican form believed (1) that moral and spiritual virtues are not essential for the administration of government and must be avoided by ensuring that government is secular; (2) that Christianity, in particular, is destructive to governing; (3) that fear and the threat of coercive force are more important than legal force; (4) that a forceful, and even violent, response is the only appropriate means to prevent enemies of the state from upsetting the political order of the state; (5) that what’s good for the state should guide government rather than what’s good for its individual citizens; (6) that the head of state must use whatever means is at his disposal to do whatever is necessary to maintain control and power; (7) that, to ensure peace and tranquility in the country, a consequence is that citizens will be disarmed.

It’s not difficult to understand Machiavelli’s observations when one considers the period in which he was an official in Florence’s government. Although a Republic existed after the Medici government was overthrown, it lasted less than 20 years; in addition, a co-conspirator in the overthrow of the Republic was the Papal forces. Thus, he seems to have concluded that Christian leaders may have been no more moral than secular leaders and that Christian leaders were as willing as secular leaders to exercise force to gain control of government and the populace.

America’s Founding Fathers, all of whom had studied the Bible as an essential part of the classical education, believed that moral and spiritual virtues were necessary for good men to establish good government.  They believed that the government should be entrusted with limited powers, with those powers determined by the people through their elected representatives, rather than with unelected governors who used force to obtain security for the people, but at the expense of the people’s liberty. And they believed that government existed to secure the rights of the people rather than to ensure the long-term viability of the state.

As they debated the construction of a new Republican form of government in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, they sought to use their knowledge of republican and authoritarian governments over thousands of years to construct one that might prevent their proposed republic from ultimately being overcome by authoritarian-minded opponents. The features of acquiring authoritarian power in government noted by Machiavelli were features that the Convention delegates sought to minimize in their new Constitution.

Their Christian education and study of Aristotle’s Ethics informed them that leaders of good character were necessary for good government.  John Adams, in a speech to the Massachusetts militia in 1798, said that “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” and George Washington reflected a similar sentiment when he said, in his Farewell Address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.”

Yet they also recognized that no particular religion should require support by the citizens of the nation and that no religious affiliation should be required to hold federal public office. At the time, many of the 13 states had state-sponsored religions and, at a minimum, required that those citizens eligible for public office must be Protestants. In Article VI, Clause 3, of the United States Constitution, the Constitution clearly stated that, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”  So, good character, moral, and ethical principles, generally acquired from education in religious and philosophical principles, were recognized as important for helping citizens acquire responsible civic virtue that the Founders considered necessary for good government of the people.

In crafting the Second Amendment, the Founders recognized that citizens who were disarmed would be unable to retain their liberty should authoritarian politicians attempt to seize power in the federal government.

Rather than adopting Machiavelli’s concept that government existed for the “good of the state,” the Founders decided that government existed to secure liberty for the people. The Constitution was designed to provide the government’s structure in support of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, most specifically the Declaration’s statement that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” To more forcefully communicate that government existed to secure the rights of the people, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifies limited powers of the federal government and the Ninth Amendment states that, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Additional measures in the Constitution provided for two houses in Congress, one to represent the people and the other to represent the individual states. The President was given power to veto laws passed by both houses of Congress to prevent the legislature from accruing excessive power, and the Congress was given the power to override a Presidential veto to prevent a President from accruing excessive power.  The Supreme Court was given the power to ensure that laws passed by Congress and signed by the President were in accord with the Constitution to prevent a situation in which both houses of Congress as well as the office of President were occupied by politicians of one faction and attempted to enact legislation to benefit their faction, in conflict with the Constitution.

If all else fails, then Article I of the Constitution provides for impeachment of the President, Vice President and all civil Officers for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, with the additional check and balance providing that the House has the sole power to impeach and the Senate has the sole power to try all impeachments.

As noted above in Federalist 37, “A faultless plan was not to be expected.” The Founders attempted, to the best of their abilities, to construct a Constitution that reflected the strengths and minimized the weaknesses of republican governments over thousands of years of history, a history they knew well because of their classical education.  Yet, they recognized that their conception of a federal government structure was an experiment, as reflected in what Benjamin Franklin said in his final speech at the Convention, “when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.” Later, when he was asked by a group of citizens what sort of government the delegates had created, his answer was, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

We’ve kept it for more than 230 years, overcoming many challenges to its existence. In his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln reminded us that, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”  And President Reagan said in his 1964 speech, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.” It’s up to us, we the people, not the government, to keep it going for another 230 years.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


Among the common definitions one finds for “Machiavellian” are “unscrupulous,” “cunning,” “deceitful,” and “duplicitous,” words associated with disreputable character. The namesake for these malignant traits is Niccolo Machiavelli, a Florentine diplomat who lived from 1469 to 1527. He was a scion of an ancient Florentine family. His father, a lawyer, provided him with a classic education. That learning shows in Machiavelli’s various books about political science, warcraft, and history. In addition, Machiavelli wrote numerous letters and shorter essays and a satirical play, Mandragola, which was immensely popular at the time. Whether or not he intended it as such, this play has been described as an allegory about political events in 16th century Italy, a bawdy dramatization of the advice Machiavelli gave to the Medici family in his notorious work, The Prince (De Principatibus or Il Principe).

Machiavelli and his family were firmly associated with the republican factions in Florence. Through that connection, he held diplomatic offices in service to his city, traveling extensively to political centers and royal courts in Italy and the rest of Europe. In this capacity, he met a number of rulers, including the charismatic Cesare Borgia, after which the protagonist in The Prince is supposedly styled. With the return to power of the anti-republican faction of the Medicis in 1512, Machiavelli’s political fortune cratered. The following year, he was accused of plotting against the regime, arrested, imprisoned, and tortured.

It has long been claimed that he wrote The Prince while in prison as a testimony that he was loyal to the regime and, indeed, should be permitted to serve in the new government. The fawning dedication to Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino, that Machiavelli wrote in the preface of the book lends credence to that claim. Whether or not Lorenzo or any other member of the family ever read the book, Machiavelli’s hope for a further diplomatic career remained unfulfilled. He retired to a life of contemplation and writing.

Around 1517, he wrote his other famous work on politics, The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, wherein he examined the politics of the early Roman Republic. From Rome he sought to learn the necessary conditions for a successful republic, an aspiration for his own city’s future. Although there are common threads, such as the judicious use of violence when needed to maintain the government, The Prince is different in tone and goal than The Discourses. This has led to much speculation about Machiavelli. Was he the amoral cynic who scorned Christian ethics, which the former book displays? Or was he the admirer of republican Rome, who emphasized the need for constant “rebirth” to maintain that best of all systems? In the latter work, he is alarmed that corruption of republican character will destroy the republic, unless something spurs its rebirth, preferably from reforms within the republic itself. John Adams, writing a quarter-millennium later in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, agreed. But that is not The Prince.

In short, one must look at The Prince on its own terms. Readers then and since have been shocked—or piously professed to be shocked—by its content and tone. But why? The book makes no claim to promote virtue, either in the classic or Christian sense. He does not disparage Christianity or challenge Christian virtue in this or any other of his works. As one commentator has noted, “What should not be assumed is that whatever Machiavelli thinks about things in general is necessarily ‘Machiavellian.’ His view of politics is, but it simply does not follow that his view of everything is ‘Machiavellian.’” The Prince purports to deal with the world as it is, not as philosophy or religion would like it to be. It followed a long literary tradition called “the mirror of princes,” books whose lessons instructed future rulers about “proper” governance. It should come as no surprise that such instructions during the Middle Ages came with a heavy dose of Christian ethics to civilize the prince and habituate him to just and temperate rule. After all, as Thomas Aquinas noted, God gave the ruler care of the community for the general welfare, not a license to exploit the people for the ruler’s own benefit.

Machiavelli builds on that literary tradition but uproots it from its philosophical grounding. He tosses aside the Aristotelian conjoining of ethics and politics, the classic assumption that what defines a good person also defines a good ruler, where the private virtue is elevated to the public. It is an abandonment of the scholasticism of the High Middle Ages and its synthesis of philosophy and religion, of which Thomas was a prominent expounder. The Prince warns the ruler that, to be successful in politics, assume the worst of everyone, whereas the classical version of politics as ethics writ large held that a few people are virtuous, more are evil, and the great majority are in-between. It was for the last group that habituation to ethical behavior might move the needle.

Machiavelli is not interested in saving the prince’s soul, but in having him survive, a matter of particularly acute relevance in the chaotic and often murderous factional politics of the Italian states. He does not hold up his examples as paragons of morality, and his praise of virtu means a prince’s skill at the craft of statesmanship, not the ideal character of a Christian nobleman or the pursuit of personal excellence by a Roman Stoic sage. His advice is specific and based on assumptions about how human beings consistently respond to certain events and actions. These assumptions are drawn from hard-nosed examination of human behavior and contemporary events. Machiavelli engages in empirical psychology, no less valid because his analysis often also draws from historical sources made familiar through his classical education. Like the image of Janus, the Roman two-faced god of transitions, Machiavelli and his contemporaries looked ahead to a more secular world revealed through humanistic tools of discovery but still could not avert their gaze from the medieval world receding behind them.

The Prince is divided into several sections and chapters, dealing with the particular conditions of various principalities. There are secular and ecclesiastical princes.. Among the secular are those who became rulers by conquest, by criminal acts, or by acclaim of the people. Just as all cars might have certain similar requirements for maintenance, yet need different manuals to address their particular components, so does the governance of people in different polities.

Starting with commonalities, there are certain common sense postulates derived from experience. It is better to be feared than loved by the people. He acknowledges that it is best to be both respected and loved by the people. A ruler who is loved is likely to return that love and act magnanimously and govern moderately. But love is unsteady. In human relations, lovers betray each other constantly, through deceit or worse. That behavior is the theme of much literature, dramatic as well as comedic, including Machiavelli’s own Mandragola. At the impersonal level of a state, love becomes even less stable, which Machiavelli’s own fate in a city riven with factionalism demonstrated all too well. No politician is loved by everyone and should not even try. Sic transit gloria mundi should be a warning for every politician, as the glory of today becomes the exile, or worse, of tomorrow. Fear, on the other hand, provides a more stable rule, because it always produces the same reaction from people, of obedience and, indeed, respect for the ruler’s decisive leadership.

True, some might feel so much hatred for a strict ruler that it overcomes their fear. Therefore, the ruler must apply the precautionary principle: treat everyone as a potential assassin, more practical advice to survive in 16th century Italian politics. From this, another general rule emerges. Feign affability, but never let down your guard by mistaking your disguise for reality.

Of particular relevance to the Medicis would be the advice for rulers of conquered lands. Upon victory, the new ruler might react in an understandable human way and be indiscriminately magnanimous to the conquered people. Big mistake. The ruler must put himself in the position of various groups among those people. First, there is the former ruler and his family, around whom those with loyalty to the prior regime might coalesce. To the extent possible, the prior ruler’s family must be exterminated to eliminate this mortal danger to the new prince.

Another group might be those who have invited the prince to invade as a result of factional strife within that domain. This group expects to be rewarded. It is safe to ignore them, as they have no one to support them against the new prince. Their own people consider them traitors, and their very existence depends on the prince’s success. He holds their reins, not they his.

A third group are the sizable portion of the people who have something to lose in wealth or position, but are not among the first two groups. They might be, for example, merchants, artisans, and bureaucrats. The advice: be generous to make them feel connected to him. Kill those with loyalties to the old regime, fine. But get it done quickly, and do it through a subordinate who can then be blamed for having been overly zealous. One might think of King Henry II of England and his cry to the nobles, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest” about killing Thomas Becket, the 12th century Archbishop of Canterbury. Better yet, kill the executioner, for there is no better way of showing that executions are over than hanging the hangman. The conquered people are afraid and cowed, uncertain of what will become of them, their families, and their property. They look for any sign of humanity in the conqueror and want to believe in the ruler’s good will. Such an approach will reassure them that they are safe and will be seen by them as one of generosity. After all, the condemned man is thankful for a pardon, even though it may have been the ruler whose prosecution put the man in the position of needing one. The reader might find it difficult to avoid the sense that this part may have been about Machiavelli and his own family’s situation while he wrote The Prince.

People, by nature, lack gratitude. Over time, the effect of not having been killed or lost their property wears off. Now the prince should reward them, but do so gradually and without raising taxes. The people may see through this, but will respect the prince for his fiscal discipline which has benefited them financially. One other noteworthy point that Machiavelli makes is that this third group of people might accept their conqueror because they blame the prior ruler for their situation. They will believe that the prior ruler lost because of corruption of his moral or political bearings, with the latter due either to the ruler’s laziness in attending public affairs or to a rot of the political structure as a whole. In any case, the prior ruler proved unfit, which makes the new one worthy of respect and fealty.

The last group is the remainder of the population. One option is to rule with perpetual fear and to strangle their livelihoods with taxes to keep them struggling for survival rather than engaging in political scheming. But, sooner or later, the prince will need them as soldiers. It will not do to impoverish the people because, with nothing for them to lose, it will make them unable and unwilling to fight on his behalf.

This broaches the topic of war, one of Machiavelli’s favorites, not coincidentally also a frequent pursuit of the rulers of Italian states during his time. War, he declares, is ubiquitous and inevitable among states. The prince should embrace it, but be smart about how and when to fight. War must deliver benefits for his people, such as tribute or new lands. Internal politics are inevitably connected to foreign policy, an interrelation which a diplomat such as Machiavelli would be sure to emphasize. War also can be a useful distraction from domestic trouble by rallying the people to the prince.

The “how” of fighting the war is of particular significance and requires long-term choices. One might use one’s own forces, those of allies, or mercenaries. While some combination among them, particularly the first two, is possible, he addresses the benefits and drawbacks of each. If one relies on allies, one takes a risk. They may help you and fight with elan. However, they may want a division of the conquered territory. If you refuse, they may turn on you. Therefore, be hesitant about allying with more powerful entities, but at least make sure that there is not one predominant ally among the group.

Mercenaries are always a problem, during war or peace. Perhaps he based this on the experience Italian states had with their frequent use of mercenaries, particularly German and Swiss. He broadened the argument to include professional soldiers in general. They fight for money and often are on retainer during peacetime. Therefore, they want to avoid war and will counsel against or even frustrate the ruler’s political decision about war. If war happens, they feel a certain fraternity with those on the other side. They may know them and even may have fought alongside them in other wars. Mercenaries do not fight vigorously, because the soldier on the other side is “just doing a job,” just as they are. The mercenaries lack the necessary conviction for the cause, because, in the words of one commentator, they “no more hate those they fight than they love those whom they fight for.” Even if they win, they could turn on the prince. At the least, they might raise their fee, a demand it would behoove the prince not to ignore lest the mercenaries act against his interest.

Best, then, to rely on one’s own citizen militia. If there are military reverses, the citizens will fight most vigorously for their hearth and home. If they are victorious, they can be rewarded with a moderate degree of plunder. They might also be useful to colonize the new realm. However, this migration must be undertaken with the long view towards intertwining the conquerors with the original inhabitants. It must not produce a collection of isolated communities of occupiers. Assimilation works best if the conquerors and the conquered share language, religion, and customs. Otherwise, particular care must be taken to be sensitive to deeply-held customs of the conquered people to pacify them. This reflects a practical strategy employed successfully by the ancient Romans as they spread across alien lands.

Machiavelli’s commendation of citizen militias and his distrust of professional soldiers reflects his republican leanings. Such broad-based military service was at the heart of the classic Greek and Roman conception of citizenship. His views became a staple of classic republican argumentation. During the debates over the American Constitution in 1787 and 1788, the Anti-federalists vigorously objected to a standing army as a tool of tyranny that would doom the republic. Hamilton and Madison used several essays in an attempt to blunt those objections.

Another aspect of Machiavelli’s instruction was that the ruler must consider the role of luck in events, particularly in war. He uses Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck and fate. She is capricious, moody, and willful. She must constantly be courted to keep her on one’s good side. Her capriciousness cannot be tamed, but fortunately, if one may use that word, it may be calmed by the ruler’s virtu. Machiavelli is a Christian, so he does not believe in unalterable fate; man has free will. Moreover, the history of warfare shows not only the influence of luck, but of skill at warcraft, such as when a commander executes a deft maneuver that allows his army to escape a precarious situation. Hence it behooves a ruler to act decisively. Fortuna and virtu, working together, are irresistible.

Unlike the legitimacy a prince has by succession under established constitutional rules, conquest by itself cannot bestow legitimacy on the new prince. Machiavelli’s prince is not Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. Machiavelli calls to mind Aristotle’s distinction between king and tyrant. The non-pejorative meaning of “tyrant” was someone who came to power outside the customary process. That said, a consistently “lucky” prince will be seen by the people as beyond ordinary men, which creates legitimacy in their eyes. It is a well-known psychological urge in people to “go with a winner.” One need note only the increased attendance at sporting events in our time when the team is on a winning streak that season. As in the case of the ancient Greek heroes favored by their deities, Fortuna smiles on the prince. The concrete evidence of the prince’s success bestows the legitimacy on him which medieval Christians believed occurred through God’s anointment of kings and emperors. A lot of this may be theater, where elaborate court pomp and ritual provides the stage to make it appear that the prince is powerful and favored by fortune. The medium becomes the message, as the phrasing goes. As in Plato’s parable of the cave, the appearance becomes the reality in the minds of the subjects, a metamorphosis to which citizens of modern republics certainly are not immune, either.

The requirement that a successful prince take account of Fortuna’s fickleness and need for constant attention and courting sounds very much like Plato’s and Polybius’s critiques of the “pure” forms of democracy. For them, the general citizenry was fickle and willful and craved constant flattery from would-be leaders. The extent to which the latter possessed the political virtu to manipulate the citizens would determine how much support such demagogues would get. One also is reminded of Hamilton’s concern in Number 68 of The Federalist that direct election of executives is undesirable, because it rewards men who offer nothing more than their “[t]alents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity.”

The Prince has often been compared—unfavorably—to the works of political theorists who followed Machiavelli within a few generations, preeminently Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes. The latter, critics have charged, produced much more sophisticated and internally consistent investigations of political systems. Bodin, a French academic and jurist who wrote in the 16th century, analyzed different forms of government and organized them around the concept of sovereignty. Hobbes, an Englishman writing a hundred years later, claimed his work to be a new science of politics. He provided a modern psychological basis for the origin of political society in the rational self-interest of mankind, foremost the desire for personal security and safety. Meeting that primal psychological need established for Hobbes the legitimacy of an absolute ruler such as his Leviathan.

These criticisms miss the purpose of writing The Prince. Like Bodin, Machiavelli favored centralized and effective power through his prince. He hoped for a strong leader to unify Italy, much as Bodin wrote in favor of the French monarchy which had mostly completed the unification of France. Like Hobbes, Machiavelli in The Prince rejects established ethical justifications for a ruler’s legitimacy and justifies a strong and energetic ruler based on that ruler’s success in governing. As was essentially the case for Hobbes, there is no universal moral order of natural law which actually limits the prince’s law-making. To borrow from Justinian’s Code, the prince is the law because there is no earthly sovereign above him. This had also been the position of certain medieval churchmen, especially William of Occam, in regards to the divine realm and God’s omnipotence. Machiavelli and Hobbes secularized those arguments. It is true that The Prince lacks the philosophical wholeness and complexity of other works, but Machiavelli was not aiming for that. His Discourses on Livy comes closer to it. With The Prince, he was writing a practical guide for a successful ruler, a guide drawn from experience and an exemplar of a new science of statecraft.

Machiavelli’s prince did not, then, fail as a political concept. Indeed, Machiavelli’s goal of Italian unification through a dynamic leader, possessed of virtu and smiled upon by Fortuna, was realized, albeit more than three centuries later. Rather, because so much depended on the political skills of each ruler, particular princes failed while others succeeded. This flux destroys the social stability which is needed for productive lives and is traditionally the goal of government. Machiavelli reveals the concurrent strengths and weaknesses of monarchy and other single-executive systems of government. Leaving aside the potential problems of standing armies and heavy taxation discussed earlier, The Prince provides many lessons for us and reveals parallels to how our system functions.

For one, Machiavelli’s methodology is strikingly similar to the approach in The Federalist. Alexander Hamilton declared in Number 6, “Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.” Use of illustrative historical events and commentaries on human nature based on similar psychological investigations run throughout those essays. One goal of the authors of The Federalist was to explain to their readers how this republican system could be successful as a practical undertaking, regardless of its conformance to some ethical ideal, the virtue—or lack thereof—of its politicians, or the problematic legitimacy of its creation.

Machiavelli also recognized that the fate of the prince and the people ultimately are tied together. The prince’s wise practice of statecraft will bring prosperity, which the citizens will defend vigorously, if needed. This is an eminently pragmatic position, well supported by examining history. As James Madison wrote in Number 40 of The Federalist in response to criticisms that the Philadelphia convention had acted illegitimately and against existing constitutional rules, “[If] they had violated both their powers and their obligations, in proposing a constitution, this ought nevertheless be embraced, if it be calculated to accomplish the views and happiness of the people of America.”

Another lesson is the need to avoid dependence on the particular qualities of one leader. It has long and often been recognized that the Constitution creates a potential for strong executive government. Examples abound, from Alexander Hamilton’s broad claims of implied executive powers in his Pacificus essays from 1793, to Woodrow Wilson’s positively Machiavellian observation in his book Constitutional Government, “If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible. . . . His office is anything he has the sagacity and force to make it.” Most telling are the numerous claims of far-reaching power to act in emergencies by presidents down to the present, which emergency powers then conjure more emergencies. While the political benefits from energy and decisiveness in the executive were duly noted, the framers of the Constitution intended the system of structural separation of powers to diminish the dangers from concentration of power in a single ruler.

Finally, there was the need to deal with the destructive factional politics that plagued Italian cities during Machiavelli’s time and beyond. The Prince proposes one manner—the charismatic leader whose skill will prevent these factions from entrenching themselves. The Constitution recognizes the problem, but proposes a different solution, to set the factions against themselves in peaceful competition by multiplying their number and diversity so that none become entrenched.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier


As Professor Joerg Knipprath notes, Webster defines Machiavellian as a term often used to describe someone who employs cunning, duplicity, or bad faith tactics to get what he wants. Synonyms include cutthroat, immoral, unconscionable, unethical, unprincipled, unscrupulous.

Only 250 years before the rise of revolutionary fever in the American colonies, Machiavelli’s observations on political power were published.  Those observations were more a description of how government worked at the time he wrote than a prescription of how government should work.  Government in the British colonies in the 18th century, in many ways, looked too Machiavellian to our Founding Fathers and influenced their decisions about how to form a new government, more specifically how to minimize human nature’s inclinations for control and power by those to be trusted as America’s future political leaders. Machiavelli’s tenure in political office in the Republic of Florence was sandwiched between the long Medici reign before its overthrow and the Medici restoration, with the aid of Papal troops, less than 20 years later.

In the turmoil of those years, Machiavelli saw that raw power determines who rules; natural law, religious faith and morality were irrelevant to rule and therefore, a secular government was more the norm. Preserving the state, not protection of individual rights by the state, was the objective of government; and whatever force was necessary to preserve the state, provide security for its citizens, and stability was acceptable. Machiavelli is considered by many today as the father of political science, generations before the term “political science” came into common usage.

Considerable discussion occurred during and after the 1787 Constitutional Convention between those arguing for and against a strong, energetic President. This was understandable in light of the recently concluded war of independence from a perceived strong British ruler whose “long train of abuses and usurpations” were listed in the Declaration of Independence.

In Anti-federalist 70, the author, arguing against a strong and energetic executive says, “In the first place the office of President of the United States appears to me to be clothed with such powers as are dangerous.”  He then adds, “So far is it from its being improbable that the man who shall hereafter be in a situation to make the attempt to perpetuate his own power, should want the virtues of General Washington, that it is perhaps a chance of one hundred millions to one that the next age will not furnish an example of so disinterested a use of great power.”  Although Washington was not yet in office as President, the author recognized that Washington would probably be elected President if the Constitution were ratified, but that subsequent Presidents, lacking the moral and civic virtues of Washington, may hunger for unlimited power and become the despot that all feared. The author went on to say that, “If we are not prepared to receive a king, let us call another convention to revise the proposed constitution, and form it anew on the principles of a confederacy of free republics.”

In Anti-federalist 71, the author says that “the best security for liberty was a limited duration, and a rotation of office, in the chief executive department.”  And, in Anti-federalist 72, arguing against unlimited reelections of a President, “Upon his being invested with those powers a second or third time, he may acquire such enormous influence and, haughtily and contemptuously, turn our poor lower house (the only shadow of liberty we shall have left) out of doors, and give us law at the bayonet’s point. We seem to be fast gliding away; and the moment we arrive at it — farewell liberty.” The Anti-federalists’ knowledge of the history of ancient governments reflected their concerns that political offices in the proposed Republic didn’t have more stringent restrictions on the ability of those elected to federal office to be reelected. Where restrictions were in place, the risk of despots holding office was reduced and where such restrictions were not in place, authoritarian government often grew.

The Federalists, on the other hand, took pains to illustrate that the checks and balances and separation of powers in the proposed Constitution would slow down the enactment of laws with extensive debate and thereby check the authoritarian impulses of the various branches. In modern terms, days, weeks, and months of debate were preferred to the ability of a President to use his phone and pen to enact new law rapidly.  They also believed that the two, four, and six-year terms of office in the Legislative and Executive branches were long enough to enable the occupants of those offices to have a positive impact on the exercise of their enumerated powers, yet short enough to allow citizens to turn them out of office when their Machiavellian methods and authoritarian impulses, to override the will of the people, became too strong.

In Federalist 51, Madison states that, “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” Therefore, to avoid a legislative branch aggrandizing its power at the expense of the executive branch, the Founders believed that care must be taken in constructing the government to grant powers to the President to check legislative overreach. Also, they recognized that a legislature which knew that the President who, after his four-year term ended could not be reelected, could wait out a President whom the legislature deemed too willing to check their power and hope that the next occupant of the executive branch would be less willing to check the legislative powers with a veto.  Over a period of time, patience by the legislature would enable them to accrue significant power. Therefore, the Founders decided that a President would not be forced to vacate his office, but could be reelected if the citizens so decided.

In Federalist 71, Hamilton discusses the advantages and disadvantages of a term of four years for the President. He says, “a duration of four years will contribute to the firmness of the executive but not long enough to justify any alarm for the public liberty.” In Federalist 72, Hamilton argues that a President shouldn’t be limited to only one four-year term, stating that there is a connection between “the duration of the executive magistrate in office and the stability of the system of administration.” This is easily observed in recent years as the Executive Orders of a prior President are frequently reversed immediately open the ascension to office of a new President, especially when a sitting President is defeated after his first term of office. Businesses that don’t know if a President’s Executive Orders will stand in the next administration are not willing to make long-term investments to grow their businesses.

In Federalist 23, Hamilton discusses the problems encountered during the fighting of the War under a Confederation form of government. He states the difficulty of requisitioning troops, supplies, and money to fight the war and of keeping morale high in the military ranks under such conditions. Hamilton says, of the country, “the Union ought to be invested with full power to levy troops; to build and equip fleets; and to raise the revenues which will be required for the formation and support of an army and navy, in the customary and ordinary modes practiced in other governments.” The President, as Commander in Chief, also must know that he has the authority to effectively lead the nation in time of war.

The Founders’ knowledge of the successes and failures of all types of government was deep; Machiavelli’s observations of what government transitions normally looked like provided an important, more recent, reminder of how quickly a Republic can fail internally if its government is not well constructed at birth and externally when confronted by powerful, amoral governments, led by autocrats’ intent on seizing and holding power.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


In making the case for the ratification of the Constitution, the authors of the Federalist papers (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay) routinely looked to history for examples of what to follow, and, almost more importantly, what shouldn’t be followed. The Constitution, of course, was to be an improvement over the previous Articles of Confederation, and document whose flaws in the separation and balance of powers necessitated the drafting of the Constitution itself.

The Articles of Confederation was also built on historic example, and among these was the 1579 constitution of the Netherlands provinces—the subject of Federalist #20, authored by Madison. Created as a result of the “Union of Utrecht”—a treaty created between the seven northern Dutch provinces who had allied with one another to oppose the Habsburg-controlled southern provinces, this constitution laid out the shared power structure between these unified territories.

But Madison recognized that the flaws endemic in the document creating this Dutch confederacy were duplicated by the flaws in the Articles of Confederation. In laying out his criticism of the Netherlands Constitution, he said the following:

“What are the characters which practice has stampt upon it? Imbecility in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and indignities; a precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities from war.”

In other words, because of the structural flaws in how this constitution laid out the relationship between the provinces, it left this union weak and vulnerable. Madison went on to say, “It was long ago remarked [that] nothing but the hatred of his countrymen to the House of Austria, kept them from being ruined by the vices of their constitution.”

To be fair, there was a flaw in Madison’s essay (and it was a flaw repeated by others), in that Madison suggested that votes on issues of importance to these provinces had to be unanimous. This was untrue.  William Riker, a political scientist and expert on federalism, said this in his 1957 journal article, “Dutch and American Federalism”:

“Nearly all the framers who spoke on the subject seemed certain of one statement about the Netherlands; and in this they were mistaken. Nearly all seemed to believe that the decisions of the general government required unanimity of the seven provinces-an even more stringent requirement than in the Continental Congress. But, misled by inaccurate commentaries, they did not know what this requirement meant or how it worked in practice or what significance it had in Dutch politics.”

Riker noted how favorably many of the founders (other than Madison) looked at the governmental practices within the Netherlands—which should come as no surprise given the breadth of Dutch colonial activity in the continent prior to the American founding.  He said:

“[W]hen the records of the Constitutional Convention and the state ratifying conventions are superficially examined, it appears that our heritage from the Netherlands is considerable. The records show that members of the conventions referred to the government of the United Provinces more frequently than to any other modern European government, except that of Great Britain.”

It should be noted that Professor Riker’s views on federalism changed over time as his expertise on the subject grew.  In his 1987 book, The Development of American Federalism, he admits the following in the introduction:

“Given my ideological shift [from “New Dealer” to “anti-statist”], I have also changed my evaluation of federalism. Initially I regarded it as an impediment-minor, perhaps—but still an impediment to good government. Now I regard it as a desirable, though still minor, restraint on the leviathan.”

But contemporaneous accounts underscore the relationship between the 1579 constitution and the Articles of Confederation. Pieter Paulus, who later became the first President of the Batavian Republic, wrote:

“It is surprising and to the credit of our ancestors, that these inhabitants of another continent, after a lapse of some two centuries, adopted practically the same measures and arrangements as they did when drafting the Union of Utrecht.”

Yet, here we have Madison’s criticism, a criticism which may have been informed by his fellow-Virginian, William Grayson, a lawyer and soldier who later became a member of the United States Congress.  Grayson had deep concerns about the Articles of Confederation, and how similar it was to the 1579 Netherlands constitution, writing to Madison:

“It is no wonder our Government should not work well, being formed on the Dutch model where circumstances are so materially different.”

This becomes reflected in Madison’s concluding remarks for Federalist #20, in which he says:

“The important truth, which it unequivocally pronounces in the present case, is, that a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals; as it is a solecism in theory; so in practice, it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity, by substituting violence in place of law, or the destructive coertion [sic] of the sword, in place of the mild and salutary coertion [sic] of the magistracy.”

The answer then is made manifest in the choices made in the structure of the Constitution as it was ultimately adopted: carefully enumerated powers for the federal government, a balancing of those powers between branches of government, and the retention of all power not surrendered in the hands of the people themselves as well as state governments.

This theme is made manifest throughout the Constitution and, in just one example, one can note the balance and contrast between what is discussed in Article 1, Section 10, and Article IV.  In Article I, Section 10, the founders placed very clear limits on the extent of state power—by making it clear, for example, that states cannot coin their own monies, nor could they negotiate treaties on their own. The reason for this is clear: building on the warning echoed by Madison in Federalist 20 (in part because of how he understood the flaws of the 1579 Netherlands Constitution), the drafters knew that while there might be intense internal debate between the states, that once an issue reached America’s shorelines, the nation had to speak with one voice. It would be chaos, for instance, if Massachusetts were negotiating one treaty with Spain, and Maryland were negotiating something different with Spain, or with an enemy of Spain.

In the same way that the federal government is responsible for regulating interstate commerce, these drafters also knew that it would likewise be chaotic if each state were creating its own currencies. So, they limited the power of the states in that regard as well.

But like all the other checks and balances, the trade-off to this is seen in Article IV—while the powers of the states are limited in terms of things like treaties and currency creation, Article IV gives a guarantee of protection to states. The federal government agrees to defend a state against military threats, and at the same time offers assurances in terms of working to make sure that each and every state treats each and every other state fairly. Article IV also makes guarantees as to the admission of new states into the Union, and a guarantee of a “republican” form of government.

With all of that in mind, the framers still felt it necessary to include the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2), which says that the Constitution, and any laws that are created by Congress, are the “supreme law of the land.”  So long as Congress creates laws that are based on the powers delegated to the federal government by the people (and the states), should those laws come into conflict with state laws, the federal laws take precedence.

But those laws have to be within those enumerated powers—and this is central to many of the policy and political debates of today. For much of the 20th century, the federal government’s authority was virtually unlimited in terms of legislation, and thus holding sway over competing laws that might be enacted by state legislatures, due to an expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3).

But in a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s, the limitations on federal power were re-asserted. The Supremacy Clause remains, but that “leviathan,” as Professor Riker described it, is checked by the limitations on, and diffusion of, that power within our system of federalism.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett

In Federalist No. 20, James Madison (with Alexander Hamilton) discusses the vices of the constitution of the United Netherlands. The United Provinces of the Netherlands, sometimes called the Dutch Republic, consisted of seven republics and was established through the Union of Utrecht in 1588. After decades of bloody religious wars, the sovereignty of the United Provinces was officially recognized with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, but the union collapsed in 1795 during the Batavian Revolution.

In theory, Madison observes, the constitution of the United Netherlands seems to have successfully combined effective executive power with republican representation in a legislative body. “The sovereignty of the Union,” Madison writes, “is represented by the States General, consisting usually of about 50 deputies appointed by the provinces.”[1] The States General has well-defined powers and responsibilities – including the power to make treaties, to make war or peace, to raise armies and equip fleets, and to demand quotas of contribution from the provinces – and the individual provinces are restrained from engaging in certain actions that are deleterious to the other provinces or to the Union as a whole.

“The executive magistrate of the Union is the Stadtholder,” Madison continues, “who is now a hereditary Prince.”[2] Each of the seven provinces was led by a stadtholder, but the offices eventually became hereditary and, in time, the Prince of Orange came to hold most or all of the individual stadtholderships. The Stadtholder of the union was given many powers and prerogatives, including the power to settle disputes between provinces, and to command the federal troops and navy.

The United Provinces of the Netherlands, “as delineated on parchment,” seemed to have struck a form that balances popular representation with an energetic executive. “What are the characters which practice has stampt upon it?” Madison asks. “Imbecility in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and indignities; a precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities from war.” The first vice of the constitution of the United Provinces is that there is a nearly constant tension between the different aims and policies of the States General – which wants to preserve the republican nature of the government – and the Stadtholder, with his ties to wealth and other monarchical powers in Europe. In fact, Madison writes, the authority of the Stadtholder arises mainly “from his great patrimonial estates [and] from his family connections with some of the chief potentates of Europe.”[3] This tension between the foundations and objects of the Stadtholder and States General had led to frequent disagreements and conflicting policies between the two departments over commercial affairs and defense policies.

The second vice of the union is that the States General, though vested with general legislative authority, requires “unanimity and the sanction of their constituents” for the enactment of all policies and laws. Although the unanimity requirement arose from an assumed equality of the seven provinces, and a desire to protect the provincial interests of each, it had led to two further difficulties. First, the unanimity requirement meant that a single deputy in the States General could veto measures necessary for the good of the whole union. “The Union of Utrecht,” Madison writes, “reposes an authority in the States General seemingly sufficient to secure harmony, but the jealousy in each province renders the practice very different from the theory.”[4] The second difficulty this produces is that in times of great and urgent emergencies, the States General and the Stadtholder frequently violated the constitution by ignoring the rule of unanimity. A constitution that, of necessity, is frequently violated, Madison suggests, is fundamentally flawed and in need of improvement.

The Articles of Confederation, which governed the union of American states prior to the Constitution, suffered from this second vice in some important ways. The unanimous consent of all the state legislatures and state delegations in Congress was required for all amendments to the Articles of Confederation. In the Confederation Congress, supermajorities (nine out of thirteen state delegations) were required for Congress to raise revenues, make treaties, and do other things necessary for the good of the American Union. The Federalists defended the new Constitution’s ability to remedy these potentially deadly defects: the requirements for ratifying and amending the Constitution were reduced from unanimity to a supermajority of state conventions; furthermore, all acts of Congress under the new Constitution would require only a majority vote of both houses of Congress. This last improvement especially makes it less likely that the federal government would need to violate the Constitution to take necessary actions in times of crisis, as the United Netherlands had done on numerous occasions. This problem is further mitigated by the independence and discretion of the president to take certain actions in times of crisis without prior authorization from Congress; it is further mitigated by the fact that there are implied powers in the Constitution, as indicated by the necessary and proper clause in Article II. These improvements would give the federal government a degree of flexibility to better fulfill its responsibilities, especially with regard to national security, without the need to undermine the sanctity of the Constitution by frequent violations.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

[1] The Federalist ­No. 20

[2] The Federalist ­No. 20

[3] The Federalist ­No. 20

[4] The Federalist ­No. 20

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


Historians have usually described the government of the Netherlands in the two centuries between 1579 and the political system’s collapse in the late 18th century as a “republic.” Consistent with his commentary about the government of Venice, James Madison did not approve of this characterization. In Number 20 of The Federalist, he deemed the United Netherlands “a confederacy of republics, or rather of aristocracies, of a very remarkable texture.” While at times complimentary in his assessment, overall he saw in their government further evidence of what ailed, in his view, all confederations, including the United States under the Articles of Confederation.

Like the Articles, the Dutch system was forged in a war for independence, the first goal of which was to survive militarily. The Dutch referred to their Revolt of the Netherlands as the “Eighty Years’ War.” Fighting against Spain began in 1566, the seven northern provinces of the Spanish Netherlands formally united in their common cause through the Union of Utrecht in 1579, a watershed step not unlike the agreements of mutual aid and action among the North American colonies in the years before 1776. The Dutch analogue to the American Declaration of Independence was the Act of Abjuration of 1581 against the king of Spain. There were some truces and cessations of hostilities in subsequent decades, but independence was not officially recognized until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which ended the much broader European conflict known as the Thirty-Years’ War. Still, the Dutch Republic had been functioning as an independent nation long before the status became official.

In the romanticized founding myths of the Dutch, the struggle was about religious toleration and national independence precipitated by an inquisition launched by the Spanish crown in support of the Council of Trent of 1543 and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. That may have been the motivator for some portion of the populace, and the assertion was useful in papering over the tensions which arose among the provinces during the war. The general reality was less lofty and more prosaic.

The Habsburg family ruled the Holy Roman Empire. They had received 17 provinces of the Duchy of Burgundy in 1482, which were allotted to the family’s Spanish branch in 1556. What happened next sounds familiar to the student of American history. The new Spanish king, Philip II, sought to centralize administration over these provinces located some distance from Spain, and to increase the efficiency of tax collecting. This would diminish the power that local bodies had previously exercised under the more hands-off approach of the Burgundians and the Emperor. The commercial towns in the southern provinces and the local nobles viewed this as an attack on their ancient privileges, secular and religious.

With resistance turning into rioting in 1566, the Spanish government sent an army, led by the Duke of Alba. Although a very capable military leader said by some to be one of the greatest of all time, he was a harsh governor, referred to by the Dutch as the “Iron Duke.” His army was generally successful against the rebels, but his policy of mass executions, sackings of towns, and massacres coalesced the population against the Spanish. The rebels received the support of a Catholic German-Dutch prince, William of the House of Orange-Nassau, the incumbent royal governor of several of the provinces. Colloquially—but unjustifiably—known as William the Silent for his supposed self-control not to erupt in anger, he was an effective political leader. As one of the richest Dutch nobles, he was also an important financial supporter of the rebels.

Although William had some successes against the Spanish army, the Duke of Alba eventually defeated his forces. William fled to his ancestral lands in Germany, from where he organized several mostly unsuccessful invasions. In 1573, Philip II relieved Alba of command and instituted a policy of reconciliation and acquiescence to greater local control. That split the rebels. The mostly Catholic southern provinces, which constitute Belgium today, returned to the Spanish fold. The seven increasingly Protestant provinces of the north remained in rebellion under William’s leadership. Dutch military fortunes brightened after the army of the United Provinces was formed following the Union of Utrecht. The army was placed under the command of William’s son, Maurice, after William was assassinated by a Spanish agent in 1584. Prince Maurice remained a prominent military and political leader for the next forty years.

One facet of the conflict at which the Dutch were consistently better than the Spanish was at sea. The northern provinces had long been oriented to fishing and maritime trade. Their coastal trade surpassed that of England and France in the 16th century. By the 17th century, their horizon had expanded to oceanic trade and the acquisition of colonies and foreign trading concessions. Along with that experience came skills in naval warfare. Professor Scott Gordon, in his thorough work on checks and balances in older constitutions, Controlling the State, estimates that, in the middle of the 17th century, the United Provinces owned more shipping capacity than England, France, the German states, Spain, and Portugal—combined. Amsterdam became the leading financial center of the world until it was finally replaced by London a century and a half later. It was the Dutch bankers from whom John Adams sought help during the American Revolution, because that was where the money was. Amsterdam was also one of the largest cities in Europe in the 17th century, having grown from 100,000 to 200,000 population in the middle decades.

Although the seven provinces were formally the main constituent parts of the “United Provinces of the Netherlands,” the towns were the actual foundation of the Dutch Republic’s political structure. The approximately 200 native Dutch noble families had status but limited power. There was not the same tradition of feudalism based on relationships of lord and vassal as in other European domains. In part, this was due to the closeness to the sea, with its sources of sustenance and wealth. In part it was due to the fact that for generations, land had been recovered by draining swamps or building dikes. These “polders” were claimed by commoners.

The towns were governed by the Regents, a wealthy subgroup of the merchant elite. The towns traced their charters and privileges to the medieval period. The Regents claimed to act for and represent the citizenry. However, their authority did not rest on broad political participation. From that perspective, the structure was not a republic, but an oligarchy. Meetings of the town councils controlled by the Regents were not open to the public. At the same time, the Regents did not constitute a class-conscious bourgeoisie in a Marxist sense. Rather, their actions seem to have been driven by local identity and preserving their local power. This town-centric system of governance remained until the reorganization of the Netherlands after the end of the Republic in the 1790s.

The towns built their own defense installations and levied taxes to maintain them, to preserve public order, and to provide for the poor. They also operated their own courts, enforced provincial laws, and administered provincial policies. The policy-making bodies, the town councils, generally had between 20 and 40 members. They elected various burgomasters annually from the Regent class to carry out executive and judicial functions.

The oligarchic character of the town governments was modulated somewhat through the militia, a combination military unit and social club. They were composed of troops of well-trained and heavily-armed men. Because members had to supply their own weapons, the militias consisted of middle and upper-middle class volunteers. They were led by officers from Regent families appointed by the town councils and were expected to carry out the latter’s wishes in case of civil disturbances. According to sources cited by Professor Gordon, riots were a not-uncommon manner for the citizenry to provide feedback to the Regents about their policies. The militia sometimes stood back if they opposed those policies themselves. Such expressions of popular discontent would have been particularly potent because the towns were still rather small, with the homes of the Regent families in close proximity to the other residents.

Gordon considers the failure of the Dutch Republic to provide less destructive means of popular expression of opposition to the town councils as one of its defects. Perhaps. But such riots were not uncommon in the history of the American republic, with apparently a customary acceptance of a degree of violence before the militia would be summoned. Recent events show that still to be a characteristic of American society. Whether that shows a defect in the republican nature of the political structure created in the constitutions of the United States and the several states is an interesting speculation.

The level of government above the towns were the provinces, formally the constitutional heart of the Dutch Republic. They were governed by entities called the “provincial states,” another institution formed in the Middle Ages. This term is not to be confused with the American concept of “states” as distinct political domains. Rather, the term refers to specific constitutional bodies which governed such political domains. These were assemblies of delegates from the towns. The members were selected by the town councils typically from the members of the Regent families. A town could send more than one delegate, but each town only had one vote, regardless of its population. However, despite this formal equality where decisions were generally reached by compromise and consensus, a dominant town would necessarily exercise a greater influence. Amsterdam as the largest and wealthiest town within the province of Holland provides a telling example. A province’s nobility also had one vote.

The principal obligation of the provincial states was to maintain the province’s military forces and to provide a system of provincial courts to preside over trials for various crimes and for appeals from the local courts. These assemblies could also assess taxes, but were dependent on the towns to collect them. Not infrequently there might be tension between the provincial state and the stadholder, the province’s chief executive from the House of Orange. Those tensions were especially acute and frequent in Holland, due to the strong anti-Orangist sentiments of Amsterdam, with its bourgeois merchants, its growing tradition of secular and religious dissent, and its cosmopolitanism. At times, Holland, as well as other provinces, refused to elect a stadholder when the prior one died.

At the apex of the Republic’s constitutional structure was the States-General, the body of around 50 delegates from the provinces. It met at The Hague. Although a province might send more than one delegate, each province had one vote. This equality of sovereigns marked the constitutional nature of the Republic in Madison’s characterization of it as a confederacy. As with the provincial states, this formal equality was tempered by the inequality of size and wealth among the provinces, in particular, Holland. That province’s delegation’s willingness to provide—or not—needed funding gave it influence which better reflected its economic position. The terms of office of the delegates were determined by the provinces and could be at pleasure, for one or more years, or for life. The agenda of the States-General was set by its president, which position rotated weekly among the provinces. Unanimity was required for action, although that was sometimes ignored if a particular need arose. It had various working committees to formulate policy and a Council of State to carry out its executive functions. The Council of State was composed of the provincial stadholder and twelve other appointees of the provincial states.

Initially, the States-General was to deal with the military campaign for independence. Thereafter, its role continued to be about war in the various conflicts in which the republic found itself in the 17th century. Beyond that, the States-General had broad responsibilities over coinage, diplomacy and foreign commerce and, as the Dutch quickly entered the pursuit of overseas empire, colonial affairs. Although it had the potential to become a national legislative body, that potential remained inchoate. Aside from the overarching political jealousies of the provinces and towns to maintain their local privileges, there were more direct limitations on the powers of the States-General, as well. For one, that body could not generally impose taxes directly. It could tax the colonies, but that yielded rather little. It could make assessments on the provinces, but that depended on the willingness of their delegates to agree, especially the delegation from Holland which typically had to bear at least half of the burden of an assessment. Any loans sought by the States-General for the benefit of the Republic must be approved by the provinces. It becomes clear why Madison saw the Republic as a case study for the fate of the Articles of Confederation.

Finally, there were the stadholder of the provinces and the de facto stadholder of the United Provinces. The office was derived from the provincial governorships the Holy Roman Emperor had established. Each provincial state selected that province’s stadholder for life. More than one province could appoint the same person, a very common scenario. During the two centuries of the Republic after 1589, all provinces always appointed members of the House of Orange-Nassau. When the need arose, the province of Holland, as the most important of the union, always appointed the head of that family. Technically, there was no Stadholder of the United Provinces. However, by customary practice, the States-General always appointed the stadholder of Holland to be the Republic’s commander-in-chief. This made the head of the House of Orange the main political leader of the most populous and prosperous province and the commander-in-chief of the Republic’s armed forces. The stadholderships generally became hereditary in the mid-17th century.

The power of the Prince of Orange over the armed forces included the power to set up military tribunals and to appoint higher-level officers. He also met with foreign ambassadors and had some adjudicatory powers, such as settling disputes among the provinces. His influence was bolstered by two broad sources. First, at the level of the union, he sat on all working committees of the States-General and on the Council of State. Together with his life term, this gave him broad knowledge about political matters over a much longer time frame than the provincial delegation, analogous to the Venetian Doge’s position in relation to the Senate and Great Council. If knowledge is power, this made the prince powerful, indeed.

Second, being the stadholder of Holland and, usually, several other provinces gave him significant control over provincial and even town affairs. The provincial stadholder was the head the province’s highest court, could pardon criminals, and had significant patronage powers over the appointment of officials at all levels. He could appoint certain burgomasters, although those had to be made from lists submitted by the Regent-controlled town councils. These roles, some formal, others by accepted practice, exercised at all levels of government, and extending to civil, military, and judicial matters, made the Prince of Orange in some ways the vortex around which Dutch politics swirled. In the end, however, with the vague constitutional dimensions of the office, it was the personality and talents of the particular stadholder which defined his powers.

A curious spectacle occasionally arose when various provinces left their stadholderships unoccupied. Even the province of Holland at one point in the 18th century left that position unoccupied for 45 years. In the 17th century Holland also prohibited the House of Orange from holding the stadholderships. Soon thereafter, its provincial state abolished the office altogether. That experiment lasted only five years, when those acts were repealed in the face of an invasion by England and France. One modern commentator quoted by Professor Gordon described the princes of the House of Orange as having “a special status within the Dutch state, almost mystical … in its nature.”

The Republic’s constitution was weakened in the 18th century in part due to factional rivalries in Amsterdam, the largest and wealthiest city in the largest and wealthiest province. The monarchist pretentious of the House of Orange clashed with the increasingly militant endemic anti-Orangist attitudes of the urban bourgeoisie. With a hardening of factional positions, political accommodations became more difficult. As well, the financial burdens of the colonial empire and the military needed to support it began to overwhelm the capacities of what was, after all, a rather small country. Still, it took the military might of, first, the Prussian Army and, thereafter, Napoleon’s forces, to end the Republic’s two centuries of successful government.

Madison in Number 20 of The Federalist disparages the Dutch system, his stand-in for the Articles of Confederation, as, “Imbecility in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and indignities; a precarious existence in peace; and peculiar calamities from war.” He seems to have derived his information from a book by Sir William Temple, a 17th century British ambassador to the United Provinces. But Temple was hardly an unsympathetic observer of the Republic. Where Madison saw deadlock leading to eventual dissolution and anarchy, Temple saw a system which attracted large numbers of foreigners from polities less conducive to liberty. Certainly, the federal nature of the United Provinces stood in stark contrast to the centralization of power in national governments generally, and in monarchs particularly, which was ascendant in the Europe of the time.

If one uses classic designations of constitutions, the Dutch system at first blush most closely resembles an oligarchy. If one uses Madison’s definition in Number 10 of The Federalist, it was a closed system controlled by the wealthy Regent families and the Prince of Orange. It failed the test of broad public participation even by the limited standards of the early American polities. But, if one evaluates a republic functionally, as a political structure which provides overall social stability, fosters the general well-being of the people, and promotes the liberty of individuals to follow their own paths to fulfilled lives, all by reigning in various political institutions through a functioning balancing of powers, the constitution of the United Provinces qualifies. The mutual checks provided among the levels of government (town, provinces, union), among the provinces themselves, and between the stadholder on the one hand and the provincial states and States-General created a system which protected the liberties of the people better than other contemporaneous countries. More bluntly, as Professor Gordon explains, “[W]ith this political system, the Dutch not only fought Spain and France to a standstill and invaded England, but also made their little collection of swamps and polders into the richest, most civilized, nation in the early modern world.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett


In the previous essay we saw the Federalist’s critique of the Holy Roman Empire and its two principal vices: first, a lack of effective executive authority in the confederacy; and second, a lack of centralized control and effective checks by the national authority over the member states. Both of these defects were strongly prevalent in the American Union under the Articles of Confederation as well. Under the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, there was no independent executive branch. Important matters affecting foreign policy and national security were handled by Congress, which created numerous “executive boards” to formulate and execute defense policies. This uncoordinated approach to fulfilling executive functions, as Alexander Hamilton observed, meant that “their decisions are slower, their energy less, their responsibility more diffused.” Hamilton continued, “Congress is properly a deliberative corps and it forgets itself when it attempts to play the executive. It is impossible such a body, numerous as it is, constantly fluctuating, can ever act with sufficient decision, or with system.”[1]

Congress also lacked any real power – especially a tax power – under the Articles of Confederation, and had no way to coerce or enforce their policies upon delinquent or disobedient states. “The next most palpable defect of the subsisting Confederation, is the total want of a SANCTION to its laws,” Hamilton wrote. “The United States, as now composed, have no powers to exact obedience, or punish disobedience to their resolutions.”[2] All revenue for the purposes of defensing the Union was raised through the voluntary compliance by the state legislatures, which was frequently lacking. Furthermore, the manner in which Congress was constituted gave the individual states great influence – if not complete control – over the affairs of Congress. Each state had one vote in Congress, and state legislatures selected their congressional delegations with authority to recall those delegations at any time. Supermajorities (nine out of thirteen state delegations) were required for Congress to enact important matters such as requisitions for revenue and making treaties. Despite specific restrictions on the states, the structure of government under the Articles of Confederation gave the individual states enormous influence and control over Congress; Congress, on the other hand, had no means by which to compel the states to comply with the Articles of Confederation. In other words, the Articles of Confederation had recreated the same fundamental defects of the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire. The result was a lack of unity, coordination, and effectiveness in doing those things vitally important for the good of the whole Union – or as James Madison put it, there was a complete “want of concert in matters where common interest requires it.”[3]

The framers of the Constitution remedied these defects by creating an independent executive with a large degree of discretionary power, especially in the area of foreign affairs. “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government,” Hamilton observed. “It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws.”[4] The unitary nature of the executive – as opposed to executive boards or committees – provides the office with the “energy” to act on important matters with “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch.” The Constitution deems the president “Commander in Chief” of the military forces of the nation, giving the office a further degree of discretion, free from the influence of a cumbersome Congress, in taking swift measures necessary for the security of the Union. Even the longer four-year term in office, combined with the mode by which the president is elected – through an electoral system rather than being appointed by Congress or the state legislatures – gives the executive a degree of independence to do those things necessary for the steady administration of the laws and the protection of the states from foreign threats.

The framers of the Constitution also found remedies to prevent the “inordinate pride of state importance” from hindering the national government’s efforts to promote the good of the whole Union.[5] By dividing Congress into two houses, the preponderance of state influence in national affairs is confined to the Senate, in which state legislatures would appoint the senators (as opposed to direct election by the people of members in the House of Representatives). Rather than each state having one vote in the Senate, the two senators do not need to agree or vote in the same way on any particular law or policy. The framers also overcame reliance on the voluntary compliance of the states to provide the needed revenue for national purposes by giving to Congress a real tax power. “There is no method of steering clear of this inconvenience,” Hamilton observed, “but by authorizing the national government to raise its own revenues in its own way.”[6] Even the “republican guarantee” clause in Article IV section three gives the national government the right to protect every state of the Union “against Invasion [and…] domestic violence.” “Without a guaranty,” Hamilton wrote, “the assistance to be derived from the Union in repelling those domestic dangers which may sometimes threaten the existence of the State constitutions, must be renounced. Usurpation may rear its crest in each State, and trample upon the liberties of the people, while the national government could legally do nothing more than behold its encroachments with indignation and regret.”[7]

Through these improvements, the Constitution of the United States provides the national government with the “energy’ needed to effectively repel foreign and domestic dangers, a higher degree of independence from state interference in national affairs, and the means to prevent the frequent dissentions, rebellions, and civil wars that constantly plagued the Holy Roman Empire.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

[1] Alexander Hamilton to James Duane, 3 September 1780.

[2] The Federalist No. 21.

[3] James Madison, “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” 1787

[4] The Federalist No. 70

[5] The Federalist No. 21

[6] The Federalist No. 21

[7] The Federalist No. 21

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett

In the months leading up to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, James Madison carefully studied ancient confederacies so as to learn from their failures and improve upon their defects. He published his critique of the Holy Roman Empire in The Federalist essay number 19, co-authored by Alexander Hamilton.

The Holy Roman Empire was a union of kingdoms in Western, Northern and Southern Europe. It arose in the Early Middle Ages and lasted over eight centuries until its dissolution after the Napoleonic Wars. The Holy Roman Empire was initially under the nominal authority of one “emperor,” who claimed the right to rule as the heir of the emperors of Rome.  Eventually the office became “elected” after political control devolved to the dozens of kingdoms and territories that comprised the union.

Madison’s critique of the Holy Roman Empire focuses on two fundamental defects. The first is a lack of effective executive authority in the confederacy. Though initially under the centralized control of a single sovereign, the “principal vassals” claimed more localized control over the affairs of the union. “In the eleventh century the emperors enjoyed full sovereignty,” Madison writes. “In the fifteenth they had little more than the symbols and decorations of power.” The Emperor did retain certain prerogatives, including a veto power over the resolutions of the legislative body. Two judicial bodies, under control of the emperor, had “supreme jurisdiction in controversies which concern the empire.” From these institutions one might surmise that the supreme executive was extremely capable and efficient in directing the affairs of the union. But real political power in the Holy Roman Empire was vested in a Diet that represented the constituent members of the union.

The lack of an efficient executive had left important matters of security and commerce in the hands of a Diet whose members were deeply divided over local interests. “Military preparations must be preceded by so many tedious discussions, arising from the jealousies, pride, separate views, and clashing pretensions of sovereign bodies,” Madison writes, “that before the diet can settle the arrangements, the enemy are in the field; and before the federal troops are ready to take it, are retiring into winter quarters.” The military forces of the union are “defectively kept up, badly paid, infected with local prejudices, and supported by irregular and disproportionate contributions to the treasury.” This vice has left the confederacy constantly open to the predations of neighboring enemies.

Madison’s second and most important critique of the Holy Roman Empire is a lack of centralized control and effective checks over the member states. In theory, the member states are expected to restrain themselves from infringing upon the duties of the central government and are pledged to obey its authority. As Madison writes,

The members of the confederacy are expressly restricted from entering into compacts prejudicial to the empire; from imposing tolls and duties on their mutual intercourse, without the consent of the emperor and diet; from altering the value of money; from doing injustice to one another; or from affording assistance or retreat to disturbers of the public peace. And the ban is denounced against such as shall violate any of these restrictions.

Sufficient constitutional restraints seem to have been placed on the member states to prevent them from undermining the interests of the whole union. However, as Madison writes: “Nothing would be further from the reality. The fundamental principle on which it rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns, that the diet is a representation of sovereigns and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns, renders the empire a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.” The central authority, in its weakness, had been forced of necessity to rely on local enforcement of the acts and policies of the Diet. “This experiment has only served to demonstrate more fully the radical vice of the constitution,” Madison writes. “Each circle is the miniature picture of the deformities of this political monster. They either fail to execute their commissions, or they do it with all the devastation and carnage of civil war. Sometimes whole circles are defaulters; and then they increase the mischief which they were instituted to remedy.”

The lack of any effective centralized authority to enforce the policies of the Diet reveals the tenuous nature by which the parts of the union remain barely united. This defect is revealed in the nearly constant acts of violence and injustice among the member states. “The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor and the princes and states; of wars among the princes and states themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak,” Madison writes. In sum, the vices of the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire are marked by “general imbecility, confusion, and misery.”

Despite these vices, one might ask, what allowed the Holy Roman Empire to persist for more than eight centuries? Not the constitution and institutions of the union, Madison concludes, but matters that rely more on “accident and force” rather than “reflection and choice.” “They are kept together by the peculiarity of their topographical position,” Madison writes, “by their individual weakness and insignificancy; by the fear of powerful neighbors…[and] by the mutual aid they stand in need of, for suppressing insurrections and rebellions.”

In the following essay we will explore the remedies to these defects that Madison and the framers worked into the Constitution of the United States.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

Much of the history of the Holy Roman Empire was one of conflict and intrigue: among emperors and popes, emperors and nobles, and nobles themselves. Periods shaped by forces that fostered centralization of power in the hands of strong and capable emperors were eclipsed by developments that threatened to tear apart the Empire due to personal weaknesses or military miscalculations by the holders of the imperial title. Several generations of extraordinarily wise and astute rulers were inevitably followed by the collapse of dynasties and periods of political turmoil and social misery.

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. led to the formation of various Germanic kingdoms throughout the former territory. The Visigoths and other invaders attempted to carry on the Roman civilization, but lacked the administrative capabilities, technological know-how, and economic wherewithal to do so. They, in turn, also collapsed within a few generations. For the inhabitants of the former Roman domain, there was continuing danger from Germanic tribes, other marauders that are said to have been successors to the Huns, and, beginning in the 7th century, Arab raiders and armies. The Byzantine emperor’s control over those lands was nominal. The Roman Catholic Church was organizationally weak and doctrinally disorganized.

In the 8th century, the situation improved. A new line of kings had been elected by the nobles of a Germanic people, the Franks. The most prominent was a warrior-king, Charles. He defeated other German tribes and pushed against the Muslims in Spain whose advance into Frankish territory had been stopped by his grandfather, Charles the Hammer. Pope Leo III, eager to distance himself from the political and religious influences of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire, and hoping to spread the influence of the Catholic Church through the physical security offered by the Franks, crowned Charles emperor on Christmas Day, 800 A.D. Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne, as he came to be known, was proclaimed the successor to the Roman Empire in the west. Indeed, from the imperial capital at Aachen, in the current Germany, he governed, as “Emperor of the Romans,” an area of Europe larger than anything seen since that empire.

Three decades after his death, Charlemagne’s realm was divided among his grandsons. Several centuries later, the western portion became the kingdom of France. The eastern portion became the German dominions. The end of the Carolingian dynasty in 911 resulted in the fracturing of the eastern portion. There were strong tribal loyalties within the various ancestral German domains, centered on several dukedoms and on the holdings of other, less powerful local strongmen.

In 936, Otto, the duke of the Saxons, a particularly warlike people who had been barely Christianized through force by Charlemagne a century earlier, was elected King of the Germans by the other nobles. A successful military campaigner who extended the eastern Frankish realm, Otto was given the imperial title in 962, after the Pope had appealed to him for military help. Referred to as Otto the Great, he established a new dynasty of emperors. His grandson, Otto III, revived the imperial seal of Charlemagne which had the motto, in Latin, that stood for “Renewal of the Roman Empire.” He understood this to be a clearly Christian empire, not only a political unit as imperium romanum, as reflected in his designation of the realm as imperium christianum. The successors of Otto III were weak and saw themselves as primarily German kings who happened to have holdings in Italy, not as rulers of a multicultural and transcendent Christian empire.

Once political conditions in western Europe became relatively settled by the end of the 10th century, the era of the warrior-king was succeeded by the era of the great landholding magnates. High feudalism emerged as the dominant social and political structure. Wealth, social standing, and power were based on land ownership and formalized through personal obligations between lords and vassals. On the continent more so than in England, local great men were independent of the emperor, who was addressed at times as “King of Germany” or the “German Roman Emperor.” These nobles retained their ancestral privileges and often claimed new ones.

Nevertheless, the idea of Empire remained alive. This political tension of a universal empire, yet of a German people, led externally to frequent, and not always enthusiastic or well-received, involvement of the Germans in the affairs of Italian communities. Internally, it resulted in the strange federal structure of what formally became known in the 13th century as the Holy Roman Empire. The interactions between emperors and popes further underscored the claims to universality. Papal coronation bestowed God’s recognition of the emperors’ legitimacy as secular rulers in Christendom. Refusal by a pope to grant that legitimacy, or removing it later by issuing a ban on the emperor, endangered the emperor’s rule by absolving the people, particularly the nobility, of loyalty to their earthly lord and excused them from fealty to any oath sworn to that lord. In a society vastly more religious than ours, within a feudal structure fundamentally based on mutual personal loyalties and obligations, such a development could prove fatal to the ruler.

After the end of the Saxon Ottonian line in 1024 and of its successors, the Frankish Salians, control over the Holy Roman Empire shifted in 1127 to a family from another part of the realm, the Hohenstaufen line from the Duchy of Swabia in southwest Germany. Under their best-known ruler, the charismatic and militarily and politically astute Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (“Red beard”) from 1155 to 1190, the Empire achieved its greatest geographical expanse. Shortly after the rule of his similarly powerful grandson, Frederick II, the Hohenstaufen line ended, and the Great Interregnum brought considerable turmoil to the Empire and contests among various noble families for the imperial title. Rival emperors from different houses were chosen, and a general decline of the Empire’s territory and influence occurred. Not until the 16th century did the Empire regain a prominent position in Europe.

The struggle between emperor and nobles ebbed and flowed, depending significantly on the dynamism and capabilities of the emperors. These contests were endemic, with a parallel for several centuries in the conflict between the emperors and the popes. An example of the latter was the Investiture Controversy over the right to name local church leaders which led to a half-century of civil strife in Germany in the late 11th and early 12th centuries and ended with the emperor’s powers reduced as against popes and local nobles. Even as strong an emperor as Frederick II out of political expediency had to confirm, in statutes of 1220 and 1232, previously only customary privileges to the nobles, such as over tolls, coinage, and fortifications.

In 1493, Maximilian I from the Habsburg family, became Holy Roman Emperor. From that year, the Habsburg line provided an almost uninterrupted sequence of emperors until the Empire was abolished in 1806. A significant change in outlook under Maximilian was a turn to a more national identity and the stirrings of a nascent nation-state, in part due to the proposed Imperial Reform during the late 15th century supported by the energetic Maximilian. As a consequence, the realm began to be known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

The Imperial Reform of 1495 was an attempt to modernize the administration of the realm and to increase the power of the emperor through more centralized governance. Aside from some success in making aspects of legal administration uniform through the use of Roman Law, the reforms came to naught by being ignored in the local principalities. There, the rulers generally strove to exercise the absolute powers of monarchs in England and France. As to the Empire, these local nobles guarded their privileges. Not to be outdone, the independent imperial “free” German cities, with their rising populations and increasingly powerful commercial bourgeoisie, were no less jealous of their privileges than the landed nobility.

The problem with the political structure of the Holy Roman Empire in the eyes of the framers of the American Constitution of 1787 was the overall weakness of the emperor in relation to the nobles. The Empire was a federal system, but, in their view, an unsuccessful version. The criticism is, overall, a fair one. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, writing in The Federalist repeatedly identified the sources of weakness. Both emphasized the straightened financial circumstances in which the emperor frequently found himself to fund the costs of imperial government or necessary military actions against foreign countries. That difficulty was due at least in part to the obstructions created by local rulers to the flow of commerce.

Hamilton mentioned in Federalist Number 12 the emperor’s inability to raise funds, despite the “great extent of fertile, cultivated, and populous territory, a large proportion of which is situated in mild and luxuriant climates. In some parts of this territory are to be found the best gold and silver mines in Europe. And yet, from the want of the fostering influence of commerce, that monarch can boast but slender revenues.” Along the same lines, quoting from the Encyclopedia, he wrote in Number 22, “The commerce of the German empire is in continual trammels, from the multiplicity of the duties which the several princes and states enact upon the merchandises passing through their territories; by means of which the fine streams and navigable rivers with which Germany is so happily watered, are rendered almost useless.” In Number 42, Madison seconded Hamiltons’s point, “In Germany, it is a law of the empire, that the princes and states shall not lay tolls or customs on bridges, rivers, or passages, without the consent of the emperor and diet [the parliament]; though it appears from a quotation in an antecedent paper, that the practice in this, as in many other instances in that confederacy, has not followed the law, and has produced there the mischiefs which have been foreseen here.” Both writers painted this bleak picture as an omen of what would occur in the United States under the Article of Confederation. The Constitution would prevent this problem because, there, Congress was given “a superintending authority over the reciprocal trade of [the] confederated states.”

More fundamentally, however, the problem of the Empire and, by analogy, the United States under the Articles of Confederation was in the structure itself, an imperium in imperio, a state exercising sovereignty within another state. In Number 19 of The Federalist, Madison presented a lengthy overview of the Empire’s history. He identified problems with the structure, such as the difficulty to meet military emergencies or collect requisitions. The emperor had no holdings as such, only in his position as a hereditary sovereign in his ancestral lands or those acquired by marriage. Madison dismissed the Empire as a playground of foreign rulers because of the conflicts among the members of the Empire and between the emperor and the nobles large and small. This division allowed foreign rulers to split the allegiances of the nobles and to keep the empire weak. The worst example of this was the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648. While there were limitations on the powers of the nobles, and while the emperor had various prerogatives, these were paper powers, not real. Ultimately, the problem was that the empire was a community of sovereigns.

In support of Madison’s critique, one can look at one locus of power, the Reichstag, the name for the Imperial Diet or parliament. The Diet in some form already existed during Charlemagne’s time. Originally intended as a forum for discussions, not as a modern legislative body, by the 11th century it presented a serious counterweight to the emperor and a source of power for the nobles in two ways. First, the Diet participated in the making of law, typically through a collaborative manner with the emperor. Second, certain members of the Diet elected the Emperor.

The Diet during the Middle Ages comprised two “colleges.” That number was eventually raised to three as feudalism gave way to a more commercial modern society, and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie in the cities required representation of their estate. Each member of those colleges in essence represented a sovereignty, and the Diet in that light was a “community of sovereigns.” When the Diet met, the colleges and the emperor attended together. All were seated in a carefully prescribed manner, respecting their rank, with the emperor front and center and raised at least three feet above all others. Voting might be either per individual or per collegium as an estate in a complicated arrangement, depending on the rank of that individual and group.

The most important of these groups was the college of electors, which represented another locus of power in the Empire. Not only did the prince-electors vote individually, rather than as an estate, but they had the important occasional task of electing the emperor, the third institution of power. There was a fourth locus of power in the Empire, that is, the pope. Papal influence precipitated many political crises in medieval Europe, because the emperor was not properly installed until crowned by the pope, a practice discontinued after Charles V in the 16th century. However, papal influence is not crucial to an examination of the Empire’s political constitution as that structure influenced the debates over the American Constitution of 1787.

The election of the emperors was derived from the ancient practice of German tribal councils to elect their leaders for life. The direct male heirs of a deceased ruler generally had the advantage in any succession claim, but heredity was never a guarantee. That practice was extended first to the election of the kings of Germany by the dukes of the largest tribes in the 10th century, and then to the election of the emperors in the 13th century. Initially, the number of electors was somewhat fluid, but eventually there were four set secular and three set ecclesiastical electors. Over time, the membership was increased to nine and, briefly, to ten electors. The ecclesiastic rulers from certain archbishoprics eventually were replaced by secular electors, and, in time, the secular rulers themselves might be replaced by others as power shifted among rulers of various local domains.

A critical moment came with the promulgation of the Golden Bull of 1356 by the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg. A “bull” in this usage is derived from the Latin word for a seal attached to a document. Because of such a decree’s significance, the imperial seal attached to this document was made of gold. This particular golden bull was the closest thing to a written constitution of the Empire. It was the result of the political instability caused by contested elections and succession controversies. It specified the number—seven—and identity—by secular or ecclesiastical domain—of the imperial electors. Procedures were set for the emperor’s election, the specific functions of the electors were prescribed, and an order of succession was provided if an elector died. For example, to prevent rival claims from lingering and dragging the realm into disunity and war, the deliberations of the electors must result in a timely decision. Failure to decide on an emperor within 30 days in theory would result in the electors being given only bread and water as sustenance until they concluded their task.

Also significant was the Golden Bull’s undermining of the emperor’s power. Sometimes described as a German analogue to the Magna Charta of 1215 imposed by the English nobility on King John, it affirmed the privileges of the nobility against the emperor. Tolls and coinage were the right of the nobles in their domains. Crimes against them, including presumably through actions by the emperor, became treason against the empire itself. The rulings of their courts could not be appealed to the emperor. With a few notable episodic exceptions, such as the rule of Maximilian I and Charles V in the 16th century, this decree put the Empire on a gradual path to disintegration and reconfiguration as independent nations-states.

Voltaire is credited with the quip in his Essay on Customs in 1756 that the Empire was “neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire.” Whatever might have been the veracity of his derision half a millennium earlier, when he wrote the essay his satire did not require much nuanced reflection on the part of his readers. The emperor in a basic sense was always the primus inter pares, and his power rested on the prestige of his title, the size and wealth of his own ancestral domain, and his skills as a political operator and military leader. Even with the emergence of the modern nation-state, the Holy Roman Empire remained just a confederation of de facto sovereignties, a matter underscored by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War. The Habsburg ruler’s power was a far cry from the classic imperium of Octavian.

With the Reformation and the rise of the self-confident nation-state, the Roman and classic medieval idea of the universal Christian empire also became anachronistic. And it was no longer “Roman.” The conscious effort of Frederick I Barbarossa in the 12th century to demonstrate that the Empire was “Roman” stands in stark contrast with the 16th century, when emperors and the Diet emphasized its German character. As constituent German entities in the Empire, such as Prussia and Bavaria, grew more powerful, the struggles between emperor and nobles intensified and sharpened into outright wars as between independent nations. The imperial structure and its institutions, such as the Diet, became weaker and, indeed, irrelevant. Despite some belated and ineffectual efforts at reform and reorganization around the turn of the 19th century, the Empire, the thousand-year Reich, was dissolved a half-century after Voltaire’s remark, when Napoleon’s army crushed the emperor’s forces and effected the abdication of Francis II in 1806.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter


America’s Founders and Constitution Framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, 235 years ago this May, did not arrive without examples of what worked and what did not work in past empires or republics. In Essay #12, we examined the Constitution’s wisdom in light of the Roman Empire and how certain provisions helped ensure against regime failure. In this essay, we explore further some of the Constitution’s wisdom in preventing such failures.

The Republic of Venice

While the Republic of Venice officially lasted eleven hundred years, the five hundred years referred to here is the constitutional period, from 1297 until the fall of Venice in 1797. In 1297, an ordinance was passed providing for the Council of Forty. Venice was ruled by the doge, elected by the Council, and ruled for life. The Founding Fathers would consider the form of government of Venice and provide protections against regime failure, including the Republican Guarantee Clause.

The Guarantee Clause

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution provides:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

This was an important provision included by the drafters to ensure a process of governance through elections. The drafters had examples of the Republic of Venice and Rome and other regimes in collapse, with concerns about other forms of government, even those labeled republics, at its core.

In Federalist No. 57, the reality of various forms of republican government is acknowledged:

“The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.”

In 1787, ahead of the Constitutional Convention and back from a trip to the Netherlands, John Adams published the first of his three-volume set, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.” In it, his goal was to defend the tripartite form of federal government. He examined other republics, including Venice. As to Venice, he wrote:

“It was at first democratical…. the people…determined that one magistrate should be chosen, as the center of all authority…. He was to be for life…he was to have the nomination of all magistrates, and the power of peace and war.”

Adams then discusses the evolution of the system in Venice, with power being in a few and not in the populace. Adams proposed the form of republican government that would find its way into the Constitution.

Adams concluded Volume I:

“All nations, under all governments, must have parties; the great secret is to controul them: there are but two ways, either by a monarchy and standing army, or by a balance in the constitution. Where the people have a voice, and there is no balance, there will be everlasting fluctuations, revolutions, and horrors, until a standing army, with a general at its head, commands the peace, or the necessity of an equilibrium is made appear to all, and is adopted by all.”

In Federalist No. 39, James Madison refers to Venice and how the republican form of government, as the Founding Fathers envisioned it, was to be different.  Madison wrote:

The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican. It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government. If the plan of the convention, therefore, be found to depart from the republican character, its advocates must abandon it as no longer defensible.

“What, then, are the distinctive characters of the republican form? Were an answer to this question to be sought, not by recurring to principles, but in the application of the term by political writers, to the constitution of different States, no satisfactory one would ever be found. Holland…has passed almost universally under the denomination of a republic. The same title has been bestowed on Venice, where absolute power over the great body of the people is exercised, in the most absolute manner, by a small body of hereditary nobles…These examples, which are nearly as dissimilar to each other as to a genuine republic, show the extreme inaccuracy with which the term has been used in political disquisitions.

“If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.”

(Emphasis added.)

With the Guarantee Clause, majority rule is the way, and each state must have an electoral process in place, to prevent the usurpation of power by a monarchial actor such as the doge. It is an important safeguard put in the Constitution by the founders.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Guarantee Clause cannot be challenged in federal court, as it is nonjusticiable.

Conclusion

The Constitution’s wisdom is shown in many ways, including with the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution. The careful drafting in 1787 has helped to ensure American Exceptionalism once again.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

 

In Number 39 of The Federalist, James Madison objects to the habit of political writers of referring to Venice as a republic. He asserts that Venice is a system “where absolute power over the great body of the people is exercised, in the most absolute manner, by a small body of hereditary nobles.” Later, in Number 48 of the same work, Madison raises the need of providing practical security for each branch of the government against the intrusion by others into its powers. He quotes Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson, commenting about the formal separation of powers in the constitution of Virginia which he had been instrumental in creating, bemoaned the lack of effective barriers among the branches which would better preserve their respective independence. As a part of his critique, Jefferson opined that the concentration of legislative, executive, and judicial powers in one body would be “the definition of despotic government.” Further, it mattered not “that these powers would be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it, turn their eyes on the republic of Venice.”

Leaving aside the historical veracity of Madison’s and Jefferson’s characterizations of Venice, their perceptions shaped their ideas of a proper “republican” political structure and how that would differ from Venice. Madison’s critique of a city governed absolutely by a small body of men made Venice an aristocracy or, more accurately, an oligarchy for him. It is ironic that opponents of the proposed Constitution launched that very calumny against the structure which Madison was defending. The Anti-federalists maintained a drumbeat of attacks about the supposed anti-republican, aristocratic Constitution. Some were thoughtful and substantive objections. Other writers opted for the popular appeal of satire, not likely nuanced and subtle humor, but an entertaining burlesque style.

Two examples suffice. A writer styling himself “Aristocrotis” wrote a lengthy satire in a pamphlet published in Pennsylvania in 1788.

“For my own part, I was so smitten with the character of the members [of the Philadelphia Convention], that I had assented to their production, while it was yet in embryo. And I make no doubt but every good republican did so too. But how great was my surprise, when it appeared with such a venerable train of names annexed to its tail, to find some of the people under different signatures—such as Centinel, Old Whig, Brutus, etc.—daring to oppose it, and that too with barefaced arguments, obstinate reason and stubborn truth. This is certainly a piece of the most extravagant impudence to presume to contradict the collected wisdom of the United States; or to suppose a body, who engrossed the whole wisdom of the continent, was capable of erring. I expected the superior character of the convention would have secured it from profane sallies of a plebeian’s pen; and its inherent infallibility would have debarred the interference of impertinent reason or truth.”

With the tune of satire set, Aristocrotis applied it to a libretto of feigned aristocratic enthusiasm for a document which, according to him, set the few to rule over the many, in accord with the law of nature. Particularly useful for this aristocratic scheme was a powerful Senate and both direct and deviously hidden restrictions on the potentially dangerous House of Representatives. Establishing the latter was an unavoidable practice reflective of the corrupt practices of the times, he acknowledged. However, providing for 2-year terms, instead of the annual elections common to republican state constitutions, in combination with Congress’s power to set the times, places, and manner of elections allowed that body’s membership to perpetuate itself. In addition, Congress had the power to tax so as to give itself independence over its own pay. Raising taxes on the people would have another salubrious effect: it will make them industrious. “They will then be obliged to labor for money to pay their taxes. There will be no trifling from time to time, as is done now….This will make the people attend to their own business, and not be dabbling in politics—things they are entirely ignorant of; nor is it proper they should understand.” If the people object, Congress had the power to make them comply by raising an army. This backhanded compliment reflected the deep republican antipathy to peacetime armies.

Another example of the style was an essay by “Montezuma,” which appeared in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer on October 17, 1787, a month after the constitutional convention adjourned. If anything, Montezuma was even more prone to literary absurdity and plot lines reminiscent of a Gilbert and Sullivan production a century later than was Aristocrotis. He begins, with all emphases in the original,

“We, the Aristocratic party of the United States, lamenting the many inconveniences to which the late confederation subjected the well-born, the better kind of people, bringing them down to the level of the rabble—and holding in utter detestation that frontispiece to every bill of rights, “that all men are created equal”—beg leave (for the purpose of drawing a line between such as we think were ordained to govern, and such as were made to bear the weight of government without having any share in its administration) to submit to our friends in the first class for their inspection, the following defense of our monarchical, aristocratic democracy.”

After this mockery of the Constitution’s preamble, Montezuma proceeds to a listing of provisions that animate his imagined constitution. Any semblance of republicanism in the actual proposal, such as the election of the House of Representatives is a mirage. After all, the actions of the House can be overridden by the aristocratic Senate’s refusal to go along or by the monarchic President’s veto. Moreover, there is no limit to their re-election, so that the basic republican principle of “rotation of office” found in the Articles of Confederation is eliminated. This will result in perpetual re-election and soon make the representatives permanent members of the ruling elite. The Senate is the main home of this elite and is structured with long overlapping terms so that there is continuity in membership to acculturate any newcomers to the elite’s ways. The states are made subordinate to, and dependent on, the national government and will be “absorbed by our grand continental vortex, or dwindle into petty corporations, and have power over little else than yoaking hogs or determining the width of cart wheels.” The office of President is so named to fool the rubes with a republican title which hides his kingship. After all, “[W]e all know that Cromwell was a King, with the title of Protector.” He is the head of a standing army, which will start out small, ostensibly to defend the frontier. “Now a regiment and then a legion must be added quietly.” This allows the elite “to entrench ourselves so as to laugh at the cabals of the commonality.” There is no bill of rights, including the “great evil” of freedom of the press. The list goes on. Concluding his send-up of the Constitution through its closing phrase, Montezuma writes, “Signed by unanimous order of the lords spiritual and temporal,” a direct reference to the British House of Lords.

Montezuma and Aristocrotis recited the common themes of the Constitution’s opponents about the document’s insufficient republicanism: Long terms of office, no rotation in office through mandatory term limits, an aristocratic Senate, a president elected and re-elected for sequential lengthy terms, a standing army, consolidation of the formerly sovereign states into a massive national government, and lack of a bill of rights. There were other, more specific concerns raised by thoughtful opponents, but the foregoing resonated well with the citizenry.

If those themes defined a constitution’s non-republican character, Venice looked little different from what the Philadelphia Convention had produced. True, a formal nobility was prohibited under the Constitution, but there had been no formal nobility set in place in Venice until the previous constitutional structure was changed in 1297. Rather, wealth determined one’s status. Further, the commoners controlled the operations of the government through the bureaucracy. There were other important political institutions, such as the Senate with its important role to define public policy in Venice, but the ultimate power to make law was in the most populous branch, the Great Council, acting without fear of a veto by another branch of government. Unlike the proposed American system, membership in the Venetian Senate and the executive apparatus, with the exception of the Doge, was limited to annual or even shorter terms, as was the practice in the early state constitutions. While the President’s selection was filtered through electors chosen by the state legislatures, and the election might finally be determined by the House of Representatives, the selection of the Doge occurred through a process which had a strong component of what was classically viewed as a “democratic” tool, the drawing of lots of the names of those who would make that selection. The likelihood of a cabal controlling this convoluted process in order to install a puppet as the head of government was no more likely in Venice than under the Constitution. Moreover, the Doge had little formal power, unlike the President. Finally, Venice had no standing army, although it did have a large and powerful navy. In short, to an opponent of the Constitution, “aristocratic” Venice had at least as “republican” a character as the proposed American system, and Madison’s contemptuous dismissal of the city as a small group governing with absolute power sounded hollow.

The writers of The Federalist strove mightily to rebut these attacks. Madison’s narrowly formalistic definition of a republic in essay Number 10 that its distinguishing characteristic was its system of government by indirect representation, rather than direct action by the citizenry, was useful to establish a minimum of republicanism in the proposed system. But, by itself, it would hardly suffice to address the Anti-federalists’ multiple attacks. Madison understood this weakness and went on the attack, cleverly turning his opponents’ arguments against them in connection with the problem of “factions” and their threat to individual liberty and political stability.

Today, that essay is considered a brilliant insight into how political actors operate and how the framers were practical men who set up the constitutional machinery for our system of interest group politics later dubbed by the American political theorist Robert Dahl as Madisonian “polyarchy.” Yet, at the time of its publication, essay Number 10 aroused hardly a murmur. The reason likely was that few disputed his premises or his discussion about the existence, sources, and problems of factions in society seeking their own ends in contrast to the republican ideal of the general welfare. Alexander Hamilton, for one, had addressed the same point in essay Number 9. As well, no one really challenged his definition as a necessary characteristic of a republic. They disagreed about its sufficiency for a republic and, more profoundly, about whether the Constitution adequately balanced the self-interests of factions while at the same time preserving liberty.

As in so many other instances, the writers of The Federalist took to heart the maxim that “the best defense is a good offense.” Madison argued first that the republican principle of the vote, as qualified by the states themselves per the Constitution, would protect against extended dominance by some political minority. As to liberty, Madison asserted that the very variety of political factions spread across the country made the national council less likely to succumb to a dictatorship of an entrenched faction than would be the case in a smaller, culturally more homogeneous polity, whether democratic or republican in structure, such as a state or a city, including Venice. In a memorable paragraph, he wrote:

“The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular states, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states: a religious sect may degenerate into a political faction on a part of the confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it, must secure the national councils against any danger from that source: a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the union, than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire state.’

In other words, to prevent the deleterious effects of factions, the answer is, the more, the better, and the larger the domain, the more factions will exist. In at least the sense of guarding against a federal tyrant, diversity really is our strength. He repeated this defense of the general government in other essays, including one of the most renowned, Number 51.

Essay Number 51 also provides a thoroughgoing refutation that the states will be “consolidated” into the general government, and that the latter will degenerate into a tyranny. Madison relied on the formal structural separation of powers with its mutual checks and balances and on reflections about human nature. As to the first, he found common ground with his opponents:

“In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which, to a certain extent, is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted, that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others….It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices.” In the opinion of its supporters, the Constitution did that, and to exactly the correct degree.

As to the second, Madison tapped into the cynicism of some of his antagonists and the generally pessimistic views most Americans had about human nature in its fallen state. In another series of hard-hitting paragraphs, he urged:

“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others….Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interests of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government of men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

In short, government is a necessary evil commensurate with the fall of mankind. But, as a human creation, it, too, is naturally corrupt. To protect liberty, one cannot overly rely on the virtue of the citizenry, and certainly not on that of the rulers. Constitutions are made of parchment and need robust pragmatism to work. To do that, it is best to harness the natural self-interest of politicians to maintain and then expand their power, by setting them against each other in various independent centers of power, state, national, legislative, executive, and judicial. The scandalous and amoral proto-capitalist assertion by the early-18th-century economist Bernard de Mandeville in his satirical Fable of the Bees about how private vices, such as greed, lead to public benefits, such as economic growth, applies well in the political realm, it seems. Such a multiplicity of political institutions acting as checks on each other, exists in the entire system of human affairs, private and public, according to Madison. An examination of the competition among political bodies and offices which characterized constitutions throughout Western history, from Athens and Sparta to Rome and Venice, bears him out.

It must be noted that, by engaging their opponents in a debate about the objects of government in a republic, not merely about its operational grounding in the particulars of the concept of representation, the writers of The Federalist were able to turn the contest to their advantage. Debates over annual versus biennial election of representatives, or four-year terms for the President versus three-year terms for the governor of New York, was playing small ball. Those issues must be addressed and were, in various writings. Excepting the careful obfuscation of the institution of slavery, the big issues were given their proper due. Reassuring the people incessantly that the federal government was of little consequence when compared to the reserved powers of the states; that the President had exactly the right degree of power to provide energy to government while also being checked by Congress’s or the Senate’s power over the purse, war, and treaties; that a standing army was necessary to protect the country’s security and that the possibility of that army becoming dangerous to liberty was remote in light of the vastly larger number of armed Americans organized into militia.; that a bill of rights was both unnecessary and would be proposed once the Constitution was adopted. Those were the republican principles which mattered, and it was there that Madison and others successfully advocated the Constitution’s republican bona fides.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


In Number 10 of The Federalist, James Madison defines “republic” and distinguishes that term from “democracy.” The latter, in its “pure” form, is “a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, ….” Think of the classic New England town meeting or the administration of justice through a jury drawn by lot from the local citizenry. A republic, by contrast, is “a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, ….” It is distinguished by “first, the delegation of the government … [given] to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of the country, over which [a republic] may be extended.” The last quality is due to the fact that direct participation by citizens means that the place of government cannot be too far from their homes, lest they must leave their livelihoods and families, whereas the indirect system of governance in a republic only requires that the comparatively small number of representatives be able to travel long distances from their homes. One argument by historians for the collapse of the Roman Republic and its popular assemblies is that eventually there were too many Roman citizens living long distances from the city to make the required direct participation in the assemblies possible.

Political theorists and Western expositors of constitutional structures have characterized various systems as republics more broadly than Madison’s functional and limited definition. Examples abound. Plato ascribed the title Politeia (“Republic”) to his principal work on government. His conception of the ideal system was one of balance among different groups in society, with the leaders to come from an elite “guardian” class bred and trained to govern. This has been called government by philosopher-kings, but it was an obvious aristocracy in the true meaning of the word, government by the best (aristoi). Such government would establish a realm of “justice,” the cardinal virtue of the individual and the political order, through trained reason. He analogized the system to a charioteer who, through his reason guides the chariot safely along the path to the destination. The charioteer relies on the help of the strong obedient horse to control and direct the unruly horse which, driven by its appetites for physical satisfaction, wants to bolt off the path in search of immediate gratification of its desires. The charioteer is the guardian class, the strong horse the auxiliaries—disciplined and competent military officers and civil administrators—, and the unruly horse the masses. The system allows all to achieve their proper status in society in reflection of their inherent natural inequalities, provides stability necessary for social harmony, and is guided by an ethical principle—justice; hence, it is a republic.

Aristotle in his Politika did not discount the role of the demos in Athens. Like Madison, Aristotle considered democracy to be unstable and dangerous. From an analytic perspective, as was the case for Plato, democracy was a corruption of politeia, which he considered the best practical government for a city. Man is a politikon zoon, a creature which by his nature is best suited to live in the community that was the Greek polis. Once more, preserving a stable society and governing system was the key to maximizing the flourishing of each resident in accordance with the natural inequalities of each. Aristotle saw that balance in the “mixed” government of Athens, neither pure democracy nor oligarchy, in which the formal powers of the demos in the assembly and the jury courts were balanced by the Council of 500 and the practice of deference to the ideas and policies advanced by the elite of the wealthy and of those who earned military or civic honor.

The government of Rome before at least the First Triumvirate in 59 B.C. of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus has consistently been described over the centuries as a “republic.” Polybius explained mikte (mixed government), the political structure of the Roman Republic, differently than did Aristotle. But he, too, deemed Rome a republic because of the balance among the monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements of its constitution. As important, the practical functioning of the competing political institutions limited the power of each. Polybius related the political structure and its evolution to Roman character traits that reflected Rome’s history and contemporary culture, which had stressed the maintenance of civic virtue. Polybius also understood that Romans were not immune to human passions and vices. Like Madison writing nearly two millennia later, he warned that Rome’s republican structures were better than other forms of government but were not impregnable barriers against political failure.

Cicero also described Rome as a mixed government, although his declaration that the people were the foundation of political authority was opposed to his approving description of the patrician Senate as preeminent. For Cicero, Rome’s system reflected the natural divisions of society, with leadership appropriately assigned to the best, the optimates. What made Rome a republic was that the mutual influences and overlapping authority of the various political institutions provided the stability for a successful community oriented to the thriving of all, the res publica. In the Ciceronian version, Rome was a republic, but an aristocratic one.

Closer to Madison’s time were the observations of Baron Montesquieu, an authority well-respected by the writers of The Federalist. Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws has been criticized as contradictory and lacking systematic analysis. In a relevant portion which describes the English system, he calls the structure a mixed government, with separate roles for monarch, Lords, and Commons. He characterizes this as a republic, similar to the Rome of Polybius, because they embodied different interests and were able to check each other to prevent any of them from exercising power arbitrarily. England was a republic in function, but a monarchy in form.

Today, one sees systems self-named as republics that are a far cry from the foregoing examples. North Korea as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics appear to have at most a passing resemblance to the Rome of Polybius or the England described by Montesquieu. Their “republican” connection seems to be at best a theoretical nod to the concept of the people, in the form of the proletarian class, as the source of authority, with the ruler chosen for long term, often life, by a token assemblage of delegates in a closed political system.

What then made classical Venice a republic? Based on classical taxonomy of “pure” political systems, Venice was an aristocracy. Although Venice had been founded under Roman rule, the most revealing period was the half-millennium between the constitutional reforms of 1297 and the Republic’s end after the city’s occupation by Napoleon in 1797. Like Rome and other classical polities, Venice had no written formal constitution or judicially applied constitutional law. The political structure was the result of practical responses to certain developments, the demands of popular opinion, and, as in Rome, the deference to custom traceable to the “wise ancestors.”

In 1297, membership in the nobility became fixed in certain families, and the previous fluid manner of gaining access through the accumulation of wealth during a period of economic expansion was foreclosed (the “Serrata”). That said, the number of nobles was significant, with estimates that it amounted at times to 5% of the population. The nobility governed, and their foundational institution was the Great Council. All adult males of the nobility belonged to the Council and could vote in its weekly meetings. That body debated and enacted laws. It voted on the appointment of the city’s political officials, of which at times there were estimated to be more than 800. Since the officials’ terms of office were brief, and turnover frequent, this task occupied considerable time of the Council.

In addition, there was another powerful political body, the 300-member Senate, Venice’s main effective policy-making institution. Nobles at least 32 years old were eligible to be selected by one of two procedures, election by the Council or by lot drawn from nominations by retiring Senators. Their annual terms overlapped, with no uniform beginning and end. As well, senior civil and military officers were members. The Senate determined policy for the government, most particularly in foreign and financial affairs. However, the agenda of the Senate was set by the 26-member Collegio, a sort of steering committee. While the Collegio could control what matters were debated by the Senate, it could only offer opinions held by various of its members about an issue, not submit concrete proposals.

The administrative part of the Venetian government was particularly complex, as described by Professor Scott Gordon in his well-researched book, Controlling the State. Regarding Venice, he refers frequently to Gasparo Contarini’s classic work from 1543, De Magistratibus et Republica Venetorum. Selection to office involved a confusing combination of voting and selection by lot. Gordon provides a schematic of the selection of the Doge, the city’s head. At once amusing and awe-inducing for its complexity, a simplified version is shown by: 30L-9L-40E-12L-25E-9L-45E-11L-41E-Doge, where L stands for selection by lot and E for election. In other words, at a meeting of the Great Council, the names of 30 members were drawn by lot. From them, 9 were drawn by lot. Those nine voted for 40 members of the Great Council. From those, 12 were drawn by lot, and so on, until 41 nominators were selected who would select the duke. This convoluted procedure had some anticipated benefits. Together with the prohibition of formal campaigning, the unpredictability of the eventual selecting body discouraged election rigging. Moreover, the time delays involved and the likely variation of opinions among the members of the Council encouraged debate in the Council and among the public about the qualifications of various potential candidates. Factionalism is unavoidable in large bodies, but its effects likely were somewhat blunted by this procedurally chaotic approach.

Although elected for life, the doge himself had little formal substantive power. He could do nothing official by himself. To meet visitors, or when he engaged in correspondence, at least two members of the Ducal Council had to be present. The Ducal Council was composed of six members elected for eight-month terms by the Great Council, each representing a geographic district of the city. They were the doge’s advisors, but also his watchdogs, much as the ephori (magistrates) of Sparta shadowed their kings.

Upon election, the new doge had to swear an oath on a document which detailed the limitations imposed on his office. Those limitations could vary, depending on the political conditions and the identity of the person selected. To remind him, the oath was reread to him every two months. After the doge died, his conduct was subject to an inquiry by committees of the Great Council. If he was found to have engaged in illegality, his estate could be fined, a not unusual result.

The office had little formal power, but it was more than simply ceremonial. The Doge presided over the meetings of the Great Council and the Senate, though he did so attended by the Ducal Council and the three chief judges of the criminal court. His power came from his long tenure and his participation in the processes and deliberations of all of the important organs of the city’s government.

There also were security and secret police organs, such as the shadowy Dieci (Council of Ten), elected by the Grand Council to staggered one-year terms, and the three Inquisitors. The Dieci targeted acts of subversion. The usual legal rules did not apply to them, to allow them to move quickly and secretly. The Inquisitors were a counterintelligence entity, set up to prevent disclosure of state secrets. Like all such extraordinary bodies connected to national security, they represented a potential threat to the republican structure of Venice. Notably, there is no record of them attempting to subvert the republic and seize power.

A final and very significant component of the Venetian system were the bureaucracy, the craft guilds, and the service clubs. All of these were controlled by the non-noble citizens of Venice. The first, especially, was an ever-expanding part of the government. Excluded from the political operations, commoners sought power through the bureaucratic departments. Eventually, a sort of bureaucratic oligarchy developed, as prominent families came to dominate certain departments over the generations. These cittadini roughly equaled the nobles in number, and they had the advantage that, unlike the annual terms of noble officeholders, they held their offices for life.

Venice acquired the reputation among writers during the 15th through 17th centuries of an “ideal” republic, with a stable constitution able to survive even catastrophic military defeat in 1508. The city was marked by good government and the protection of political and religious liberty. As noted by one modern commentator, Venice was “a Catholic state where the Protestant could share the security of the Greek and the Jew from persecution.”  The system stood in contrast to the violent chaos and bouts of persecution that characterized the history of Florence and other Italian cities, and the economic backwardness and lack of social mobility of the emerging nation-states, such as France. It was a wealthy, capitalist society, which was easily able to raise more tax revenues than nation-states with several times its population. On the military side, although it had no regular army or militia, Venice had for several centuries the most powerful navy in the world, with bases around the eastern Mediterranean to protect its far-ranging commercial interests.

However, by the 18th century, the “myth of Venice” had become tarnished, as the city acquired a reputation for civic decay. Hamilton and Madison wrote disparagingly about it in The Federalist, the latter claiming that the city did not meet the definition of a republic. Thus, coming back to that earlier question, why was Venice’s constitution described as such by so many? Madison’s own definition in No. 39 of The Federalist, in which he rejects characterizing Venice as a republic, emphasizes that the governing authority in a republic must come directly or indirectly from the “great body of the people,” and the government must be administered by persons holding office during good behavior.

It is true that the organs of state in Venice were controlled by a noble elite of at most 5% of the population. Yet, the general exclusion of women, children, convicts, and slaves from governance in the American states, along with the impact on free male adults of the property qualifications imposed by many states on voting well into the 19th century, undercuts Madison’s claim that the American states were republics. Moreover, in Venice the cittadini carried out the ordinary operations of the government and were, therefore, a significant force in the execution of government policy. Looking at terms of office, with the exception of the doge’s life tenure, office holders in Venice were usually selected for annual terms, unlike the longer terms of office for President, Representatives, Senators, and judges in the United States. Indeed, it was the very length of the tenures of officers of the general government which the Anti-federalists decried as unrepublican, and which Madison defended.

That is not to say that Madison’s focus is misplaced. It is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of a republic that there is a significant element of popular participation, albeit one not amenable to precise reckoning. As important, however, is that the government is not unlimited and power is not concentrated in a single person, class, or body of persons. The balance and separation of powers which Madison considers to be crucial in The Federalist Numbers 10 and 51, when he defends against the charge that the Constitution is a prescription for tyranny, is also clearly present in Venice’s, one might say Byzantine, structure of overlapping entities checking and supervising each other. It was a structure that, by Madison’s time had, with some alterations, served the city for 500 years since the Serrata, and another three centuries since its independence from Byzantium before then. It took Napoleon’s mass army, the military might of a large nation-state, to end Venice’s long-functioning, but obsolete city-state constitution.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter


Those who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, 235 years ago this May, did not arrive without examples of what worked and what did not work in past empires or republics. With such wisdom, the Founding Fathers made sure the Constitution addressed regime failure. Two of those provisions are the Necessary and Proper Clause and the vesting clause of executive power.

The Necessary and Proper Clause

Article I of the United States Constitution sets forth the Congressional powers. Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 of the Constitution provides:

“[The Congress shall have Power] … To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

This clause has been referred to as the “elastic clause” or the “sweeping clause” because the language on its face appears to expand significantly the powers of Congress. The clause has been referred to as the most important provision in the Constitution, for good reason – most federal laws are enacted under this Clause 18.

From the beginning, the clause has been debated. In Federalist No. 33, Alexander Hamilton argued the “virulent invective and petulant declamation against the proposed Constitution” caused in large measure by the Necessary and Proper Clause was misdirected, writing in part:

They are only declaratory of a truth which would have resulted by necessary and unavoidable implication from the very act of constituting a federal government and vesting it with certain specified powers. This is so clear a proposition, that moderation itself can scarcely listen to the railings which have been so copiously vented against this part of the plan, without emotions that disturb its equanimity.

“What is a power, but the ability or faculty of doing a thing? What is the ability to do a thing, but the power of employing the MEANS necessary to its execution? What is a LEGISLATIVE power, but a power of making LAWS? What are the MEANS to execute a LEGISLATIVE power but LAWS? What is the power of laying and collecting taxes, but a LEGISLATIVE POWER, or a power of MAKING LAWS, to lay and collect taxes? What are the proper means of executing such a power, but NECESSARY and PROPER laws?”

James Madison in Federalist No. 44 reiterated much the same. Anti-federalists expressed concern about the unlimited power the Clause presented. Writing in Anti-federalist No. 32, Brutus wrote: “It is truly incomprehensible. A case cannot be conceived of, which is not included in this power. It is well known that the subject of revenue is the most difficult and extensive in the science of government.” The concern would play out in the Supreme Court over the years, beginning early in the republic.

In 1819, the Court supported the views of the Federalists, in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819). Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the opinion, and after explaining the meaning of the clause, echoed the language of Federalist No. 44:

“We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the Government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the Constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional.

(Emphasis added.)

Vesting Clause

Article II, Section 1 begins: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” Known as the “vesting clause,” this clause too has been the subject of debate. With no settled meaning of the term “executive power” at the founding, some have argued that the term refers only to those powers set forth in the Constitution in other provisions. The opponents of the minimalist view assert that the power is expansive, subject only to specific limitations included in the Constitution. The latter view is referred to as the “unitary executive” and many have argued the president has such powers, often the party of the president in the White House asserting he has such powers, but not when the opposing party is inhabiting the White House.

In Federalist Nos. 69 and 70, Hamilton wrote of the need for a singular executive and the powers. In Federalist No. 70, Hamilton wrote in part:

“This unity may be destroyed in two ways: either by vesting the power in two or more magistrates of equal dignity and authority; or by vesting it ostensibly in one man, subject, in whole or in part, to the control and co-operation of others, in the capacity of counsellors to him. Of the first, the two Consuls of Rome may serve as an example; of the last, we shall find examples in the constitutions of several of the States. New York and New Jersey, if I recollect right, are the only States which have intrusted the executive authority wholly to single men. Both these methods of destroying the unity of the Executive have their partisans; but the votaries of an executive council are the most numerous. They are both liable, if not to equal, to similar objections, and may in most lights be examined in conjunction.”

Conclusion

The Constitution’s wisdom is shown in many ways, including with the two provisions covered by this essay.  The careful drafting in 1787 has helped to ensure American Exceptionalism.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey
GaiusMariusCarthageRuins-18thCentury-JosephKremer


Plutarch writes of the life of Gaius Marius, the noted Roman general who seized power in the Roman Republic early in the first century B.C., that Marius was no patrician. He was born into the equestrian class—“poor smallholders,” as Plutarch describes them, a family living outside the great city. He rose to prominence on the strength of his own abilities and of his leading virtue, courage. As a young man, he had disdained the liberal arts education which had entered Rome from Greece. After all, were not the Greeks now the slaves of Rome, their education corruptive of the manliness that resists enslavement? A real man evidently needed no Aristotelian moderation, in Marius’ judgment: Plutarch cites Marius’ “harsh and better character,” his “inordinate love of power,” and “insatiable greed,” along with his inveterately superstitious mind, as markers of his rejection of everything urbane and civil. No gentleman he, and proud of it.

A great military strategist and tactician, Marius began his rise to prominence by crushing the Teutones and Ambrones at today’s Aix-en-Provence in 102 B.C. Using paupers and slaves as his soldiers, he next defeated and captured the formidable African monarch, Jugurtha. When the Teutones and the Cimbri joined forces to invade Italy, moving towards Rome, the Romans elected Marius consul, empowering him to repel the enemy. In this war, he proved a superb manipulator of the souls of his men, taking them to battle with appeal to their fear, their courage, their shame, their honor—all, sometimes, in the same speech.

“In a military context,” Plutarch writes, Marius’ “status and power were based on the fact that he was needed, but in political life his preeminence was curtailed, and he took refuge in the goodwill and favor of the masses”—not the patrician senators—and “abandoned any attempt to be the best man in Rome, so long as he could be the most powerful.” To do that, he needed to keep his soldiers satisfied and thereby to maintain his power base. This political necessity mirrored the character of his soul: “He was incapable of just quietly enjoying what he had.” Therefore, when he ran out of foreign wars, he could only turn to civil war. Forced into exile by his even more vicious rival, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, he regrouped his forces and came back, turning the city into a field of blood.

For centuries, Rome had been a proud republic, with elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy mixed in rough balance, with the senate as the balance-wheel. Marius and Sulla overturned that regime temporarily, foreshadowing the end of the republican regime at the hands of the Caesars, several decades later. Military overthrow of republics had occurred many times in Greece as well, and modern history has seen such revolutions in England (Oliver Cromwell), France (Napoleon Bonaparte), Iraq (Saddam Hussein), and many other countries. If there is any truth to the claim of ‘American exceptionalism,’ the absence of any such coup d’état in our own history undoubtedly ranks among the most striking examples of it. The dogs of war have barked no less frequently for Americans than for other nations, but the wolf of military takeover has remained silent. And this, despite the fact that we have seen some twelve U.S. generals elevated to the presidency, beginning with George Washington. Unlike Marius, our military men have been able to become first in peace after having been first in war, without bringing a general’s command-and-control temperament with them. The framers of the Articles of Confederation and the ‘anti-federalist’ opponents of the proposed United States Constitution in the late 1780s had provided for no presidency at all, in large measure to avoid the possibility that an independent executive branch could be seized by a military man, using the equivalent of the Roman consulship as his vehicle.

As students of the Roman regimes, the Framers of the Constitution recognized the need of energy in the executive as much as the Romans did. They also wanted to make their chief executive a defender of republican liberty, not its subverter. Politically ambitious military officers might channel their vigor and courage into peaceful civilian life, including high office, but no more than that. With this intention, the Framers designed the ruling institutions of the new republic in ways that have kept tyrannical souls like those of Marius and Sulla out of the presidency.

Marius could not have risen to power in Rome except by exploiting Rome’s factionalism, the inveterate resentment of the many plebeians for the few patricians. In Federalist 10, Publius famously calls faction the characteristic vice of popular governments. Factions typically center on what he calls the various and unequal distribution of property. The regulation of property has become “the principal task of modern legislation,” since “neither moral nor religious motives” adequately moderate factitious passions. As Rome itself had repeatedly proven, “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” One way to control faction and thereby to prevent the tyranny that may arise to eradicate it is by designing the republic’s ruling offices not so much along the lines of a mixed regime, as in Rome, but in accordance with the principle of representation. The people will have a voice, but not directly—only through their elected delegates to the bicameral legislature and, much more indirectly, through the Electoral College to the presidency. The most democratic part of the government, the House of Representatives, will consist of persons who know their constituents but do not need simply to register their desires. Representative government enables officials to deliberate, to “refine and enlarge the public views.” The kind of appeal Marius made to the Romans would find itself quickly diluted among the Americans.

If there is something resembling a ‘mixed-regime republican’ element in the Unites States government, it can be found in that bicameral legislature. Although, as a democratic republic, America doesn’t have a born-to-rule patrician class as in Rome (and indeed as in Europe at the time of the Founding), there is no question that Senate members tend to be wealthier than members of the House. In the thirty-fourth Federalist, Publius examines how this kind of legislature will govern military expenditures. Such expenditures, he writes cannot be limited constitutionally, as it’s impossible to estimate far in advance the cost of wars, “contingencies that must baffle all the efforts of political arithmetic.” As we are not “entirely out of [Europe’s] reach,” and would indeed become less so as naval technology advanced, “to model our political systems upon calculations of lasting tranquility would be to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.”

Rome exemplified this dilemma, Publius observes. Its liberties “proved the final victory to her military triumphs.” As for modern Europe, its “liberties…as far as they have ever existed, have, with few exceptions, been the price of her military establishments” (Federalist 41). This being so, a standing army “is a dangerous, [and] at the same time that it may be a necessary, provision.” Therefore, “a wise nation will combine all these considerations.”

The federal union, however, “by itself, destroys every pretext for a military establishment which could be dangerous.” Although one or a few states might be easy prey to foreign invaders, “America united,” even without a standing army, “exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited.” “The moment of [the Union’s] dissolution will be the date of a new order of things.” In that event, “the face of America will be but a copy of that of the continent of Europe,” its liberty “crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes.” Worse still, a disunited America would see foreign powers playing divide and rule on this continent, even as they do in Europe. As I write these lines, this has been exactly the strategy followed by Russia in its several invasions of Ukraine, perhaps with more to come, beyond Ukraine.

The fact that all spending bills must originate in the House—again, the most democratic branch of the democratic republic—will limit such spending nonetheless, as the people have won the battle against taxation without representation. At the same time, the more nearly patrician, or at least richer, Senators, with their longer terms in office, will moderate any impassioned rush into war. Congress as a whole can check and balance ambitious presidents, if only by exercising the power of the purse. Further, Congress must limit its funding, as “the Constitution ties down the legislature to two years as the longest admissible term” for military appropriations.

The Framers built additional constraints into the office of the executive itself. Publius forthrightly observes that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government”—a character the Articles of Confederation lacked. “A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government,” which is one way of having “a bad government.” This, he continues, is especially true in war, which is why the American president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In Federalist 70, Publius pays considerable attention to the executive offices of the Roman republic.

The “ingredients” of executive energy are unity, duration in office, financial support, and competent power.” Safety in the executive depends upon a due dependence upon the people and due responsibility for one’s conduct in office. How did Rome measure up to these standards?

In its frequent wars, Rome “was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of dictator, as well as against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasion of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.” The dictator had little or no dependence upon the patricians, let alone the people as a whole. And he made sure that he could not be prosecuted for anything he did while dictator.

When it did not suffer under dictatorship, however, Rome had not one but two co-equal executives, the consuls. That is, if something went wrong, each pointed the finger of blame at the other. Responsibility was lacking. This executive dualism might well have led to even more rivalry than it did, except that the patricians were so frequently in conflict with the plebeians at the same time they were faced with foreign wars and invasions. This led the Romans to give one consul authority over foreign policy, the other over domestic policy, keeping the two men distracted from one another. “This expedient must no doubt have had great influence in preventing those collisions and rivalships which might otherwise have embroiled the peace of the republic.”

In the American republic, by contrast, the executive enjoys the unity of a Roman dictatorship along with the powers of commander-in-chief while at the same time being constrained by four-year terms in office and by dependency on Congress for financial support. Publius is well aware that an executive might be tempted to undertake a life of Marius. “Self- love” often causes “the great interests of society [to be] sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit, to the obstinacy of individuals, who have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting to mankind.” Against this, the Framers designed a regime that frustrates such passions, while recognizing that they will never be extirpated so long as human beings are what they are.

In addition to the institutional structures ordained in the Constitution, one must notice that the way of life in republican Rome differed from that of America. Rome had begun as a military monarchy, then became a military republic. Even in its founding legend, Romulus overpowered Remus and, as Roman historians from Livy to Tacitus testify, it fought its way through the centuries. Because it was so good at pursuing that way of life, its great generals became its principal heroes. More, as those men ranged farther afield in the republic’s extensive empire, their troops became more attached to their generals than to Rome and its republic. A military republic thus encourages not only habits of obedience to one commander but the geopolitical circumstances in which such a regime might easily threaten the civilian-ruled capital.

America’s commercial republic is as extensive as many of the ancient empires, but the American way of life inclines us to think of territory less in terms of military rule than of free trade. From the start, Americans have understood their political union as a vast free-trade zone. Ambitious citizens most often devote their lives and energies to peaceful commercial competition, not military rivalry. The best accounts of the distinction between military and commercial republics remain Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline and his massive and authoritative The Spirit of the Laws both works well known to the American Founders.

Finally, the purpose of the American republic differs from that of the Romans. The Declaration of Independence maintains that government should aim at securing the safety and happiness of the people. Romans most assuredly sought their own safety, but it wasn’t happiness so much as glory that its leading men prized. War did not only seek them out; they sought it. And so have many rulers and many peoples, before and since—America (mostly) excepted. Our presidents have sometimes conquered for territory—invoking our ‘Manifest Destiny’ to rule from sea to shining sea on this continent—but seldom for fame, which Alexander Hamilton called “the ruling passion of the noblest minds.” Thanks to the Framers’ work, that ruling passion has stayed within the boundaries of reason, along with the men whose minds are ruled by it.

Will Morrisey is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College, and Editor and Publisher of Will Morrisey Reviews.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


Rome, the city-state on the Tiber River, like her counterparts in Greece, had no cohesive written constitution. There were the Twelve Tables from around 450 B.C., of which mere fragments remain, which are sometimes presented as the Roman Republic’s constitution. However, the tablets were more an attempt to codify certain principles of criminal and civil law, rather than to lay the foundation for a political system. However, they did begin the practice in Roman law of published codes enacted by a legislative body and accessible to all citizens, which remained a core characteristic of European legal systems influenced by Rome.

Much of Rome’s political constitution by contrast was the product of custom. That custom evolved through responses to changes in the society’s social structure, through the citizens’ tacit acceptance of political bodies that arose from critical events, and by incorporating founding legends. An example of the first was the change in sources of wealth and the nature of the aristocracy comprising the leading families. The second would include the expulsion of Rome’s last king, the Etruscan Tarquin the Proud, at the end of the 6th century B.C. That event resulted immediately in the preeminence of the established aristocratic council, the Senate, and, a half-century later, in the emergence of the assemblies as sources of political influence for the commoners. The last would be the creation of institutions (such as the Senate and the tribunes) and practices said to go back to the 8th century B.C., and the acts of Rome’s first king, the legendary Romulus, and his successor, the Sabine Numa Pompilius.

While the writings of historians such as Livy and Sallust and political leaders such as Cicero are instructive, the single most authoritative source for the Roman constitution is its earliest expositor, the great Greek historian and father of constitutional analysis, Polybius of Megalopolis. Born in 200 B.C., he became a prominent politician in the Achaean League, of which his city was a member. The League, had for some years, had to tread a narrow path in relations with Rome, by then in control of most of Greece. With some exceptions, the leaders of the Greek cities generally were less than thrilled about Roman control. Such lack of enthusiasm raised suspicions and put those politicians in potential danger.

After Rome in 168 B.C. defeated Macedon for the third and final time, the Senate decided to break up that kingdom into four tributary republics. Rome also “went Roman” on the Greeks allied with Macedon, destroying 70 towns in the region of Epirus and selling a reported 150,000 into slavery. Rome’s Greek “allies” fared better but were disciplined for their lack of commitment. Polybius was among the 1000 Achaean leaders suspected of “fence-sitting” who were deported. Most were sent to provincial towns away from Greece.

Polybius was allowed to stay in Rome itself, due to the intervention of two powerful Roman leaders, Scipio Aemilianus and his brother. The developing friendship between Scipio and Polybius gave the latter access to the Roman elite. His learning and gregarious and active personality further solidified those connections. Polybius, in turn, became a committed advocate for the city and its system of government. As well, his favored status gave him extensive freedom to travel. When the Senate authorized the Greeks to return to their cities, Polybius declined. Instead, he eventually accompanied his friend Scipio to North Africa when the latter was given the command of the army sent to destroy Carthage in the Third Punic War. Polybius was well acquainted with Rome, its history, and its institutions, and he wrote about them with affinity.

The Histories is Polybius’s major influential work. It was a massive undertaking of 40 books, although one needs to keep in mind that the physical limitations of papyrus scrolls meant that a “book” might be more like a quite lengthy chapter today, and the entire effort perhaps a couple of thousand pages. The first five books are fully available, with more or less extensive excerpts from many others. Some are entirely lost. Most of the work covers Roman history from the Second Punic War (against Hannibal) to Polybius’s time. Most important to constitutional analysis is Book 6, the numerous preserved fragments of which cover, in the estimate of one authority, about two-thirds of the book. Missing is a thorough analysis of the Roman assemblies, in contrast to his discussion of other elements of the Roman constitution.

The constitution Polybius describes is that of his time, after Rome has finalized its drive for dominance of the Mediterranean world. The Punic Wars lie in the past, Carthage has been eradicated, and the destructive Social Wars and civil wars are in the future. Romans’ confidence in their institutions is high, and the republic which Polybius describes is at its political zenith. As was the habit of classic Greek observers of political systems, Polybius believed in a duality of good and bad forms of government, with an inexorable process of degeneration between those forms. But, unlike, for example, Plato and Aristotle, he claimed to see in the Roman constitution a system resistant to such degeneration. He also observed that states commonly moved through those forms sequentially and even attempted an anthropological explanation for the origins of government. Thus, he argued an archaic form of monarchy emerged when the physically dominant member of a primitive band of humans took command.

As societies become more sophisticated, that archaic form of tribal leadership proves inadequate. A more stable form of kingship emerges, one based on reason and excellence of judgment, which, in turn, fosters consent of the governed. Initially, such kings are elected for life. Eventually, the dynastic impulse of rulers to pass their office from father to son leads to kingship often becoming hereditary. Over time, such dynastic succession induces a sense of superiority and entitlement, which results in formal distinctions and ceremonies to set the royals apart from commoners. Worse, these royals begin to consider themselves exempt from rules and morals. As ordinary people begin to react with disgust at such licentiousness and arrogance, the ruler responds with anger and force. Thus, the inevitable outgrowth of kingship is tyranny.

The wealthy and talented members of respected families chafe at the tyrant’s rule the most. Conspiracies develop and the tyrant is replaced by a ruling class of high-minded men, the aristocracy. Recalling Plato’s criticism of oligarchy, Polybius saw the degeneration as the fault of the sons, not the fathers. As he wrote, the descendants “had no conception of hardship, and just as little of political equality or the right of any citizen to speak his mind, because all their lives they had been surrounded by their fathers’ powers and privileges.” Soon enough, the government controlled by supremely moral and wise men gives way to a self-interested oligarchy “dedicated … to rapaciousness and unscrupulous money-making, or to drinking and the non-stop partying that goes with it ….”

The general populace, encouraged in their passions by manipulative leaders, murders or banishes the oligarchs and itself takes on the responsibilities of government. Democracy, according to Polybius, is based on majority rule, but a majority tempered by “the traditional values of piety towards the gods, care of parents, respect for elders, and obedience to the laws.” This sounds strikingly like the admonition of republicans through the ages, that self-government requires self-restraint, focus on the common good and general welfare, and a strong moral and religious framework to promote republican virtue. John Adams’s observation that the American system was fit only for a moral and religious people is one example particularly relevant to the American experience. The exhortation in the third article of the great North-West Ordinance of 1787, about “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind” is another.

Regrettably, such values prove to be in short supply, and the population of the democracy, now encouraged in their delusions by manipulative politicians, believes instead that it has “the right to follow every whim and inclination.” Those ambitious for power and wealth seek to get ahead by corrupting the people with money to obtain their support. The common people become greedy for such largesse, and democratic self-government degenerates into ochlocracy (“mob rule”). As Polybius described the fate of democracy, “For once people had grown accustomed to eating off others’ tables and expected their daily needs to be met, then, when they found someone to champion their cause … they instituted government by force: they banded together and set about murdering, banishing, and redistributing land, until they were reduced to a bestial state and once more gained a monarchic master.” This is the predictable and depressing lifecycle of political systems. Polybius would have nodded knowingly, had he been present at Benjamin Franklin’s reply to his interlocutor about the type of government produced at the Philadelphia Convention, “A republic, Madam; if you can keep it.”

Fortunately, such a cycle of corrupt and degenerate forms of government could be avoided, and Rome showed the way. Polybius exalted Rome as a “mixed” government, composed of essential elements of all taxonomic forms, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Unlike Plato’s fictitious ideal republic, Rome’s was a functioning system which had proved its mettle for centuries. Unlike Aristotle’s description of the Athenian government as a workable, but uneasy, mixture of popular and oligarchic elements in the Assembly on one side and the Council of 500 and other institutions on the other, Rome succeeded because of its more developed balance of powers. In that, according to Polybius, Rome’s constitution resembled that of Sparta, although Rome’s developed by natural evolution rather than from a conscious decision by a wise lawgiver like the mythical Spartan Lycurgus. Polybius regarded Sparta’s system as particularly enlightened and wrote with great favor about it, although he recognized that the structure did not prevent Spartan hubris from engaging in ultimately disastrous foreign military adventures. In light of Sparta’s legal totalitarianism, it is ironic that Polybius ascribed to this mixed government a long history of liberty in Sparta. Perhaps by this he meant independence. In any event, his characterization of mixed government became the classic understanding of what today would be called a system of limited government.

The preeminent political institution of the Roman Republic was the Senate. Although eligibility changed over time as membership was opened up to the more prominent plebeian class, the equites ((knights), the Senate was primarily the institution of Rome’s aristocratic families, the patricians. The body had begun as a council composed of 100 men chosen by Romulus from the leading land-holding families as city fathers (“patres“). Initially, it was solely a hereditary body, but eventually the primary determinant, if one sought admission to the Senate, became landed wealth. The Senate had the power over appropriations. The civil functionaries had to obtain Senate consent for all expenditures, most importantly for the massive funds spent every few years on the repair and construction of public buildings. Major crimes, such as treason, conspiracy, and gang murder were under Senate jurisdiction. Foreign relations, colonial administration, and matters of war and peace were the domain of the Senate.

Striking about the Senate was that it had no formal role except to act as an advisory council, the same as under the earlier monarchy. In reality, it was the single most powerful body in the republic, due to its class ties and consciousness, its continuous sessions, and its life membership. Moreover, the mos maiorum (the “custom of the ancestors”), the powerful force of tradition in the Roman constitution, sustained the legitimacy of the Senate. A senatus consultum was merely an advisory opinion by the Senate, but such an opinion was required for any law proposed for adoption by an assembly. Although a consultum could be overridden by the assembly or could be vetoed by a plebeian tribune, in reality an unfavorable consultum usually spelled the end of the proposed law or, if enacted, caused it not to be enforced by the magistrates. Polybius noted, if one were to look solely at the Senate, one would believe that Rome was an aristocracy. Or, in the more jaundiced view of some historians who claimed that the Senate was actually controlled by a tightly knit small hereditary group of families, it was an oligarchy.

There was also, however, another long tradition in Rome’s constitution, “What touches all must be approved by all.” As Cicero put it in Republic, “res publica, res populi.” The consent of the people was given through the assemblies. Polybius described their role in assessing taxes, the ratification of treaties, actual declaration of war, and confirming the appointment of officials. Moreover, the people had a role in legal processes. All death penalties had to be approved by an assembly. The same held for more general criminal cases where a substantial fine would be imposed. He concluded that, from this perspective, one might declare Rome a democracy.

There were various assemblies over time, and Roman citizens could attend any. Histories does not have much discussion of them. This might be because Polybius was not a great admirer of those bodies or, more simply, because his discussion is in the chapters which have been lost. These explanations are not contradictory, and there is evidence for both. One such body was the Centuriate Assembly, the oldest. It can be traced to a 6th century B.C. king and was modeled on the centuriae, the military units of 100 infantry and 10 cavalry that each of the ten subunits of the three “tribes” of Rome had to provide. As in Athens, these tribes were not based on ethnicity but were simply geographic constituencies within the city.

As the city grew, so did the number of tribes and the size of the voting units. For a long time, there were 193 “centuries.” They were organized on the basis of land ownership, wealth, and age, which, in turn, was related to the type of military service and associated weaponry of the members. At the top were the equites (knights), who were wealthy enough to provide horses and served in the cavalry. They had 18 centuries. Next were 170 centuries for the infantry, divided further into five classes based on their members’ wealth and weaponry. Below them were five centuries for the proletarii (the poor), those who could not supply weapons and typically were assigned to the navy.

In contrast to the Athenian ekklesia, in the Roman system the citizens did not vote simply as individuals. Although they met in the same place, the actual voting took place within their respective centuries. Each century had one vote, determined by the majority vote of citizens assigned to that century. The Assembly’s approval depended on a majority vote of the centuries, not of the undifferentiated citizens. With 193 centuries, the votes of majorities in 97 of those centuries would be required to approve a measure. In fact, voting was heavily skewed in favor of the equites and the wealthiest layer of the others. Between them, they were assigned 98 centuries, on the reasoning that those who provided the most financial support and had the most to lose in military service should have the most influence. Moreover, voting was done in class order, with the centuries of the equites voting first, those of the wealthiest class of others voting next, followed by the next lower group, and so on. The poor voted last. As a result, the vote of the poor rarely mattered. Class solidarity, the number of centuries weighted towards the wealthy, and the staggered voting meant that most issues would be decided well before the smaller landowners or the poor voted. Even the reforms of the 3rd century B.C., which expanded the number of centuries for the landowning classes to 350, had little effect on the dominance of the wealthy.

The Assembly could only consider bills which were on the agenda set by the tribunes or the magistrates. The citizens could vote on the proposal but not debate the bill at issue or offer amendments. Finally, all voting was done in the city of Rome. As the city’s domain spread, it became more difficult for any but wealthy citizens to travel to Rome for the duration of the Assembly’s legislative or appointive tasks. Based on his analysis of the system, the historian Scott Gordon doubts that even one-tenth of the 400,000 Roman male citizens at the end of the 2nd century B.C. attended a voting assembly in their lifetimes. The formal powers of the Assembly eventually were transferred to the Senate by the Emperor Tiberius.

There was, however, one mechanism by which the public could express its views, the contio. After a bill was proposed by a tribune, there had to be a period of at least twenty-four days before the Assembly could vote on it. This allowed for informal discussion among citizens of the bill’s merits. Moreover, any tribune could call for a formal meeting, the contio, which all residents, including women, foreigners, and slaves, could attend. The only speakers permitted were those selected by the presiding tribune and usually were senators or various magistrates. Public comment was limited to shouts and other sounds indicating support or opposition.

The final part of the formally operating civil government were judicial, executive, and administrative officials. Chief among them were those sought by ambitious Romans embarked on the cursus honorum, the “path of honors” along a sequence of offices, the apex of which was the consulship. All were initially open only to those of senatorial rank, but eligibility was expanded in the 4th century B.C. In practice, only scions of the wealthy families were likely to be elected, especially as consul. Thus, Cicero, a non-patrician resident of a non-Roman town in Latium and member of the knightly class, the highest of the plebeian classes, climbed this ladder of success quickly.

Election to these offices was by the Assembly for a one-year term, with minimum age requirements. The lowest office was that of the quaestor, who had to be 30 years old and have completed several years of military service. Quaestors were in charge of financial administration, a source of influence for further political advancement, and of record-keeping for the state archives. Above the quaestor was the aedile, in charge of public facilities and public festivals and celebrations. The next rung in the ladder was the praetor, a multi-function office. Praetors performed judicial functions but also could step into the executive role of consul if both of the consuls were absent from the city. As jurists, praetors had significant influence on the development of the body of Roman law. After his term ended, a praetor could also be awarded a foreign post as propraetor. This included military power, with full governing authority in the province. There was no term limit for that office.

At the end of the cursus honorum beckoned the consulship. The Assembly elected two consuls each year, at least one of whom was usually engaged in military campaigns in the provinces, the consul peregrinus. The one in Rome, the consul urbanus, had no real military function, because armed forces had to be kept some distance from Rome during peacetime, a constitutional limit broken, for example, by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon River. The consul’s position in the Republic was one of influence, not formal power. Any executive decision could be vetoed by the other consul and any of the ten plebeian tribunes, Moreover, he could not override the actions of other magistrates. However, his status as a member of a leading family and constant interaction with the Senate, plus the fact that he had survived the competition to reach the apex of the cursus honorum gave his opinions and actions great constitutional legitimacy. After his one-year term ended, a consul could not be re-elected for at least ten years, until the general Marius destroyed that informal constitutional limit in the 1st century B.C. After his term, a consul could be elected as proconsul, the highest military and administrative position in the provinces, with no term limits. This usually arose from the extended military campaigns abroad, which necessitated continuity of command.

Finally, outside the formal cursus honorum were the tribuni plebis, ultimately ten in number, who originally represented the “tribes” or sections of the city. Tribunes spoke for the political interests of the plebeians. They were elected to one-year terms by the Assembly. In that capacity, they were responsible to assist any plebeian who had been wronged by a magistrate. This included the power to overrule an unjust judicial order of punishment. The tribunes’ political power extended to vetoing any bills proposed to the Assembly by other magistrates and to consulta of the Senate deemed contrary to the plebeians’ interests. Eventually, they became members of the Senate and set the agenda for that body. While they formally represented the plebeian classes, with some exceptions such as the famous Gracchi brothers, they were no radicals. They were typically drawn from the patricians and the knights, the high-status classes, and shared their interests. As well, their potentially significant power was impeded by the fact that any affirmative act of a tribune could be vetoed by any of his nine colleagues. In reality, tribunes could act as a shield for the commoners against the wealthy, but rarely as an effective sword to advance the interests of the lower classes in opposition to the wealthy.

One additional aspect of the Republic’s constitutional practices bears mention. Every system has to deal with the state of emergency that can arise over time, the most common of which is war, either foreign or civil. For a long time, in such exceptional circumstances the Roman Senate would formally appoint a dictator to rule by decree for six months. That practice was discontinued by the end of the 3rd century B.C. Instead, during later troubles, such as those of the civil wars of the 1st century B.C., such exceptional powers would be authorized under the terms of a senatus consultum ultimum, a “final act of the Senate” needed to protect the Republic.

Polybius saw in the structure of the magistracies, especially in the consuls, the monarchic element that was part of the “balance” in the Republic’s constitution. In the various interactions of Senate, Assembly, and tribunes, and in their mutual formal and practical limitations, he perceived a system of “checks” on the power of any of them. In some of the particulars, he was off the mark. For example, unlike the Spartan kings to which he compared the consuls, the latter served for only one year, not life. Moreover, the consuls lacked the formal powers one normally associates with kingship. On the whole, however, his assessment has merit.

Historians have long debated the causes of the Republic’s demise. There is certainly no reason to limit the matter to one such cause. Among them was the collapse of broadly-distributed land ownership which sustained a “middle class” in an agricultural republic. As the wealthy became more so regardless of the source, they bought up more land. Land was a reflection of one’s status. Indeed, because commercial ventures were formally prohibited for Senators, one needed land to join that body. The demand raised the price of land and the taxes imposed on it. The growth of these large latifundia drove the previous smaller landowners into the city. There, they became part of the urban proletariate and competed for employment with the large and growing number of slaves acquired through foreign conquests and with other foreigners attracted to the increasingly imperial city.

Another cause was the opportunity for power and wealth afforded to successful generals operating as proconsuls in the provinces. With the troops often ill-paid by Rome, local taxes were extracted by these commanders and used to pay the troops directly. Loyalties became redirected from the city to the commander. The republican slogan SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus), “the Senate and the People of Rome,” which appeared on the standards of the legions, was supplanted by the reality that, “You take the king’s silver, you become the king’s man.” Especially as those troops were increasingly formed from poor Roman volunteers or foreigners, especially after the military reforms of Gaius Marius around the turn of the 1st century B.C., it became easier for generals to use those professional troops—or threaten to do so—against the city itself and to rule by force. Marius himself, and his erstwhile protégée Sulla, set unfortunate examples.

Perhaps most significant was the fundamental change in the political and social conditions of Rome. Consistent with Polybius’s theory, the societal degeneration about which he had warned as the inevitable result of the democratization of politics and the weakening of the population’s character brought about thereby, in fact occurred a couple of generations after his death. The impoverishment of a large portion of society and the resultant dependency on public largesse for survival, made those citizens susceptible to the slogans and programs of the populares, such as Julius Caesar and other, more dangerous demagogues. The bloody competition among families of the oligarchic upper classes, as shown in the Social Wars and the proscriptions of the military commanders Marius and Sulla, contributed to the chaos which sent the Republic on the path to the monarchy of the Empire.

The same events that brought about that radical social transformation also manifested themselves in the essential incongruity of governing a huge multi-cultural empire through institutions designed for a small city-state on the Tiber River. The notion of “community,” with shared traditions, civic and religious, and an ethic of sacrifice necessary to sustain the civic engagement at the core of real self-government, is eroded in the chaos of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity and the impersonality of large numbers. Had the Roman elite been willing to open up its political institutions and to extend citizenship and formal participation in the political system to all parts of their domain sufficiently and in a timely manner, a republican structure of sorts might have survived. As it was, the city had become an empire in fact well before its political structure changed from Polybius’s republic to Octavian’s monarchy.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier


Not all the political leaders in the 13 states were sold on the Constitution presented to the states for ratification in the fall of 1787. It was common under the Articles of Confederation to require unanimous agreement, of the states to changes, made to the Articles. Aware that unanimous agreement on the Constitution was unlikely, the Constitutional Convention delegates decided that the Constitution would require only nine states’ ratification to become effective. Had Las Vegas existed then, the betting would have reflected the more-likely result that the Constitution would not be ratified.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and others realized that a marketing and communication campaign had to be waged. They were especially concerned about New York, and proceeded to write a series of 85 essays in New York newspapers to sell the new Constitution to the public. Those essays are known as the Federalist Papers. Those opposed to the new Constitution, known as Anti-federalists, countered with their own essays to disprove the points in each of the Federalist Papers.

The Anti-federalists were as well educated on the history of governmental structures of the past and, in particular, knew that Democratic Republics were unlikely to survive because of their greater trust in the political wisdom and virtue of the common man. The Anti-federalists also were concerned that a “national” government, rather than a stronger Confederation, would quickly erode the Sovereign powers of the individual states. They feared a national government, not unlike the British government they had just relinquished, that would dictate to the states and leave the state governments with few powers, even over more local matters. Although the Tenth Amendment was designed to ensure that the states retained significant powers, to some extent, the Anti-federalist fears have been increasingly realized, especially since the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment when the Senate was effectively made into a second House of Representatives by popular election of the Senators rather than the Senators being “representatives” of the states who sent them to Washington. Since then, Federal mandates have diminished the power of the states to act independently with respect to many otherwise local issues.

The Federalists had a difficult job to sell the Constitution, but their wisdom eventually won the day. Some of the major issues addressed are reflected below.

In Anti-federalist 47, the author writes, “Mr. Adams has traced the constitution of every form of government that ever existed. A republican, or free government, can only exist where the body of the people are virtuous.” All our founders were very familiar with the writings of Cicero and Aristotle regarding individual and community virtue and many Anti-federalists doubted that sufficient civic virtue existed in man to make this new experiment at republican government successful.

“But Hamilton’s notes for his famed five-hour (only) speech to the Convention cite Cicero, as well as Aristotle and Montesquieu, in favor of the Constitution’s proposed mixed government theory, and Madison’s notes, while drafting the Federalist Papers, cite Cicero in addition to Aristotle and Polybius. Hamilton based his foundation of republican government on Cicero’s as that strong, representative government which is most conducive to liberty and resistant to tyranny.”[1]

In Anti-federalist 57, the author notes that “the men most commonly presented to the people as candidates for the offices of representatives include (1) the natural aristocracy, (2) popular demagogues, and (3) the substantial and respectable part of the democracy, a numerous and valuable set of men, who discern and judge well, but from being generally silent in public assemblies are often overlooked. He fears that those elected to the national House of Representatives will be less likely to come from the third category than from the first two categories.”

In Federalist 57, Madison counters this argument saying, “Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor; not the learned, more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscurity and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States. They are to be the same who exercise the right in every State of electing the corresponding branch of the legislature of the State. No qualification of wealth, of birth, of religious faith, or of civil profession is permitted to fetter the judgement or disappoint the inclination of the people.” Furthermore, Madison notes that a key restraint to the election of representatives, who are found unworthy after their election, is the requirement in the Constitution that Representatives be elected every two years, allowing constituents to “throw the bums out” quickly.

Separation of powers was an important element of the new Constitution.  Anti-federalists weren’t convinced of the validity of the claim that such separation would be effective. But in Federalist 47, Madison observes that “the oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject (separation of powers) is the celebrated Montesquieu.” Madison then quotes Montesquieu as saying, “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body of magistrates, or if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”

The authors of the Federalist papers used extant facts from foreign governments as well as from the Constitutions and practices of the 13 states to demonstrate that what the Constitution proposed is not so distinct but, in fact, identifies deficiencies in those documents and proposes solutions to correct those deficiencies. Madison, in Federalist 47 examined the Constitutions of each of the states to prove his case that provisions such as separation of powers already existed at the state level; if they existed there, then why would the anti-federalists believe that such a provision wouldn’t work at the national level?

Whether to have one or two bodies in the legislature was a topic of contention in the Convention. The final Constitution proposal was for two bodies, a House and a Senate. In Anti-federalist 63, the authors state, “But they are so formed, that the members of both must generally be the same kind of men, men having similar interests and views, feelings and connections, men of the same grade in society, and who associate on all, occasions. The Senate, from the mode of its appointment, will probably be influenced to support the state governments; and, from its periods of service will produce stability in legislation, while frequent elections may take place in the other branch.”

In Federalist 63, Madison notes that, “history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate.” And, as to an equivalent to the Constitution’s House of Representatives, Madison states that, “in Sparta we meet with the Ephori, and in Rome with the Tribunes; two bodies, small indeed in numbers, but annually ELECTED BY THE WHOLE BODY OF THE PEOPLE, and considered as the REPRESENTATIVES of the people, almost in their PLENIPOTENTIARY capacity,” and “The Tribunes of Rome, who were the representatives of the people, prevailed, it is well known, in almost every contest with the senate for life, and in the end gained the most complete triumph over it.”

Because of the breadth and depth of the Founding Fathers’ understanding of both good and bad governments from ancient to then-current history, their debates in the Constitutional Convention, and in the political pamphlets produced in those days, were robust. The citizens read the Anti-federalist and Federalist arguments and heard both sides’ arguments in the churches and meeting halls in their communities. Because civic virtue was an important part of their formal and informal education in the 18th century, they were able to decide that the strengths of human nature could prevail over its weaknesses and that the experiment the Convention created, had a better than even chance of success.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List. 

(1) What the founders learned from Cicero // The Observer (ndsmcobserver.com)

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Ron Meier
The School of Athens, Raphael, 1509-1511, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City

In our schools over the past century or so, we’ve learned, and quickly forgotten after the test, a little about some of the great philosophers who lived thousands of years ago, the ancient Greek and Roman empires, the Kings of medieval Europe, the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown in the 17th century, and the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Since the early 19th century, academic attention has increasingly shifted to a focus on more utilitarian subjects, particularly STEM over the past half century since the first rockets left the earth’s atmosphere to circle the earth in outer space.

All our Founding Fathers were educated in the early-to-middle 18th century. Some were able to attend the colleges of the day, but most were not so able and were self-taught or homeschooled. Primary and secondary education for all included study of the Bible. Libraries were few until Benjamin Franklin and his Junto Club[1] members started the first public library in the early 18th century. Soon thereafter they started the American Philosophical Society to “promote useful knowledge.”

With so few books and libraries, no internet to provide instantaneous acquisition of virtually any information or knowledge one would like to acquire, no email to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, no Zoom to interact with experts on any topic, it’s natural to wonder how America’s Founding Fathers could have acquired the knowledge required to write the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, and later, the United States Constitution. How were they able to create a Constitution, admired around the world, in only three months meeting in the humid city of Philadelphia in a building with no air conditioning?

Whether in a formal school or not, colonial children had to acquire a broad body of knowledge to survive in the largely agrarian, merchant, and shopkeeper society of that time; knowledge of religion, science, literature, art, rhetoric, human nature, and politics were necessary to solve the problems each would encounter in daily life, both individually and in their spiritual and political communities. Few could afford specialization in one body of knowledge as is more common today. We call those few among us today with such a wide-ranging body of knowledge Renaissance Men (and Women).

The Colonies’ most influential authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison.

Thomas Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary where he studied science, philosophy and law. He learned the law from the leading Virginia legal scholar, George Wythe. Acknowledging the importance of education, he later founded the University of Virginia.[2] Jefferson, well-educated in the classics, “argued that the Declaration of Independence rested on the authority of Cicero and Aristotle as well as that of Locke. This is most evidently seen by Jefferson’s altering of Locke’s natural rights formulation of ‘life, liberty and property’ into the famous American creed: ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ in the Declaration’s preamble.”[3]

John Adams attended Harvard College, which expressed as its primary purpose “to educate future members of a learned ministry and an effective civil government.”  At Harvard, all students took the exact same curriculum with no electives, which included courses in theology, mathematics, and natural science.[4] Adams then studied law with a Massachusetts lawyer, which was how preparation for a career in law was conducted in Colonial America.

“It was upon John Adams that Cicero had the greatest influence among early Americans. The Harvard curriculum had at its core in the colonial grammar schools and colleges the study of the Latin and Greek languages, literatures and antiquities, what some called the “Sacred Classics.” The aims of this learning were to expose students to classical authors from whom they could derive “useful knowledge.” And among these selected Classics in early America Cicero took pride of place in the admiration of many liberally educated men as model authority for diction and style, as orator, lawyer, political theorist, letter writer, and guide to “private and public virtue.”[5]

James Madison, considered the “Father of the Constitution,” attended the College of New Jersey (Princeton). His primary and secondary education included mathematics, geography, modern and classical languages, particularly Latin, and ancient philosophy. At college, he studied classical languages, mathematics, rhetoric, geography, philosophy, Hebrew, and political philosophy under university president John Witherspoon, later a signer of the Declaration of Independence.[6]

Because of their education, focused on the “sacred classics,” as described more fully by Professor Joerg Knipprath in Essay #7, our political authors were well-educated in alternate political philosophies and structures. Even those not-highly-educated citizens of Colonial America, in what might be called the Middle Class today, were reasonably familiar with the political thoughts of the day from their pastors, town-hall meetings, and widely distributed pamphlet writings of the more highly educated Colonists.

All our Founding Fathers accepted the Stoic’s fundamental concept of a universal moral order based on reason and nature, but they rejected the Stoic’s concept of an individual moral order being unrelated to the laws of the political community. They understood the importance of religious faith, which at that time was almost exclusively Protestant Christianity, in the development of moral and civic virtue, the necessary ingredients of good government. They recognized the impossible Stoic vision that man could control his passions, prejudices, and pride by perfecting his reason, ethics, and morality. Civic virtue, not perfection, was expected by the founders. As Madison states in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” and in Federalist 55, Madison says that, “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason.”

In Federalist 6, Alexander Hamilton notes that a basic assumption about people is that “men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.” If that is a valid assumption, then expecting that a divided nation would continually live in harmony is pure folly.  It would “disregard the uniform course of human events, and set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.”

Our Founding Fathers, including those whose debates on the issues, some of which became known through their writings and discussions as Federalists and Antifederalists, were amazingly well-educated in the political philosophies of ancient governments. They were therefore able to identify those components of governmental structure that worked and those components that didn’t work as they met in Philadelphia to construct a new government and provide that government a structure that might survive longer than the Republics of the past. Yet they still recognized that it was to be an experiment, not a proven solution.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List. 

(1) formed to “discuss queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy [physics])” Franklin’s Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society (ushistory.org)

(2) Thomas Jefferson Biography, History, and Facts

(3) What the founders learned from Cicero // The Observer (ndsmcobserver.com)

(4) John Adams as a Harvard student, by Richard Alan Ryerson | Harvard Magazine

(5) View of The influence of Cicero on John Adams (unito.it)

(6) The Life of James Madison | Montpelier

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath


It has been said that Stoic metaphysics was the state philosophy of ancient Rome. While perhaps an overstatement, the point is well taken. Rome did not achieve the prominence of the Greeks in original philosophy, but there were a number of outstanding expositors who adapted Stoic principles to Roman conditions. Seneca the Younger, a wealthy Roman statesman, dramatist, and tutor to the future emperor Nero; Epictetus, born as a slave, but freed by his wealthy master on reaching adulthood; and Marcus Aurelius, known as the last of the “Five Good Emperors” of Rome, were particularly influential Roman Stoics.

The absorption of the Greek city-states into the Macedonian Kingdom of Philip and his successors in the 4th century B.C. shocked the Greeks’ self-regard. Hellenic culture for centuries had emphasized the special status of citizenship in the polis, and its necessity for achieving eudaimonia, human flourishing. The polis was not just “political” in the modern sense. It was a “community” in all manner, political, yes, but also social, religious, and economic. Aristotle associated such community with a true form of friendship, wherein one acts for the friend’s benefit. Plato and Aristotle both concerned themselves at length with what constitutes such a community that is suitable for a fulfilled life. For Plato, the city was the individual writ large, which formed a key component of his description of the ideal government in his Republic. For Aristotle, politics was an extension of ethics. The moral and the political, the personal and the public, were joined. The teaching and practice of individual virtue (arete—the root word for aristocracy) were necessary for a just society, and a polis operating on that basis created the conditions for individual virtue to flourish. Those outside the polis, be they hermits, bandits, or barbarians, and no matter their wealth or military prowess, could not attain that level of full human development.

The Macedonian occupiers were not much different than the Greeks and, such as Alexander, were hardly ignorant of Greek ideas or unsympathetic to Greek social and political arrangements. Moreover, the Greek poleis did not vanish, and ordinary daily life continued. Still, after unsuccessful attempts to rid themselves of their Macedonian overlords, it became clear that the Greeks were just one group competing with others for influence in a new empire. Politics being a branch of ethics, the ideal for the Greeks had been to do politics “right.” With the Macedonian success, it seemed that the foundation of the entire Greek project had collapsed.

The result was a refocus of the meaning of life from the ultimately outward-looking virtue ethics of Aristotle and the vigorous political atmosphere of the polis. In this psychological confusion and philosophic chaos arose several schools. One, the Skeptics, rejected the idea that either the senses or reason can give an accurate portrayal of reality. Everything is arbitrary and illusionary, truth cannot arise from such illusions, no assertion can claim more intrinsic value than any other, and everything devolves into a matter of relative power: law, right, morality, speech, and art. Such a valueless relativism can expose weaknesses in the assumptions and assertions of metaphysical structures, but its nihilism is self-defeating in that it provides no ethical basis for a stable social order or workable guide for personal excellence.

Another group was the Cynics, who responded to the psychological shock of the collapse of the city-state by rejecting it. The correct life was to understand the illusory and changing nature of civilizational order and withdraw from it. Life must be lived according to the dictates of nature, through reason, freedom, and self-sufficiency. The good life is not a project of study and speculation, but practice (askesis). Live modestly through your own toil so that you may speak freely, unperturbed by the turmoil and illusions around you. One of the most prominent Cynics, Diogenes, allegedly lived in a rain barrel in the Athenian market and survived through gifts and by foraging and begging. Social arrangements and conventions are not necessarily inimical to this quest, but they often hide the way. Thus, it becomes the Cynic’s duty to light the way, as Diogenes sought to do with his lamp, by exposing and ridiculing such conventions. The Cynics saw themselves no longer as citizens of the polis, but as citizens of the world.

While principled, the Cynics’ grim lifestyle in order to “speak truth to power” was not for most. An alternative school was founded by Epicurus in the late 4th century B.C. The Epicureans urged people to focus foremost on themselves to achieve the good life. The gods have turned away from the city, political decisions are made in royal capitals far away, and the only control is what you have over your actions. Thus, obeying rules, laws, and customs is practically useful but should not be a matter of concern. To live the good life was to obtain pleasure, the highest end. “Pleasure” is not to be understood as we often do as some form of sensory stimulation. Rather, it was to achieve a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and absence of pain. This ultimate form of happiness would come through a life of domestic comfort, learning about the world around us, and limiting one’s desires. Crucially, Epicureans avoided the turbulence of politics, because such pursuits would conflict with the goal of achieving peace of mind. The best one could hope for in this life was good health, good food, and good friends.

Stoic philosophy was an eclectic approach, which borrowed from Plato, Aristotle, and competing contemporary investigations of ethics and epistemology. Its name came from a school established by Zeno, a native of Citium on Cyprus, who began teaching in Athens around 300 B.C. The “school” met on a covered colonnaded walkway, the stoa poikile, near the marketplace of Athens. Its 500 years of influence are usually divided into three eras (Early, Middle, and Late), which eras broadly correspond to changes from the austere fundamentalist teachings of its ascetic founder into a practical system of ethics accessible to more than wise and self-abnegating sages.

There were two key aspects to Stoicism. First, at an individual level, there was apatheia. It would be massively misleading to equate this with our term “apathy.” Apathy is negative, conveying passivity or indifference. Apatheia means a conscious effort to achieve a state of mind freed from the disturbance of the passions and instincts. It is equanimity in the face of life’s challenges. The Stoic sage would “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” over which he has no control and focus instead on his own actions. Reason being man’s distinctive and most highly evolved innate feature, the Stoic must train himself to live life in accordance with nature and reason. He must control his passions and avoid luxuries and material distractions that would lead to disappointments and frustrations. His happiness is within himself. The virtuous life is a simple life, achieved through constant discipline “in accordance with rational insight into man’s essential nature.”

Second was universalism. Hellenic culture became Hellenistic culture, as Greek ideas and practices were adapted to the new world order, as the polis became the cosmopolis. A Stoic saw himself in two ways. In the political realm, he was a citizen of his city or state; in his self, he was a human. As Marcus Aurelius expressed it, “My city and country, so far as I am Antoninus [a title for emperor—ed.], is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.” Stoicism, unlike its Platonic and Aristotelian sources insisted that the universe was governed by law which applied equally to all and raised all to equal status, a “universal brotherhood of man.” This revolutionary claim would profoundly influence Roman and Christian ideas thereafter.

Stoicism differed from Skepticism in that it rejected the latter’s nihilistic pessimism that life was simply a competition for power. It projected a vision of personal improvement and sought to construct a positive path towards happiness within a universal order of moral truth. It differed from the Cynics in that Stoicism did not reject the basic legitimacy of the state and its laws and conventions or urge withdrawal from the public sphere. Rather, the Stoics separated the universal moral order, by which each person’s individual conduct must be measured, from the reality of the political world and the obligation to obey the laws of the community. Stoics did not reject the secular authority or make a point to ridicule it. From a Christian perspective, it was not exactly “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” But it was close enough, coming from a pagan philosophy.

Finally, the Stoics differed from the Epicureans. The latter’s goal of a tranquil private life through the pursuit of health, learning, good food, and good company was at odds with the former’s demands of a more disciplined private life of constant self-reflection and self-improvement, plus the continuing duty to shoulder one’s obligations under the civic law. Those differences made Stoicism much more attractive than Epicureanism to the average Roman. The Roman upper classes might well be drawn to the Epicurean vision, but Stoicism could appeal to more than the leisure class. Most significant, with its emphasis on self-reliance, simplicity, and service, Stoicism more closely reflected the Roman sense of self during a half-millennium of the Republic and the early Empire. The historian Will Durant observed, “A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.” By that he meant that civilizations degenerate. As he explained, “[C]ivilizations begin with religion and stoicism; they end with skepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure.” Though at times turbulent and seeming to veer into dissolution as the political edifice of the Roman Republic became Octavian’s principate, the Roman culture did not yet fundamentally change, due in part to the stability provided by Stoic philosophy.

Stoicism fit well the Roman character imagined by the Romans themselves and reflected in their laws and history. As the historian J.S. McClelland wrote, “The Greeks might be very good at talking about the connection between good character and good government, but the Romans did not have to bother much about talking about it because they were its living proof.” Not unlike Sparta, Rome had always had a strong martial component to its policies, which Romans took to be an essential part of their character. It was a masculine, male-dominated culture, and unabashedly so. At the root of virtus, that is, virtue or excellence, is vir, the word for adult male or hero. Stoicism “spoke” to Romans in a way that Epicureanism could not. That said, the Middle and Late Stoic writers from the second century B.C. on were willing to refine some of the school’s rough homespun aspects and accepted that a materially good life was not inconsistent with Stoicism. Self-discipline and self-reflection were key. Moderation, not excess, all in accord with nature and reason, sufficed. Self-deprivation and the ascetic life were not necessary.

American polemicists of the post-Revolutionary War period often associated the Stoic virtues with the Roman Republic and saw those virtues reflected in themselves. This required turning a blind eye to certain fundamental assumptions. For example, as noted, Stoicism separated the universal moral order’s control over private conduct from the need for unquestioning adherence to the state’s laws made for the welfare of the community. For the Americans, a distinction between private morality and virtue on the one hand, and public morality and law on the other was not readily conceivable, at least as an idea. Though at times John Adams was quite doubtful about the capacity of Americans for self-government, in his message to the Massachusetts militia in 1798 he wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” James Madison writing in The Federalist, No. 55, noted that republican self-government more so than any other form requires sufficient virtue among the people.

There was another, profound, appeal Stoicism had for the Romans, which connected to their views of good government. Rome prided itself on its balanced republican government, a government meant for a cohesive community, that is, a city-state. “The Eternal City,” the poet Tibullus called it in the 1st century B.C., and so it became commonly known through the works of Virgil and Ovid during the reign of Octavian, long after it had ceased to be a mere city on the Tiber and become an empire in all but name. Indeed, Octavian styled himself princeps senatus, the highest ranked senator, avoided monarchical titles and insignia, and purported to “restore” the Roman Republic in 27 B.C. The trappings of the republican system were maintained, some for centuries.

As in the earlier Greek city-states, Roman citizens had the right and the duty to participate in their governance. Stoicism called on its adherents to involve themselves in res publica, public affairs, working for the benefit of the whole, not themselves, a commitment of personal sacrifice and service. This mirrored basic obligations of Roman citizenship, from military service to political engagement to contribution for public works. These burdens with their physical and economic sacrifices were to be borne with equanimity. Marcus Aurelius, the last great Stoic sage, spent a large portion of his reign on the frontier leading armies against invading German tribes. It is said that he wrote his famous inward-directed Meditations on Stoic ideas and practice during those campaigns.

An important component of the Roman political system was law, both as a collection of concrete commands and as an idea. As noted, Romans were not, by and large, known for original contributions to Western philosophy. For them, that was the role of the Greeks. They were, however, exceptional jurists. As they gained territory, the need to administer that territory required a system of law capable of adapting to foreign conditions. As they gained dominion over cultures beyond the Italian peninsula, and as Roman trade ventured to even farther corners of the world, the Roman law might differ in particulars from that of the local population. At the same time, there appeared to be certain commonalities to the Roman law and those of disparate communities. For the politicians, such commonalities could help unify the realm through a “common law” and support the legitimacy of Rome and its administrators. For the merchants, it could help make commercial dealings more predictable and lower their transaction costs. For the jurists, it raised the possibility of universal influences or elements in the concept of law itself.

The Stoics provided the framework for systematic exploration of that possibility. Stoicism, it may be recalled, had a cosmopolitan, indeed universal, outlook. The Stoic universe was an orderly place, governed by immutable, eternal, constant principles. In other words, an eternal law. At the center was the universal moral law. Law in general had its basis in nature, not in the arbitrary creative will of a human ruler or the cacophony of mutually cancelling irrationalities of the multitude. Humans have an inborn notion of right and wrong. Unlike Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments, which he based on our social nature, the Stoics ascribed this to our essential human nature, with each individual participating in this universal moral order. There was an essential equality to Stoicism that eliminated the lines between ruler and subject, man and woman, freeman and slave. Gone was Aristotle’s attempt to explain slavery with the claim that the nature of some conduced them to slavery.

Of course, this only applied to one’s ability to achieve individual virtue through Stoic self-discipline in the personal realm. The outside world still maintained those distinctions in positive law. Many were slaves in Rome. While the Stoics could consider slaves their brethren as members of the human community within the moral law, they accepted the separate obligation imposed on them to obey the political world in its flawed, but real, condition. Epictetus, himself a former slave, blurred that duality when he declared slavery laws the laws of the dead, a crime. But for most, the reality of despotic and corrupt government, the suppression of freedom, and prevalence of slavery were the actions of others over which the Stoic had no control and the consequences of which he had to deal with as best he could through apatheia.

Still, the concept of eternal law, possessed of inherent rightness, and connected to human nature, had some profound implications for human governance and freedom. The universal order is right reason itself and exists within our nature, accessible to us through our own reason. The Apostle Paul addressed this from a Christian perspective in Romans 2:14 and 15: “For when the Gentiles who do not have the law, by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written on their hearts ….” Proper human law, in its essential principles, is a practical reflection of this higher moral law and necessary for good government. Despite the shortcomings of actual Roman politics, this set a standard.

Because the moral law is universal, eternal and beyond the control of human rulers, it implies a lawgiver of similar qualities. The character of the Stoic “god” was often unclear and differed among various Stoic philosophers. It was certainly not the gods of the Greek and Roman civic religions, with their all-too-human character failings and pathological urges to interfere, usually disastrously, in human lives. Nor was it the personal and loving Christian God of the Gospels, cognizant of each creature within His creation and particularly interested in the flourishing of those created in His image. Rather, the Stoic god is best viewed as a force which created and through its presence maintained the universal order. This force has been described variously as a creative fire, world soul, pneuma (breath), or logos (word). The last two are particularly interesting in relation to Christian writings. Logos not only meant “word” but also the reason, cause, or ultimate purpose or principle of something. The Stoic moral order was an expression of divine reason and accessible to us through the reason that is part of our nature.

One of the foremost Roman commentators and synthesizers of Stoic doctrine in law was Cicero, the great lawyer, philosopher, and statesman. Cicero claimed he was not a Stoic. He seemed to have seen himself as a follower of contemporary versions of Plato’s ideas. Indeed, his two major works on good government, The Republic and Laws, paralleled the titles of Plato’s major works on politics. However, his introduction of the ius naturale (natural law) to Roman jurisprudence, a fundamental step in human freedom, owes much to the Stoics. Note his justification for the right of self-defense: “This, therefore, is a law, O judges, not written, but born with us, which we have not learnt, or received by tradition, or read, but which we have taken and sucked in and imbibed from nature herself; a law which we were not taught, but to which we were made, which we were not trained in, but which is ingrained in us ….”

Or consider the following that vice and virtue are natural, not mere artifices: “[In] fact we can perceive the difference between good laws and bad by referring them to no other standard than Nature: indeed, it is not merely Justice and Injustice which are distinguished by Nature, but also and without exception things which are honorable and dishonorable. For since an intelligence common to us all makes things known to us and formulates them in our minds, honorable actions are ascribed by us to virtue, and dishonorable actions to vice; and only a madman would conclude that these judgments are matters of opinion, and not fixed by Nature.”

Perhaps most famous is this passage from The Republic: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; … It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, [note the use of the singular, not the plural associated with the Roman pantheon—ed.] over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment.”

From these recognitions, it is but a short step “self-evident [truths], that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” A short step conceptually, but centuries in time to realize fully.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty. Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


In the previous essay, we discussed how classical history (i.e., the history of Greek and Roman political structures) informed the debates over the Constitution—and how James Madison drew on history to make the case for the Constitution’s immediate necessity and importance.

In this essay, we focus again on Federalist #38, but this time discussing how the same examination of historic political structures informed the architecture or structure of the U.S. Constitution itself.

Madison and most, if not all, of the other founders were students of classical history, and well-understood how governance had changed through the ancient Mediterranean societies. They learned how Athenians’ political choices compared and contrasted with those of the Spartans and Minoans, and how the Roman Republic came into existence, but eventually turned into an imperial tyranny.

When reviewing these governments, which ranged from benign monarchies to democracies to despotic autocracies, the founders came to a stunning conclusion: that these historic examples pointed to the necessity of a balancing of powers and interests. Concentrate too much power in one person or one body, and that power could become corrupted as happened in Rome as respect for the rule of law degenerated over time, giving rise to the imperial dictatorship.  Rely too much on pure democracy, and it could descend into the rule of the mob, something equally feared.

As Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have said, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”

The statement is a truism (regardless of whether it was Franklin who said it first!), reflected, in turn, in how the architects of the Constitution ultimately designed our federal government. Our system is one that is rooted in the principles of democratic governance—we elect our legislators and cast votes in a presidential electoral system.

But in order to stave off the possibility of “mobocracy,” those democratic ideals are balanced with republican limitations—from a Bill of Rights which underscores limitations on how government exercises its power, to the idea that each branch of our federal government has its powers specifically enumerated.

Consider, for example, the voicing of unpopular ideas—a subject hotly debated today. There are some, there have always been some, who would like to see unpopular speech outlawed or severely restricted, whether it is so-called “hate speech” or speech that is sharply critical of America, to the point of the burning of a flag. In a pure, Athenian-style democracy, the majority declaring this speech outlawed would be it—the “mob” would have spoken.

But our Constitution recognizes that it is unpopular speech that requires the greatest amount of protection; popular speech requires no protection, after all. So, regardless of what the majority of citizens might demand, and regardless of what the Congress might enact, or the Executive Branch attempts to pursue through the administrative process, the First Amendment presents a counterbalance to a majoritarian tyranny.

It is that explicit assignment of powers, and the careful balancing of those powers against one another, that serves to protect the rights of individual Americans.

In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the legislative powers of Congress are laid out. In Article II, the Executive Branch is given the power to interpret and carry out the laws Congress has passed. Under Article III, the Judicial Branch enforces those laws and ensures that both the laws that have been passed and the interpretation and administration of those laws by the Executive Branch withstand constitutional scrutiny.

In theory, this is supposed to ensure that no branch is more powerful than any other branch—and that the creation and administration of federal policies does not injure or harm the individual rights of American citizens.

In theory.

The ongoing concern is similar to that which brought the aforementioned descent of ancient Rome from republic to dictatorial empire—an increasing disrespect for the regular order of governmental processes and the overall rule of law. In Rome, as chaos and corruption grew, first Julius Caesar and then Augustus offered Romans greater safety and security in exchange for their democratic political rights. The result was the end to any real sort of Roman republic and centuries of despotism.

Again, it was Benjamin Franklin who warned, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

In modern America, we see this playing out in a myriad of ways—from those who seek to simply circumvent the Constitution’s rules to those who use Congress’ political propensity to pass vaguely defined pieces of legislation as a pretext to increase the power of the federal Executive Branch.

Because of the manner in which power is distributed and balanced, if Congress passes a piece of legislation in which the subject-matter is vaguely defined, the Executive Branch can, in turn, define it. The result is a situation in which, while the Executive Branch isn’t creating law out of “whole cloth,” the power of the Executive Branch is expanded.

Take the Clean Water Act of 1972, a piece of legislation with the noble purpose of dealing with America’s polluted waterways of the 1970s—rivers were, literally, catching on fire! In it, Congress declared that we cannot “pollute” a “navigable water of the United States.”

But Congress didn’t define “pollution,” didn’t define “navigable,” didn’t define “water of the United States”—and for a half-century, all of those terms have been subjected to intense debate as various presidential administrations have offered a varying degree of definitions, some focusing on the plain-language of the act, but others which seem to encircle not just America’s major rivers but even disparate and unconnected bodies of water, or even patches of dry land, that would otherwise have been under the regulatory purview of state and local governments (the definition of “Waters of the United States” or “WOTUS” is once again under debate in Washington).

In the end, this balancing of interests is supposed to protect the population at large to prevent the kind of overreach we have been discussing and to also ensure that we “look before we leap” in terms of public policy solutions. This is especially true when it comes to foreign policy.

The President is Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces and the military operates under the auspices of the federal Executive Branch.  But it is only Congress that can declare war.  The President, and his duly-designated officers, have the power to negotiate treaties, but it is within the power of the Senate to ratify them. Moreover, despite the power of the President and the Executive Branch to respond to national emergencies and international crises, and setting aside the legitimacy of the War Powers Resolution which asks the President to report on such actions within 48 hours of them being undertaken, Congress retains the power of the “purse strings” i.e., the power to actually fund the operations of the U.S. government, so the Executive Branch is further restrained.

In all, taking a cue from the governments of the Greek city-states as well as ancient Rome, the founders knew that there had to be a greater division of powers and balancing of interests, that good democratic principles have to be checked by the limitations that a republican form of government provides. When it works, this balance serves to protect the rights of individual Americans.

But we have to make sure that all of the branches are working properly, lest the American experiment become a cautionary tale that scholars two millennia from now examine as an example of what not to do.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer


In his play, The Tempest, William Shakespeare wrote, “What’s past is prologue.”  Building on this idea, in 1905, philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Our founders were acutely aware of this concept—even if they were unfamiliar with Shakespeare or preceded Santayana by more than a century.  Firmly grounded in both the history of classical antiquity and the philosophies underpinning the various Greek and Roman societies, men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison relied firmly on what they had learned as they were envisioning the American Republic (and, to be certain, Jefferson found great inspiration from the Greeks and the Romans in his architectural pursuits as well).

Nowhere is this more evident than in Federalist #38.  Written by Madison, this essay continues his efforts to counter the rhetoric of those opposed to the ratification of the Constitution—focusing squarely on the flaws in those opponents’ reasoning, and drawing on the lessons of history in order to sway support in favor of ratification.

After briefly discussing the Minoans, the Spartans, and the Romans, Madison focuses on Athens—the cradle of early democracies (the word “democracy” is in and of itself Greek, meaning “ruled by the people”).  After discussing some of what led to the formation of the Athenian democratic government, he asks by the people of Athens,

“should consider one illustrious citizen as a more eligible depositary of the fortunes of themselves and their posterity, than a select body of citizens, from whose common deliberations more wisdom, as well as more safety, might have been expected?”

In other words, there was concern as to whether one person—whether a “divine right” monarch or someone selected through a democratic process—would serve the nation (though in the case of the Greeks we’re generally talking about “city states” better than some group of citizens, acting together to make decisions.

In fact, Athens made participation in their democracy mandatory, and each year a group of citizens would be compelled to serve in the government.

Madison then goes on to talk about the challenges that the founders of these governments faced, showing that there is indeed a lesson in the debates that existed in Greece and Rome for those debating the ratification of the Constitution:

“History informs us, likewise, of the difficulties with which these celebrated reformers had to contend, as well as the expedients which they were obliged to employ in order to carry their reforms into effect.”

In other words—these men faced challenges, too, but those challenges did not prevent them from moving forward with improvements. But most important is the lesson that correcting the mistakes of governance in the past is an essential element of a successful and enduring nation, while at the same time recognizing that opposition for opposition’s sake can be needlessly complicating:

“If these lessons teach us, on one hand, to admire the improvement made by America on the ancient mode of preparing and establishing regular plans of government, they serve not less, on the other, to admonish us of the hazards and difficulties incident to such experiments, and of the great imprudence of unnecessarily multiplying them.”

This is the real focus of Madison’s essay—his accusation to the critics of the Constitution that their arguments are not in any way constructive or substantive, but worse, that they are (in many cases) contradictory and harmful in that they are needlessly delaying the lawful formation of a national government.

The Constitution was meant as a necessary improvement over the Articles of Confederation, a document that, like many implemented first drafts, was found to be wanting and ultimately unworkable.  It was a document full of contradictions—a central government given responsibilities but little authority to exercise those responsibilities.  In fact, it could be said that this is by design, that these flaws were embedded in the Articles of Confederation to make that document (and any government trying to operate under it) unworkable (in modern legal parlance, this is referred to as a “poison pill”).

But Madison knew time was of the essence—and that pointing out the contradictions in the arguments of the Constitution’s opponents was essential to the speedy adoption of that document, framing it as a mortal health issue:

“A patient who finds his disorder daily growing worse, and that an efficacious remedy can no longer be delayed without extreme danger, after coolly revolving his situation, and the characters of different physicians, selects and calls in such of them as he judges most capable of administering relief, and best entitled to his confidence. The physicians attend; the case of the patient is carefully examined; a consultation is held; they are unanimously agreed that the symptoms are critical, but that the case, with proper and timely relief, is so far from being desperate, that it may be made to issue in an improvement of his constitution…

“Such a patient and in such a situation is America at this moment. She has been sensible of her malady. She has obtained a regular and unanimous advice from men of her own deliberate choice. And she is warned by others against following this advice under pain of the most fatal consequences. Do the monitors deny the reality of her danger? No. Do they deny the necessity of some speedy and powerful remedy? No.”

Sometimes, we forget the precarious nature of the fledgling American republic.  Yes, we had just won the war for our independence, but the nation’s future was hardly guaranteed.  In fact, it was even more precarious because of the failure of the Articles of Confederation in producing the balancing of interests between the states, the central government, and the people themselves.

Ultimately, Madison prevailed upon the readers of his essays to consider that as flawed as the Constitution might be, it was better than either of the two alternatives (as he saw them): the Articles of Confederation or no organizing document whatsoever.  Whichever the particular complaints of the Constitution’s opponents, Madison needed them to see that point.  With the past being prologue, Madison knew what would happen to the American experiment otherwise.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

In classical studies and terminology, a (political) constitution is a concept that describes how a particular political system operates. It is a descriptive term and refers to actual political entities. It is, therefore, unlike what Americans are accustomed to hearing when that term is used. Rather, we think of The Constitution, a formal founding document which not only describes the skeleton of our political system, but has also attained the status of a normative standard for what is intrinsically proper political action. Thus, we can talk about constitutional law and of rights recognized in that document in defining not just how things are done, but how they ought to be done.

In that, our Constitution is unusual. The ancient Greek cities lacked such formal documents that were self-consciously founding a new political order. However, there were analogous decrees and laws which shaped aspects of government. In that sense, we, too, might say that a statute that organizes a branch of government might be “constitutional,” not in the sense that it is somehow a noble law, and not just that it is within the textual limits of the Constitution. Instead, the term conveys that such a law simply sets up basic procedures to run the government, procedures that people use and, thereby, at least tacitly accept as legitimate. An example might be a statute that establishes a specific system of federal courts.

Moreover, functional descriptions of constitutions must take into account not only formal written rules of government for that entity, but the unwritten customs and practices that shape, refine, or even negate those written rules. Even our formal written Constitution is subject to such informal influences, one prominent form of which is the collection of opinions of Supreme Court justices on the meaning of the words in that document. The ancients, too, were keenly aware of the importance of such long-adhered-to customs to influence the practice of politics and also to give—or deny—legitimacy to political actions. The Greek playwright Sophocles made the clash between a novel royal decree and custom in the form of the “immortal unrecorded laws of God” a central plot device in his play Antigone, a part of the tragic Oedipus Cycle. For the Roman Republic and the early Empire, one must look to the use of constitutional custom through the mos maiorum (the “custom of the ancients” or “practice of the forefathers”) to understand the political order.

As with our own polity, it would be foolish to describe the constitutions of the Greek poleis (city states) as unchanged over the centuries of their existence. Cultural perspectives and societal needs do not remain static. Thus, one must give an evolutionary overview, made more specific through a snapshot of a particular period. When Aristotle (or his students) wrote Athenaion Politeia (the Athenian Constitution), he did just that, providing a history and a contemporary description. As an aside, Aristotle is credited with analyzing 158 Greek constitutions, of which the Athenian is the only one to survive in substantial form. With that number, it is more likely that Aristotle’s students compiled these surveys, perhaps on behalf of their teacher’s research.

As the Greek city states evolved, so did their governments. The chieftain or kingly form of government under a basileus, limited often by powerful individual noble warriors, prominent in Homer’s Iliad, typically gave way to an aristocracy based on land ownership. In Athens, as later in Rome and in the history of Europe and North America, there were further pressures towards democratization, influenced by the growth of commerce and sea trade. Both Plato in Politeia (the “Republic”) and Aristotle in Politika (the “Politics”) wrote about these trends. Neither was a fan. Plato, especially, saw these developments as evidence of degeneration.

While much of this history is murky and in shadows, apparently the major power of government in early Athens was in the Areopagus, a council of aristocratic elders with legislative and judicial powers. Significant constitutional changes in Athens began in 621-620 B.C. with the Code of Draco (who may have been an individual or a signifier for a priestly class), which solidified the powers of the holders of large estates in a legislative Council of 400. This body was selected by lot from the class of those who, according to the Code, could supply a certain level of military equipment.

Solon, regarded by many historians as the founder of Athenian democracy, undertook various political reforms in the early 6th century B.C. One was to deprive the Areopagus of much of its judicial power. Instead, jury courts took over that role, including the ability to adjudicate suits against public officials for unjust treatment. The most significant reform was to expand political participation based on size of land ownership. Four classes were created. All, even the landless laborers could take part in the ekklesia (assembly) and the jury courts. However, only the top two classes could hold the significant public offices. Members of the third class could hold minor administrative positions. In effect, this diminished the role of the hereditary aristocracy and entrenched the wealthier oligarchy of large landowners. The Council of 400 controlled the agenda of the assembly, thereby ensuring more control by the landed elite.

The process of democratization continued with the reforms by the military leader Kleisthenes who came to political power in 507 B.C. He organized the citizens in Athens and the surrounding area into ten “tribes.” While Athens had many residents from other Greek cities and from non-Greek areas, these “metics” were not counted. Tribe is not to be understood as an ethnic concept, but merely as a convenient label for a geographic constituency, such as a community or district. Kleisthenes eliminated the Council of 400 and replaced it with the boule, a Council of 500. Each tribe would have 50 seats in that council, chosen annually by lot from male citizens over 30 years old. The Council was a powerful entity, in charge of fiscal administration. It also set the agenda for the Assembly. Council members could serve only twice in their lifetimes. Kleisthenes had his reforms approved by vote of the Assembly, which gave particular legitimacy to the rules and increased the Assembly’s constitutional significance. However, the nine archons, the senior civil officials, as well as other magistrate offices, such as judges, were still drawn from the nobility and the wealthy landowners.

During the 5th century B.C., further reforms occurred under Ephialtes and Pericles, resulting in what historians often call Athens’s “Golden Age of Pericles.” The Assembly was the focal point of Athenian democracy. It met on a hill near the central market. Sessions were held on four non-consecutive days each Athenian month. There were ten months, with thirty-six days each. A quorum was 6,000 of the estimated 40,000 Athenian male citizens. Anyone could speak on items placed before the Assembly by the Council. Laws generally were adopted by majority vote of hands, though some laws required approval also by a special body drawn by lot from the jury rolls.

This façade of radical democracy must not fool casual observers of Athenian politics. First, there was the matter of demographics. Of the estimated 300,000 residents of Athens and its environs, most were slaves, metics, women, or children. It is estimated that only about 15% were adult male citizens. Second, the members of the Assembly did have final authority to vote, but on proposals shaped by the Council. Finally, business could not have been carried on if thousands of people exercised their right to speak. Thus, informal customs were observed. Speeches on proposals were given by a small number of recognized leading members of the community. These speakers were the “demagogues” (demos means “people”; gogos means “leader”). Initially, the term had a neutral meaning. It soon took on the modern sense, as various individuals sought to gain favor and influence with the voters through inflammatory language, theatrics and emotionalism.

As happens not infrequently, many such spokesmen for the people were from noble families or wealthy businessmen seeking to advance their economic interests. Notorious among them were Alcibiades, known for his charm, wealth, good looks, and Spartan military training; Hyperbolus, namesake of a word that represents theatrical and emotional language, a frequent target of satire by Greek playwrights, and the last person to be “ostracized” (that is, required to leave Athens for ten years); and Cleon, a man who, centuries before William F. Buckley, declared that “states are better governed by the man in the streets than by intellectuals …who… want to appear wiser than the laws…and…often bring ruin on their country.” Such speakers could “demagogue” issues and exploit, exacerbate, and even create divisions within the Athenian populace. However, they also served a useful role in that they were usually well-informed and regular participants in the debates. They could explain to the more casual attendees unfamiliar with the intricacies of Athenian government and politics the issues of the day. It is reported that ordinary Athenians, not known to be reticent in matters of political debate, were anything but shy about vocalizing their opinions about the various speakers through shouts, jeers, cheers, laughter, and a multitude of other sounds even if they did not make speeches.

As noted, the Assembly’s power was not unrestricted. The Council of 500 controlled its agenda. More precisely, since a body of five hundred could not realistically expect to control the shaping of public policy and its administration, it was a standing committee of the Council that performed this work. The standing committee of 50 rotated monthly among the ten tribes which composed the Council.

Athens had no king or president. The archons were senior magistrates and judges. They were selected by lot and, in theory, by the 4th century B.C., any male citizen was eligible for the office. Archons served for one year and thereafter could not be re-selected. Strategoi were the military commanders of the army and navy. Since those positions required particular expertise in war and leadership capabilities, they were not selected by the chancy method of the lot. Rather, the Assembly elected them for one-year terms. Unlike the civil magistrates, because wars operate on their own timetable, military commanders were typically re-elected. At the same time, the Assembly could revoke their commands at any time and for any reason. In addition, Athens had many junior bureaucrats who held their offices longer.

By the end of the fifth century B.C., the jury courts, well-established in the litigious Athenian society, had also taken on a political role. They were in charge of the confirmation process that each official had to undergo before taking office. If challenged on his qualifications, a jury would have to vote by majority to approve the selection. The courts and the Assembly also could hear “denunciations” brought by Athenian citizens against public officials and military commanders after an initial review by the Council. Finally, upon completing his term of office, a public official was subject to a review (euthenai) by an administrative board. If a citizen brought a complaint of mistreatment by the official, that complaint also would be heard by the courts after an initial review by a committee of the Council.

Despite its source in the demos, the Athenian system was not an unrestrained democracy. Such a system would have collapsed quickly, given the size and complexity of the Athenian state by the 6th century B.C. Athens was a “mixed” government (mikte). What brought it to eventual collapse was defeat in the Peloponnesian War at the hands of Sparta, the overextension of its colonial reach, the interference by foreign powers during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. in the politics of Athens (from Persia to Sparta to Thebes to Macedon), and the usual interest group conflicts that plague societies (rich versus poor, landed versus commercial interests, creditors versus debtors, new elites versus old, traditionalists versus modernists). The social frictions and political instability caused by the violence of the successive factions that controlled Athens in the early 4th century B.C. based on support of, or opposition to, Spartan influence, undermined the system to the point that the city could not resist its eventual assimilation by the Kingdom of Macedon and its successor, the Alexandrian Empire. Both the oligarchic pro-Spartans, such as the Thirty Tyrants, and the democratic anti-Spartans seized the property of defeated political rivals and resorted to death for people suspected of supporting those defeated rivals. It was the democratic faction, after all, that convicted Socrates and sentenced him to death for a trumped-up charge.

All of that said, one must not forget that between the initial democratic stirrings under Draco and the Macedonian occupation, the Athenian democracy functioned three centuries. Even after the end of its independence as a city-state, the Athenian constitution continued, albeit in modified form and with less power abroad.

The Spartan system was superficially similar to the Athenian constitution yet was grounded in some fundamentally different social and political realities. Like some other thoroughly stratified and structured societies, Sparta was highly legalistic. The tight and intrusive control over life that is associated with the “Spartan way” was rooted in law, not tyrannical arbitrariness. Law, in turn rested on tradition, not written statutes, allegedly due to a directive from its possibly fictional founder, Lycurgus.

Spartans attributed the origin of their system to their great “lawgiver,” Lycurgus, supposedly in the 9th century B.C. Because so little is known about Lycurgus, historians have questioned the timing and, indeed, his very existence as a real person. Still, this event lay at the base of Spartan claims that their democracy antedated that of Athens by a couple of centuries.

In some sense, it is curious to imagine Sparta as “democratic,” but there is a basis to that description. The apella was the Spartan Assembly, to which all adult male citizens authorized to bear arms belonged. Moreover, Spartan women were far more equal in status to men than were their Athenian counterparts. While they were not given formal political powers, Spartan women were expected to voice their opinions about public matters. Most important, they also, unlike Athenian women, had rights to their own property through dowry and inheritance.

At the same time, the real political power was exercised by two institutions, the gerousia (Council of Elders—gerontes) and the ephoroi (magistrates). The Assembly could only vote on proposals presented by the Council, not initiate them. There is dispute about whether the Assembly could even formally debate proposals, but it is likely that vigorous debates in fact took place. The Assembly was composed of Spartan warriors, after all. The Council consisted of the two Spartan kings and 28 citizens over the age of 60 who were elected by the Assembly for life. This made the Council the main legislative power in what might be considered a bicameral system. Cicero analogized the Council to the Roman Senate. While the Council was not composed of a hereditary “aristocracy,” as was the principal – but not sole — characteristic of the Roman Senate, its members were drawn from the most prominent and tradition-minded elements of Spartan men.

Political writers since ancient times often pointed to another feature of the Spartan constitution, the dual monarchy. The origins of that system are obscure. For example, historians have sought to locate that origin in an ancient dispute between two powerful noble families that was settled by making the leader of each a king. Others have seen this as the result of a union of various villages or tribes at the city’s founding, the chiefs of the two most powerful becoming the kings. In later years, the system evolved that one king was responsible for domestic matters, mainly religious and judicial, while the other was typically away on military expeditions. The two kingships were not explicitly hereditary, and the kings were elected, another democratic feature. But they were elected for life and from those same two ancient families.

Whatever its origins or democratic bona fides, writers have often lauded the dual monarchy as representing an effective barrier to centralization of power in a single tyrant. The force of tradition and the natural rivalries among powerful faction kept each in check. Given the largely ceremonial role of the kings, except in military campaigns, and the checks otherwise placed on the kings make this justification for the dual monarchy less compelling.

The final piece of the formal Spartan political structure was the board of magistrates. The ephoroi were elected annually by the Assembly. Even the poorest citizen theoretically could be elected. There could be no re-election to a subsequent term. Initially, the ephoroi had limited powers, but as time passed, their offices gained substantive powers. When away on a military campaign, the king was accompanied by two ephoroi. Similarly, the kings lost the power to declare war and to control foreign policy to the ephoroi and the Council. Much of this might be traceable to security concerns that a king could make surreptitious deals with enemies of Sparta or get entangled in foreign schemes injurious to Spartan survival. Except while acting as generals, the kings over time became figureheads. But the ephoroi themselves also had significant limitations on their powers, chief among them their short tenures.

Polybius, often described as the founding light of constitutional and political studies, described the Spartan system as a true balanced and mixed government. In the classic understanding, that meant it contained a mixture of monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements balanced in harmony to produce an effective government duly attentive to individual rights. It seems unpersuasive to describe the rigid and totalitarian Spartan society in that manner. In light of the functional dominance of the Council, with its life tenure and its selection from the upper levels of Spartan society, one might more readily classify Sparta as an oligarchic system.

The end of Spartan power was not due to any inherent defect in the constitutional structure. More likely were the combined factors of demographic collapse and overextension in foreign and military ventures. The near-constant warfare of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. against Persians, then Athenians in the Peloponnesian Wars, then against the combination of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Persia in the Corinthian Wars, and, finally, against Thebes alone, depleted the Spartan hoplite infantry on which Spartan military success depended. The population of Spartan citizens shrunk, and their rule over the helots which made up 90% of the state’s residents became increasingly precarious.

The rigid nature of Spartan society, the paranoia reflected in the Spartan security state, and the traditionalism of the Council, shown for example by their unwillingness to extend citizenship to the helots, may have contributed to the downfall of Spartan influence after the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C. Still, the city at that time had been a powerful actor in the Mediterranean world for three centuries. Moreover, the system continued to operate reasonably well within the Roman world for nearly another eight hundred years, until it was sacked by Alaric and the Visigoths in 396 A.D.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Samuel Postell


 
In the last essay, I attempted to show how the framers rejected ancient political thought. In this essay, I will try to show what guided the framers of our Constitution. In Federalist 1, Publius made the bold claim that:

“it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

Publius implied that no past regime had created the circumstances for reasonable lawmaking or political stability. Past regimes lacked liberty, but they also lacked institutional arrangements to foster reflection and cooperation in law making, and thus were ruled by the force of one or the accidents of the many. Publius envisioned that America would create the opportunity for freedom and stability because of the regime’s dedication to liberty and natural rights, reliance on the people, and structure to combat the abuse of power.

In Federalist 9, Publius revealed what regimes governed by “accident and force” look like in practice: he claimed that “The petty republics of Greece and Italy… were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny.” Because no regime had provided a stable foundation for “reflection and choice,” the ancient regimes were led by the force of tyrants, or the anarchy typical of pure democracies. But what did the past regimes lack that made them unstable? Publius argued that they lacked a proper constitution that assured a “firm union.”

Publius argued that various principles unavailable to the ancients allowed the framers of our Constitution to check tyranny and prohibit anarchy. In Federalist 9, he argued that the vibration between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny might give the opponents of liberty just cause to “abandon that species of government as indefensible.” However, Publius argued that “The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients.” He argued that five principles rendered the American republic more stable than ancient constitutions. According to Publius, the following improvements are “means… by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided”:

  1. “The regular distribution of power into distinct departments.”
  2. “The introduction of legislative checks and balances.”
  3. “The institution of courts composed of justices holding their offices during good behavior.”
  4. “The representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election.”
  5. “The enlargement of the orbit within which such systems are to revolve, either in respect to the dimensions of a single State or to the consolidation of several smaller States into one great Confederacy.”

The last of the five improvements was the most novel, but also the most criticized. For example, both Anti-Federalists, Cato and Brutus, argued that such an enlarged sphere made “consolidation” likely, and thus endangered liberty. Montesquieu, the thinker upon whom many of the founders’ relied, argued that free government could only exist in small republics. Additionally, the free regimes of the ancient world were much smaller than the United States, and when they expanded, they became corrupt and liberty was endangered.

In Federalist 10, Publius gave his most robust defense of the “enlarged sphere.” In that paper, he considered an enlarged sphere to be the means by which the union may “break and control the violence of faction.” He argued that there are two means for dealing with the problem of faction: you may either remove the causes, or control the effects. However, the former cure– removing the causes– is worse than the disease because it would require that one remove liberty because “liberty is to faction what air is to fire.” Publius argued that two things will follow from an enlarged sphere, both of which combat faction: first, enlarging the sphere multiplies the number of factions which makes it more difficult for one faction to become a majority, and second, if the country covers a larger tract of land, it will be more difficult for a faction to “concert and carry out its schemes of oppression.”

However, Publius did not explain the most prolific difference between the American Constitution and ancient constitutions until Federalist 51. In Federalist 51, Publius argued that the constitutional form makes possible an extensive republic while also providing checks upon the abuse of power. He argued that the Constitution created an “interior structure” which made the branches “by their mutual relations… the means of keeping each other in their proper places.” In Federalist 47, Publius established that the departments of power were “distributed and blended.” The distribution of powers into separate branches, he argued, is essential to ensure accountability and prohibit the abuse of power. In fact, he argued that the very definition of tyranny is “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective.”

Even before the Constitutional Convention, Madison noted that giving the government sufficient power while ensuring that power was not used to abuse rights was the “great desideratum” (Latin, meaning “great thing desired”). Publius argued that the next and most important task after dividing power was to provide some “practical security” to combat consolidation over time. In Federalist 48-50, he sought the means whereby the distribution of power into separate branches could be maintained. In Federalist 51, he revealed the practical security: the “interior structure” of the Constitution creates ambitious branches which counteract one another, and thereby limit the exercise of federal power.

Ultimately, Publius argued that in order to preserve liberty, each department must have “a will of its own” and each department should have “as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of others”; additionally, each officer, in each branch, must have the “necessary constitutional means” and the “personal motives to resist encroachments from the others.” In other words, not only must the branches be separate, but the members of each branch must defend the rightful power of the branch to which he belongs. Publius envisioned a system in which each officer identified his own power with that of his branch, and became jealous of usurpation. He argued that the result is that “ambition” will counteract “ambition,” and each branch will check the others in the use of power. The result is that tyranny, consolidation, and the abuse of power is less likely, and the preservation of natural rights is more likely.

But in order to make each branch ambitious, each officer must be ambitious, and that requires that “the interest of the man must be connected to the constitutional rights of the place.” In order for this to occur, the officer must understand that whatever good he may do, or whatever glory he may harvest, ultimately, he requires that the branch to which he belongs maintains its Constitutional strength. Publius argues that such a system reinforces the separation of power. Paradoxically, the solution to the abuse of power is to make each branch ambitiously use its Constitutional powers to limit the abuse of power by other branches.

In our Constitution, therefore, there are a variety of institutional checks that keep the branches in their proper places. I will list a few of those checks inherent in the interior structure of our government. Publius remarks that the legislature is the most powerful branch so it is in need of extensive checks. He remarks that the legislature is an “impetuous vortex” swallowing the power of other branches. Therefore, our Constitution weakens the legislature by dividing its power between two houses and rendering each house different in mode of election and principle of representation. Additionally, the executive department has veto power over legislation. On the other hand, the Senate has the authority to declare war, so the president cannot determine foreign policy alone. The legislature is mixed with the executive and judicial departments when it comes to appointing justices of the Supreme Court, as the Senate must approve the president’s appointments to the Supreme Court. Additionally, the Vice President casts a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The judiciary checks the legislature by considering the constitutionality of its laws. And finally, the states check the federal government because sovereignty is divided between the states and the federal government. Publius argues that this creates a “dual security” for the rights of the people.

The idea of blending power to control power, and rendering each branch sufficiently ambitious in order to combat tyranny and centralization, was an entirely new theory about how to control power. Institutionalizing this new theory made our Constitution completely novel in political science. Although the framers rejected the popular theory that a strict division of power was necessary to ensure the separation of powers, they did so after careful consideration of ancient history. For example, In Federalist 47, Publius argues that no state embraced a strict separation of power in its constitution, nor did the British government. Although almost all other regimes were forced by necessity to blend power, the American Constitution was the first to utilize the principle of blending power to ensure that power remained limited.

Samuel Postell serves as Executive Director of The Center for Liberty and Learning at the Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas. Mr. Postell graduated from Ashland University with undergraduate degrees in Politics and English. He earned his master’s degree in Political Thought from the University of Dallas and is working on his dissertation to complete his Ph.D. Mr. Postell is writing a book on Henry Clay and legislative statesmanship, a subject about which he frequently writes and publishes. He has also conducted studies for Ballotpedia and has frequently contributed to Law and Liberty and Constituting America. At Founders Classical Academy he teaches courses on Government and Economics, and has taught courses on American Literature and Rhetoric.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

Guest Essayist: Samuel Postell


 

 
In a letter to Henry Lee written in 1825, Thomas Jefferson counseled that the Declaration of Independence’s authority rested “on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, Etc.” George Washington had the play Cato performed before his troops at Valley Forge, presumably because he believed that ancient examples would inspire them. In what sense was America an experiment in self-government, and in what sense was it a continuation of the Roman or Athenian experiment in popular government? The American Founders relied on the Western tradition for their understanding of virtue, but they learned from the failures of the ancient regimes and sought to correct those failures when framing the Constitution.

The ancient constitutions presupposed a high degree of virtue, and ancient regimes would often stifle freedom in order to ensure that citizens cultivate virtue; the American Constitution, prioritizing liberty and individual rights, embraced a more sober understanding of human nature.

Plato’s Republic is considered his most comprehensive account of government, yet the imaginary republic constructed by Socrates stifled liberty to ensure order and harmony. The American founders rejected much of Plato’s thought because The Republic paints liberty as inconsistent with order and political unity. For example, in 1814 John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson,

“I amused myself with reading seriously Plato’s republic. I am wrong however in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to go through a whole dialogue. while wading thro’ the whimsies, the puerilities, & unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?”

In addition to stifling liberty, The Republic relies on one-man rule and proposes that a philosopher king should be vested with power; the founders found this suggestion unpalatable because they believed that one-man rule could quickly lead to abuses of power. One of The Republic’s central allegories is the image of the “ship of state.” In Book 6, Socrates argues that the “true pilot” of the ship will be overlooked by the multitude, and he will be called a “star-gazer” or a “good for nothing.” Nevertheless, Socrates argues that such a man deserves to rule because a good captain must “pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art.” In Federalist 10, Publius rejects Plato’s prescription of an “enlightened statesman” to steer the ship of state. He writes,

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.”

Not only did Publius believe that an enlightened statesman would likely be rejected, but he also believed that it would be unlikely that the statesman could “take into view indirect and remote considerations.” Whereas Plato believed that a high degree of knowledge was necessary for rule– however unlikely that knowledge may be– the founders believed that it was unlikely that rulers, even if enlightened, could properly consider and weigh all “indirect and remote considerations” having to do with politics in a popular regime. Additionally, the framers did not believe that enlightenment made men less self-interested; rather, they believed that even an enlightened statesman may have passions and interests that would tie him to a particular faction and corrupt his judgment.

If the framers did not follow Plato’s political prescriptions, did they also reject Aristotle? In The Politics, Aristotle identified six different kinds of regimes: monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, polity, and democracy. He argued that what defines a regime as correct or deviant is whether the ruler rules for his own good, or the public good. He suggested a “mixed regime.” The mixture, he suggested, was an aristocratic republic. In Book 5, Aristotle argued that justice is the end of regimes, and that some degree of stability is necessary to promote peace and justice. Aristotle concluded that disputes among the few rich and the many poor result in instability and injustice. In Book 5, Chapter 7, he wrote that “Both polities and aristocracies are overturned above all through a deviation from justice in the regime itself.” Aristotle argued that such regimes are overturned because the parties attempt to rule for their own benefit at the expense of the common benefit. Aristotle argued that this results because the aristocratic and democratic elements of the regime have not been “finely mixed.”

While it does seem that our regime is mixed because we have aspects of each kind of regime, in Federalist 14 Publius argued that our republic is unmixed. He wrote, “America can claim the merit of making the discovery of the basis of unmixed and extensive republics.” In other words, he argued that the American founding presents a new kind of constitution, a true republic, and that no historical or philosophical examples can explain our Constitution. In Federalist 39, Publius argues that Holland, Venice, Britain, and Poland are all called republican governments, but argues that they are not truly republican in form.

There are many ways in which the U.S. Constitution is novel, but the most obvious novelty is a system of representation predicated on the consent of the people. In Federalist 39, when defining republicanism, Publius wrote that:

“It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic. It is SUFFICIENT for such a government that the persons administering it be appointed, either directly or indirectly, by the people.”

In Federalist 51, Publius argued that what makes a republic– a reliance on the people– is also the “primary security” for liberty. He argued that “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government.” Unlike Plato’s Republic, which relied on a philosopher king, the American Constitution relies on the virtue and wisdom of the people. Unlike Aristotle’s mixed regime, the idea of consent permeates all of our institutions. What makes the American regime unique is its firm reliance on the people as the source of political power, and the faith that the people are capable of justly wielding political power.

Did the American founders, therefore, reject ancient wisdom entirely? Although the framers rejected many of the ancients’ prescriptions for political constitutions and created a form of government which was unprecedented, they relied on ancient wisdom in order to do so. Although the framers rejected the totalitarian government of Plato’s Republic, and did not precisely follow Aristotle’s model for a mixed regime, what led them to create a novel form of government was an understanding of human nature and the failures of past experience. The framers were led by history and experience, and much of the history they considered was ancient, and they derived their critiques from the same foundation as the ancients did. In the next essay, I will consider the history and experiences that led the framers to create our Constitution, and I will highlight precisely what makes it different from past constitutions.

Samuel Postell serves as Executive Director of The Center for Liberty and Learning at the Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, Texas. Mr. Postell graduated from Ashland University with undergraduate degrees in Politics and English. He earned his master’s degree in Political Thought from the University of Dallas and is working on his dissertation to complete his Ph.D. Mr. Postell is writing a book on Henry Clay and legislative statesmanship, a subject about which he frequently writes and publishes. He has also conducted studies for Ballotpedia and has frequently contributed to Law and Liberty and Constituting America. At Founders Classical Academy he teaches courses on Government and Economics, and has taught courses on American Literature and Rhetoric.

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

 

90-Day Study 2022

Essay #1 — HISTORIC TOPIC #1: Plato, Aristotle, and Ancient Greek Thought on Human Nature and Good Government – How they succeeded and how they failed.

Essay #2 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of Plato, Aristotle, and Ancient Greek Thought – Their thinking and debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses and failures.

Essay #3 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of Plato, Aristotle, and Ancient Greek Thought – Specifics in the Constitution dealing with how to prevent the previous regime’s failures; see requirements for electors and elected officials.

Essay #4 — HISTORIC TOPIC #2: The Constitutions of Athens and Sparta (Democracy and Oligarchy and Instabilities of Each) – How they succeeded and how they failed.

Essay #5 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Constitution of Athens and Sparta – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalists, but rather a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Madison focuses extensively on the distinctions between the U.S. Constitution and ancient Foundings in Federalist No. 38; Fed. 10, 18, 38, 55, 63.

Essay #6 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: — Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Constitution of Athens and Sparta – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent the previous regime’s failures; Focus on limited/enumerated powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8, and the ratification/amendment process.

Essay #7 — HISTORIC TOPIC #3: — The Stoics and Classic Roman Thought on Human Nature and Good Government (Cicero and Universal; Law; Polybius and Balanced Government) – How they succeeded and how they failed.

Essay #8 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: — Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Stoics & Classic Roman Thought on Human Nature & Good Government – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Fed. 47, 51, 57, 66.

Essay #9 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: — Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of The Stoics & Classic Roman Thought on Human Nature & Good Government – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures.

Essay #10 — HISTORIC TOPIC #4: The Roman Republic (From Aristocracy To Dictatorship) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #11 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Roman Republic – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalists but rather a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Focus on Federalist Papers view of executive and also on improvements to Roman Senate by Madison. Fed. 10, 34, 41, 70.

Essay #12 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Roman Republic; Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures – Necessary & proper clause in Article I section 8; Nature of the vesting clause of executive power in Article II.

Essay #13 — HISTORIC TOPIC #5: Five Hundred Years of the Republic of Venice (What is a Republic) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #14 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of Five Hundred Years of the Republic of Venice – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalists but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. See Federalist No. 39 on “what is a republic?” See James Madison’s “Vices” on “republican principle” & majority rule. Fed. 9, 14, 39, 51, 52, 55, 57. No titles of nobility may be granted by the U.S. [Article I, Section 9] nor by any state [Article I, Section 10]; nor may a person holding the office of honor in federal government receive a title from a foreign country [Article I, Section 9].

Essay #15 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of Five Hundred Years of the Republic of Venice –Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures; Republican Guaranty clause.

Essay #16 — HISTORIC TOPIC #6: Holy Roman Empire (Imperium in Imperio, Ruler Elected by Electoral College) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #17 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of Holy Roman Empire – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. See Federalist #18-20 on problems with ancient confederacies – failures to act because of disagreements between member states. Fed. 19, 22, 43.

Essay #18 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: — Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of Holy Roman Empire – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures; Modes of an election, especially for executives.

Essay #19 — HISTORIC TOPIC #7: United Provinces of the Netherlands (Federal Head Over Constituent Sovereigns) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #20 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of United Provinces of the Netherlands – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. See Federalist #18-20 on problems with ancient confederacies – failures to act because of disagreements between member states. Fed. 15, 20, 54.

Essay #21 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: — Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of United Provinces of the Netherlands – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures. Supremacy clause; Article I section 10 (limits on state power); Article IV (on relations between the states).

Essay #22 — HISTORIC TOPIC #8: Machiavelli & the Science of Politics (The Pursuit & Maintenance of Power by the Ruler) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #23 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of Machiavelli & the Science of Politics – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Machiavelli calls for an energetic executive to do the things necessary for the security of both his power & the lives & property of his subjects; the problem is the lack of checks on executive authority (at least in The Prince). Contrast Federalist #51 on checks & balances with Federalist 72 on the need for the energetic executive. See Federalist 23 for the need for energy in government to achieve necessary ends. Fed. 31 (“science” of politics to prevent excess power). Fed. 37 (limitations of the science of politics). Fed. 51.

Essay #24 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of Machiavelli & the Science of Politics – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures. Impeachment, treason, legislative process.

Essay #25 — HISTORIC TOPIC #9: The “Sun King,” Louis XIV (The King As Sovereign) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #26 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the “Sun King,” Louis XIV – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Fed. 69, 70.

Essay #27 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the “Sun King,” Louis XIV – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures.

Essay #28 — HISTORIC TOPIC #10: King Versus Parliament in 17th Century England (From Absolutism to Constitutional Monarchy; Montesquieu) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #29 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of King Versus Parliament in 17th Century England – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. See Federalist #68 contrasting constitutional executive to a monarch. See Brutus, Cato No. 4, & Old Whig No. 5 on dangers of absolute/hereditary monarchy. Fed. 26, 47, 52.

Essay #30 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of King Versus Parliament in 17th Century England – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent the previous regime’s failures.

Essay #31 — HISTORIC TOPIC #11: The Mayflower Compact & the City of God on Earth (Government by Consent; Government in the Service of God) – The genesis of self-government, the strengths & weaknesses.

Essay #32 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Mayflower Compact & the City of God on Earth – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures – or in THIS case, IMPROVED upon or BUILT upon their genius. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. See Federalist & Anti-Federalist literature on American exceptionalism – what makes America special? Federalist #37: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently & signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.” Brutus I’s use of Biblical language to describe the importance of the ratification question. Fed. 37, 69. Religious test oaths were prohibited under Article VI, Section 3. Religious liberty & 1st Amendment; Virginia Memorial & Remonstrance of 1786, as well as Statute for Religious Freedom of that year. Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.

Essay #33 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Mayflower Compact & the City of God on Earth – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures; Preamble: “Secure the blessings of liberty.”

Essay #34 — HISTORIC TOPIC #12: The Creation of Colonial Governments in British North America (Types of Charters; Eventual Failure & Royal Control) – How they succeeded & how they failed.

Essay #35 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Creation of Colonial Governments in British North America – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Thomas Jefferson, “Rights of the British Colonies”? David Ramsay (Federalist historian) on colonial histories & abuses by British; Brutus I against expansion/empire; Fed. 52.

Essay #36 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Creation of Colonial Governments in British North America – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures. Addition of territory/admission of new states.

Essay #37 — HISTORIC TOPIC #13: The American Declaration of Independence (Musings on Human Nature & the Basis of Government; Revolution) – The genius of the genesis.

Essay #38 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful CONTRIBUTING Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist (FOUNDING FATHERS) to the American Declaration of Independence – See Federalist #40 on right to revolution, and #43 on the transcendent right to preservation by the law of nature; Fed. 28, 39, 40, 49, 78.

Essay #39 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful WISDOM from FOUNDING FATHERS to PRESERVE the American Declaration of Independence.

Essay #40 — HISTORIC TOPIC #14: Chaos & Experimentation in the Early State Constitutions (Legislative Dominance; Who Makes Constitutions) – The strengths & weaknesses.

Essay #41 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful WISDOM of FOUNDING FATHERS to the EXPERIMENTATION in the Early State Constitutions – FOUNDERS WISDOM & lessons noted to this experimentation; John Adams “Thoughts on Government”; James Madison, “Vices of the Political System of the United States”; Federalist No. 9 & 10 on “petty republics” & problem of faction in states; Fed. 47, 48, 53, 81, 83.

Essay #42 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the EXPERIMENTATION in the Early State Constitutions – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures; The legislative process on Constitution; function of the federal courts & judicial review.

Essay #43 — HISTORIC TOPIC #15: From the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution (Government in Stasis, What Is/Are the United States) – Strengths & weaknesses.

Essay #44 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the EXPERIMENTATION of Articles of Confederation to the Constitution – Brutus I on nature of the Union; Hamilton to James Duane, 3 September 1780; Madison, “Vices of the Political System of the U.S.”; Federalist #15 on the situation under the Articles of Confederation; Generally Fed. 15-22; Fed. 39, 40, 43; Anti-Fed.: Eleventh Letter of Centinel, in Independent Gazetteer, January 16, 1788, in McMaster & Stone, Pennsylvania & the Federal Constitution, (1888), pp. 634-637; also in Morton Borden, The Antifederalist Papers, (1965), Antifederalist No. 6.

Essay #45 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: From Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Articles of Confederation & the Constitution – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent weaknesses in Articles; How the Constitution creates a “more perfect Union.”

Essay #46 — HISTORIC TOPIC #16: The Bill of Rights (Why? Types of rights? Source of rights?) – Why a bill of rights…what in constitution & fears of big government warranted it such as: where England failed with Magna Carta.

Essay #47 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful COLLECTIVE Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the NEEDS of the Bill of Rights – Brutus IV; Federalist No. 84; Madison, “Letter to Jefferson,” 17 October 1788; Madison, Speech in the House of Representatives, 8 June 1789; Anti-Fed.: An Old Whig, in The Massachusetts Gazette, November 27, 1787; also in Morton Borden, The Antifederalist Papers, (1965), Antifederalist 18-20; Fed. 84; Declaration of Independence, petitions from states during ratification, debates in Congress.

Essay #48 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful FOUNDERS Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution That WAS a BILL OF RIGHTS & How LIMITED GOVERNMENT IN CONSTITUTION WAS a BILL of Rights – There are several places in the Constitution (before the Bill of Rights) in which rights are protected by provisions: e.g., no titles of nobility, no ex post facto laws, no suspension of habeas corpus unless invasion/rebellion, no bills of attainder, etc.

Essay #49 — HISTORIC TOPIC #17: The Importance of Virtue: John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Taylor of Caroline (Education & Training – Virtue As Fundamental to Republican Government; Separation of Powers & Other “Auxiliary Precautions”).

Essay #50 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful CORRESPONDING Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the WISDOM of the Importance of Virtue – John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Taylor of Caroline. John Adams letters to Abigail Adams, Mercy Warren, Thomas Jefferson Federalist No. 51, 55; Adam’s writings in 1776, 1798; Fed. 56, 76.

Essay #51 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful CORRESPONDING Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Importance of Virtue – John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Taylor of Caroline.

Essay #52 — HISTORIC TOPIC #18: The French Revolution & the Reign of Terror (Violent Revolutions Versus Peaceful Change) – The success & failures of the French Revolution. Jefferson’s naïveté & Adam’s prescience.

Essay #53 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the French Revolution & the Reign of Terror – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Federalist No. 1: “Reflection & choice.” Fed. 40, 49, 78.

Essay #54 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the French Revolution & the Reign of Terror – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures.

Essay #55 — HISTORIC TOPIC #19: The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte (Preventing One-Man Rule Through Layered Election & Separation of Powers) – The essayist will talk about why and how Napoleon succeeded. Also how he manipulated & excited people to think he could succeed.

Essay #56 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience; Fed. 38, 70

Essay #57 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s failures.

Essay #58 — HISTORIC TOPIC #20: The Communist Manifesto (Views On Human Nature & Class Loyalties; Madisonian Pluralism) – Why & how the Communist Manifesto manipulated & excited people to think it could work. Additionally, the obvious & subsequent failure. In essence: success (manipulations) & failures with its theories.

Essay #59 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Communist Manifesto. – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience; Federalist No. 10 on human nature & protection of property; Fed. 10, 51, 54, 70.

Essay #60 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Communist Manifesto – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent previous regime’s manipulations & failures; How the Constitution protects one’s property but minimizes class distinctions concerning rights.

Essay #61 — HISTORIC TOPIC #21: The American Civil War: Disunion & Reconstruction (What is the Union; Secession; “An Indestructible; Union Composed of Indestructible States”).

Essay #62 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the American Civil War. This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalists but a commentary on their corresponding prescience; Federalist #2-4 on the benefits of Union; Federalist #5-6 on dangers of sectionalism (including on economic grounds); Fed. 42, 59.

Essay #63 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the American Civil War: Disunion & Reconstruction – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent such disunion; Nature of representation in the House & Senate; electoral college mode of electing President.

Essay #64 — HISTORIC TOPIC #22: World War I & the Collapse of the Old World Order (Federalist 6/7 & Conflicts Among Republics); The success of the Old World Order & where it failed & how it led to WWI.

Essay #65 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of World War I & the Collapse of the Old World Order – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalists but a commentary on their corresponding prescience. Fed. 6, 7, 74, 75.

Essay #66 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of World War I & the Collapse of the Old World Order – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent the previous regime’s failures.

Essay #67 — HISTORIC TOPIC #23: Stalin & the Military Regime; The use of persuasion & how Stalin slyly manipulated the people & situation into a Military Regime.

Essay #68 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of Stalin & the Military Regime – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience; Federalist justification of standing army; Anti-Federalist concerns; Fed. 25, 26, 28, 41, 46.

Essay #69 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to Stalin & the Military Regime – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent the previous regime’s failures.

Essay #70 — HISTORIC TOPIC #24: The Progressive Vision & Its Challenge to the Constitutional Order (“Negative” Constitution to Protect Liberty Inherent in Individuals From Government, to “Active” Government to Reshape Society Into an “Organic” State in Which Individuals Are Mere Cogs) – The progressive movement, what vulnerability in the U.S. populace led to it, why it succeeded, how it has “failed” or been limited.

Essay #71 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Progressive Vision & its Challenge to the Constitutional Order; Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures – or in this case, had a loophole that allowed it; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience.

Essay #72 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Progressive Vision & its Challenge to the Constitutional Order – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how it has prevented full progressive movement or could if people understood the Constitution better.

Essay #73 — HISTORIC TOPIC #25: The Economic Depression & the Birth of New Deals & Great Societies (Dangers of an Administrative State Governed by Unelected Bureaucrats; Separation of Powers; Judicial Review; Due Process; Status of Rights in Property).

Essay #74 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Economic Depression & the Birth of New Deals & Great Societies – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience.

Essay #75 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Economic Depression & the Birth of New Deals & Great Societies.

Essay #76 — HISTORIC TOPIC #26: Hitler & the Third Reich – How Hitler used an economic crisis to fool the German people and lead them into tyranny and evil.

Essay #77 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the evil and tyranny of Hitler & the Third Reich.

Essay #78 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the evil and tyranny of Hitler and the Third Reich.

  • The United States Constitution as a Bulwark Against Tyranny by Jeanne McKinney, Military Writer at Patriot Profiles; Award-winning Military Journalist; Winner of multiple San Diego Club “Excellence in Journalism Awards” and eight first place honors; Published, among many, in Working Dog Magazine, Homeland Security Today.

Essay #79 — HISTORIC TOPIC #27: Chairman Mao & the Cultural Revolution (Freedom of Speech & Religion; Right to Direct the Upbringing of Children) – What led to Mao’s take over & the rise of the Cultural Revolution.

Essay #80 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of Chairman Mao & the Cultural Revolution –Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience.

Essay #81 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of Chairman Mao & the Cultural Revolution – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent the previous regime’s failures.

Essay #82 — HISTORIC TOPIC #28: The Creation of the United Nations & the “Citizen of the World” (Treaties; Nations; Borders; Citizenship) – Reasons why people thought it was a good idea & how the failures of international regimes in the past led to it.

Essay #83 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Creation of the United Nations & the “Citizen of the World” – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience; Federalist #6 on foreign policy & motives of other nations.

Essay #84 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Creation of the United Nations & the “Citizen of the World” – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent such global interplay.

Essay #85 — HISTORIC TOPIC #29: The Collapse of the British Empire – America’s Manifest Destiny but also our curbing of international domination & overreach & how the founders wisdom led to such curbing.

Essay #86 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Collapse of the British Empire – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience; Brutus & other Anti-Federalists on problems of representation in “large republics” (i.e., empires).

Essay #87 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failures of the Collapse of the British Empire – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent large republics & international interplay & allowance of international involvement & its dangers.

Essay #88 — HISTORIC TOPIC #30: The Failings of Utopian Creation Experiments (Framers As Constructing Workable Government, Not an Ideological Blueprint; Madison’s “Best Possible” Government; Franklin’s Pragmatism; Connecticut Compromise; Compromise Over Slavery Issue) – The dangers of utopian thinking in our American Republic. How our founders were aware & educated about historic failings. How we should have such awareness & education as a populace to prevent such historic failures in our republic – as history has endured before & after our founding. How our founders’ prescience & founding documents still hold true, that this is why we are exceptional. “A republic if we can keep it.”

Essay #89 — FEDERALIST & ANTI-FEDERALIST’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom of Federalist/Anti-Federalist to the Failures of the Failings of Utopian Creation Experiments – Their thinking/debates about how to prevent the previous regime’s weaknesses/failures; This is not a counteracting debate between Federalists & Anti-Federalist but a commentary on their corresponding prescience; Fed. 14, 31, 37, 85.

Essay #90 — THE CONSTITUTION’S WISDOM: Successful Counteracting Wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to the Failings of Utopian Creation Experiments – Specifics in Constitution dealing with how to prevent Utopian Creation Experiments.

Guest Essayist: Chris Burkett
George Washington, presided over the first Continental Congress; Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War; first President of the United States; painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1796.

How did the American Founders acquire the wisdom to frame a Constitution that has withstood many challenges to liberty and self-government for over two hundred years? Their deep interest in understanding human nature, derived from a careful study of history, allowed them to create a Constitution that both improved upon past constitutions and also anticipated future developments well beyond their time.

The American Founders studied ancient constitutions carefully, especially those of Greece and Rome, and sought to improve upon their imperfections. They found that these ancient regimes were all founded on unrealistic notions of human nature, which led the ancients to count on a degree of civic virtue that was either too high or too low. Many ancient regimes assumed that “there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; & that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying & devouring one another.”[1] The Founders discovered that ancient democracies – or “petty republics” as Alexander Hamilton called them – too often vibrated between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny.[2] The defect in these ancient constitutions was a lack of institutions necessary to preserve both virtue and liberty; many lacked, for example, a proper separation of powers, adequate checks and balances, and important representative bodies such as a senate. Without proper constitutional arrangements, as James Madison observed, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”[3]

The American Founders needed to improve upon these constitutional devices because they wanted to create a political system that balanced civic virtue with liberty. To accomplish this, they established a Constitution framed upon a more realistic notion of human nature – one that acknowledged and anticipated both the good and bad aspects of human motives. “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection & distrust,” James Madison wrote, “so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem & confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities to a higher degree than any other form.”[4] The Founders’ study of history revealed that in some fundamental ways, human nature never changes. Human beings are capable of being reasonable and therefore self-governing, but one should not ignore the propensity of mankind to pursue and abuse power for self-interested purposes. By framing a constitution upon a realistic understanding of unchanging human nature, they anticipated all sorts of new political developments: the forms of tyranny might change in the future, but the sources would not.

The American Founders applied what they learned from history and human nature to fix the defects of the Articles of Confederation. The glaring defect of the Articles of Confederation was the frequent failure of the state governments to abide by the terms of that compact – despite the fact that they had all promised to do so. States often refused to pay their share of revenue for the good of the Union, violated international treaties, and exercised other powers that were prohibited by the Articles of Confederation. This led George Washington to observe in 1786, “We have errors to correct. We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation. Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt & carry into execution, measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power.”[5] The proposed Constitution, created by the Federal Convention of 1787 to correct these errors, was then submitted to the public for ratification.

The debate over ratification was also the greatest debate in history on human nature. Supporters and critics of the proposed Constitution – Federalists and Antifederalists – made insightful arguments learned from the lessons of history regarding human nature. The key to a good constitution, according to Antifederalist Brutus, for example, is establishing good representation. A virtuous citizenry is especially important under any constitution to check the self-interested abuses of power by elected representatives. “It is a truth confirmed by the unerring experience of ages,” wrote Brutus, “that every man, and every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way.” This disposition to attain and abuse power, “which is implanted in human nature,” requires sufficient protections against potential tyranny.[6] “The principle of self-love, therefore, that will influence the one to promote the good of the whole, will prompt the other to follow its own private advantage. The great art, therefore, in forming a good constitution, appears to be this, so to frame it, as that those to whom the power is committed shall be subject to the same feelings, and aim at the same objects as the people do, who transfer to them their authority. There is no possible way to effect this but by an equal, full and fair representation; this, therefore, is the great desideratum in politics.”[7]

Federalist James Madison, considered to be the Father of the Constitution, agreed with Brutus on the fundamental difficulty of framing good government – the natural propensity of human beings, out of self-love, to put their private interest above the common good. In Federalist No. 10, Madison argued that a constitution must be framed on the understanding that men are prone by nature to become “factious,” and that the causes of faction are rooted in human nature. Factions are groups of people, according to Madison, united by a common interest or passion, who want to use political power to harm or violate the natural rights of others. From his careful study of history, Madison learned that factions have been “the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.” The causes of faction might only be eliminated, Madison argued, by eliminating liberty itself – in which case the “remedy” would be “worse than the disease.”[8] Rather than trying to eliminate the causes of faction, Madison’s solution was to frame a Constitution that acknowledged the likelihood of factions in politics, and sought to control their dangerous effects through the means of properly separating power and providing sufficient checks and balances between the branches of government. Madison’s insights into human nature led to important improvements to the science of politics and of constitution making.

The insights learned from history allowed the American Founders to infuse the Constitution with a wisdom that stretched far into the future. They understood well that so long as human beings are human beings, the possibility of tyranny will always exist. Even though new forms of tyranny might emerge, its causes remain the same. Because its foundation rested on an understanding of unchanging human nature, the Constitution has proven remarkably adaptable and capable of dealing with new challenges to liberty and self-government for over two hundred years.

Christopher C. Burkett is Associate Professor of History and Political Science, and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program at Ashland University.

 

 

 

Click here for American Exceptionalism Revealed 90-Day Study Schedule
Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox

[1] Federalist No 55

[2] Federalist No. 9

[3] Federalist No. 55

[4] Federalist No. 55

[5] George Washington to John Jay, August 15, 1786

[6] Brutus No. I

[7] Brutus No. IV

[8] Federalist No. 10

My name is Giovanni Adu-Gyamfi. I am 19 years old, and I am a freshman at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), where I am majoring in public health. I spent most of my childhood in Old Bridge, New Jersey, but I currently live in Parlin, New Jersey. From a young age, I was fascinated by the world around me, participating in STEM-based activities and taking STEM classes. I enjoy reading, writing, helping others, and spending time with my family. In the future, with a public health degree, I hope to go into research helping regulate the spread of diseases and looking into more ways to prevent them.

Watch Giovanni’s Winning PSA:

Our Interview With Giovanni

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
I was recommended to it by a close family friend.

What inspired your work?
Growing up, I was passionate about history, knowing a lot about the presidents.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned what it means to carry out civil civic conversations, which I never knew about.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I hope to encourage others to learn more about civil civic conversations.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
They are neutral to it.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I like learning about how our country was exactly formed.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
White House.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Martin Luther King Jr.

Who is your greatest role model?
My parents.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I’m most passionate about my education.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time, I read, play soccer, watch TV, study, and work out.

What are your plans for the future?
Right now, I am a public health major. I hope to help with the control of diseases.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would be an advocate for mental health.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It is relevant today because it basically tells us what we are entitled and have rights to.

Dawson Rhoades, 12, is a 6th Grader at Grapevine Faith Christian School and resides in Texas with his parents and his older brother. Dawson’s hobbies include playing tennis, pickleball, golf, water skiing, acting, and performing on the piano. In his free time Dawson can be found adding music to his “favorites” playlist, which includes songs from the 80’s, Contemporary Christian, and Country Hits.  Dawson’s favorite class is American History.  Dawson enjoys learning about our country’s rich history and the lessons that can be learned from our past.  He is honored to have been selected as “Best Middle School Song Winner.”

Listen to Dawson’s Winning Song Below:

Our Interview With Dawson

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
My advanced science teacher Mrs. Lauden assigned the project.

What inspired your work?
I love to write music and I love America, so I decided to enter a song about the Constitution in the competition.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned that in the Bill of Rights there’s a provision regarding the housing of soldiers and another regarding unlawful search and seizure.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love that we have ups and downs in our history that we can learn from.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Pearl Harbor

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I would say Donald Trump because he is a smart businessman who ran our country like a business and promoted America first.

Who is your greatest role model?
My grandfather is my greatest role model because even though he has a disease that prevents him from doing the things he loves like tennis and golf, he perseveres and does the best he can and is supportive of his family and treats everyone he meets with respect and kindness.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about music, tennis, and personifying Jesus through my actions.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time playing board games with my family and playing tennis.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to become a marine biologist. I’ve always loved nature and animals, in particular. I’d like to do something to benefit animals.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
America is one nation under God. Therefore, I would spread the gospel and the good word of Jesus.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution justifies our freedoms and gives us guidelines to follow.

Louis Akkermans
Louis Akkermans is 21 years old and beginning his MA in Public Interest Media and Communication.  Interested in filmmaking, he hopes to find a path that would allow him to write for the screen, though video production as a whole is a passion of his and one he could inhabit in any facet. Topics he is interested in are politics, philosophy, inter/intrapersonal relationships, and intimacy/loneliness.

Casey Chapter
Casey Chapter is a senior at Florida State University studying Digital Media Production and Literature. Throughout her education, Casey has been interested in journalism in all of its forms, from print newspapers to radio broadcasts to documentaries. While she currently serves as the Managing Editor of the FSView & Florida Flambeau (FSU’s independent, student-run newspaper), she aims to be a documentary producer in the future and hopes to attend FSU’s graduate program in Public Interest Media & Communications. In her free time, Casey enjoys reading, writing, and playing with her dog Lucy and her cat Ashe.

Watch Louis & Casey’s Winning Short Film Below!

Our Interview With Casey & Louis

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Casey: Yes, I had never previously entered any of Constituting America’s contests.
Louis: Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
Casey: I was referred to Constituting America’s contest by Izzy Cring, who has won the contests for best high school song and best college song. We have worked together on video projects in the past. She also works with Constituting America now.
Louis: Both Casey and I heard about the competition through our friend Izzy Cring.

What inspired your work?
Casey: As a journalist, I have done a lot of reporting on local city commissions, boards, and committees of various kinds. I was interested in the idea of using the format of a local political meeting, such as a sub-committee meeting, and playing with it to create a funny and honest film that shows how the system works.
Louis: We wanted to poke some fun at the stalling, slow-moving, and unimportant debates that sometimes occur in government. Our video was meant to hyperbolize some of the drawbacks that occur in a ruminating democracy.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
Casey: I learned that creating a film is a complex and sometimes difficult endeavor, but it’s worth it once you get to see the final product. I’m very proud of what we came up with.
Louis: A creative partner is invaluable. Casey and I hadn’t worked in that capacity before, and once we passed the awkward idea formulation stage production was like a well-oiled machine.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Casey: As a journalist, I think about and talk about the first amendment a lot. I plan to continue to educate my peers on the importance of a free press and the many other freedoms included in the Constitution.
Louis: By my words and actions. We sometimes forget the purpose of government; how it works and why it works the way it does. It’s important to critique our systems, but before we do that we must understand why those systems were put in place. Sometimes we find that those systems should stay upheld and other times they should change. The constitution grants us a foundation to begin that discussion.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Casey: I have engaging discussions with my friends about the U.S. Constitution and government system.
Louis: This is admittedly a subject that doesn’t come up often in conversation. If it does, it’s usually framed through the topic of current events. It’s a subject that is missing in most people’s thought processes.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
Casey: I love that America has a free press, as I think this is a vital part of a democracy. This allows everyone to be informed about their government and their communities.
Louis: The tenacity of our government. We live in the longest lasting governmental institution of the modern day. It’s through the belief of its people and the stability those founding documents provide that our country has lasted for so long; that is to be admired.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Casey: I would like to visit Mount Rushmore in my lifetime.
Louis: I would love to visit the Grand Canyon one day.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Casey: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an inspirational figure that I look up to. After learning about her struggles throughout her life, and how she managed to become a successful lawyer and eventual Supreme Court Justice while juggling being a mother, I felt inspired by her tenacity.
Louis: Even the best and brightest of U.S. history can be mired with scandal and unsuccessful policy. Though controversial I find Franklin D. Roosevelt to embody much of what is desirable in a leader. Providing stability during a destabilizing crisis and creating policy that uplifts and secures the average American. You find these qualities in other figures, but FDR is a stark and prominent symbol of those characteristics.

Who is your greatest role model?
Casey: My mother is my greatest role model. She managed to become a successful business owner while being a single mother at a young age, and has always been my role model growing up.
Louis: There are many people I take great inspiration from but there is no one I wholly want to emulate. There are people who demonstrate skills or characteristics that I would like to mimic, but it’s more a process of taking all the good and leaving the bad.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Casey: I am most passionate about informing people and staying informed myself on international, national, state and local occurrences. I feel that it is important to be fully informed from multiple sources of information in order to have my own understanding of events and phenomena throughout the world.
Louis: Currently, it’s figuring out what I am passionate about. I have a love for many things, so I suppose I’m passionate about creating a “life formula” that allows me to do as many lovely things as I can.

How do you spend your free time?
Casey: I spend lots of time reading and writing. I also enjoy filming and editing documentary-style videos.
Louis: I exercise, consume media, write, and spend time with friends and family. What most people do.

What are your plans for the future?
Casey: I plan to pursue a Master’s degree at Florida State University and eventually become an independent video journalist or documentarian.
Louis: I want to make films in some capacity.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Casey: I enjoy telling people’s stories so that the world is more aware of what is going on around them. Writing nonfiction news stories about everyday people and their struggles allows others to become more aware of their communities and can lead to people taking action.
Louis: As a filmmaker my skills lie in effectively communicating ideas visually. If opportunity allows, I want to contribute to communicating a crisis or issue to a mass audience through that medium.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Casey: The Constitution comes up every day in political discussions between citizens, politicians, activists, and others throughout America. It is the basis for American citizens’ rights, and provides us with foundational rights that help maintain our democracy.
Louis: It guides every action and debate that takes place in government.

Maya Robinson is a senior at Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts. She loves exploring interesting mathematical concepts and is developing a budding interest in coding. She has attended the Ross Mathematics Program and PROMYS over the past two summers, and she is hoping to continue deepening her understanding and appreciation of number theory this summer. Besides math, Maya enjoys being involved in theatre at Gann, whether it be acting in productions, being a House Manager, attending drama club meetings, or taking theatre classes. Every week, she looks forward to leading toddler services at her synagogue, where she feels a personal connection to the children and parents who come to pray.

This semester, Maya is taking a class on the Supreme Court, where her research for the We the Future Contest has helped her greatly. Her interest in U.S. history is relatively new, but it is growing quickly, and she cannot wait to see where this opportunity will take her!

Maya Describes Her Winning STEM Project: 

“What does an average high schooler know about the US Constitution? In order to start to answer that question, I coded an online quiz (https://mayarobinson613.wixsite.com/constitution/quizzes; click on “General Constitution Quiz”) about the Constitution which I shared with peers.

It turns out that coding a quiz was not quite as straightforward as I imagined that it would be. Though such quizzes may look simple on their surface, even getting my code to open a graphical window with a title and a clickable button was a huge achievement at first. I spent hours fixing problems like making a window disappear when the test-taker is done with a question so the next can pop up; disabling buttons after the user responds so that it is impossible to double-click an answer and get twice the points; and emailing results to my email inbox so that I could track scores and specific answers.

Achieving these goals required me to substantially deepen my knowledge of the computer language Python, including object-oriented programming and graphical user interface programming, as well as to find and utilize helpful code modules in books and online to solve specific problems.

When the general quiz was finished (copy of questions and answers attached; quiz code available on request), I sent it out to peers to collect data.”

Click here to read more about Maya’s winning STEM project, including tables that show data for 15 test-takers, of which 14 go to her high school.

Maya Also Created A Website: 
“Of course, quizzes test knowledge, and I wanted to teach as well. So, I also created a larger educational website composed of original explanations that I wrote, along with links to pre-existing informative resources. In doing so, I strengthened both my knowledge of and appreciation for the US Constitution and its history.
Click here to explore Maya’s winning STEM Project website

Click here for answers to Maya’s Quiz Questions!

Our Interview With Maya

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes it was!

How did you hear about the contest?
I found it on a scholarship database with just barely enough time to complete a project of this scale before the deadline. After reading the description, though, I knew it would be well worth my time to apply.

What inspired your work?
I am in my school’s chapter of Girls Who Code, and we created a personality quiz last school year. When I saw this scholarship’s technology category, I felt it would be an exciting chance for me to do a similar project from an entirely different angle – using a different coding language, working with very different subject matter, and building an educational website around my coding project.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned more deeply about the Constitution in order to create the quizzes, landing page, and resources page on my website, gained a deeper appreciation of the history behind it, and greatly improved my Python skills. I also found out that Thomas Jefferson did not sign the Constitution, which had previously escaped my notice.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I have shared my project with many of my friends and classmates in order to both gather information about the pre-existing knowledge level of a typical student at my high school and help them fill in the gaps in their knowledge. In the future, I believe that my project is still a wonderful way to begin conversations about the Constitution outside of class.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I have been fortunate to have thoughtful friends who, regardless of their knowledge level, have been enthusiastic about discussing any of my interests. Some of my friends respond to my request to talk about the Constitution with a great deal of information and the desire to have a deep and nuanced conversation, while others are open to learning more about this important topic. I have yet to encounter a friend who has been unwilling to discuss this part of American history with me.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love the fact that our government is built to shift over time. We do not have kings, we have three branches of government, each of which has a duty to keep the others in check; Presidents have term limits; and the Constitution can be amended. With adequate power behind a cause, major changes can take place.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Of the historical sites that I have already visited, I would most like to revisit the Freedom Trail. I live in the Boston area and visited the Freedom Trail a few times as a small child, and would love to go back both for the nostalgia and to deepen my knowledge of my home city’s history.

Out of the U.S. historical sites that I have not yet had the chance to visit, I would particularly like to visit Mount Vernon. I have learned about George Washington since elementary school as America’s legendary first President, and more recently as a nuanced person who was exceptionally important in the foundation of our country, demonstrated wonderful leadership, and still had important flaws. I believe that in seeing his home – and plantation – I would have the chance to reflect on such a deeply influential President and increase my knowledge on both George Washington and the history of the United States.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I think there are so many good answers to this question, but one that feels particularly inspirational is Harriet Tubman. Through her bravery and resourcefulness, she rescued dozens of enslaved people using the Underground Railroad: a connected group of activists and safe houses who helped enslaved people move to states where slavery was illegal.

As a Jew, I find deep meaning in Tubman’s actions. My grandmother’s family, and many others like it, only survived by escaping Nazi-controlled Poland with the help of a network of activists. When others are struggling, Jewish tradition dictates that my people have struggled, so I am obligated to help those around me who are struggling, in ways as large as what Harriet Tubman did, or as small as checking in on the people I care about.

Who is your greatest role model?
While I feel that it would be impossible to pick just one person who is the greatest of all my role models, I am particularly inspired by 19th century mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya. At a time when women were not welcome in many parts of academia, she broke through barriers and learned an incredible amount, proving to her mentor that the reason he did not see more women in math stemmed from prejudice. Her story, and many like it, inspire me to openly live my truth as a woman who wants to learn and likely pursue STEM. In telling these stories, pursuing STEM myself, and creating an environment where other girls feel comfortable learning whatever they want, I feel I am doing my part to create a world where girls and women do not feel that their gender will prevent them from pursuing their dream career.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
This ties in to my previous answer – I am most passionate about education. Many students feel discouraged for learning certain subjects, especially math, because of teaching styles that feel inaccessible to them. I love showing these students a new way to view math as a subject that is creative and interesting and, most importantly, intuitively understandable with the right approach. When I help one of my peers begin to feel empowered to succeed in classes and experience less anxiety about previously difficult topics, I feel that I have succeeded in an important way.

How do you spend your free time?
I love spending time with friends, baking, and working on interesting math problems when I have free time.

What are your plans for the future?
My career plans are definitely not set in stone, but I am planning on attending Harvard College for the next four years, and I cannot wait to see what opportunities are in store. If I absolutely had to guess, I would say I am likely to major in math or physics and continue in academia.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
In Jewish tradition, every individual person is metaphorically viewed as their own universe. I have grown up with the wisdom that if I save one person, it is as if I saved an entire universe. As such, I have the power to shift entire universes through my actions. I believe that an action that looks small from an outside perspective can make a massive difference. When I teach those around me, I impact their universes, and I feel great power in the act of showing my peers a new way to view the subject they are learning, and ultimately the world around them.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is the document that lays out the blueprint for our entire system of government. I believe that everybody should have at least a baseline understanding of their government in order to be an informed citizen. Having just taken a class on the Supreme Court, I especially think of incredibly influential Supreme Court cases that require an understanding of the Constitution, and what is constitutional, in order to grasp.

My name is Noe Flores. I am a 6th grade honors student and live in Fort Worth, Texas.  I enjoy learning and reading and was the runner up for my school Spelling Bee in 3rd grade. I am currently in band and play percussion. My favorite subject in school is science because it’s interesting and at my STEM school we get hands-on learning.  I like playing video games and hope to one day become an animator and create my own video game.  

I am very excited and grateful to have been selected as one of the winners. Thank you for this amazing opportunity and the chance to visit Washington D.C. and meet my fellow   Constituting America contest winners. 

Click Here for Noe’s report on his STEM Project! Click Here to see the 20 surveys he created, distributed, collected and then tabulated from his peers!

Our Interview With Noe

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was my first time entering the contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
My middle school counselor sent out an email with several scholarship opportunities and this one grabbed my attention.

What inspired your work?
Since I was learning about the Constitution in class, I figured it would be a good time to do the survey.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned that my classmates didn’t know too much about the Constitution.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Talk to my classmates about how important the U.S. Constitution is to us and why we need to be more aware of the benefits of learning our rights.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
They don’t really know much about the history of the Constitution or talk about it.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I get to learn how our government was formed and how we have evolved over the years as a country.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit the White House and see where all the past Presidents lived.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Martin Luther King is most inspirational to me because he abolished racial discrimination and fought for civil rights.

Who is your greatest role model?
My mom and dad because they never give up.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about Jurassic World, Godzilla, and video games.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time I like to play video games, read books and play with my dog Rex.

What are your plans for the future?
I plan to become an animator for video games and film.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would make sure all those without a home or shelter get the help they need to survive and be successful in their lives.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Because it created all of our laws and gave us the freedom we have today.

Shaynlin is a 17-year-old senior from Drexel, Missouri. She is the founding chairman and current chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom Chapter at Drexel High School. Shayn is also the president of NHS, FBLA, FCCLA, and Student Council at Drexel High. Throughout high school, she was involved in football, basketball, basketball cheerleading, track and field, dance team, and scholar bowl. In her limited spare time, she enjoys volunteering at Restoration House of Greater Kansas City, attending leadership conferences, and spending time with her family. After she graduates, Shaynlin plans to attend Central Methodist University to Study Business Communications and Graphic Design. She is extremely honored to receive this award and grateful for the patriotism of Cass County, Missouri!

 

 

Watch Shaynlin’s Winning Short Film Below!

Our Interview With Shaynlin!

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes! This is the first time that I have entered any video contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
I was searching for scholarship opportunities when I stumbled across Constituting America’s website.

What inspired your work?
I was inspired by all of the patriotism that is represented in my community and school. This video gave me a really great opportunity to visit places in my area that I usually wouldn’t take much time to appreciate.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While creating my entry, I came to the realization that we are constantly surrounded by signs of freedom and independence. We may not always see the beauty that surrounds us, because you have to be looking for it in order to truly admire it.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Through my leadership as the chairman of the Drexel Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), I am an advocate for the Constitution every single day at my school. This is something that may bother other people, but I am always willing to discuss my thoughts and the importance of the U.S. Constitution with those that agree or disagree with my views. YAF gives students the opportunity to meet a few times each year to talk about our rights and how to preserve them.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I have many friends that enjoy learning and talking about American history and the Constitution, however, it is a goal of mine to get more students to understand how important knowledge of history and the Constitution is.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love everything about the founding of the United States! Every one of our founding fathers has such an incredible story. The most amazing thing about America’s founding is the fact that all odds were against the rebellion, and it is a miracle that freedom prevailed.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit Mount Rushmore. I have never traveled to South Dakota before, and I think that it would be really cool to see the sculpture in person.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Sergeant William Harvey Carney is definitely the most inspirational historical figure that I have ever encountered. He served in the Civil War, fighting for his own freedom. He entered the line of fire to stop the American flag from touching the ground. Sergeant Carney survived several gunshot wounds, and became the first African American to receive a Medal of Honor.

Who is your greatest role model?
Ronald Reagan is a role model that has really impacted my life. I attended the 2021 Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home Inaugural Program in Dixon, Illinois, and I got the chance to explore the town that he grew up in. His character, leadership, and accomplishments have influenced my life immensely.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about making a difference for my country, and giving back to my community. I am involved in many organizations that prioritize community service, and I currently volunteer at Restoration House of Greater Kansas City. While I don’t know what life has in store for me, I am certain that I will find time for charitable acts.

How do you spend your free time?
During my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my family, volunteering, and attending leadership conferences.

What are your plans for the future?
I am planning to attend Central Methodist University to study Business Communications and Graphic Design. During my time in college, I will participate in many internships and job shadowing opportunities in order to find a job that I am passionate about and excel at.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would really like to do something to give back to veterans that have fought for our country. I have considered working for or starting my own nonprofit organization that would accomplish this goal. This really interests me, because many nonprofit organizations have really inspired me throughout my life.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is more relevant today than ever before, because we continue to inch further and further away from the liberty that the Constitution provides. The Constitution will be relevant as long as America exists, because it lays the foundation of the government and provides U.S. citizens with their freedoms and rights.

We believe in the importance of the ideals of our Constitution! Our aim is to design lessons that engage and empower middle through high school students. Through our diverse backgrounds, we are able to collaborate and curate dynamic educational experiences in Spring, Texas. In the words of President Teddy Roosevelt, “believe you can, and you’re halfway there.”

 

See their winning digital lesson plan here.

Our Interview With Adam

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest from a visiting presenter last spring who recommended submitting a lesson. My district content supervisor is a former lesson plan winner Michelle Neyrey who also encouraged making a submission.

What inspired your work?
Our lesson was inspired by the kinesthetic method example of our presenter and a desire for a lesson that was effective and ready made without any teacher preparation to implement.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
We learned that the incorporation of physical motion creates a unique association with the content for better recall and brings an element of fun for greater student engagement.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
We plan to collaborate with other content areas about implementing similar lessons that can extend to their specific areas while reinforcing the core principles of the U.S. Constitution.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends share my enjoyment of history and we have many conversations about it together.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love the story of what individuals are capable of achieving in pursuit of their happiness and purpose that connects across time to our own human experience.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Smithsonian Museums, Sagamore Hill

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Theodore Roosevelt

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role models are my parents.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about my children.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time reading books and enjoying physical activities outside.

What are your plans for the future?
My plan for the future is to continue to teach, sharing my enthusiasm with my students and become more impactful on my campus bridging social studies into a literary/history club, Decathlon/UIL coach, leading a travel group and launching a history elective course offering.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I want to be in a place and role with the maximum effect to encourage/support/model to others the great potential and opportunity that comes from healthy living, a positive attitude and willingness to learn through effort in all areas of their life. Arete Strenuous Life

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is a testament to how a common purpose can unite differing individuals to create a society for all individuals to thrive in the pursuit of fulfillment and purpose. A greater understanding of this common aim is critical in the wake of increasing antagonism grounded in the differences that make up our citizenry today.

Our Interview With Christine

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes

How did you hear about the contest?
A presenter from Constituting America presented at my school last year and encouraged me to enter.

What inspired your work?
My daughters and my students are always my greatest inspiration.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
It was a reminder of the requirements needed to change an amendment.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Any time I discuss geopolitics both inside and outside the classroom, it’s connected to how lucky we are to have the Constitution protecting us.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most of my friends work in Education so they appreciate hearing about history and the Constitution.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that America is always evolving. We are constantly living through historical events that are shaped by our country’s past, but we get to help guide what happens next.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit the White House.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
President Teddy Roosevelt. I respect his passion for bringing a balanced approach to leadership and his relentless thirst for knowledge. Mr. Clark and I immediately bonded over this same question when we first began teaching together.

Who is your greatest role model?
My step-dad. He was an immigrant to the U.S., and he worked hard to gain his American citizenship. I’m grateful every day to have him in my life!

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I’m most passionate about my family and providing the best educational experiences for my students. I hope that my World Geography class inspires them to always consider the broader contexts and implications of history.

How do you spend your free time?
I love playing games, crafting, and reading with my daughters. I also love traveling and learning new languages.

What are your plans for the future?
I’ve always wanted to write historical fiction and continue to travel as much as possible.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Aside from teaching in the U.S., I would love to help with refugee resettlement. My background is in international social work, and I also taught ESL in South Korea and Russia.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution continues to protect our freedoms and ensure a level of equality that isn’t guaranteed in many countries. The more my students learn about geopolitics, the more they realize this truth.

We believe in the importance of the ideals of our Constitution! Our aim is to design lessons that engage and empower middle through high school students. Through our diverse backgrounds, we are able to collaborate and curate dynamic educational experiences in Spring, Texas. In the words of President Teddy Roosevelt, “believe you can, and you’re halfway there.”

 

See their winning digital lesson plan here.

Aaron Toler has been a Social Studies teacher in Oklahoma for over 15 years. During this time he has taught World History, U.S. History, Native American History, Military History, and Modern History. He has been awarded Middle School Teacher of the Year twice as well as District Teacher of the Year once. He holds a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Southern Nazarene University and became a National Board Certified Teacher in 2012. His philosophy in his classroom is “Make History Fun.” He uses a number of different resources to teach his students about history. His Constituting America lesson “Little Jemmy is Missing” is an interactive escape room lesson where the students must find “Little Jemmy” a.k.a. James Madison and the missing Constitution. He also enjoys incorporating debates, songs, and skits to bring history to life for his students. His historical themed Valentines Day Cards were featured on “The Ellen” show to celebrate Presidents Day. You can see more of his resources on his website www.makehistory.fun and follow him on Social Media @MakeHistoryFun

Aaron and his wife Lauren (who is also a teacher) have three children Lila, Will, and Hayes.

See his winning digital lesson plan here.

Our Interview With Adam

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
This was the first time I had entered the contest!

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest from Jacob and Emily Vanderwerken who came to speak to my 8th graders on Constitution Day.

What inspired your work?
I am always looking for ways to draw my students into the lessons, so I created this fictional story where the “Father of the Constitution” James Madison had been captured by King George III and it was up to them to try and save the Founding Father and the country! I used the book “Our Constitution Rocks” by Juliette Turner to help me with my research!

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While creating my entry I had to do a lot of research to try and make it as kid friendly as possible. I learned a ton of information about the 7 Articles of the Constitution specifically

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
In addition to my job as a middle school history teacher I also run a business called Make History Fun and I am active with it on Instagram and Facebook spreading information and ideas teachers can use in their classrooms. My whole goal is to try and help teachers make history fun for their students. WIth this account I plan to continue sharing information about the importance of learning about the Constitution and the rights of American citizens.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Many of my friends are big fans of history and enjoy having historical conversations about the government and the Constitution!

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love learning about the people who created our country and showing my students that these were actually real people.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit colonial Williamsburg!

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I am a big fan of John Adams and think his life was incredible. He played such a large part in the creation of the country and also was a part of sustaining it. So many great lessons can be taught by using his life as an example. The way he defended the soldiers in the Boston Massacre when it would have been very unpopular to do so. The feud and then eventual reconciliation between Thomas Jefferson and himself.

Who is your greatest role model?
My parents and my wife are my biggest role models. They always seem to have the right words to say and have been a constant encouragement to me.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am the most passionate about my wife and 3 kids.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time with my family. My wife is also a teacher which means every time we have a break we try and do something together.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future I plan to continue teaching middle school history and trying to make history fun for students.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
As a teacher, education is obviously a very important part of my life. I would want to encourage students to be learners, to ask questions, and listen to learn rather than listen to respond.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is still relevant today because the ideas that it was created with still remain. The system of checks and balances and separation of powers are crucial in ensuring that no singular person or group can dominate the government.

Priscilla was born in NYC. Her father is an army veteran and her mother is from Seoul, Korea. She received her BME from Texas Christian University. Priscilla is a 30-year veteran public school Master Teacher in Denver Public Schools; an elite distinction held by less than 1% of Colorado’s teachers. She was the first teacher in Colorado to become National Board Certified in Early Adolescent/Young Adult Music. Priscilla has worked in urban, suburban and rural schools in Texas, Colorado and Alaska as a public school teacher, principal, Regional Team Specialist, teacher evaluator/coach, Summer ELA Site Leader, high school tennis and volleyball coach and higher education Student Teacher Supervisor at Colorado Christian University. Priscilla is the 2020 Harriet Tubman “Moses” Teacher Leader of the Year recipient from The EduCtr and bestowed an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Aspen Theological Seminary.

Priscilla is married to international jazz saxophonist and record producer, Darren Rahn, and they volunteer on the worship band at their church. Priscilla is also a small business owner and loves to snowboard on her free time.

See her winning digital lesson plan here.

Our Interview With Priscilla

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was my first time!

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest from Jill Cullis. She was the presenter for the free Constituting America presentation. She brought flyers to my students and explained the contest and encouraged me to enter the teacher lesson plan contest.

What inspired your work?
I teach music, and one of the music standards is creativity. I thought it would be a great idea to teach my students how to write a song about the Constitution. I was inspired by watching videos of past Constituting America student winners and my students. I wanted to expose my students to songwriting, because even though it can be very daunting to young musicians, it doesn’t have to be out of their reach. It is important that my students embrace the challenge, so I found a simplified way of helping students connect important content within the Constitution to their ability to express themselves through song.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned that I don’t have to be a Social Studies teacher in order to create a platform for my students to engage with the Constitution! I can use music content and songwriting skills to help students make a personal connection with the history of America and tell their story. I also learned that it’s ok to not be an expert in history and the Constitution. I can start with a basic knowledge of my rights and freedoms and continue to learn from there.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I have already shared this amazing opportunity with other teachers to have Constituting America teach a free class to their students. I will continue to share this opportunity with my social media network.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends/colleagues and I can typically find agreement on topics when we talk about the Constitution. Talking about the founding of our nation and our freedoms actually helps me engage with my friends and we discuss solutions to the problems we see in our government today.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that everyone I speak to agrees that all men are created equal. I love that our nation was founded on godly principles and the acknowledgement that we are born with unalienable rights. I love the story of Frederick Douglass and many other courageous people who fought to hold our government accountable for the words in our Constitution.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit the White House, Congress, Howard University, museums, any Frederick Douglass historical site and the US Supreme Court.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
The most influential and inspirational figure to me is Frederick Douglass. His story of being born a slave, escaping slavery, teaching himself to read, author 4 autobiographies and became the advisor to 5 US presidents is quite astounding!

Who is your greatest role model?
I think Lt. Governor Winsome Sears is an amazing role model as well as Dr. Ben Carson.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about honoring our veterans and seniors. My dad retired after 30 years in the Army. He was a Vietnam War veteran and my mom survived the Korean War. I believe we should take great care of our military and seniors so that they can live out their lives with dignity.

How do you spend your free time?
I enjoy crafting. I like to make soaps, body butters and candles! I also enjoy snowboarding and tennis.

What are your plans for the future?
I would love to open a music school. I would also love to have a small gift shop. I am running for County Commissioner and who knows where that will lead?!

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
The most impactful thing I could do to help people is to share the gospel with them and pray for them. I think it’s important to defend our religious freedoms. I’ve just watched all of the attacks from the left against individual freedoms (i.e medical, right to go to church, etc.). I want to be a voice to protect these freedoms. I have been very active in my community teaching, raising money for student scholarships and foundations, but the issue of salvation is literally the most important issue I can think of. My goal is to be salt and light wherever I go and to treat people with love and dignity.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because it is still the supreme law of the land that outlines the proper role of government. It is the glue that keeps our three branches in check. It’s also relevant because it reminds us that our individuality is sacred and that we have the right to hold the government accountable for protecting our freedoms.

As educators, we have the opportunity to provide students with innovative learning experiences that combine standards-aligned objectives and future-ready skills. Students think, process, and learn through varying avenues.

I am passionate about designing instruction that is creative, engaging, and relevant to a diverse set of learners. I love seeing students take ownership of their learning.

 

See her winning digital lesson plan here.

Our Interview With Sam

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes

How did you hear about the contest?
Teachers

What inspired your work?
Creating an assignment that empowers students and gives them autonomy in their learning inspired me to create self-paced slides.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned how to align content to social studies standards. It was stretching to create content to be helpful to other teachers.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Encouraging other teachers to submit entries to your contest.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends enjoy talking about all things history.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love learning about the men and women who played impactful roles in the formation of our government.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Jane Addams

Who is your greatest role model?
My mom.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about my family.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time at parks with my two sons, reading books, and hanging out with my friends.

What are your plans for the future?
I am stepping out of the classroom to be more present at home and design instruction full time.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The constitution is relevant today because it is our framework on how decisions are made. It gives our nation a foundation.

As educators, we understand that not all children think, process, or learn alike. Therefore, at Grapevine Faith we have the unique opportunity to offer STEAM to our students. We are passionate about teaching students that scientific principles and artistic expression work together with such incredible harmony to reach all types of learners. The genius, Leonardo da Vinci said it best, “To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; Study the art of science.”

We hope you will enjoy our Constitution lesson plan coming from two subject area perspectives.

Thank you,
Heather Lauden and Monique Gorman

Click Here For Their Winning STEAM Constitution Lesson Plan!

Our Interview With Monique & Heather

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Monique: No, I have entered the contest multiple years.
Heather: yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
Monique: A fellow co-worker had scheduled you to come and speak to our students.
Heather: Through getting to know Cathy/Janine after a presentation at our school

What inspired your work?
Monique: We have had the privilege of having past winners, and wanted to try again.
Heather: We thought it would be fun to write a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) lesson plan about a topic that is usually only taught in social studies or history classes.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
Monique: Teamwork on a lesson plan can be enriching and fun at the same time.
Heather: How the original documents are stored and preserved.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Monique: We teach about the importance of our Constitution at Grapevine Faith.
Heather: By teaching our lesson plan in our STEAM classes and also sharing our lesson plan with other teachers, such as social studies and language arts.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Monique: Positively
Heather: They realize how interesting it actually is and are reminded of its importance and applicability to our freedom, even (and especially!) today.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
Monique: That the Bible was fundamental.
Heather: I love the fact that our government was founded on democratic, “we the people” processes.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Monique: Plymouth and/or Jamestown
Heather: Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Monique: Ronald Reagan
Heather: Abraham Lincoln

Who is your greatest role model?
Monique: My family (Dad, Mom, and older brother)
Heather: Jesus

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Monique: Teaching and creating
Heather: My family and of course, inspiring kids through teaching.

How do you spend your free time?
Heather: Any kind of craft, sewing, etc. Spending time with my family.

What are your plans for the future?
Heather: To retire with my husband and travel.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Heather: Prove to people that they are important and that they are seen and loved by at least one other person.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Heather: More than ever, with what is going on overseas, we should be thankful for our freedom and the rights, as well as protection that we have as Americans. We all have the constitution to thank for that!

Carson is a 15-year-old homeschooled freshman from Austin, Texas. He is a nationally competitive rower, racing in regattas across the country. As well as being a successful rower, he is also an assistant coach teaching introductory courses for teens and adults. When he is not studying, Carson enjoys reading, writing, and documentary filmmaking. Last year, he won the middle school division of C-SPAN’s national StudentCam documentary competition. Carson is also the leader for his Youth Bible Study at the church he attends, Austin Ridge. In his free time, Carson enjoys volunteering at the Central Texas Food Bank, amassing over 500 hours of time there over the last 4 years.

Watch Carson’s Winning Essay On Film 

Our Interview With Carson

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was the first time I entered the contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
My sister had previously won the contest and my parents introduced me to the video division.

What inspired your work?
I love making documentaries and I’ve always wanted to use my hobby to share my passion for the Constitution. When I came across the Constituting America contest I thought it was a perfect opportunity.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
Not only did I learn about how the Constitution actually functions, but also how U.S. citizens’ rights are better protected than in other countries that do not have such a document.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I love debating my peers in both of my government courses and generally am the only one defending constitutional opinions. I believe I have changed at least a few opinions. I also intend to keep creating and sharing videos related to the matter.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
The majority of my friends do not particularly care about the Constitution in itself. Rather, they are more interested in interpreting the Constitution to maximize government size and use their knowledge of our founding documents to defend their own predisposed positions, and even then, few seem to seriously care. Many of my closest friends, however, do show serious interest in the Constitution and how it dictates our government.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love using U.S. history to form opinions about how our government functions. I believe we can learn so much from looking at our past and that this method of governing is neglected today more than ever.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I’d love to revisit the Gettysburg battle site. I toured it when I was in elementary school, but I feel that I lacked enough knowledge of American history to truly understand why this battle, and the greater war, were and still are important. I’d love to have the opportunity to re-examine the significance of Gettysburg with my greater understanding of its history.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
While there are a plethora of figures I look up to, by far the most inspirational to me is Desmond Doss. His courage serving in World War II unarmed, there only to save his fellow Americans shines as one of the bravest acts of the war. His unwavering valor is inspirational to me everyday.

Who is your greatest role model?
My entire life I’ve looked up to my grandfather as one of the greatest role models I could have been blessed with. After serving in the Air Force in Vietnam, he returned to San Antonio to teach computer aided design at community college. He’s always willing to help me with anything I need, he’s always respectful and outgoing to everyone he meets, and beyond anything else, he’s truly the kindest person I’ve ever met.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about working hard at whatever I do. Right now, that’s rowing and making documentaries.

How do you spend your free time?
In the few hours a week I can spare outside of schoolwork and rowing, I love to spend time with my friends, read non-fiction, and work on other videography projects.

What are your plans for the future?
I would like to join the military and earn a college degree.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would like to spread more about the Constitution in some new, innovative way. I’m not sure how, but I’d like to use platforms and strategies most influential to younger generations to help reach my peers.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is one of the most important defense mechanisms to liberty and truth in the world. Without it, we are forlorn to the tyrannical impulses of human nature. Today, the Constitution is still as important, if not more important, as it was in 1776 when the Founding Fathers designed the blueprint for American freedom.

My name is Ella Dumas. I am in the 6th grade at Grapevine Faith Christian School in Grapevine, Texas. I love music and play the piano for our school Chapel Band. I love trying new sports and playing all types of games. This past year at Faith, I was on the basketball team and swim team. My favorite sport is volleyball, and I have been playing competitive club volleyball for 4 years. I have also enjoyed STEM activities, and in 5th grade I competed with my middle school robotics club. My friends and I have enjoyed going to local escape rooms and I loved having to solve the problems and clues. Last year we did online escape rooms for class and it was always super fun and a great way to learn. For this project, I thought I could create something people could play that was fun and enjoyable that could help them learn. When making the Constitution Escape Room, I was able to learn about coding to make the game work as I wanted. I hope people enjoy playing the game and learning more about the Constitution!

Click here to visit Ella’s escape room!

 

Our Interview With Ella

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
We entered in science class for a grade.

What inspired your work?
I wanted to make something no one has done before. And having ADD, I know it is hard to stay focused on something unless it is fun or interactive. I immediately knew I was going to work online so it came down to what am I going to do? At first, I wanted to try to make a VR like game but I didn’t have the resources to do it so I thought of the next best thing, an escape room. We did escape rooms last year for school all of the time and I really enjoyed it. I also had been doing a lot of real escape rooms. So, once I thought of that I stuck to it and it paid off!

What did you learn while creating your entry?
Technology is not as easy as it seems.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Right now, especially, our government is much more important than they and I myself would have realized. Think about it, if we didn’t have our constitution or people who stood up for us to be a democracy we could be in the same spot as the Russians, in communism. I think giving people the “what would’ve happened” point of view really helps them think about it.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
We have long conversations. At first, it’s confusing but then it gets more interesting the more you understand it.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
It is so interesting. It’s like what makes an interesting book, it’s hard to explain but it is like you want to keep reading.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would want to see the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu because I love WW2. I love reading the books about it and talking about it and this site is what brought us into the war. I would LOVE to see it one day.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Martin Luther King Jr.

Who is your greatest role model?
My mom and dad.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Sports and School.

How do you spend your free time?
Hanging out with my family/friends and playing volleyball.

What are your plans for the future?
To graduate school. Until then I will focus on the other things like volleyball and school and hanging out with my friends. YOLO so I’m going to live now and leave my future for then.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I could do one super impactful thing, I would cure cancer. There is a long story to that, but that is what I would do.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It forms our basic rights as people to live by. Without them we could have little to no freedom and terrible lives.

Ava Watts is 12 years old and in sixth grade at Grapevine Faith Christian School in Grapevine, Texas.  Making the PSA for the “We The Future” contest came naturally because she loves performing in front of a camera as well as on stage as a competitive dancer.  Ava has been dancing since the age of two and started competing at the age of six.  It is her passion and joy and one day she hopes to make it a career. Along with dance, Ava enjoys playing a variety of sports.  She was a member of Grapevine Faith’s Junior High basketball team this year, is on the Speech and Debate team, and will be a Junior High cheerleader in the fall.

 

 

 

Watch Ava’s Winning PSA 

Our Interview With Ava

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
My science teacher, Ms. Lauden.

What inspired your work?
My dad inspired my project.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned more details about freedom of speech and what is included or not included.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to tell them that history is cool and to watch my video so they can learn how things started, and why, in order to know where things are going in the future. You have to go backwards first before you can go forward in learning about our country and the Constitution.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most are indifferent and have no feeling on the subject.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
What I love most are the freedoms that we have.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The Lincoln Memorial.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Abraham Lincoln.

Who is your greatest role model?
My mom and my best friend, Maddie.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Dancing.

How do you spend your free time?
Dancing and sleepovers with friends.

What are your plans for the future?
To have a career in dance or the entertainment industry.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
To share the gospel.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It protects our rights and lets us know how to go about life!

My name is Emily Tan – I am a 7th grader at South Forsyth Middle School in Cumming, GA. Social Studies and History has always interested me, and this STEM project was a new experience, as this was the first complete website I have created. Soon after, I started creating more websites on different topics. Currently, I am part of my school’s FBLA and HOSA, which are two major clubs in South Forsyth Middle. I am also part of my school’s Symphonic Band as a clarinet player and recently participated in GMEA All-State Middle School Band. Outside of school band, I play piano, enjoy drawing and play tennis as side activities. I have participated in the school Creative Writing Workshop and VEX Robotics. This STEM project combined several of my passions and makes for an interesting contest to compete in! I am truly grateful for everyone who supported me, allowing me to be able to get this far. This accomplishment enhanced my attentivity and love for Social Studies and History and I am excited to see what else is in store!

Click Here To Explore Emily’s Winning STEM Project!

Our Interview With Emily

Was this the first time you entered the contest?.
Yes, this was the first time I have entered a contest from Constituting America.

How did you hear about the contest?
From my ELA tutor, as well as being posted on my school’s website.

What inspired your work?
Competing has always been something that has interested me, whether for fun or for learning opportunities.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
Admittedly, I didn’t know much about the Constitution before creating the website – only the basics, so I got to study and research much about the topic whilst creating the project, which in my opinion, was quite fun.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Most of my peers have already known about the importance of the Constitution, but I hope to recommend them to view my website sometime.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends believe the Constitution is important, but don’t think much of it.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
It is very well made and planned out to fit exactly what we want and the government’s needs. Providing a thought-out and thorough plan for America. It has also supported us for many years, proving my point.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The White House, U.S. Capitol, Library of Congress, or just any place in Washington DC. I have never been there.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – arguable one of the biggest influencers who partook in ending segregation in America. He raised and upheld one of the most iconic speeches and changed America into what it is today. Without him who knows what dystopian country we may have had.

Who is your greatest role model?
My parents have raised me for 13 years and continue to do so and I sometimes take it for granted. They always care for me while being strict and without their support, I would not have made it this far. They have shown me success throughout my life and I consider them role models.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I love the Arts; this includes music and drawing, however being a passion of mine, I am not looking to pursue a career in this field.

How do you spend your free time?
Drawing, listening to music, or if necessary, studying for a test.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to do something that will impact or change the world positively.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Cure Cancer – It’s generic but it’s truthful. Many of my relatives have passed from the disease and Cancer is an incredibly dangerous and feared illness. I remember seeing how upset my friends and family alike were when a loved one passed from Cancer. So Cancer is something I want gone and it is considered an impactful thing to help people.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution remains to be, and always will be, an important part of U.S. history. It has served us well for many years past and still continues to do so now. The Constitution plays a role in commending citizens’ freedoms and rights and still remains relevant today.

Nicholas Heiniger was born and raised in Marietta, Georgia. Currently, he is attending the University of Georgia where he is majoring in international affairs. From a young age, he has shown interest in world languages and cultures by taking Spanish and Latin language classes in high school and studying Russian through the National Scholarship Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y). He also enjoys learning about the law and government, and he has participated in the Atlanta Bar Association Summer Law Internship Program. He hopes to combine all of these interests in the future by working as a diplomat. In his free time, Nicholas likes to play table tennis and chess.

Click here to view Nick’s Winning STEM Project or scroll down to watch his video!

Our Interview With Nicholas

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, and I am excited to enter it again next year!

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest from Fastweb Scholarships, a scholarship database that sends me emails about various scholarship and internship opportunities.

What inspired your work?
I was interested in exploring an unconventional or often less talked about amendment to the United States Constitution. Most Americans are already familiar and fond with most of the amendments in the Bill of Rights as well as other, later-added amendments granting greater equality and expanding the suffrage, such as the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, and 26th amendments. I thought it would be interesting to examine the effects of the 16th amendment, one which I had often taken for granted.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned about just how integral income tax was for governmental revenues in the modern-day as well as its increasing importance over time. From 2020, income tax accounted for over half of all governmental revenues. It is hard to imagine a past where there was no income tax at the federal level, but from 1776-1913, this was largely a reality.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I am planning to further my involvement within political organizations on campus as well as participate in voter-outreach and perhaps even work on a congressional campaign during the 2022 midterm cycle. An integral function of voter outreach is informing people of their Constitutional right to vote. The Founders of our country created a representative democracy so that Americans could make informed decisions and freely choose who they wanted to lead. Through informing Americans about issues related to their community and how candidates will address them, people often become more energized and incentivized not only to vote, but to volunteer, to protest, to petition for a new law to be passed, to work for a political campaign, or to even run for office themselves. Through the engagement of any and all of these activities, the founding father’s vision of an ideal representative democracy is further realized.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends are also very enthusiastic about history and talking about the Constitution. I have a lot of friends who are studying international affairs as I am, and we recognize that it is essential to understand history to understand current relations among countries. Additionally, turning our focus to the governmental institutions of other countries in the world can often expand our own knowledge and appreciation for the U.S. Constitution through comparison. It is very fortunate that we are able to live in a society that gives importance to ideas such as freedom of speech, due process, and equal treatment under the law.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
Over this past Spring Break, I had the amazing opportunity of visiting Jamestown, Yorktown, and Colonial Williamsburg. There, I was able to see in-person many of the monumental sites to the founding of our country, explore revolutionary battle-grounds, tour informative historical museums, and learn more about both common and famous people from the time through re-enactments. I especially loved to see how the philosophical ideas from the Enlightenment such as from Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire became actualized in the founding documents of our nation such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
One U.S. historical site I would like to visit would be Ford Theater. It was the site of the assassination of President Lincoln in April 14, 1865. Currently, it is both an operating theater house as well as a museum showcasing many historical artifacts relating to Lincoln’s presidency. Abraham Lincoln was one of the most influential figures in American history, and it is always intriguing for me to learn more information about him. Although it is macabre, I think the story behind Lincoln’s assassination is very interesting, and it was an event that changed the course of U.S. history.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Martin Luther King Jr. is most inspirational to me because of his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. He advanced Civil Rights through non-violence and civil disobedience and was able to create the momentum and support needed for the passage of several monumental pieces of legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model would probably be my mom or my dad. I am very glad to have been raised by such loving and caring parents, and they mean the world to me.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about learning languages. To me, a new language is a new door opened. Through learning a new language, I can not only communicate with people who may have distinctively different lifestyles and perspectives than my own, but can learn more about their culture, their belief systems, and what makes them unique.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time I like to play table tennis, play chess, try new restaurants and eat new foods, learn about new topics, tune into the news, and go to the gym to exercise.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future, I would like to go to law school. After completing my legal education, I would like to work as a lawyer specializing in criminal law and provide pro-bono legal services for the indigent accused. Eventually, I would also like to work as a foreign service officer as a political officer to interact with foreign governments on policy issues and negotiate policy.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I think what most people desire out of life is happiness. What that means to me is growing up and living in a safe, respectful, and ethical community where peoples’ common needs are met and they have the freedom to live whatever life they please and explore whatever opportunity they want to without unreasonable restriction. As long as someone is not harming another, they should be able to pursue their aspirations in life. Anything that would get us closer to this ideal, anything that safeguards civil liberties, civil rights, and human well-being, would be my choice of action. For example, forming a stronger education system, developing and investing in infrastructure, and expanding access to healthcare are all things that I would strive to do to help people.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Although the Constitution is over two-hundred years old, it is still as relevant today as it was at our country’s founding. The Constitution both ensures that power is balanced between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government and enshrines to the American people a Bill of Rights to prevent a tyrannical concentration of power. In many places throughout the world, freedom of speech is a concept granted only to supporters of the prevailing government regime, due process is a promise tarnished by bribery and corruption, and governmental power is legitimized not through the consent of the governed, but by the terrorization of the governed.

My name is Honor Cassidy and I am a Seventh Grader at Rainey McCullers School of the Arts down in Columbus Georgia. I have a passion for music, singing, and acting. I have been in multiple plays throughout my life, and many events with chorus and theatre. I learned about the We The Future contest with my school. My teacher mentioned it, and my friend and I decided to film something for it. We were just doing it for fun, and to re-fresh us on this topic of history. We had a great time and are very excited for our trip to Washington DC!

My name is Anna Grace Hollifeld. I am in the 7th grade at Rainey MuCullers School of the Arts. This year, I have participated in 3 plays at my school as well as one at Springer Opera House, where I also do Summer Academy. I enjoy acting and attending productions. I like spending most of my time reading, spending time with family, and doing school! I entered this contest as I was learning more about the Constitution and America and I had a lot of fun doing it!

Watch Honor & Anna’s Winning PSA Below:

Our Interview With Honor

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
Our ELA teacher told us about the contest, and we decided to enter for fun.

What inspired your work?
Of course the constitution inspired most of our work, but also past experiences when we were little, and people telling us we couldn’t “play with them.”

What did you learn while creating your entry?
We learned more about the Constitution and rights.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
We could show them about this contest, and passed winner’s entries which will teach them more about the constitution.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends care about the constitution a lot, and understand how it is such an important part of our history, and life today.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love a lot of it because as I learn more about history, I realize how history shaped our whole world and how it is today.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The Washington Monument.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I love Eliza Hamilton. She made a huge difference in history. I learned lots about her by the musical Hamilton, when they told her story before she passed.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model would be my parents. They have taught me most of the things I know today.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about the arts I do. I go to a school of the arts, and want to pursue singing and acting.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time singing, acting, hanging out with my friends and family, and making jewelry.

What are your plans for the future?
I hope to have a career in the arts field or be in the Air Force.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would want to help all of the people in need around the world, getting them the things they need like food, water, meds, etc.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Many of the freedoms and rights that they established a long time ago are still here today. For example, The freedom of speech, press, and the right to bear arms were established when the constitution was made. They are still freedoms that American citizens have today.

 

Our Interview With Anna

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
Our ELA teacher, Mrs. Gebhardt told us about it.

What inspired your work?
We’ve done a lot of skits and plays at my school. We think that acting something out is a great way to convey material.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
We learned more about our rights and freedoms.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Start discussions about how the constitution came to be in the past and how it will affect us in the future.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
They don’t really talk about it or mention it. Though, whenever they do they act bored.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how everyone can have their own personal opinion and we can all freely express how we feel.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The White House

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Eliza Hamilton

Who is your greatest role model?
My mom and my dad because they push me to be the best person I can be.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Helping others and my family.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend most of my free time hanging out with friends, spending time with family, and performing in plays.

What are your plans for the future?
I would like to be a Neurosurgeon when I grow up.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would like to make a difference in the foster care and adoptive communities. My siblings were adopted from the foster care system, and there is so much room to make a difference in that area.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It protects all of our rights and freedoms.

Alexandra Gusinski is a 16-year old sophomore from Greenwich, Connecticut where she attends Greenwich High School. She won the best High School STEM award for 2023.

Alexandra has a passion for STEM, and wholeheartedly believes that the best way to learn more about this broad web of studies is through interdisciplinary learning. Her website, “Constitution Your Way” is reflective of that. It lets users peruse through pages at their own pace and discover the constitution on their own terms, learning through connections to theater, history, science, law and more!

Within the realm of STEM, Alexandra is especially passionate about medicine. Early in her freshman year, she joined the Greenwich Emergency Medical Services (GEMS) Explorer Post club and has attended numerous volunteer events to teach the community what to do in emergency situations. In late 2023, She took the 4-month intensive EMT course, and completed hours of clinical observation time in the ambulance and hospital emergency room.

Alexandra took the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) Exam and the Connecticut State Psychomotor Exam, passing and becoming an officially certified EMT in the state of Connecticut as of January 2024. This marked a significant milestone in her pursuit of serving her community through healthcare. Currently, she volunteers as an EMT at the Greenwich EMS, working on an ambulance and responding to calls.

Alexandra actively participates in the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program, being a member since she was 11 years old. She also contributes as a valued member of her high school’s Student Council and Model UN club. Among her freshman achievements are earning the Distinguished English Scholar award and being recognized as a Life Science Achievement Recipient.

Alexandra’s artistic passion encompasses film analysis, scriptwriting, animation, and filmmaking, having studied film since 8th grade, she enrolled in the UConn Early College Experience program, taking an honors Film Production course .

Outside of academics, Alexandra is a licensed PADI open water scuba diver. She became junior certified in 2018, and she completed the adult certification program in 2023. During the summer, she likes to spend her time on the beach playing volleyball. During the winter months, Alexandra enjoys skiing, a pastime she’s cherished since her childhood. Dedicated to a healthy lifestyle and sports, Alexandra has been practicing martial arts for 8 years, and has her second dan black belt in Taekwondo. She also has been a dancer at Greenwich Dance Studio for almost 8 years, practicing various styles from Jazz to Hip hop to Ballet, culminating in a yearly studio production at the SUNY Purchase Performing Arts Center.

Click here to view Alexandra’s Winning STEM Project

Our Interview With Alexandra

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Nope! I actually entered the contest back in 2019 and won for Middle School Best PSA

How did you hear about the contest?
My babysitter as a kid, Annie Nirschel, won best song when she was in high school, and she told me about it.

What inspired your work?
I am very STEM-oriented, but I also love the arts and humanities. Through my studies, I realized that the most beneficial way to learn was by mixing them both, through what I learned was called “interdisciplinary learning.” And I wanted to implement this to learn the constitution, to get a broader range of people involved in learning about their nation’s most interesting and important document.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I am actually fairly new to web design, and I learned to make the features I imagined in my mind as I went along. Two of my favorite features to make were probably the embedded google form and the hover-interactive home page.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
By starting the conversation! No one even starts talks about the constitution, and that’s why no one learns more about it. Just sparking the conversation by mentioning it makes plenty of impact. Plus, this year I’ve been taking AP U.S. History, and that gives me the perfect opportunity to talk about the constitution with both my classmates and other peers.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I’m friends with a lot of people interested in history, just because of the advanced classes I am taking in humanities. So they respond pretty well since we have to collaborate to study.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how amendable the government has been since its creation. America has gone through innumerable changes in how the government functions from the legal perspective—laws and amendments have been changed—to just societal expectation—for example the shift from laissez-faire to government intervention. It’s interesting to see how global political environments impacted our government throughout history.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I’ve already visited a few, but I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National park (or any national park in general). I’d just love to be able to hike through the park trails and enjoy their views—to see exactly what President Teddy Roosevelt put his conservation efforts toward in his Square Deal.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I think it’s so hard to choose just one. As an AP U.S. History student, we’ve learned about so many different people who’ve done amazing things throughout history, and what never ceases to amaze me is how influential women have been. Dorothea Dix, a woman who advocated for change in how the mentally ill were treated in the mid-1800s. Clara Barton, a civil war nurse responsible for the founding of the American Red Cross. Elizabeth Cady Stanton who read the declaration of sentiments, a revised declaration of independence including women’s rights, at the Seneca Falls convention despite nearly no support, even from many fellow activists. It’s not about one person, instead it’s about the collective effort of all these amazing people that makes the world a better place.

Who is your greatest role model?
My Mom. She’s such an accomplished person and she’s done so much in her life. She works so hard and she still finds time to support me and my pursuits. I love her and everything she’s done, and hope that I can grow up to be like her.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I’m most passionate in my belief that life is about perpetual growth and learning. I’m committed to inspiring others to embrace an ideal of lifelong learning. We change so much throughout our lives—our passions change, our environments change, but your desire to learn is something you can indefinitely pursue and nurture. I, for one, aspire to always continue learning, because our sharpest tool as humans is our curiosity and love for learning.

How do you spend your free time?
Well, I’m an athlete; I like to play volleyball, dance, and ski. But I also love working on my film blog startup and volunteering at Greenwich Emergency Medical Services (GEMS). Lastly, I love listening to music on Spotify, spending time with my family, and hanging out with my friends.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future, I want to go to medical school, and to become a doctor. In regards to the specific field though, I know that as many college students do, I might change my mind a few times along the way. However, I’m also in love with the film industry and all the creativity behind it—all the processes behind the creation of a feature film or a tv show. I would love to be able to pursue my passion for film, along with my passion for medicine, whether that be through scriptwriting, directing, or acting. For instance, a director I look up to, James Cameron, is a filmmaker but he also loves the ocean and exploring the deep waters, and this ended up being the inspiration behind his most famous franchise: Avatar. Perhaps in the future my two interests, medicine and film, might be combined, seeing as movies are often inspired by science and vice versa.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I’d make mental health education more readily available to teenagers, recognizing the immense pressure they face during their four years of high school, where all the decisions made by their still-developing minds can heavily impact their future. With stressors like college acceptance rates being at historic lows and the recent pandemic, this issue is amplified for the youth of today making them increasingly susceptible to mental health struggles like depression and anxiety. One of the ideas I had in mind to individually make a difference is to create animated videos on mental health and neuroscience to educate high schoolers struggling with these issues. Through these efforts, we can increase awareness of resources and coping mechanisms, and combat the high rates of mental illness in our generation.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The constitution is relevant today, and will never stop being relevant, because it is the basis of our rights as a citizen in this country. How can you know that you’re being treated fairly, that your rights aren’t being violated, without knowing what your rights even really are? It is with keeping this in mind that I believe that every American citizen should learn about the constitution in school—no exceptions—begging as early as middle school or lower school, even if it’s just learning about the first amendment: the freedom to speech, religion, assembly, press, and petition.

Punarvash Mitta is a current high-school senior in Phoenix, Arizona and attends BASIS Scottsdale. Punarvash is a Certified Nursing Assistant and conducts research at Arizona State University while interning and shadowing with multiple physicians. Aside from his medical interests, he is a National Taekwondo Champion and has his own non-profit organization known as KidsTae. He enjoys playing basketball for his school’s Varsity team and loves thrifting. He plans on pursuing the pre-med track as he hopes to help children with uncommon genetic conditions through clinical treatment and research.

Our Interview With Punarvash

Was this the first time you entered the contest
This was my first time.

How did you hear about the contest?
I found the contest on the online website and I thought it was a super fun idea!

What inspired your work?
Watching captivating social media posts inspired me to do the same for this social media post as well. My past experiences as a social media manager also seemed to help a little.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned how easy it is to be persuasive and how easy it is to make a change in one’s community. I was able to do so with the short amount of time I had.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution through discourse. I think the best way for people to learn about the Constitution is by discussing some of its core values, principles, and beliefs, and I plan to do just that.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends love talking about the Constitution! I believe the biggest thing we talk about is how effective it really is at securing our freedoms, and how these freedoms can contribute to our individual opinions flourishing.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how overlapped our U.S. History really is. Every decision impacts the beliefs of a specific group, that specific group calls for action, and these lead to new decisions. Everything is cyclical!

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The historical site I would love to visit would be Jamestown, a living historical museum of one of the first settlements in the United States.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
The American historical figure who is most influential/inspirational to you would be Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln wasn’t the most fortunate as a child, however, he managed to change the tide of American history through sheer will and determination.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model would be my martial arts instructor, John D. Nottingham. He taught me many values I pride myself with.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am extremely passionate about the proper medical treatment of underserved populations in the medical field.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time playing basketball, practicing Taekwondo, and thrifting!

What are your plans for the future?
I plan to become a pediatric sports medicine physician in the future.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I hope to create large mental health initiatives that incorporate physical activity to ultimately be able to serve those in need.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution guides our everyday actions. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the vast freedom I have gone to love and respect.

Miya is a 16-year-old in Roanoke, Virginia. With a family history that dates back to the beginning of America and a mother who came from Mainland China, Miya has a deep appreciation for the importance of our constitution and freedoms. She is honored to be the winner for Best High School Song. Miya has been playing the piano since she was 5 and writing music since she was 8. She has played as one of two main piano accompanists for Church services since 2020 and plays and sings on Wednesday night in Church youth group’s worship band. She won First prize and Exceptional Young Talent Special Prize, Golden Classical Music Award International Competition in 2021 and had the opportunity to play in the Winner’s Concert at Carnegie Hall on October 31, 2021. In June 2022, Miya sang in Roanoke Valley Children’s Choir Concert Group in New England Symphonic Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. Along with her love for music, Miya also enjoys dancing, drawing, sewing, writing, acting, and track. Last year, she dedicated significant time to make a beautiful Quinceañera dress as a gift to a classmate whose family came from Venezuela. Miya is currently creating her own comic book Between it All on Webtoon, which is an analogy for the story of the Bible. Miya hopes to use the gifts that God has given her to further His Kingdom. With Miya’s full schedule she also excels in academics. She wants to honor God by trying her best at everything she does.

Listen to Miya’s winning song below:

Our Interview With Miya

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about it from my mom. She came across it when looking for scholarship opportunities for my older brother.

What inspired your work?
I was inspired by the style of music in Hamilton, the musical. I thought the music style would fit a song about the constitution just as well as they fit songs about Alexander Hamilton. I still added my own touch to it though, of course!

What did you learn while creating your entry?
It was fascinating to see how the amendments, especially the first few, hold up each other. The first amendment outlines our basic rights, and the others defend it.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I think, just speaking about it when the topic comes up is a good way to voice how I feel about the Constitution. I can also share my song with my friends.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
It is not a common topic to come up. I think they would probably be similar to me where they know the gist of some of the amendments, but maybe not the details.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how the U.S was based on Christianity. The basis allowed for equality and freedom to be possible.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit the Lincoln Memorial. Mostly because I want to see the size of the statue, but also because I believe in equality that was fought for when he signed the emancipation proclamation.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I am most inspired by George Washington. While he was human and had his flaws, just like anyone else, his leadership skills are something to be admired. He fought in a war and led America to victory to then become the first president of a young and developing nation during an uncertain period where many things still needed to be figured out. Later, when offered the power of a king, he stepped down from power, setting the standard for presidents to come.

Who is your greatest role model?
I would have to say, and I know this is a basic Sunday school answer, but it’s the truth, Jesus. He is a person fully man and fully god whose love is so great he was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice. I don’t know what more to model myself after since he was the perfect example.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I have a love for anything creative. Whether it be drawing, playing piano, writing music, singing, dancing, choreographing, making videos, acting, or writing, I like to tell a story through my work. I hope that, one day, I can use my gifts to convey the greatest story ever. I hope to work through my comic, “Between it All”, to do a fantasy parody of the Bible.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time… well, I spend it reading, drawing, playing piano, hanging out with my friends, choreographing, writing, church and the like.

What are your plans for the future?
As of right now, my plan A is to get into the medical field. My true passion is for the arts, but medicine is more stable, and it’s a lot easier to go from a Doctorate to a recording studio than from the writing bench to medical school.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would spread God’s word. Now, don’t get me wrong. I would love to also help out the needy in a tangible way such as those in need of food or money, but I believe that life here is short and temporary, but where your soul goes is eternal. It won’t be a final fix if I only help with material needs. I would like to play my part in God’s plan to tell as many people as possible about God and let him do his work in their hearts to save their souls.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is the backbone of our country. It is like the crust to our pie.

Neha Yalamanchi is a Staten Island, New York senior who attends Susan E Wagner High School. During her high school career, she has been a part of the Science Research Club and Debate Club and enjoys other extracurricular activities. Outside of school, Neha has collaborated with numerous community organizations to develop equitable healthcare solutions for her community. She has also led initiatives to improve social service support for young women across New York City. Once she is in college, Neha plans to major in neuroscience and journalism. Her ultimate goal is to strengthen her dedication to community health by pursuing a career as a physician. Neha believes that through this scholarship, she is so thankful to have this chance to educate the community about civic conversations.

Maryam Tunkara is a 16 year old junior from West Chester, Ohio. She attends the Butler Tech Bioscience Center. Maryam is passionate about community education. She is part of a green engineering initiative at her local mosque, aimed at changing the community’s attitude towards waste. She is also junior class representative for her school’s student government. She believes the public should have awareness of government policies and should participate in collaborative change. In her free time, she enjoys lacrosse, portrait painting, and rollerblading. Besides politics, she is also passionate about healthcare, especially in the teenaged population. In the future, she hopes to go into public health.

Watch Maryam’s Winning PSA Below:

Our Interview With Maryam

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes it was!

How did you hear about the contest?
I think I heard about it through my government teacher.

What inspired your work?
I researched a lot of bills and initiatives, both in federal and state governments. I ended up deciding to go with only federal measures, but I still learned a lot about my state and local government.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I’m hoping to create an educational website/app that makes government and politics accessible to teens. If all goes well, I’d also like to host a Constitutional discussion forum for interested teens and young adults to expand their knowledge of the subject.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Starting conversation about relevant topics of today while intertwining the importance of the Constitution is probably the best way to spread the word. Most of my classes are discussion based, which leaves a lot of room for student driven conversation.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
It really depends; most of them don’t care much for the Constitution or government at all, some of them like talking about the government/politics but not the constitution. Thankfully I do have a few friends with interests in the Constitution; my freshman year, we started a debate club surrounding it. Unfortunately I left the school after that year, but we keep in touch.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
My favorite thing about US History is the complexity of the country on so many different levels. From the smallest towns to the biggest courts, there are so many little facets that go into managing and governing the US. Especially since it’s historically been a cultural melting pot and there are a lot of perspectives to understand.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I hope to visit Virginia, so I can see the site of the Jamestown colony.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Franklin D. Roosevelt is one of the most inspirational figures to me. In my opinion, the sheer amount that he got done throughout his terms in office was incredible. It really inspires me to think that even in such trying times, dedicated politicians can bring about real results.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is probably my older cousin Penda. She’s so passionate about what she does and so kind to everyone she comes across. She’s going into medical school soon, and I have nothing but respect for her since she worked so hard to get there.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about community-driven efforts like my local public garden, community art gallery, and healthcare association.

How do you spend your free time?
I like to spend my free time gardening, roller-blading, playing lacrosse, and painting. I also like watching video essays about various topics.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future, I hope to get a graduate degree in the medical field, and then work as a public health professional. I want to help educate communities and guide regulation relating to the healthcare field.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I could do anything, I might create a language that all people can understand and speak. But more realistically, I’d like to help make the average working class person’s voice in government matter as much as the large organizations that donate.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution represents the key ideals of our nation. Studying the formation and evolution of the Constitution shows the evolution of the country, and it kind of shows where we are, where we came from, and where we’re going.

Coralyn Cairns is a junior from Evans, Georgia and attends Lakeside High School. She is enrolled in the IB program and also enjoys many extracurricular activities. She is the president of the French National Honor Society, a junior officer of Science National Honor Society, and a member of organizations such as Science Olympiad, Science Bowl, and International Thespian Society. Coralyn also participates in the swim team and musical theater. Outside of school, she volunteers at a local domestic violence shelter and teaches swim lessons. She hopes to get her bachelor’s degree in a pre-medicine pathway and, someday, become a forensic pathologist. Coralyn has been honored by Constituting America twice now, and she is very grateful for this opportunity to educate other young people about the importance of civil civic conversations!

Watch Coralyn’s Winning PSA Below:

Our Interview With Coralyn

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
It is not the first time I entered the contest. I entered in my freshman year and won best high school song, and I also entered last year for the essay category. I think I am better at singing and throwing pies than writing essays, but who can blame me?!

How did you hear about the contest?
I first heard about the contest the summer before I started high school. My school had all the eighth graders sign up for a program that helped with career planning and scholarships, and I stumbled upon this one. It seemed like the perfect fit for my skill set, and I haven’t looked back since!

What inspired your work?
In my English class this year, we did presentations on advertising campaigns, and I wanted to research different PSAs. I found that the ones that stuck with me the most were the ones that had a comedic flare broken up by statistics that sent home the intended message. I highly recommend you watch PSAs like “Pizza Farm” and “What If Bears Killed One In Five People?” They are ridiculously hilarious but also very impactful.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
After writing the script, I knew I wanted the two characters to be me, but I had no idea how to clone myself in a video. It took a lot of trial and error, but I eventually got it right. I also learned a lot more about the state of political discussion in America. From a teenager’s perspective, it is hard to comprehend how disjointed the country is. Most of the civic conversations I experience are in my house where we all love and respect each other. But at school, most teenagers aren’t very invested in politics, so it is rare to hear conversations over politics, and especially not ones that get out of control. So in my research, it was definitely a shock to see the statistics and read the articles about the lack of civility in political conversation in America.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Starting conversation about relevant topics of today while intertwining the importance of the Constitution is probably the best way to spread the word. Most of my classes are discussion based, which leaves a lot of room for student driven conversation.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends are very intellectually driven people, and so discussion about the Constitution is welcomed with open arms. Finding friends who support your interests and passions is so important to your growth as a student and citizen.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
What I love about U.S. History is the fact that, even though I have been learning America’s history since I was in kindergarten, there are always new facets to discover; it is never boring. And you might not find that in other places. Our government has always protected our right to education. My history teacher never shies away from the truth of the matter, even if America was in the wrong. Whether the good, the bad, or the ugly, there is always something you can take and learn from.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit Ellis Island. Even though I don’t know the exact route my mom’s family took coming to America, I know they immigrated here from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s. I can imagine them arriving in America at this historical place.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I really resonate with a lot of the First Ladies of America, but Eleanor Roosevelt has to be one of my favorites. She was President FDR’s right-hand woman after he contracted polio and became a worldwide sensation until her death in the 60s. Her career extended beyond her husband’s influence, and she always handled her roles with grace.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is my mom. She has always been extremely supportive of all of my ventures, and I would not be the person I am today without her guidance. She has made a very blessed life for my siblings and I, despite not growing up with the same comforts and support.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am very passionate about a lot of things, a little bit of a jack of all trades. I love anatomy and really all the sciences. I also love learning about history, especially when I can tie it into my other interests. On top of that, I really like singing and musical theater. And above all of this, I greatly enjoy helping other people. I tutor students in the sciences at my school, pick up trash around my community, volunteer at a domestic violence shelter, teach swim lessons, and read at my church.

How do you spend your free time?
Unfortunately, I am a very busy young woman, so I don’t have a lot of free time. But when I do, I like spending time with my mom; we love getting lunch and going thrifting. I also really like sewing my own clothes. This year I recycled some of my old satin fabrics and made a rainbow homecoming dress! And I am currently learning how to play the guitar.

What are your plans for the future?
I would like to go on to get my bachelor’s in a pre-med pathway, and then continue to medical school with the hopes of one day becoming a forensic pathologist. I also love language and would like to minor in French or Spanish so that one day I could volunteer for Doctors Without Borders.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I am a firm believer that everyone should learn how to swim. Every year people drown in the nearby lake because they don’t know how to swim, or they don’t know water safety. And that shouldn’t be the case. My county, even though we are a fairly developed community, does not have a public pool, which makes learning how to swim inaccessible for some people. In many states, water safety classes are required as part of the physical education curriculum, and I think that this should be the case in Georgia.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is a very special document in that it is flexible, but also firm. In science terms, it’s like the cell membrane. The membrane is fluid and can change depending on cellular requirements, but it is also very specific in how it reacts with certain molecules. This relates to the Constitution because the Constitution has adapted with society. Even though America has changed more than the Founding Fathers could have ever guessed, the Constitution still works for the needs of America, precisely because it was drafted so delicately and intelligently. However, this fluid nature of the Constitution does not mean that it gives space for the government to take away our liberties and rights as citizens.

Niya Torres is 12 years old and is a homeschooled student from Easton, Pa. Niya is so excited to be a part of Constituting America and follow in her uncles’ footsteps as a first place winner of this awesome contest. Niya is an avid performer and loves to sing and dance in musical theater productions. She also loves to express her creativity through drawing, painting, choreographing dances, sewing clothes with her aunt, and creative writing. In her spare time, when she’s not creating something, her favorite thing to do is use her imagination and play pretend with her baby cousin, Cana.

Watch Niya’s Winning PSA Below:

Our Interview With Niya

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this is the first time I have entered the contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest from the uncles because they won in the past.

What inspired your work?
I am very creative and love to use my imagination and think of things from a fantastical point of view. I read a lot of fantasy so the idea came to me very naturally.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I broke down the first amendment so I could really compare it to the elements of the forest so it made perfect sense.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I am so proud of the video I made and I’ve been showing everyone that I know and when I show them I have to explain it to them most of the time because kids my age don’t have as much of an understanding as I do so it’s been really fun!

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
It depends.. if they are my homeschooled friends they love hearing about history and the constitution. But if they are my regular school friends, they don’t understand and aren’t as interested once I start explaining my video.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love learning about how we came to be free and about what it took to get where we are today. It’s crazy to think that other kids my age say that they want to move to a new country because I love it here!

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit the White House.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
George Washington

Who is your greatest role model?
My sister, Leianna.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about performing on stage in musicals.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time performing, doing arts and crafts, writing stories, drawing, and playing with my baby cousin.

What are your plans for the future?
I would like to own a cafe one day.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would help to educate kids my age about their first amendment rights and the Constitution.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because there are people in power that think they can control us, the citizens of the United States and if we didn’t have the constitution they would succeed in being able to.

Hi! My name is Emmanuel Mbianda Egbe, but everybody calls me Manny. I am creative, smart, and kind. My dad immigrated from Cameroon, Africa to the United States before I was born. I think what makes our country great is the different cultures, people, and ideas that we have here. I was born and raised in Denver, CO where I am a 7th grader at Hamilton Middle School. Hamilton is my neighborhood public school and has great kids and teachers. My favorite subjects in school are math, language arts, science, and music. I want to thank my music teacher Priscilla Shaw for entering me into this contest. When I’m not in school I like to spend time with friends and family, go to the movies, and play video games. I also like to play basketball and volleyball. After high school I want to go to college and become a mechanical engineer. If I could give any advice to kids I would tell them to keep following their dreams and do what they love.

Hi, I’m Zidane LaPlante-Dorlean, I am thirteen and I am a 7th grader at Hamilton Middle School in Denver, Colorado home of the Denver Broncos with my two moms, my older sister, and three doggies. I am a big sports person and I enjoy many subjects in school. I play baseball, flag football, basketball, and soccer, out of the sports I’ve listed my favorite sport is baseball. I’ve been playing baseball since the age of three and currently, I have been playing on the same team for almost six years. I play many positions on the team like the pitcher, third baseman, and first baseman. My favorite position is first baseman, whilst my favorite school subjects are Math, Robotics, and Social Studies. I love to hang out with my friends and play video games in my free time. My favorite place to travel is San Diago because of the beach. When me and my family go to San Diagio we stay in Carlsbad. I predict I will live near an ocean one day. When I become a 12th grader in high school I want to apply to SDSU and learn and study Ocean Biology. When I grow up I want to be an Ocean Biologist. When I’m older my dream house will be on the side of the ocean in Hawaii.

Listen to Emmanuel and Zidane’s Winning Song Below:

Our Interview With Zidane

Was this the first time you entered the contest
Yes it was

How did you hear about the contest?
My music teacher Priscila Shaw

What inspired your work?
My music teacher, she helps encourage us

What did you learn while creating your entry?
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
That it can help you

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
They’re not so with it

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I think that it is pretty good

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Washington

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Martin Luther King Jr

Who is your greatest role model?
Martin Luther King Jr

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Baseball

How do you spend your free time?
Friend, video, hanging out with my family

What are your plans for the future?
Be in college

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Helping them with thing they need help with

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
To help people indeed

Audrey Gomes is a musician, singer-songwriter and guitarist. She is a junior currently enrolled at California State University Northridge studying Music Industry Studies. Upon releasing her first singles last year under her artist name (Audrey Lisette), she was selected to perform at Grammy award winner Anderson Paak.’s music festival. Audrey hopes to continue to advance her career as an artist, writing her own original music that can be a voice for others.

 

Listen To Audrey’s Winning Song Below

Our Interview With Audrey

Was this the first time you entered the contest
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about it through a suggested scholarship website.

What inspired your work?
The song prompt of having a song regarding using our voices to unite to make a change.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I was reminded that the voice of American citizens together has so much power to make a difference for our future and also be the voice for others.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to continue to educate myself about the Constitution and talk about what I’ve learned and its relevance today.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
We discuss history when talking about how certain rights were established, its origin and how we see certain laws and rights still being talked about today.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I like how our Founding Fathers came together to form the Constitution and what it stands for.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Statue of Liberty

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Susan B. Anthony

Who is your greatest role model?
I would say my greatest role model is Adele because her songs inspired me to become a musician.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Music.

How do you spend your free time?
I really enjoy hanging out with my friends, trying new things or going to the gym.

What are your plans for the future?
I would like to be a professional musician and continue performing/writing my own music.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I could do one impactful thing, it would be to provide housing or education to those who are unable to afford it. Many people are unable to get a headstart and pursue their interests and make a better life for themselves due to financial circumstances.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is still relevant today because it still shapes how the American government revises and creates laws. It is also relevant because it grants U.S. citizens our rights for free speech.

I am Samdeesh Thukral, a seventh-grade student at Riverwatch Middle School in Suwanee, Georgia. In my leisure time, I enjoy a diverse range of activities, including creating and playing video games, immersing myself in literature, assembling PC systems, and engaging in cricket matches. My commitment to community service is paramount in my life. I actively participate in meal donation events, contribute to road cleaning initiatives, and have been volunteering for blood donation drives since the tender age of two. Presently, I am an active member of two esteemed clubs, namely Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) and DECA. Through these affiliations, I have garnered multiple victories in competitions centered around video game and mobile app development and have proudly represented my school at the national level in the History Bee.

My passion for music extends to proficiency in playing the bass clarinet as a member of my school’s band, as well as mastering the intricacies of the Tabla, an Indian percussion instrument, which I have been dedicated to since the age of seven. My journey into the realm of website creation commenced in fourth grade during virtual schooling. Presented with the choice between Google Sites and Google Docs for a project, I opted to explore the former, sparking a newfound fascination that led to the development of numerous websites. The discovery of “We the Future”, facilitated by my social studies teacher, Mrs. Weatherford, captivated me with its unique blend of historical significance and technological innovation. This platform allowed me to meld my passion for website design with my love for history, while deepening my understanding of the constitution.

Being selected as one of the winners of the “We the Future” competition has been a profound and enriching experience. I am immensely grateful to the Constituting America committee and the esteemed judges of “We the Future” for affording me this invaluable opportunity to expand my knowledge and skills. Thank you for considering my contributions and granting me the privilege of being part of this esteemed competition.

 

 

 

Hi there! My name is Sofia Delgado, and I’m currently in 6th grade at Valley View ISD. At school, I’m involved in a variety of activities, including UIL academics and student council, where I hold the position of vice president. I’m also a member of the Mariachi band and love playing the violin while singing and learning new music. Outside of school, I’m a proud member of the Girl Scouts of South Texas, where I work hard to help my community and develop my leadership skills. In my free time, I enjoy reading graphic novels, listening to music, and sketching my own fashion designs. My ultimate dream is to become a famous fashion designer, study in Paris, and create my own line of fashion that represents my unique creativity and style.

Watch Sofia’s Winning PSA Below:

Our Interview With Sofia

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was my first time entering the contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
My school librarian, Mrs.Vela, reached out to me and suggested that I create a video and send it in.

What inspired your work?
My creative freedom inspired me to make my video .

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While creating my video I was able to further my knowledge of the United States Constitution and the Amendments.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
To spread knowledge of the Constitution I plan on showing my peers my video .

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends all enjoy learning about history as we’re curious to learn more about America’s past and the Constitution.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love learning about important historical figures in U.S. history and how our government was formed to give the people a voice.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I think the Lincoln Memorial would be the coolest to visit because I’ve seen the site in so many photos and movies.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most influential American figure to me because she was a successful woman who fought for gender equality and women’s rights.

Who is your greatest role model?
My family will always be my biggest role model because they root for me and I want to be successful like them.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
In my life, I am most passionate about anything that allows for me to be creative like further developing at my art and fashion designs.

How do you spend your free time?
My free time is mostly taken up by listening to music while drawing in my sketchbook or creating new fashion designs.

What are your plans for the future?
For my future, I plan on going to school to be a lawyer and or designer.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I could do one super impactful thing to help people it would be to allow everyone to have a good education. Because when people are educated they can accomplish more.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The U.S. Constitution is relevant today because it guarantees every American fundamental rights and protection of life liberty and property.

Hello! My name is Caroline Andrews. I am a 21 year old final year online student at The Master’s University. I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home which cared about politics, which is why I am who I am today.

I love educating students and am currently a private tutor seeking to expand my business and get involved in alternative education systems. Outside of tutoring, I love being involved at my church, baking, lifting weights, reading, and doing puzzles.

I am so grateful to Constituting America for this opportunity, and to the Lord for His provision in bringing me this far.

Click Here to See Caroline’s Winning STEM Project

Maze Gusa, 19, is currently a freshman at Northwood University pursuing her bachelor’s degree in hospitality management. While she has been at Northwood University for less than a year, it is due to the amazing opportunities that have come forth from the university that even made her aware of Constituting America and the mission that they hope to accomplish. Maze would not consider herself a social media expert, but she has always loved putting together messages and finding herself in front of an audience or camera.

Outside of her studies, Maze also serves as the Michigan FFA Association’s State Vice President. In this role, she has had the chance to travel throughout Michigan and even to Indiana and Washington D.C. The whole time she has expanded the impact that agricultural education can have on an individual and shared the FFA’s Mission of “premier leadership, personal growth and career success.”

When she is not busy with school or FFA, Maze loves to grab a good book, go for a walk, or bake up delicious treats like French macarons and cake pops. One day, Maze hopes to become an event planner or an inspirational speaker. It is by the grace of God that Maze has had so many wonderful experiences in her life, and she hopes to continue leaning on her Lord and Savior in everything that she does.

Hi! My name is Emily, and I am a 20-year-old senior at Liberty University Online, pursuing my B.Ed. in Elementary Education. I grew up in a strong Christian conservative home in Colorado, and my family inspired my love of politics. I can’t wait to find ways to integrate my passion for the Constitution and America into my future classroom!

I also love public speaking, and two of my proudest moments include representing Colorado at the 2022 American Legion National High School Oratorical Contest and speaking at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit as their Under 30 Speech Contest winner!

When I’m not doing school, teaching music lessons, or tutoring, you can find me enjoying art, puzzles, audio dramas, and writing songs on my ukulele.

I would like to thank Constituting America for this amazing opportunity, my parents and siblings for always supporting me, and God for His goodness and inspiration in my life!
-Numbers 6:24-26

Watch Emily’s Winning PSA Below:

 

Our Interview With Emily

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes! This was the first time I entered the contest. I realized this was the last year I could enter as a college student, so I even rearranged my class schedule so I could enter!

How did you hear about the contest?
My older sister sent me information about the contest a couple of years ago, but I rediscovered it through a scholarship database.

What inspired your work?
I did a Constitutional speech scholarship in 2022, and that inspired my passion for the Constitution and, specifically, the First Amendment. When I found out I could combine my love of art, video editing, and the First Amendment, I couldn’t resist trying!

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I loved learning and observing how the sections of the First Amendment are so interconnected. Because our freedom of religion is protected, we all have convictions about something. Because we all have convictions, we all have reasons to speak out. Because we have the freedom to do so, we also have the freedom to assemble and petition to attempt to persuade others to consider and make decisions based on our convictions. We can also practice our freedom of speech through the press. I am so thankful the Constitution protects so many of our fundamental freedoms!

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Last summer, I did a Leadership Congress through Patriot Academy, and that inspired me to share more about the Constitution. I have been working on a curriculum for middle school students about the Constitution, civics, and communication, and I hope to complete that and share it with students, particularly in the homeschool community.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I know I have a few friends that I can talk politics and the Constitution with, but for some reason it is a touchy subject for many other people. However, when I know someone will be receptive to hearing about the Constitution, I love sharing information with them, and I hope they can sense my excitement!

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how our country’s Founding Fathers built this country on principles they knew worked – Limited government, Individual liberties, Free enterprise, and Timeless truths (what I learned at Patriot Academy as the LIFT principles). The Constitution was based off of documents that were effective, such as the Magna Carta and the Mayflower Compact, and the Founders also learned from some of our country’s first mistakes, like the Articles of Confederation. Obviously what they instituted was successful – although the average constitution lasts about 17 years, the U.S. Constitution has been in effect for over 230 years!

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I went to Washington, D.C. with my family a few years ago, and I loved visiting the Washington Monument and the Library of Congress. I would absolutely love to go back!

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Frederick Douglass is an American historical figure who is incredibly inspirational to me. He became one of the greatest orators of all time, which inspires me because I love public speaking. I hope I can learn and grow from his example and influence.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role models are my parents. They have dedicated their whole lives to help me and my siblings become successful adults, and I am so grateful for everything they have done. My mom even homeschooled us three kids from Kindergarten all the way through high school!

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I would have to say my greatest passion is teaching. I love working with kids and seeing that special expression on their face when they understand what we have been working on. It is my dream to inspire and impact as many lives of the next generation as possible!

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time, I enjoy art (especially painting, drawing, and chalk art), puzzles, listening to music and audio dramas, writing songs on my ukulele, and editing videos. I also love playing board games with my family and friends.

What are your plans for the future?
In May 2024, I will graduate from Liberty University Online with my B.Ed. in Elementary Education. I would like to pursue a few extra certifications to help me become a reading or a math interventionist. I hope to continue developing curricula and grow my online teacher’s store, Emspirations Learning. A huge dream of mine is to travel around the country and speak at political and educational conferences, but I also would love to start a family.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would become an advocate for human life. The unborn are a huge population, but their rights are still not protected in very many states. I want everyone to know how each of us are fearfully and wonderfully created in the image of God and that every life matters.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because it has been relevant every day since it was enacted. If we as American citizens do not know our Constitutional rights, how are we supposed to stand up for them? How are we supposed to take action when the government tries to usurp their powers and take advantage of us? The Constitution is relevant because it is still holding our country together – as long as we do our part to make sure we do not tear it apart.

My name is Emerson Letz, and I am in the 6th grade at Grapevine Faith Christian School. In my free time, I enjoy playing football and learning more about the game. When I’m older, I hope to study sports broadcasting in college and hopefully have a career in football. For now, I also really enjoy traveling and am looking forward to exploring Washington DC this summer with my family.

 

Watch Emerson’s Winning PSA Below:

Our Interview With Emerson

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
I entered some artwork last year, but this is the first time my project was chosen as a winner.

How did you hear about the contest?
In 5th grade, the winners of the contest gave a speech about their entries into the contest, and that was the first time I heard about it.

What inspired your work?
I am interested in broadcast journalism and I wanted to make my project sound like a news story. I thought the PSA format would work best in that way.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I would say I learned a lot about how much the amendments to the Constitution matter.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I look forward to giving a speech about Constituting America and about my project to my school.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Several of my friends enjoy studying history, and they all think the Constitution is important.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I admire the unity the people who founded our country must have had to decide how to shape the country.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I love WW11 History, so I can’t wait to see the WW11 Memorial.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
George Washington is definitely my favorite American figure.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is Jesus, but my dad is a close second.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about American football.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time, I enjoy drawing, playing chess and other games, and playing football.

What are your plans for the future?
I hope to get an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas to play football there and then try to go to the NFL after college, but I am also interested in studying finance and sports broadcasting.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would like to help to change the 2nd Amendment to stop gun violence, especially in schools.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is still used today to govern our country, so it is important in our everyday lives.

My name is Jalen Hill and I am 17 years old. I live in Oklahoma City, and attend Destiny Christian School as a Junior. My favorite subjects currently are sign language and government. I love getting to know more about how our country works, and trying to find ways to improve it. I love getting to help people whenever I can. Before attending Destiny, I was in the marching band at Moore High School. I played flute and piccolo. After switching schools, I started playing the flute for the orchestra at my church, but I had to give it up when they started remodeling. After high school I plan to attend college in Oklahoma.

My name is Brittani Richards, I’m 16 years old and a junior at Destiny Christian School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I’m on the Varsity cheerleading squad and softball team. In my free time I enjoy playing the guitar and learning about history and seeing how much it has changed throughout the years. I am learning how to speak Spanish and French. I am very active in my church Unity Christian Center where I am a praise dancer and I run the audio visuals and sounds system.

My name is Kamryn Dukes, I’m 17 years old. I am a junior at Destiny Christian School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. My favorite subjects are drama and choir. In the future my plan is to go to college to become a lawyer. I want to study to be a prosecuting lawyer and eventually open my very own law firm. My hobbies include songwriting and singing. I am currently singing on the praise and worship team at school, and also in my school choir. Music has always been a huge part of my life. I was so excited to learn that our team won the contest for our category! It was extremely fun being able to blend music with our classwork. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express myself through songwriting and singing!

 

Listen to their Winning Song Below:

Our Interview Brittani, Jalen & Kamryn: 

Brittani Richards: 

What about your winning contest entry do you think is the most eye-grabbing? We’re looking for the best “clickbait” to get people to open your work on social media!

The beat that plays when the song starts.

Our Interview With Brittani

Was this the first time you entered the contest? 

Yes, it was the first time I entered.

How did you hear about the contest?

My history teacher Mrs.Fellers told my class about it.

What inspired your work?

The idea of getting to voice how I feel about the first amendment.

What did you learn while creating your entry?

More about my rights about the freedom of speech, how I’m allowed to say what I want as long as it does not infringe on someone else’s rights.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S. Constitution?

Encouraging them to learn more about their rights that the first amendments list for them.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?

They respond pretty well, we have different opinions on something but we find common ground between us.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?

The things I love about U.S. history is that it shows the struggle of the USA came to be and how we got to where we are. What I love about the forming of the government is how it stood on protecting the well-being of humans.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?

National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?

Jackie Robinson

Who is your greatest role model?

My mother 

What in your life are you most passionate about?

The thing I’m most passionate about softball and how I can keep improving myself at it.

How do you spend your free time?

Listening to music and reading.

What are your plans for the future?

Go to college to be an ultrasound technician and travel across the world.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?

To donate, whether it be blood, money or clothes.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?

It sets the fundamental law of the U.S. federal government, and it helps with preventing a majority from taking rights away from minorities.

 

Jalen Hill: 

What about your winning contest entry do you think is the most eye-grabbing? We’re looking for the best “clickbait” to get people to open your work on social media!

I think the line about sending a note to Congress is a good one and could be used to get people’s attention. When you hear it all by itself it makes you want to know why.

Our Interview With Jalen

Was this the first time you entered the contest?

Yes. 

How did you hear about the contest?

Our teacher told us about it

What inspired your work?

Our teacher informed us about the contest, and made it an assignment for the class.

What did you learn while creating your entry?

I learned more about what is necessary in creating a song. When we first started, I had no idea what to do. As we got into it more, I began to understand how to put the words to the music.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S. Constitution?

I like telling my friends who are not in government class all of the cool things that I learn. I want people my age to see the fun aspects of government rather than the boring parts. One fun fact about government is that it is not a democracy, or a republic, it is a Constitutional Republic. That means that the people vote on representatives and follow the Constitution.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?

Some of my friends think that government is boring, but the ones who are taking government class with me are more likely to question, debate, or support my ideas as well as provide new perspectives on the topic.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?

I think the most interesting thing about how our government was founded is that the American people had to be ruled by a tyrant first. If they had not, our country would be so much different than it is today

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?

I think it would be cool to see the Statue of Liberty.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?

The most inspirational figure to me would be George Washington. He commanded the army and led the entirety of the American people. He was respected by everyone around him, not just because of his status, but because he earned their respect.

Who is your greatest role model?

I don’t think that there has been a greatest role model in my life. I learn from the flaws of others, as well as learn from the good that they have done. My role model would be the people as a whole, rather than one person.

What in your life are you most passionate about?

I care the most about the people around me. To me, the welfare and happiness of the majority of the people is to be preserved over my own. I enjoy working with other people in order to come to a common goal because that bonds us together in a way that can not be attributed to a simple friendship. 

How do you spend your free time?

I spend most of my time reading books, doing crossword puzzles, watching tv, and gardening with my grandpa.

What are your plans for the future?

I want to go to college and get a master’s degree in library sciences. Then I want to be a librarian at some university or college.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?

I’ve always wanted to help the homeless people, whether that is supplying them with a job, food, necessary medicines, or moral support. I see homeless people whenever we go out to the city and it makes me sad to think about myself in their situation.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?

The Constitution is a set of rules that the government has to follow, as well as a book of rights that we as humans have. The Constitution protected unalienable rights when it was first established, and protects those rights today.

Carson is a 16-year-old homeschooled sophomore from Austin, Texas and a dual-credit student at Austin Community College. He is a nationally competitive rower, racing in regattas across the country. In fact, Carson and his teammate are the current US Rowing Junior National champions in the Men’s U17 Double. When he is not rowing, Carson enjoys documentary filmmaking, debate, and chess. This past year, Carson accomplished one of his goals of battling the ferocious-looking sotol plant and completing a 50K ultra-marathon through the Texas Hill Country.

Watch Carson’s Winning PSA Below:

 

Our Interview With Carson

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
This was my second time to enter the contest; last year I was lucky enough to win the “Best Essay on Film” category.

How did you hear about the contest?
My sister competed and won a few years ago. When I learned about the PSA contest, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to practice my documentary filmmaking in a new, shorter format!

What inspired your work?
The amazing resources and learning materials from Constituting America, the Foundation for Economic Education, and dozens of other organizations committed to American liberty provided the basis, inspiration, and information I needed to provide. I’m extremely grateful for the work Constituting America does to teach the next generation about the most important documents in American history.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I gained a new understanding of the deeper meaning of the U.S. Constitution. Researching, studying, and presenting this material has given me a wonderful opportunity to expand my knowledge of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In addition, I learned how effective shorter videos can be to disseminate information quickly, efficiently, and effectively.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I want to continue making videos like the Stronger Together PSA to further educate students in America about the U.S. Constitution. In addition to the increased engagement the medium of video can create, I think the short and to-the-point nature of the PSA is a fantastic way to spread the word about the importance of the U.S. Constitution.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most are interested in learning about the Constitution, as long as it is presented in small doses, which is why I find the PSA format so effective. As long as our conversations are short and informative, most of my friends are more than willing to embrace learning about America’s founding documents and the people who wrote them.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that you can never learn it all, and no matter how much time you spend, there will always be people who know more about some topics. There’s always a new place to explore or a new historical figure to investigate, and there’s always someone who can help you expand your knowledge.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to spend time exploring and learning about the history of Boston. There are, of course, hundreds of monuments, memorials, and memories, but if I had to choose one, I would most like to visit the Granary Burying Ground. Although it may feel like a somber place—it’s where men like Samuel Adams & Paul Revere are buried—it is a solemn reminder that people of such a caliber will be remembered for centuries to come.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Abraham Lincoln is the most inspirational American historical figure to me. He, of course, led the American people through likely the most contentious period in our country’s history, laying the groundwork for the abolition of slavery. But I believe that his ability to communicate with the common people, even while debating complicated and contentious issues, was his most important skill. He was so influential in this regard he had one of the most popular debate formats—Lincoln-Douglas—named after a series of his debates.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is my grandfather. After serving his country in Vietnam, he became a CAD professor. From always spending time to help me with math homework, to being my first inspiration to start playing chess, he has always provided a shining example for me to live up to. He’s truly the kindest man I’ve ever known.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I’m most passionate about the American dream and the set of Judeo-Christian values that make such a dream possible.

How do you spend your free time?
Outside of school, I love spending time at church. In addition to this, I spent the majority of time at Texas Rowing Center, training for Youth Nationals in June. When I have the time, I love to read anything and everything about human anatomy, leadership, or whatever else has piqued my interest.

What are your plans for the future?
I would like to be appointed to the Naval academy and row for their men’s heavyweight crew team. After college, I would like to serve and defend the country that has done so much for me.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would like to spread the message to a wider audience that, in a culture so dismissive of American values, these values still hold true. One of the most crucial missions of this century, and one that Constituting America addresses, is reviving the American spirit that has made this country so great.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today for the same reasons it was relevant almost two and a half centuries ago: it guarantees and protects the rights of the American people, constructs a fair and just government, and provides the basis of the American liberty that shines across the world.

Colt is a 17-year-old homeschool student living on a small cattle ranch in Florida. When he is not studying, Colt enjoys making Lego displays for local Lego exhibitions, including the Florida State Fair. Colt has been the worship leader for his youth group, where he sang and played guitar on Wednesday nights and for a children’s youth program on Saturday evenings. Colt now plays on his Church-wide worship team. He grew up in Creation Happened’s creation apologetics ministry (creationhappened.org). Colt has interviewed scientists in the creation apologetics field all over the country. For example, he was present at the opening of the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, where he, at ten years old, interviewed Ken Ham about the attraction.

Additionally, this young man volunteers to help scientist and renowned speaker Dr. Jason Lisle, the Biblical Science Institute founder. Colt has traveled extensively, including in the United States, Central and South America, and Europe. Colt is involved with Turning Point USA, where he serves as a local high school chapter president. Colt has written dozens of songs and hopes to release an album.

Hear his winning song below:

Our Interview With Colt Jaxon

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
No, I entered and won first place last year.

How did you hear about the contest?
I am a “huge” fan of Vince Gill. I saw a video on YouTube of him giving a tour of his guitar room to previous contest winners. That incredible video prompted me to look up the website for Constituting America.

What inspired your work?
Unfortunately, we live in a time when people do not believe the Constitution is still relevant. Our Government seems to be acting to controvert our rights under the Constitution, especially the First Amendment. As a Constitutional Republic, we all must take a stand for the Constitution, which guarantees the rights with which our Creator endowed us.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I researched the Constitution and realized that we Americans owe a lot to our 4th President, James Madison. He did a lot of hard work on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Honestly, having the songs that I have written about the First Amendment helps. Whenever I sing them for people, I get several questions about why I wrote it and why the First Amendment is important.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most of my friends are very interested in history. I am a home-schooled kid, and most homeschoolers hit United States history pretty hard.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I think Americans are very fortunate that we chose George Washington as our first President. He could have easily set himself up as a king. Instead, he set the standard for all future Presidents. Clearly, the U.S. Constitution is our forefather’s most impressive achievement. It is the premiere document of its kind in the world. Even though the United States is a relatively young country, our Constitution is the oldest (fully codified) Constitution globally.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I have traveled around the United States, from the battle site at Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to the Alamo in San Antonio. I have yet to go to Washington, D.C. I would like to go to the National Archives and see the original Constitution.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I am a Munroe, so I am very interested in the history of the Munroe family in the United States. Sixteen of the Minute Men at the Battle of Lexington, Massachusetts, the first battle of the Revolutionary War, were from the Munroe family. The Munroe Tavern still stands in Lexington. Family history records that Sergeant “Billy” Munroe fired the famed “shot heard around the world.” Sergeant William Munroe was also the guard stationed outside of the house where Samual Adams and John Hancock were sleeping when Paul Revere came to warn them about the coming invasion of Lexington and Concord. He refused to let Revere into the house, and only after Hancock heard the commotion was Revere allowed to enter. I am a direct descendant of Sergeant William Munroe.
Because there was only one Munro clan in Scotland, all people who are named Munro, Munroe, Monro, Monroe are from the same family. So I have also always been inspired by my ancestor President James Monroe.

Who is your greatest role model?
I am a Christian, so obviously, the greatest role model and the one that we should all strive to emulate is Jesus Christ.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about the Lord Jesus and his plans for me. It is a fantastic feeling to lead a group of my peers to worship Him through my music. While I am passionate about music, I am also grateful and humbled that the Lord gave me this gift.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend a lot of time learning to play music (I recently bought a banjo) and writing songs. I also enjoy making Star Wars Lego displays for Lego shows. In addition, I make videos for our family ministry, Creation Happened, and I have a podcast, Creation Happened’s Believe it or Not. I help with the ministry when we do events. As a family, we often help out Biblical Science Institute started by our friend, astrophysicist Dr. Jason Lisle. In May, I will help him by selling books at his table at the Florida Homeschool Convention. I love doing this because I like to talk to the kids about apologetics and astronomy. I have also been serving as a president of a local high school chapter of Turning Point, the youth organization started by Charlie Kirk.

What are your plans for the future?
I am planning to go to college. I always have thought that I would become an Apologist, but I may also do something in music since this is also my passion.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
As a Christian, I am commanded to make disciples, so I plan to use my music to share my faith with others.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Our government is a Constitutional Republic. It’s literally the backbone of our political system, the thing our government is based on. The Constitution protects us from tyranny. If interpreted correctly by the Supreme Court, it’s the only hope of sustaining the “American” way of life.

 

Maisie is a twelve-year-old homeschool student who lives on a small cattle ranch in Florida. Maisie enjoys singing, playing guitar, making art, and horseback riding when she is not studying. She is involved with the local 4-H club and will show a steer at next year’s county fair. Maisie has won first place for two years at the Florida Parent Educators’ Sacred Music Contest held every year in Orlando. She regularly sings at Church. Maisie has a unique sound that makes her very popular. Maisie wants to study entomology in college and work as an insect expert for a creation apologetics organization. Living in Florida on a ranch, she certainly has access to a wide variety of insects.

Listen to her winning song below:

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was the first time.

How did you hear about the contest?
My brother entered the contest last year and I was able to travel to Washington D.C. with him. I couldn’t let him be the only one to enter the contest.

What inspired your work?
I love to sing songs to the Lord. Without the first amendment I may not be allowed to do that openly and freely.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I have seen my brother write many songs. When I wrote this song I discovered that its harder than it looks.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Most kids my age are not very aware of the Constitution or its importance in our life. So just talking to them about the Constitutions is a great starting point.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most of my friends find it interesting.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that we stood up to a powerful empire based upon our moral belief in what was correct.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I have not been to Lexington, Massachusetts since I was very young. I would like to go back and see the Munroe Tavern again.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
George Washington could have been named king if he wanted but he decided to step down from power.

Who is your greatest role model?
Our Lord Jesus.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I really like to sing and I really like horses.

How do you spend your free time?
I like to do artwork and ride horses and study insects.

What are your plans for the future?
I plan to become an entomologist.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
There is no greater impact than to lead someone to Jesus.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is the last defense we have against tyranny.

 

 

 

Hi, my name is Victoria Anyiam. I am a sophomore college student at the Community College of Philadelphia. I love to dance, sing, and play sports. I have done sports collegiately at my previous school, Penn State Brandywine, running for the cross country team. I also did track and field at my alma mater high school, Cardinal O’Hara, located in Springfield. I currently am pursuing Health Care Management and look to excel in numerous areas throughout my career, including in my passions of sports and the arts, singing and dancing. My goal ultimately is to give back and show love to others. I am also a Christian and I give God the credit for all my successes. I try to tie my Christianity into everything, showing who God is to others in whatever way I can.

Our Interview With Victoria

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes it was!

How did you hear about the contest?
I can’t recall, but I know it was during the time I was searching for scholarships to apply for. I liked Constituting America because it allowed me to use my passions to create a piece. That I admire about the organization, their openness to expression and individuality.

What inspired your work?
The opportunity to send a message through music. The requirements that Constituting America asked for resonated with me, and I wanted to be able to express my thoughts on our rights through song.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I actually didn’t learn anything new! I’ve learned about the Constitution since I was little from my schooling, so all the information was pretty known to me.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to spread the word through social media. Social Media has the capability of reaching various audiences. I would like to use social media to spread awareness of the U.S. Constitution and to use my platform for education on why it is important.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends respond with open dialogue. My friends want the best for this country. We all are always reflecting on the Constitution as well as work that can be done to better educate others who are unaware of certain aspects in the Constitution

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that U.S. history covers how everything started from the beginning. It helps reduce the why and how questions that I would ask in regards to things right now.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit the White House. I have never been to the White House before, so I think that would be a cool experience to get up close to it.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Martin Luther King Jr. I admire his bravery and his speeches. Me and my mom still reflect on his speeches to this day.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is Jesus Christ. I admire his character and his love towards others. I strive to resemble his image in everything that I do.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about helping others. I believe we all have a purpose to help each other out, even in the smallest ways. I want to excel in everything I do to inspire others in positive ways as well as be a giver.

How do you spend your free time?
I am currently working on a clothing company on Etsy! So that takes some of my time. I also like to enjoy my hobbies, playing sports, dancing, and hanging out with friends. I also like to have time with God, reflecting on stories or messages in the Bible or listening to worship music.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to pursue Health Care Management as well as my passions of being active, dancing, and being a business owner.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Send them cards of encouraging messages. I actually currently do this. I like to have a list of people I want to give cards to every month, and write encouraging, nice messages to them. It makes me feel whole doing this and seeing their loving reactions when they see the cards.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because it was the foundation of U.S. law. This foundation empower others, and reminds them of their rights and freedoms.

Casey Chapter is a graduate student at Florida State University studying Public Interest Media & Communication. She has previously worked in journalism, reporting on COVID-19 and K-12 education for various media outlets, including USAToday’s Tallahassee Democrat and NPR-affiliated news station WFSU. Casey is interested in producing documentary films in the future.

 

Watch Casey’s Winning Short Film Below:

Steph comes from a background in higher education and education administration. She earned her BS in Recreation Management from the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University, and an MA degree in English Literature from the University of New Hampshire. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate degree in Instructional Design and Technology at Idaho State University.

Steph works for the Quantic School of Business and Technology, an online MBA program based in Washington, DC. As a Training Coordinator and Admin Lead, she provides training, administrative, and operational support to the Admissions Team, and oversees the administrative needs of select business-to-business products and services with the Valar Leadership Accelerator program.

Steph loves to learn how people learn and enjoys designing training for new hires and ongoing education for seasoned employees. She hopes to pursue a career in corporate training after she graduates from ISU. Steph lives in Idaho Falls with her husband, son, and two doggos.

Watch Steph’s Winning Short Film Below:

Our Interview With Steph

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
Social media/Aubrey Jackman.

What inspired your work?
I’ve always enjoyed history, specifically American history. I wanted to create content that was fun and engaging for a range of ages. It seems to me that media has moved from static images and written posts to videos. For instance, I’m old and not hip enough to remember when Instagram was just an app with square-shaped photos. Now you hardly see any photos – they are all just “stories” which are video clips. TikTok captured this trend and took the internet by storm. A recent survey by Business Insider found that the majority of 8 to 12 year-old Americans want to be Youtubers or social media stars. (Whereas the majority of Chinese students the same age want to be astronauts). It’s clear that audiovisual media resonates with youth, especially American youth today.

I’m very interested in how to use multimedia to bring about effective learning outcomes. (That’s what I’m studying this semester in my doctorate program). I also have a great reverence for the Constitution – how many other pieces of written word are still in effect over two centuries later? It made sense to try to create a short film to instill the same excitement I feel for the world’s longest surviving written charter of government.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I had learned about the Constitution in U.S. History in high school, but that was a while ago. Creating the short film was a great refresher on the genius and significance of the Constitution which influences our lives in substantial ways today. I also learned how to create a short film using PowerPoint and iMovie! I had never made one before now.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I’m using my short film as the basis of my final project for my multimedia authoring course this semester. I will be able to share it with my classmates and smother them with my enthusiasm for the Constitution!

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Very well! Since entering the Constituting America contest, I’ve been able to bring it up more naturally in conversation.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love the youthfulness of US History. Compared to many other nations, our history is brief and we have so much more left to write! I come from a more conservative religious background, and people in my faith believe that the Constitution and the forming of our government was divinely inspired. It must have taken real courage and faith to create a form of government that was practically non-existent in the eighteenth century. It also takes great courage and humility to admit when something you painstakingly created is not working. Even though the founders’ first attempt (the Articles of Confederation) did not prove strong enough to unite the fledgling nation, they learned from mistakes rather than giving up hope, and gave us the Constitution.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit the Lincoln Memorial. President Lincoln’s life was difficult and lonely, but he remained true to what he believed in and sealed his conviction in his blood. I can only imagine the hate and loathing he endured as he tried to keep a divided nation from collapsing in on itself.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I greatly admire Abigail Adams. When we speak of the founders of our nation, they are almost singularly male (“founding fathers”). But Abigail was a founder in her own right. She had powerful intellect, shrewd insights, and strong opinions, and she was not afraid to speak her mind. Abigail had little patience for the sexist views of what women could and should do that permeated her time. She was fiercely independent and managed the farm during John’s long absences. She was her husband’s most trusted advisor and supported him throughout his presidency.

Who is your greatest role model?
This may seem un-American, but the late Queen Elizabeth II is my greatest role model. As the longest reigning monarch, she spent an incredible seven decades on the throne. No monarch has been so well-respected and so well-loved. She balanced duty with her own moral compass and continually sacrificed her own desires to serve her country. Throughout her life she made decisions even when it was difficult, she had no personal agenda, and she was consistent in her approach. I don’t understand the draw of monarchy and the thought of bowing to someone is quite odd to me, but I can respect the love she had for her country and her people. I wish more of our presidents loved their people the way she did. Queen Elizabeth II was truly an elect lady.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about family, friends, and creating a good life. I love being in the outdoors away from modern distractions. I love to learn new things which is probably why I’m STILL in school and just started 19th grade! I enjoy serving others and helping those who cannot help themselves. I regularly hold supply drives for children in foster care, and blood drives for the Red Cross. I believe we come to this world with nothing and we leave the world the same. What determines our wealth is the love we leave behind.

How do you spend your free time?
With a young family and a full-time job and going to school, I don’t have as much free time these days, but when I do get a few moments of quiet (usually once everyone’s in bed!) I enjoy sewing (quilting, embroidery, you name it!) I’m also a voracious reader. When the weather is nicer and we’ve made it through the long Idaho winter, I love hiking and kayaking. My husband and I have the goal to visit all 63 national parks in the US. We’ve been fortunate to visit a few, but we still have many more to go!

What are your plans for the future?
I believe in the power of education. To me, learning is a lifelong endeavor and isn’t something that simply ends when you’ve graduated from an institution. You can learn and upskill in whatever field you pursue. Once I receive my doctorate degree, I plan to pursue a career in corporate training.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Reinvent global supply chains. It’s astounding to me that in this day and age with the level of agricultural technology we have, so many people and children across the globe go hungry. So many children and adults in our own country experience food insecurity. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough food. We do! The problem is getting it to where it needs to be before it is no longer viable.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution remains relevant today because it restricts government from obtaining too much power, provides our country with essential guidelines, and ensures rights and freedoms to its citizens. The very fabric of our nation depends on it. If we ever lose the Constitution, we lose the United States of America.

 

My name is Jonell Adu-Gyamfi, and I am a first-year pre-med student at Johns Hopkins University. My major is Psychology and my minor is Entrepreneurship and management. At Hopkins, I am on the African Dance Team and am a part of the Executive Board for our African Student Association. I also started working as a social media intern for the Baltimore Youth Film Arts Program. I hope to one day become a dermatologist, and mix my love for medicine, with helping to fight disparities in women and people of color. I am very privileged that I was able to use my love for writing to express how lucky I am to be a first-generation American child of Ghanaian immigrants and to freely showcase my freedom of speech. Thank you Constituting America for this scholarship!

 

Kristin is a graduate student at Northwood University, a private, free-enterprise school. She studied economics in her undergrad and is currently working on her master’s degree in science with a concentration in business analytics. She lives in Michigan with her family, although she is a seasoned traveler. She grew up across several states and even spent most Summers in Bulgaria (where her family is originally from). A particular interest of hers is public policy, specifically, the unintended consequences of legislation. She feels fortunate enough to have the ability to pursue internships with various think-tanks, allowing her to analyze and discern the costs that regulations impose on the people.

Since starting her academic career at Northwood at the age of 13, Kristin has enjoyed studying the importance of limited government and has learned to appreciate the values laid out in the Constitution by our founding fathers. In her free time, she enjoys swimming, the outdoors, and traveling around the world with her dog.

Regarding her future, Kristin hopes to pursue a career where she can reach a younger generation and help instill a passion for public policy and the importance of protecting our liberty through video production.

Watch her winning PSA below:

Our Interview With Kristin

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, for the PSA.

How did you hear about the contest?
One of my professors suggested I enter.

What inspired your work?
Multiple violations of the Constitution by the government over the past few years.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
That Liberty is a fragile thing and needs to be protected and fought for by each new generation.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
By producing short educational/entertaining videos on YouTube.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
There is a wide variety of reactions among my peers. Some enjoy the discourse and exchange of ideas and opinions on the constitution while others don’t care for the history of our country.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
That the founding fathers created a republic and not a democracy as many believe.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The freedom trail in Boston, MA has been on my travel list for years!

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
James Madison remains one of the most influential American historical figures in my life.

Who is your greatest role model?
My parents are my greatest role models!

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Spending time with my family.

How do you spend your free time?
I like to spend my free time outdoors (hiking, swimming, etc.)

What are your plans for the future?
I hope to make an impact through my work in advancing liberty.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I could do one thing to help people, it would be to restrain the “help” by the government – to allow people the liberty necessary to carry out their lives the way they want.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It is not just a piece of paper. The values it lays out are essential to a free and prosperous nation today, just the same as the day it was written.

My name is Jayden Mann, I’m 16 years old from Midwest City Oklahoma. I attend Destiny Christian High School as a Junior. History has always fascinated and intrigued me. I participate in art and drama. Some of the plays I’ve acted in are Godspell, The One Act Play That Goes Wrong, Peter Pan and many more. During my free time you can catch me listening to music, reading, or playing with my dogs, Scooby and Chalula. I am passionate about what is going on in America and pray to make a difference in our future.

 

Watch Jayden’s Winning PSA Below:

Our Interview with Jayden

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
Through my American History teacher! She showed us a video and made it a grade for us to do.

What inspired your work?
The fact that people in this country are having a hard time finding their voice in fear of being shut down. Everyone has an opinion and therefore we should try to meet in the middle and compromise to find a solution.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
That there are multiple articles explaining the importance of freedom of Speech and how many amendments there are to keep and support this valuable right.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
By spreading things that are happening in this country and what our constitution says on how we can help fix it.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most of my friends are into government affairs and our rights so when I get to talking about something they normally join into the conversation even if we have different views. It’s better to know everyone’s views than to be clueless.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
That we saw what we want and went after it. We’re still building to make our country strong but the foundation our founding fathers laid out for us is strong.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Independence hall in Philadelphia. It is where we officially declared our independence from England.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. She is a Native American political activists for native Americans rights. She wasn’t allowed to SPEAK her language or practice her culture. She advanced indigenous people’s rights and her work is still in use today.

Who is your greatest role model?
My Mema. She has taught me to fight in what I believe in and to not back down just because of a disagreement. She taught me the value of compromise and understanding one another.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Indigenous people’s human rights. Our voice is still getting silenced and it is up to us who do have a voice to carry the problems that are being faced.

How do you spend your free time?
I talk to my friends, play video games, and read. Sometimes I go to the gym but that’s not as often.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to teach the importance of art in our culture by becoming a teacher. Art is in everything and is the one language everyone can speak.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
To protect the ICWA act. This act helps keep native American families together and preserves our culture.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Because it helps preserve what we have right now and helps us make decisions that can better the future of our nation.

 

 

 

Adam Zheng 

Adam Zheng is a 16-year old senior at Williamsville North High School, currently living in Western New York. His love for filmmaking began during the onset of the pandemic, and he has since spent hundreds of hours mastering its art. He enjoys creating films to educate, to raise awareness, and to document memories. 

As an independent filmmaker, Adam’s work has earned him Best Young Live-Action Director in the Don Bosco Global Youth Film Festival, two category awards in the Golden Lion Awards High School Film Festival, Finalist in the New York Times Coming of Age in 2020 Contest, and more. Filmmaking and engineering are his two greatest passions, and although he is planning to pursue a career in engineering, creating films will always be an important part of his life. 

Beyond filmmaking, Adam is also an avid runner, a violinist, an Eagle Scout, a Regional Champion in Science Olympiad, a National Merit Semifinalist, and an AP Scholar with Distinction. With his multitude of interests and abilities, he hopes that, no matter what he pursues, he will one day be able to make a positive impact on the world that will last to benefit generations upon generations into the future.

Watch Adam’s Winning PSA Below:

 

 

Our Interview With Adam

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, it was.

How did you hear about the contest?
If I’m remembering correctly, it was through a scholarship website called Fastweb.

What inspired your work?
Well, I have always felt strongly about the importance of talking to people with different backgrounds and understanding their opinions. So it was only natural for me to combine it with my love for filmmaking to help others grasp its importance as well.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While creating my PSA, I had to carefully ponder the reasoning behind why civil civic conversations are so important. It is because our own views tend to be limited by our own experiences, and so in order to gain a more all-encompassing view, we need to understand the opinions and experiences of others by communicating with them.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Many of my peers are taking US government classes right now, so I like to talk with them about the importance of the Constitution because it is often very relevant to what we are learning in class.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I think that some of them do enjoy talking about history and government, but some of them aren’t all that interested, and would rather just leave it for school classes.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I enjoy learning about the past history of our country because it allows me to understand how we got here – how we went from a motley group of colonies to the country that we are today.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to go to Philadelphia and visit Independence Hall. It would be absolutely incredible to stand in the same room where, centuries ago, the Founding Fathers convened to debate and adopt both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
This is not a very unique answer per se, but I would have to say George Washington. He led the fight for American independence, and then served as our first president, admirably stepping down after just two terms when he easily could’ve gone on longer.

Who is your greatest role model?
I would say my mother. Among her many other laudable attributes, I have always admired the hard work and dedication she has put forth as a stay-at-home mom to raise me and my two siblings.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
To be honest, probably running. I have run almost every day for the past three years, and it has come to be one of the greatest joys of my life. Even though it can be difficult at times, I love the challenge of it and the satisfaction I get from overcoming its challenges and improving.

How do you spend your free time?
I like to run, create films, play chess, learn about science, and spend time with my family.

What are your plans for the future?
Next year, I’ll be going to college to study engineering. I’m not completely sure which specific field yet, but I’m currently thinking about mechanical or aerospace engineering. Through my undergraduate (and likely also graduate) education, I hope to gain the skills that I will need to establish a career as an engineer. And although my career focus will be in engineering, I do hope to also continue my passion for filmmaking on the side.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I suppose the entire purpose of my engineering endeavor is to do “super impactful things” for the world. One of the most important things I would like to do is to design solutions to help preserve the Earth and keep it as the rich, bountiful home it has long been for humans, as well as millions of other species.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Obviously, the Constitution is and has always been very relevant to American society, as it is the supreme law that governs our government and our laws. It functions to preserve the rights and liberties of American citizens, serving an invaluable role in our lives.

Jake R. Cairns
Jake is a 17-year-old from Evans, Georgia who attends Evans High School as a Junior. He has played lacrosse for four years and is currently the varsity goalie for the Evans Knights! Jake’s hobbies are doing anything outdoors and music. He enjoys fishing, camping, hiking, boating, hunting and exploring all over the North Georgia Appalachian Mountains, waterfalls and rivers. When Jake is not busy exploring the great outdoors, you will find him at the piano playing and composing songs. Jake did not find his love for music until the pandemic hit in 2020. Bored and stuck in the house, he taught himself to read, play and compose music on the piano and guitar. Jake has been accepted to Toccoa Falls College where he plans to major in Outdoor Leadership and minor in Worship Music. This path combines both of his passions for the outdoors and music. After college Jake hopes to work for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources as a game warden and continue to play music whenever possible.

Coralyn M. Cairns
Coralyn Cairns is a Freshman at Lakeside Highschool in Georgia and is enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program there. She is involved in Student Government, Science Olympiad, and the school’s production of Aladdin. Some other musicals she has played in are 101 Dalmatians and a Christmas Carol. Because of her love of fine arts, at one-point Coralyn whole-heartedly focused on acting, singing, and modeling. However, she now focuses on academics and is at the top of her class. While her favorite subject is science, she is also very passionate about foreign languages. Currently, she takes both Spanish and French, and hopes to start Latin soon. Additionally, Coralyn is a Sunday School teacher at her church on the weekends. Over the summer, she enjoys swimming competitively with her friends and sewing clothes. In the future, Coralyn wants to go on to be a pathologist. Coralyn’s family is very musical, with her father, who sings and plays the guitar, being her inspiration. He also teaches political science which has helped instill in her the importance of the Constitution.

Jake and Coralyn would also like to say thank you and express how proud they are of their older brother, Wyatt, who is currently serving in the United States Marine Corps.

Listen To Their Winning Song Below:

 

Our Interview With Coralyn & Jake

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Carolyn: This submission was my first for Constituting America.
Jake: I have not entered this contest before.

How did you hear about the contest?
Carolyn: I have a myOptions account through my school, and I occasionally peruse on there. Over the summer, I saw the contest on the scholarships page, and I was excited because it sounded like something I would really like to do.
Jake: My sister learned about the contest and asked me to partner up and create the song.

What inspired your work?
Carolyn: I think for writing lyrics, you have to find an inspiration that just opens the creative floodgates in your brain. Like a catchy melody or rhyming words that just stick in your mind. That’s what happened for me. Before I wrote the lyrics, we did a lot of research about the actual information, but because most people know the gist of the first amendment, we kind of overlooked it. However, I decided to look back at it, and I found the words press and redress. That immediately brought the building melody that we have in the chorus to my mind and we just built off of that.
Jake: The favorite artist who originally led me to the piano is Elton john. Much of my piano playing is inspired by his music and playing style.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
Carolyn: I have been writing my own lyrics since I was like maybe 7 or 8, but I have never actually put them to music. My brother plays other pieces or creates songs occasionally and then adds lyrics to them, but he doesn’t start with the lyrics. So I think we both learned how to mesh our two styles, musical backgrounds, and ideas together to make something cool.
Jake: I learned a great deal while creating this piece about the composition of a song and how to create distinct sections like a verse, pre chorus, and chorus.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Carolyn: I am currently taking an AP Government and Politics course and it has opened my eyes. I have a dad who teaches these concepts for a living and I couldn’t have told you most of the stuff about the Constitution that I know now a year ago. So for people who want to learn more about our country’s origins, I would recommend they take a Government course. Just learning about all the facets to the Constitution and the intentions behind the words of our Founders instills in you the Constitution’s importance. In the week that I am writing this, my class is talking about the President’s delegated powers along with Federalist 70, and how the Founders had so much for thought and inspiration to come up with a system that made an energetic President, yet still have a Congress that checks their power. To have created this document that has upheld our country’s values for so long, is absolutely crazy to me. For anyone who wants to hear, I can go on.
Jake: I plan to spread the importance of the constitution to my peers by starting conversation about current political issues. If I can shed more light on topics like gun control and social media censorship, the Constitutional Amendments will better be understood among my peers.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Carolyn: I moved school zones this year to be able to take part in the IB program in our county. I had to make all new friends. However, the group of people I am surrounded by are extremely bright and curious people. I have always had friends who were invested in their education, but it is refreshing to be around people who also care deeply about truly learning. All year my Government course has challenged us, but we help each other out, not only to receive good grades, but also because we are interested in the Constitution and our history and want to collaborate. It is a difficult class, but most of my friends would say it is one of their favorite classes.
Jake: The majority of my friends enjoy conversation about the constitution and American history, although most lack any concern of it being degraded or taken away.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
Carolyn: I love what I talked about earlier. Just the careful intention behind every single word of our Constitution. And also I think the unity of early America is truly inspiring. As human beings we have always had different opinions, but against all odds we fought for John Locke’s life, liberty, and (Thomas Jefferson’s change) the pursuit of happiness. Plus, after the Constitution’s ratification, the entire country was like, “Yep, we want Washington”. With how fractured America is now, I find the unity very admirable.
Jake: The thing I love most about United States history and the formation of its government is the focus on limited governmental power. The founding fathers’ focus was on individual freedom and liberty. While the government has expanded today the expansions are progressive and are used to help Americans so it still carries on a tradition of a people first government.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Carolyn: I would like to visit the White House. I went to Washington, D.C. in 6th grade and we were supposed to visit the White House, but the tour got cancelled. Out of all the places we went, I would have liked that the most. The White House is the home and office of every President to have ever lived, and the President is the energy and face of America.
Jake: I would like to visit Mt. Rushmore and see the massive sculptures of the presidents.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Carolyn: I would say the most influential historical figure to me would have to be First Lady Abigail Adams. Not only was she an advocate for women’s education, but also an advocate for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. #RememberTheLadies
Jake: My most influential and inspiring historical figure is Thomas Jefferson. I completely agree with the stance Jefferson took with keeping a small central government and his focus on free speech.

Who is your greatest role model?
Carolyn: My greatest role model would be my mother. She has always worked so hard for my siblings and I, and is super supportive. When I wanted to focus on acting, singing, and modeling, she was right there. When I’m sad, she uplifts me. When I wanted to switch schools for IB, even though it would be harder to get me there, she was on board. My mom has very few flaws, and I would say that I have corrected most of them. Since I have been able to recommend changes to her outfits, they have been much better. She and I are best friends and I wouldn’t change that for the world.
Jake: Elton John and Billy Joel are my biggest role models, and I hope to one day make as unique and beautiful music as they did in the 1970s.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Carolyn: I think I am most passionate about medicine and science. A few years ago, I would have said singing was my main passion, but in recent years my love for everything scientific has increased tenfold, specifically in the area of pathology. I am an incredibly curious and analytical person and I feel like that’s where I can make my impact in the world.
Jake: In life, I am most passionate about music and the outdoors. I love to hunt and camp along with playing piano and guitar.

How do you spend your free time?
Carolyn: I spend my free time sewing clothes, bags, stuffed animals, etc. I also like to swim competitively, record songs with my brother (I guess you know that), participate in clubs and plays at school, and volunteer at my church.
Jake: I am the starting goalie of my high school lacrosse team, and when I’m not playing lacrosse I play and write music on my piano.

What are your plans for the future?
Carolyn: When I go off to college, I want to major in some sort of pre-med program and minor in one of my languages. Then I want to go to medical school and hopefully intern at a medical examiner’s office. That’s because, at least right now, I want to be a forensic pathologist. As for short-term, I hope to be at the top of my class and receive an IB diploma when I graduate highschool.
Jake: I would like to become a Georgia park ranger and work in the state parks I frequently go camping and hiking in.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Carolyn: If I could do one super impactful thing in my life, I would establish more medical centers around the globe. The most important aspect of medicine is prevention and there are so many places around the world that need more medical care. The centers would be used to provide yearly check-ups, life-saving services, and education about taboo subjects
clouded with misinformation to communities who don’t have those resources.
Jake: I would like to work as a park ranger and help prevent harm to the forests of America, so often these parks are polluted and misused by people and I would like to help protect them.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Carolyn: The Constitution is incredibly relevant today. It was and still is the leading example of a free and democratic government. It provides the blueprint for our expertly balanced government, and even accounts for modern day issues. For modern day issues from taxes to the economy to foreign policy, the Constitution delegates powers to our leaders. Being familiar with the Constitution allows citizens to be able to be active members of America’s political process and understand what’s going on.
Jake: Now more than ever certain constitutional rights are being debated over like the continued push for gun control and censorship on free opinions. I feel more and more Americans are ignorant of the rights they possess and why they are important.

Astha Savalia is a fifth grader from Naperville, Illinois. She proudly serves on the Student Council, plays viola in her school orchestra. and plays chess in an afterschool club. She has already completed over 25 hours of community service during this school year and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down! Astha is actively involved with the InsideOut Club DuPage, local food pantries, Feed My Starving Children, and the Conservation Foundation. She has been learning Spanish in a dual language classroom since Kindergarten and is now almost fluent! She also enjoys Tae Kwon Do, swimming, and rock climbing. Astha loves spending time with her friends and family and keeps them laughing with her funny skits and jokes.

Click here to read Astha’s winning poem!

Our Interview With Astha

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes

How did you hear about the contest?
My mom read about it during a visit to our local public library.

What inspired your work?
Ms. Faria, the librarian, helped me find books about the Constitution. The checks and balances system really stood out to me.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I got a better understanding of the Constitution and how power was balanced across the three branches of government. This prevented any one person or group from having too much power.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to share my poem at the library and in my classroom. Hopefully that will encourage more kids to learn more about the Constitution and maybe enter the contest.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
We just started learning about it at school. There is a lot more to learn and talk about. I think most of us are eager to learn more.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that we are a democracy and that all citizens have a voice.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit Washington DC for the first time and get a tour of the White House.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Abraham Lincoln. Illinois is known as the Land of Lincoln and he is one of my favorite presidents.

Who is your greatest role model?
It’s hard to pick my greatest role model. So many people inspire me.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Spending time with my friends and family is really fun for me. I also love to travel.

How do you spend your free time?
I like to volunteer and participate in martial arts.

What are your plans for the future?
I hope to become an engineer.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
End hunger. We have a surplus of food, yet people are still dying of starvation every day.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights so that it could live on and continue to be improved and changed as time passed. I think the Constitution is one of the reasons our country is so great.

Benjamin Moak, age 7, is from Parachute, Colorado. He is an avid video game player, four wheeler rider and loves shark week! His big sister Halley was our inaugural poem winner in 2010, so apparently his talent runs in the family!
Click here to read Benjamin’s winning poem!

Our Interview With Benjamin

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
I entered my poem two times.

How did you hear about the contest?
My sister has been a winner before me.

What inspired your work?
I like the idea that we don’t have a king or queen to boss us. I like to rhyme words!

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned that a balance in power is a good thing and that I can say what I want to say (and do it nicely)

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
My teacher and my mom will help me.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
We are really little. We have not learned about the Constitution except that my family has taught me about it.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I like George Washington.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I think I would like to see where a battle was fought or maybe the White House.

Who is your greatest role model?
My sister is pretty cool.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I like to play soccer and baseball. I am saving up my chore money for a Playstation 5.

How do you spend your free time?
I play games on my computer with my friends. read. I ride a 4-wheeler.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to be a policeman or a firefighter.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Make them obey the law.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Everybody needs to know about their rights and that our law is good…even kids.

Rachel Xu is a sophomore in the International Baccalaureate program at Eastside High School. She is involved with the Student Government Association as the acting vice president representing 10th grade, participates in varsity Girls’ Weightlifting team, having won in district and regionals, serves on the PALS Leadership Council, and is actively involved in Mu Alpha Theta and the Health Occupations Students of America club. Outside of campus, she is a member of the UF Classical Guitar Ensemble and the local Annasemble Orchestra. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering with local churches, nonprofits, and animal shelters, and her hobbies include writing and visual art, of which she has won numerous related essay, poetry, and art contests in the past.

Click Here to Read Rachel’s Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Rachel

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
Google search

What inspired your work?
Seeing the efforts of American families and active citizens across the country on social media and in the news trying to reassert their unalienable First Amendment rights to free speech, petition, and protest and, in doing so, advocate for the causes they believe to be most important and patriotic.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
By researching the failure of historical empires and the ensuing downfalls of countless political and social revolutions around the world in the last few centuries, I gained a great deal of knowledge about world history, change and continuities in global processes, and, above all else, the ineffable genius of our country’s system of government as delineated in America’s founding document, the Constitution.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Through social media engagement, one-on-one discussions, sharing relevant posts, and visiting historically significant locations and landmarks.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Like me, they’re very interested in exchanging ideas and sharing different perspectives on the nature of our Bill of Rights and Constitutional Amendments, especially as they relate to what we’re studying in civics and recent newsworthy events. We often enjoy having discussions about the nuanced modern interpretations of the founding documents, and take pride in being able to analyze and respond to questions about U.S. history in class.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love dissecting the fundamental guiding philosophies and ethical principles underlying our Founding Fathers’ central outlooks on how to run this country as a democracy and republic, aligning the dogma of Enlightenment thinkers with radically innovative ideas at the time of civil liberties, religious protections, and legal representation for all.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The Statue of Liberty, because of its symbolic relevance as an international talisman of American freedom, justice, and equality, all core principles in the Declaration of Independence, as well as a beacon of hope for generations of immigrant families like my own arriving in this strange new land searching for an opportunity to begin anew and reinvent themselves.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Alexander Hamilton, for his role in crafting the building blocks for our federal government, championing the ratification of our Constitution, and altogether embodying the American dream of a man who rose from obscurity and impoverished squalor into the most elevated, stratified political spheres of the greatest country on the face of the Earth.

Who is your greatest role model?
Martin Luther King Jr., a man of impeccable dignity and righteousness who, above all else, viewed peaceful and nonviolent, but altogether meaningful and justified, political protest as the most moral and effective manner of galvanizing legislative and cultural progress.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Defending the rights of the voiceless, whether that be through my work as a volunteer, my intended career going into the medical field, and, hopefully, through my writing and publications as a student right now.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time, I enjoy sketching, biking, reading, crafting stories and poetry, badminton, learning languages, volunteering, listening to music, etc.

What are your plans for the future?
I plan on attending university, majoring in the scientific/medical field, and eventually obtaining a career in public health or affiliated clinical practices where I am able to aid epidemiological research efforts and promote the wellbeing of families and neighborhoods in my community.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would dedicate my weekends to volunteering with local nonprofits, whether that be animal shelters, daycares, churches, food banks, Habitat for Humanity, libraries, retirement homes, etc.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It guarantees rights and freedoms to the citizens of this country, and acts as a blueprint for what our leaders and we as citizens should be doing to ensure our liberties and Constitutional privileges moving forward in these trying times as we continue to confront issues of partisan polarization, infringements on free speech, political corruption, inequality, and more.

April 10, 1788

Source: Ashbrook Center – Teaching American History

When great and extraordinary powers are vested in any man, or body of men, which in their exercise, may operate to the oppression of the people, it is of high importance that powerful checks should be formed to prevent the abuse of it.

Perhaps no restraints are more forcible, than such as arise from responsibility to some superior power. — Hence it is that the true policy of a republican government is, to frame it in such manner, that all persons who are concerned in the government, are made accountable to some superior for their conduct in office. — This responsibility should ultimately rest with the People. To have a government well administered in all its parts, it is requisite the different departments of it should be separated and lodged as much as may be in different hands. The legislative power should be in one body, the executive in another, and the judicial in one different from either — But still each of these bodies should be accountable for their conduct. Hence it is impracticable, perhaps, to maintain a perfect distinction between these several departments — For it is difficult, if not impossible, to call to account the several officers in government, without in some degree mixing the legislative and judicial. The legislature in a free republic are chosen by the people at stated periods, and their responsibility consists, in their being amenable to the people. When the term, for which they are chosen, shall expire, who will then have opportunity to displace them if they disapprove of their conduct — but it would be improper that the judicial should be elective, because their business requires that they should possess a degree of law knowledge, which is acquired only by a regular education, and besides it is fit that they should be placed, in a certain degree in an independent situation, that they may maintain firmness and steadiness in their decisions. As the people therefore ought not to elect the judges, they cannot be amenable to them immediately, some other mode of amenability must therefore be devised for these, as well as for all other officers which do not spring from the immediate choice of the people: this is to be effected by making one court subordinate to another, and by giving them cognizance of the behaviour of all officers; but on this plan we at last arrive at some supreme, over whom there is no power to controul but the people themselves. This supreme controling power should be in the choice of the people, or else you establish an authority independent, and not amenable at all, which is repugnant to the principles of a free government. Agreeable to these principles I suppose the supreme judicial ought to be liable to be called to account, for any misconduct, by some body of men, who depend upon the people for their places; and so also should all other great officers in the State, who are not made amenable to some superior officers. This policy seems in some measure to have been in view of the framers of the new system, and to have given rise to the institution of a court of impeachments — How far this Court will be properly qualified to execute the trust which will be reposed in them, will be the business of a future paper to investigate. To prepare the way to do this, it shall be the business of this, to make some remarks upon the constitution and powers of the Senate, with whom the power of trying impeachments is lodged.

The following things may be observed with respect to the constitution of the Senate.

1st. They are to be elected by the legislatures of the States and not by the people, and each State is to be represented by an equal number.

2d. They are to serve for six years, except that one third of those first chosen are to go out of office at the expiration of two years, one third at the expiration of four years, and one third at the expiration of six years, after which this rotation is to be preserved, but still every member will serve for the term of six years.

3d. If vacancies happen by resignation or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature of any State, the executive is authorised to make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the legislature.

4. No person can be a senator who has not arrived to the age of thirty years, been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who is not at the time he is elected an inhabitant of the State for which he is elected.

The apportionment of members of Senate among the States is not according to numbers, or the importance of the States; but is equal. This, on the plan of a consolidated government, is unequal and improper; but is proper on the system of confederation — on this principle I approve of it. It is indeed the only feature of any importance in the constitution of a confederated government. It was obtained after a vigorous struggle of that part of the Convention who were in favor of preserving the state governments. It is to be regretted, that they were not able to have infused other principles into the plan, to have secured the government of the respective states, and to have marked with sufficient precision the line between them and the general government.

The term for which the senate are to be chosen, is in my judgment too long, and no provision being made for a rotation will, I conceive, be of dangerous consequence.

It is difficult to fix the precise period for which the senate should be chosen. It is a matter of opinion, and our sentiments on the matter must be formed, by attending to certain principles. Some of the duties which are to be performed by the senate, seem evidently to point out the propriety of their term of service being extended beyond the period of that of the assembly. Besides as they are designed to represent the aristocracy of the country, it seems fit they should possess more stability, and so continue a longer period than that branch who represent the democracy. The business of making treaties and some other which it will be proper to commit to the senate, requires that they should have experience, and therefore that they should remain some time in office to acquire it. — But still it is of equal importance that they should not be so long in office as to be likely to forget the hand that formed them, or be insensible of their interests. Men long in office are very apt to feel themselves independent [and] to form and pursue interests separate from those who appointed them. And this is more likely to be the case with the senate, as they will for the most part of the time be absent from the state they represent, and associate with such company as will possess very little of the feelings of the middling class of people. For it is to be remembered that there is to be a federal city, and the inhabitants of it will be the great and the mighty of the earth. For these reasons I would shorten the term of their service to four years. Six years is a long period for a man to be absent from his home, it would have a tendency to wean him from his constituents.

A rotation in the senate, would also in my opinion be of great use. It is probable that senators once chosen for a state will, as the system now stands, continue in office for life. The office will be honorable if not lucrative. The persons who occupy it will probably wish to continue in it, and therefore use all their influence and that of their friends to continue in office. — Their friends will be numerous and powerful, for they will have it in their power to confer great favors; besides it will before long be considered as disgraceful not to be re–elected. It will therefore be considered as a matter of delicacy to the character of the senator not to return him again. — Every body acquainted with public affairs knows how difficult it is to remove from office a person who is [has?] long been in it. It is seldom done except in cases of gross misconduct. It is rare that want of competent ability procures it. To prevent this inconvenience I conceive it would be wise to determine, that a senator should not be eligible after he had served for the period assigned by the constitution for a certain number of years; perhaps three would be sufficient. A farther benefit would be derived from such an arrangement; it would give opportunity to bring forward a greater number of men to serve their country, and would return those, who had served, to their state, and afford them the advantage of becoming better acquainted with the condition and politics of their constituents. It farther appears to me proper, that the legislatures should retain the right which they now hold under the confederation, of recalling their members. It seems an evident dictate of reason, that when a person authorises another to do a piece of business for him, he should retain the power to displace him, when he does not conduct according to his pleasure. This power in the state legislatures, under confederation, has not been exercised to the injury of the government, nor do I see any danger of its being so exercised under the new system. It may operate much to the public benefit.

These brief remarks are all I shall make on the organization of the senate. The powers with which they are invested will require a more minute investigation.

This body will possess a strange mixture of legislative, executive and judicial powers, which in my opinion will in some cases clash with each other.

1. They are one branch of the legislature, and in this respect will possess equal powers in all cases with the house of representatives; for I consider the clause which gives the house of representatives the right of originating bills for raising a revenue as merely nominal, seeing the senate be authorised to propose or concur with amendments.

2. They are a branch of the executive in the appointment of ambassadors and public ministers, and in the appointment of all other officers, not otherwise provided for; whether the forming of treaties, in which they are joined with the president, appertains to the legislative or the executive part of the government, or to neither, is not material.

3. They are part of the judicial, for they form the court of impeachments.

It has been a long established maxim, that the legislative, executive and judicial departments in government should be kept distinct. It is said, I know, that this cannot be done. And therefore that this maxim is not just, or at least that it should only extend to certain leading features in a government. I admit that this distinction cannot be perfectly preserved. In a due ballanced government, it is perhaps absolutely necessary to give the executive qualified legislative powers, and the legislative or a branch of them judicial powers in the last resort. It may possibly also, in some special cases, be adviseable to associate the legislature, or a branch of it, with the executive, in the exercise of acts of great national importance. But still the maxim is a good one, and a separation of these powers should be sought as far as is practicable. I can scarcely imagine that any of the advocates of the system will pretend, that it was necessary to accumulate all these powers in the senate.

There is a propriety in the senate’s possessing legislative powers; this is the principal end which should be held in view in their appointment. I need not here repeat what has so often and ably been advanced on the subject of a division of the legislative power into two branches — The arguments in favor of it I think conclusive. But I think it equally evident, that a branch of the legislature should not be invested with the power of appointing officers. This power in the senate is very improperly lodged for a number of reasons — These shall be detailed in a future number.

JANUARY 23, 1944 – NOVEMBER 1, 2021

Constituting America thanks:

Janice Gauntt

Barbara Edstrom

Cathy Gillespie

For your generous donations in Mr. Agee’s name.

 

Mr. Agee was Constituting America Founder Janine Turner’s uncle and board member Janice Gauntt’s brother. “Stan was known for his robust, positive spirit. He was an avid reader, intellectually curious, and a dedicated hard worker. He was a very generous man to many. There was never a doubt of his deep affection for his family, country, state or city. He beamed with pride at the mere mention of his family, who were the center of his life.” Click Here to view Mr. Agee’s Obituary and learn more about his remarkable life and legacy. Click here to make a donation in Mr. Agee’s name.

December 26, 1936 - December 12, 2021

Constituting America thanks:

Don Hay
Mary Jeanne Cooke
Cher McCoy
Mark & Carolyn Clapp
Janet Barton
Chris Burns
Linda Gillespie
Jane Lukes
Sharla Metze Davenport
Dorothy & Rod Dickson-Rishel
LaRawn Scaife Rhea
Zelda Shute
Sharyn Taets
Cathy Tripodi

For your generous donations in Mrs. Hay’s name.

Betty Hay was Constituting America President Cathy Gillespie’s mother. She was an active member of the DAR, Dallas’ Jane Douglas Chapter, and volunteered in their school outreach program. Mrs. Hay was an enthusiastic supporter and volunteer for Constituting America and a continual inspiration to Cathy and all who were blessed to have her in their lives.

Click Here to view Mrs. Hay’s Obituary and learn more about her remarkable life and legacy. Click here to make a donation in Mrs. Hay’s name.

March 23, 1979, 1941 – July 24, 2021

Constituting America thanks Bill Kohnke and Nancy Quinn for their generous donation in memory of  SFC Alex J. Hytowitz. Alex served his country for over 20 years as member of the U.S. Army Reserve and a member of the Georgia Army National Guard. He was deployed in two major theaters of operation: Kuwait, in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Bagdad, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His third deployment was to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Alex was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge in Iraq and the Bronze Star Medal for actions in combat in Afghanistan. Alex achieved the rank of Sergeant First Class and was admired by his peers and subordinates alike.

Click Here to learn more about SFC Alex J. Hytowitz’s amazing life and legacy!

September 16, 1941 – April 27, 2021

Constituting America thanks Geyer Dybesland for her generous donation in her mother’s memory.  Mrs. Wise attended Constituting America’s Hamilton/Jefferson debate with her grandchildren and bought many copies of Our Constitution Rocks to distribute to her friends’ grandchildren! She was an active member of the Lady Washington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and The National Society of The Colonial Dames in the State of Texas. She also served as a docent with the Bayou Bend Docent Organization for many years. She was a long-time board member of the Brown County Museum of History. Mrs. Wise was a patriot, through and through!

Click Here to view Mrs. Wise’s Obituary and learn more about her remarkable life and legacy.

December 19, 1938 – February 4, 2021
Constituting America thanks our board member Mrs. Janice Gauntt and friend Jan Wallace for their generous donation in Mrs. Polk’s memory.  Mrs. Polk was an enthusiastic and generous supporter of Constituting America and a respected Texas real estate broker.
Click Here to view Mrs. Polk’s Obituary and learn more about her remarkable life and legacy.
Essay 90 – Guest Essayist: William B. Allen
The United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence on an American Flag background

On this occasion I beat an old horse, just to prove that he is not dead. In this task I am not unlike the rhapsode, Ion, who kept Homer alive by memorizing Homer’s entire poems and reciting them at every opportunity. Unlike Ion, however, I trust that I do not mistake the wisdom of the authors for the wisdom of the rhapsode.

The relation between the Declaration and the Constitution has a different affect today than it did in 1860, when enemies to the more perfect union could find no pillar bearing more weight – and thus to be dislodged – than what they called the “self-evident lie” that “all men are created equal.” Those critics insisted that men indeed are not by nature made equal, nor should be. Today’s enemies of the more perfect union believe that “all men” in 1776 only meant all white males and, moreover, that not even they were by nature made equal though they should be. These critics insist, however, that what nature and history refused to humankind law can create (and they would indeed have all men equalized, the Constitution notwithstanding).

In 1860 nothing and no one so stoutly resisted the enemies of the Declaration than the Defender of the Constitution. Today nothing and no one so stoutly resist the enemies of the Constitution than the Defender of the Declaration. Abraham Lincoln established at Gettysburg that the nation “conceived in liberty” and confirmed “in the proposition that all men are created equal” must conduct its affairs through limited, constitutional union. Today we require to learn that limited, constitutional union can only be justified on the basis of the Declaration of Independence. What we mean, then, when we say that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are best friends, is that they are necessary and reciprocal supports for each other.

Two proofs are necessary to complete this argument: first, that the Declaration requires limited, constitutional union and, second, that the Constitution requires the principle of equality founded in laws of nature and creation.

The First Proof: Limited Constitutional Union Is Required

We may restate the first inquiry in the following form: is it true that the rebellion against British monarchy would have been unjustified on any grounds other than the grounds of natural rights, and that natural rights must disclose not only people’s claims to justice but their capacities to realize those claims?

When stated thus, the first proof becomes, I believe, easily realizable. Let’s start with the negative argument. The British constitution and laws in no way recognized a right of revolution. Accordingly, the act of revolution could not have been founded on any positive authority. Moreover, the Americans were not disproportionately harmed, relative to other subjects of the monarchy. Therefore, as far as the conceded rights of Englishmen went, the Americans could have had no beef against the Crown. Although non tallagio non concedendo (“no taxation without consent”) was an established principle of positive right in Britain, it was honored more in the breach than in the practice (given the pervasiveness of rotten borough representation). Americans were no less well represented than many a Briton. Nor could America make any secession claim, since the colonies could not affect an autonomous status conditioning their place in the empire. To have a right to secede, they would have had to begin with voluntary assimilation into the empire. Political forms, which are themselves artifices, cannot derive principles of their conduct from nature as opposed to their architecture.

If the Americans were justified at all, in other words, their justification had to be extra-judicial, extra-political, extra-historical. When we read the Declaration of Independence, we notice not only the broad language of the exordium (“When in the Course of Human Events…”) and the universal principle of the enunciation (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”), but we can especially notice the particular charges (“the long train of abuses and usurpations”) leveled against the King. It has been frequently noted that the very form of the Declaration’s indictment identifies the King rather than the Parliament as the enemy to America’s liberty. Sometimes this is thought to be a ruse to avoid acknowledging Parliament’s authority (the Americans claimed an interpretation of the British constitution that made them directly subject to the monarch without intervention of the Parliament). A careful reading, however, discloses a substantive and not merely rhetorical argument that highlights the Declaration as an initial charter of government.

Government for the Good of the People…

The first twelve charges against the King (all of them, that is, until the thirteenth, which associates him with the Parliament in opposition to the colonies) actually condemn the King foremost for ignoring the welfare of his subjects. The language of the very first charge is meant to characterize the particulars in all of those that follow:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Now, the laws invoked by the colonists here are the laws of their colonial legislatures, not any laws of Parliament. Thus, the substance of the charge is that the King, their sovereign, has declined to cooperate in their exertions of lawful and subordinate self- government with an eye to the public welfare. The implicit argument made here, clearly, is that persons are subject to government only for their good, and that argument is a principle that transcends any charter or act of government. It establishes a standard of judgment to which every government of whatever cast is subject, and in the name of which any people, any time, have the right, nay, the “duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

…Or Else Legislative Powers Return to the People

Each of the remaining charges against the King reinforces this same principle; each is a particular proof of the universal truth contained in the Declaration’s enunciation. Perhaps none does so, however, so centrally as that in which they accuse him of neglecting the necessary exercise of legislative powers in such a manner as to cause that “the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise.” But this very observation is followed with the particular notice that the result is to expose the people, inadequately provided, “to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.” This observation, then, makes the necessary argument that although in general the purpose of government is to provide for the public welfare, in particular it is to accomplish such acts as the people, otherwise unprovided, cannot so well provide for themselves. And where the constituted government — limited by this purpose — fails, it falls to the people speedily to provide such a government as can respect these limits and accomplish these results.

Each of the charges against the King can be converted into a positive affirmation of the obligations of government. For example, government must respond to “immediate and pressing” needs, relying upon local necessities and judgments wherever delays in execution would be a necessary part of reserving judgment to the highest authority. The needs of people must be accommodated without the cost of them relinquishing “the right of Representation in the Legislature.” Legislatures must operate in such a manner as to remain readily accessible to the people and with recourse to public records. Dissent must be respected within the assemblies that conduct the public business. Free movement of persons into and out of the country is a fundamental part of the liberty of citizens. Judicial powers must be independent of executive will and be empowered to render justice to persons. Citizens should not be burdened with excessive requirements to support public officers. A military administration is incompatible with public liberty, and the military must be subordinate to and dependent upon the civil power.

Architecture of Government Founded in Universal Principles

The architecture of government sought in these affirmations is founded in universal principles and not the English constitution. If there were any doubt about this, the doubt would be resolved not merely by comparing this to the actual English constitution of the day, but also by considering the weighty charge against the King concerning his activities in Canada. For there, the revolutionaries held, he abolished “the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing there in an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.” Note that this produces a different picture of English laws operating in Canada. If Canada, previously French, were being anglicized along lines different from what obtained in the thirteen colonies, the thirteen colonies were not anglicized. Moreover, the demand for a clear-cut demarcation among the powers of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — derived not from English practice but from a universal principle.

This design of limited constitutionalism, further, was nothing less than imitating in human artifice the order of nature reflected in the powers of God affirmed in the Declaration. God held the three powers of effective order, legislative, executive and judicial. He legislated “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God;” regarding humans he was the executor, for “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights;” and he was appealed to as “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” God, in other words, united the three powers of effective order in his own person. He could do so precisely because he exists in an order above man and respecting which no “consent” to his rule could be demanded. No man is God’s equal, while every man is any king’s moral equal.

Therefore, no rule by men could assemble the three powers of effective order in the same man or body of men, without creating the presence of a power superior to man. The necessity of consent derives from the truth that “all men are created equal,” meaning that no one man is by nature the ruler of any other. In that circumstance, just rule among men can eventuate only from consent. To be effective, however, such consent must be limited by prudential separations of power that will prevent god-like domination. Men will fail to obtain such good as God has ordained for them unless they gather together in effective political union, but effective political union requires limited, constitutional government.

The Declaration needs limited, constitutional union in order to realize its promise of goods ordained by God for men. The Constitution responds to that need. The most evident forms of Constitutional response are visible in the architecture itself. The powers of government are divided into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Among these, the legislative takes pride of place, being elaborated in Article I and bearing the most careful delineation of powers and principles of representation. This satisfies the concerns of the Declaration, in which the particular enumeration of tyrannical oppressions lists fourteen specific legislative power violations, ten executive power violations, and one judicial power violation. The list of legislative powers in Article I, Section 8 serves as a template by which we may assess the charges against the King as mainly of one or the other tendency. The Constitution established bulwarks where the experience recorded in the Declaration identified dangers. This same pattern is evinced in the Bill of Rights, which opens with the powerful stricture, “Congress shall make no law…”

The Second Proof: The Principle of Equality

The most telling evidence of the Constitution’s principles is provided in its architecture. Nevertheless, further, significant dimensions are contained in the language and tenor of the document. The Preamble has oft been noted as keynoting the document in its identification of “We the People” as the authorizing power of the government established under the Constitution. This responds, of course, to the Declaration’s insistence that the public good is the aim of limited, constitutional union. Moreover, it furthers the claim that not artificial, political entities create the United States of America, but the people, exercising a native, God-given right do so. Not less important, however, is the fact that the authorizing people are recognized within the document as fully entitled to serve in the government and to benefit from its ministrations. Those who are eligible to hold office on the Constitution’s own terms are distinguished no further than by reasonable age and citizenship restrictions. No religious test is admitted. No race or gender is excluded. In short, in the vision of the Constitution, “all men are created equal.”

Perhaps the most important affirmation of the Declaration’s constitutionalism is the careful provision for re-balancing, re-forming, and re-directing the government that is contained within the Constitution. The amending provision is evidently the leading, though not the sole, source of this understanding. The constitution is careful to keep the door open to the formation of new political subdivisions within the Union, at the same time as providing guarantees against arbitrary or unwanted re-constitutions of the political subdivisions. In the vision of the Constitution the states are both permanent members of the Union and autonomous members of the Union. The sovereign without their consent may not alter them. Further, political decision making is constrained by a careful regard to establish broad consensus rather than the mere weight of numbers – or, in other words, as nearly as possible all the people must be comprehended in decisions for all and not merely a disproportionate number. Whether the concern is constitutional amendments (which must attract three-fourths of the states), the election of the president (which must attract dispersed majorities throughout the country rather than a merely numerical majority), or the election of representatives (which must work toward broad acceptance rather than merely ideological conformity), the Constitution is a Declaration-minded charter, eager to avoid ever again exposing one part of the empire to the willful neglect or oppression of another part.

The detailed ways in which the Constitution, rhapsode-like, echoes the Declaration are legion and, mercifully, will scarcely reward rehearsal in these premises. (However, an appendix is added to illustrate the relationship.) A notable example is the subordination of the military power to the civil power, and there are many others. Yet, I would insist that nothing so fully explains the Constitution as the Declaration.

What About Slavery?

Now it will be reasonable for anyone to insist that the compromises of the Constitution be brought within the compass of these reflections – most notably, the compromises with slavery. Is not slavery the very denial of the Declaration that the Constitution is otherwise said to have echoed? No, we cannot duck this important challenge, for it is certainly correct to say that, if the Constitution were a slave-holding Constitution, then it could not have been a Declaration Constitution. Benjamin Banneker argued as much when he appealed, in 1792, to the author of the Declaration to take up the work of vindicating that document by using his office (as Secretary of State) and reputation (as author of liberty’s charter) to end the abuse that slavery was. Banneker believed that only by eliminating slavery could the Constitution be a true Declaration charter.

I would readily embrace Banneker’s impassioned plea on behalf of the slaves, if I were not already persuaded that the reciprocal influences of the Declaration and the Constitution alone provided in this world any hope for the eventual renunciation of slavery as a lawful practice among men. Although Christianity long before the founding of the United States inseminated moral consciousness with repugnance for slavery, it is doubtless correct to observe that it was only when Christianity combined with the political architecture of liberty that any real opportunity arose to sustain that moral consciousness through the abolition of slavery.

The Constitution, then, compromised with slavery. But in what did the compromise consist? Could it be fairly said that the Constitution purchased its ratification at the cost of approving slavery? Or, was it rather that slave-holding purchased an extended lease at the cost of approving a Declaration charter? I believe the answer to this question is that the latter is nearer the truth than the former. We have not only the testimony of James Madison in the first Congress, who interpreted the slavery clauses in the Constitution as revealing an opposition to slavery albeit in consciousness of the inability to eliminate it at once. We also have the very language of the Constitution itself. The studious avoidance of the word, “slave” – thus to avoid staining the Declaration charter – testifies volubly. Moreover, the tendency of each of the slave-provisions is to provide direct testimony against slavery. At least some proportion of the slaves should be regarded as human beings, for purposes of representation and direct taxation (based on population numbers). That language, the three-fifths clause, was borrowed from a 1783 measure that dealt only with taxation (and therefore led slave-holders to resist the formula rather than support it) and also made plain that all free persons included black persons not slaves. This meant that it was not a comment on the human value of black persons; it was rather a practical measure of the degree of influence the respective sides of the controversy exercised in making the decision. The slave-trading language (“the migration or importation of such persons”) again affirmed the personhood of the slaves. And it did more; it identified the trade as a thing eventually to be ended rather than an option for the future. And the last compromise, the fugitive slave clause, conceded that general laws regarding property should be enforced without exception (thus preserving comity among the states) while yet speaking of “persons held to service,” which included a class larger than slaves.

The slave compromises passed the Constitution, to be sure. But the slave power took the greater risk in doing so. For the other provisions of the Constitution constantly fostering and even encouraging a spreading democratic sentiment could fairly have been expected to deepen the modulated criticism of slavery contained with the compromise language itself. The fact that changing economic and demographic facts in subsequent decades rendered this a more problematic expectation cannot be employed to discount the initial prospects. Nor can it be fairly denied that Lincoln’s valiant and successful effort to recapture the original perspective owed everything to the prior existence of the Declaration charter. When Lincoln and Douglas debated whether the Constitution could apply to black people, and Lincoln reverted to the “standard maxim of a free society” (“that all men are created equal”) to explain the nature of the constitutional principles, we beheld in purest form the sustained, reciprocal interplay of the Declaration and the Constitution. Such a view should persuade us that they are friends never to be separated, best friends in the cause of liberty.

Author’s Note: Keynote address delivered before the New Hampshire Center for Constitutional Studies at its 2004 Constitution Day Celebration, Concord, New Hampshire, September 21, 2004. I acknowledge with gratitude the editorial assistance of my wife, Carol M. Allen. Published in Original Intent vol. 5, no. 1 (December 2004): 1-3, 5.

William B. Allen is Emeritus Dean and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Appendix

Declaration                                                         Constitution

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. Article. I., Section. 1.
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing im- portance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. … If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it,unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. Section. 2.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
[The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper;

 

 

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have re- turned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. Article III., Section. 1.
The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. [The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. The Congress shall have Power… To declare War… To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

 

 

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. Section. 2.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service…
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: Article. VI.
… This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: … no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. [counters the Quebec Act]
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: Section. 4.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances

 

 

of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

 

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 89 – Guest Essayist: Michael P. Farris

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The Declaration of Independence has only one operative paragraph—the last one. All that precedes it is an explanation of the actions taken in that bold final paragraph.

Yet, even in the midst of declaring the United States to be a new, independent nation as a matter of right, in this concluding paragraph there are two important references to God.

The first is an appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions.”

This is a remarkable thing for a bunch of “rebels” to proclaim. It is common for a rebel to begin with the rejection of human authority and quickly follow with the rejection of divine authority. This was not the attitude of America’s founders. They believed in the higher law that comes from God, and by this appeal they acknowledge their duty of obedience to God both in word, action, and even in their intentions.

In the midst of declaring their independence from England, they declared their dependence on God.

The reason for this attitude of faith flowed directly from their view of both society and government.

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson made the case that freedom was dependent on the right view of God and man:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.

In a similar vein, George Washington reminded the nation of these truths in his Farewell Address:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.

In light of the common canard that most of the Founders were deists, it is important to note that this phraseology is utterly inconsistent with deism—a philosophy which contends that God created the world and then walked away and is unconcerned with present human actions.

God is described as the “Supreme Judge of the World.” This acknowledges that God has universal standards and that He will hold all men accountable for their actions. This is not a disconnected, indifferent God.

Indeed, Jefferson’s great-grandson acknowledged his forebear’s unorthodox views on most matters but noted “but he was a firm believer in Divine Providence, in the efficacy of prayer, [and] in a future state of rewards and punishment.”

The founding generation widely believed that there were eternal consequences for improper actions during life. Thus, the signers of the Declaration were not merely willingly accepting the temporal consequences of their bold action, but they were effectively saying that they were willing to stand before the throne of God and accept His judgment of these actions.

They believed they were doing right in the eyes of a holy God.

The second reference to God in this paragraph comes in the last sentence:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

This again echoes the theme of dependence on God. In the first instance they proclaimed that their hearts were right before God; this proclaims that the success of their efforts depended entirely on God’s intervening protection.

This was not a mere figure of speech or a rhetorical gesture. They actually believed that God would intervene on their behalf in these dangerous efforts.

George Washington’s letter to Landon Carter on March 27, 1776, describing his capture of Boston clearly demonstrates his belief in God’s intervention:

Upon their discovery of the works next morning, great preparations were made for attacking them; but not being ready before afternoon, and the weather getting very tempestuous, much blood was saved, and a very important blow, to one side or the other, was prevented. That this most remarkable interposition of Providence is for some a wise purpose, I have not a doubt.

Less than a month after the Declaration was signed, Samuel Adams said:

There are instances of, I would say, an almost astonishing providence in our favor; our success has staggered our enemies, and almost given faith to infidels; so we may truly say it is not our own arm which has saved us.

These two passages reflect both parts of the promise that we see in John 15:5:

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

Their appeal to the rectitude of their intentions reflects those willing to abide in Christ. And their acknowledgement of their dependence on God for their success shows that they knew that without Christ, they could do nothing.

These are humble men who lived by profound truths.

Michael P. Farris is president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom. As the second CEO of ADF, he brings to the role a diverse background as an effective litigator, educator, public advocate, and communicator, and is widely recognized for his successful work on both the national and international stage.

Farris was founding president of both the Home School Legal Defense Association (1983) and Patrick Henry College (2000) and continues to serve as chairman of the board of HSLDA and chancellor emeritus of PHC.

He graduated from Western Washington State College magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in political science, followed by a Juris Doctor from Gonzaga University (with honors). He also earned an LL.M. in public international law (with honors) from the University of London.

Farris has specialized in constitutional appellate litigation. In that capacity, he has argued before the appellate courts of 13 states, eight federal circuit courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 2018 he successfully argued NIFLA v. Becerra, resulting in a free speech victory for California’s pro-life pregnancy centers.

Farris has testified many times before both the House and Senate. He was an executive committee member of the Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion that successfully lobbied Congress for the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. He also has substantial experience in international religious freedom advocacy.

Farris is the author of over 15 books, as well as law review and other scholarly and popular articles. He and his wife, Vickie, have 10 children and many grandchildren.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 88 – Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

Most Americans today see the Declaration of Independence as the handiwork of one man—Thomas Jefferson—that was almost handed down to the Second Continental Congress from on high and adopted for American independence. The truth is much more complex, and ultimately more interesting. The Declaration of Independence was part of a great republican deliberative moment of the people and their representatives in colonial legislatures and the Continental Congress engaging in reflection and debate about their liberties and fate as a people united with a common purpose.

The deliberation about independence took shape over a decade of resistance against British taxes and tyranny. While some colonists spoke of a possible break with Great Britain, most considered themselves English and could not imagine living outside the empire. However, the war forced them to reconsider their ties with the British and provided a moral imperative to protect natural rights against a tyrannical government.

The publication of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, in January 1776, made independence central to the national conversation. As colonists substituted committees of safety and conventions of representatives of the people for royal rule in several colonies, Congress began to consider independence.

On May 10, Congress adopted a resolution urging each colony to adopt new state governments and write constitutions. Five days later, Congress added a preamble written by John Adams that asserted, “it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed, and all the powers of government exerted, under the authority of the people of the colonies.”

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee rose in Congress and offered a resolution for independence. “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” Congress appointed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence while states such as Virginia wrote constitutions and their own declarations of rights.

Jefferson composed the draft of the Declaration and submitted it to his fellow committee members, particularly Benjamin Franklin and Adams, for their review. After making light edits, the committee sent the document to the Congress for its consideration.

The delegates to the Congress were ready to enter the seminal discussion over national independence. Many important founders were not present for these debates, the creation of the Declaration of Independence, or the final vote on Lee’s resolution. For example, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox were then preparing the defenses of New York for a massive British invasion.

Others were either opposed to independence or at least hesitant. The middle colonies—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland—were the center of most of the opposition to independence. Some of the leading statesmen against independence were John Dickinson (PA), James Wilson (PA), Edward Rutledge (SC), and financier Robert Morris (PA). Their viewpoint was predicated on several factors: they thought it imprudent to sever historic ties to Britain, the colonies were insufficiently united, the Continental Army needed decisive victories, and the timing was not just right yet. Moreover, congressional delegations waited for their legislatures to authorize them to vote for independence.

While Thomas Jefferson was drafting the Declaration of Independence, several key colonies authorized their delegates to support independence. In this decisive shift, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware delegations were permitted to vote for independence. Maryland and New York still had not changed their mind in time for the final debates over independence.

With more delegations receiving authorization to vote for independence and the tide clearly turning in favor of independence, Rutledge begged his friend, John Jay of New York, who opposed independence, to make haste to Philadelphia for support. But Jay had important business that kept him from the city as it did other delegates through the spring and summer.

On July 1, John Dickinson and Adams engaged in a titanic debate over whether America should declare its independence while a dramatic thunderstorm raged outside. The next day, Congress voted for independence by passing Lee’s resolution. Caesar Rodney of Delaware famously rode through the night to join his delegation to push it in favor of independence. John Rutledge and his fellow South Carolinians decided to switch their vote for the resolution for the good of America.

Dickinson and Morris abstained from the final vote as did the entire New York delegation. The vote was thus unanimous in favor of independence. It was a hard-fought battle over a decisive break with Great Britain between principled men who voted, and had deliberated according to their consciences. They disagreed with one another—sometime vehemently—and then accepted the result.

The Congress then considered and edited the document much to Jefferson’s chagrin.  It adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4 and enunciated the natural rights principles of the American republic. Congressional president John Hancock and secretary Charles Thomson affixed their signatures to the document that day. New York belatedly voted for independence more than a week later.

Most of the delegates did not sign the document that day, however. Most of them signed the document on August 2. Morris added his signature despite his earlier opposition, though Dickinson never did. Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire was elected to Congress in the fall and retroactively signed the document in early November. Other statesmen who did not sign the document included Robert Livingston, who was recalled to New York, and George Clinton resigned his seat and returned to New York state politics before they could sign.

The debate over independence, the ratification of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights demonstrated that history is ruled by continency. The fate of America could have turned out very differently had individuals not made certain decisions, or debates took a different turn. Perhaps most importantly, the vigorous debate over independence was proof of the strength of republican principles of self-government during the American founding. The people and their representatives, not a king, would determine their own destiny.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn. 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 87 – Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

George Walton was one of the most fascinating, but puzzling signers of the Declaration of Independence. His life and career included great triumphs and defeats, as well as a number of changes in political course that were thought by some to be rank opportunism. Others believed those choices were principled. He rose to great heights of political and governmental office, but also endured censure and disappointment, losing offices and missing opportunities for greater esteem. He died in relatively modest circumstance after serving as a senator, governor, judge, and militia officer in service to Georgia and his country.

George Walton was born in Virginia sometime between 1740 and 1750.  The exact date is not known.[1] Walton’s father had died before his birth, and his mother died a few years later, so Walton was taken in by his father’s brother, who was also named George Walton. The elder Walton was not a poor man, but he had thirteen children of his own to raise, as well as those of his brother. When he was fifteen, the younger Walton was apprenticed as a carpenter, where he learned that trade. He was released from his apprenticeship while still a teenager, when he moved with an older brother to Savannah, Georgia. There, he became a clerk in an attorney’s office, and began to learn the law while on the job. By 1775, Walton had not only become a practicing attorney, but had also become one of the most sought-out and prosperous lawyers in Savannah.  As his professional success grew, Walton became involved with the young Whigs opposing British rule in America.[2]

There were multiple factions jockeying for influence in Georgia’s colonial politics at the time. Some Loyalists wished to remain a British colony. The Whigs wished to separate, but they were internally divided between more radical and more conservative factions, which were concentrated in different parishes. Walton had relatives who had settled in western Georgia, but he was also connected to more conservative politicians along the Atlantic coast. Walton was elected to the provincial congress in July of 1775 and chosen for the Council of Safety in December. He also became a high-ranking officer in the Georgia militia, where he became a close follower of Colonel Lachlan McIntosh.    Walton was chosen as one of five delegates to the second Continental Congress, but he was one of only three to attend the proceedings and vote on independence. Walton was the last of the three to arrive in Philadelphia, so he missed some of the debate over the motion to break free from Britain. He did arrive in time to hear John Adams’ summation of the arguments for independence. Years later, Walton wrote to Adams telling him that “Since the first day of July, 1776, my conduct, in every station in life, has corresponded with the result of that great question which you so ably and faithfully developed on that day.”[3] Walton remained an enthusiastic Adams supporter for the rest of his life.

Walton served four one-year terms in the Continental Congress, although the terms were not consecutive. Walton spent much of his time in Congress convincing other representatives of the importance of Georgia in the war effort asking for assistance. In late 1777, Walton returned to Savannah and his law practice. Walton married Dorothy Camber, who was said to be in her teens at the time. They had two sons together. Walton soon returned to public office by serving in the General Assembly. He also volunteered in November, 1778, to serve in the militia to repel a British invasion from Florida. In December, the British landed on the Georgia coast to attack Savannah. Walton ordered his militia unit to stop British troops advancing through a swamp. His troops were unable to hold their position and quickly retreated. Walton was left in the field, badly wounded by a bullet wound in his thigh and a fall from his horse. He spent the next ten months as a prisoner of war.[4]

After his release, Walton began a political transformation that perplexed many historians and at times infuriated some of his contemporaries.   Over the next few years, Walton was named to a number of public offices: governor, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, state supreme court chief justice, and United States Senator. Before and during the revolutionary war, Walton had been a political ally of Lachlan McIntosh and a virulent critic of Button Gwinnett, who had joined Walton and Lyman Hall in Philadelphia as Georgia’s representatives to the Second Continental Congress. Walton was even censured for his support of a duel in which McIntosh killed Gwinnett. But after his release by the British in a prisoner exchange, Walton began to re-align himself politically with the factions that he had previously opposed. He turned away from McIntosh and fell in with the more radical faction that Gwinnett had led before his death.[5] Walton allegedly forged a letter ostensibly penned by the speaker of the Georgia house of representatives which urged the removal of McIntosh as commander of Georgia’s military forces. After the speaker reported that he had not signed the damaging letter, Congress repudiated its dismissal and restored McIntosh to his position. Later, the son of Lachlan McIntosh, Captain William McIntosh, reportedly horsewhipped Walton, a crime that led to his court-martial.[6]

Whether this was a strategic, politically opportunistic decision or a principled change of heart is not clear, but there is no doubt that many of Walton’s contemporaries believed that he had betrayed his former allies.   Nonetheless, despite accusations of dishonesty and betrayal, Walton continued to be elected or nominated for public offices. Finally, after serving part of a U.S. Senate term to fill a vacancy, Walton failed to be re-elected in 1795.[7]

Earlier, in 1787, Walton was asked to attend the federal constitutional convention as a delegate from Georgia, but he declined so he could attend to matters of state. In 1789, Walton was named as a delegate to the convention to craft Georgia’s second state constitution.[8] That convention produced a document quite similar in form to the new federal constitution, with a separation of powers and a bicameral legislature.[9]   After the constitutional convention, Walton was elected a second time as governor. During his time in office, the state capital was moved to Augusta, where Walton and many of his relatives had settled. Walton spent much of his time in negotiation with Indian tribes, seeking the ceding of lands to the state. Soon Walton was embroiled in two land sale scandals, one involving the “pine barren speculation” of south-central Georgia, the other, larger scandal involving the Yazoo land sales of territory making up present-day Alabama and Mississippi. Walton approved the Yazoo land sales that had begun under Governor George Mathews and which involved bribery within the state legislature. When the scandal came to light, the Georgia General Assembly enacted a law canceling and revoking the land sales that had already been completed.   This led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Fletcher v. Peck, in which the court ruled, for the first time, that a state law violated the federal constitution. Specifically, the court ruled that the Georgia law violated the prohibition of the impairment of the obligation of contracts in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1.[10]

Unlike most men of property and influence in Georgia, Walton did not own slaves. There is little record of his public views on slavery, but it is known that shortly after leaving the governor’s mansion, Walton spoke out against what he called “barbarian” treatment of members of an African-American Baptist congregation in Yamacraw, Georgia, in 1790.   When the congregation first began to hold services, local whites imprisoned some of the church-goers and whipped about fifty members of the assembly. After Walton spoke out against this outrage, a state court ordered the release of the prisoners and declared that religious services could continue.[11]

In his last years, Walton lived somewhat quietly in a cottage outside of Augusta that was located on confiscated Tory land. He never completely left public life, serving as a superior court judge and speaking out on matters of public concern that received his attention. He became an enthusiastic booster supporting the economic development of Augusta.   He was a founder of Richmond Academy and tried unsuccessfully to have Franklin College, the predecessor of the University of Georgia, located in Augusta. His last years were difficult. He had never completely recovered from his wounds incurred in the revolution and he suffered many illnesses in his final years.[12] He was not well off financially. Walton died in February of 1804, only two months after the death of his oldest son.[13]

George Walton’s reputation was marred by scandal that might have broken many politicians. But Walton continually returned to power after losing office and influence. His resolve to return again and again to the political fray displayed his commitment to the building of a new nation. One of the youngest signers of the Declaration of Independence, George Walton was certainly a skilled statesman who sacrificed much in service to his country and his state of Georgia.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. Dr. Clinger teaches courses in state and local government, Kentucky politics, intergovernmental relations, regulatory policy, and public administration. Dr. Clinger is also the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board and a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association. He currently resides in Hazel, Kentucky. 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

[1] https://www.dsdi1776.com/george-walton/

[2] Bridges, Edwin C.  “George Walton,” in Georgia’s Signers and the Declaration of Independence, by Edwin C. Bridges, Harvey H. Jackson, Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. and James Harvey Young. Cherokee Publishing Company, 1981.

[3] Bridges, op cit., page 64.

[4] Bridges, op cit.

[5] Bridges, op cit.

[6] Daughters of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.  https://www.dsdi1776.com/george-walton/

[7] Daughters of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. ibid .

[8] Bridges, op cit.

[9] Hill, Melvin B., Jr., and Hill, Laverne Williamson Hill.   “Georgia: Tectonic Plates Shifting.” In George E. Connor and Christopher W. Hammons (editors).  The Constitutionalism of American States. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008.

[10] 10 U.S. 87 (1810).

[11] Whitescarver, Keith. 1993. “Creating Citizens for the Republic: Education in Georgia, 1776-1810.” Journal of the Early Republic 13 (4): 468.

[12] Daughters of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.  https://www.dsdi1776.com/george-walton/

[13] Bridges, op cit.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 86 – Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

Lyman Hall was a multi-talented clergyman, physician, and statesman who served in the Second Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, and won state office in his adopted state of Georgia.   Repeatedly, Hall faced personal and financial losses as a result of his service to his country and his state, but he emerged as a respected political figure in a politically fractious environment.

Most sources indicate that Hall was born in Connecticut in 1724, although some authorities list a later year of birth. Hall’s family was filled with pious Congregationalists, and his father and uncle served as clergy. To no one’s surprise, Hall studied divinity at nearby Yale University, and then began a career as a parson. He lost his position because of some sort of scandal involving confessed immoral conduct.   The exact nature of the offense is not now known. Whatever the details of the controversy were, Hall’s reputation was not so severely damaged that he was unable to secure some income preaching occasionally at local churches. For a time, he also taught school. Perhaps those careers did not offer much attraction to Hall, since he resolved to learn to practice medicine through an internship with an established physician.[1]   This kind of medical education was not uncommon at that time, even though it would be unthinkable in the United States today.

Hall married Abigail Burr in 1752, but she died a year later. Hall later married Mary Osborne, who bore him a son. Hall and his family moved from Connecticut to Dorchester, South Carolina, in 1756, where he practiced medicine. He later moved to Liberty County, Georgia, where he again set up a medical practice and later acquired a plantation. In both South Carolina and Georgia, Hall settled amongst transplanted New Englanders, descendants of Puritans. Once in Georgia, Hall became active in the push for independence.[2]

In 1775, Hall was elected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress from St. Johns Parish. The colony of Georgia at that time was divided amongst factions that were urging independence and those that wished to become reconciled with the British government. Because he was not chosen state-wide, Hall attended the First Continental Congress as a non-voting member. Hall brought a shipment of rice to Philadelphia to be distributed in Boston which was suffering from the British embargo on foodstuffs from other colonies. Hall served on a scientific committee along with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Patrick Henry.[3]

In 1776, Hall was chosen as one of five delegates to the Second Continental Congress, although only three attended at the time of the debate and to vote on independence. Hall and Button Gwinnet, who were personal friends and members of the same faction in Georgia’s colonial politics, arrived first. George Walton, who represented a different faction and geographic areas of Georgia, arrived only shortly before the vote. Hall served on committees concerned with provision of medical supplies to the continental troops. Hall was regarded as a steady and hardworking committee member.[4] The Georgia delegation was stalwart in its support for the proposal for independence, but according to Thomas Jefferson, the delegations from Georgia and South Carolina led the opposition to his provision “reprobating the enslaving [of] the inhabitants of Africa.”[5]

Hall was steadily re-elected to the Congress through 1780, but he may not have actually served in Philadelphia after February of 1777.   Matters of state and family necessity required him to return to Georgia and later to flee to South Carolina, where he still had friends and supporters. The British issued a bill of attainder directing his arrest and the confiscation of his property. Hall’s plantation house at “Hall’s Knoll” and his home in Sunbury, Georgia, were burned to the ground by British troops.[6] Years later, the United States Constitution would forbid the use of bills of attainder by the federal government (Article I, Section 9, Clause 3) and by the states (Article I, Section 10). In addition to the losses of property, many personal papers and public documents were lost in the flames.

Hall was devastated by the death of Button Gwinnett in a duel in 1777.   Hall made an unsuccessful effort to arrest and prosecute the duelist, Lachlan McIntosh, who killed Gwinnett. Hall briefly returned to his medical practice, but was elected to the Georgia House of Assembly in 1783. One of the first acts of the Assembly was to elect Hall governor.   It was not a position that he had sought. While governor, Hall worked futilely on the state’s finances, which were in a complete shambles. Hall also initiated negotiations with Native American tribes from whom the state wished to gain land concessions.[7] Hall pushed hard for a piety-oriented educational system that would “restrain vice and encourage virtue.” Hall supported the creation of what was originally known as Franklin College, which later became the University of Georgia.[8]

Factional politics in Georgia was fierce, both before and after statehood.   After Hall left office as governor he was taken into custody for contempt because he failed to produce some public documents regarding sequestered estates. He later was cleared of the charge, but the allegations placed great strain on the last years of his life. The estate of a one-time business partner was suing Hall over twenty year old disputes as late as 1786. His loss of property during the revolution and the demands of his public obligations upon his time left him in financial difficulties.[9]

Hall moved to Savannah in 1785, where he once more practiced medicine. He did not leave public service entirely, though, for he supplemented his income as Judge of the Chatham Court. Hall moved to a Burke County plantation shortly before he died in 1790, leaving behind a widow and a son who would both die within three years.[10]

Lyman Hall’s name may be the most well-known of Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence, although much of his fame may be attributed to the stage and movie musical, 1776, in which Hall plays a significant supporting role. Unfortunately, very little about the musical’s portrayal of Hall can be established as factual. Hall’s actual life was certainly dramatic enough to deserve the attention of all Americans, and certainly all Georgians.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. Dr. Clinger teaches courses in state and local government, Kentucky politics, intergovernmental relations, regulatory policy, and public administration. Dr. Clinger is also the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board and a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association. He currently resides in Hazel, Kentucky. 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

[1] Young, James Harvey.  “Lyman Hall,” in Georgia’s Signers and the Declaration of Independence, by Edwin C. Bridges, Harvey H. Jackson, Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. and James Harvey Young. Cherokee Publishing Company, 1981.

[2] Krafka, J.. “Lyman Hall-Yale 1747: A Connecticut Doctor Who Mixed Medicine and Politics in Georgia.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 10 (1938): 531-537.

2 Young, James Harvey.  “Lyman Hall,” in Georgia’s Signers and the Declaration of Independence, by Edwin C. Bridges, Harvey H. Jackson, Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. and James Harvey Young. Cherokee Publishing Company, 1981.

[4] Young, op cit.

[5] Jefferson, Thomas. “The Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson’s Account.” https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/account/index.html

[6] Young, op cit.

[7] Krafka, op cit.

[8] Whitescarver, Keith. 1993. “Creating Citizens for the Republic: Education in Georgia, 1776-1810.” Journal of the Early Republic 13 (4): 455-479.

[9] Krafka, op cit.

[10] Krafka, op cit.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 85 – Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger
Nathaniel Hone the Elder (Irish, 1718–1784)Title: Portrait of Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence from GeorgiaMedium: Oil on Canvas Size: 84.5 x 73.7 cm. (33.3 x 29 in.)

Button Gwinnett was one of the three Georgia delegates to the Second Continental Congress who signed the Declaration of Independence. Gwinnett was also was a prominent leader in Georgia’s state government. But despite those prominent achievements, Gwinnett’s life was also full of controversies, scandals, and tragedies. He was the second of the fifty-six signers to die, and his death was caused by internal political and personal feuding within Georgia, not by the new nation’s battles with the British.

Gwinnett was born in Gloucester, England, in 1735, the son of an Anglican vicar. He was named in honor of his godmother, Barbara Button. He married Anne Bourne, and they had three children together. For much of his adult life, he worked as a merchant, but was never consistently successful. In fact, he may have fled England to come to the colonies in order to escape his creditors. After living briefly in Nova Scotia and Jamaica, Gwinnett arrived in Savannah, Georgia, where his business ventures were mostly unsuccessful.[1] Gwinnett did have some success in politics as he quickly became a leader within a faction that favored wresting political control from elites in Christ Church Parish as well as from the British. Georgia was the last of the original thirteen colonies to be organized by the British. The population was concentrated within a few miles of the Atlantic coast, with only sparse settlement in the backcountry. Much of the representation in the colonial assembly was held by landed gentry from Christ Church Parish, while other parishes had little influence.[2] Gwinnett became an outspoken leader of colonists from St. Johns Parish and claimed to represent the common people throughout all of Georgia.

The British presence was led by royal governors, the last of which was a fairly popular and capable administrator, Sir James Wright. Actions by the British government affected all of the American colonies slowly led to opposition in Georgia.[3] The opponents of British rule were known as Whigs, but the group was divided among different factions. The more conservative faction had its base in Christ Church parish, while a more radical faction, which included Button Gwinnett, had more support elsewhere. The radical faction, later known as the Popular Party, gained political strength in Georgia after the Stamp Act was enacted in Britain and after British troops fought with colonists in Lexington and Concord.[4]

Gwinnett rented a store shortly after arriving in Savannah and established himself as a merchant. That venture proved unsuccessful and Gwinnett borrowed money to buy St. Catherine’s Island in St. John’s Parish so that he could become a planter. At that time, he became active in local politics and civic affairs, becoming a justice of the peace and later a representative to the Commons House of Assembly. During his first term in legislative office, he made a name for himself as an advocate for parishes that had taxes imposed upon them without legislative representation. He also became known as an opponent of the royal governor.[5]

Gwinnet left the Assembly after one session to try to return to his plantation and stave off bankruptcy. Soon both his personal property and his land were put up for forced sale to satisfy his creditors in 1773.   Gwinnett returned to politics, claiming that his troubles and those of other Georgians were the doing of the elites from Christ Church Parish and the royal governor. Georgia did not send a delegation to the First Continental Congress, because of divisions between the different Whig coalitions. The St. Johns Parish representatives also boycotted the First Provincial Congress, but later held a Second Provincial Congress in July of 1775 which was attended by all factions, but not by Gwinnett.   Forging an alliance between his supporters in St. John’s Parish and new recruits from the western, rural areas of Georgia, Gwinnett built up a personal following. When the Continental Congress declared that Georgia should raise a continental battalion, the colonial legislature chose Gwinnett as the commander, despite his complete lack of military qualifications. However, Gwinnett never served as commander because the different factions later chose him as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, joining his friend and political ally, Lyman Hall.   The man then chosen to serve as the battalion commander was Lachlan McIntosh, an officer in George Washington’s continental army, who at the time, at least, was considered to be unaffiliated with any particular faction.[6]

Gwinnett presented his credentials in Philadelphia on May 20, 1776.    He served on some committees, but little is known about his participation in any debates on independence. Gwinnett did vote for the motion in support of independence, and he did sign the Declaration of Independence on August 2. Gwinnet returned to Georgia, probably hoping to re-gain the appointment to the battalion commander, but McIntosh was selected to remain in that position. Gwinnet was soon chosen to participate in a state constitutional convention that would draft the first of Georgia’s constitution. Once he arrived at the convention, Gwinnett was chosen as speaker. Most records of the debates at the convention have not survived to this day, but it appears that the final product was to Gwinnett’s liking. The new state constitution established relatively low property ownership requirements for voting, created a unicameral state legislature, and established a weak chief executive, elected by the legislature, who could not veto legislative actions. The new constitution also abolished the parish system of representation and created counties that would serve as administrative units of the state as well as a basis for representation in the legislature. The new document was approved in February of 1777. By that time, Gwinnett served on the Council of Safety, which assumed governmental power after the Provincial Congress adjourned. The president of the Council of Safety, Archibald Bulloch was the de facto chief executive. Bulloch died suddenly, late in that month. The Council of Safety selected Gwinnett to serve as temporary president. The only dissenting vote was cast by George McIntosh, the brother of Lachlan McIntosh.[7]

Gwinnett urged the Continental Army to form an expedition to attack British troops and sympathizers in what is now St. Augustine, Florida.   But those urgings were ignored or rejected. Gwinnett also urged the Georgia battalion to take action, but was met with resistance from Lachlan McIntosh, who thought the Georgia forces were ill-prepared to mount an operation in that territory far from their sources of supply.   Eventually, an attempt to begin an expedition did occur, but the effort was abandoned before the troops moved more than a few miles from their base of operations.

Gwinnett’s feud with the McIntosh family intensified after he received a packet of documents in March of 1777 that reported that George McIntosh had entered into a business partnership with his brothers-in-law to ship rice first to Dutch Guiana and then to the British West Indies.   The shipment took place before independence was declared, but it was a violation of the Continental Association’s prohibition of trade with British ports. George McIntosh was arrested, but later released on bail, paid for in part by members of the Council of Safety.[8]

By early May, the first assembly under the new constitution met to elect the first governor. Gwinnett expected to be chosen, but the legislature selected another member of the Popular Party, John Adam Treutlen, as governor. The legislature also reported the results of an investigation into the St. Augustine expedition, which upheld Gwinnett’s position and implicitly rejected the stance taken by Lachlan McIntosh. Enraged, McIntosh took to the floor of the Assembly and declared that Gwinnett was “a Scoundrell & Lying Rascal.” Gwinnett was not willing to allow the insult to go unchallenged. On May 15, 1777, he issued a written challenge to McIntosh to a duel on the following day. McIntosh agreed.   The following morning, standing only about a dozen paces apart, Gwinnett and McIntosh fired at one another. Both men hit their target.   McIntosh suffered a flesh wound to his thigh, but his shot shattered bone just above Gwinnet’s knee. McIntosh asked if both parties could re-load and fire again, but the seconds intervened to put an end to the duel. The antagonists shook hands, and their seconds took the wounded men home. McIntosh made a complete recovery, but Gwinnett’s wounds quickly became gangrenous. He died Monday morning, May 19, leaving behind a destitute widow and three orphaned children. He was the second of the signers of the Declaration of Independence to pass away, and the first to die violently.[9]

Gwinnett was an intriguing, controversial figure. He was in many ways politically adroit, but he was an utter failure in business and even in politics his victories were short-lived. He was loved by some of his followers but was hated by his opponents. Lachlan McIntosh was far from the first to accuse him of dishonesty and betrayal. Nonetheless, he is remembered today for his role in crafting, and signing in support of, one of America’s foundational documents, the Declaration of Independence.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. Dr. Clinger teaches courses in state and local government, Kentucky politics, intergovernmental relations, regulatory policy, and public administration. Dr. Clinger is also the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board and a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association. He currently resides in Hazel, Kentucky.  

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

[1] Davis, Robert Scott.   “The Dark and Heroic Histories of Georgia’s Signers,” Journal of the American Revolution.  February 11, 2019.  https://allthingsliberty.com/2019/02/the-dark-and-heroic-histories-of-georgias-signers/

[2] Jackson, Harvey H.  “Factional Politics in Revolutionary Georgia,” in Georgia’s Signers and the Declaration of Independence, by Edwin C. Bridges, Harvey H. Jackson, Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. and James Harvey Young. Cherokee Publishing Company, 1981.

[3] Bridges, Edwin C.  “Prelude to Independence,” in Georgia’s Signers and the Declaration of Independence, by Edwin C. Bridges, Harvey H. Jackson, Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. and James Harvey Young. Cherokee Publishing Company, 1981.

[4] Jackson, Harvey H.  “Factional Politics in Revolutionary Georgia,” in Georgia’s Signers and the Declaration of Independence, by Edwin C. Bridges, Harvey H. Jackson, Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. and James Harvey Young. Cherokee Publishing Company, 1981.

[5] Jackson, Harvey H.  “Button Gwinnett,” in Georgia’s Signers and the Declaration of Independence, by Edwin C. Bridges, Harvey H. Jackson, Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. and James Harvey Young. Cherokee Publishing Company, 1981.

[6] Jackson, ibid.

[7] Jackson, ibid. 

[8] Jackson, ibid.

[9] Fleming, Thomas H. (2011). “When Politics Was Not Only Nasty… But Dangerous”. American Heritage. 61 (1). Retrieved 24 May 2021.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 84 – Guest Essayist: Edward Lee

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Arthur Middleton (June 26, 1742-January 1, 1787) was the son of Henry Middleton and Mary Williams Middleton. Arthur’s father, Henry, served as president of the First Continental Congress in 1774 after Peyton Randolph. Arthur Middleton was educated in England at Harrow School, Westminster School, and Cambridge, Class of 1773. He studied law, also, at the Middle Temple and traveled extensively in Europe for two years prior to Independence, developing a strong appreciation of the fine arts such as music, architecture, literature, and learning Latin and Greek.

When Arthur was in his early twenties, he returned from attending school to live in his home state of South Carolina. Soon after returning home, Middleton married, and he and his bride, Mary Izard, settled at Middleton Place. They had nine children together.

Once settled back in South Carolina, Arthur became engaged in politics, interested in the activity of independence. His father, Henry Middleton, viewed negatively the colonies’ Loyalists and wanted his son to succeed him as a member of the Continental Congress to oppose the encroaching policies of the British. Due to Arthur being a vocal critic of England and Parliament’s actions, like his father, this led to the thirteen-member Council of Safety. He served on the council as a delegate of the First and Second Provincial Congresses, then succeeded his father as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776. Though a man of great wealth and much to lose, with sober knowledge of the risk to his own life and that of his family, Arthur supported the cause of freedom, voting in favor of independence from Great Britain, leading him to add his signature to the Declaration of Independence.

By the end of 1777, Arthur declined both a further role in Congress, and an election as governor of South Carolina in 1778. As part of his service, Arthur and William Henry Drayton worked together on the Great Seal of South Carolina with a design inspired by the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in June of 1776. The design holds the dates March 26 when the state constitution of South Carolina was ratified, and July 4 to mark the Declaration of Independence, and the year 1776 for the momentous events of that same year. Arthur was also instrumental in constructing the state constitution for South Carolina.

Later, as the British laid siege to Charleston in 1780, Middleton was active in the city’s defense as a member of the militia. His home of Middleton Place was attacked as well. His family escaped, but he, like Rutledge and Heyward, was captured and confined aboard ship in St. Augustine, Florida, and exchanged for British prisoners the following year, 1781, in Philadelphia.

Middleton remained in Philadelphia to continue serving in the Second Continental Congress until 1782. This was a time of discussing and crafting a governing document upon which to get their freedom and independence started even though the American Revolutionary War for independence from Britain was raging, and a better document would be needed, later resulting in the United States Constitution by 1787. In March 1781, the assembly of delegates, though now referred to as under the same Continental Congress, was then known as the Confederation Congress, or Congress of the Confederation (convened from 1781-1789), after the Articles of Confederation were approved by the states in March 1781 to decentralize government and protect their new governing system from repeating what the Americans were fighting against in the current American Revolutionary War. Moreover, the Articles of Confederation were written to unite the thirteen colonies, vest most of the power in the states so that governing remained in the hands of the American people, and limit power of the courts. Upon completing his service in Congress there, Arthur returned home to his family at Middleton Place.

Arthur Middleton accomplished much for the cause and defense of American independence, known for his unwavering patriotism and moral character. When he died, the State Gazette of South Carolina praised him as a “tender husband and parent, humane master, steady unshaken patriot, the gentleman, and the scholar.” Middleton Place passed into the care of his eldest son, Henry, who later was elected Governor of South Carolina, United States Representative, and Minister to Russia. Arthur’s other children were also known to hold positions of honor and service to America, and he was survived by eight children at the time of his passing. Arthur Middleton died at the age of 44 from a fever that would not subside, in 1787, the same year that the United States Constitution was adopted.

J. Edward Lee, Ph.D., is Professor of History at Winthrop University. Lee is a former mayor of the City of York, South Carolina.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

(November 1, 1787)

Source: Consource. Click Here to view the original document.

To the CITIZENS of the STATE of NEW-YORK.

I flatter myself that my last address established this position, that to reduce the Thirteen States into one goverment, would prove the destruction of your liberties.

But lest this truth should be doubted by some, I will now proceed to consider its merits.

Though it should be admitted, that the arguement against reducing all the states into one consolidated government, are not sufficient fully to establish this point; yet they will, at least, justify this conclusion, that in forming a constitution for such a country, great care should be taken to limit and define its powers, adjust its parts, and guard against an abuse of authority. How far attention has been paid to these objects, shall be the subject of future enquiry. When a building is to be errected which is intended to stand for ages, the foundation should be firmlylaid. The constitution proposed to your acceptance, is designed not for yourselves alone, but for generations yet unborn. The principles, therefore, upon which the social compact is founded, ought to have been clearly and precisely stated, and the most express and full declaration of rights to have been made-But on this subject there is almost an entire silence.

If we may collect the sentiments of the people of America, from their own most solemn declarations, they hold this truth as self evident, that all men are by nature free. No one man, therefore, or any class of men, have a right, by the law of nature, or of God, to assume or exercise authority over their fellows. The origin of society then is to be sought, not in any natural right which one man has to exercise authority over another, but in the united consent of those who associate. The mutual wants of men, at first dictated the propriety of forming societies; and when they were established, protection and defence pointed out the necessity of instituting government In a state of nature every individual pursues his own interest; in this pursuit it frequently happened, that the possessions or enjoyments of one were sacrificed to the views and designs of another; thus the weak were a prey to the strong, the simple and unwary were subject to impositions from those who were more crafty and designing. In this state of things, every individual was insecure; common interest therefore directed, that government should be established, in which the force of the whole community should be collected, and under such directions, as to protect and defend everyone who composed it The common good, therefore, is the end of civil government, and common consent, the foundation on which it is established.1 To effect this end, it was necessary that a certain portion of natural liberty should be surrendered, in order, that what remained should be preserved: how great a proportion of natural freedom is necessary to be yielded by individuals, when they submit to government, I shall not now enquire. So much, however, must be given up, as will be sufficient to enable those, to whom the administration of the government is committed, to establish laws for the promoting the happiness of the community, and to carry those laws into effect But it is not necessary, for this purpose, that individuals should relinquish all their natural rights. Some are of such a nature that they cannot be surrendered. Of this kind are the rights of conscience, the right of enjoying and defending life, &c. Others are not necessary to be resigned, in order to attain the end for which government is instituted, these therefore ought not to be given up. To surrender them, would counteract the very end of government, to wit, the common good. From these observations it appears, that in forming government on its true principles, the foundation should be laid in the manner I before stated, by expressly reserving to the people such of their essential natural rights, as are not necessary to be parted with. The same reasons which at first induced mankind to associate and institute government, will operate to influence them to observe this precaution. If they had been disposed to conform themselves to the rule of immutable righteousness, government would not have been requisite. It was because one part exercised fraud, oppression, and violence on the other, that men came together, and agreed that certain rules should be formed, to regulate the conduct of all, and the power of the whole community lodged in the hands of rulers to enforce an obedience to them. But rulers have the same propensities as other men; they are as likely to use the power with which they are vested for private purposes, and to the injury and oppression of those over whom they are placed, as individuals in a state of nature are to injure and oppress one another. It is therefore as proper that bounds should be set to their authority, as that government should have at first been instituted to restrain private injuries.

This principle, which seems so evidently founded in the reason and nature of things, is confirmed by universal experience. Those who have governed, have been found in all ages ever active to enlarge their powers and abridge the public liberty. This has induced the people in all countries, where any sense of freedom remained, to fix barriers against the encroachments of their rulers. The country from which we have derived our origin, is an eminent example of this. Their magna charta and bill of rights have long been the boast, as well as the security, of that nation. I need say no more, I presume, to an American, than, that this principle is a fundamental one, in all the constitutions of our own states; there is not one of them but what is either founded on a declaration or bill of rights, or has certain express reservation of rights interwoven in the body of them. From this it appears, that at a time when the pults of liberty beat high and when an appeal was made to the people to form constitutions for the government of themselves, it was their universal sense, that such declarations should make a part of their frames of government. It is therefore the more astonishing, that this grand security, to the rights of the people, is not to be found in this constitution.

It has been said, in answer to this objection, that such declaration of rights, however requisite they might be in the constitutions of the states, are not necessary in the general constitution, because, “in the former case, every thing which is not reserved is given, but in the latter the reverse of the proposition prevails, and every thing which is not given is reserved.” It requires but little attention to discover, that this mode of reasoning is rather specious than solid. The powers, rights, and authority, granted to the general government by this constitution, are as complete, with respect to every object to which they extend, as that of any state government-It reaches to every thing which concerns human happiness-Life, liberty, and property, are under its controul. There is the same reason, therefore, that the exercise of power, in this case, should be restrained within proper limits, as in that of the state governments. To set this matter in a clear light, permit me to instance some of the articles of the bills of rights of the individual states, and apply them to the case in question.

For the security of life, in criminal prosecutions, the bills of rights of most of the states have declared, that no man shall be held to answer for a crime until he is made fully acquainted with the charge brought against him; he shall not be compelled to accuse, or furnish evidence against himself-The witnesses against him shall be brought face to face, and he shall be fully heard by himself or counsel That it is essential to the security of life and liberty, that trial of facts be in the vicinity where they happen. Are not provisions of this kind as necessary in the general government, as in that ofa particular state? The powers vested in the new Congress extend in many cases to life; they are authorised to provide for the punishment ofa variety of capital crimes, and no restraint is laid upon them in its exercise, save only, that “the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall being the state where the said crimes shall have been committed.” No man is secure of a trial in the county where he is charged to have committed a crime; he may be brought from Niagara to New-York, or carried from Kentucky to Richmond for trial for an offence, supposed to be committed. What security is there, that a man shall be furnished with a full and plain description of the charges against him? That he shall be allowed to produce all proof he can in his favor? That he shall see the witnesses against him face to face, or that he shall be fully heard in his own defence by himself or counsel?

For the security of liberty it has been declared, “that excessive bail should not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel or unusual punishments inflicted-That all warrants, without oath or affirmation, to search suspected places, or seize any person, his papers or property, are grievous and oppressive.”

These provisions are as necessary under the general government asunder that of the individual states; for the power of the former is as complete to the purpose of requiring bail, imposing fines, inflicting punishments, granting search warrants, and seizing persons, papers, or property, in certain cases, as the other.

For the purpose of securing the property of the citizens, it is declared by all the states, “that in controversies at law, respecting property, the ancient mode of trial by jury is one of the best securities of the rights of the people, and ought to remain sacred and inviolable.”

Does not the same necessity exist of reserving this right, under this national compact, as in that of this state? Yet nothing is said respecting it. In the bills of rights of the states it is declared, that a well regulated militia is the proper and natural defence of a free government-That as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous, they are not to be kept up, and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and controuled by the civil power.

The same security is as necessary in this constitution, and much more so; for the general government will have the sole power to raise and to pay armies, and are under no controul in the exercise of it; yet nothing of this is to be found in this new system.

I might proceed to instance a number of other rights, which were as necessary to be reserved, such as, that elections should be free, that the liberty of the press should be held sacred; but the instances adduced, are sufficient to prove, that this argument is without foundation.2 -Besides, it is evident, that the reason here assigned was not the true one, why the framers of this constitution omitted bill of rights; if it had been, they would not have made certain reservations, while they totally omitted others of more importance. We find they have, in the 9th section of the 1st article, declared, that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless in cases rebellion-3 that no bill of attainder, or expost facto law, shall be passed-4 that no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States, &c.5 If every thing which is not given is reserved, what propriety is there in these exceptions? Does this constitution anywhere grant the power suspending the habeas corpus, to make expost facto laws, pass bills of attainder, or grant titles of nobility? It certainly does not in express terms. The only answer that can be given is, that these are implied in the general powers granted. With equal truth it may be said, that all the powers, which the bills of right, guard against the abuse of are contained or implied in the general ones granted by this constitution.6

So far it is from being true, that a bill of rights is less necessary in the general constitution than in those of the states, the contrary is evidently the fact- This system, if it is possible for the people of America to accede – to it, will be an original compact; and being the last, will, in the nature of things, vacate every former agreement inconsistent with it For it being a plan of government received and ratified by the whole people – , all other forms, which are in existence at the time of its adoption, must yield to it This is expressed in positive and unequivocal terms, in the 6th article, “That this constitution and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution, or laws of any state, to the contrary notwithstanding.7

“The senators and representatives before-mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States, and of the several states, shall be bound, by oath or affirmation, to support this constitution.” It is therefore not only necessarily implied thereby, but positively expressed, that the different state constitutions are repealed and entirely done away, so far as they are inconsistent with this, with the laws which shall be made in pursuance thereof, or with treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States; of what avail will the constitutions of the respective states be to preserve the rights of its citizens?8 should they be plead, the answer would be, the constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, is the supreme law, and all legislatures and judicial officers, whether of the general or state governments, are bound by oath to support it. No priviledge, reserved by the bills of rights, or secured by the state government, can limit the power granted by this, or restrain any laws made in pursuance of it It stands therefore on its own bottom, and must receive a construction by itself without any reference to any other-And hence it was of the highest importance, that the most precise and express declarations and reservations of rights should have been made.9

This will appear the more necessary, when it is considered, that not only the constitution and laws made in pursuance thereof, but all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, are the supreme law of the land, and supersede the constitutions of all the states.10 The power to make treaties, is vested in the president, by and with the advice and consent of two thirds of the senate. I do not find any limitation, or restriction, to the exercise of this power. The most important article in any constitution may therefore be repealed, even without a legislative act.11 Ought not a government, vested with such extensive and indefinite authority, to have been restricted by a declaration of rights? It certainly ought So clear a point is this, that I cannot help suspecting, that persons who attempt to persuade people, that such reservations were less necessary under this constitution than under those of the states, are wilfully endeavouring deceive, and to lead you into an absolute state of vassalage.

November 1, 1787

Source: Teaching American History 

MR. PRINTER, In order that people may be sufficiently impressed, with the necessity of establishing a BILL OF RIGHTS in the forming of a new constitution, it is very proper to take a short view of some of those liberties, which it is of the greatest importance for Freemen to retain to themselves, when they surrender up a part of their natural rights for the good of society.

The first of these, which it is of the utmost importance for the people to retain to themselves, which indeed they have not even the right to surrender, and which at the same time it is of no kind of advantages to government to strip them of, is the LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. I know that a ready answer is at hand, to any objections upon this head. We shall be told that in this enlightened age, the rights of conscience are perfectly secure: There is no necessity of guarding them; for no man has the remotest thoughts of invading them. If this be the case, I beg leave to reply that now is the very time to secure them.—Wise and prudent men always take care to guard against danger beforehand, and to make themselves safe whilst it is yet in their power to do it without inconvenience or risk.—who shall answer for the ebbings and flowings of opinion, or be able to say what will be the fashionable frenzy of the next generation? It would have been treated as a very ridiculous supposition, a year ago, that the charge of witchcraft would cost a person her life in the city of Philadelphia; yet the fate of the unhappy old woman called Corbmaker, who was beaten—repeatedly wounded with knives—mangled and at last killed in our streets, in obedience to the commandment which requires “that we shall not suffer a witch to live,” without a possibility of punishing or even of detecting the authors of this inhuman folly, should be an example to warn us how little we ought to trust to the unrestrained discretion of human nature.

Uniformity of opinion in science, morality, politics or religion, is undoubtedly a very great happiness to mankind; and there have not been wanting zealous champions in every age, to promote the means of securing so invaluable a blessing. If in America we have not lighted up fires to consume Heretics in religion, if we have not persecuted unbelievers to promote the unity of the faith, in matters which pertain to our final salvation in a future world, I think we have all of us been witness to something very like the same spirit, in matters which are supposed to regard our political salvation in this world. In Boston it seems at this very moment, that no man is permitted to publish a doubt of the infallibility of the late convention, without giving up his name to the people, that he may be delivered over to speedy destruction; and it is but a short time since the case was little better in this city. Now this is a portion of the very same spirit, which has so often kindled the fires of the inquisition: and the same Zealot who would hunt a man down for a difference of opinion upon a political question which is the subject of public enquiry, if he should happen to be fired with zeal for a particular species of religion, would be equally intolerant. The fact is, that human nature is still the same that ever it was: the fashion indeed changes; but the seeds of superstition, bigotry and enthusiasm, are too deeply implanted in our minds, ever to be eradicated; and fifty years hence, the French may renew the persecution of the Huguenots, whilst the Spaniards in their turn may become indifferent to their forms of religion. They are idiots who trust their future security to the whim of the present hour. One extreme is always apt to produce the contrary, and those countries, which are now the most lax in their religious notions, may in a few years become the most rigid, just as the people of this country from not being able to bear any continental government at all, are now flying into the opposite extreme of surrendering up all the powers of the different states, to one continental government.

The more I reflect upon the history of mankind, the more I am disposed to think that it is our duty to secure the essential rights of the people, by every precaution; for not an avenue has been left unguarded, through which oppression could possibly enter in any government; without some enemy of the public peace and happiness improving the opportunity to break in upon the liberties of the people; and none have been more frequently successful in the attempt, than those who have covered their ambitious designs under the garb of a fiery zeal for religious orthodoxy. What has happened in other countries and in other ages, may very possibly happen again in our own country, and for aught we know, before the present generation quits the stage of life. We ought therefore in a bill of rights to secure, in the first place, by the most express stipulations, the sacred rights of conscience. Has this been done in the constitution, which is now proposed for the consideration of the people of this country?—Not a word on this subject has been mentioned in any part of it; but we are left in this important article, as well as many others, entirely to the mercy of our future rulers.

But supposing our future rulers to be wicked enough to attempt to invade the rights of conscience; I may be asked how will they be able to effect so horrible a design? I will tell you my friends—The unlimited power of taxation will give them the command of all the treasures of the continent; a standing army will be wholly at their devotion, and the authority which is given them over the militia, by virtue of which they may, if they please, change all the officers of the militia on the continent in one day, and put in new officers whom they can better trust; by which they can subject all the militia to strict military laws, and punish the disobedient with death, or otherwise, as they shall think right: by which they can march the militia back and forward from one end of the continent to the other, at their discretion; these powers, if they should ever fall into bad hands, may be abused to the worst of purposes. Let us instance one thing arising from this right of organizing and governing the militia. Suppose a man alledges that he is conscientiously scrupulous of bearing Arms.—By the bill of rights of Pennsylvania he is bound only to pay an equivalent for his personal service.—What is there in the new proposed constitution to prevent his being dragged like a Prussian soldier to the camp and there compelled to bear arms?—This will depend wholly upon the wisdom and discretion of the future legislature of the continent in the framing their militia laws; and I have lived long enough to hear the practice of commuting personal service for a paltry fine in time of war and foreign invasion most severely reprobated by some persons who ought to have judged more rightly on the subject—Such flagrant oppressions as these I dare say will not happen at the beginning of the new government; probably not till the powers of government shall be firmly fixed; but it is a duty we owe to ourselves and our posterity if possible to prevent their ever happening. I hope and trust that there are few persons at present hardy enough to entertain thoughts of creating any religious establishment for this country; although I have lately read a piece in the newspaper, which speaks of religious as well as civil and military offices, as being hereafter to be disposed of by the new government; but if a majority of the continental legislature should at any time think fit to establish a form of religion, for the good people of this continent, with all the pains and penalties which in other countries are annexed to the establishment of a national church, what is there in the proposed constitution to hinder their doing so? Nothing; for we have no bill of rights, and every thing therefore is in their power and at their discretion. And at whose discretion? We know not any more than we know the fates of those generations which are yet unborn.

It is needless to repeat the necessity of securing other personal rights in the forming a new government. The same argument which proves the necessity of securing one of them shews also the necessity of securing others. Without a bill of rights we are totally insecure in all of them; and no man can promise himself with any degree of certainty that his posterity will enjoy the inestimable blessings of liberty of conscience, of freedom of speech and of writing and publishing their thoughts on public matters, of trial by jury, of holding themselves, their houses and papers free from seizure and search upon general suspicion or general warrants; or in short that they will be secured in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property without depending on the will and pleasure of their rulers.

If we pass over the consideration of this subject so essential to the preservation of our liberties, and turn our eyes to the form of the government which the Convention have proposed to us, I apprehend that changing the prospect will not wholly alleviate our fears.—A few words on this head, will close the present letter. In the first place the office of President of the United States appears to me to be clothed with such powers as are dangerous. To be the fountain of all honors in the United States, commander in chief of the army, navy and militia, with the power of making treaties and of granting pardons, and to be vested with an authority to put a negative upon all laws, unless two thirds of both houses shall persist in enacting it, and put their names down upon calling the yeas and nays for that purpose, is in reality to be a KING as much a King as the King of Great Britain, and a King too of the worst kind;—an elective King.—If such powers as these are to be trusted in the hands of any man, they ought for the sake of preserving the peace of the community at once to be made hereditary.—Much as I abhor kingly government, yet I venture to pronounce where kings are admitted to rule they should most certainly be vested with hereditary power. The election of a King whether it be in America or Poland, will be a scene of horror and confusion; and I am perfectly serious when I declare that, as a friend to my country, I shall despair of any happiness in the United States until this office is either reduced to a lower pitch of power or made perpetual and hereditary.—When I say that our future President will be as much a king as the king of Great-Britain, I only ask of my readers to look into the constitution of that country, and then tell me what important prerogative the King of Great-Britain is entitled to, which does not also belong to the President during his continuance in office.—The King of Great-Britain it is true can create nobility which our President cannot; but our President will have the power of making all the great men, which comes to the same thing.—All the difference is that we shall be embroiled in contention about the choice of the man, whilst they are at peace under the security of an hereditary succession.—To be tumbled headlong from the pinnacle of greatness and be reduced to a shadow of departed royalty is a shock almost too great for human nature to endure. It will cost a man many struggles to resign such eminent powers, and ere long, we shall find, some one who will be very unwilling to part with them.—Let us suppose this man to be a favorite with his army, and that they are unwilling to part with their beloved commander in chief; or to make the thing familiar, let us suppose, a future President and commander in chief adored by his army and the militia to as great a degree as our late illustrious commander in chief; and we have only to suppose one thing more, that this man is without the virtue, the moderation and love of liberty which possessed the mind of our late general, and this country will be involved at once in war and tyranny. So far is it from its being improbable that the man who shall hereafter be in a situation to make the attempt to perpetuate his own power, should want the virtues of General Washington; that it is perhaps a chance of one hundred millions to one that the next age will not furnish an example of so disinterested a use of great power. We may also suppose, without trespassing upon the bounds of probability, that this man may not have the means of supporting in private life the dignity of his former station; that like Caesar, he may be at once ambitious and poor, and deeply involved in debt.—Such a man would die a thousand deaths rather than sink from the heights of splendor and power into obscurity and wretchedness. We are certainly about giving our president too much or too little; and in the course of less than twenty years we shall find that we have given him enough to enable him to take all. It would be infinitely more prudent to give him at once as much as would content him, so that we might be able to retain the rest in peace; for if once power is seized by violence not the least fragment of liberty will survive the shock. I would therefore advise my country-men seriously to ask themselves this question;—Whether they are prepared TO RECEIVE A KING? If they are to say at once, and make the kingly office hereditary; to frame a constitution that should set bounds to his power, and, as far as possible secure the liberty of the subject. If we are not prepared to receive a king, let us call another convention to revise the proposed constitution, and form it anew on the principles of a confederacy of free republics; but by no means, under pretence of a republic, to lay the foundation for a military government, which is the worst of all tyrannies.

Source: The Complete Anti-Federalist, ed. Herbert J. Storing (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1981) Volume 3, 34-38.

Source: Consource. Click Here To View Original Document.

LETTER IV.

OCTOBER 12th, 1787.

DEAR SIR, It will not be possible to establish in the federal courts the jury trial of the vicinage so well as in the state courts.

Third. There appears to me to be not only a premature deposit of some important powers in the general government-but many of those deposited there are undefined, and may be used to good or bad purposes as honest or designing men shall prevail. By Art. 1, Sect. 2, representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states, &c-same art. sect. 8, the Congress shall have powers to lay and collect taxes, duties, &c. for the common defence and general welfare, but all duties, imposts and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States: By the first recited clause, direct taxes shall be apportioned on the states. This seems to favour the idea suggested by some sensible men and writers, that Congress, as to direct taxes, will only have power to make requisitions; but the latter clause, power to tax immediately individuals, without the intervention of the state legislatures[;] in fact the first clause appears to me only to provide that each state shall pay a certain portion of the tax, and the latter to provide that Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, that is to assess upon, and to collect of the individuals in the state, the states quota; but these still consider as undefined powers, because judicious men understand them differently.

It is doubtful whether the vice president is to have any qualifications; none are mentioned; but he may serve as president, and it may be inferred, he ought to be qualified therefore as the president; but the qualifications of the president are required only of the person to be elected president. By art. the 2, sect. 2. “But the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper in the president alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of the departments:” Who are inferior officers? May not a Congress disposed to vestthe appointment of all officers in the president, under this clause, vest the appointment of almost every officer in the president alone, and destroy the check mentioned in the first part of the clause, and lodged in the senate. It is true, this check is badly lodged, but then some check upon the first magistrate in appointing officers, ought, it appears by the opinion of the convention, and by the general opinion, to be established in the constitution. By art. 3, sect. 2, the supreme court shall have appellate jurisdiction as to law and facts with such exceptions, &c. to what extent it is intended the exceptions shall be carried-Congress may carry them so far as to annihilate substantially the appellate jurisdiction, and the clause be rendered of very little importance.

4th. There are certain rights which we have always held sacred in the United States, and recognized in all our constitutions, and which, by the adoption of the new constitution, its present form will be left unsecured. By article 6, the proposed constitution, and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby; any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

It is to be observed that when the people shall adopt the proposed constitution it will be their last and supreme act; it will be adopted not by the people of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, &c. but by the people of the United States; and whenever this constitution, or any part of it, shall be incompatible with the antient customs, rights, the laws or the constitutions heretofore established in the United States, it will entirely abolish them and do them away: And not only this, but the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance of the federal constitution will be also supreme laws, and whenever they shall be incompatible with those customs, rights, laws or constitutions heretofore established, they will also entirely abolish them and do them away.

By the article before recited, treaties also made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law: It is not said that these treaties shall be made in pursuance of the constitution-nor are there any constitutional bounds set to those who shall make them: The president and two thirds of the senate will be empowered to make treaties indefinitely, and when these treaties shall be made, they will also abolish all laws and state constitutions incompatible with them. This power in the president and senate is absolute, and the judges will be bound to allow full force to whatever rule, article or thing the president and senate shall establish by treaty, whether it be practicable to set any bounds to thosewho make treaties, I am not able to say: If not, it proves that this power ought to be more safely lodged.

The federal constitution, the laws of congress made in pursuance of the constitution, and all treaties must have full force and effect in all parts of the United States; and all other laws, rights and constitutions which stand in their way must yield: It is proper the national laws should be supreme, and superior to state or district laws; but then the national laws ought to yield to alienable or fundamental rights and national laws, made by a few men, should extend only to a few national objects. This will not be the case with the laws of congress: To have any proper idea of their extent, we must carefully examine the legislative, executive and judicial powers proposed to be lodged in the general government, and consider them in connection with a general clause in art. 1 sect. 8.in these words (after enumerating a number of powers) “To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof-The powers of this government as has been observed, extend to internal as well as external objects, and to those objects to which all others are subordinate; it is almost impossible to have a just conception of these powers, or of the extent and number of the laws which may be deemed necessary and proper to carry them into effect, till we shall come to exercise those powers and make the laws. In making laws to carry those powers into effect, it will be expected, that a wise and prudent congress will pay respect to the opinions of a free people, and bottom their laws on those principles which have been considered as essential and fundamental in the British, and in our government: But a congress of a different character will not be bound by the constitution to pay respect to those principles. It is said, that when the people make a constitution, and delegate powers, that all powers not delegated by them to those who govern, is reserved in the people; and that the people, in the present case, have reserved in themselves, and in there state governments, every right and power not expressly given by the federal constitution to those who shall administer the national government. It is said, on the other hand, that the people, when they make a constitution, yield all power not expressly reserved to themselves. The truth is, in either case, it is mere matter of opinion, and men usually take either side of the argument, as will best answer their purposes: But the general presumption being, that men who govern, will, in doubtful cases, construe laws and constitutions most favourably for encreasing their own powers; all wise and prudent people, in forming constitutions, have drawn the line, and carefullynever infringe. It is here wisely stipulated, that the federal legislature shall never pass a bill of attainder, or EXPOST FACTO law; that no tax shall be laid on articles exported, &c. The establishing of one right implies the necessity establishing another and similar one.

On the whole, the position appears to me to be undeniable, that this bill of rights ought to be carried farther, and some other principles established, as a part of this fundamental compact between the people of the United States and their federal rulers.

It is true, we are not disposed to differ much, at present, about religion; but when we are making a constitution, it is to be hoped, for ages and millions yet unborn, why not establish the free exercise of religion, as a part of the national compact There are other essential rights, which we have justly understood to be the rights of freemen; as freedom from hasty and unreasonable search warrants, warrants not founded on oath, and not issued with due caution, for searching and seizing men’s papers, property, and persons. The trials by jury in civil causes, it is said, varies so much in the several states, that no words could be found for the uniform establishment of it. If so the federal legislation will not be able to establish it by any general laws. confess I am of opinion it may be established, but not in that beneficial manner in which we may enjoy it, for the reasons before mentioned. When I speak of the jury trial of the vicinage, or the trial of the fact in the neighbourhood-I do not lay so much stress upon the circumstance of our being tried by our neighbours: in this enlightened countrymen may be probably impartially tried by those who do not live very near them: but the trial of facts in the neighbourhood is of great importance in other respects. Nothing can be more essential than the cross examining witnesses, and generally before the triers of the facts in question. The common people can establish facts with much more ease with oral than written evidence; when trials of facts are removed to a distance from the homes of the parties and witnesses, oral evidence becomes intolerably expensive, and the parties must depend on written evidence, which to the common people is expensive and almost useless; it must be frequently taken ex-parte, and but very seldom leads to the proper discovery of truth.

The trial by jury is very important in another point of view. It is essential in every free country, that common people should have a part and share of influence, in the judicial as well as in the legislative department – To hold open to them the offices of senators, judges, and officers to fill which an expensive education is required, cannot answer any valuable purposes for them; they are not in a situation to be brought forward and to fill those offices; these, and most other offices of any considerable importance, will be occupied by the few. The few, the wellborn, &c. as Mr. Adams calls them, in judicial decisions as well as in legislation, are generally disposed, and very naturally too, to favour those of their own description.

The trial by jury in the judicial department, and the collection of the people by their representatives in the legislature, are those fortunate inventions which have procured for them in this country, their true proportion of influence, and the wisest and most fit means of protecting themselves in the community. Their situation, as jurors and representatives, enables them to acquire information and knowledge in the affairs and government of the society; and to come forward, in turn, as the centinels and guardians of each other. I am very sorry that even a few of our countrymen should consider jurors and representatives in a different point of view, as ignorant, troublesome bodies, which ought not to have any share in the concerns of government.

I confess I do not see in what cases the Congress can, with any pretence of right, make a law to suppress the freedom of the press; though I am not clear, that Congress is restrained from laying any duties whatever on printing and from laying duties particularly heavy on certain pieces printed, and perhaps Congress may require large bonds for the payment of these duties. Should the printer say, the freedom of the press was secured by the constitution of the state in which he lived, Congress might, and perhaps, with great propriety, answer, that the federal constitution – is the only compact existing between them and the people in this compact the people have named no others, and therefore Congress, in exercising the powers assigned them, and in making laws to carry them into execution, are restrained by nothing beside the federal constitution, anymore than a state legislature is restrained by a compact between the magistrates and people of a county, city, or town of which the people- in forming the state constitution, have taken no notice.

It is not my object to enumerate rights of inconsiderable importance; but there are others, no doubt, which ought to be established as a fundamental part of the national system.

It is worthy of observation, that all treaties are made by foreign nations with a confederacy of thirteen states-that the western country is attached to thirteen states-thirteen states have jointly and severally engaged to pay the public debts-Should a new government be formed of nine, ten, eleven, or twelve states, those treaties could not be considered as binding on the foreign nations who made them. However, I believe the probability to be, that if nine states adopt the constitution, the others will.

It may also be worthy our examination, how far the provision for amending this plan, when it shall be adopted, is of any importance. No measures can be taken towards amendments, unless two-thirds of the Congress, or two-thirds of the legislatures of the several states shall agree-While power is in the hands of the people, or democratic part of the community, more especially as at present, it is easy, according to the general course of human affairs, for the few influential men in the community, to obtain conventions, alterations in government, and to persuade the common people they may change for the better, and to get from them a part of the power: But when power is once transferred from the many to the few, all changes become extremely difficult; the government, in this case, being beneficial to the few, they will be exceedingly artful and adroit in preventing any measures which may lead to a change; and nothing will produce it, but great exertions and severe struggles on the part of the common people. Every man of reflection must see, that the change now proposed, is a transfer of power from the many to the few, and the probability is, the artful and ever active aristocracy, will prevent all peaceable measures for changes, unless when they shall discover some favorable moment to increase their own influence. I am sensible, thousands of men in the United States, are disposed – to adopt the proposed constitution, though they perceive it to be essentially defective, under an idea that amendment of it, may be obtained when necessary. This is a pernicious idea, it argues a servility of character totally unfit for the support of free government; it is very repugnant to that perpetual jealousy respecting liberty, so absolutely necessary in all free states, spoken of by Mr. Dickinson.-However, if our countrymen are so soon changed, and the language of 1774, is become odious to them, it will be in vain to use the language of freedom, or to attempt to rouse them to free enquiries: But I shall never believe this is the case with them, whatever present appearances may be, till I shall have very strong evidence indeed of it.

Source: Consource. Click Here To View Original Document.

(Continued. )

I said in my last number, that the supreme court under this constitution would be exalted above all other power in the government, and subject to no controul. The business of this paper will be to illustrate this, and to shew the danger that will result from it. I question whether the world ever saw, in any period of it, a court of justice invested with such immense powers, and yet placed in a situation so little responsible. Certain it is, that in England, and in the several states, where we have been taught to believe, the courts of law are put upon the most prudent establishment, they are on a very different footing. The judges in England, it is true, hold their offices during their good behaviour, but then their determinations are subject to correction by the house of lords; and their power is by no means so extensive as that of the proposed supreme court of the union.-I believe they in no instance assume the authority to set aside an act of parliament under the idea that it is inconsistent with their constitution. They consider themselves bound to decide according to the existing laws of the land, and never undertake to controul them by adjudging that they are inconsistent with the constitution- much less are they vested with the power of giving an equitable construction to the constitution.

The judges in England are under the controul of the legislature, for they are bound to determine according to the laws passed by them. But the judges under this constitution will controul the legislature, for the supreme court are authorised in the last resort, to determine what is the extent of the powers of the Congress; they are to give the constitution an explanation, and there is no power above them to sit aside their judgment. The framers of this constitution appear to have followed that of the British, in rendering the judges independent, by granting them their offices during good behaviour, without following the constitution of England, in instituting a tribunal in which their errors may be corrected; and without adverting to this, that the judicial under this system have a power which is above the legislative, and which indeed transcends any power before given to a judicial by any free government under heaven.

I do not object to the judges holding their commissions during good behaviour. I suppose it a proper provision provided they were made properly responsible. But I say, this system has followed the English government in this, while it has departed from almost every other principle of their jurisprudence, under the idea, of rendering the judges independent; which, in the British constitution, means no more than that they hold their places during good behaviour, and have fixed salaries, they have made the judges independent, in the fullest sense of the word. There is no power above them, to controul any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controuled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself. Before I proceed to illustrate the truth of these assertions, I beg liberty to make one remark. Though in my opinion the judges ought to hold their offices during good behaviour, yet I think it is clear, that the reasons in favour of this establishment of the judges in England, do by no means apply to this country.

The great reason assigned, why the judges in Britain ought to be commissioned during good behaviour, is this, that they may be placed in a situation, not to be influenced by the crown, to give such decisions, as would tend to increase its powers and prerogatives. While the judges held their places at the will and pleasure of the king, on whom they depended not only for their offices, but also for their salaries, they were subject to every undue influence. If the crown wished to carry a favorite point, to accomplish which the aid of the courts of law was necessary, the pleasure of the king would be signified to the judges. And it required the spirit of a martyr, for the judges to determine contrary to the king’s will. – They were absolutely dependent upon him both for their offices and livings. The king, holding his office during life, and transmitting it to his posterity as an inheritance, has much stronger inducements to increase the prerogatives of his office than those who hold their offices for stated periods, or even for life. Hence the English nation gained a great point, in favour of liberty. When they obtained the appointment of the judges, during good behaviour, they got from the crown a concession, which deprived it of one of the most powerful engines with which it might enlarge the boundaries of the royal prerogative and encroach on the liberties of the people. But these reasons do not apply to this country, we have no hereditary monarch; those who appoint the judges do not hold their offices for life, nor do they descend to their children. The same arguments, therefore, which will conclude in favor of the tenor of the judge’s offices for good behaviour, lose a considerable part of their weight when applied to the state and condition of America. But much less can it be shewn, that the nature of our government requires that the courts should be placed beyond all account more independent, so much so as to be above controul.

I have said that the judges under this system will be independent in the strict sense of the word: To prove this I will shew-That there is no power above them that can controul their decisions, or correct their errors. There is no authority that can remove them from office for any errors or want of capacity, or lower their salaries, and in many cases their power is superior to that of the legislature.

1st. There is no power above them that can correct their errors or controul their decisions- The adjudications of this court are final and irreversible, for there is no court above them to which appeals can lie, either in error or on the merits.-In this respect it differs from the courts in England, for there the house of lords is the highest court, to whom appeals, in error, are carried from the highest of the courts of law.

2d. They cannot be removed from office or suffer a dimunition of their salaries, for any error in judgement or want of capacity.

It is expressly declared by the constitution,-“That they shall at stated times receive a compensation for their services which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.”

The only clause in the constitution which provides for the removal of the judges from offices, is that which declares, that “the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office, on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” By this paragraph, civil officers, in which the judges are included, are removable only for crimes. Treason and bribery are named, and the rest are included under the general terms of high crimes and misdemeanors. – Errors in judgement, or want of capacity to discharge the duties of the office, can never be supposed to be included in these words, high crimes and misdemeanors. A man may mistake a case in giving judgment, or manifest that he is incompetent to the discharge of the duties of a judge, and yet give no evidence of corruption or want of integrity. To support the charge, it will be necessary to give in evidence some facts that will shew, that the judges commited the error from wicked and corrupt motives.

3d. The power of this court is in many cases superior to that of the legislature. I have shewed, in a former paper, that this court will be authorised to decide upon the meaning of the constitution, and that, not only according to the natural and obvious meaning of the words, but also according to the spirit and intention of it. In the exercise of this power they will not be subordinate to, but above the legislature. For all the departments of this government will receive their powers, so far as they are expressed in the constitution, from the people immediately, who are the source of power. The legislature can only exercise such powers as are given them by the constitution, they cannot assume any of the rights annexed to the judicial, for this plain reason, that the same authority which vested the legislature with their powers, vested the judicial with theirs-both are derived from the same source, both therefore are equally valid, and the judicial hold their powers independently of the legislature, as the legislature do of the judicial.-The supreme court then have a right, independent of the legislature, to give a construction to the constitution and every part of it, and there is no power provided in this system to correct their construction or do it away. If, therefore, the legislature pass any laws, inconsistent with the sense the judges put upon the constitution, they will declare it void; and therefore in this respect their power is superior to that of the legislature. In England the judges are not only subject to have their decisions set aside by the house of lords, for error, but in cases where they give an explanation to the laws or constitution of the country, contrary to the sense of the parliament, though the parliament will not set aside the judgement of the court, yet, they have authority, by a new law, to explain a former one, and by this means to prevent a reception of such decisions. But no such power is in the legislature. The judges are supreme-and no law, explanatory of the constitution, will be binding on them.

From the preceding remarks, which have been made on the judicial powers proposed in this system, the policy of it may be fully developed.

I have, in the course of my observation on this constitution, affirmed and endeavored to shew, that it was calculated to abolish entirely the state governments, and to melt down the states into one entire government, for every purpose as well internal and local, as external and national. In this opinion the opposers of the system have generally agreed-and this has been uniformly denied by its advocates in public. Some individuals, indeed, among them, will confess, that it has this tendency, and scruple not to say, it is what they wish; and I will venture to predict, without the spirit of prophecy, that if it is adopted without amendments, or some such precautions as will ensure amendments immediately after its adoption, that the same gentlemen who have employed their talents and abilities with such success to influence the public mind to adopt this plan, will employ the same to persuade the people, that it will be for their good to abolish the state governments as useless and burdensome.

Perhaps nothing could have been better conceived to facilitate the abolition of the state governments than the constitution of the judicial. They will be able to extend the limits of the general government gradually, and by insensible degrees, and to accomodate themselves to the temper of the people. Their decisions on the meaning of the constitution will commonly take place in cases which arise between individuals, with which the public will not be generally acquainted; one adjudication will form a precedent to the next, and this to a following one. These cases will immediately affect individuals only; so that a series of determinations will probably take place before even the people will be informed of them. In the mean time all the art and address of those who wish for the change will be employed to make converts to their opinion. The people will be told, that their state officers, and state legislatures are a burden and expence without affording any solid advantage, for that all the laws passed by them, might be equally well made by the general legislature. If to those who will be interested in the change, be added, those who will be under their influence, and such who will submit to almost any change of government, which they can be persuaded to believe will ease them of taxes, it is easy to see, the party who will favor the abolition of the state governments would be far from being inconsiderable.-In this situation, the general legislature, might pass one law after another, extending the general and abridging the state jurisdictions, and to sanction their proceedings would have a course of decisions of the judicial to whom the constitution has committed the power of explaining the constitution.-If the states remonstrated, the constitutional mode of deciding upon the validity of the law, is with the supreme court, and neither people, nor state legislatures, nor the general legislature can remove them or reverse their decrees.

Had the construction of the constitution been left with the legislature, they would have explained it at their peril; if they exceed their powers, or sought to find, in the spirit of the constitution, more than was expressed in the letter, the people from whom they derived their power could remove them, and do themselves right; and indeed I can see no other remedy that the people can have against their rulers for encroachments of this nature. A constitution is a compact of a people with their rulers; if the rulers break the compact, the people have a right and ought to remove them and do themselves justice; but in order to enable them to do this with the greater facility, those whom the people chuse at stated periods, should have the power in the last resort to determine the sense of the compact; if they determine contrary to the understanding of the people, an appeal will lie to the people at the period when the rulers are to be elected, and they will have it in their power to remedy the evil; but when this power is lodged in the hands of men independent of the people, and of their representatives, and who are not, constitutionally, accountable for their opinions, no way is left to controul them but with a high hand and an outstretched arm.

Source: The Complete Anti-Federalist, ed. Herbert J. Storing (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1981) Volume Four, 81-83.

To the People.

There cannot be a doubt, that, while the trade of this continent remains free, the activity of our countrymen will secure their full share. All the estimates for the present year, let them be made by what party they may, suppose the balance of trade to be largely in our favour. The credit of our merchants is, therefore, fully established in foreign countries. This is a sufficient proof, that when business is unshackled, it will find out that channel which is most friendly to its course. We ought, therefore, to be exceedingly cautious about diverting or restraining it. Every day produces fresh proofs, that people, under the immediate pressure of difficulties, do not, at first glance, discover the proper relief. The last year, a desire to get rid of embarrassments induced many honest people to agree to a tender-act, and many others, of a different description, to obstruct the courts of justice. Both these methods only increased the evil they were intended to cure. Experience has since shewn, that, instead of trying to lessen an evil by altering the present course of things, every endeavour should have been applied to facilitate the course of law, and thus to encourage a mutual confidence among the citizens, which increases the resources of them all, and renders easy the payment of debts. By this means one does not grow rich at the expense of another, but all are benefited. The case is the same with the states. Pennsylvania, with one port and a large territory, is less favourably situated for trade than the Massachusetts, which has an extensive coast in proportion to its limits of jurisdiction. Accordingly a much larger proportion of our people are engaged in maritime affairs. We ought therefore to be particularly attentive to securing so great an interest. It is vain to tell us that we ought to overlook local interests. It is only by protecting local concerns, that the interest of the whole is preserved. No man when he enters into society, does it from a view to promote the good of others, but he does it for his own good. All men having the same view are bound equally to promote the welfare of the whole. To recur then to such a principle as that local interests must be disregarded, is requiring of one man to do more than another, and is subverting the foundation of a free government. The Philadelphians would be shocked with a proposition to place the seat of general government and the unlimited right to regulate trade in the Massachusetts. There can be no greater reason for our surrendering the preference to them. Such sacrifices, however we may delude ourselves with the form of words, always originate in folly, and not in generosity.

Let me now request your attention a little while to the actual state of publick credit, that we may see whether it has not been as much misrepresented as the state of our trade.

At the beginning of the present year, the whole continental debt was about twelve millions of pounds in our money. About one quarter part of this sum was due to our foreign creditors. Of these France was the principal, and called for the arrears of interest. A new loan of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds was negotiated in Holland, at five per cent. to pay the arrears due to France. At first sight this has the appearance of bad economy, and has been used for the villainous purpose of disaffecting the people. But in the course of this same year. Congress have negotiated the sale of as much of their western lands on the Ohio and Mississippi, an amount nearly to the whole sum of the foreign debt; and instead of a dead loss by borrowing money at five per cent. to the amount of an hundred and twenty thousand pounds, in one sum, they make a saving of the interest at six per cent. on three millions of their domestick debt, which is an annual saving of an hundred and eighty thousand pounds. It is easy to see how such an immense fund as the western territory may be applied to the payment of the foreign debt. Purchasers of the land would as willingly procure any kind of the produce of the United States as they would buy loan office certificates to pay for the land. The produce thus procured would easily be negotiated for the benefit of our foreign creditors. I do not mean to insinuate that no other provision should be made for our creditors, but only to shew that our credit is not so bad in other countries as has been represented, and that our resources are fully equal to the pressure.

The perfection of government depends on the equality of its operation, as far as human affairs will admit, upon all parts of the empire, and upon all the citizens. Some inequalities indeed will necessarily take place. One man will be obliged to travel a few miles further than another man to procure justice. But when he has travelled, the poor man ought to have the same measure of justice as the rich one. Small inequalities may be easily compensated. There ought, however, to be no inequality in the law itself, and the government ought to have the same authority in one place as in another. Evident as this truth is, the most plausible argument in favour of the new plan is drawn from the inequality of its operation in different states. In Connecticut, they have been told that the bulk of the revenue will be raised by impost and excise, and therefore they need not be afraid to trust Congress with the power of levying a dry tax at pleasure. New-York, and Massachusetts, are both more commercial states than Connecticut. The latter, therefore, hopes that the other two will pay the bulk of the continental expense. The argument is in itself delusive. If the trade is not over-taxed, the consumer pays it. If the trade is over-taxed, it languishes, and by the ruin of trade the farmer loses his market. The farmer has in truth no other advantage from imposts than that they save him the trouble of collecting money for the government. He neither gets or loses money by changing the mode of taxation. The government indeed finds it the easiest way to raise the revenue; and the reason is that the tax is by this means collected where the money circulates most freely. But if the argument was not delusive, it ought to conclude against the plan, because it would prove the unequal operation of it, and if any saving is to be made by the mode of taxing, the saving should be applied towards our own debt, and not to the payment of the part of a continental burden which Connecticut ought to discharge. It would be impossible to refute in writing all the delusions made use of to force this system through. Those respecting the publick debt, and the benefit of imposts, are the most important, and these I have taken pains to explain. In one instance indeed, the impost does raise money at the direct expense of the seaports. This is when goods are imported subject to a duty, and re-exported without a drawback. Whatever benefit is derived from this source, surely should not be transferred to another state, at least till our own debts are cleared.

Another instance of unequal operation is, that it establishes different degrees of authority in different states, and thus creates different interests. The lands in New-Hampshire having been formerly granted by this state, and afterwards by that state, to private persons, the whole authority of trying titles becomes vested in a continental court, and that state loses a branch of authority, which the others retain, over their own citizens.

I have now gone through two parts of my argument, and have proved the efficiency of the state governments for internal regulation, and the disadvantages of the new system, at least some of the principal. The argument has been much longer than I at first apprehended, or, possibly, I should have been deterred from it. The importance of the question has, however, prevented me from relinquishing it.

Source: Consource. Click Here To View Original Document.

To the PEOPLE of the State of NEW-YORK.

It was intended in this Number to have prosecuted the enquiry into the organization of this new system; particularly to have considered the dangerous and premature union of the President and Senate, and the mixture of legislative, executive, and judicial powers in the Senate.

But there is such an intimate connection between the several branches in whom the different species of authority is lodged, and the powers with which they are invested, that on reflection it seems necessary first to proceed to examine the nature and extent of the powers granted to the legislature.

This enquiry will assist us the better to determine, whether the legislature is so constituted, as to provide proper checks and restrictions for the security of our rights, and to guard against the abuse of power-For the means should be suited to the end; a government should be framed with a view to the objects to which it extends: if these be few in number, and of such a nature as to give but small occasion or opportunity to work oppression in the exercise of authority, there will be less need of a numerous representation, and special guards against abuse, than if the powers of the government are very extensive, and include a great variety of cases. It will also be found necessary to examine the extent of these powers, in order to form a just opinion how far this system can be considered as a confederation, or a consolidation of the states. Many of the advocates for, and most of the opponents to this system, agree that the form of government most suitable for the United States, is that of a confederation. The idea of a confederated government is that of a number of independent states entering into a compact, for the conducting certain general concerns, in which they have a common interest, leaving the management of their internal and local affairs to their separate governments. But whether the system proposed is of this nature cannot be determined without a strict enquiry into the powers proposed to be granted.

This constitution considers the people of the several states as one body corporate, and is intended as an original compact, it will therefore dissolve all contracts which may be inconsistent with it. This not only results from its nature, but is expressly declared in the 6th article of it. The design of the constitution is expressed in the preamble, to be, “in order to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity.” These are the ends this government is to accomplish, and for which it is invested with certain powers, among these is the power “to make all laws which are necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.”1 It is a rule in construing a law to consider the objects the legislature had in view in passing it, and to give it such an explanation as to promote their intention. The same rule will apply in explaining a constitution. The great objects then are declared in this preamble in general and indefinite terms to be to provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and an express power being vested in the legislature to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution all the powers vested in the general government. The inference is natural that the legislature will have an authority to make all laws which they shall judge necessary for the common safety, and to promote the general welfare. This amounts to a power to make laws at discretion: No terms can be found more indefinite than these, and it is obvious, that the legislature alone must judge what laws are proper and necessary for the purpose. It may be said, that this way explaining the constitution, is torturing and making it speak what it never intended. This is far from my intention, and I shall not even insist upon this implied power, but join issue with those who say we are to collect the idea of the powers given from the express words of the clauses granting them; and it will not be difficult to shew that the same authority is expressly given which is supposed to be implied in the forgoing paragraphs.

In the 1st article, 8th section, it is declared, “that Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence, and general welfare of the United States.” In the preamble, the intent of the constitution, among other things, is declared to be to provide for the common defence, and promote the general welfare, and in this clause the power is in express words given to Congress “to provide for the common defence, and general welfare”-And in the last paragraph of the same section there is an express authority to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution this power. It is therefore evident, that the legislature under this constitution may pass any law which they may think proper.2 It is true the 9th section restrains their power with respect to certain objects. But these restrictions are very limited, some of them improper, some unimportant, and others not easily understood, as I shall hereafter shew. It has been urged that the meaning I give to this part of the constitution is not the true one, that the intent of it is to confer on the legislature the power to lay and collect taxes, &c. in order to provide for the common defence and general welfare. To this I would reply, that the meaning and intent of the constitution is to be collected from the words of it, and submit to the public, whether the construction I have given it is not the most natural and easy. But admitting the contrary opinion to prevail, I shall nevertheless, be able to shew, that the same powers are substantially vested in the general government, by several other articles in the constitution. It invests the legislature with authority to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, in order to provide for the common defence, and promote the general welfare, and to pass all laws which may be necessary and proper for carrying this power into effect. To comprehend the extent of this authority, it will be requisite to examine 1st. what is included in this power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.

2d. What is implied in the authority, to pass all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying this power into execution.

3d. What limitation, if any, is set to the exercise of this power by the constitution.

1st. To detail the particulars comprehended in the general terms, taxes, duties, imposts and excises, would require a volume, instead of a single piece in a newspaper. Indeed it would be a task far beyond my ability, and to which no one can be competent, unless possessed of a mind capable of comprehending every possible source of revenue; for they extend to every possible way of raising money, whether by director indirect taxation. Under this clause may be imposed a poll-tax, a land-tax, a tax on houses and buildings, on windows and fire places, on cattle and on all kinds of personal property:-It extends to duties on all kinds of goods to any amount, to tonnage and poundage on vessels, to duties on written instruments, news-papers, almanacks, and books:-It comprehends an excise on all kinds of liquors, spirits, wines, cyder, beer, &c. and indeed takes in duty or excise on every necessary or conveniency of life; whether of foreign or home growth or manufactory. In short, we can have no conception of any way in which a government can raise money from the people, but what is included in one or other of these general terms. We may say then that this clause commits to the hands of the general legislature every conceivable source of revenue within the United States. Not only are these terms very comprehensive, and extend to a vast number of objects, but the power to lay and collect has great latitude; it will lead to the passing a vast number of laws, which may affect the personal rights of the citizens of the states, expose their property to fines and confiscation, and put their lives in jeopardy: it opens a door to the appointment of a swarm of revenue and excise officers to prey upon the honest and industrious part of the community, eat up their substance, and riot on the spoils of the country.

2d. We will next enquire into what is implied in the authority to pass all laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry this power into execution.

It is, perhaps, utterly impossible fully to define this power. The authority granted in the first clause can only be understood in its full extent, by descending to all the particular cases in which a revenue can be raised; the number and variety of these cases are so endless, and as it were infinite, that no man living has, as yet, been able to reckon them up. The greatest geniuses in the world have been for ages employed in the research, and when mankind had supposed that the subject was exhausted they have been astonished with the refined improvements that have been made in modern times, and especially in the English nation on the subject-If then the objects of this power cannot be comprehended, how is it possible to understand the extent of that power which can pass all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying it into execution? It is truly incomprehensible. A case cannot be conceived of, which is not included in this power. It is well known that the subject of revenue is the most difficult and extensive in the science of government. It requires the greatest talents of a statesman, and the most numerous and exact provisions of the legislature. The command of the revenues of a state gives the command of every thing in it.-He that has the purse will have the sword, and they that have both, have every thing; so that the legislature having every source from which money can be drawn under their direction, with a right to make all laws necessary and proper for drawing forth all the resource of the country, would have, in fact, all power.

Were I to enter into the detail, it would be easy to shew how this power in its operation, would totally destroy all the powers of the individual states. But this is not necessary for those who will think for themselves, and it will be useless to such as take things upon trust, nothing will awaken them to reflection, until the iron hand oppression compel them to it.

I shall only remark, that this power, given to the federal legislature, directly annihilates all the powers of the state legislatures. There cannot be a greater solecism in politics than to talk of power in a government, without the command of any revenue. It is as absurd as to talk of an animal without blood, or the subsistence of one without food. Now the general government having in their controul every possible source of revenue, and authority to pass any law they may deem necessary to draw them forth, or to facilitate their collection; no source of revenue is therefore left in the hands of any state. Should any state attempt to raise money by law, the general government may repeal or arrest it in the execution, for all their laws will be the supreme law of the land:4 If then anyone can be weak enough to believe that a government can exist without having the authority to raise money to pay a door-keeper to their assembly, he may believe that the state government can exist, should this new constitution take place.

It is agreed by most of the advocates of this new system, that the government which is proper for the United States should be a confederated one; that the respective states ought to retain a portion of their sovereignty, and that they should preserve not only the forms of their legislatures, but also the power to conduct certain internal concerns. How far the powers to be retained by the states shall extend, is the question; we need not spend much time on this subject, as it respects this constitution, for a government without the power to raise money is one only in name. It is clear that the legislatures of the respective states must be altogether dependent on the will of the general legislature, for the means supporting their government. The legislature of the United States will have a right to exhaust every source of revenue in every state, and to annul all laws of the states which may stand in the way of effecting it; unless therefore we can suppose the state governments can exist without money to support the officers who execute them, we must conclude they will exist no longer than the general legislatures choose they should.5 Indeed the idea of any government existing, in any respect, as an independent one, without any means of support in their own hands, is an absurdity. If therefore, this constitution has in view, what many of its framers and advocates say it has, to secure and guarantee to the separate states the exercise of certain powers of government it certainly ought to have left in their hands some sources of revenue. It should have marked the line in which the general government should have raised money, and set bounds over which they should not pass, leaving to the separate states other means to raise supplies for the support of their governments, and to discharge their respective debts. To this it is objected, that the general government ought to have power competent to the purposes of the union; they are to provide for the common defence, to pay the debts of the United States, support foreign ministers, and the civil establishment of the union, and to do these they ought to have authority to raise money adequate to the purpose.6 On this I observe, that the state governments have also contracted debts, they require money to support their civil officers, and how this is to be done, if they give to the general government a power to raise money in every way in which it can possibly be raised, with such a controul over the state legislatures as to prohibit them, whenever the general legislature may think proper, from raising any money. It is again objected that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to draw the line of distinction between the powers of the general and state governments on this subject. The first, it is said, must have the power of raising the money necessary for the purposes of the union, if they are limited to certain objects the revenue may fall short of a sufficiency for the public exigencies, they must therefore have discretionary power. The line may be easily and accurately drawn between the powers of the two governments on this head. The distinction between external and internal taxes, is not a novel one in this country, it is a plain one, and easily understood. The first includes impost duties on all imported goods; this species of taxes it is proper should be laid by the general government; many reasons might be urged to shew that no danger is to be apprehended from their exercise of it. They may be collected in few places, and from few hands with certainty and expedition. But few officers are necessary to be imployed in collecting them, and there is no danger of oppression in laying them, because, if they are laid higher than trade will bear, the merchants will cease importing, or smuggle their goods. We have therefore sufficient security, arising from the nature of the thing, against burdensome, and intolerable impositions from this kind of tax. But the case is far otherwise with regard to direct taxes; these include poll taxes, land taxes, excises, duties on written instruments, on every thing we eat, drink, or wear; they take hold of every species of property, and come home to every man’s house and packet. These are often so oppressive, as to grind the face of the poor, and render the lives of the common people a burden to them. The great and only security the people can have against oppression from this kind of taxes, must rest in their representatives. If they are sufficiently numerous to be well informed of the circumstances, and ability of those who send them, and have a proper regard for the people, they will be secure. The general legislature, as I have shewn in a former paper, will not be thus qualified, and therefore, on this account, ought not to exercise the power of direct taxation. If the power of laying imposts will not be sufficient, some other specific mode of raising a revenue should have been assigned the general government; many may be suggested in which their power may be accurately defined and limited, and it would be much better to give them authority to lay and collect a duty on exports, not to exceed a certain rate per cent, than to have surrendered every kind of resource that the country has, to the complete abolition of the state governments, and which will introduce such an infinite number of laws and ordinances, fines and penalties, courts, and judges, collectors, and excisemen, that when a man can number them, he may enumerate the stars of Heaven.

I shall resume this subject in my next, and by an induction of particulars shew, that this power, in its exercise, will subvert all state authority, and will work to the oppression of the people, and that there are no restrictions in the constitution that will soften its rigour, but rather the contrary.

November 15, 1787

Source: Consource. Click Here To View Original Document.
To the CITIZENS of the STATE of NEW-YORK.

In the investigation of the constitution, under your consideration, great care should be taken, that you do not form your opinions respecting it, from unimportant provisions, or fallacious appearances.

On a careful examination, you will find, that many of its parts, of little moment, are well formed; in these it has a specious resemblance of a free government-but this is not sufficient to justify the adoption of it-the gilded pill, is often found to contain the most deadly poison.

You are not however to expect, a perfect form of government, any more than to meet with perfection in man; your views therefore, ought to be directed to the main pillars upon which a free government is to rest; if these are well placed, on a foundation that will support the superstructure, you should be satisfied, although the building may want a number of ornaments, which, if your particular tastes were gratified, you would have added to it: on the other hand, if the foundation is insecurely laid, and the main supports are wanting, or not properly fixed, however the fabric may be decorated and adorned, you ought to reject it.

Under these impressions, it has been my object to turn your attention to the principal defects in this system.

I have attempted to shew, that a consolidation of this extensive continent, under one government, for internal, as well as external purposes, which is evidently the tendency of this constitution, cannot succeed, without a sacrifice of your liberties; and therefore that the attempt is not only preposterous, but extremely dangerous; and I have shewn, independent of this, that the plan is radically defective in a fundamental principle, which ought to be found in every free government; to wit, a declaration of rights.

I shall now proceed to take a nearer view of this system, to examine its parts more minutely, and shew that the powers are not properly deposited, for the security of public liberty.

The first important object that presents itself in the organization of this government, is the legislature. This is to be composed of two branches; the first to be called the general assembly, and is to be chosen by the people of the respective states, in proportion to the number of their inhabitants, and is to consist of sixty five members, with powers in the legislature to encrease the number, not to exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants. The second branch is to be called the senate, and is to consist of twenty-six members, two of which are to be chosen by the legislatures of each of the states.1

In the former of these there is an appearance of justice, in the appointment of its members-but if the clause, which provides for this branch, be stripped of its ambiguity, it will be found that there is really no equality of representation, even in this house.

The words are “representatives and direct taxes, shall be apportioned among the several states, which may be included in this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.”-What a strange and unnecessary accumulation of words are here used to conceal from the public eye, what might have been expressed in the following concise manner. Representatives are to be proportioned among the states respectively, according to the number of freemen and slaves inhabiting them, counting five slaves for three free men.

“In a free state,” says the celebrated Montesquieu, “everyman, who is supposed to be a free agent, ought to be concerned in his own government, therefore the legislature should reside in the whole body of the people, or their representatives.” But it has never been alledged that those who are not free agents, can, upon any rational principle, have any thing to do in government, either by themselves or others. If they have no share in government, why is the number of members in the assembly, to be increased on their account? Is it because in some of the states, a considerable part of the property of the inhabitants consists in a number of their fellow men, who are held in bondage, in defiance of every idea of benevolence, justice, and religion, and contrary to all the principles of liberty, which have been publickly avowed in the late glorious revolution? If this be a just ground for representation, the horses in some of the states, and the oxen in others, ought to be represented-for a great share of property in some of them, consists in these animals; and they have as much controul over their own actions, as these poor unhappy creatures, who are intended to be described in the above recited clause, by the words, “all other persons.”2 By this mode of apportionment, the representatives of the different parts of the union, will be extremely unequal; in some of the southern states, the slaves are nearly equal in number to the free men; and for all these slaves, they will be entitled to a proportionate share in the legislature-this will give them an unreasonable weight in the government, which can derive no additional strength, protection, nor defence from the slaves, but the contrary. Why then should they be represented? What adds to the evil is, that these states are to be permitted to continue the inhuman traffic of importing slaves, until the year 1808-and for every cargo of these unhappy people, which unfeeling, unprincipled, barbarous, and avaricious wretches, may tear from their country, friends and tender connections, and bring into those states, they are to be rewarded by having an increase of members in the general assembly.3 There appears at the first view a manifest inconsistency, in the apportionment ofrepresentatives in the senate, upon the plan of a consolidated government. On every principle of equity, and propriety, representation in a government should be in exact proportion to the numbers, or the aids afforded by the persons represented. How unreasonable, and unjust then is it, that Delaware should have a representation in the senate, equal to Massachusetts, or Virginia? The latter of which contains ten times her numbers, and is to contribute to the aid of the general government in that proportion?4 This article of the constitution will appear the more objectionable, if it is considered, that the powers vested in this branch of the legislature are very extensive, and greatly surpass those lodged in the assembly, not only for general purposes, but, in many instances, for the internal police of the states. The other branch of the legislature, in which, if in either, a feint spark of democracy is to be found, should have been properly organized and established-but upon examination you will find, that this branch does not possess the qualities of a just representation, and that there is no kind of security, imperfect as it is, for its remaining in the hands of the people.

It has been observed, that the happiness of society is the end of government-that every free government is founded in compact; and that, because it is impracticable for the whole community to assemble, or when assembled, to deliberate with wisdom, and decide with dispatch, the mode of legislating representation was devised. The very term, representative, implies, that the person or body chosen for this purpose, should resemble those who appoint them-a representation of the people of America, if it be a true one, must be like the people. It ought to be so constituted, that a person, who is a stranger to the country, might be able to form a just idea of their character, by knowing that of their representatives. They are the sign-the people are the thing signified. It is absurd to speak of one thing being the representative of another, upon any other principle. The ground and reason of representation, in a free government, implies the same thing. Society instituted government to promote the happiness of the whole, and this is the great end always in view in the delegation of powers. It must then have been intended, that those who are placed instead of the people, should possess their sentiments and feelings, and be governed by their interests, or, in other words, should bear the strongest resemblance of those in whose room they are substituted. It is obvious, that for an assembly to be a true likeness of the people of any country, they must be considerably numerous.-One man, or a few men, cannot possibly represent the feelings, opinions, and characters of a great multitude. In this respect, the new constitution is radically defective.-The house of assembly, which is intended as a representation of the people of America, will not, nor cannot, in the nature of things, be a proper one-sixty-five men cannot be found in the United States, who hold the sentiments, possess the feelings, or are acquainted with the wants and interests of this vast country.5 This extensive continent is made up of a number of different classes of people; and to have a proper representation of them, each class ought to have an opportunity choosing their best informed men for the purpose; but this cannot possibly be the case in so small a number. The state of New-York, on the present apportionment, will send six members to the assembly: I will venture to affirm, that number cannot be found in the state, who will bear a just resemblance to the several classes of people who compose it. In this assembly, the farmer, merchant, mecanick, and other various orders of people, ought to be represented according to their respective weight and numbers; and the representatives ought to be intimately acquainted with the wants, understand the interests of the several orders in the society, and feel a proper sense and becoming zeal to promote their prosperity. I cannot conceive that any six men in this state can be found properly qualified in these respects to discharge such important duties: but supposing it possible to find them, is there the least degree of probability that the choice of the people will fall upon such men? According to the common course of human affairs, the natural aristocracy of the country will be elected. Wealth always creates influence, and this is generally much increased by large family connections: this class in society will for ever have a great number of dependents; besides, they will always favour each other-it is their interest to combine-hey will therefore constantly unite their efforts to procure men of their own rank to be elected- they will concenter all their force in every part of the state into one point, and by acting together, will most generally carry their election. It is probable, that but few of the merchants, and those the most opulent and ambitious, will have a representation from their body-few of them are characters sufficiently conspicuous to attract the notice of the electors of the state in so limited a representation. The great body of the yeoman of the country cannot expect any of their order in this assembly-the station will be too elevated for them to aspire to-the distance between the people and their representatives, will be so very great, that there is no probability that a farmer, however respectable, will be chosen-the mechanicks of every branch, must expect to be excluded from a seat in this Body-It will and must be esteemed a station too high and exalted to be filled by any but the first men in the state, in point of fortune; so that in reality there will be no part of the people represented, but the rich, even in that branch of the legislature, which is called the democratic.-The well born, and highest orders in life, as they term themselves, will be ignorant of the sentiments of the midling class of citizens, strangers to their ability, wants, and difficulties, and void of sympathy, and fellow feeling. This branch of the legislature will not only be an imperfect representation, but there will be no security in so small a body, against bribery, and corruption- It will consist at first, of sixty-five, and can never exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants; a majority of these, that is, thirty-three, are a quorum, and a majority of which, or seventeen, may pass any law-a majority of the senate, or fourteen, are a quorum, and eight of them pass any law-so that twenty-five men, will have the power to give away all the property of the citizens of these states-what security therefore can there be for the people, where their liberties and property are at the disposal of so few men?6 It will literally be a government in the hands of the few to oppress and plunder the many. You may conclude with a great degree of certainty, that it, like all others of a similar nature, will be managed by influence and corruption, and that the period is not far distant, when this will be the case, if it should be adopted; for even now there are some among us, whose characters stand high in the public estimation, and who have had a principal agency in framing this constitution, who do not scruple to say, that this is the only practicable mode of governing a people, who think with that degree of freedom which the Americans do-this government will have in their gift a vast number of offices of great honor and emolument. The members of the legislature are not excluded from appointments; and twenty-five of them, as the case may be, being secured, any measure may be carried.

The rulers of this country must be composed of very different materials from those of any other, of which history gives us any account, if the majority of the legislature are not, before many years, entirely at the devotion of the executive-and these states will soon be under the absolute domination of one, or a few, with the fallacious appearance of being governed by men of their own election.

The more I reflect on this subject, the more firmly am I persuaded, that the representation is merely nominal-a mere burlesque; and that no security is provided against corruption and undue influence. No free people on earth, who have elected persons to legislate for them, ever reposed that confidence in so small a number. The British house of commons consists of five hundred and fifty-eight members; the number of inhabitants in Great-Britain, is computed at eight millions-this gives one member for a little more than fourteen thousand, which exceeds double the proportion this country can ever have: and yet we require a larger representation in proportion to our numbers, than Great-Britain, because this country is much more extensive, and differs more in its productions, interests, manners, and habits. The democratic branch of the legislatures of the several states in the union consists, I believe at present, of near two thousand; and this number was not thought too large for the security of liberty by the framers of our state constitutions: some of the states may have erred in this respect, but the difference between two thousand, and sixty-five, is so very great, that it will bear no comparison.

Other objections offer themselves against this part of the constitution-I shall reserve them for a future paper, when I shall shew, defective as this representation is, no security is provided, that even this shadow of the right, will remain with the people.

To the CITIZENS of the State of NEW-YORK.

In my last number I endeavored to prove that the language of the article relative to the establishment of the executive of this new government was vague and inexplicit, that the great powers of the President, connected with his duration in office would lead to oppression and ruin. That he would be governed by favorites and flatterers, or that a dangerous council would be collected from the great officers of state;—that the ten miles square, if the remarks of one of the wisest men, drawn from the experience of mankind, may be credited, would be the asylum of the base, idle, avaricious and ambitious, and that the court would possess a language and manners different from yours; that a vice-president is as unnecessary, as he is dangerous in his influence-that the president cannot represent you, because he is not of your own immediate choice, that if you adopt this government, you will incline to an arbitrary and odious aristocracy or monarchy—that the president possessed of the power, given him by this frame of government differs but very immaterially from the establishment of monarchy in Great-Britain, and I warned you to beware of the fallacious resemblance that is held out to you by the advocates of this new system between it and your own state governments.

And here I cannot help remarking, that inexplicitness seems to pervade this whole political fabric: certainty in political compacts which Mr. Coke calls the mother and nurse of repose and quietness, the want of which induced men to engage in political society, has ever been held by a wise and free people as essential to their security; as on the one hand it fixes barriers which the ambitious and tyrannically disposed magistrate dare not overleap, and on the other, becomes a wall of safety to the community—otherwise stipulations between the governors and governed are nugatory; and you might as well deposit the important powers of legislation and execution in one or a few and permit them to govern according to their disposition and will; but the world is too full of examples, which prove that to live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s misery. Before the existence of express political compacts it was reasonably implied that the magistrate should govern with wisdom and justice, but mere implication was too feeble to restrain the unbridled ambition of a bad man, or afford security against negligence, cruelty, or any other defect of mind. It is alledged that the opinions and manners of the people of America, are capable to resist and prevent an extension of prerogative or oppression; but you must recollect that opinion and manners are mutable, and may not always be a permanent obstruction against the encroachments of government; that the progress of a commercial society begets luxury, the parent of inequality, the foe to virtue, and the enemy to restraint; and that ambition and voluptuousness aided by flattery, will teach magistrates, where limits are not explicitly fixed to have separate and distinct interests from the people, besides it will not be denied that government assimilates the manners and opinions of the community to it. Therefore, a general presumption that rulers will govern well is not a sufficient security. —You are then under a sacred obligation to provide for the safety of your posterity, and would you now basely desert their interests, when by a small share of prudence you may transmit to them a beautiful political patrimony, which will prevent the necessity of their travelling through seas of blood to obtain that, which your wisdom might have secured:—It is a duty you owe likewise to your own reputation, for you have a great name to lose; you are characterised as cautious, prudent and jealous in politics; whence is it therefore, that you are about to precipitate yourselves into a sea uncertainty, and adopt a system so vague, and which has discarded so many of your valuable rights:—Is it because you do not believe that an American can be a tyrant? If this be the case you rest on a weak basis, Americans are like other men in similar situations, when the manners and opinions of the community are changed by the causes I mentioned before, and your political compact inexplicit, your posterity will find that great power connected with ambition, luxury, and flattery, will as readily produce a Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian in America, as the same causes did in the Roman empire.

But the next thing to be considered in conformity to my plan, is the first article of this new government, which comprises the erection of the house representatives and senate, and prescribes their various powers and objects of legislation. The most general objections to the first article, are that biennial elections for representatives are a departure from the safe democratical principles of annual ones—that the number of representatives are too few;1 that the apportionment and principles of increase are unjust;2 that no attention has been paid to either the numbers or property in each state in forming the senate;3 that the mode in which they are appointed and their duration, will lead to the establishment of an aristocracy;4 that the senate and president are improperly connected, both as to appointments, and the making of treaties, which are to become the supreme law of the land;5 that the judicial in some measure, to wit, as to the trial of impeachments is placed in the senate a branch of the legislative, and some times a branch of the executive:6 that Congress have the improper power of making or altering the regulations prescribed by the different legislatures, respecting the time, place, and manner of holding elections for representatives; and the time and manner of choosing senators;7 that standing armies may be established, and appropriation of money made for their support, for two years;8 that the militia of the most remote state may be marched into those states situated at the opposite extreme of this continent;9 that the slave trade, is to all intents and purposes permanently established;10 and a slavish capitation, or poll-tax, may at any time be levied-11these are some of the many evils that will attend the adoption of this government. But with respect to the first objection, it may be remarked that a well digested democracy has this advantage over all others, to wit, that it affords to many the opportunity to be advanced to the supreme command, and the honors they thereby enjoy fills them with a desire of rendering themselves worthy of them; hence this desire becomes part of their education, is matured in manhood, and produces an ardent affection for their country, and it is the opinion of the great Sidney, and Montesquieu that this is in a great measure produced by annual election magistrates.

If annual elections were to exist in this government, and learning and information to become more prevalent, you never will want men to execute whatever you could design Sidney observes that a well governed state is as fruitful to all good purposes as the seven headed serpent is said to have been in evil; when one head is cut off, many rise up in the place of it. He remarks further, that it was also thought, that free cities by frequent elections of magistrates became nurseries of great and able men, everyman endeavoring to excel others, that he might be advanced to the honor he had no other title to, than what might arise from his merit or reputation, but the framers of this perfect government, as it is called, have departed from this democratical principle, and established bi-ennial elections, for the house representatives, who are to be chosen by the people, and sextennial for the senate, who are to be chosen by the legislatures of the different states,12 and have given to the executive the unprecedented power of making temporary senators, in case of vacancies, by resignation or otherwise, and so far forth establishing a precedent for virtual representation (though in fact, their original appointment is virtual) thereby influencing the choice of the legislatures, or if they should not be so complaisant as to conform to his appointment—offence will be given to the executive and the temporary members, will appear ridiculous by rejection; this temporary member, during his time of appointment, will of course act by a power derived from the executive, and for, and under his immediate influence.13

It is a very important objection to this government, that the representation consists of so few; too few to resist the influence corruption, and the temptation to treachery, against which all governments ought to take precautions—how guarded you have been on this head, in your own state constitution, and yet the number of senators and representatives proposed for this vast continent, does not equal those of your own state; how great the disparity, if you compare them with the aggregate numbers in the United States.14 The history of representation in England, from which we have taken our model of legislation, is briefly this, before the institution of legislating by deputies, the whole free part of the community usually met for that purpose, when this became impossible, by the increase of numbers, the community was divided into districts, from each of which was sent such a number of deputies as was a complete representation of the various numbers and orders of citizens within them; but can it be asserted with truth, that six men can be a complete and full representation of the numbers and various orders of the people in this state? Another thing may be suggested against the small number of representatives is, that but few of you will have the chance of sharing even in this branch of the legislature; and that the choice will be confined to a very few; the more complete it is, the better will your interests be preserved, and the greater the opportunity you will have to participate in government, one of the principal securities of a free people; but this subject has been so ably and fully treated by a writer under the signature of Brutus, that I shall content myself with referring you to him thereon, reserving further observations on the other objections I have mentioned, for my future numbers.

Mr. PRINTER, This is certainly very important crisis to the people of America; experience seems to have convinced everyone, that the articles of confederation, under which Congress have hitherto attempted to regulate the affairs of the United States, are insufficient for the purposes intended; that we are a ruined people unless some alteration can be effected. The public mind has therefore been raised to the highest pitch expectation, and the evident need of relief from the many distresses , public and private, in which we are involved has reduced us to such a state, that we can hardly endure a disappointment. Scarcely anything that could be proposed by the convention, in this state of people’s minds, would fail of being eagerly embraced. Like a person in the agonies of a violent disease, who is willing to swallow any medicine, that gives the faintest hope of relief; the people stood ready to receive the new constitution, in almost any form in which it could be presented to them. The zealous supporters of the proposed constitution, seem to be not unwilling to avail themselves of this disposition: and therefore it is strongly inculcated, that if we do not adopt this constitution, we shall not be able to establish another, but be left to our present weakness, confusion and distress. If I was pursuaded that this is really the case, I hardly know whether I should vote for rejecting any government however unfriendly to the liberties of the people, which promised to give vigour to the councils of this country; for any government is better than none. However, I do not see that it is by any means impracticable, for us yet to correct such errors and imperfections, as appear to exist in the proposed constitution; and whilst there is a possibility of procuring better a constitution, it is the duty of every good man to accomplish it.

By the proposed constitution, every law, before it passes, is to undergo repeated revisions; and the constitution of every state in the union provide, for the reversion of the most trifling laws, either by their passing through different houses of assembly and senate, or by requiring them to be published for the consideration of the people. Why then is a constitution which affects all the inhabitants of the United States, which is to be the foundation of all laws and the source of misery or happiness to one quarter of the globe; why is this to be so hastily adopted or rejected, that it cannot admit of a revision?- If a law to regulate highways, requires to be liesurely considered and undergo the examination of different bodies of men, one after another, before it be passed, why is it that the framing of a constitution for the government of a great people; a work which has been justly considered as the greatest effort of human genius, and which, from the beginning of the world has so often balled the skill of the wisest men in every age, shall be considered as a thing to be thrown out, in the first shape which it may happen to assume? Where is the impracticability a revision? Cannot the same power which called the late convention, call another? Are not the people still their own masters? If when the several state conventions come to consider this constitution, they should not approve of it, in its present form, they may easily apply to Congress and state their objections. Congress may as easily direct the calling another convention, as they did the calling the last. The plan may then be reconsidered , deliberately received and corrected; so as to meet the approbation of every friend to his country. A few months only will be necessary for this purpose; and if we consider the magnitude of the object, we shall deem it well worth a little time and attention- It is much better to pause and reflect beforehand, than to repent when it is too late; when no peaceable remedy will be left us, and unanimity will be forever banished. The struggles of the people against a bad government, when it is once fixed, afford but a gloomy picture in the annals of mankind. They are often unfortunate, they are always destructive of public and and private happiness; but the peaceable consent of a people to establish a free and effective government, is one of the most glorious objects that is ever exhibited in the theatre of human affairs. Some I know, have objected, that another convention will not be likely to agree upon any thing-I am far however from being of that opinion. The public voice cries so loudly for a new constitution, that I have no doubt we shall have one of some sort.- My only fear is, that the impatience of the people will lead them to accept the first that is offered them, without examining whether it is right or wrong; and after all, if a new convention cannot agree upon any amendments in the constitution, which is at present proposed, we can still adopt this in its present form; and all further opposition being vain, it is to be hoped we shall be unanimous in endeavouring to make the best of it. The experiment is at least worth trying, and I shall be much astonished, if a new convention called together for the purpose of revising the proposed constitution, do not greatly reform it.

I find that a number of pens are employed, in pointing out the defects in the proposed constitution- Without descending therefore, into minute particulars, I shall confine the remainder of my observations in this letter, to one or two of the most important considerations.

It is beyond a doubt that the new federal constitution, if adopted, will in a great measure destroy, if it do not totally annihilate, the separate governments of the several states. We shall, in effect, become one great Republic.- Every measure of any importance, will be Continental What will be the consequence of this? One thing is evident- that no Republic of so great a magnitude, ever did, or ever can exist.1 But a few years elapsed, from the time in which ancient Rome extended her dominions beyond the bounds of Italy, until the downfal of her Republic; and all political writers agree, that a Republican government can exist only in a narrow territory: but a confederacy of different Republics has, in many instances, existed and flourished for a long time together- The celebrated Helvetian league, which exists at this moment in full vigor, and with unimpaired strength, whilst its origin may be traced to the confines of antiquity, is one, among many examples on this head; and at the same time furnishes an eminent proof of how much less importance it is, that the constituent parts of a confederacy of Republics may be rightly framed than it is, that the confederacy itself should be rightly organized;- for hardly any two of the Swiss cantons have the same form of government, and they are almost equally divided in their religious principles, which have so often rent asunder the firmest establishments. A confederacy Republics must be the establishment in America, or we must cease altogether to retain the Republican form of government. From the moment we become one great Republic, either in form or substance, the period is very shortly removed, when we shall sink first into monarchy, and then into despotism. -If there were no other fault in the proposed constitution, it must sink by its own weight. The continent of North-America can no more be governed by one Republic, than the fabled Atlas could support the heavens. Is it not worthy few months labour, to attempt the rescuing this country from the despotism, which at this moment holds the best and fairest regions of the earth in thraldom and wretchedness?- To attempt the forming plan confederation, which may enable us at once to support our continental union with vigor and efficacy, and to maintain the rights of the separate states and the invaluable liberty of the subject? These ideas of political felicity, to some people, may seem like the visions of an Utopian fancy; and I am persuaded that some amongst us have as little disposition to realize them, as they have to recollect the principles, which inspired us in our revolt from Great-Britain. But there is at least, this consolation in aiming at excellence, that, if we do not obtain our object, we can make considerable progress towards it.- The science of politics has very seldom had fair play. So much of passion, interest and temporary prospects of gain are mixed in the pursuit, that a government has been much oftener established, with a view to the particular advantages or necessities of a few individuals, than to the permanent good of society. If the men, who, at different times, have been entrusted to form plans of government for the world, had been really actuated by no other views than a regard to the public good, the condition of human nature in all ages would have been widely different, from that which has been exhibited to us in history. In this country perhaps we are possessed of more than our share of political virtue. If we will exercise a little patience, and bestow our best endeavours on the business, I do not think it impossible, that we may yet form a federal constitution, much superior to any form of government, which has ever existed in the world;- but, whenever this important work shall be accomplished, I venture to pronounce, that it will not be done without a careful attention to the framing of a bill of rights.

Much has been said and written, on the subject of a bill of rights;- possibly without sufficient attention to the necessity of conveying distinct and precise ideas of the true meaning of a bill of rights. Your readers, I hope, will excuse me, if I conclude this letter with an attempt to throw some light on this subject.

Men when they enter into society, yield up a part of their natural liberty, for the sake of being protected by government. If they yield up all their natural rights hey are absolute slaves to their governors. If they yield up less than is necessary, the government is so feeble, that it cannot protect them. To yield up so much, as is necessary for the purposes of government; and to retain all beyond what is necessary, is the great without exception, we ought carefully to guard ourselves by a BILL OF RIGHTS, against the invasion of those liberties which it is essential for us to retain, which it is of no real use to government to strip us of; but which in the course of human events have been too often insulted with all the wantonness of an idle barbarity.

SOURCE: HERBERT J. STORING, ED., THE COMPLETE ANTI-FEDERALIST, VOL. 2, 136-143.


To the Freemen of Pennsylvania

Friends, Countrymen and Fellow Citizens, Permit one of yourselves to put you in mind of certain liberties and privileges secured to you by the constitution of this commonwealth, and to beg your serious attention to his uninterested opinion upon the plan of federal government submitted to your consideration, before you surrender these great and valuable privileges up forever. Your present frame of government, secures to you a right to hold yourselves, houses, papers and possessions free from search and seizure, and therefore warrants granted without oaths or affirmations first made, affording sufficient foundation for them, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded or required to search your houses or seize your persons or property, not particularly described in such warrant, shall not be granted. Your constitution further provides “that in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the parties have a right to trial by jury, which ought to be held sacred.” It also provides and declares “that the people have a right of FREEDOM OF SPEECH, and of WRITING and PUBLISHING their sentiments, therefore THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS OUGHT NOT TO BE RESTRAINED.” The constitution of Pennsylvania is yet in existence, as yet you have the right to freedom of speech, and of publishing your sentiments. How long those rights will appertain to you, you yourselves are called upon to say, whether your houses shall continue to be your castles; whether your papers, your persons and your property, are to be held sacred and free from general warrants, you are now to determine. Whether the trial by jury is to continue as your birth-right, the freemen of Pennsylvania, nay, of all America, are now called upon to declare.

Without presuming upon my own judgment, I cannot think it an unwarrantable presumption to offer my private opinion, and call upon others for theirs; and if I use my pen with the boldness of a freeman, it is because I know that the liberty of the press yet remains unviolated, and juries yet are judges.

The late Convention have submitted to your consideration a plan of a new federal government — The subject is highly interesting to your future welfare — Whether it be calculated to promote the great ends of civil society, viz.[1] the happiness and prosperity of the community; it behoves you well to consider, uninfluenced by the authority of names. Instead of that frenzy of enthusiasm, that has actuated the citizens of Philadelphia, in their approbation of the proposed plan, before it was possible that it could be the result of a rational investigation into its principles; it ought to be dispassionately and deliberately examined, and its own intrinsic merit the only criterion of your patronage. If ever free and unbiased discussion was proper or necessary, it is on such an occasion. — All the blessings of liberty and the dearest privileges of freemen, are now at stake and dependent on your present conduct. Those who are competent to the task of developing the principles of government, ought to be encouraged to come forward, and thereby the better enable the people to make a proper judgment; for the science of government is so abstruse, that few are able to judge for themselves; without such assistance the people are too apt to yield an implicit assent to the opinions of those characters, whose abilities are held in the highest esteem, and to those in whose integrity and patriotism they can confide; not considering that the love of domination is generally in proportion to talents, abilities, and superior acquirements; and that the men of the greatest purity of intention may be made instruments of despotism in the hands of the artful and designing. If it were not for the stability and attachment which time and habit gives to forms of government it would be in the power of the enlightened and aspiring few, if they should combine, at any time to destroy the best establishments, and even make the people the instruments of their own subjugation. . . .

I am fearful that the principles of government inculcated in Mr. [John] Adams’s treatise,[2] and enforced in the numerous essays and paragraphs in the newspapers, have misled some well designing members of the late Convention. But it will appear in the sequel, that the construction of the proposed plan of government is infinitely more extravagant.

I have been anxiously expecting that some enlightened patriot would, ere this, have taken up the pen to expose the futility, and counteract the baneful tendency of such principles. Mr. Adams’s sine qua non[3] of a good government is three balancing powers, whose repelling qualities are to produce an equilibrium of interests, and thereby promote the happiness of the whole community. He asserts that the administrators of every government, will ever be actuated by views of private interest and ambition, to the prejudice of the public good; that therefore the only effectual method to secure the rights of the people and promote their welfare, is to create an opposition of interests between the members of two distinct bodies, in the exercise of the powers of government, and balanced by those of a third. This hypothesis supposes human wisdom competent to the task of instituting three co-equal orders in government, and a corresponding weight in the community to enable them respectively to exercise their several parts, and whose views and interests should be so distinct as to prevent a coalition of any two of them for the destruction of the third. Mr. Adams, although he has traced the constitution of every form of government that ever existed, as far as history affords materials, has not been able to adduce a single instance of such a government; he indeed says that the British constitution is such in theory, but this is rather a confirmation that his principles are chimerical[4] and not to be reduced to practice. If such an organization of power were practicable, how long would it continue? not a day — for there is so great a disparity in the talents, wisdom and industry of mankind, that the scale would presently preponderate to one or the other body, and with every accession of power the means of further increase would be greatly extended. The state of society in England is much more favorable to such a scheme of government than that of America. There they have a powerful hereditary nobility, and real distinctions of rank and interests; but even there, for want of that perfect equality of power and distinction of interests, in the three orders of government, they exist but in name; the only operative and efficient check, upon the conduct of administration, is the sense of the people at large.

Suppose a government could be formed and supported on such principles, would it answer the great purposes of civil society; If the administrators of every government are actuated by views of private interest and ambition, how is the welfare and happiness of the community to be the result of such jarring adverse interests?

Therefore, as different orders in government will not produce the good of the whole, we must recur to other principles. I believe it will be found that the form of government, which holds those entrusted with power, in the greatest responsibility to their constituents, the best calculated for freemen. A republican, or free government, can only exist where the body of the people are virtuous, and where property is pretty equally divided; in such a government the people are the sovereign and their sense or opinion is the criterion of every public measure; for when this ceases to be the case, the nature of the government is changed, and an aristocracy, monarchy or despotism will rise on its ruin. The highest responsibility is to be attained, in a simple structure of government, for the great body of the people never steadily attend to the operations of government, and for want of due information are liable to be imposed on — If you complicate the plan by various orders, the people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the source of abuses or misconduct, some will impute it to the senate, others to the house of representatives, and so on, that the interposition of the people may be rendered imperfect or perhaps wholly abortive. But if, imitating the constitution of Pennsylvania, you vest all the legislative power in one body of men (separating the executive and judicial) elected for a short period, and necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency, and guarded from precipitancy and surprise by delays imposed on its proceedings, you will create the most perfect responsibility, for then, whenever the people feel a grievance they cannot mistake the authors, and will apply the remedy with certainty and effect, discarding them at the next election. This tie of responsibility will obviate all the dangers apprehended from a single legislature, and will the best secure the rights of the people.

Having premised this much, I shall now proceed to the examination of the proposed plan of government, and I trust, shall make it appear to the meanest capacity, that it has none of the essential requisites of a free government; that it is neither founded on those balancing restraining powers, recommended by Mr. Adams and attempted in the British constitution, or possessed of that responsibility to its constituents, which, in my opinion, is the only effectual security for the liberties and happiness of the people; but on the contrary, that it is the most daring attempt to establish a despotic aristocracy among freemen, that the world has ever witnessed.

I shall previously consider the extent of the powers intended to be vested in Congress, before I examine the construction of the general government.

It will not be controverted[5] that the legislative is the highest delegated power in government, and that all others are subordinate to it. The celebrated Montesquieu[6] establishes it as a maxim, that legislation necessarily follows the power of taxation. By sect. 8, of the first article of the proposed plan of government, “the Congress are to have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States, but all duties, imposts and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States.” Now what can be more comprehensive than these words; not content by other sections of this plan, to grant all the great executive powers of a confederation, and a STANDING ARMY IN TIME OF PEACE, that grand engine of oppression, and moreover the absolute control over the commerce of the United States and all external objects of revenue, such as unlimited imposts upon imports, etc. — they are to be vested with every species of internal taxation — whatever taxes, duties and excises that they may deem requisite for the general welfare, may be imposed on the citizens of these states, levied by the officers of Congress, distributed through every district in America; and the collection would be enforced by the standing army, however grievous or improper they may be. The Congress may construe every purpose for which the state legislatures now lay taxes, to be for the general welfare, and thereby seize upon every object of revenue.

The judicial power by 1st sect. of article 3 “shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made or which shall be made under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, to controversies to which the United States shall be a party, to controversies between two or more states, between a state and citizens of another state, between citizens of different states, between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.”

The judicial power to be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such Inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

The objects of jurisdiction recited above, are so numerous, and the shades of distinction between civil causes are oftentimes so slight, that it is more than probable that the state judicatories would be wholly superseded; for in contests about jurisdiction, the federal court, as the most powerful, would ever prevail. Every person acquainted with the history of the courts in England, knows by what ingenious sophisms they have, at different periods, extended the sphere of their jurisdiction over objects out of the line of their institution, and contrary to their very nature; courts of a criminal jurisdiction obtaining cognizance in civil causes.

To put the omnipotency of Congress over the state government and judicatories out of all doubt, the 6th article ordains that “this constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

By these sections the all-prevailing power of taxation, and such extensive legislative and judicial powers are vested in the general government, as must in their operation, necessarily absorb the state legislatures and judicatories; and that such was in the contemplation of the framers of it, will appear from the provision made for such event, in another part of it; (but that, fearful of alarming the people by so great an innovation, they have suffered the forms of the separate governments to remain, as a blind.) By sect. 4th of the 1st article, “the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the place of choosing senators.” The plain construction of which is, that when the state legislatures drop out of sight, from the necessary operation [of] this government, then Congress are to provide for the election and appointment of representatives and senators.

If the foregoing be a just comment — if the united states are to be melted down into one empire, it becomes you to consider, whether such a government, however constructed, would be eligible in so extended a territory; and whether it would be practicable, consistent with freedom? It is the opinion of the greatest writers, that a very extensive country cannot be governed on democratical principles, on any other plan, than a confederation of a number of small republics, possessing all the powers of internal government, but united in the management of their foreign and general concerns.

It would not be difficult to prove, that any thing short of despotism, could not bind so great a country under one government; and that whatever plan you might, at the first setting out, establish, it would issue in a despotism.

If one general government could be instituted and maintained on principles of freedom, it would not be so competent to attend to the various local concerns and wants, of every particular district, as well as the peculiar governments, who are nearer the scene, and possessed of superior means of information, besides, if the business of the whole union is to be managed by one government, there would not be time. Do we not already see, that the inhabitants in a number of larger states, who are remote from the seat of government, are loudly complaining of the inconveniencies and disadvantages they are subjected to on this account, and that, to enjoy the comforts of local government, they are separating into smaller divisions.

Having taken a review of the powers, I shall now examine the construction of the proposed general government.

Art. 1. Sect. 1. “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a senate and house of representatives.” By another section, the president (the principal executive officer) has a conditional control over their proceedings.

Sect. 2. “The house of representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year, by the people of the several states. The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every 30,000 inhabitants.”

The senate, the other constituent branch of the legislature, is formed by the legislature of each state appointing two senators, for the term of six years.

The executive power by Art. 2, Sect. 1. is to be vested in a president of the United States of America, elected for four years: Sect. 2. gives him “power, by and with the consent of the senate to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law,” etc. And by another section he has the absolute power of granting reprieves and pardons for treason and all other high crimes and misdemeanors, except in case of impeachment.

The foregoing are the outlines of the plan.

Thus we see, the house of representatives, are on the part of the people to balance the senate, who I suppose will be composed of the better sort, the well born, etc. The number of the representatives (being only one for every 30,000 inhabitants) appears to be too few, either to communicate the requisite information, of the wants, local circumstances and sentiments of so extensive an empire, or to prevent corruption and undue influence, in the exercise of such great powers; the term for which they are to be chosen, too long to preserve a due dependence and accountability to their constituents; and the mode and places of their election not sufficiently ascertained, for as Congress have the control over both, they may govern the choice, by ordering the representatives of a whole state, to be elected in one place, and that too may be the most inconvenient.

The senate, the great efficient body in this plan of government, is constituted on the most unequal principles. The smallest state in the union has equal weight with the great states of Virginia, Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania—The Senate, besides its legislative functions, has a very considerable share in the Executive; none of the principal appointments to office can be made without its advice and consent. The term and mode of its appointment, will lead to permanency; the members are chosen for six years, the mode is under the control of Congress, and as there is no exclusion by rotation, they may be continued for life, which, from their extensive means of influence, would follow of course. The President, who would be a mere pageant of state, unless he coincides with the views of the Senate, would either become the head of the aristocratic junto in that body, or its minion, besides, their influence being the most predominant, could the best secure his re-election to office. And from his power of granting pardons, he might screen from punishment the most treasonable attempts on liberties of the people, when instigated by the Senate.

From this investigation into the organization of this government, it appears that it is devoid of all responsibility or accountability to the great body of the people, and that so far from being a regular balanced government, it would be in practice a permanent ARISTOCRACY.

The framers of it, actuated by the true spirit of such a government, which ever abominates and suppresses all free enquiry and discussion, have made no provision for the liberty of the press, that grand palladium of freedom, and scourge of tyrants, but observed a total silence on that head. It is the opinion of some great writers, that if the liberty of the press, by an institution of religion, or otherwise, could be rendered sacred, even in Turkey, that despotism would fly before it.

And it is worthy of remark, that there is no declaration of personal rights, premised in most free constitutions; and that trial by jury in civil cases is taken away; for what other construction can be put on the following, viz. Article 3. Sect. 2d. “In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases above mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact”? It would be a novelty in jurisprudence, as well as evidently improper to allow an appeal from the verdict of a jury, on the matter of fact; therefore, it implies and allows of a dismissal of the jury in civil cases, and especially when it is considered, that jury trial in criminal cases is expressly stipulated for, but not in civil cases.

But our situation is represented to be so critically dreadful that, however reprehensible and exceptionable the proposed plan of government may be, there is no alternative, between the adoption of it and absolute ruin.

My fellow citizens, things are not at that crisis, it is the argument of tyrants; the present distracted state of Europe secures us from injury on that quarter, and as to domestic dissensions, we have not so much to fear from them, as to precipitate us into this form of government, without it is[7] a safe and a proper one. For remember, of all possible evils that of despotism is the worst and the most to be dreaded.

Besides, it cannot be supposed, that the first essay on so difficult a subject, is so well digested, as it ought to be, — if the proposed plan, after a mature deliberation, should meet the approbation of the respective States, the matter will end, but if it should be found to be fraught with dangers and inconveniencies, a future general Convention being in possession of the objections, will be the better enabled to plan a suitable government.

Who’s here so base, that would a bondsman be?

If any, speak; for him have I offended.

Who’s here so vile, that will not love his country?

If any, speak; for him have I offended.

—Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2

Essay 83 – Guest Essayist: Edward Lee

Thomas Lynch, Jr. (August 5, 1749 – late 1779), of Irish descent, was born in Prince George’s Parish (present day Georgetown County). Lynch was the son of Thomas Lynch and Elizabeth Allston Lynch. His mother died when he was a young child. He was educated at Georgetown’s Indigo Society School and earned honors at England’s Eton College and Cambridge. He studied law and political philosophy at London’s Middle Temple, like the other South Carolina Declaration of Independence signatories, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, and Arthur Middleton.

In South Carolina on the eve of the Revolution, Lynch enjoyed the life of a planter, farming and discussing politics, rather than practicing law as his father hoped he would along with becoming engaged in public life, after having received a good education and studying law. He allied himself with figures such as Charles Cotesworth  Pinckney, Christopher Gadsden, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr. He was a staunch advocate of South Carolina’s right to form its own independent government, regardless of the wishes of the other British colonies. He found the talk by the British politicians distasteful toward the colonists which served to strengthen his views for supporting independence.

In 1772, Lynch married his longtime sweetheart, Elizabeth Shubrick. Elizabeth’s sister, Mary, married one of the other South Carolina signers, Edward Rutledge, after Edward’s first wife, Henrietta, passed away.

He soon after became involved in public service as his father had encouraged him to do, having served in South Carolina’s First and Second Provincial Congresses, and on the state constitutional committee. During these roles, he was commissioned in the First South Carolina Regiment as a company commander in the summer of 1775.

Eventually Thomas Lynch, Jr. was appointed to the Second Continental Congress where his father, Thomas Lynch, Sr. was also serving. Thomas Lynch, Sr. was known and respected as an effective statesman for working with George Washington and influencing the appointment of Washington to the Continental Army as Commander-in-Chief.

Although he was ill as was his father, Thomas Lynch, Jr. signed the Declaration of Independence the following year in 1776, having stood in for his father, Thomas Lynch, Sr., who was unable to represent South Carolina by the time the vote for independence would be taken, and the signatures placed. Lynch was one of the youngest of the South Carolina signers, said to be in his twenties.

Having resigned his commission in 1776, and plagued with bad health, Lynch and his wife eventually sailed to the West Indies for a change in climate in late 1779 as advised by physicians, in hopes of restoring his health. The vessel was reported as lost, and the young signatory and his wife died childless, unfortunately having disappeared at sea, as the Revolution raged.

J. Edward Lee, Ph.D., is Professor of History at Winthrop University. Lee is a former mayor of the City of York, South Carolina.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 82 – Guest Essayist: Edward Lee

Thomas Heyward, Jr. (July 28, 1746-March 6, 1809) was born in St. Luke’s Parish (present day Jasper County). Heyward was the son of Colonel Daniel Heyward and Mary Miles Heyward who were planters. Educated at home, Thomas Heyward, Jr. traveled to England where he studied law and became a member of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Despite his family’s wealth, he cherished scholarship and traveled to Europe during his studies. He valued setting an example of placing importance on educating oneself as his father encouraged.

Heyward was married twice: the first time in 1773 (some records say 1774) to Elizabeth Mathews. Her brother, John Mathews, was governor of South Carolina. After her death in childbirth, Heyward married another Elizabeth, this time Elizabeth Savage Heyward in 1786. He was the father of a total of nine children. Only one of the six children from his first marriage lived to adulthood. The three children from his second marriage all lived to adulthood.

Heyward voiced early his opposition to British rule and the control being forced upon the colonies through such methods as the Stamp Act. Soon after becoming a member of the Continental Congress, Heyward signed the Declaration of Independence, standing with Richard Henry Lee’s Resolution for Independence. Disagreements about whether to support independence included a warning from his father that voting for it could result in being hung. Still, Thomas Heyward believed independence for the colonies was acting in good judgment. With a strong sense of duty, he took notice of the abuses upon his fellow countrymen by the British Crown, further solidifying his resolve to discuss and accomplish independence.

Heyward, like Edward Rutledge, was in the South Carolina Militia. Heyward served as a Captain of Artillery. Both were taken prisoner by the British when Charleston fell in 1780, and considered a “ringleader of the rebellion.” He was eventually released through a prisoner exchange. While heading back, Heyward fell off the ship and nearly drowned. He held onto the ship’s rudder to stay alive until he could be rescued. After his release in a prisoner exchange, and much property damage, Heyward eventually served as a criminal court judge until his retirement in 1798, and also assisted forming a new state constitution as part of his final duties. He also served in the state legislature and presided over the Agricultural Society of South Carolina. While serving as a judge in the new government, Heyward was charged with the difficult task, which he took seriously, of trying, followed by execution for being found guilty, people who were in contact with the British for treasonous reasons.

Heyward was regarded as a strong statesman, of whom Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer from Pennsylvania described as “a firm Republican of good education and most amicable manners. He possessed an elegant political genius, which he sometimes exercised with success upon the various events of the war.” Heyward died in Jasper County in 1809.

J. Edward Lee, Ph.D., is Professor of History at Winthrop University. Lee is a former mayor of the City of York, South Carolina.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

 

Essay 81 – Guest Essayist: Edward Lee

In the summer of 1776, four well-educated men of social, economic, and political prominence stepped forward in Philadelphia to place their names on the Declaration of Independence. These Founding Fathers hailed from the rice-rich, slave-holding South Carolina Low Country. They, and the other signatories, boldly and courageously risked their lives and property by endorsing a formal break from the Mother Country’s North American Empire. Three of them would be imprisoned by England aboard a vessel harbored at St. Augustine when Charleston was besieged in 1780, and the fourth would be lost at sea the previous year, while the Revolution was underway.

These four signatories were connected by family ties, the land, and the economic power of the Low Country of South Carolina. They were well-educated advocates for their state and ably spoke for the colony’s planters and legal community. By July 1776, all of them grasped that the time had come for independence which manifest itself in Mr. Thomas Jefferson’s timeless explanation of an abusive Mother Country, Great Britain, which was trampling on the rights of its American children.

The first South Carolina signer, who is the focus of this essay, is Edward Rutledge (November 23, 1749-January 23, 1800), one of the youngest South Carolina signatories. Rutledge was the last of seven children born in Charleston to physician Dr. John Rutledge and Sarah Hext Rutledge. Like his two older brothers, John and Hugh, Edward studied law in London at Oxford’s Inns of Court. During his time in London, he witnessed Parliament’s debates concerning the colonies. In 1772, he was admitted to the English bar (Middle Temple) and returned to South Carolina where in 1774 he was married to Henrietta Middleton, the sister of signer Arthur Middleton. Edward and Henrietta had three children, one of whom died in infancy.

In Charleston, Edward had a successful law practice and owned more than fifty slaves. From 1774-1776, he and older brother, John, represented their state in the Continental Congress. He advocated the expulsion of African Americans from the newly formed Continental Army.

As a delegate to the Congress, Rutledge initially opposed Virginian Richard Henry Lee’s June 1776 plan for independence, arguing that the time was not yet “ripe.” Persuaded that the urgency of independence and the actions of Parliament called for southerners like himself to line up in the pro-Revolution group, he argued that the vote by Congress be unanimous and became the first South Carolina delegate to affix his signature. His oratorical style was said to resemble Cicero.

Returning to South Carolina in November, Rutledge served in the state’s General Assembly. He served as captain of the 2nd Independent Company of artillery in the militia and saw action at the 1779 Battle of Beaufort. He and signatories Arthur Middleton and Thomas Heyward were captured the following year when Charleston fell to the British. During July 1781, the men were released in a prisoner exchange.

Returning to the General Assembly where he served until 1796, Rutledge supported the harsh confiscation of Loyalist property. That year, he supported Thomas Jefferson’s unsuccessful presidential bid. He differed with Jefferson’s pro-France position and found himself often allied with President John Adams despite the latter’s support of England in its war with France. He served as a state senator for two years and was elected South Carolina’s governor in 1798. He did not complete his term and died in Charleston in 1800. It was said that his stroke was aggravated by the previous year’s death of George Washington.

Edward Lee, Ph.D., is Professor of History at Winthrop University. Lee is a former mayor of the City of York, South Carolina.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 80 – Guest Essayist: Barb Zakszewski

John Penn was a lawyer, North Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress, patriot, and some might say a bit of a rebel. Most importantly, he was one of 56 men who pledged to each other, “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” by signing the Declaration of Independence.

John Penn was not the most famous of the 56 signers. In fact, not much is written about him in the usual literature; however, from what is known and written, Mr. Penn led a fairly fascinating life. He was born May 17, 1741 (his birth has also been recorded as May 6, 1740) in Port Royal Virginia to Moses and Catherine Penn, an only child. The family was not wealthy and since the senior Mr. Penn did not see value in a formal education, John attended only two years of school before working with his father on the family farm. John’s father died when John was 18; he then went to live with his uncle, Edmund Penderton, where he completed his education by entering law school. In 1762, Penn became an attorney in Virginia.

After marriage to Susanna Lyne in 1763, and 2 children, the family moved to North Carolina in 1774, where they purchased a farm in Granville County. It was in North Carolina that Penn developed some very patriotic views about taxation especially, and firmly believed the only way to resolve the problems with the mother country of Great Britain was complete separation from her. He was vehemently against the Stamp Act and King George III, and some would say almost to the point of being disrespectful. As a consequence of his outspokenness, Penn was brought up on charges and found guilty. However, a sympathetic judge set Penn’s sentence at ONE CENT which Penn refused to pay on principle.

Subsequently, Penn entered a career in politics where he served in various capacities until his untimely death in 1788. Penn was elected to the Third Provincial Congress in 1775. These provincial congresses were governmental bodies that led the transition from royal government to states governments. The Third Congress established an executive committee and six military districts. Bills of credit that were issued were used as currency to fund organized armies in defense of the colonies. From there, Penn was sent as a delegate to the Continental Congress where he served until 1780.

Penn was a supporter and signer of a document called the Olive Branch Petition. Adopted in July of 1775, this petition was considered a last chance effort to appeal to the King of England and avoid war. The Petition contained a Declaration of Causes and outlined the necessity and reasons for the 13 colonies to take up arms in the American Revolutionary War. The King ultimately rejected the Olive Branch petition and the formal push for Independence from England began.

In 1776, as a champion of liberty, John Penn affixed his signature, along with 55 other men, to the Declaration of Independence. Continuing his belief that a permanent union of states was necessary, he also signed the Articles of Confederation.

Penn served in the Continental Congress until 1780. During that time, Penn, a very zealous man when it came to the Colonies separating from England, clashed with other members of the Congress who were not as convinced. This included the President of the Congress, Henry Laurens. As it turned out, Mr. Penn and Mr. Laurens roomed together during this time. Mr. Laurens, who was much older than Penn and in disagreement with his views, challenged Penn to a duel. But the duel was canceled the morning of, as Mr. Penn suggested such an idea was just foolish. Mr. Laurens agreed and the duel was canceled.

British victory at Camden in august of 1780 paved the way for the British invasion of North Carolina. Because the governor did not seem to have adequate emergency powers, he requested the formation of a Board of War, a three-member board, on which Penn was appointed to serve. Because the other two members rarely attended meetings, Penn had extra latitude to decide on several courses of action including where to send military supplies, and the coordination of military activities. The State assembly abolished the Board in January 1781 after complaints from military officers who opposed civilian interference and supposed usurpation of power.

Penn continued to hold various positions in government until his death in 1788, at the young age of 47. Originally, he was buried near his home in Granville County. In 1894, his remains were reinterred at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, in North Carolina, site of one of the turning-point battles late in the American Revolutionary War.

Barb Zakszewski is a wife, mother and grandmother, lifelong conservative, regular civic volunteer and writer.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 79 – Guest Essayist: Jeff Broadwater

History remembers Joseph Hewes as one of the three North Carolina signers of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams, who served in the Continental Congress with Hewes and who would later become president, believed Hewes was critical in persuading moderate members of Congress to support the break with Great Britain.

Raised on his family’s estate near Kingston in what was then West Jersey, Hewes received a classical education in a Quaker grammar school. Rather than obtaining a degree at the nearby College of New Jersey, the forerunner of Princeton University, however, Hewes, in 1749, apprenticed himself to Joseph Ogden, a Philadelphia merchant. Five years later, Hewes declined an offer to join Ogden as a partner, and with money from his father’s estate, went into business for himself. Hewes’s work for Ogden had taken him to North Carolina, and apparently dissatisfied with his Philadelphia enterprise, Hewes moved in 1755 to Edenton, a small but prosperous commercial center on the Carolina coast.

With a likeable, easy-going personality; a natural head for business; and a vigorous work ethic, Hewes quickly rose to the top of Edenton society. He formed a close friendship with Samuel Johnston, one of the colony’s most influential lawyers and political leaders, becoming engaged to Johnston’s younger sister, Isabella, in 1760. She died before they could be wed, but Hewes never married and was treated as a member of the Johnston family for the rest of his life. The year Isabella died, Hewes replaced Johnston as Edenton’s representative to the colonial assembly and served on committees on appropriations and finance, appropriate assignments considering his commercial background.

Hewes eventually became involved in the Whig resistance to British imperial policies, especially the Tea Act of 1773 and the punitive Coercive Acts of 1774, which had been adopted in response to the Boston Tea Party, and he was an original member of North Carolina’s Committee of Correspondence. In June 1774, the committee endorsed a Massachusetts’s proposal for a continental congress, and in August of that year, assembly members meeting in New Bern approved the committee report and elected Hewes, along with William Hooper and Richard Caswell, to represent North Carolina in a meeting in Philadelphia of all the colonies.

While some members of the First Continental Congress seemed ready to resort to force, the North Carolina delegates sided with moderates who held out hope for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Hewes admired Britain’s constitutional monarchy and feared a violent revolution could lead to virtual mob rule, but he later wrote that he could accept any government the people supported. Despite their differences, the delegates did approve the Continental Association, proclaiming a boycott of British goods as long as Parliament’s objectionable policies remained in place.

Hewes returned to Edenton in late November 1774, suffering from a fever, probably malaria, that would continue to plague him intermittently. He nevertheless remained active, serving on Edenton’s Committee of Safety, which had the responsibility for enforcing the Continental Association in Edenton. The outbreak of fighting at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts and King George III’s subsequent refusal to negotiate with the colonies undermined the position of moderates like Hewes and led him to act more aggressively. When Congress reconvened in May 1775, Hewes recruited two Presbyterian ministers to rally support for the American cause among Highland Scots in the North Carolina backcountry. Mainly Presbyterians, the Scots had long been estranged from the colony’s politically dominant English Anglican faction to their east. Hewes also served as secretary to Congress’s Naval Board and helped secure John Paul Jones’s commission in the Continental Navy.

In the first half of 1776, Hewes found himself overtaken by events. Parliament’s Prohibitory Act of 1775, outlawing trade with the colonies, had created widespread resentment. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, his fiery call for American independence; Hewes reluctantly forwarded it to North Carolina. In February, the victory of North Carolina militia over a Loyalist force at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge emboldened the colony’s Whigs. In April, the Fourth Provincial Congress, meeting in Halifax, authorized North Carolina’s congressional delegation to support independence. Reserved by nature, preoccupied with his committee assignments, and at the moment the only North Carolina delegate in Philadelphia, Hewes did not introduce the so-called Halifax Resolves in Congress until May 27, when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a similar resolution.

Hewes readily signed the Declaration of Independence and thereafter worked tirelessly for the success of the Revolution, particularly in securing ships and supplies for the American cause, but his conservatism created enemies for him at home. In November 1776, a Fifth Provincial Congress met to draft a constitution for what was now the independent state of North Carolina. The convention split between what historians have traditionally labeled “conservative” and “radical” factions. Conservatives favored a strong executive and property qualifications for voting and holding political office. Radicals wanted to concentrate power in the legislature and to expand the political rights of the less affluent. The result was a compromise that pleased neither side. Hewes had identified with the conservatives, and when the state’s new General Assembly met in April 1777, the radicals, alleging Hewes had enriched himself in his business dealings with Congress and violated the ban in the recently adopted constitution on dual office-holding, defeated his bid for reelection to the Continental Congress.

Hewes might have made a political comeback if not for his failing health. Still popular in Edenton, he was elected to the General Assembly in 1779, and the assembly almost immediately returned him to Congress. An arduous trip to Philadelphia in the summer heat weakened his delicate constitution. By late September he was virtually bed-ridden, and in October he resigned from Congress. Too sick to come home, Hewes died in November at the age of 49 and was buried in the graveyard of Christ’s Church in Philadelphia.

Jeff Broadwater is professor emeritus of history at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina, where he taught courses on the American Revolution and on the history of the American South. His publications include Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution (2019); James Madison, A Son of Virginia and a Founder of of the Nation (2012); and George Mason, Forgotten Founder (2006). He also co-edited, with Troy Kickler, North Carolina’s Revolutionary Founders (2019).

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Bibliography:

Martin, Michael G. “Hewes, Joseph.” In William Powell, ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979-1991, 3: 123-125.

Mitchell, Memory F. North Carolina’s Signers: Brief Sketches of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Raleigh, N.C.: State Department of Archives and History, 1964.

Morgan, Daniel T. and William J. Schmidt. North Carolinians in the Continental Congress. Winston-Salem, N.C.: John F. Blair, 1976.

Sikes, E.W. and S.A. Ashe. “Joseph Hewes.” In S.A. Ashe, ed. Biographical History of North Carolina: From Colonial Times to the Present, 8 vols. Greensboro, N.C.: Charles L. Van Nappen, 1906, 3: 172-80.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 78 – Guest Essayist: Jeff Broadwater
William Hooper at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park

William Hooper is generally considered to have been one of the most impressive North Carolinians to have served in the Continental Congress. Yet his career is marked by irony. Initially a key figure in mobilizing opposition to Great Britain, Hooper nevertheless struggled after 1776 to adjust to the politics of a revolutionary era.

Born in Boston in 1742, Hooper was educated first by his father, the Reverend William Hooper of Trinity Episcopal Church, and later at Boston’s Public Latin School. At the age of 15, he entered Harvard College as a sophomore and graduated in 1760. Hooper continued his studies at Harvard, receiving a master’s degree in 1763, and read law with James Otis, an early defender of American rights and an obvious influence on Hooper’s political views.

Shortly after completing his studies, Hooper moved to Wilmington. The North Carolina seaport had fewer lawyers than did Boston, and it offered Hooper other advantages. The Boston merchant James Murray was a family friend, and Murray’s brother-in-law, Thomas Clark, lived in Wilmington and served as his business agent. Clark’s family provided Hooper invaluable support, and in August 1767, he married Clark’s much-admired daughter, Anne.

Hooper prospered in Wilmington and became identified with the colony’s eastern faction. Appointed deputy attorney general for the Salisbury District, he clashed on more than one occasion with the Regulators, backcountry farmers who protested—sometimes violently—against taxes, debt collection, and political corruption at the local level. In 1773, Hooper entered the colonial assembly as a representative of what is today the city of Fayetteville, and at about the same time, he began buying land south of Wilmington on Masonboro Sound, where he would eventually build a house he called Finian.

As a member of the assembly, Hooper became embroiled in the foreign attachment controversy, which involved the power of colonial courts to seize the North Carolina property of debtors in Great Britain who owed money to North Carolina residents. The royal governor Josiah Martin had been instructed by the crown to end the practice. In response, Hooper wrote a series of essays under the pseudonym “Hampden” that demonstrated considerable learning and eloquence in defending the jurisdiction of North Carolina’s courts.

Hooper returned to the assembly from New Hanover County in December 1773 and was appointed to the colony’s Committee of Correspondence. Britain’s closing of the port of Boston after the Boston Tea Party helped radicalize him. He sensed as early as April 1774 that events were driving the American colonies to independence, an end he did not relish. But he considered “the cause of the Town of Boston” to be “the common cause of British America,” and in Wilmington he led a call for a provincial congress and helped raise money and supplies for the citizens of Boston.

North Carolina’s First Provincial Congress met in New Bern in August 1774, and elected Hooper to North Carolina’s delegation to the Continental Congress. In November, he was elected to Wilmington’s Committee of Safety. Hooper became a regular fixture in North Carolina’s provincial congresses, which, as royal authority disintegrated, governed the colony until a new state government could be organized. He authored several important public papers defending American rights, but by the end of 1775, Hooper privately grew disillusioned. Politics, he wrote, “drives men to expedients that morality must condemn.”

Hooper’s defense of American rights did not spring from a hostility to the British constitution. Consistent with the classical republicanism then common in America, he believed Britain’s commercial success had produced a widespread luxury that had undermined civic virtue. The resulting corruption manifested itself in the oppression of the colonies.  Oppression in America, Hooper seemed to believe, could spread to Britain itself, making the survival of colonial liberty essential to the survival of British liberty. Hooper envisioned for North Carolina, should it become independent, a British-style government purged of corruption. This, he thought, required a strong executive, an independent judiciary, a bicameral legislature, and popular deference to an educated elite.

His service in the Fourth Provincial Congress of April 1776 only increased his frustration. He served on a committee that tried but failed to produce a new state constitution. As prospects for reconciliation with Great Britain evaporated, Hooper supported the Halifax Resolves, endorsing independence, but his presence at the North Carolina congress meant he missed the Continental Congress’s debate over the Declaration of Independence. He did, however, participate in the general signing of the document on August 2.

Hooper struggled as the Revolutionary War went on with no end in sight. Early in 1777, he contracted yellow fever and sometime later, malaria. In April he resigned his seat in the Continental Congress, partly because the new General Assembly failed to reelect his friend and congressional colleague, the Edenton merchant Joseph Hewes. Hooper remained in the state assembly, but fearing British warships, he abandoned Finian for Wilmington and then fled Wilmington before it fell to the British in January 1781. He, Anne, and their three children eventually settled in Hillsborough. There he resumed a profitable law practice while his political fortunes declined.

In 1782, Hooper won a Hillsborough seat in the General Assembly, but lawmakers voided the election results, and the next year he lost a race to tavern keeper Thomas Farmer. Hooper returned to the state legislature in 1784, but it was a last hurrah. His elitism and his support for the lenient treatment of former Loyalists and a stronger national government alienated many North Carolina voters, and in 1788 he lost his last election: a bid for a seat in the Hillsborough convention called to consider ratification of the United States Constitution. Undeterred, he continued to champion the Constitution and received a measure of vindication when a second convention, meeting in Fayetteville, ratified the document. Weakened by disease, sometimes delirious, and drinking heavily, the 48-year-old Hooper died in 1790, the day before his daughter was to be married.

Jeff Broadwater is professor emeritus of history at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina, where he taught courses on the American Revolution and on the history of the American South. His publications include Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution (2019); James Madison, A Son of Virginia and a Founder of of the Nation (2012); and George Mason, Forgotten Founder (2006). He also co-edited, with Troy Kickler, North Carolina’s Revolutionary Founders (2019).

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Bibliography:

Engstrom, Mary Claire. “Hooper, William.” In William Powell, ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979-1991, 3: 199-202.

Ashe, S.A. “William Hooper.” In S.A. Ashe and Stephen B. Weeks, eds. Biographical History of North Carolina: From Colonial Times to the Present, 8 vols. Greensboro, N.C.: Charles L. Van Nappen, 1906, 7: 233-244.

Watson, Alan D. Harnett, Hooper and Howe: Revolutionary Leaders in the Lower Cape Fear. Wilmington, N.C.: Lower Cape Fear Historical Society, 1979.

Williams, Patrick G. “Hooper, William.” In John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds. American National Biography, 26 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 3: 145-147.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 77 – Guest Essayist: Jay McConville

When studying history, it is important to remember a few things. First, historic events were not singular moments as we often view them; instead, they developed as events today do, over time, and as a result of many influences.

Second, it is important to not oversimplify the past because people and events then were as complicated, conflicted, and convoluted as they are today. How people lived, the decisions they made, and the challenges they faced were complex, even if some of the details may have been lost to history.

When reading of the life of Carter Braxton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia, it is important to keep these considerations in mind. Born into wealth, Braxton did not, however, live an easy life though it may have been privileged and full of material comforts. He died at an early age, having lost his once significant fortune, yet given the struggles he faced throughout his life, he might be excused for some of these failures.

Braxton was born on September 10, 1736 into one of the wealthiest and most distinguished families in the colonies. He was born on the Newington Plantation, east of Richmond on the Mattaponi River, which connects to the York River and Chesapeake Bay, and sits at the western end of Virginia’s beautiful Middle Peninsula. He was a planter and merchant. His grandfather had immigrated from England, and his father, who received a large land grant from George II, would expand the family’s wealth and prestige, serving frequently in the House of Burgesses from 1718 to 1734. His grandfather on his mother’s side was Robert “King” Carter, a man of great wealth and prominence, who also served in the House of Burgesses, including as Speaker. King Carter even served as the colony of Virginia’s Acting Governor for a year.

From this auspicious beginning, one might assume that Carter led a happy and contented life of comfort. Yet his wealth did not shield him from tragedy. His mother died just a week following his birth, and his father passed away when Carter was only 13. He married Judith Robinson upon leaving the College of William and Mary after only one year, but sadly she also died after they had been married for only two years. Perhaps to ease his grief, he traveled to Europe and England where he learned a great deal about the rulers of his colonial home, knowledge and perspective that would inform his decisions when revolutionary fervor gripped the colonies. After two years in Europe, he returned, marrying a second time in 1760 to Elizabeth Corbin. It is reported that they had 16 children together.

In keeping with family tradition, Braxton served in the House of Burgesses following his return, beginning in 1761. Then, when Peyton Randolph died suddenly in October 1775, he was made a member of Virginia’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress where he would serve for two years.

Carter was loyal to Virginia, but also to the Crown, at first. He was a reluctant revolutionary and argued against independence, fearing that it, and specifically a republican government, would lead to disaster and despotism in the colonies. While disinclined, he continued to work alongside the familiar names of the eventual revolution, including George Washington and Peyton Randolph. He did not relish conflict with the British, and worked to quell it when he could.

One historical incident shows the character and conservative nature of the man, when he worked with Patrick Henry to avoid direct conflict with the Royal Governor Lord Dunmore. Following the events at Lexington and Concord, Dunmore had confiscated gunpowder stored in Williamsburg, Virginia. Militia units were ready to fight over their lost supplies, led by the fiery Patrick Henry. Braxton was able to use the good connections he had through his father-in-law, Richard Corbin, who was serving as receiver general of the Colony, to pay the militia for the gunpowder, thus avoiding a military confrontation.

While Braxton was reluctant, he was not without independence sentiments. While a member of the House of Burgesses, likely as a result of his knowledge of the financial designs England had for the colonies which he learned through his travels there, he signed the Virginia Resolves which asserted that only the House of Burgesses had the right to tax Virginians. He also signed the Virginia Association, a non-importation agreement, and in 1775 became a member of the Virginia Colonial Convention.

Students of history know that there was a raging debate in the colonies at that time regarding independence. Many American leaders wanted England to change its policies toward the American Colonies, but did not support independence, nor did they desire revolution. Carter Braxton was initially of that opinion, and advocated a conservative approach. His essay which was published in June 1776, however, an excerpt of which is below, demonstrates his eventual acceptance of the need for independence:

When depotism had displayed her banners, and with unremitting ardour and fury scattered her engines of oppression through this wide extended continent, the virtuous opposition of the people to its progress relaxed the tone of government in almost every colony, and occasioned in many instances a total suspension of law. These inconveniencies, however, were natural, and the mode readily submitted to, as there was then reason to hope that justice would be done to our injured country; the same laws, executed under the same authority, soon regain their former use and lustre; and peace, raised on a permanent foundation, bless this our native land.

But since these hopes have hitherto proved delusive, and time, instead of bringing us relief, daily brings forth new proofs of British tyranny, and thereby separates us further from that reconciliation we so ardently wished; does it not become the duty of your, and every other Convention, to assume the reins of government, and no longer suffer the people to live without the benefit of law, and order the protection it affords?

So, rather hesitatingly, but eventually, he came to support the Revolution, voted for the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and signed it on August 2, 1776.

In response to his cautious and conservative views about democracy, Braxton was not initially returned to Congress after 1776. He did, however, remain active in Virginia politics and eventually returned to Congress where he served until 1783. He died of a stroke at the age of only 61 in 1797.

Like many of the founders, the revolution was not kind to Braxton. He lent significant financial support to the American Independence effort, including both money and ships, many of which were destroyed. His business was greatly curtailed, and his lands and plantations ransacked and pillaged. He made some unfortunate financial decisions of his own, as well, and ended his life in debt. His reputation as a clear thinker, honorable public servant, and patriot did not suffer, however, from his lack of financial success. He was described by his peers as a sensible and accomplished gentleman, and by others as a man of cultivation and talent. Despite the many challenges and tragedies that punctuated his life, he is remembered most for his honorable service to the cause of liberty.

Jay McConville is a military veteran, management professional, and active civic volunteer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he held multiple key technology and management positions within the Aerospace and Defense industry, including twice as President and CEO. He served in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer, and has also been active in civic and industry volunteer associations, including running for elected office, serving as a political party chairman, and serving multiple terms as President of both his industry association’s Washington DC Chapter and his local youth sports association. Today he serves on the Operating Board of Directors of Constituting America. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Government from George Mason University, and a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College. Jay lives in Richmond with his wife Susan Ulsamer McConville. They have three children and two grandchildren.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

References:

Cruz, Shelly (2014). Carter Braxton, Descendant, Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (DSDI), https://www.dsdi1776.com/carter-braxton/

Revolutionary War (2020). Carter Braxton, Revolutionary War: A colorful, story-telling overview of the American Revolutionary War, https://www.revolutionary-war.net/carter-braxton/

Hyneman, C., & Lutz, D. (1983). American Political Writing During the Founding Era, 1760-1805. Liberty Fund, Incorporated. https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/lutz-american-political-writing-during-the-founding-era-1760-1805-vol-1

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 76 – Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

Any successful enterprise, whether it be a large business or a political movement, will have within it the widest cross section of people both leading that effort or participating within it—individuals who bring a multitude of different skills and experiences to the table in order to make certain that the endeavor will succeed. This is the true definition of “diversity,” something that looks past the cosmetic and draws on the outlook and experience of its participants.

This is certainly true with our founders, men who couldn’t have been more different than each other, despite their similarities. The authors of the Declaration of Independence:  Jefferson (the principal author), John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman (who were all on the Continental Congress’ Declaration Committee), all brought with them unique perspectives.

These differences extended to the pair of brothers who signed the Declaration, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, both of Virginia. The only pair of brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence, both brought with them different outlooks and temperament.

The older brother, Richard Henry Lee, with his European education and charming likeability, became a major political force in the budding liberty movement in Virginia—especially with his writing and speaking.

But Francis Lightfoot Lee, a planter born in 1734 in Westmoreland, Virginia, contemporarily known as Frank, the second-youngest of the Lee brothers, was a determined worker, someone who did things out of duty and a devotion to getting done whatever task lay before him. He didn’t seek the spotlight, but was seen as a tireless worker. A leader, certainly, but one who led by doing.

Political movements need both, and while much praise and attention is bestowed on the former, it is the latter which is just as important (if not more so).

It is important to note that this branch of the Lee family played a prominent role in the first three centuries of not only American history, but Virginia history as well. The Lees were what is known as “FFVs” one of the “First Families of Virginia”—the families who first settled Virginia in Colonial Times. Richard Lee I, the first Lee in Virginia, migrated to the Colonies in 1639, and served as Virginia’s Attorney General several years after his arrival. His grandson was Thomas Lee, who became Governor in 1749, and was the father of both Frank Lee and Richard Henry Lee (among the other descendants of Richard Lee I are both Gen. Robert E. Lee and President Zachary Taylor, as well as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Edward Douglass White).

Frank Lee served as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, the elected legislature that was Colonial Virginia’s precursor to today’s House of Delegates. But from his statements, it is clear that he did so out of a duty to serve, and not to satisfy any greater political ambition. Lee wrote to his older brother at one point, when it looked like he might not get re-elected:

The people are so vexed at the little attention I have given them that they are determined it seems to dismiss me from their service, a resolution most pleasing to me, for it is so very inconvenient to me that nothing should induce me to take a poll, but a repeated promise to my friends there, enforced by those here who consider me as a staunch friend to Liberty.

Lee was focused on achieving the cause of liberty for the American Colonies, as he (like others) had grown both frustrated and dismayed by the increasing mistreatment of the Colonial Citizens by the British Crown.

He continued to serve and was eventually sent as a delegate to the Continental Congress—and John Adams remarked at the constancy of both Lee brothers who were in service together.

Frank Lee signed the Declaration and continued to serve as a Delegate to the Continental Congress, but he grew increasingly frustrated with the ambition and mismanagement of those around him. He wrote to Richard Henry Lee, his brother, again, saying:

I am as heartily tired of the knavery and stupidity of the generality of mankind as you can be; but it is our duty to stem the Current, as much as we can and to do all the service in our power, to our Country and our friends. The consciousness of having done so, will be the greatest of all rewards… [W]e may give a fair opportunity to succeeding Patriots, of making their Country flourishing and happy, but this must be the work of Peace.

He returned to Virginia following his service in the Continental Congress and served as a member of the Virginia State Senate. He retired from public and political life in 1785, having seen his deliberate “work of Peace” achieve the end he so desired. He and his wife died within one week of each other in 1797.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 75 – Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

Thomas Nelson Jr. of Virginia gave his fortune and his health to further the cause of American Independence. When he and his fellow signers pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” the men of the Second Continental Congress took that risk seriously. Some paid more than others and Thomas Nelson Jr. may have paid more than all of them. He was never a healthy man, but the mission of independence took much of the health that he did have, resulting in an early death at the age of 50. He also sacrificed his family’s fortune, spending and donating it to help win the War of Independence. This was truly a man who risked and gave all so that we could live in the nation that we do today.

Nelson was born in Yorktown, Virginia in 1738 to a very wealthy family. As many members of wealthy Virginia families were, Thomas was sent to England for his education. He graduated from Cambridge and returned to Virginia soon after. He married Lucy Grymes, a young widow who was a member of Virginia’s Randolph family, in 1762 and they had 13 children. The young family settled down as Nelson became a planter and an estate manager.

He was elected to Virginia’s House of Burgesses and was a very outspoken opponent of Britain and their policies toward the colonies and was one of the first leaders in the colonies to entertain the idea of an independency for the colonies. He believed that it was absurd to have the colonists hold an “affection for a people who are carrying on the most savage war against us.” On November 7, 1774, Nelson was a member of the Yorktown Tea Party. Citizens of York County, Virginia had passed a non-importation boycott in response to the Tea Act of 1773. When the British ship Virginia docked at Yorktown, enraged citizens marched onto the ship and dumped two imported half-chests of tea into the water.

Nelson was appointed as a member of the Second Continental Congress in mid-1775, replacing George Washington when Washington left the Congress to go to Boston to take command of the Continental Army. He had returned to Virginia and was in Williamsburg on May 15, 1776 when the Fifth Virginia Convention passed a series of resolutions declaring Virginia was no longer a part of the British Empire. Nelson immediately carried the news from Virginia to Philadelphia where Richard Henry Lee on June 6, 1776 made the official resolution for independence within the Second Continental Congress, that would lead to the Declaration of Independence. He eventually had to resign from the Congress due to poor health.

Nelson was later appointed a brigadier general in the Continental Army and commanded the Virginia militia during the battle of Yorktown in 1781 during the American Revolutionary War. It was here that one of the most selfless acts of his life took place as he ordered the artillery of the Continental Army to fire on his home, where several British officers were headquartered. The home was heavily damaged. The surrender of the British troops at Yorktown occurred soon after.

In June of 1781, Nelson became the second governor of Virginia, succeeding Thomas Jefferson. He had to resign in November of 1781 due to poor health. By this point in his life, he had lost almost everything. His businesses were destroyed. He was owed over two million dollars by the United States government for his loans to help finance the French fleet and their aid to the war effort. He was never repaid and his financial well-being was destroyed.

Nelson passed away at his home at the age of 50 in 1789 from severe asthma. His body was originally buried in an unmarked grave in Yorktown because of a fear that creditors may hold his body for collateral until his debts were paid. He now rests under a fitting stone that pays tribute to him and his service to the United States, including honoring his service as a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Once, after the war, when he was asked if his treatment was worth it, Nelson replied that if he had to, he “would do it all over again.” After his countless sacrifices, Thomas Nelson Jr. still believed in his nation and his service to it.

Val Crofts serves as Chief Education and Programs Officer at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. Val previously taught high school U.S. History, U.S. Military History and AP U.S. Government for 19 years in Wisconsin, and was recipient of the DAR Outstanding U.S. History Teacher of the Year for the state of Wisconsin in 2019-20. Val also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School as a social studies teacher for 9 years. He is also a proud member of the United States Semiquincentennial Commission (America 250), which is currently planning events to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 74 – Guest Essayist: William Rasmussen

One of the most influential and conspicuous of the delegates at the 1775 Second Continental Congress was Benjamin Harrison V of Berkeley (1726-1791). Elected Chairman of the Congress’s Committee of the Whole, he presided, with flair, over the final deliberations that shaped the Declaration of Independence. Harrison was given that important position because he was “a favorite of the day,” stated Edmund Randolph, his colleague from Virginia: “With strong sense and a temper not disposed to compromise with ministerial power, he scruples not to utter any untruth.”

To explain the respect that Harrison received in Philadelphia, Randolph pointed to his colleague’s years of legislative experience in Virginia: “During a long service in the House of Burgesses, his frankness, though sometimes tinctured with bitterness, has been the source of considerable attachment [to him].” The “bitterness” had resulted when Harrison said whatever he pleased, with sometimes brutal frankness. John Adams used the words “obscene,” “profane,” and “impious” to describe the sometimes-boisterous behavior of Harrison that was the antithesis of what the New Englander considered proper. Adams even compared Harrison—an obese man—to Shakespeare’s comical figure Falstaff, although—in confirmation of Edmund Randolph’s observations—he admitted that “Harrison’s contributions and many pleasantries steadied rough sessions” of the Congress.

Harrison’s conspicuousness at the Congress was confirmed by accounts of the time and by the painter John Trumbull’s famous canvas of 1818 that recreates the “Signing of the Declaration of Independence.” Harrison is pictured at the table on the extreme left, easy to spot. The “Signers” passed in front of him to sign what they feared might be a death warrant. According to delegate Benjamin Rush, there was a “pensive and awful silence” that Harrison dared to interrupt. His best-known exchange was with Eldridge Gerry, a slight man: “I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes and be with the Angels, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.”

The fact that Benjamin Harrison is little known today would have shocked his contemporaries. The explanation, however, is simple: Harrison has been overshadowed by the fame of Virginia colleagues who became some of the most illustrious figures in all of American history—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, George Mason, and John Marshall. In addition, it is easy to lose sight of Harrison because he was fifth in his family line to carry exactly the same name, as did his oldest son, Benjamin Harrison VI. (The Roman numerals have been added by modern historians; the confusion was even greater without the numerals.)

All six of the Benjamin Harrisons were active in public service. For that reason, the fifth Benjamin Harrison is generally dubbed “Benjamin Harrison the Signer.” Benjamin I (who arrived in the colony c. 1630) became Clerk of the Governor’s Council, and Benjamin II, III, and IV all served in the House of Burgesses. Benjamin IV built the house at Berkeley plantation, where in 1745, at age fifty-one, he—and a child he had with him—died when struck by lightning while closing an upstairs window. Son Benjamin V, the principal heir, inherited at age nineteen a vast empire of land and slaves. For the next forty-six years, however, Harrison spent little of his time and energy managing the vast operations at both Berkeley and other plantations he had inherited on both sides of the James River. Instead, Harrison gave his time to public service.

The decades prior to 1775 formed a tumultuous period in American history when Harrison involved himself in numerous pursuits that culminated in the decisions of the Second Continental Congress and the establishment of a new nation. Those experiences developed Harrison into an effective legislator, and they made him as well the “favorite” that Edmund Randolph recognized.

Harrison served three decades in the Virginia House of Burgesses, representing Surry County and Charles City County. In 1752, as a member of the Committee of Propositions and Grievances, he assisted in drafting a complaint to the governor and to King George and Parliament regarding the taxing of land patents—that was taxation without representation. Harrison with that stance became one of the earliest of the patriots. A decade later, when Britain passed the Townsend Acts in 1767 that asserted Parliament’s right to tax the colonies, he helped draft a response from the Virginia Burgesses that claimed the opposite—British subjects can be taxed only by their elected representatives.

In the next decade, as more issues came to the fore, Harrison became more involved in the resistance. In 1770, he joined an association of Virginia lawmakers and merchants that boycotted British imports until the British Parliament repealed its tea tax. He was as well a sponsor of a bill that declared illegal any laws passed by Parliament without the consent of the colonists. In 1772, Harrison and Jefferson were among six Virginians who petitioned the King to end the importation of slaves from Africa. Although Harrison sided with the East India Company’s demand for payment when its tea was dumped into the Boston harbor in 1773, he condemned the Intolerable Acts that were the response of the British Parliament. He was among eighty-nine Virginia Burgesses who denounced the new policy—and invited colonies to convene a Continental Congress. It followed that Harrison was selected as one of Virginia’s delegates to that gathering.

On the eve of the Second Continental Congress, Harrison was present when Patrick Henry presented his “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech at a March 1775 convention in Richmond. Two months later when the Second Continental Congress convened, Harrison’s choice of roommates signaled his importance there. They were his brother-in-law Peyton Randolph, who was elected president of both the First and the Second Continental Congresses (he died in October 1775), and George Washington, who soon left to take command of the Continental Army. Harrison served on a committee that reviewed the needs and morale of that army.

For his prominence at the Second Continental Congress and the signing, Harrison won election to positions in the newly formed state of Virginia, but he also paid a price—when the British ravaged his Berkeley plantation. In 1777 Harrison was elected Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, soundly defeating Thomas Jefferson for that position, to which he was reelected several times. He next served as Virginia’s fifth governor, from 1781 to 1784. It was early in 1781 that Benedict Arnold led a British force of 1,600 up the James River in an effort to shift both the setting and course of the Revolutionary War, and to punish the rebellious leaders of Virginia. A specific target was Harrison’s plantation, which Arnold succeeded in only partially burning, though he was able to burn its furnishings, including the family portraits on its walls. (A rare and priceless miniature painting of Benjamin the Signer is in the collection of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.)

Before he died in 1791, Harrison was elected to the Virginia House for two additional terms. In 1788 he cast one of his last votes in opposition to ratification of the new Constitution, due to its lack of a bill of rights.

Harrison and his wife Elizabeth Bassett, who married in 1848, were blessed with eight children during their 40-year marriage. The youngest was William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), who served as a congressional delegate for the Northwest Territory, became a governor of the Indiana Territory, then a general who turned back Indian uprisings, and, finally, became the ninth president of the United States. Benjamin Harrison’s great-grandson (1833-1901), also named Benjamin Harrison (probably to no family member’s surprise), was a Union general in the Civil War, a senator, and, finally, the twenty-third U.S. president.

William M.S. Rasmussen serves as Senior Museum Collections Curator & Lora M. Robins Curator of Art at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. He is co-author of The Story of Virginia, Highlights from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, with Jamie O. Bosket, among many other books and articles on Virginia history.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 73 – Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

Colonial Virginia was a hierarchal society in which wealthy, slave owning planters provided political and civil leadership. Their financial independence gave them the leisure to serve in the House of Burgesses, local offices such as the militia, and Anglican parishes as vestrymen, to name a few. These planter-statesmen were the leaders of the patriot resistance movement to British tyranny in the 1760s and 1770s: George Washington, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson.

On April 13, 1743, Jefferson was born to Peter and Jane at Shadwell Plantation on the Virginia frontier. His father was a planter-statesman who passed away in 1757, leaving Thomas and his brother significant landholdings. Jefferson was destined to become a planter-statesman in his own right, though the imperial crisis and American Revolution would provide him an opportunity for greatness on a world stage as a founder and lawgiver.

In 1825, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend, Henry Lee, reflecting on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. He disclaimed originality in the ideas that shaped the Declaration of Independence.

This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent…it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. ….”

Jefferson disclaimer to any originality in writing about the principles of natural rights republicanism in the Declaration of Independence was based upon the “harmonizing sentiments of the day” circulating in colonial newspapers, pamphlets, taverns, and colonial legislatures.

The “harmonizing sentiments” of the 1760s and 1770s supported a natural law opposition to British tyranny in the American colonies. James Otis was one of the earliest proponents of natural law resistance. In 1764, he wrote, “Should an act of Parliament be against any of his natural laws, which are immutably true, their declaration would be contrary to eternal truth, equity, and justice, and consequently void.” The speeches of Patrick Henry, the debates in the House of Burgesses and Continental Congresses, and the pamphlets of John Dickinson, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine expressed many of the same natural rights sentiments.

Jefferson also discovered these “harmonizing sentiments” during his classical education and in the books he read. He studied with Rev. William Douglas and Rev. James Maury. They provided young Jefferson with a rigorous classical education. He studied Latin and Greek, and read the poetry of Horace and Virgil, the Roman historians, and the political ideas of Cicero and Aristotle. He derived much of his thinking about natural law and political principles from these sources.

During his time with these tutors, Jefferson did not neglect his study of modern languages and political thought. He learned French and began his reading in the thinkers of the Enlightenment such as John Locke. He continued his study of the Enlightenment, especially the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, when he went to the College of William and Mary. While he was at college, he studied and read English law with George Wythe.

Jefferson said of his beloved teacher, Wythe, “No man ever left behind a character more venerated than George Wythe…and, devoted as he was to liberty, and the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country.”

Jefferson’s education thus had a strong foundation in the study of natural law and popular government from a variety of traditions: ancient Greece and Rome, the English tradition, the ideas of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers combined with Protestantism woven together into a rich tapestry.

By the mid-1770s, Jefferson was ready to join the arguments of other patriots as a writer and statesman in the Second Continental Congress. In 1774, he authored a pamphlet entitled Summary View of the Rights of British America. He wrote that God was the author of natural rights inherent in each human being. The Americans were “a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate… the God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”

At the Second Continental Congress, Jefferson and John Dickinson wrote the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Congress resolved, “The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.”

Almost exactly a year later, the Congress declared independence and the ideas liberty and self-government. On June 7, 1776, Virginian Richard Henry Lee rose in Congress and offered a resolution for independence. “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” Congress appointed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence including thirty-three-year-old delegate, Jefferson.

John Adams later explained why he and the committee asked Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence. Among the several reasons, Adams stated, “I had a great opinion of the elegance of his pen and none at all of my own.” The elegance of Jefferson’s writing—and of his mind and political thought—was deeply rooted in his classical education.

The committee submitted the document to Congress, where it was considered, edited, and then adopted on July 4, 1776, enunciating the natural rights principles of the American republic. The Declaration claimed that the natural rights of all human beings were self-evident truths that were axiomatic and did not need to be proven. They were equally “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The equality of human beings meant that they were equal in giving consent to their representatives in a republic to govern. All authority flowed from the sovereign people equally. The purpose of that government was to protect the rights of the people. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The people had the right to overthrow a government that violated the people’s rights with a long train of abuses.

Thomas Jefferson’s early life and classical education prepared him to author the Declaration of Independence. After this watershed contribution to the creation of the American republic, Jefferson led a life of patriotic public service as a member of Congress, diplomat, Secretary of State, Vice-President, and President during the early republic that witnessed the creation of American institutions, the formulation of domestic and foreign policies, and the expansion of the new nation.

Jefferson died providentially on July 4, 1826 along with his friend, John Adams. It was fitting that Jefferson and Adams died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that they submitted to the Continental Congress, the American people, and the world.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner


 

Constituting America first published this message from Founder Janine Turner over Memorial Day Weekend, 2010, the inaugural year of our organization. We are pleased to share it with you again, as we celebrate our 13th birthday!  

Read more

Essay 72 – Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

If one lived in Virginia during the first couple of centuries or so of European settlement, one could do much worse than being born into the Lee family. Founded in the New World by the first Richard Lee in 1639, its wealth was based initially on tobacco. From that source, the family expanded, intermarried with other prominent Virginians, and established its prominence in the Old Dominion State. Richard Henry Lee and his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee, both signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, were scions of one branch of the family. Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee III was a son of Richard Henry Lee’s cousin. Henry III was a precocious officer in the Continental Army, major-general in the United States Army, governor of Virginia, and father of Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee.

Despite this illustrious background, Richard Henry Lee was in relatively straightened financial circumstances, compared to others in his political circle. Though he was the son of a royal governor of Virginia and plantation owner, Lee inherited no wealth other than some land and slaves. He rented those assets out for support, but depended on government jobs to help maintain his participation in politics. Although Lee studied law in Virginia after returning from an educational interlude in England, it appears he never practiced law. Still, his training became useful when he was appointed Justice of the Peace in 1757 and elected to the House of Burgesses in 1758.

Once in politics, Lee quickly took on radical positions. In September, 1765, he protested the Stamp Act by staging a mock ritual hanging of the colony’s stamp distributor, George Mercer, and of George Grenville, the prime minister who introduced the Stamp Act. Soon it was discovered that Lee himself had applied for that distributor position, which proved rather awkward for his bona fides as a fire-breathing patriot. After a mea culpa speech delivered with the trademark Lee passion, he was absolved and, indeed, lauded for his honesty.

He escalated the protest in 1766 by writing the Westmoreland Resolves, which promised opposition to the Stamp Act “at every hazard, and, paying no regard to danger or to death.” Further, anyone who attempted to enforce it would face “immediate danger and disgrace.” The signatories, prominent citizens of Westmoreland County, Lee’s home, pledged that they would refuse to purchase British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed. Eight years later, this type of boycott was the impetus for the Continental Association, an early form of collective action by the colonies drafted by the First Continental Congress and signed by Lee to force the British to repeal the Coercive Acts.

On March 12, 1773, Lee was appointed to Virginia’s Committee of Correspondence. The first such committee was established in Massachusetts the previous fall under the leadership of Sam Adams to spread information and anti-British propaganda to all parts of the colony and to communicate with committees in other colonies. The trigger was the Gaspee affair. The British cutter Gaspee, enforcing custom duties off Rhode Island, ran aground on a sand bar. Locals attacked and burned the ship and beat the officer and crew. The government, keen on punishing the destruction of a military vessel and the assault on its men, threatened to have the culprits tried in England. The specter of trial away from one’s home was decried by the Americans as yet another violation of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. Other colonies soon followed suit and established their own committees. Letters exchanged between Lee and Adams expressed their mutual admiration and laid the foundation for a lifelong friendship between the two.

Amid deteriorating relations between Britain and her American colonies, Parliament raised the ante by adopting the Coercive or Intolerable Acts (Boston Port Act, Massachusetts Government and Administration of Justice Act, Quartering Act) against Massachusetts Bay. Virginia’s House of Burgesses responded with the Resolve of May 24, 1774, concocted by Lee, his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Mason, which called for a day of “Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer” for June 1. Time being of the essence, the authors were not above a dash of plagiarism. They took the language from a similar resolution made by the House of Commons in the 1640s during their contest with King Charles I. The Resolve denounced the British actions as a “hostile invasion.” It called for the Reverend Thomas Gwatkin to preach a fitting sermon. The reverend declined the invitation, not eager to have his church drawn into what he viewed as a political dispute. The royal governor, the Earl of Dunmore, reacted by dissolving the Burgesses. Lee and other radicals thereupon gathered at Raleigh’s Tavern in Williamsburg on May 27. They adopted a more truculent resolution, which declared that “an attack made on one of our sister Colonies, to compel submission to arbitrary taxes, is an attack made on all British America.”

Lee’s visibility in the colony’s political controversies paid off, in that he was selected by Virginia as a delegate to the First Continental Congress and, the following year, to the Second Continental Congress. It was in that latter capacity that Lee made his name. In May, 1776, the Virginia convention instructed its delegates to vote for independence. On June 7, Lee introduced his “resolution for independancy [sic].” The motion’s first section, adopted from the speech by Edmund Pendleton to the Virginia convention, declared:

“That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

Debate on the motion was delayed until July due to the inability or unwillingness of some delegations to consider the issue.

In the meantime, colonies were declaring themselves independent and adopting constitutions of their own. With events threatening to bypass Congress, a committee was selected to draft a declaration of independence. Lee was unavailable. He had hurried back to Virginia, apparently to attend to his wife who had fallen ill. That absence prevented him from participating in the debate on his resolution on July 2. He returned in time to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Lee’s terms in Congress demanded much from him. He was what today would be described as a “workaholic.” On several occasions, this led to illness and absence due to exhaustion. He served in numerous capacities, including as chairman of the committee charged with drafting a plan of union, though most of the work on that project was done by John Dickinson as the principal drafter of the eventual “Articles of Confederation.” Lee was one of sixteen delegates who signed both the Declaration and the Articles.

From 1780 to 1782, Lee put his position in Congress on hold to tend to political matters in Virginia. The state was in relatively sound financial shape and keeping up with its war debt obligations. Lee opposed making the highly-depreciated Continental Currency legal tender. He also took the unpopular position of denouncing the law to cancel debts owed by Virginians to British creditors. “Better to be honest slaves of Great Britain than to become dishonest freemen,” he declared.

On the topic of slaves, Lee inherited 50 from his father. Despite that, he had strong anti-slavery sentiments. In 1769, he proposed that a high tax be assessed against importation of slaves, in order to end the overseas slave trade. Some critics grumbled that he did this only to make his own slaves more valuable, the same charge made against those Virginians who supported the provision in the Constitution which ultimately ended the trade after 1808. His pronouncements on the moral evil of slavery continued. It is unclear if Lee ever manumitted his slaves. The charge of hypocrisy is readily leveled at someone like Lee. But this history also demonstrates the difficulty of extricating oneself from an economic system on which one’s livelihood depends.

One pressing problem at the time was the parlous state of Congress’s finances, made even more dire by the looming obligations of the war debt. Lee’s role in stabilizing the financial situation in Virginia added to his stature in Congress. His fellow-delegates elected him their president during the 1784-1785 session. He was the sixth to serve as “President of the United States in Congress Assembled” after approval of the Articles of Confederation in 1781. Despite the impressive-sounding title as used in official documents, the position was mainly ceremonial. However, a skillful politician such as Lee could use it to guide the debates and influence the agenda of Congress.

Lee opposed proposals to give Congress a power to tax, especially import duties. He also believed that borrowing from foreign lenders would corrupt. Instead, he aimed to discharge the war debts and fund Congress’s needs through sales of land in the newly-acquired western territory. With the end of British anti-migration policy, millions of acres were potentially open to settlers. He hoped that the Western Land Ordinance of 1785, with its price of $1 per acre of surveyed land would raise the needed cash. Alas, poor sales soon dashed those hopes. Indian tribes and the pervasive problem of squatters who simply occupied the land mindful of the government’s lack of funds for troops to evict them contributed to uncertainty of land titles. With Lee’s prodding, Congress belatedly adopted the Land Ordinance of 1787, better known as the Northwest Ordinance. This law, reenacted by the Congress under the new Constitution of 1787, provided some needed stability, but it came too late to benefit the Confederation.

When Virginia accepted the call in Alexander Hamilton’s report on the Annapolis Convention of 1786 to send delegates to a convention to meet the following May in Philadelphia to consider proposals to amend the Articles of Confederation, Lee was elected as one of those delegates. Lee declined the position, as did his political ally Patrick Henry and a number of prominent men in other states. Henry summed up the views of many non-attendees. When asked why he did not accept, Henry, known as a man of many words over anything or nothing, stepped out of character and declared simply, “I smelt a rat in Philadelphia, tending toward the monarchy.”

Once the draft Constitution was approved, the Philadelphia convention sent it to the states for ratification as set out in Article VII. They also sent a copy to the Confederation Congress, with a letter that requested that body to forward its approval of the proposed charter to the states. Lee now attempted a gambit, innocuous on its face, which he hoped would nevertheless undo the convention’s plan. He moved to have Congress add amendments before sending the Constitution to the states. Taking clues from his friend George Mason, the most influential delegate at the convention who refused to support its creation, Lee submitted proposals on free exercise of religion, a free press, jury trials, searches and seizures, frequent elections, ban on a peace-time army, excessive fines, among others. These particulars echoed portions of Mason’s Declaration of Rights which he had drafted for Virginia in 1776.

Lee’s strategy was that the states should ratify either the original version, or a revised one with any or all of the proposed amendments. If no version gained approval, a second convention could be called which would draft a new document that took account of the states’ recommendations. One facet of this “poison pill” approach alone would have doomed the Constitution’s approval. As drafted, assent of only nine states’ conventions was needed for the new charter to go into effect among those states. For anything proposed by Congress, the Articles of Confederation required unanimous agreement by the state legislatures. Since support of a bill of rights, which the Constitution lacked, was a popular political position, it was likely that enough states would vote for proposed amendments to that end. In that event, the original Constitution would fall short of the nine states requirement, and Lee’s approach would require a second convention. It was feared—or hoped, depending on one’s view of the proposed system—that this would doom the prospect of change to the structure of governing the United States.

The pro-Constitution faction had the majority among delegations to Congress. Lee’s clever maneuver was defeated. However, rather than conveying the “Report of the convention” to the states with its overt approval, Congress sent it on September 28, 1787, without taking a position.

In the Virginia ratifying convention, Henry and others continued on the path Lee had laid out, of seeking to derail the process and to force a second convention. Like many other Americans, Lee was not opposed to all of the new proposals, but believed that, on the whole, the general government was given too much power. The new Constitution was a break with the revolutionary ethos that had sparked the drive to independence and was alien to the republicanism which was a part of that ethos. The opponents’ conception of unitary sovereignty clashed with that of the Constitution’s advocates who believed, such as Madison asserted in The Federalist, that the new government would be partly national and partly confederate. To the former, such an imperium in imperio was a mirage. Sooner or later, the larger entity would obliterate the smaller, the general government would subdue the states. Likewise, in the entirety of human history, no political entity the size of the United States had ever survived in republican form. To the classic republicans rooted in the struggle for independence who now were organizing to oppose the Constitution, the very existence of an independent central government threatened the republic. Of course, if any version of such a government were to be instituted, a bill of rights was indispensable.

The writings of an influential Antifederalist essayist, The Federal Farmer, have often been attributed to Lee. As with the works of William Shakespeare, historians debate these essays’ authorship. The claim that Lee wrote them was first made nearly a century after these events. No contemporary sources, including Lee or his political associates, mention him as the writer. The essays, presented in the form of letters addressed to The Republican, were collected and published in New York in late 1787 to influence the state ratifying convention. The Republican is Governor George Clinton, a committed Antifederalist who was the presiding officer of that convention and a powerful politician who remains the longest-serving governor in American history. Clinton himself is believed to have authored a number of important essays under the pseudonym Cato. Both Federal Farmer and Cato were so persuasive that they alarmed the Constitution’s supporters to the point that The Federalist addresses them by name to dispute their assertions.

Lee was in New York attending Congress during this time, and he was a prolific writer of letters, so it is possible he composed these, as well. Moreover, the arguments in the essays paralleled Lee’s objections about the threat the new system posed to the states and to American republicanism. The similarity extended even to the specific point that Lee made that the composition of the House of Representatives was far too small to represent adequately the variety of interests and classes across the United States.

However, Lee never wrote anything as systematic and analytically comprehensive as the Federal Farmer letters. What he intended for public consumption, such as his resolves, motions, and proclamations were comparatively brief and, like his rhetoric, to the point and designed to appeal to emotions. John Adams wrote during the First Continental Congress, “The great orators here are Lee, Hooper and Patrick Henry.” St. George Tucker, a renowned attorney from Virginia and authority in American constitutional law, described Lee’s speeches: “The fine powers of language united with that harmonious voice, made me sometimes think that I was listening to some being inspired with more than mortal powers of embellishment.” Historian Gordon Wood has contrasted Lee’s passionate style with the moderate tone and thoughtfulness of the Federal Farmer letters and asserts that Lee did not write them.

If not Lee, who? More recent scholarship has claimed that Melancton Smith, a prominent New York lawyer who attended the state convention, wrote these essays. Smith eventually voted for the Constitution in the narrow 30-27 final vote, which might explain the essays’ moderation in their critiques of the Constitution. His background as a lawyer might account for the close analysis of the document’s provisions. That said, the case for Smith and against Lee is also based on conjecture.

Once the Constitution was adopted, Lee, like Patrick Henry, made his peace. Henry used his influence in the state legislature to take the “unusual liberty” of nominating Lee to become one of Virginia’s two initial United States Senators. In that position Lee supported the Bill of Rights, although he considered its language a weak version of what it was supposed to achieve. Soon, however, Lee parted ways with his old political ally Henry and sided with Hamilton’s expansionist vision of the national government and its financial and commercial policies.

Lee died, age 62, on June 19, 1794. Thus ended the life of a man whose advice still commands attention: “The first maxim of a man who loves liberty, should be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly and indispensably necessary for the safety and well being of society.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 71 – Guest Essayist: Suzanne Harman Munson

George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson’s surrogate father, is recognized as the Godfather of the Declaration of Independence by such authorities as Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and other scholars. Wythe’s significant contributions to America’s founding document include: serving as Jefferson’s influential mentor; co-authoring a precursor to the Declaration; and organizing the Declaration’s legal brief of grievances.

Wythe is also known as the Prophet of the American Revolution for his early call for independence and for his resistance to taxation without representation. In honor of his unflagging contributions to the Revolution, Wythe’s signature was given the top place of honor among Virginia signers of the Declaration, above that of the younger Jefferson. On July 4, 1776, Wythe at age fifty was considered Virginia’s senior statesman, while Jefferson, only thirty-three, was just beginning his career in public life. Wythe was revered for his unflinching patriotism, honorable character, and principled statecraft.

Wythe and his friend John Adams of Massachusetts had been among the indefatigable workers in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia during the months leading to independence. They and their committee members labored daily to raise funds and provide supplies for General George Washington as he prepared for a David and Goliath contest against the western world’s mightiest military force.

Later, Adams was irritated that Jefferson, who had been a quiet member of Congress and also absent much of the time, “ran away with all the glory of it,” simply by putting pen to paper to draft the Declaration. Yet, Adams had strongly asserted that Jefferson should compose the document, as he was the best writer in their group and from Virginia, considered the thought-leader among Southern colonies necessary to win the Revolution.

Years later, Jefferson acknowledged that the ideals he expressed in the lofty preamble were not necessarily original, but reflected thinking prevalent at the time. Specifically, his work drew from that of John Locke, the influential English philosopher who had articulated mankind’s basic rights to life and liberty some decades earlier. During his five years as Wythe’s legal apprentice in Williamsburg, young Jefferson studied Locke, other Enlightenment thinkers, and eminent Greek philosophers. The Declaration of Independence reflects Jefferson’s comprehensive education in the humanities under Wythe’s direction.

When Jefferson began his association with Wythe in his mid-teens, he had recently lost his beloved father, Peter, at age fourteen and was in need of an excellent adult role model. Wythe had no surviving children from his marriage and took the youth under his wing, leading him on a path to greatness. Jefferson referred to him as “my second father,” “my beloved Mentor,” and “one of the greatest men of the age.”

In Philadelphia, when Jefferson was tasked with writing the Declaration of Independence, he studied a document drafted a short time earlier by a committee consisting of Wythe, Edward Rutledge, Sam Adams, and himself, considered a precursor to the Declaration. On May 29, the Continental Congress resolved to publish a “animated address” to the inhabitants of the colonies to “impress the minds of the people with the necessity of their now stepping forward to save their country, their freedom and property.” Significant numbers of Americans were not convinced of the need to sever ties with the Mother Country. The address persuaded the colonies that they must act to deliver their country from bondage by “uniting firmly, resolving wisely, and acting vigorously.” The surviving draft is in Wythe’s handwriting, and Jefferson preserved it among his most important papers.

In another contribution to the Declaration of Independence, attorney Wythe considered this document to be America’s legal brief before the court of world opinion. As such, its accusations against King George III had to be credible and verifiable. The Declaration includes a second part, after Jefferson’s inspired preamble. This consists of a long list of grievances against the king and his military, in acts of plunder, assault, murder, and other atrocities. Several months earlier, Wythe had sent letters to officials in the colonies soliciting their documented grievances.

Wythe was also instrumental in the success of the United States Constitution. If Virginia failed to ratify during the Constitution’s ratification rounds among the thirteen states, the document would have become effectively worthless; Virginia at the time was America’s largest, richest, and most powerful state. Wythe had served as chairman of the Rules Committee at the national Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia and was a forceful advocate for a more unified nation.

At the Richmond, Virginia, Ratifying Convention in 1788, Wythe served as chairman of the Committee of the Whole. Patrick Henry and other states’ rights activists threatened to torpedo the ratification vote, fearing an over-reaching federal government. At the end of weeks of heated dispute, senior statesman George Wythe swayed the vote in favor, 89 to 79, with the promise of the addition of a Bill of Rights and a vision for a stronger America under the Constitution. “But for Wythe’s services in the Convention of 1788, Virginia would not have ratified the Constitution of the United States as it stood . . . The entire course of American history may have been materially changed,” noted Oscar Shewmake, former dean of the School of Law at the College of William and Mary.

Wythe served at William and Mary as America’s first collegiate professor of law between 1779 and 1789. He quickly turned his law school into the nation’s first leadership training program for future statesmen. At his death in 1806, his former pupils virtually ran the country, with Jefferson as president, John Marshall as influential chief justice of the Supreme Court, Henry Clay as a rising statesman, and a host of other former students in high offices at every level of the government and judiciary. Wythe arguably ranks as the most influential teacher in American history. He is recognized as the Father of American Jurisprudence.

George Wythe was born near Hampton, Virginia, spent his middle years in Williamsburg as attorney, professor, and leading legislator, and his last two decades in Richmond as a prominent judge in Virginia’s High Court of Chancery. Today, NASA’s Langley Research Center stands near his birthplace, and he would have been fascinated by his beloved country’s advancement in the greater world.

Suzanne Munson is author of the George Wythe biography, Jefferson’s Godfather: The Man Behind the Man. She lectures frequently on the Wythe-Jefferson legacy at university affiliates, historical societies, and other venues. She is currently writing a new book, America’s First Leadership Crisis: 1776.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 70 – Guest Essayist: Colleen Sheehan

Charles Carroll of Carrollton was a third generation American.  His grandfather emigrated from Great Britain to America in the late seventeenth century, procuring a large tract of land in Maryland. At ten Charles was sent to a Jesuit school, subsequently attending Jesuit colleges in French Flanders and Reims, and then attending the College Louis le Grand in Paris. The next few years he studied law in France and then in England, at the Temple, London.

Charles Carroll was impeccably educated in the classics. He spoke five languages and, according to Tocqueville, personified the “European gentleman.” In 1764, with his education completed, he crossed the Atlantic and returned to his native Maryland. In 1768, he married Mary Darnall, with whom he had seven children, three of whom survived beyond childhood.

Charles Carroll was a member of the Continental Congress, a framer of the Maryland Constitution of 1776, a member of the Maryland legislature, and a member of the U.S. Senate. The respect he earned among his peers was not easily obtained, for Carroll was of Irish descent (originally of County Offaly, between Dublin and Galway), and a Catholic – or Papist, as Roman Catholics were often then called – the pariah of 18th century Anglo-American Protestant society. Even in his home state of Maryland, which had the largest concentration of Roman Catholics of any of the states, Catholics were denied the right to vote and to hold office. Carroll set about to change that, penning the “First Citizen” letters, ultimately succeeding in placing a provision in the Maryland Constitution of 1776 guaranteeing all Christians (i.e., including Catholics) the right to participate in public life.

The years leading up to the American Revolution were for Carroll a time of intense public spiritedness in defense of the rights and liberties of the colonists. Among many posts of leadership, Carroll was a member of a Committee of Correspondence, of the Maryland Convention of 1775, and of the delegation to Canada (with Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Chase) seeking Canadian support for the American war for independence. Like many others, Carroll pronounced the doctrine of no taxation without representation, and he prodded and provoked, persuaded and led his fellow Marylanders to join the cause of independence.

Elected delegate to the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, Carroll took his seat on the 18th and signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2nd, when the engrossed parchment copy was presented for signature.

After the war, the implementation of the Articles of Confederation, and finally the establishment of the new Constitution, Carroll became a Senator in the first Congress of the United States. Supportive of Alexander Hamilton’s national and financial program (and opposed to the Republican financial and foreign policy agenda), Carroll became a member of the Federalist Party, helping broker deals such as placing the temporary capital in Philadelphia and the permanent one on the Potomac, and adjusting land claims between Virginia and his home state of Maryland.

One of the wealthiest families in America at the time of the founding – some would say the wealthiest, with an estate estimated at over 2 million pounds sterling at that time – Charles Carroll was in a position to contribute substantially to the financing of the war. At the same time, he did not take his good fortune for granted. In the old world, the family has been systematically stripped of their holdings by hostile Protestant Englishmen. In the new world, the security of property, freedom of religion, and equal treatment before the law was a work in progress.  Writing to James Warren in 1776, John Adams noted that Charles Carroll “continues to hazard his all: his immense Fortune, the largest in America, and his Life. This Gentlemans Character, If I foresee aright” Adams remarked, “will hereafter make a greater Figure in America.”

Charles Carroll inherited a ten-thousand-acre plantation from his father, and with that estate, hundreds of slaves. He was a slaveholder; he was also an abolitionist. He worked for the gradual abolition of slavery, sponsoring a bill in the Maryland legislature that required all slave girls to be educated and then at 28 years old set free, that they may in turn educate their husbands and children.

Charles Carroll was the last surviving signer of the American Declaration of Independence, called by one contemporary “the last of the Romans.” Of the principles of the Declaration, he said, “I do hereby recommend [them]to the present and future generations…as the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them.”

While the name Carroll may not be as renown as Washington, Jefferson, Adams, or Franklin, or as familiar as Kennedy or Reagan, and though there be no cities, states, rivers or colleges that serve as eternal reminders of his deeds and sacrifices, that does not make us any the less in his debt.

Indeed, if some Americans look to the presidential election of John F. Kennedy as the moment that marked the acceptance of Irish Catholics in the Anglo-Protestant dominated political mainstream of 20th century America, the possible pathway for an Irish Catholic president in America was originally paved by the Carroll family, particularly Charles Carroll and his cousin Daniel, a signer of the U.S. Constitution.

The war for independence and the founding of the United States was a work that could only have been accomplished by the dedicated work of many minds and many hands. Charles Carroll was one of the men who made this land we call America and who left to us the earthly inheritance – and the ongoing work – of keeping alive the principles of ’76.

 

Colleen A. Sheehan is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies with the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership of Arizona State University.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

 

Essay 69 – Guest Essayist: Ron Meier

Mary Land, the State of Maryland, was originally established in the early 17th century as a haven for Catholic immigrants to the American colonies. It was named after Henrietta Maria who was married to King Charles I, and was also a tribute to the Virgin Mary. But the American colonies were largely settled by Protestants with Puritans to the north, Anglicans to the South. Maryland, in spite of its Catholic heritage, tolerated religious diversity, so it was just a matter of time until Protestants dominated in Maryland. By the end of the 17th century, it had become largely inhabited by Protestants.

In 1688, the Glorious Revolution in England resulted in the Catholic King being replaced by Protestant monarchs. The proprietary Catholic colony in Maryland reverted to the British Crown.

In 1689, following the spirit of the Glorious Revolution in the mother country, Protestants in Maryland revolted and established a new Protestant government in the colony. Catholics were removed from office, prohibited from holding public office in the future, from practicing law, and from voting. Maryland’s citizens became loyal to the Crown over the next several generations before the onset of differences with the Crown in the 1760s.

Maryland’s principal cash crop was tobacco.  Disputes among the growers in the colonies and the merchants in Britain who controlled the trade grew over time. After the French and Indian War, when Britain imposed taxes on the colonies to pay for Britain’s costs in prosecuting the war, additional disputes with Britain grew and a Sons of Liberty chapter was formed in Maryland.

Maryland citizens sympathetic to the patriot cause joined with other colonies in establishing Committees of Correspondence and its merchants joined with merchants in other colonies to boycott British imports. Sensing problems, Maryland’s Royal Governor prorogued the Colonial Assembly in the spring of 1774. Taking their cue from the Boston Tea Party, Maryland’s patriots held their own protests, the Chestertown Tea Party and the Annapolis Tea Party, against the British Tea Act.

A Provincial Convention was formed in Annapolis by the former members of the Colonial Assembly in 1774 and served as the patriots’ governing body until the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Delegates were sent to the First and Second Continental Congress. The Annapolis Convention, in January 1776, firmly instructed its delegates which included Thomas Stone, to attempt reconciliation with Britain and to not join in any attempt of the Continental Congress to declare the independence of the colonies. In spite of these instructions, Maryland already had its soldiers in the field with George Washington. Maryland’s soldiers became some of Washington’s most reliable Continentals after the “Maryland 400” held the line in Brooklyn allowing Washington and the remainder of his forces to escape annihilation by crossing the East River to Manhattan.

It was not until June 28, 1776 that Maryland’s Convention instructed its delegates to vote for Independence; this is the same day that Jefferson and the Committee of Five charged with drafting the document presented its draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Congress.  Interestingly, not all delegates who voted for the Declaration on July 2 were official signatories. For example, John Rogers voted for independence on behalf of Maryland, but due to subsequent illness, was unable to sign the document.

Many delegates to the First and Second Continental Congresses considered themselves British citizens and sought reconciliation with Britain rather than revolution.

Thomas Stone was among those preferring reconciliation. He was born in Maryland in 1743 into a wealthy family which emphasized a classical education for Thomas who, like many other young men of the time, used their classical education as a springboard into the study of law.

In 1764, he entered the practice of law and spent the subsequent decade focused on serving his legal clients. Little is known about his life until his marriage in 1768 to seventeen-year-old Margaret Brown, daughter of a prominent and wealthy Maryland family. Thomas and Margaret purchased land on which to build their home and establish their family.  The family owned slaves to work the large tobacco plantation established on the land and because Thomas was often absent riding the law circuit, his brother managed the plantation.

In 1774, Thomas was chosen to be on his county’s Committee of Correspondence, the vehicle through which patriots in the colonies communicated with each other. Think of the Committees of Correspondence as a Private Facebook Group of the 18th century – not providing instantaneous communication among the colonies, but enabling each of the colonies to coordinate their efforts to reconcile with the British Crown and simultaneously provide support to those colonies already engaged in conflict with the British military and blockades.

Stone is variously known as a “Reluctant Revolutionary,” a “Quiet Patriot,” and a “Moderate” who used his legal skills in the background rather than as a great orator, like Patrick Henry and John Adams, whose names are more recognizable as the movers and shakers of the Revolution.

He was then appointed to represent Maryland at the Second Continental Congress. Even after the battles at Lexington, Concord, and Boston, Stone and most members of the Continental Congress strove for reconciliation. Stone strongly supported the 1775 Olive Branch Petition, which King George refused to read and which was rejected by Parliament. Even after rejection of the Olive Branch Petition, as noted above, the Annapolis Convention in January 1776 instructed its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote against independence.

As the British Navy, with more than 30,000 troops aboard hundreds of ships, assembled in New York’s harbor to prepare to do battle with Washington’s troops, including the Maryland Line, on Long Island, reconciliation appeared hopeless and sentiment among the delegates to the Congress moved more towards independence. Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee introduced the independence resolution to the Congress in early June and Jefferson began writing the Declaration of Independence.  Thomas Stone moved ever so slowly, but firmly, in favor of independence, and cast his Yea vote on July 2. He returned on August 2 to sign the Declaration.

The next year, after having been appointed to the committee to draft the Articles of Confederation, he declined reappointment to the Congress because of health problems his wife experienced due to complications from smallpox. He returned to Maryland and was appointed to the Maryland Senate, where he served for the rest of his life. Maryland’s commitment to the Confederation was weak, but Stone used his persuasive powers to support the Confederation, which Maryland ratified in February 1781, the last state to do so almost two years after the 12th state.

Stone was appointed to represent Maryland at the Constitutional Convention, but his wife died in June, 1787, causing him to decline appointment. He became deeply depressed upon the death of Margaret and died just four months later with a “broken heart” apparently being the cause. He and Margaret were buried on their plantation which is administered today by the National Park Service.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran.  He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_in_the_American_Revolution

Protestant Revolution (Maryland) – Wikipedia

https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/chron/html/chron17.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Convention_(1774%E2%80%931776)

https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A103286

https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdstatehouse/html/independence.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rogers_(Continental_Congress)

https://www.nps.gov/people/thomas-stone.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Stone

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/a-reluctant-revolutionary.htm?utm_source=article&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=experience_more&utm_content=small

https://www.thebaynet.com/articles/0616/the-quiet-patriot-thomas-stone-of-haberdeventure.html

http://colonialhall.com/stone/stone.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Branch_Petition

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 68 – Guest Essayist: Val Crofts
Signer William Paca 1823 by Charles Willson Peale - Public Domain Image in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Paca#/media/File:William_paca.jpg

Benjamin Rush once referred to his fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, William Paca, as “beloved and respected by all who knew him, and considered at all times as a sincere patriot and honest man.” John Adams called Paca the “great deliberator,” for the work that Paca did during the First and Second Congressional Congresses. William Paca was a tireless advocate for freedom and justice for Maryland and the 13 colonies, as well as a brilliant lawyer and champion for veterans’ benefits. He was one of four signers of the Declaration from Maryland. He was also one of two signers, Caesar Rodney being the other, who were of Italian heritage.

Paca was born in Maryland in 1740 and very little is known about his early life and education. Most of his papers and diaries were destroyed in a fire at his former home in Maryland in 1879. As a result, we do not have the volumes of information on William Paca that we have regarding other members of the Founding generation.

William Paca graduated from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1759, and he soon moved to Annapolis, Maryland to begin his legal career. He wanted to become a lawyer, which he did, and in the process of doing so he became very good friends with Samuel Chase and Thomas Stone, two fellow lawyers who would both sign the Declaration of Independence with Paca in 1776.

Paca and Chase also started a Sons of Liberty organization in Annapolis in 1765 to protest the passage of the Stamp Act. Here is where William began his career in politics and his strong opposition to the policies of the British crown. He was a strong early supporter of independence and a lifelong advocate for states’ rights and a person’s individual rights. Paca had a reputation for being more of a quiet, behind the scenes type of a politician, but on one noteworthy occasion, he proved that he could stand in the spotlight to protest a cause as well as anyone. The governor of Maryland refused to rule favorably on a law that Chase and Paca wanted him to support. As a result, and to protest the ruling, Paca and Chase protested the governor’s ruling by “hanging” a paper copy of the law in a public ceremony, then burying it in a tiny coffin with a cannon firing in the distance. A very theatrical and powerful way to prove your point!

William Paca was known as a very charming man who dressed well and married well (twice). He came from a very wealthy family and he married into two wealthy families. He married Mary Chew, known as Molly in 1763 and she passed away in 1774, possibly due to childbirth complications. His second wife, Ann Harrison also passed away at a young age. Paca fathered six children and never re-married after Ann died.

William Paca served in both the First and Second Continental Congresses as a delegate from Maryland. During the debate over independence in the Second Continental Congress, Maryland was a colony that had much debate over whether or not to vote in favor of independence. As Paca waited for word on how to vote on the matter, instructions eventually arrived in Philadelphia that Maryland had agreed to vote for independence and have its delegates sign the document. Paca then cast his vote in favor of independence on July 2, 1776 and he signed the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776.

William Paca cared deeply for the veterans of the American Revolution and he did everything possible after the war to help them in any way that he could, personally, legally and financially. As a result of these actions, in 1783, he became an honorary member of the society of the Cincinnati. Membership in the Society was usually reserved for Revolutionary War officers, but Paca was given this honor due to his constant efforts to support the Revolutionary war veterans.

After the Revolutionary War ended, Paca served in various legal roles within the state of Maryland, including serving as their third governor. He would also later help to push forward many of the amendments to the constitution that would become the Bill of Rights. His commitment to personal and individual freedoms in the Bill of Rights is part of his lasting legacy. William Paca died in 1799.

Val Crofts serves as Chief Education and Programs Officer at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. Val previously taught high school U.S. History, U.S. Military History and AP U.S. Government for 19 years in Wisconsin, and was recipient of the DAR Outstanding U.S. History Teacher of the Year for the state of Wisconsin in 2019-20. Val also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School as a social studies teacher for 9 years. He is also a proud member of the United States Semiquincentennial Commission (America 250), which is currently planning events to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 67 – Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

In his work E Pluribus Unum, the historian Forrest McDonald provides a succinct profile of Samuel Chase: “But for Samuel Chase, Maryland’s immediate postwar history would have been dull in the extreme….At the time, all that seemed to be happening—or most everything with salt and spice, anyway—appeared to revolve around Samuel Chase….

“Chase was a man of peculiar breed, perfectly consistent by his own standards but wildly inconsistent by any other….[W]henever he appeared in public life in the capacity of an elected official, he artfully duped the people, led them by demagoguery into destructive ways, and exploited them without mercy; and they loved him and sang his praises and repeatedly reelected him….

“But when he appeared in public life in a different capacity, the capacity of institution-maker or institution-preserver, he worked with sublime statesmanship to protect the people against themselves, which is to say, against the like of himself. Thus in 1776, as the principal architect of Maryland’s revolutionary constitution, he created a system so fraught with checks and balances, and with powers so distributed between aristocracy and people, that destructive radicalism seemed impossible. Less than a decade later, as a member of the state’s House of Delegates, he engineered a movement to subvert that very constitution, and did so for the most flagrantly corrupt reasons and with the enthusiastic support of ‘the people,’ in whose name he did it….

“As a rogue who exploited public trust, Chase pursued private gain, but he probably did so more because he enjoyed the role than because he really coveted its fruits. Whatever his motives, he led Maryland’s proud and pretentious aristocrats by the nose for nearly a decade, and in so doing executed a dazzling series of maneuvers that accounted for most of the state’s major policy decisions.”

A physically large man, “Old Baconface,” a sobriquet he was given as a young attorney for his ruddy complexion, was in many ways, then, a larger-than-life character in Maryland. And that all happened before Chase’s rise to high federal judicial office, and the vortex of controversy in which he placed himself once more, precipitating an existential institutional crisis for the Supreme Court.

The expulsion in 1762 of Chase, the young attorney, from a debating club was for unspecified “extremely irregular and indecent behavior.” The founding of the local Sons of Liberty in 1765 was with another eventual signer of the Declaration of Independence, his friend William Paca, a wealthy planter and future governor, who was himself no stranger to political corruption. There was a failed attempt to corner the grain market through inside information after being elected to the Second Continental Congress. These incidents were the overture to the dynamic that marked the increasingly consequential relationship between Samuel Chase and the established political and social order.

Chase’s scheming then moved to the Maryland legislature, which, in the 1781-1782 session, adopted two laws favorable to Chase. The first was the creation of the office of Intendant of the Revenues, which placed in one office complete control over the state’s finances. The appointment went to a Chase associate, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, a future signer of the U.S. Constitution. The second deprived Loyalists of their rights and confiscated their property with a value of more than 500,000 Pounds Sterling at the time. That property was to be sold at public auction. Chase and various associates placed their men in crucial administrative positions and manipulated the sales to their advantage. Among those associates was Luther Martin, an influential Antifederalist who began a long tenure as Maryland’s attorney general in 1778 through Chase’s influence. Another was Thomas Stone, who also had signed the Declaration of Independence.

The Chase syndicate acquired confiscated property valued between 100,000 and 200,000 Pounds Sterling, an amount far beyond what they could pay. Their solution was to choreograph the auction process with the help of Intendant of Finance Jenifer so as to cancel that sale through questionable legal technicalities and end up, in a second sale, with a price that was one-tenth that of the original auction price. Even that amount was more than the syndicate had, so they undertook a several-year-long effort to delay payment and procure a law that would enable them to pay their obligation with an issue of depreciated Maryland paper currency.

Chase’s questionable dealings and political scheming caused him and his associates trouble at times. In the end, however, the scandals, investigations, and attendant calumnies did him no harm. The personal charm he could invoke when needed, the political demagoguery to which he freely resorted to portray himself as a tribune of the people and an opponent of aristocracy and Toryism, and the willingness to deflect attention from the negative consequences of a failed political scheme by fomenting another even more base and outrageous, served him well.

It is a cliche of a certain genre of entertainment that a plot featuring a lovable scoundrel or band of misfits needs a straight-laced, establishment foil. In the tale of Samuel Chase, that part was played by Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Carroll came from the leading family of Maryland Catholics. He was a wealthy planter, thought to have been the wealthiest person in the new nation, worth about $400 million in today’s money. He was also the most lettered of the generally well-educated signers of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll was an early pro-independence agitator. As the leader of the Maryland Senate during the 1780s, he jousted politically with Chase and his allies over Chase’s schemes. While Carroll was able to blunt some of those schemes, Chase, in turn, succeeded in painting Carroll as a Tory. This was a supreme irony, indeed, in light of Carroll’s bona fides as a patriot who had been advocating violent revolution against Britain when Chase was still urging discussions.

In 1791, Chase became chief justice of the Maryland General Court, where he stayed until he was appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President George Washington in 1796. Chase served in that capacity until his death in 1811.

As the political temperature in the country heated up after passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, Chase was drawn into the rhetorical clashes between Federalists and Jeffersonians. With relish, Chase denounced Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans as the party of “mobocracy.” Drawing on his experience as a partisan brawler during his days in Maryland politics, he denounced Jefferson, the Republicans, and Jeffersonian policies with his accustomed sharp tongue. Crucially for the events to follow, he did so while performing his judicial duties.

The nature of his position as a supposedly impartial and nonpolitical jurist had no impact on him.

Examples were Chase’s ham-handed actions in the trials in 1800 of, respectively, Thomas Cooper and James Callender for publishing libelous materials about John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. While Cooper was a sympathetic figure, Callender was a scandalmonger whose fate in the courtroom probably would not have stirred anyone, had Chase not made him a political martyr. Callender’s attacks on Hamilton had impressed Jefferson, who was pleased with anyone willing to sling rhetorical mud at the Federalists. Jefferson encouraged and subsidized Callender’s efforts and later pardoned him for his conviction in Chase’s courtroom. However, Jefferson soon became much less enchanted with Callender when the latter demanded he be appointed to a federal office. Upon Jefferson’s refusal, Callender switched political allegiances and, as a Federalist Party newspaper editor, published scurrilous articles that claimed Jefferson’s paternity of children born to Sally Hemings, one of his slaves.

Chase, meanwhile, continued his political activism. Not content to campaign as a sitting judge for President Adams’s reelection, he harangued a Baltimore grand jury in 1803 with a long charge which criticized the Jeffersonians for having repealed an Adams-era judiciary statute that Chase favored, and which condemned the idea of universal suffrage as unrepublican. The last was particularly ironic in light of his public persona as a man of the people and opponent of Toryism in his earlier political career in Maryland.

Having made himself the lightning rod for the Jeffersonians’ fury at what they saw as the Federalists entrenching themselves in the judiciary following the latters’ election loss in 1800, Chase became the target of an impeachment effort in the House of Representatives. The grand jury charge in 1803 may have been the catalyst, but Jefferson’s distaste for his cousin Chief Justice John Marshall and outrage at Marshall’s lectures to the executive branch in Marbury v. Madison that same year, helped produce the reaction. Indeed, it was broadly understood that a Chase impeachment was a dry-run for a more consequential attempt to remove Marshall.

Led by another of Jefferson’s cousins, the flamboyant ultra-republican majority leader John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, the House voted out eight articles of impeachment on March 12, 1804. The first seven denounced Chase’s “oppressive conduct” in the Sedition Act trials. The eighth dealt with the “intemperate and inflammatory political harangue” in Baltimore which was intended to “excite the fears and resentment…of the good people of Maryland against their state government…[and] against the Government of the United States.” In short, the Jeffersonians accused Chase of the seditious speech they previously claimed Congress could not prohibit under the Sedition Act. With that statute no longer in effect, there was no criminal act on which the impeachment was based. More significantly, since the Republicans had claimed that a federal law that targets seditious speech violates the First Amendment, Chase’s remarks were not even potentially indictable offenses. The vote was a strict party-line matter, 73-32. If party discipline held in the Senate trial, where the Republicans enjoyed a 25-9 advantage, Chase’s judicial tenure was doomed.

The trial was held in February, 1805, supervised by Vice-President Aaron Burr, still under investigation for his killing of Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Chase’s lawyers, including his old political crony, close friend, and successful Supreme Court litigator, Luther Martin, argued that conviction required proof of an act that could be indicted under law. The House managers claimed that impeachment was not a criminal process. Since impeachment was the only way to remove federal judges, they asserted that “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” must include any willful misconduct or corrupt action that made the person unfit for judicial office. Their charges met that test, they averred, because Chase had acted as prosecutor as well as judge in the trials.

The effort failed. Even on the eighth charge, the Baltimore grand jury speech, six Republican Senators voted to acquit, leaving the prosecution four votes short of the necessary two-thirds vote for conviction. On the other, weaker, charges, the House fared worse. Chase’s acquittal diminished the threat which impeachment posed to the independence of the judiciary. Still, the two sides’ respective arguments over the purpose of impeachment and the meaning of the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” were replayed in subsequent such proceedings and continue to be contested today. After his trial, Chase stayed on the Court another six years. He remains the only Supreme Court justice to have been impeached.

Samuel Chase died in Baltimore in 1811 at the age of 70.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 66 – Guest Essayist: Gordon Lloyd
SignerThomasMcKean1787CharlesWPeale Public Domain Image - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McKean#/media/File:Thomas_McKean_by_Charles_Willson_Peale.jpg

Thomas McKean (1734-1817) was born of Scotch-Irish ancestry in New London, eastern Pennsylvania near the border of New Jersey and Delaware. He married Mary Borden with whom he had six children. Mary was the sister of Francis Hopkinson’s wife. Hopkinson was a signer from New Jersey. After Mary died, McKean married Sarah Armitage and together they had five children.

McKean practiced law in both Pennsylvania and Delaware, and served as a colonel in the New Jersey militia. He was politically active in all three states, even while elected to federal office. In 1756, he became deputy Attorney General in Pennsylvania. In 1757, he was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and appointed clerk of the Delaware Assembly.

In 1762, the Assembly appointed McKean and Caesar Rodney, another signer of the Declaration of Independence, to revise and publish the laws of the province of Delaware. Also in 1762, he was elected to the Delaware Assembly, and re-elected for seventeen years despite a six-year residence in Philadelphia during that time. No other Signer of the Declaration took part in so many different State activities simultaneously as did McKean.

In 1775, he represented Delaware at the Stamp Act Congress in New York and then Pennsylvania at the Continental Congress from 1774-1777. On July 1, 1776, two of the three Delaware delegates were in attendance. McKean voted in favor of Independence and George Read voted against it. McKean strongly opposed the power that the British were imposing upon the colonies. He sent an urgent message to Caesar Rodney in Dover to come at once to Philadelphia to break the deadlock. Rodney rode overnight in a rainstorm, having arrived wearing boots and spurs as described by McKean, and the deadlock was broken on July 2.

McKean also served on the Congressional committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation. In 1777, he was appointed Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, an office that he held for nearly twenty years. He was elected President of the Continental Congress in 1781. In 1787, he attended the Pennsylvania ratifying convention and voted in favor of ratification. In 1789, he was elected Governor of Pennsylvania and served in that office before retiring in 1812, but his governorship was controversial as he survived an impeachment effort due to strife within differing partisan viewpoints.

Toward the end of his life, though McKean had mostly retired, he participated in a discussion to guard against possible British invasion of Philadelphia in the War of 1812. McKean admonished the people to set aside differences and consider there were only two parties which consisted of America and its invaders.

McKean died in Philadelphia on June 24, 1817 at the age of 83.

Gordon Lloyd is the Robert and Katheryn Dockson Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, and a Senior Fellow at the Ashbrook Center. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all the course work toward a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago before receiving his master of arts and PhD degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The coauthor of three books on the American founding and sole author of a book on the political economy of the New Deal, he also has numerous articles, reviews, and opinion-editorials to his credit. His latest coauthored book, The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry, was published in 2013, and he most recently released as editor, Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, in September 2014. He is the creator, with the help of the Ashbrook Center, of four highly regarded websites on the origin of the Constitution. He has received many teaching, scholarly, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and the Howard White Award for Teaching Excellence at Pepperdine University. He currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 65 – Guest Essayist: Gordon Lloyd

George Read (1733-1798) was born in Maryland from a line of Irish and Welsh immigrants. However, he was raised in Delaware. He died in New Castle and is buried in Immanuel Episcopal Churchyard in Newcastle. Read was educated in Pennsylvania where he studied law and admitted to the Philadelphia Bar at age 20. In 1754, he returned to Delaware. In 1763, he married the widowed sister of George Ross, fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence from Pennsylvania and uncle of Betsy Ross. What is impressive is Read’s forty-year involvement in local, state, and national politics during which time he embraced both the politics of reconciliation with Britain in 1776 and the politics of change from 1786.

Read was attorney general in the colonial government from 1763-1774, but opposed the Stamp Act despite his reputation as a moderate. He was elected to the first and second Continental Congress from 1774-1776 along with Thomas McKean. The third delegate, Caesar Rodney, attended at the conclusion of the discussions. Read initially voted against Richard Henry Lee’s Resolution for Independence on July 2; he was the only eventual signer to do so. He preferred to continue pursuing possible reconciliation with Britain rather than agreeing to a complete break.

McKean sent an urgent message to Rodney in Delaware to come to Philadelphia to break the tie in the Delaware vote on independence because of Read’s reluctance to make the final step to endorse independence. Rodney’s vote broke the tie. When Lee’s Resolution was adopted, however, Read accepted the vote of his two Delaware colleagues and signed the Declaration.

In 1776, Read was selected to the Constitutional Convention in Delaware, where he served on the committee to draft the new Delaware Constitution. In 1777, the British captured Delaware President (Governor) John McKinley and Read became emergency governor replacing Thomas McKean who served as acting president for a short time prior.

Read was twice elected State Senator under the new Delaware Constitution. Between 1782-1788, he devoted himself to political activities in Delaware.

Read attended the Annapolis Convention in 1786 that called for a Grand Convention to meet in Philadelphia May 1786 to reconsider the structure and powers of the general government under the Articles of Confederation. He then represented Delaware at the Constitutional Convention, where he signed the Constitution, attended the 1787 Delaware Ratifying Convention, served in the United States Senate (1789-1793), and then as Chief Justice of Delaware. George Read was among six delegates who signed both the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then, eleven years later, the United States Constitution in 1787.

Read actually signed the Constitution twice, signing once for himself and once for fellow Delaware delegate John Dickinson who was at home sick with a migraine. William Pierce, a delegate from Georgia at the Constitutional Convention, penned sketches of fellow delegates to the 1787 Convention. According to William Pierce, Read’s “legal abilities are said to be very great, but powers of Oratory are fatiguing and tiresome to the last degree.”

Yet George Read was known for his consistency in moral duties and benevolent ways. He was respected for setting standards Delaware would find as useful precedents or even authoritative. Having lived to the age of 65, Read died on September 21, 1798.

Gordon Lloyd is the Robert and Katheryn Dockson Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, and a Senior Fellow at the Ashbrook Center. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all the course work toward a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago before receiving his master of arts and PhD degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The coauthor of three books on the American founding and sole author of a book on the political economy of the New Deal, he also has numerous articles, reviews, and opinion-editorials to his credit. His latest coauthored book, The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry, was published in 2013, and he most recently released as editor, Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, in September 2014. He is the creator, with the help of the Ashbrook Center, of four highly regarded websites on the origin of the Constitution. He has received many teaching, scholarly, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and the Howard White Award for Teaching Excellence at Pepperdine University. He currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 64 – Guest Essayist: Robert M. S. McDonald

Can one person’s vote make a difference? Just ask Caesar Rodney.

One of Delaware’s three delegates to the Continental Congress, in July 1776 he broke the tie within his delegation on the question of independence. This was a vote that mattered.

By no means was independence a foregone conclusion—even though Great Britain, for more than a decade, had trampled on Americans’ rights. It placed off limits to Americans lands they helped conquer in the French and Indian War, subjected colonists to taxation without representation, disregarded the right to trial by jury, closed down Boston harbor, dissolved elected legislatures, banned town meetings, and in April 1775 sent troops from Boston to Concord to seize the Massachusetts militia’s arms and ammunition, triggering a war.

Attempts to end the conflict while restoring American liberties went nowhere.

On June 7, 1776, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee advanced the momentous proposition that “these United Colonies are, and, of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States.”

Congress, which was meeting in Philadelphia, tabled the motion to give members time to consult with their colonies’ legislatures.

It also appointed Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson to draft a declaration of independence in the event that Lee’s motion won Congress’s approval. Jefferson did nearly all the work, but it could have been a wasted effort.

Indeed, it almost was. On July 1 members of Congress took a non-binding test vote. While the delegations of nine colonies stood ready to vote for independence, New York—still awaiting instructions from its provincial assembly—had to abstain. Worse, the Pennsylvania and South Carolina delegations opposed independence.

And then there was Delaware. One delegate, Thomas McKean, supported cutting ties with Great Britain. The other, George Read, opposed the move.

McKean, anticipating this result, had already dispatched an urgent message to the colony’s third delegate, Caesar Rodney, who had absented himself from Congress to thwart a potential uprising of Delaware colonists still loyal to the king.

Learning that Congress would vote the next day on the question of independence, Rodney, a 47-year-old lawyer, rode more than 70 miles through thunder and lightning. He crossed several swollen rivers and fast-moving creeks. One account has him making the journey by carriage. Another has him on horseback and notes that he arrived the next morning, just in the nick of time, wearing his boots and spurs.

As he took his seat at the Pennsylvania State House (which, thanks in part to him, is now known as Independence Hall), all eyes focused on the unlikely hero. He was frail and suffered from chronic asthma. Worse still, advanced skin cancer had disfigured his nose and one side of his face, which he covered with a green silk scarf tied across his head.

John Adams, one of the fiercest proponents of independence, had described him uncharitably as “the oddest looking Man in the World.” On the morning of July 2, however, Adams must have considered him one of the most important men in the world.

Addressing the Continental Congress, Rodney declared that “I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of Independence.” Adding that “my own judgment concurs with them,” he announced that “I vote for Independence.”

Delaware was now the tenth colony ready to declare itself an independent state.

To anxious supporters of independence, it must have seemed as if, after the previous night’s storm, the clouds had parted.

South Carolina delegate Edward Rutledge, who had hesitated the day before, moved South Carolina to favor breaking from Britain as well. Then Pennsylvanians John Dickinson and Robert Morris, who in the July 1 test vote had also opposed Lee’s resolution, rose from their chairs and left the remainder of Pennsylvania’s delegation to make theirs the twelfth to support independence.

With twelve colonies in favor of independence, none opposed, and New York’s delegation abstaining (until July 15, when finally it received instructions to favor independence as well), the United States of America was born.

Adams wrote home to predict that July 2 “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary” and “the Day of Deliverance.” He predicted future “Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”

Instead, of course, the significance of July 2 is now largely forgotten. July 4—when Congress ratified Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence—came to be celebrated as the anniversary of America’s birth.

Like July 2, Caesar Rodney is now also largely forgotten. That’s a shame since his life was one of consequence. His epic ride alone earns him a place in America’s pantheon of heroes. He was also a militia officer, a member of his colony’s legislature, a delegate to the 1765 Stamp Act Congress, a judge, “president” (i.e., governor) of Delaware, and a member of Congress under the Articles of Confederation before succumbing to cancer in 1784.

In 1999 Rodney was honored when he was featured (on horseback) on the special-edition Delaware state quarter. In 2020, however, his statue (also on horseback) was removed from its pedestal in Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware’s capital city. The fundamental reason for this controversial decision is that he lived and died as a slaveholder.

Slavery as well as many other abhorrent forms of inequality were considered normal in the eighteenth century. Monarchy and tyranny were common nearly everywhere. To Caesar Rodney’s credit, he helped to establish the United States as an exception to this rule. He not only voted to break free from Britain but also signed the Declaration of Independence, which asserted the “self-evident” “truths” that all mankind are equally “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Almost immediately, states with fewer slaves began either to abolish slavery or enact plans for gradual emancipation. Eventually, as the Civil War concluded, President Abraham Lincoln invoked the ideas of the American Revolution to outlaw slavery throughout the United States. The Revolution sparked many other gains for equality, as well. Even today, people appropriate its principles in support of liberty and equal rights.

Whether or not Caesar Rodney returns to his pedestal, his efforts in behalf of independence laid the foundation for a nation that continues to set an example for the world in the messy, dangerous, and uncertain struggle for individual rights.

Robert M. S. McDonald is Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he has taught since 1998. A specialist in the eras of the American Revolution and the Early American Republic, he is a graduate of the University of Virginia, Oxford University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned his Ph.D. Professor McDonald is editor of the audio series, Thomas Jefferson: American Revolutionary (2020). He is the author of Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson’s Image in His Own Time (2016) and editor of Thomas Jefferson’s Lives: Biographers and the Battle for History (2019), The American Revolution: Core Documents (2019), Sons of the Father: George Washington and His Protégés (2013), Light & Liberty: Thomas Jefferson and the Power of Knowledge (2012), and Thomas Jefferson’s Military Academy: Founding West Point (2004). He has published articles in the Journal of the Early Republic, The Historian, and Southern Cultures. A native of Stratford, Connecticut, he lives with his family in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 63 – Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
* Printmakers include Asher B. Durand, Henry Bryan Hall, Albert Rosenthal and Max Rosenthal. Draughtsmen include David McNeely Stauffer. Title from Calendar of Emmet Collection. Includes some photomechanical reproductions. Citation/reference : EM391 - This image is available from the New York Public Library's Digital Library under the digital ID 79df7b90-c605-012f-73bc-58d385a7bc34: digitalgallery.nypl.org → digitalcollections.nypl.org

Every American has heard the name Elizabeth Griscom, right? No? Perhaps you will recognize her by her married name: Elizabeth “Betsy” Ross, wife of John Ross. Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Yes, Mrs. Ross was an accomplished seamstress and her particular work on a particular flag immortalized her name in American history. But Betsy also had a not-so-distant relative who should be just as famous, but is not. This relative is her uncle, George Ross, Jr. George Ross, Jr. signed an important American document in the summer of 1776.[i] It is to this “Colonel Ross” we turn today.

There were three sorts of delegates who attended the Continental Congress in the early to mid-summer of 1776. The first were those who took part in the debates over independence and were able to eventually sign the Declaration of Independence which resulted from those debates. The second were those who took part in the debates over independence and would not or never got to sign the declaration. The third were those who did not take part in the debates themselves but nevertheless had the opportunity to sign the final document. George Ross of Pennsylvania falls into the third category.

George Ross Jr. was born May 10, 1730, in Newcastle, Delaware, into a large family that could trace its lineage back to 1226 when Farquhar Ó Beólláin (1173-1251) was named the 1st Earl of Ross by King Alexander II of Scotland. Reverend George Ross Sr., with a fresh degree from Edinburgh, had arrived America in 1705[ii] as a missionary sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.[iii] He served first as rector for Immanuel Church in Newcastle, Delaware[iv] from 1705 until 1708 and then again from 1714 to 1754. Ross served in other area churches as well. At St. James’ Mill Creek Church in Wilmington, Delaware, he conducted their first service on July 4, 1717. Reverend Ross thought highly enough of learning to see that each of his sixteen children (by two successive wives) received a solid homeschool education. George Jr. reportedly became proficient in Latin and Greek.[v]

At age twenty, without attending college (that we can document), George Jr. was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar after two years of study in his half-brother John’s law office, and soon set up his own practice in nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At some point Ross took on a client, a young lady, named Ann Lawler. A romance soon blossomed and they were married August 14, 1751. Ann was reportedly a strikingly beautiful young woman, the only child of a prominent local family. Together, George and Ann produced two sons and a daughter. “Beauty was a word that defined Ann Lawler Ross and her children, in particular. Tradition states that prior to 1760 the artist Benjamin West came to make the portraits of the Ross family at their lovely country home in Lancaster… Mr. Flower, a friend of both George Ross and Benjamin West stated, ‘The wife of Mr. Ross [Ann] was greatly celebrated for her beauty and she had several children so remarkable in this respect as to be objects of general notice.’”[vi] George, Ann and their growing family attended St. James Episcopal Church in Lancaster,[vii] where George became a vestryman.[viii]

Ross’ skill as a lawyer was quickly noticed, resulting in his appointment as Crown Prosecutor (Attorney General) for Carlisle, Pennsylvania, serving for 12 years. In 1768, he was elected to the Pennsylvania legislature, representing Lancaster. There his Tory politics began to change and he was soon heard supporting the growing calls for American independence.

On May 30, 1773, Ann Ross died unexpectedly at age 42, and was buried at Saint James Church Cemetery in Lancaster.

The next year George was elected to the First Continental Congress, receiving one less vote than Benjamin Franklin himself.[ix] The Congress opened on September 5, 1774 in Philadelphia and was notable for producing a compact among the colonies to boycott British goods unless parliament rescinded the Intolerable Acts (which they did not). The Congress is also notable for producing the Declaration and Resolves[x] which laid out the grievances of the colonies. While at the Congress, Ross continued to serve as a member of Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety.

“Both his own State Legislature and the National Council (i.e. the Continental Congress), made [Ross] a mediator in difficulties which arose with the Indians, and he acted the noble part of a pacificator, and a true philanthropist.”[xi]

The Second Continental Congress convened May 10, 1775, in response to the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord. A commission as a Colonel in the Continental Army was soon added to Ross’ resume although there is no indication he saw combat. The following year, on June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution in the Congress declaring the colonies independent. In the debate which ensued, it quickly became apparent that some delegations needed time to communicate with their legislatures, so a vote on the measure was postponed until July 1. News that the resolution had been introduced spread quickly and Ross was noted to be “a warm supporter of the resolution of Mr. Lee.”[xii]

On July 15, 1776, the Pennsylvania Legislature appointed Benjamin Franklin and George Ross president and vice-president, respectively, of a convention to draft Pennsylvania’s first state constitution. The convention meeting “above stairs” in the State House (above the room Congress was using) adopted a new constitution for the state on September 28, 1776.

The journal of Congress for July 19, 1776 reports: Resolved, That the Declaration passed on the 4th, be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and stile of “The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,” and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.” It is this record which gives historians reason to claim that the Declaration was not signed on July 4, as was long the traditional narrative; the signing actually began much later after the engrossed copy was delivered.

There are 56 signatures on the engrossed copy of the Declaration. Eight men who had taken part in the July 4 vote to approve the Declaration never signed the document they debated.[xiii]

On July 20, Ross was appointed to replace either John Dickinson, Charles Humphreys or Thomas Willing (we are not sure which) as part of Pennsylvania’s delegation to the Congress.

John Dickinson presents an interesting case: Married to a Quaker, Dickinson strongly opposed going to war with Great Britain in order to obtain independence. When the July 1 vote took place – a non-binding, “test vote” in the Committee of the Whole – after an impassioned speech against the measure, Dickinson voted “No,” joining three other members of the Pennsylvania delegation in doing so. This made the delegation’s vote 4-3 against Lee’s resolution and a “No” vote was recorded for Pennsylvania (each colony got a single vote). Lee’s resolution passed, with nine of the thirteen colonies in favor, but the hoped-for unanimity had not materialized, as both Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against it, New York’s delegation abstained since new instructions from their state had not yet arrived, and Delaware entered a null (split) vote as the votes of the two delegates who were present canceled each other.  South Carolina requested the formal vote, as the Congress, be delayed to the following day, July 2.

On July 2, several “providential” events occurred. First, Caesar Rodney of Delaware walked in, still in his spurs. Rodney was a Delaware delegate, but was too sick to attend the Congress the previous day.  Someone had ridden to his house the previous evening and informed him of Delaware’s split vote. Hearing this, Rodney had roused himself from his sickbed and ridden all night to Philadelphia. His vote in favor tipped the Delaware delegation’s vote to “Yes.” Over at the Pennsylvania table, there were two empty chairs where the day before had sat John Dickinson and Robert Morris, two of the previous day’s “No” votes.  Without these two gentlemen present, Pennsylvania’s delegation vote changed from 4-3 against the measure to 3-2 in favor of the measure.  South Carolina’s delegation had had an overnight change of heart and now voted in favor of the resolution. This left New York. Without new instructions (they did not arrive until July 19), New York had to once again abstain. This put the vote at twelve colonies in favor and one abstention. This was as close to the unanimity they were going to get that day, so President of Congress, John Hancock, declared the measure passed.

Dickinson promptly resigned his position in the Pennsylvania delegation, as did Humphreys and Willing. On July 20, George Ross joined the rest of the Pennsylvania delegation. Returning members were Dr. Benjamin Franklin, George Clymer, Robert Morris, Colonel James Wilson, John Morton, Dr. Benjamin Rush; and new members, Colonel James Smith, and George Taylor.

It was not unusual in that period for competent gentlemen to be given multiple, important responsibilities or postings. From July 20 to September 28, Franklin and Ross must have been quite the sight, walking upstairs and down, attending to their concurrent responsibilities in the Congress and the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. In addition to presiding as Vice-President, Ross also participated in drafting Pennsylvania’s Declaration of Rights.[xiv]

On August 2, George Ross joined the assembled delegates in adding his signature to the “Unanimous Declaration,” the last of the Pennsylvania delegation to do so.

The following year, 1777, Ross was reelected to the Continental Congress, but was forced to resign his seat before the session ended due to a recurrence of his chronic gout. The next year, he was elected Vice President of the Pennsylvania Assembly. In March of 1779, he was appointed a judge in the Pennsylvania Court of Admiralty, but four months later, on July 14, he died at the ripe young age of 49.[xv] He is buried in Philadelphia’s Christ Church Burial Ground.

The good citizens of Lancaster thought so highly of George Ross and his service to his country that they passed the following resolution:

“Resolved, that the sum of one hundred and fifty, pounds, out of the county stock, be forthwith transmitted to George Ross, one of the members of assembly for this county, and one of the delegates for this colony in the continental congress; and that he be requested to accept the same, as a testimony from this county, of their sense of his attendance on the public business, to his great private loss, and of their approbation of his conduct. Resolved, that if it be more agreeable, Mr. Ross purchase with part of the said money, a genteel piece of plate, ornamented as he thinks proper, to remain with him, as a testimony of the esteem this county has for him, by reason of his patriotic conduct, in the great struggle of American liberty.”[xvi]

Ross, however, declined this generous gift, stating to the committee which presented the resolution that his services to his country had been overrated, that he had been driven simply by his sense of duty, and that every man should contribute all his energy to promote the public welfare, without expecting pecuniary rewards.[xvii]

Visit Lancaster, Pennsylvania today and you will encounter George Ross Elementary School, Ross Street, and several historical markers commemorating “The Patriot George Ross.”

Many men seek greatness; a few of them find it. Some men have greatness thrust upon them. Other men quietly do their duty, to God and their country; George Ross was one of these men.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

[i] Interestingly, George Ross’ sister, Gertrude, married George Read, who also went on to sign the Declaration.

[ii] https://www.immanuelonthegreen.org/.

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Society_Partners_in_the_Gospel.

[iv] The church had been founded in 1689.

[v] J. B. Lossing, Signers of the Declaration of Independence, New York: Derby & Jackson, 1856, p. 130.

[vi] Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence – George Ross, accessed on 14 April 2021 at https://www.dsdi1776.com/signers-by-state/george-ross/.

[vii] St. James Episcopal Church of Lancaster was founded in 1744, also by a Church of England missionary.

[viii] https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=5204.

[ix] https://lifewithldub.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-lancasters-hero-and-patriot-george.html.

[x] Read the Declaration at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp.

[xi] Ibid p. 132.

[xii] Op cit.

[xiii] Those unable or unwilling to sign the Declaration were John Alsop, George Clinton, Robert R. Livingston and Henry Wisner of New York; John Dickinson, Charles Humphreys and Thomas Willing of Pennsylvania; and John Rogers of Maryland.  All had left the Congress by August 2nd when the signing of the engrossed copy began.

[xiv] https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/pennsylvania-declaration-of-rights-and-constitution/

[xv] One source sets Ross’ death in 1780 and the age of 50.  See https://www.patriotacademy.com/george-ross-lives-fortunes-sacred-honor/.

[xvi] http://colonialhall.com/ross/ross.php.

[xvii] Robert R. Conrad, ed, Sanderson’s Biography of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, 1846. P.439

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

 

 

Essay 62 – Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
Declaration of Independence Signer James Wilson and a Framer of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Justice appointed by George Washington, and author of Lectures on Law.

James Wilson was one of the most intellectually gifted Americans of his time. His cumulative influence on pre-Revolutionary War political consciousness, formation of the governments under the Constitution of 1787 and Pennsylvania’s constitution of 1790, and early Supreme Court jurisprudence likely is second-to-none. Along the way, he amassed a respectable fortune, and took his place as a leading member of the political and economic elite that played such a critical role in the events leading to American independence. That said, he was not immune to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” in the words of the Bard, but, for the most part, he did not suffer them in the mind. Rather, more often, he chose “to take arms [sometimes literally]…and, by opposing, end them.”

Wilson moved to Philadelphia from his native Scotland in 1766, at age 24. Prior to emigrating, he was educated at Scottish universities. There, he was influenced by the ideas of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, such as David Hume and Adam Smith. Their ruminations about human nature, the concept of knowledge, and the ethical basis of political rule shaped Wilson’s intellectual ideas which he made concrete in later political actions and judicial opinions.

It appears that Smith’s influence was more constructive than Hume’s. The latter denied the essential existence of such concepts as virtue and vice. Hume instead characterized them as artificial constructs or mere opinion. Wilson was critical of Hume’s patent skepticism, deeming it flawed and derogatory of what Wilson saw as the moral sensibilities integral to human nature. He considered Hume’s skepticism inconsistent with what he viewed as the ethical basis of the political commonwealth, that is, consent of the governed. As he wrote later, “All men are, by nature equal and free: no one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it.” However, Wilson also believed, along with John Adams and many other republicans of the time, that such consent could only be given by a virtuous people. In short, Wilson’s democratic vision was elitist in practice. The governed whose consent mattered were the propertied classes. The others might register their consent, but only under the watchful eyes of their virtuous betters in society.

After arriving in Pennsylvania, he studied law under John Dickinson, another member of the emerging political elite. While so occupied, he also lectured, mostly on English literature, at the College of Philadelphia, site of the first medical school in North America. He had arrived at an institution that was connected to an astonishing number of American founders. Despite its relatively recent founding in 1755, it counted 21 members of the Continental Congress as graduates; nine signers of the Declaration of Independence were alumni or trustees; five signers of the Constitution held degrees from the College, and another five were among its trustees.

There, Wilson successfully petitioned to receive an honorary Master’s degree, to remedy his failure to complete his studies for a formal degree at the Scottish universities. His scholarly association with the College of Philadelphia continued the rest of his life, including after its merger into the University of Pennsylvania in 1791. At that time, Wilson took on a lectureship in law for a couple of years, only the second such position established in the United States, after the Chair in Law and Police held by George Wythe at the College of William and Mary. The University of Pennsylvania traces its eventual law school to Wilson’s position.

Wilson practiced law in Reading, Pennsylvania. His talent and connections quickly produced financial security. He turned his attention to politics amid the stirrings of conflict with the British government. In 1768, he wrote, “Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament.” In this pamphlet, Wilson denied the authority of Parliament to tax the American colonists because of the latters’ lack of representation in that body. Perhaps because it was too early to mount a direct constitutional challenge to the authority of Parliament to govern, this seminal work was not published until 1774. Despite his negation of Parliamentary authority, Wilson did not advocate sundering all ties with the mother country. Rather, he emphasized the connection between England and her colonies through the person of King George. Wilson’s union cemented by a pledge of allegiance to the king was a rudimentary plan for the type of dominion system that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson also proposed in separate missives that same year. In an ironic postscript, the British ministry offered, too late, a similar structure as a way to end the war in 1778. It was a system the British a century later instituted for other parts of their empire.

In 1774, Wilson was elected to the local revolutionary Committee of Correspondence. When the Second Continental Congress was called in 1775, Wilson was elected to the Pennsylvania delegation. With the Adamses—John and Sam—, Jefferson, the Lees of Virginia— Richard Henry and Francis—, and Christopher Gadsden—the “Sam Adams of the South” and designer of the Gadsden Flag—Wilson was among the most passionate pro-independence voices as that Congress deliberated.

Then occurred an odd turn of events. When Richard Henry Lee’s motion for independence came up for debate on June 7, 1776, consideration had to be postponed because Pennsylvania, along with four other colonies, was not prepared to vote in favor. John Dickinson, Wilson’s close friend and law teacher, was part of the peace faction. Did that influence Wilson’s vote? Was Wilson really a pro-independence radical, as his writings and soaring rhetoric in Congress indicated? Or was he an elite conservative reluctantly floating along with the tide of opinion among others of his class? Wilson and others in his delegation claimed that they merely wanted clearer instructions from their colony’s provincial congress. In a preliminary vote within the Pennsylvania delegation on July 1, 1776, Wilson broke with Dickinson and voted for independence. When Congress voted on Lee’s motion the next day, Dickinson and Robert Morris stayed away. Wilson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Morton then cast Pennsylvania’s vote in favor of the motion and independence.

During the Revolutionary War, Wilson divided his time between Congress and opposing Pennsylvania’s new constitution. He also returned to private law practice and served on the board of directors of the Bank of North America. That bank was the brainchild of fellow-Pennsylvanian Robert Morris, another personal friend with whom Wilson also worked closely on the financial matters of the United States.

Wilson continued his life-long practice of land speculation, the vocation of some among the American elite, and the avocation of most others, elite or not-so-elite. The country was land-rich and people-poor. Investors gambled that, after peace was restored, the British pro-Indian and anti-settlement policy of the Proclamation of 1763, which had prohibited American settlement of the interior, would be overturned. Western lands finally would be opened to immigrants. Wilson, along with Robert Morris and many other prominent Americans and some foreigners, had organized the largest of the land companies, the Illinois-Wabash Company, even before the war. Wilson eventually became its head and largest investor. The intrigue among the Company, politicians in various states, delegates to Congress, and agents of foreign governments to gain access to large tracts of trans-Appalachian lands presents a fascinating tale of its own.

The Illinois-Wabash Company was not Wilson’s only venture in land speculation. He co-founded another company and also purchased rights to large tracts individually or in partnership with others. It has been estimated that, directly or through investment entities, Wilson had interests in well over a million acres of Western land. Much of this land bounty was financed through debt. Creditors want cash payment, and highly-leveraged debtors are particularly vulnerable to economic contractions. Land values drop as land goes unsold, and cash in the form of gold and silver specie becomes scarce. Bank notes no longer trade at par, reflecting the financial instability of their issuers. Like his business associate and political ally Robert Morris, Wilson was hit hard by the Panic of 1796-7. He was briefly incarcerated twice in debtor’s prison, even after fleeing Pennsylvania for North Carolina to avoid his creditors. More astounding even was that these events occurred while he was on the U.S. Supreme Court and performing his circuit riding duties.

One sling of outrageous fortune against which Wilson literally took arms occurred on October 4, 1779. After the British abandoned Philadelphia, the revolutionary government undertook to exile Loyalists and seize their property. As John Adams had done for the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre in 1770, Wilson successfully took up the unpopular cause of defending 23 of the Loyalists. The public response to Wilson’s admirable legal ethics was more militant than what Adams had experienced. Incited by the speeches of Pennsylvania’s radical anti-Loyalist president, Joseph Reed, a drunken mob attacked Wilson and 35 other prominent citizens of Philadelphia. The mob’s quarry managed to barricade themselves in Wilson’s house and shot back. In the ensuing melee, one man inside the house was killed. When the mob tried to breach the back entrance of the house, the attackers were beaten back in hand-to-hand combat. The fighting continued, with the mob using a cannon to fire at the house. At that point, a detachment of cavalry appeared, led by the same Joseph Reed, and dispersed the mob. It is estimated that five of the mob were killed and nearly a score wounded. Members of the mob were arrested, but no prosecutions were launched, allegedly to calm the situation. Eventually, all were pardoned by Reed.

The Fort Wilson Riot, as it became known colloquially, had more complicated origins and produced more profound changes than one can address in detail in an essay about Wilson. It arose from difficult economic circumstances and rising prices due to food shortages. The lower classes were particularly hard hit, and popular resentment simmered for months, punctuated by gatherings and publications which none-too-subtly threatened upheaval. During that volatile time, Wilson was accused of “engrossing,” that is, hoarding goods with the intent to drive up prices. This may have made him an even more likely target for the mob’s wrath than having defended Loyalists.

As well, the friction between the lower classes and the merchant bourgeoisie was manifested in competing political factions, the Constitutionalists and the Republicans. The former supported the radically democratic Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, which placed power in a unicameral legislature closely monitored through frequent elections. They stressed the need for sacrifice for the common good, done on a voluntary basis or by government force. The latter opposed that charter as the cause of ineffective government and destructive policies which threatened property rights. In the end, the two competing visions of republicanism settled their political conflict during the riot. The mob had violated an unwritten rule of protest, and popular opinion shifted against the Constitutionalists. Wilson’s Republicans had won. They would determine the subsequent political direction of the state, which became the critical factor in Pennsylvania’s struggle to approve the proposed U.S. Constitution in the fall of 1787. The shift in political fortunes culminated in 1790 in a significantly different constitution, one of more balanced powers controlled by the political elite and containing explicit protections of property rights.

Perhaps Wilson’s greatest contribution to America’s founding was his participation in the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in May, 1787. He became one of only six to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the others being George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, and Roger Sherman.

One of the most accomplished lawyers in the country, John Rutledge of South Carolina, future Supreme Court justice and, briefly, the Court’s chief justice, stayed at Wilson’s home during this time. The historian Forrest McDonald describes a plan by Rutledge and Wilson to “manage” the convention. Apparently, Wilson made similar plans with James Madison, Robert Morris, and Gouverneur Morris (no relation). Rutledge, in turn, was scheming with others. To complete the intrigue, Wilson and Rutledge kept their side discussions secret from each other. The plan seemed to bear fruit when Wilson and Rutledge were appointed to the Committee of Detail, charged with writing the substantive provisions of the Constitution from the delegates’ positions manifested in the votes of the state delegations. Considering the committee’s final product, however, their success appears to have been less than spectacular. It was not for lack of trying, however. Wilson spoke 165 times at the convention, more than anyone other than Gouverneur Morris.

Like his fellow connivers, Wilson took a very strong “nationalist” position in the convention. He was instrumental in the creation of the executive branch. Reacting against the weakness of the multiple executive structure of the Pennsylvania executive council model and the lack of an effective balance of power among the branches of government under his state’s constitution, he, like Alexander Hamilton, believed a unitary executive to be essential. The necessary “energy, dispatch, and responsibility to the office” would be assured best if a single person were in charge of the executive authority. As well, such a person would be positioned to blunt the self-interest of political factions which are endemic to legislatures. Wilson objected to the original proposal to have the president elected by the whole Congress or by the Senate alone. Instead, he proposed, the president should be elected by the people. Very few delegates had a taste for such unbridled democracy. Wilson then fell back to his second line of argument, that the president be selected by presidential electors chosen by the people of the states, but with the states divided into districts proportioned by population, like today’s congressional districts. This, too, was defeated by eight states to two. The matter was tabled for weeks. In the end, the current system, one that dilutes majoritarian control and favors the influence of states in their corporate capacity, prevailed.

An explanation of the term “nationalist.” As used herein, it has the classic meaning associated with the concept as it relates to the period of the founding of the United States and subsequent decades. It describes those who identified more with the new “nation,” i.e. the United States, than with the individual colonies, soon to become states, of their birth. Generalizations are, by definition, imprecise. Still, the most ardent American nationalists of the time were those who, like Wilson, Robert Morris, and Hamilton, were born abroad; those who, like Rutledge and Dickinson, had traveled or otherwise spent considerable time in Europe; and those who had significant business connections abroad. They also tended to be younger. The difference between these outlooks was less significant for the process of separating from Britain, than it was for the controversies over forming a “national” government and an identity of the “United States” through the Articles of Confederation and, subsequently, the Constitution of 1787. The nationalists sought to amend and, later, to abandon the Articles. As to the Constitution, the nationalists at the Philadelphia convention supported a stronger central government and, on the whole, more “democratic” components for that government than their opponents did. They also generally opposed a bill of rights as ostentatious ideological frippery. In the struggle over the states’ approval of the Constitution, they styled themselves as “Federalists” as a political maneuver and characterized their opponents as “Anti-Federalists.” After the Constitution was approved, most of them associated with Hamilton’s policies and the Federalist Party. In the sectionalist frictions before the Civil War, they were the “Unionists.” Regrettably, like other words in our hypersensitive culture, the term has been ideologically corrupted recently, so that its obvious meaning has become slanted. Paradoxically, even as the central government becomes powerful beyond the wildest charges of the Constitution’s early critics, the very concept of the United States as a “nation” is today under attack.

In the long wrangling over the structure of Congress, Wilson urged proportional representation, as he had done unsuccessfully a decade earlier in the debate over the Articles of Confederation. He also supported direct election of Congress by the people. In light of his moderate democratic faith in the consent of the governed, and coming as he did from a populous state, his position is hardly surprising. That noted, he favored a bicameral legislature with an upper chamber that would restrain the more numerous lower chamber and its tendency towards radical policies. The insecurity of property rights that resulted from the policies of the Constitutionalist-dominated unicameral Pennsylvania legislature had alarmed Wilson. Wilson adhered to his support for proportional representation in the Senate and direct popular election. Like his fellow large-state delegates Madison and Hamilton, eventually he resigned himself to the state-equality basis of the Senate under Roger Sherman’s Connecticut compromise and to election of that body by the state legislatures. He also supported the three-fifths clause of counting slaves for the purpose of apportionment of representatives. The purpose of that clause, first presented in 1783 as a proposed amendment to the Articles of Confederation, originally was part of a formula to assess taxes on the states based on population rather than property value. That purpose is also reflected in Article I of the Constitution.

During the debate in the Pennsylvania convention over the adoption of the Constitution, Wilson delivered his famous Speech in the State House Yard, a precursor to many arguments developed more fully in The Federalist. Wilson systematically addressed the claims of the Constitution’s critics. He defended his opposition to a Bill of Rights, declaring such a document to be superfluous and, indeed, inconsistent with a charter for a federal government of only delegated and enumerated powers. Copies of the speech were circulated widely by the Constitution’s supporters.

There were those, like Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, who claimed that the drafting convention in Philadelphia had gone beyond its mandate to propose only amendments to the Articles of Confederation and that, as a consequence, the proposed Constitution was revolutionary. Wilson drew on his philosophical roots to declare that “the people may change the constitutions whenever and however they please. This is a right of which no positive institution can ever deprive them.” This notion of popular constitutional change outside the formal amendment method set out in Article V of the Constitution was a self-evident truth to many Americans at the time. It has become much more controversial, as Americans have moved from the revolutionary ethos of the 1780s and a robust commitment to popular sovereignty to today’s more pliant population governed by an increasingly distant and unaccountable elite.

Wilson next turned his attention to the adoption of a new state constitution in Pennsylvania. At the same time, he sought the chief justiceship of the United States Supreme Court. Although that office went to John Jay of New York, President Washington appointed Wilson to be an associate justice. In that capacity, he participated in several significant early cases. As expected, he consistently took a nationalistic position. Thus, in 1793 in Chisholm v. Georgia, he joined the majority of justices in holding that the federal courts could summon states as defendants in actions brought by citizens of other states and to adjudicate those states’ obligations without their consent. Wilson reasoned that the Constitution was the product of the sovereignty of the people of the United States. This sovereignty, exercised for purposes of Union, had subordinated the states to suits in federal court as defined in Article III. The decision ran contrary to the long-established common law doctrine of state sovereign immunity. Swift and hostile political reaction in Georgia and Congress culminated in the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment to overturn Chisholm.

Wilson joined two other nationalistic decisions. One was the unpopular Ware v. Hylton in 1796, which upheld the rights of British creditors to collect fully debts owed to them. Those rights were guaranteed under the Paris Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, but conflicted with a Virginia law that sought to limit those rights. Like his fellow-justices, Wilson applied the Supremacy Clause to strike down the state law. But he also recognized the binding nature of the law of nations, which had devolved to the United States on independence. The other was Hylton v. U.S. the same year, which upheld the constitutionality of the federal Carriage Tax Act. The case was an early exercise of the power of constitutional review by the Court over acts of Congress and a precursor to Marbury v. Madison. That power was one which Wilson had strenuously urged in the constitutional convention nine years earlier in support of a strong federal judiciary.

Depressed about his precarious economic situation and worn out from the rigors of circuit-riding duties as a Supreme Court justice, Wilson died from a stroke in 1798.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 61 – Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

George Taylor was a foreign-born patriot who began his adult life as an indentured servant, but rose to be one of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence. This relatively unknown man’s life is emblematic of the many everyday Americans who helped in our cause for independence.

Taylor’s story began in Ireland where he was born sometime in 1716, though we do not know the exact date or location. Interestingly, Taylor was one of eight foreign-born Signers. Button Gwinnett, Francis Lewis, Robert Morris, James Smith, George Taylor, Matthew Thornton, James Wilson, and John Witherspoon were the others, all from the British Isles.

It is generally agreed that his father was a Protestant minister, but not much else of his childhood was documented. We do know that to obtain the money required for passage to America in 1736, Taylor agreed to become an indentured servant to Samuel Savage, Jr., an ironmaster at Coventry Forge near Philadelphia.

Indentured servitude was a system by which a person would agree to teach someone (the indentured servant) a profession or pay the fare for them to come to America and, in return, the indentured servant would agree to work for room and board, but no wages, for that person for a period of about three to five years.

Interestingly, this practice of indentured servitude was quite common in early America. It is estimated over half of all European immigrants to America between the early 1600s and the 1770s came as indentured servants. Not surprisingly, they tended to be the very poor. Taylor was the only one of the Signers who was ever an indentured servant.

In any event, Taylor began his time for Mr. Savage as a shoveler of coal into the blast furnace at the forge. Probably owing to some education he received as a boy, Taylor was brighter than most and soon moved into a clerk’s position. He must have done well and impressed those around him because when his boss died in 1742, Taylor married Savage’s widow, Ann, just a few months later. Eventually, they had two children together.

Incredibly, in the space of six years, Taylor had gone from a penniless laborer who could not afford passage to America to the ironmaster of two iron works with a wealthy wife thrown into the bargain. Moreover, in 18th century British America, Taylor’s position as ironmaster, which was essentially an entrepreneur of a large-scale operation, made him a person of significance in the local community. Not surprisingly, Taylor was the one and only ironmaster among the Signers.

In 1752, when Taylor’s stepson, Samuel Savage III, came of age, Taylor had to relinquish the family business to him. The next year, George and Ann moved to Durham, Pennsylvania, and took out a five-year lease with an option for five more at the Durham Iron Works. The business prospered and even manufactured munitions for the Pennsylvania Provincial militia during the French and Indian War.

In 1763, when the Durham lease expired, the Taylors moved to Easton, about ten miles away. Here, George got more involved in politics and was elected to the Provincial Assembly from 1764-1772 and was elected as Justice of the Peace for Northampton County. He also built a beautiful stone mansion which still stands today overlooking the Lehigh River. Unfortunately, Ann died soon after completing the house. George lived there for a couple years before moving in with his son James in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Perhaps bored and missing work, Taylor returned to Durham in 1774 and took out another five-year lease at the iron works. By 1775, relations with England had deteriorated and war had broken out at Lexington and Concord on April 19. Taylor soon signed a contract to produce cannon balls for the Continental Army, becoming the first foundry in America to supply this new force.

In the summer of 1776, the Second Continental Congress was prepared to declare our independence from England. Unfortunately, five of the nine delegates, a majority, from Pennsylvania were opposed to this declaration. The Pennsylvania Assembly quickly fired these unwilling men and found five that were more willing to vote in favor of the resolution. George Taylor was one of these new delegates and he proudly signed his name to our Declaration of Independence.

Taylor’s health soon declined and his time in Congress was limited to only seven months. When his lease at Durham expired in 1779, Taylor returned to Easton where he leased a small stone house. When he died on February 23, 1781, George was with his companion and housekeeper, Naomi Smith, a woman he met after Ann passed away and by whom he had fathered five children.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should George Taylor and what he did for America matter to us today?

George Taylor was a patriot who began his adult life as an indentured servant, but rose to be one of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps no other Signer so greatly exemplifies the opportunity our great country affords to those willing to work to better themselves.

While most people are unfamiliar with George Taylor, he was a significant man and a great patriot, nonetheless. George Taylor was there when his country needed him and you cannot ask more than that of anyone.

SUGGESTED READING: The History of Weapons of the American Revolution by George Newman is an excellent book published in 1967. It provides a thorough analysis of the weaponry of the 1700s.

PLACES TO VISIT: Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site near Elverson, Pennsylvania (50 miles east of Philadelphia) is a beautifully restored “iron plantation” of over 800 acres and includes 14 buildings from the early 1800s. Founded in 1781, this sort of site was key to America’s Industrial Revolution. It is a great place to visit.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 60 – Guest Essayist: Ertis Tereziu

James Smith was born in Ireland in 1719. He spent his formative years in Ireland, arriving in Pennsylvania between the ages of ten to twelve.  James’ father was a humble farmer but was able to put James through an average education from a local Church Minister. As James grew older, he started to take interest in the law. Through his hard work, James was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar at the age of twenty-six. He set up his practice in Cumberland County, near Shippensburg. However, business was slow in Cumberland County, so, after four years James made the choice to move to the more populated New York. During the 1760s Smith joined the local Whig party, quickly rising to leadership.

As relations with Great Britain deteriorated, Smith emerged as an advocate of ideas that would soon come to define the new nation. For example, in 1774, he attended a provincial assembly where he offered a paper titled: “Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great Britain over the Colonies in America.” James recognized the purchasing power of the colonies and sought to leverage that against the British. As such, his paper spoke on a boycott of British goods. Mercantilism had built Great Britain into an empire and James Smith wanted mercantilism to do the same for the colonies. He saw Parliament’s policies as stifling to colonial trade.  The paper advocated for a boycott because Smith believed a boycott would force Parliament to acquiesce to colonial demands by applying pressure to the British economy.

The paper also spoke on a more independent version of the colonies, promoting the idea of a General Congress of the Colonies. The best way to protect one’s rights is to be in charge of them, to keep them as a bundle of sticks in one’s own bag. These ideas would become major points in the First Continental Congress adjourned in Philadelphia in the Fall of 1774.

Always the leader, James Smith then went on to organize a volunteer militia company in New York. Earning the respect of his men, he was elected as Captain. Smith was also a great recruiter, growing the company into a battalion. He understood the concept of the price of freedom. He also understood the age-old truth that the pen is mightier than the sword. James Smith would pass leadership of the militia to younger men so that he could focus on rallying the young nation around the ideas of freedom and self-determination.

While still serving the state assembly in 1775, Smith made a name for himself as a supporter of the causes of American freedom which now appeared to be possible only by separation. Thomas Paine’s articles in Common Sense began to turn public opinion to the idea of independency. The Second Continental Congress had been meeting in Philadelphia since May 10, 1775. Soon after, the colonies would raise their own army, appointing George Washington as its General.

James Smith was appointed to the provincial convention in Philadelphia in 1775, then the state constitutional convention in 1776, and eventually was elected to the Continental Congress the same year. Smith was in Congress for only two years, retiring in 1777. He then served in a few public offices: one term in the State assembly, a few months as a judge of the state High Court of Appeals. In 1782, Smith was appointed Brigadier General of the Pennsylvania militia. He was reelected to Congress in 1785, but declined to attend due to growing old in age.

However, a fire destroyed his office and papers shortly before he passed away. Because of this incident, not much is known about James Smith’s work. The result is that historians study Smith not through his journals, but through his actions. And his act of bravely signing the Declaration of Independence shows the world that James Smith believed that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights.

Ertis Tereziu came to America as a child, and he possesses a background that gives him a unique appreciation for the United States system of government. Ertis is currently an attorney at Novara Tesija Catenacci McDonald & Baas, where he loves getting lost in the law. Connect with Ertis on LinkedIn at ertistereziu.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Sources:

  1. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
  2. https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/smith.html
  3. https://www.dsdi1776.com/james-smith/

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 59 – Guest Essayist: Gordon Lloyd

George Clymer (1739-1813) was born in Philadelphia, orphaned the next year, and then mentored to be a merchant and responsible citizen by his wealthy uncle. He died in Morrisville, Pennsylvania at age 74 and was buried in Trenton, New Jersey. In addition to being economically, and politically, active, Clymer supported the abolition of slavery and the development of the practical arts and sciences.

Clymer was an early supporter of the movement for independence; he opposed both the Tea Act and the Stamp Act in the early 1770s. He served as Continental treasurer, a representative in the Pennsylvania legislature, and delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

He was one of six delegates to sign the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and then the 1787 Constitution as part of the Constitutional Convention. The other five delegates who signed both documents included Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson.

Clymer was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1789 where he supported Sherman in the successful effort to pass the Bill of Rights in 1791. He also helped President George Washington enforce whiskey excise taxes in Pennsylvania.

Despite Clymer’s extensive involvement in the story of the American founding, he is not on the list of influential, or even underrated founders.  We attribute this to Clymer’s inclination to work behind the scenes on the various committees to which his colleagues elected him. He reminds us of the steady and vital work done by individuals who do not seek the limelight. Contemporary William Pierce of Georgia, who provided character sketches of multiple founders, portrayed him as “a respectable man, and much esteemed.”

Gordon Lloyd is the Robert and Katheryn Dockson Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, and a Senior Fellow at the Ashbrook Center. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all the course work toward a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago before receiving his master of arts and PhD degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The coauthor of three books on the American founding and sole author of a book on the political economy of the New Deal, he also has numerous articles, reviews, and opinion-editorials to his credit. His latest coauthored book, The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry, was published in 2013, and he most recently released as editor, Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, in September 2014. He is the creator, with the help of the Ashbrook Center, of four highly regarded websites on the origin of the Constitution. He has received many teaching, scholarly, and leadership awards including admission to Phi Beta Kappa and the Howard White Award for Teaching Excellence at Pepperdine University. He currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 58 – Guest Essayist: Ron Meier
Public Domain in the United States - John Morton, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

In the 2016 and 2020 general elections, Pennsylvania was considered a “battleground state” and a “swing state.”  It seems that not much has changed since 1776.

Pennsylvania’s political landscape and physical location insulated it to some extent from the revolutionary fever of New England. The stability of the Colonial government was popular among many Pennsylvanians, with the Penn family ruling over the colony since 1681 when William Penn received the land grant from King Charles II.  Revolutionary activists were considered a threat to this stability and a personal threat to the power and wealth of the Penn family. Even in the spring of 1776, Pennsylvania’s official political position was opposition to independence. Fortunately, Philadelphia was somewhat central among the colonies and was chosen as the place where delegates from each of the colonies would meet.

The state with the most signers of the Declaration of Independence was Pennsylvania with nine, leading one to believe that the colony was among the most united in favor of independence. However, six of the nine were not even present on the critical days of voting for independence. In the spring of 1776, a more apt description of the situation in Pennsylvania might be “chaos.” A clash of the more radical against the ruling class was in play. John Dickinson and Robert Morris were strong supporters of the status quo, preferring reconciliation with Britain rather than revolution. Pennsylvania’s provincial legislature had instructed its delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote against independence.

In late May, with the backing of the Second Continental Congress, the radicals effectively orchestrated a coup to create a new constitution and government. A newly created and short-lived Provincial Conference, consisting of those arguing for independence, replaced the existing legislature and, as one of the existing legislature’s last acts, the Assembly gave new instructions to the delegates at the Continental Congress to vote for independence. Among the five delegates to the Continental Congress remaining on July 1, only two of them, Ben Franklin and James Wilson were in favor of independence; John Dickinson and Robert Morris were not in favor when the first vote for independence was taken on July 1. John Morton was on the fence, somewhat surprising since, in his last act as Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, he signed the document giving instructions to the Pennsylvania delegation to vote in favor of independence. Several other delegates opposed to independence had become frustrated and either resigned or simply ceased attending the Congress.

When the final vote for independence was taken in the Congress on July 2, Dickinson and Morris abstained, Morton finally declared support, ensuring a 3-0 vote for independence. Thus, John Morton became Pennsylvania’s swing vote and the man largely responsible for ensuring a “yes” vote for independence on July 2, 1776. So, who was this swing voter?

John Morton was born in 1725. He was a descendent of a Finnish family which had come to the colonies in the mid-17th century. His father died while John’s mother was pregnant. His mother remarried an English farmer and surveyor. John had little formal education, but his stepfather home-schooled John, giving him the ethical and practical education he needed to succeed in life.

At 31, he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, Pennsylvania’s legislative branch, where he remained for all but two years until the Assembly’s dissolution in 1776, at which time he was the Assembly’s Speaker. His two years outside of the Assembly were when his county’s sheriff died and Morton was appointed sheriff.

Among his other political positions, he was Justice of the Peace, Presiding Judge of the Court of General Quarters Session, Common Pleas of the County of Chester, Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and Justice of Orphan’s Court.

Morton’s first responsibility for petitioning the King for redress of rights was his appointment to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. From that first act of the colonists until the final vote on July 2, 1776, the colonists’ primary objective was not to seek independence, but to protest unjust actions of the British Parliament and to remain loyal to the mother country by seeking reconciliation. The repeated refusal of the British Parliament and King to consider their requests over the subsequent 10 years drove the colonists to unite for independence in the end.

So highly regarded was Morton in Pennsylvania’s Assembly that he was chosen to represent Pennsylvania in both the First and Second Continental Congresses. His decisiveness on July 2 was critical since only Pennsylvania and Delaware had not yet committed to approving Richard Henry Lee’s resolution “that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” Morton’s Yea vote may have been the primary reason the resolution was approved by the Congress and for our annual celebration of Independence Day on July 4. Unfortunately, Morton is not represented on John Trumbull’s famous portrait of the Continental Congress meeting on June 28, 1776, when the Committee of Five presented its draft to the Congress.

Morton thereafter served as Chairman of the Committee of the Whole that wrote the Articles of Confederation, the document under which the United States operated during the Revolutionary War. He was the first of the signers of the Declaration of Independence to die, in 1777, not living to see the adoption of the Articles of Confederation.

During the Revolutionary War, the British destroyed the Morton family home and its contents, including many of Morton’s papers, leaving little documentary evidence of his role in state and national politics. Morton is one of the least known signers of the Declaration of Independence, but one without whom the document may not have come into existence.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran.  He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Sources:

https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/resources-declarationofindependence.htm

http://dev.ushistory.org/pennsylvania/birth2.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colonial_governors_of_Pennsylvania

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0280

https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/facts-1776

https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/trumbull

https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/educ/hist/eiw_this_week/v1n17_jul1_1776.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_of_the_United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_delegates_to_the_Continental_Congress#Pennsylvania

https://staffweb.wilkes.edu/harold.cox/legis/indexcolonial.html

https://www.revolutionary-war.net/john-morton/

https://www.dsdi1776.com/john-morton/

http://dev.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/morton.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_Congress

https://archive.org/details/biographicalsket00lossing/page/262/mode/2up?q=morton

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 57 – Guest Essayist: Val Crofts
"A republic, Madam, if you can keep it."

Benjamin Franklin has always seemed to be the most “approachable” of the Founding Fathers. While most of the Founding Fathers can appear unapproachable and distant in their biographies and portraits (students of mine always seemed to think that the Founding generation were all 50 plus years old at birth), Franklin’s slight smile and grandfatherly appearance reaches out to us 231 years after his death and invites us into a conversation with him. He was the Founder who felt that our nation’s new Republic in 1787 would thrive and succeed as long as we, the people, took care of it and kept it going. Dr. Franklin was also a valuable part of the process and completion of the Declaration of Independence. As the only delegate to be known worldwide in 1776, he helped to guide discussions and bring about compromises to unite the 55 delegates to the Second Continental Congress. He understood that the delegates must hang together or most assuredly, they would all “hang separately.”

Although he is now a synonymous figure with Philadelphia, Franklin was actually born in Boston in 1706. He was one of seventeen children born to Josiah and Abiah Franklin. The original plan was to have young Benjamin study to be a minister, which did not exactly fit with Franklin’s unique skill set so he needed to try other career paths. He became an apprentice for his brother James, who was a printer. This was a perfect trade for young Benjamin as he was an excellent writer and loved books and reading. At age 16, he began writing a series of essays under the pseudonym of “Mrs. Silence Dogood.” His character was a middle-aged widow who had humorous opinions to share with “her” readers. Franklin wrote 14 of these letters and his brother (who did not know who the author of them was) published them in his Boston newspaper. In 1723, Benjamin Franklin left his brother’s printing business and ran away to Philadelphia.

After not immediately finding a printing job that he liked, Franklin traveled to London where he worked in printing houses for a short time and then returned to Philadelphia which he then felt was his home. He became the publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette which became the most popular newspaper in the colonies. Franklin married Deborah Reed in 1730 and the couple eventually had 2 children, Francis and Sarah. Deborah also raised Franklin’s illegitimate son, William. Franklin and his wife were apart for large portions of their marriage. She died in 1774 when Dr. Franklin was in England.

In 1732, Franklin began the publication of Poor Richard’s Almanac. It was published annually until 1758 and it became a must-have of colonial society. It contained news, weather forecasts, farming and domestic advice, poetry and other sections. It appealed to the normal, everyday person and many of Franklin’s most iconic sayings come from within its pages.

Benjamin Franklin also lived approximately 30 years in Europe where he was awarded honorary doctorates from British universities in 1759 and 1762.The title of Dr. Franklin comes from these awards. He also was in England during the passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 when the word of colonial uproar towards the legislation reached England. Franklin was, at first, unaware of the colonists’ hatred of the Stamp Act and went back and forth on the matter which caused him problems in the colonies. Later, he was of the opinion that the best way to get the act repealed was to boycott or not purchase the good affected. He also began to argue in England for colonial representation in Parliament if taxes were to be levied against the colonies. His idea fell on deaf ears.

As Dr. Franklin gradually became a supportive voice of the American colonies in England, his residency there was becoming less comfortable. This culminated in 1774 when he was brought in front of the Privy Council in London and was absolutely humiliated in front of the audience there. The speaker, Alexander Wedderburn, attacked his character and integrity over the emergence of a series of letters that were in Franklin’s possession. The letters somehow got released, angering the colonists further, due to their content that said some colonial rights may be further curtailed. Franklin chose not to speak on his own behalf. The next day, he was removed as Postmaster to the colonies. Franklin was furious and it is from this point that he tirelessly devotes himself to the idea of colonial independence. He returned home to the colonies in 1775, possibly to retire. He was sixty-nine years old.

Franklin’s arrival back in the colonies was celebrated in New York and Philadelphia. He was the world’s most famous American citizen and he was elected to the Second Continental Congress in 1775 as a representative of Pennsylvania. He advocated for the appointment of George Washington as the Commander of the Continental Army and was instrumental in helping to provide support and money for the Continental Army throughout the war.

Franklin was later appointed to the “Committee of Five” to draft a declaration of independence for the colonies. He served on the committee with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston. Jefferson was the primary author, but Franklin did suggest some important edits. His most famous edit was changing the phrase, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Franklin believed that the term “sacred” sounded too religious and that “self-evident” sounded more scientific. Even though he was not the primary author, many of the ideas within the Declaration of Independence had been spoken by Dr. Franklin in the previous months and years. He wholeheartedly supported the document and voted in favor of Independence on July 2, 1776.

Throughout the Revolutionary War, Dr. Franklin was constantly working in some way toward American independence: from helping gain funds to finance it to traveling to France in efforts to help convince them to be our ally against Britain. He was extremely popular in France and was a large factor in the United States’ alliance with them which helped the colonies to win the war. He was a rock star in France, to use today’s expression. His face was on merchandise there and he claimed he was quite prominent there.

Franklin was called upon again in 1787 to be a part of the Constitutional Convention which resulted in our Republic that we are now entrusted to keep. Upon the Convention’s end, he is noted for his response to a woman asking what type of government the delegates had formed, whether a republic or a monarchy, to which Franklin replied, “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

Benjamin Franklin seemed to do everything in his lifetime. In his 84 years he was a printer, publisher, writer, scientist (maybe most famous for his experiments with electricity), inventor, philanthropist, politician, diplomat, musician (he also created his own instrument, the glass armonica), postmaster and even a volunteer fireman. His lasting impact on Philadelphia is felt even today. He helped to create the first hospital there in 1751. He also strongly believed that books, ideas and information should be readily available to everyone and not just a select few. As a result, he created the first lending library in Philadelphia in 1731. He was part of the group that created Philadelphia’s first volunteer fire department. He also helped to create what is now the University of Pennsylvania, as well as founding the American Philosophical Society. He seemed to be the proudest of his earliest job which was that of a printer. As a result, he signed many letters as, “Ben Franklin, Printer.”

When Franklin died in 1790, an estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral in a city whose population in 1790 was around 28,000. His legacy in Philadelphia and the United States was secure then and should still be celebrated today.

Val Crofts serves as Chief Education and Programs Officer at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. Val previously taught high school U.S. History, U.S. Military History and AP U.S. Government for 19 years in Wisconsin, and was recipient of the DAR Outstanding U.S. History Teacher of the Year for the state of Wisconsin in 2019-20. Val also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School as a social studies teacher for 9 years. He is also a proud member of the United States Semiquincentennial Commission (America 250), which is currently planning events to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 56 – Guest Essayist: William J. Federer

John Adams wrote from Philadelphia, June of 1776: “Our misfortunes in Canada are enough to melt a heart of stone. The smallpox is ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians, and Indians together. This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from Quebec.”

George Washington wrote his concerns regarding inoculating his troops: “Should we inoculate generally, the enemy, knowing it, will certainly take advantage of our situation.”

The threat of smallpox did not lessen until widespread inoculations were called for by Dr. Benjamin Rush, born January 4, 1745. Dr. Benjamin Rush was a surgeon general of the middle department of the Continental Army, tending to wounded soldiers during the Battle of Princeton, including General Hugh Mercer. Dr. Rush personally inoculated Virginia Governor Patrick Henry against smallpox, as well as Pennsylvania troops, resulting in their low rate of illness.

Skepticism of vaccines haunted the British in other colonies. A century later, the British faced an accusation in India, as recorded in The Indian Medical Gazette, “Dr. K. C. Bose on Small-pox in Calcutta” (March 1890, 82): “The affection for their children has driven them to regard vaccination as an operation intended by government to thin the number of its poor subjects.”

Trinidad and the West Indies continued this skepticism, as William Tebb’s The Recrudescence of Leprosy and Its Causation: A Popular Treatise (1893) recounted Dr. Bakewell’s testimony before the Select Vaccination Parliamentary Committee in 1871: “There is a very strong opinion prevalent in Trinidad, and in the West Indies generally, that leprosy has been introduced into the system by vaccination.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush had studied medicine in Philadelphia, then in Europe under the world’s foremost physicians, and then returned to Philadelphia in 1769. Though his practices were archaic by today’s standards, he is considered by some as the “Father of American Medicine” for his work on staff at the Pennsylvania Hospital, where he opened the first free medical clinic.

He was among the first to recognize alcoholism as a disease and began to promote temperance. Dr. Rush wrote the first textbook on mental illness and psychiatry, recommending treatment with kindness, earning him the title “Father of American Psychiatry.”

He was a member of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. His wife was Julia, was the daughter of Richard Stockton, also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Paine consulted with Dr. Benjamin Rush when writing his stirring pamphlet Common Sense. Rush helped write Pennsylvania’s Constitution and was as a member of the Pennsylvania State Convention which ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1787. He was Treasurer of the U.S. Mint. Rush helped found Dickinson College to train physicians, and the Philadelphia Dispensary. A statue of Dr. Benjamin Rush stands on the campus of Dickinson College.

During the dread summer of 1793, Dr. Rush stayed in Philadelphia battling the disease of Yellow Fever which killed thousands. He was the first to recognize that yellow fever was not contagious, leading to the later discovery that it was spread by mosquito bites.

Dr. Benjamin Rush supported ending slavery prior to the Revolution, forming a Society for the Abolition of Slavery. He founded a Sunday School Union and the Philadelphia Bible Society.

Perhaps Dr. Benjamin Rush’s most beloved contribution to American history was in 1812 encouraging John Adams to write to Thomas Jefferson, breaking the silence which had existed between them for years due to earlier political differences.

A proponent of public education for young women as well as men, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote his Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1786:

“I proceed … to inquire what mode of education we shall adopt so as to secure to the state all of the advantages that are to be derived from the proper instruction of the youth; and here I beg leave to remark that the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid on the foundation of religion.

… Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is that of the New Testament … Its doctrines and precepts are calculated to promote the happiness of society and the safety and well-being of civil government.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote in A Plan for Free Schools, 1787:

“Let the children … be carefully instructed in the principles and obligations of the Christian religion. This is the most essential part of education.”

Rush wrote to Jeremy Belknap, July 13, 1789: “The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effectual means of extirpating (removing) Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote in an essay, “A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a School Book,” included in his 1798 work, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical:

“The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life … It should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness.”

Rush wrote in Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798:

“I know there is an objection among many people to teaching children doctrines of any kind, because they are liable to be controverted. But let us not be wiser than our Maker. If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into all the world would have been unnecessary. The perfect morality of the Gospel rests upon the doctrine which, though often controverted has never been refuted: I mean the vicarious life and death of the Son of God.”

“Vicarious” is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as: “suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the benefit or advantage of another: substitutionary.”

Dr. Rush stated: “Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.”

He wrote his Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1786: “A Christian cannot fail of being a republican … for every precept of the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self-denial, and brotherly kindness which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy … A Christian cannot fail of being useful to the republic, for his religion teaches him that no man ‘liveth to himself.’ And lastly a Christian cannot fail of being wholly inoffensive, for his religion teaches him in all things to do to others what he would wish, in like circumstances, they should do to him.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush explained in Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798: “Christianity is the only true and perfect religion, and that in proportion as mankind adopts its principles and obeys its precepts, they will be wise and happy … In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them.

… We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible. For this Divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism.”

On July 9, 1788, in a letter to Elias Boudinot regarding a parade in Philadelphia, Dr. Benjamin Rush stated: “The Rabbi of the Jews locked arms of two ministers of the Gospel was a most delightful sight. There could not have been a more happy emblem.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote:

“I have been alternately called an Aristocrat and a Democrat. I am neither. I am a Christocrat. I believe all power … will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands of man. HE alone who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.”

Rush died in Philadelphia on April 19, 1813, and was buried in the yard of Christ’s Church.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone, my dear Sir, another of the co-signers of the Independence of our country …

… A better man than Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest. I know of no Character living or dead who has done more real good in America.”

Memorials to Dr. Benjamin Rush stand on Navy Hill in Washington, D.C., and near the Harvard Square Library.

During his final illness, he wrote to his wife:

“My excellent wife, I must leave you, but God will take care of you.

By the mystery of Thy holy incarnation;

by Thy holy nativity;

by Thy baptism, fasting, and temptation;

by Thine agony and bloody sweat;

by Thy cross and passion;

by Thy precious death and burial;

by Thy glorious resurrection and ascension, and

by the coming of the Holy Ghost, blessed Jesus, wash away all my impurities, and receive me into Thy everlasting kingdom.”

Excerpt reprinted with permission from: The American Minute with Bill Federer, “‘Smallpox Is Ten Times More Terrible!’– Diseases During the Revolution, Dr. Benjamin Rush” https://americanminute.com/blogs/todays-american-minute/smallpox-is-ten-times-more-terrible-diseases-during-the-revolution-dr-benjamin-rush-american-minute-with-bill-federer

William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker and best-selling author of many books including “America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations” which has sold over a half-million copies. He is president of Amerisearch.net, a publishing company dedicated to researching America’s Christian heritage. Bill’s American Minute radio feature is broadcast daily across America and via Internet. His Faith in History television program airs on the TCT Network on stations across America and via DIRECTV. A former U.S. Congressional Candidate, Bill has appeared on CSPAN, FOXNews, MSNBC, ABC, CBN, FamilyNet, The Eric Metaxas Show, Prager U, Starnes Country on FOX Nation, Coral Ridge Hour, 700 Club, and Focus on the Family. He has been quoted or referenced in USA Today, Human Events, New York Times, Washington Times, Washington Post, to name a few, among numerous other television shows and documentaries, publications, and radio programs.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 55 – Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(financier)#/media/File:Robert_Morris.jpg Robert Morris of Pennsylvania: Merchant, Superintendent of Finance, Agent of Marine, and Signer of the Declaration of Independence – Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

Robert Morris, Jr., is one of only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of 1787. He thus was present at three critical moments in the founding of the United States. His most significant contributions to that founding occurred during the decade of turmoil framed by the first and last of these, that is, the period of the Revolutionary War and the Confederation.

Morris was of English birth, but came to Pennsylvania as a child. He inherited a substantial sum of money when his father, a tobacco merchant, died prematurely. After serving an apprenticeship with his father’s former business partner, Morris started a firm with that partner’s son. The firm became a success in the tobacco trade, marine insurance, and commerce in various merchant goods. For these reasons, Morris opposed British taxes on merchants and laws that hindered trade, especially that done with American vessels.

After the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Morris was selected to Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety. His efforts to secure ammunition for the Continental Army led to his appointment to Pennsylvania’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress, which met in the capital at Philadelphia. Morris was torn between opposition to the British government’s actions and his loyalty to the Crown. He sought to mediate between the radicals pressing for independence and the traditionalists seeking to negotiate continued connection with the motherland. When it came time to vote on Richard Henry Lee’s motion for independence on July 2, 1776, Morris and fellow Pennsylvania moderate John Dickinson absented themselves to allow that colony’s delegation to vote in favor. Independence having been declared, Morris went with the tide and signed the Declaration the following month.

During the Revolutionary War, the very wealthy Morris assumed two roles befitting his talents, finance and shipping. Even before independence, he served on the Committee of Trade and the Marine Committee. Once the Articles of Confederation were finally approved in 1781, he was given more formal executive offices, Superintendent of Finance, analogous to the current Secretary of the Treasury, and Agent of Marine, the former version of the Secretary of the Navy. As well, he continued his efforts to secure supplies for the Continental Army through those positions.

It was particularly in the former capacity that he excelled and later received the appellation “Financier of the Revolution.” The new country was, not to mince words, a financial basket case. To term the promissory notes of the Confederation “junk bonds” would be flattery. The British had refused to allow the creation of a domestic banking system in the colonies, in order to maintain control over the economy, thwart independence, and promote the ascendancy of London as the world’s financial center over Amsterdam. Each colony had had its separate financial relationship with London. In the colonies themselves, someone wanting credit had to obtain loans from local merchants. The country was utterly without even a rudimentary integrated banking system.

Commerce, as well, had been regulated by the British to their advantage. Restriction on colonial trade with the West Indies and with continental European countries had been a recurring source of friction in the decade before the War. Shortly before American independence was declared, Parliament in December, 1775, had passed the Prohibitory Act, which outlawed commerce even between the colonies and England. With independence, the gloves came off entirely. The British navy threw a blockade around American ports, which brought legal sea-borne trade to a standstill. American efforts to avoid this blockade through smuggling and eventual licensing of privateers were spirited, but nothing more than a nuisance to the British maritime stranglehold on American commerce.

Money itself was both scarce and overabundant. Scarce, in the form of gold and silver; overabundant in the form of paper currency. Not only British coins circulated, but also those from many other European countries, especially Spanish silver pieces-of-eight (akin to the future silver dollar) and gold doubloons. States issued a few small copper coins along with significant amounts of “bills of credit,” that is, paper scrip which depreciated in value and was at the center of much commercial speculation, economic chaos, and political intrigue over the first decade of independence.

The Confederation’s currency, the Continental Dollar, was, if anything, even more pathetic. Aside from a few pattern coins struck in 1776 mostly in base metals, the currency was issued as paper. Although historians’ research has not been able to reach a definitive conclusion, it appears that, over the course of about five years, about 200 million dollars’ worth was printed. To put this in perspective, the population of the United States at the time was about .8% of that of today. The current purchasing power of the dollar is about one-thirtieth of the value of coins then, and the value of gold was about a hundred times the current nominal value. Due to massive British counterfeiting, even more than that amount of Continental currency actually may have circulated. Congress had no domestic sources of income, because it lacked the power to tax directly. Instead, it must seek requisitions from the states. Although the states were obligated under the Articles of Confederation to pay those requisitions, their performance was unsteady and varied from state to state, especially as the financial demands of the war, the turmoil of military campaigns, and the strangulation of commerce by the British blockade took their toll on their economies.

The printing of vast amounts of currency, out of proportion with what the country could back up with hard assets, such as gold and silver, led to serious inflation. The currency depreciated to such a point that, by 1781, it ceased to be used as a medium of exchange. It did, however, gain linguistic currency through the commonly-used contemptuous aphorism, “Not worth a Continental” to signify something of no value.

Enter Robert Morris. Congress appointed him Superintendent of Finance in 1781. Attempting to ameliorate the desperate financial situation of a bankrupt country, he began to finance the Continental Army’s supplies and payroll himself through “Morris notes” backed by his own credit and resources. His efforts over the next three years, while crucial in averting political disaster, still fell short. The seriousness of the matter was underscored by several near-mutinies among elements of the officer corps of the Army: the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny of January, 1781, the McDougall delegation’s delivery to Congress in December, 1782, of an ominous petition signed by a number of general officers, and the Newburgh Conspiracy by a large contingent of Army officers in early 1783. They all showed the simmering threat to the young republic from Congress’s broken promises caused by the lack of funds to pay the military. Morris’ correspondence with some staff officers at General Washington’s headquarters revealed a desire for new ways to force Congress to compel the states to meet their financial obligations. This gave rise to unsubstantiated rumors that the military’s discontent, especially the Newburgh Conspiracy, was supported, or even instigated, by Morris and other “nationalist” members of Congress.

In other financial matters, Morris directed his efforts to create a banking system, in order to improve access to private credit and to stabilize public credit. In this matter he was assisted by his able protege, Alexander Hamilton, himself trained in business and finance before joining the military. Morris issued a “Report on Public Credit” in 1781, which proposed that Congress assume the entire war debt and repay it fully through new revenue measures and a national bank. The first part of this ambitious endeavor failed when, in 1782, Rhode Island alone refused to approve an amendment to the Articles of Confederation to give Congress the power to tax imports at 5% as a source of revenue.

However, Morris did obtain a charter from the Confederation Congress on May 26, 1781, for the Bank of North America. Modeled after the Bank of England, it began its operation as the first commercial bank in the United States in early 1782. It also took on some functions of a proto-central bank in its attempt to stabilize public credit. About one-third of the bank shares were purchased by private entities, the rest by the United States. Morris used $450,000 of silver and gold from loans to Congress by the French government and Dutch bankers to fund the government’s purchase of its bank shares. He then issued notes backed by that gold and silver for loans, including to the United States. When Congress appeared unable to repay the loans, Morris sold portions of the government’s shares to investors to raise funds. Using those funds, he repaid the bank and then issued more notes to lend to the government to meet its financial obligations.

Unfortunately, despite Morris’ energy and financial wizardry, the Confederation’s debts continued to expand, with no clear way to repay them that was constitutionally permitted and politically feasible. European lenders had reached the end of their patience. Unwilling to remain a part of this calamitous system, Morris resigned from Congress in 1784, having been preceded in exit by Hamilton for similar reasons a year earlier.

As a constitutional matter, the Bank’s charter was challenged early as beyond Congress’ limited powers under the Articles of Confederation. Morris obtained a second charter, from Pennsylvania, in 1782. That state’s legislature briefly revoked the charter in 1785, before reinstating it in 1786. With the end of the Confederation in 1788 due to the adoption of the new Constitution, the Bank’s charter under the Articles expired. It continued to operate as a state institution within Pennsylvania. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions since then, the Bank’s remains are part of Wells Fargo & Co. today. Its role as a national bank, but one supported by a much sounder constitutional and economic foundation, was recreated by the Bank of the United States, chartered by Congress in 1791 at the urging of Alexander Hamilton, and by-then, Senator Robert Morris.

In his role as official Agent of Marine, as well as in an informal capacity before then, it was Morris’ job to supervise the creation of a navy and to direct operations. Congress authorized the construction of more than a dozen warships. These were no match for the Royal Navy. They were primarily used as commerce raiders to capture British merchant ships. Almost all were sunk, scuttled, or captured by 1778. Most American naval ships were armed converted merchant vessels often owned by private individuals. The most effective raiders, favored by Morris, were privateers, which were private vessels licensed by Congress to attack British shipping. Nearly 2,000 such letters of marque were issued by Congress, which caused an estimated $66 million of losses to British shipping. Privateering was so profitable for a time that Morris and other investors built and sent out their own privateers.

After the Revolutionary War, Morris focused on private business, including the favorite investment activity of moneyed Americans, land speculation. On the political side, he was selected by Pennsylvania for its delegation to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He presided at the opening session on May 25, where he moved to make George Washington the presiding officer. He was a nationalist in outlook and, based on his experience as Superintendent of Finance under the Confederation, wanted to assure the general government a power to tax. He favored replacing the Articles, rather than just amending them. Beyond that, he had no real philosophical commitment to the particulars of the new constitution. Not being a politician or political theorist, he had little influence on the proceedings.

With the new government in place, the Pennsylvania legislature elected Morris to the United States Senate. President Washington wanted to make Morris Secretary of the Treasury. Morris demurred and recommended Hamilton in his stead. The two were closely aligned on economic and commercial policy. Hamilton’s “First and Second Reports on the Public Credit” in 1790 reflected Morris’ own “Report” of a decade earlier respecting the assumption and funding of war debts and the creation of a national commercial bank.

Morris’ genius in financial matters did not save him from economic disaster. He overextended himself in his land speculation. His company owned millions of acres of land. The Panic of 1797, triggered by the damage to international trade and immigration caused by the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, left Morris land-rich and cash-poor. As a consequence of depreciating land values and insufficient cash to pay creditors and taxes, he spent three and a half years in debtor’s prison. The incarceration only ended in August, 1801, after Congress passed a bankruptcy law for the purpose of obtaining his release. He was adjudged bankrupt, and his then-almost inconceivable remaining debt of nearly $3 million was discharged. Still, Morris and his wife were left virtually penniless, having received just a small pension. He died in 1806.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 54 – Guest Essayist: Heather B. Bailey

A Founder for the Common Man

If you’ve ever spoken with someone who lives in New Jersey, you may know that many of us introduce ourselves by explaining what exit we’re from off the New Jersey Turnpike or the Garden State Parkway.

It’s a way to identify ourselves and our connection to the state. It’s also a source of humor, especially to those who do NOT reside in New Jersey.

If you happen to be traveling thru New Jersey on the Garden State Parkway and find yourself at Exit 135 – Clark/Westfield, then you are at a place rich in our nation’s history and a crossroads of the American revolution formerly known as the 5th Ward of Rahway.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that in 1864 – amid the Civil War – 357 5th Ward residents declared independence from Rahway and established the town – Clark, New Jersey, named after Abraham Clark, delegate to the Second Continental Congress, one of the 56 men to have signed America’s Declaration of Independence, and my ancestor.

My father’s family – the Brubakers of Somerset County in Pennsylvania, are Clark relations. Before writing this essay, I took some time to journey into his past and found it a rewarding experience. Abraham was a person dedicated to fairness and service and was esteemed by the members of his community. Learning about him enriched me and inspired me to find ways to honor the life of this brave, just, and extraordinary, common man and patriot.

Taking time to reread the Declaration of Independence every once in a while, is time well spent. Many of us lead busy lives and haven’t thought about it or what it means or the dangers the men who signed it were inviting since we were in school. Looking at it again, with the school years so far behind me, was a new and meaningful experience I can highly recommend.

In these unsettling times, this piece of history and its vision for America we all share is the common thread that ties us together as one people and one nation. There is a beautiful quote in Barb Baltrinic’s book: A Founder for All: Abraham Clark, Signer of the Declaration of Independence: “Those who do not know the history of their land will certainly display a lack of commitment in protecting it when time demands.”

Knowing that Abraham Clark and the other signers were not presidents, royalty or celebrities, makes them relatable. These were common citizens who made the decision to protect their land at unimaginable risk when the time demanded. Their legacy is now ours to protect and to do that, we need to know, as a people, from where we came.

Having some relation, even if distant or as a collateral descendant has always been a personal source of pride. It has added some dimension to my family’s lineage.

Taking this journey was a reminder that the study of history is a study of common people who did extraordinary things. The dates are incidental.  When we take the time to learn about these Founders, we see that it was many small heroic decisions and acts over a lifetime. One cannot help but be inspired to do one’s best in small ways over the course of a lifetime and to strive to be there if called upon – when times demand.

They say human nature doesn’t change. When you examine the events leading up to the American Revolution, it is not hard to see how a dedicated servant of the Crown, like Abraham Clark, would be compelled to risk all in the name of fairness. His story and his part in the revolution relate strongly to things we speak of in conversation today, about themes that are still relevant to life in this country. The signers were extraordinary people, carrying along with them on their journey to sign the Declaration, a family, a community, a legacy, and a life each put at risk, completely. Captured by the British during the war, as happened to at least one other New Jersey signer, was an unenviable event.

A Journey in Lineage and Profession

Abraham Clark was born on February 15, 1726, and lived in Elizabethtown New Jersey, now “Elizabeth,” located approximately 7 miles from what is now Clark, situated across the river from Staten Island.

He was the only child of Thomas Clark and Hannah Winans, but his ties to New Jersey extend back at least two generations. His paternal grandfather, Richard Clark, emigrated in 1643 from England via Barbados then to Long Island. Richard fought in the Indian Wars and worked as a shipbuilder and planter. It is estimated that he and his wife moved the family to Elizabethtown in 1675 where the family became well established and was known for their service to the community.

Abraham’s mother, Hannah Winans, was also from deeply grounded New Jersey colonial stock. Her parents and great grandparents were among Elizabethtown’s founding families, present at the creation in 1664.

Today, over one hundred and fifty Winans family members are buried in the cemetery adjacent to the First Presbyterian Church, still in operation today. This is the same church where the Clark and the Winans families worshiped during the Revolutionary War period. It is also a site of critical points during the revolution that, no doubt, influenced Abraham Clark’s resolve and dedication to the cause that led him to become one of the signers.

History records that Abraham was too frail for farming, but excelled in math and studies. As the only son of a farming family, we can assume much was expected of Abraham as a helper on the farm. With college being expensive, even in those times, it is noteworthy that Abraham’s father supported his natural abilities and hired a tutor to teach him math and surveying rather than expecting him to take up the business of the family farm. This would set Abraham up well for a respected and much-needed profession, and one to which he was well suited.

The Poor Man’s Lawyer

Always a studious person, Abraham later fervently studied law and cases that were naturally related to his work, surveying land, even though he had little formal education.

It was assumed by many that he was never admitted to the New Jersey bar but, through his work as a surveyor, he was naturally involved in legal matters like the preparation of deeds, mortgages, and the drafting of legal papers. In these ways, he became a respected and trusted legal counselor in the community – a role that placed him at the very heart of the highly critical civil disputes developing in his community and across the colonies.

Through his work, Abraham had the opportunity to witness firsthand the misuse of authority and abuse of the poor at the hands of the privileged. He was deeply troubled by how poor people were cheated out of their land because of their inability to read or understand deeds and, by their lack of representation. Clark began to represent his poorer neighbors free of charge, leading his friends and neighbors to call him the “Poor Man’s Counselor” after he began to refuse to accept payment for legal advice.

Sarah

At the age of 22, Abraham Clark married Sarah Hatfield (or Hetfield). The Hetfield’s were considered a well-to-do and respectable family of Essex County, New Jersey. Together, they had ten children, two of whom (Thomas and Aaron) served as First Lieutenants and Captains during the revolution, both of whom, history tells us, were captured and singled out for torture because their father had signed the Declaration. At one point, the British offered to release them both if Abraham agreed to renounce the document but, nobly, he refused.

It was reported that Sarah was a resourceful, energetic woman with a large family within Elizabeth. As civil tensions began to mount, Clark’s oldest sons were in their teens and able to work the farm. Additionally, Sarah had many family members around her. This strong family support enabled her to manage the home front and remain supportive of Abraham’s involvement in Public Service, a role that kept him away for long periods and largely unpaid.

Always the Quest for Fairness

Through his profession and commitment to community, Abraham was placed in a position to observe and become a part of the budding conflicts that were beginning to take shape as the inevitability of a Revolution began to loom.

Abraham’s role as a public servant began in support of the Crown and he served as a clerk of the New Jersey Colonial Legislature. As British control over the trade and finances of the Colonies intensified, Abraham was called upon to act as High Sheriff of Essex County.

No doubt the proximity of tensions created by British Control were driving forces behind his decisions, at the time, again to pursue fairness, even if that meant risking all and joining forces to work toward independence.

According to various sources, he remained in the Continental Congress through 1778 when his election to the New Jersey Legislative Council brought him home. As one of the state’s three representatives at the aborted Annapolis Convention of 1786 – an early attempt to repair the Articles of Confederation – James Madison recalled Clark as having been the delegate who formally motioned for the Constitutional Convention because New Jersey’s instructions allowed for consideration of non-commercial matters.

More than many of his contemporaries, Clark is regarded by scholars of the period as a man who was a friend to farmers and mechanics because they produced things. In his eyes, this made them virtuous when compared to those in more learned professions like the law, finance, and medicine. He actively encouraged the involvement of his fellow citizens in the affairs of government and was an enthusiastic advocate of the petition to recommend a needed change to elected officials.

Abraham Clark retired from public life in 1794, just before New Jersey’s Constitutional Convention, and died later that year at his home from sunstroke.

Under the pen name, A Fellow Citizen, he wrote several books or pamphlets including: The True Policy of New-Jersey, Defined; or, Our Great Strength led to Exertion, in the Improvement of Agriculture and Manufactures, by Altering the Mode of Taxation, and by the Emission of Money on Loan, in IX Sections in February 1786.

Heather Brubaker Bailey, who now lives in New Jersey, is a descendent of Abraham Clark. Heather graduated from Elizabethtown College and now works as a real estate agent in Morristown, New Jersey.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 53 – Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

John Hart of New Jersey was one of the lesser-known signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was also among the oldest, being one of seven signers who was sixty years of age or older.[1] His life prior to his attendance at the Second Continental Congress was full of public service, primarily to his local community and the colony, and then the state of New Jersey. He died before the final battles of the Revolutionary War were fought and won.

His exact date of birth is subject to some dispute. Most sources claim that he was born in 1713, but some have his birth listed as 1711 or even earlier. He grew up in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, and resided in that area virtually his entire life. His father was active in civic affairs, serving as a justice of the peace, assessor, and farmer.[2] Hart had relatively little formal education, but was considered well-read, knowledgeable about the law, and possessed with business acumen.   Like his father, John Hart was a farmer, raising cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry. He also owned and operated grist mills, some of which were co-owned by his brother. At one time, Hart owned four slaves.[3] Slavery had not yet been abolished in all of the northern colonies. New Jersey did not begin a gradual abolition of slavery until 1804. Under that law, children born to slaves after July 4, 1804 would gain their freedom after serving the master of their mother for twenty-five years for males and twenty-one years for females.[4]

Hart was a Presbyterian, but he donated land from the lower meadow in front of his home to a Baptist congregation in 1747. A Baptist Meeting House was constructed there, and Baptists were enthusiastic in their support of Hart when he began his political career. Hart was elected to the Hunterdon County Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1750 and as Justice of the Peace in 1755. He served on the Colonial Assembly from 1761 to 1771, and was appointed to the Court of Common Pleas in 1768.   He was selected for a committee to appoint delegates to the First Continental Congress. In 1775, he was elected to the New Jersey Committee of Correspondence and later served on the Committee of Safety.[5] The committees of correspondence were designed to maintain communication among the colonies and to oppose British customs enforcement and bans on paper money issued by the colonies.[6]

In 1776, Hart was elected to the New Jersey Provincial Congress which was created to supersede the power of the royal governor. The Provincial Congress designated Hart to sign “Bill of Credit” notes issued by New Jersey.[7] These notes were a form of paper money that would later be forbidden for state governments by Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution.

The New Jersey delegates to the First Continental Congress had not supported independence for the American colonies but, on June 22, Hart along with four other delegates from New Jersey were elected to the Second Continental Congress. Hart arrived so late in the proceedings that he had little opportunity to participate in the deliberations over the Declaration, but he voted to approve the document on July 4. Benjamin Rush, another signer of the Declaration, described Hart as “a plain, honest, well-meaning Jersey farmer, with but little education, but with good sense and virtue enough to pursue the interests of his country.”[8]

On August 13, Hart was elected to the State Assembly of New Jersey and on August 29 he was elected Speaker of the General Assembly.   Hart presided over the Assembly briefly but was called home to care for his sick wife. He returned to the Assembly on October 7, but was called home once more. The Assembly adjourned on August 8, the same day that his wife died, leaving behind her husband and thirteen children, two of whom were still minors. In November, the British army invaded New Jersey and Hart was forced to hide out in some rock formations in the nearby Sourwood Mountains to escape British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries who damaged, but did not destroy, the farm.[9]

The British forces retreated after American victories at Trenton and Princeton, after which Hart returned to his home and then to the General Assembly. Hart was re-elected twice as Speaker of the Assembly. In June 1778, Hart invited George Washington to have his troops encamp at the Hart farm. Washington accepted the invitation, and around 12,000 soldiers rested there before fighting and winning the Battle of Monmouth on June 26. A few months later, on May 11, 1779, Hart died painfully from kidney stones. Hart was in debt at the time of his death, and the war, currency of dubious value, and damage to his property, forced his heirs to sell most of his assets. Hart had spent much of his life in some form of public service for which he was given little monetary compensation. He did not live to see final victory in the war for independence, but his role in the creation of the new republic and the early government of the state of New Jersey should not be forgotten.[10]

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

[1] Marberry, Mark, “The 56 Men who Signed the Declaration of Independence.”  Farmington Press.   July 11, 2019.  https://dailyjournalonline.com/community/farmington-press/news/the-56-men-who-signed-the-declaration-of-independence/article_a2641ea9-9158-5aee-a9b2-6ebca5c6fe3f.html#:~:text=A%20third%20of%20the%20signers,Seven%20were%20over%2060.

[2] Staller, Grace Keiper, “John Hart,” Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.  https://www.dsdi1776.com/john-hart/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Gigantino, James J. 2014. “‘’The Whole North Is Not Abolitionized’’.” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (3): 411–37. doi:10.1353/jer.2014.0040.

[5] Staller, op cit.

[6] “Committees of Correspondence.” The History Channel.   https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/committees-of-correspondence.  Retrieved 4/24/2021.

[7] Staller, op cit

[8] Staller, op cit.

[9] http://www.doublegv.com/ggv/JHart.html

[10] Staller, op cit.

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 52 – Guest Essayist: Ron Meier

To a twenty-first century political strategist, the summer of 1776 would seem like a foolish time to have voted for independence. Little had gone well so far and a large force of the British Navy and Army was assembling in New York’s harbor to launch a decisive attack on Washington’s ragtag army. Only an Act of God could have prevented Washington’s defeat – in fact, an Act of God did prevent defeat two months later.

New Jersey had not yet been in the fight. The significant military action so far had been in New England and Canada. While Thomas Jefferson was busy writing the Declaration of Independence in June, New Jersey was one of three colonies that had not yet authorized its delegates to vote for independence, largely because of internal discord between the patriots; the loyalists; and New Jersey’s Royal Governor, William Franklin, Ben Franklin’s son. Its five delegates to the Continental Congress also opposed secession. On June 21, the New Jersey Provincial Congress authorized secession, named five new delegates all in favor of secession, to the Continental Congress, and ordered the imprisonment of Loyalist Governor Franklin. Among those new delegates was Francis Hopkinson.

Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia in 1737. His father was a friend of Benjamin Franklin who helped young Francis pursue his college studies. Hopkinson graduated from the College of Philadelphia, after which he studied law and began his life in Colonial public service as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Provincial Council, where he negotiated treaties with native American tribes.

He then turned his public service focus to trade and became Collector of Customs in Salem, New Jersey in 1763. Customs agents in the American colonies were not always diligent in executing their assigned duties, resulting in a loss of revenue for London at a time when additional revenue was needed to pay for the costs of the French and Indian War. Wanting to expand his role in Customs, he spent 15 months in London during 1766 and 1767, hoping to be appointed one of five Commissioners of Customs for North America, posts created under the despised 1767 Townsend Acts which attempted to enhance customs enforcement in the colonies. Hopkinson failed in his attempt to be named a Commissioner, which was a good thing in the long run, given the soon-to-be enhanced collection efforts that would antagonize the colonists and, in short order, lead to war. However, during his stay in London, he learned much about British politics and politicians, including Lord North, which would soon prove valuable as the Revolutionary flames rose.

Hopkinson’s interests outside the law included music, writing, and art. From 1759 to 1766, he served as secretary of the Philadelphia Library. His poems and other writings inspired patriots during the Revolutionary War. He used those literary and artistic talents while serving on the Navy Board in 1780 to design the first American flag, a fact not discovered until well after Betsy Ross had gained fame for having created the original design. He later designed the Great Seal, among other devices.

Hopkinson returned from London to Philadelphia where he became a successful merchant in 1768 and married Ann Borden, daughter of a wealthy family that had founded Bordentown, New Jersey. During this time, he continued to pursue public service opportunities. Four years later, he relocated to Delaware to resume his public service role for one year as Collector of Customs.

At this time, Revolutionary fervor was accelerating in the colonies over customs fees and Hopkinson relinquished his role as Customs Collector when New Jersey Royal Governor, William Franklin, well aware of Hopkinson’s apparent loyalty to the British government and of his political connections in London, named him to the New Jersey Provincial Council, the upper house of the New Jersey Legislature, in 1773. Hopkinson then moved his family to his wife’s hometown of Bordentown, New Jersey where he once again entered the practice of law. During this time, he became disenchanted with the British government’s hostility to Americans’ rights and freedoms and joined the patriot cause, writing many patriotic pamphlets and satires, employing a common practice of using a variety of pseudonyms, that were widely circulated in the colonies.

Hopkinson took his seat as a New Jersey delegate to the Second Continental Congress on June 22, 1776. Soon after, Congress passed the Declaration of Independence. He remained a member of the Congress for only five months, leaving to serve on the Navy Board in Philadelphia. Later, Hopkinson was appointed treasurer of the Continental Loan Office in 1778, and judge of the Admiralty Court of Pennsylvania in 1779.

The British and Hessians pillaged and burned much of Bordentown, New Jersey during the war; Hopkinson’s home was spared burning because of his extensive library. The British then used the home as their headquarters during the town’s occupation.

Although Hopkinson was not a Delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he was a member of the Pennsylvania Convention that ratified the Constitution and Chairman of the Committee of Arrangement which organized the grand July 4, 1788 celebration in honor of the ratification of the Constitution, officially ratified on June 21. Today, it may be difficult to envision a parade that included members of 44 trades and professions in addition to the traditional military units and political luminaries.

Francis Hopkinson died in 1791 at the age of 53, young for a man with such a distinguished career. While the names of Hopkinson, Stockton, Clark, Hart, and Witherspoon are immortalized on the Declaration of Independence after less than a week of service on the Second Continental Congress, the names of the dismissed members, Sergent, DeHart, Smith, Cooper, and Livingston, who had the opportunity for immortality, tend toward being forgotten.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran.  He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Sources:

New Jersey State Library:  https://www.njstatelib.org/research_library/new_jersey_resources/highlights/american_revolution/

Hopkinson Biography:  https://www.revolutionary-war.net/francis-hopkinson/

Customs:  Commissioners of Customs Act (revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com)

Townshend Acts:  https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/customs-commissioners

Ann Borden Hopkinson Biography:  https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2009/12/ann-borden-hopkinson.html

Hopkinson’s American Flag Design:  https://blog.usaflagco.com/francis-hopkinson/

http://www.virtualology.com/francishopkinson.com/

https://bordentownhistory.org/francis-hopkinson-1737-1791/

Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen

Order of Procession: https://www.loc.gov/resource/bdsdcc.c1501/

Click here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Dr. Barbara Bowie-Whitman is an economist and a retired Foreign Service Officer. She was educated at the College of William and Mary and Southern Methodist University and earned her doctorate in economics from the George Washington University.

Dr Bowie-Whitman was a Fulbright Scholar to Guatemala following the completion of her first master’s degree. She served in US Embassies in Mexico, Bogota and London, and was Economic Counselor to the US Mission to the Organization of American States. Her last position in government was as Trade Policy Coordinator for the Western Hemisphere in the US Department of State, where she served as the senior State Department negotiator on free trade agreements with 9 countries.

Barbara has been active in politics and community service and leadership for over six decades, beginning as an eleven year old who wrote a campaign song for Dwight Eisenhower. She was Miss National Young Republican in 1971. She is the widow of Lt.Col.John Whitman, an Army Airborne Ranger and military historian.

Barbara resides in Alexandria Virginia, and represented Virginia as a delegate to the 2020 Republican National Convention in Charlotte,North Carolina.

Essay 51 – Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

Despite the best efforts of several excellent historians, the contributions of the dissenting Protestant clergy, known as the “Black Robe Regiment” or “Black Regiment,” to the dissemination of revolutionary principles has largely gone unnoticed. The ministers were instrumental in propagating the ideas of John Locke from the pulpit for congregations that were consistent with the revolutionary ideas they read about in pamphlets and newspapers and heard in taverns and legislative halls that formed “the American mind.”

The ministers preached about the ideas of natural rights, self-government by consent, and the right of revolution against tyranny. They urged the young men in their congregations to pick up their muskets and go to war in the defense of their sacred rights from God. The clergy delivered what are called political sermons as they easily wove together their religious and political ideals with their covenant theology that Americans were a new Chosen People.

George III recognized the significance of the clergy and American Revolution and specifically labeled it a “Presbyterian Rebellion.” Scottish Presbyterianism had a strong strain of fierce individualism that blended well with the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment. The character of Scottish Presbyterianism was particularly strong on the American frontier among a people who defended their liberty against all forms of spiritual and civil tyranny.

Reverend John Witherspoon was born in Scotland in 1723 and educated at the University of Edinburgh, the center of the Scottish Enlightenment. Rev. Witherspoon’s ideas were particularly influenced by thinker, Francis Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy. He emigrated to the American colonies in 1768 to become the President of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) at the urging of Benjamin Rush; First Great Awakening Preacher, Rev. George Whitefield; and the college trustees.

Under Rev. Witherspoon’s brilliant leadership and guidance, Princeton students were inculcated with the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment and Presbyterianism that supported the revolutionary principles they embraced. Indeed, Witherspoon’s Princeton became a nursery of statesmen as his students included a future president (James Madison), a vice-president (Aaron Burr), a secretary of state, three attorneys general, two foreign ministers, forty-nine U.S. Representatives, twenty-eight U.S. Senators, twelve members of the Continental Congress, five delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and fourteen delegates to state ratifying conventions.

Rev. Witherspoon did not just train revolutionary statesmen for the new republic, he served as an important statesman as well. He served in the New Jersey Provincial Congress, the Continental and Confederation Congress, and the New Jersey ratifying convention. His revolutionary credentials were impeccable and noted by other founders. John Adams thought that, “Dr. Witherspoon enter with great spirit into the American Cause. He seems a Friend as any of the [native colonists]—an animated friend of liberty.” Adams also said that Rev. Witherspoon was a “clear, sensible” minister and, “as high a Son of Liberty, as any Man in America.”

During a congressional day of fasting and prayer in May 1776, Rev. Witherspoon preached a sermon entitled, “Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men.” The sermon was a prime example of covenant theology between the American colonists and God. The colonists were bound to have firm beliefs in God and to act with civic virtue which was the basis for good republican government. “They must renounce sin and corruption and virtuously act with justice, prudence, firmness, selflessness, and patience.” Governing themselves and their passions would “make you truly independent in yourselves.” A providential God would bless the American cause of liberty if they followed their part of the covenant, Rev. Witherspoon explained.

In late June 1776, Rev. Witherspoon joined the Continental Congress just as the body was preparing to discuss Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence and the draft of the Declaration of Independence. He participated in the debates and said the colonies were “in danger of becoming rotten for want of [independence].” The Congress adopted Lee’s resolution and Jefferson’s Declaration.

In 1782, Rev. Witherspoon was honored to write the congressional proclamation for a day of thanksgiving and continued to proclaim covenant theology in the American republic. He urged his fellow Americans to the “practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.” He said in a sermon associated with the day of thanksgiving: “Civil liberty cannot long be preserved without virtue…a republic once equally poised, must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty.”

Perhaps a British officer summed up Witherspoon’s significance as a member of the Black Regiment and influence as president of Princeton had in advancing revolutionary principles and independence. “Dr. Witherspoon…the political firebrand who perhaps had not a less share in the Revolution as Washington himself. He poisons the minds of his young students and through them the Continent.”

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Read more

Essay 50 – Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter

New Jersey had five signers to the Declaration of Independence, including Richard Stockton. Stockton’s statue is one of two from New Jersey in the United States Capitol as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection.

Stockton was born on October 1, 1730, near Princeton, New Jersey, to John and Abigail Stockton. A wealthy landowner, John donated land to the town of Princeton to help attract the College of New Jersey located in Newark to Princeton, later changing its name to Princeton University.

Stockton attended the College of New Jersey and after graduating, studied law with David Ogden, a prominent lawyer in Newark. Stockton was admitted to the bar in 1754 and began a prominent legal career.

In 1766, Stockton traveled to London and spent significant time in London, Scotland and Ireland. Eventually, he was able to convince John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, to move to New Jersey to become President of the College of New Jersey. While on the trip, Stockton acquired his personal coat of arms and motto, “Omnia Deo Pendent,” meaning all depends on God.

Upon his return, in 1768 Stockton was elevated to a seat in the New Jersey Provincial Council, and in 1774, he was placed on the bench of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

In the same year, he drafted and sent to Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of the Colonies, “An Expedient for the Settlement of the American Disputes,” which would have provided for self-government for America without renouncing Great Britain. That proposal was rejected.  Stockton initially was advocating for representation in Parliament by the colonies and a more moderate approach to peace with Great Britain. That changed over time with the Stamp Act and other initiatives by Great Britain.

In June 1776, Stockton was elected to the Second Continental Congress.  Stockton and Witherspoon were elected to the Congress to replace two other members after New Jersey learned that the delegates were against independence. Stockton, along with his friend, Witherspoon, signed the Declaration of Independence. Stockton was the first to sign for New Jersey. One thing that Stockton requested and Congress agreed to do was to allow both sides of the argument to present reasoning. As noted, Stockton was convinced of the need and signed the Declaration.

Congress sent Stockton and a fellow signer to Fort Ticonderoga, Saratoga and Albany, New York on a fact-finding tour. When he returned to New Jersey, the British had overrun New Jersey. Stockton quickly moved his family to safety, but the British captured him. Originally, he was jailed at Perth Amboy, then moved to Provost Prison.

Stockton was the only person who was arrested by the British for adding his name to the Declaration. Reportedly, he had agreed to recant his support and signed an oath of allegiance to King George III.

After five weeks in prison, Stockton was released on parole, returning to his estate, Morven, which had been looted and much of the furnishings destroyed, his extensive library burned. While Stockton was the only person arrested, others in the fifty-six signers knew when they agreed to the action that they were subjecting their lives, their liberties, their properties to danger, including death, having committed treason, defined as “the betrayal of allegiance toward one’s own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.”

These brave patriots did in fact suffer, Stockton not being the only person to suffer losses. Five signers reportedly were captured by the British and brutally tortured as traitors. Nine signers fought in the Revolutionary War and died from wounds or hardships. A large number of the 56, a dozen or more, had their homes pillaged and burned. Benjamin Franklin, one of the few signers of the Declaration and the Constitution, said after signing the Declaration, “We must indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately.”

Stockton returned to the practice of law, but developed cancer of the lip that moved to his throat, and Stockton died on February 28, 1781.

In 1969, a school in Atlantic City, the Richard Stockton State College, was named after him, and later changed its name to Stockton University.  In 2017, the school began the Stockton Exhibition Project to explore why the school was named after him. There are questions about Stockton’s having slaves at his Morven estate and not releasing them at his death. In his will, Stockton included this provision:

“And whereas I have heretofore mentioned to some of my negroe slaves, that upon condition of their good behavior & fidelity, I would in some convenient period grant them their freedom—this I must leave to the discretion of my wife, in whose judgment & prudence I can fully confide.”

Some have suggested that Stockton’s statue be replaced in the Capitol Rotunda, but no major effort has been made to do so. His statue is one of only six signers of the Declaration to have a statue in the United States Capitol. One of five New Jersey signers of the Declaration, Stockton was the only signer to be imprisoned and abused for doing so.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 49 – Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

Lewis Morris III was a wealthy man living a fairly quiet life when America’s quest for independence heated up in the 1770s. Morris, who was from an old, well-respected family in New York, risked family and fortune by joining the Patriotic cause, but he joined it, nonetheless.

Morris was born on April 8, 1726 at the family manor of Morrisania, a two-thousand-acre estate located in what is today the Bronx of New York City. He was the oldest son of Lewis Morris II and Katrintje (Catherine) Staats. Interestingly, his Dutch ancestry on his mother’s side, makes Lewis Morris III one of only two Dutch Americans to sign the Declaration of Independence.

In any event, Morris was educated largely by private tutors and was a good student. He entered Yale at the age of 16 and graduated four years later in 1746. He returned home and helped his father manage their properties. Three years later, on September 24, 1749, he married Mary Walton, the daughter of Jacob Walton, a wealthy merchant. Lewis and Mary had ten children together, and three of their sons served as officers in the American Revolution.

In 1762, his father died and Morris, as the oldest son, inherited the vast bulk of the family estate. (At that time, primogenitor law in which the eldest son inherits the entire estate of the father prevailed in English America.) He was only 36 years old and already one of the wealthiest men in the colony. However, his comfortable situation was soon to change as the 1760s brought increased tensions between England and her American colonies.

When the British passed the Stamp Act which taxed most printed materials, on March 22, 1765, relations between England and her colonies became strained. Although this legislation was rescinded about a year later, Parliament continued to assert they had the right to tax the colonies. Later in 1765, the Quartering Act which required the colonies to pay to house and feed the army Britain decided to station in North America was given Royal approval.

In 1767 and 1768, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, a series of laws which included new taxes to pay the salaries of colonial government officials as well as new restrictions and punitive regulations on the colonies.

The first of these laws was the New York Restraining Act of 1767 which threatened to punish the colony of New York unless they agreed to adhere to the Quartering Act. New York complied, but Lewis Morris began to sour on English rule and became an outspoken critic of it.

In 1774, colonial leaders organized the First Continental Congress to address the growing crisis. Because other leaders in New York considered Morris too outspoken, he was not chosen as a delegate to this conference.

Sentiments changed over the next year, especially after the conflict at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, and the Second Continental Congress was convened. This time, New York selected Morris to represent their interests partly because of his enthusiasm for the patriotic cause. Morris served on several committees including one chaired by George Washington that was tasked with improving the supply system for the Continental Army.

When the fateful day came to affix his signature to the Declaration of Independence, Morris was warned by family members that doing so would result in the loss of his estate and fortune since British troops were stationed near his home. Morris famously replied, “Damn the consequences, give me the pen.”

As it turned out, his relations were correct. The British quickly devastated his 1,000-acre forest, confiscated all his livestock, and destroyed his beautiful home at Morrisania. Additionally, Morris and his family were forced to go into exile for the duration of the war.

Interestingly, New York, because of its large population of Loyalists (people loyal to England), was the last of the thirteen colonies to approve the Declaration of Independence. It did so on July 9, 1776 making the decision to separate from England unanimous.

Morris resigned from Congress in 1777 and returned to New York where he became a state Senator (he served from 1777-1781 and from 1784-1788) and a Major General in the militia. He was also a member of the first Board of Regents of the University of New York from 1784 until his death in 1798.

But Morris also spent a great deal of time in his final years restoring his beloved estate of Morrisania. He was there when he passed away on January 22, 1798 surrounded by children and grandchildren.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should Lewis Morris and what he did for America matter to us today?

Lewis Morris was a wealthy man with much to lose by joining the American cause for independence. Moreover, by disposition, his preferred station in life was to quietly live out his life on his family estate of Morrisania.

However, when his country needed him, Lewis Morris was there to answer the call. By all accounts, he did so with no regrets. A man that unselfish and with that much regard for his country deserves to be remembered by us today.

SUGGESTED READING: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense written in 1776 is one of the most impactful books in American history. The importance of its message and the timing of its publication combined to convince a large portion of the American people that complete independence from England was the best course of action for the colonies. This is a must-read for all Americans.

PLACES TO VISIT: If you get the chance, you must visit Independence Hall in Philadelphia. This is where Lewis Morris and the other Signers crafted our Declaration of Independence. Entering the Hall where it all began in the summer of 1776, cannot fail to choke you up.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor

Essay 48 - Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

It is unlikely that many Americans today, even many New Yorkers, have heard of Francis Lewis. Even though he is one of only sixteen to have signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, he seems not to have had much impact on the political direction or the constitutional development of the country. Still, he was reputed by a 19th-century biographer to have been admired by his contemporaries. Today, Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York, preserves his name. According to its website, the school is one of the most applied-to public high schools in New York City.

Lewis was born on March 21, 1713, in Llandaff, Wales. He was orphaned by age 5 and raised by an aunt. After attending school in Scotland and England, he became an apprentice at a mercantile house in London. At age 21, he inherited property from his father’s estate, sold it, converted the proceeds to merchandise, and sailed for New York in 1734. He left a portion of the merchandise for his business partner, Edward Annesley, and took the rest to Philadelphia to sell. He returned to New York in 1736.

Having become a successful businessman with contacts in several countries, he was entrusted by the British military with a contract to supply uniforms during the French and Indian War. In 1756, the first official year of that war, Lewis was at Fort Oswego in upstate New York. During his stay, the French and their Indian allies attacked in August. Lewis was standing next to the English commander when the latter was killed in the battle. The British surrendered the fort to the French, and Lewis was captured and eventually taken to France. It has been written that he was kept in a box or crate during that voyage. His harrowing captivity ended through a prisoner exchange when peace was achieved in 1763. Lewis returned to New York. The British government awarded him 5,000 acres in New York as compensation for the lost years of his life.

Lewis once more turned his attention to business, and he quickly prospered. With his large fortune firmly established, he retired from running his businesses and became active in politics. When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, he changed his pro-Royalist sentiments and joined the Stamp Act Congress organized to protest the tax.

Thereafter, his political activism deepened. That same year, he was a founding member of the local chapter of the Sons of Liberty, one of a loosely-connected collection around the colonies of silk-stockinged rabble-rousers with their lower-class auxiliaries as enforcers. When the crisis between Britain and her colonies began to worsen, Lewis joined the Committee of Fifty-one, organized in New York in 1774 to protest the closing of the port of Boston to commerce. When the Committee was succeeded by the Committee of Sixty in 1775 to enforce the colonies’ trade embargo against British goods, which had been adopted by the First Continental Congress, Lewis joined that, as well. That committee was replaced, in short order, by the Committee of One Hundred, which directed the colonists’ program against Parliament until the first New York Provincial Assembly met and took over that task on May 23, 1775. The Assembly soon elected Lewis to be a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he served between 1775 and 1779.

In the Congress, he signed the Olive Branch Petition on July 5, 1775. That missive, written by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, was a last attempt by the moderates in the Congress to avert war. The petition assured King George of the Americans’ loyalty to him. Dickinson pleaded with the king to create a more equitable and permanent political and trade arrangement between Britain and her colonies than existed as a result of Parliament’s various unpopular and, to the Americans, unconstitutional, acts. The petition failed to achieve its purpose. The King refused even to read it. Instead, on August 23, 1775, he declared the American colonies to be in rebellion. The message of peace and compromise of the Olive Branch Petition likely was undermined by the Congress’ adoption the following day of the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Drafted in parts by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, that document castigated Parliament’s tax and trade policies and its punitive acts. It did so in rather incendiary language, in sharp contrast to the tone of the Olive Branch Petition. As well, John Adams’ letter to a friend, intercepted by the British and forwarded to London, which belittled the petition and complained that the Americans should have built up a navy and taken British officials prisoner, could not have helped the effort to persuade the British government of the Americans’ sincerity.

As the final break with Britain loomed, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. The vote on Richard Henry Lee’s resolution to declare independence, on July 2, 1776, was approved by 12 delegations. Lewis and the rest of the New York delegates had to abstain because they had not yet received instructions from the provincial assembly to proceed. After his delegation received the proper authorization from New York, Lewis and the other members signed the Declaration on August 2.

Lewis used his wealth and business acumen to assist the new country. He is estimated to have been the fifth-wealthiest signer of the Declaration. Before and during the war, he was instrumental in procuring uniforms, arms, and supplies for the Continental Army, both on his own account and through his administrative talents. He strongly sided with General George Washington against the latter’s critics in the “Conway Cabal” who sought to replace Washington with the politically popular, but militarily incompetent, General Horatio Gates. Lewis’ service in the Congress also included approving the Articles of Confederation in 1777 and being Chairman of the Continental Board of Admiralty.

Despite his wealth and his involvement in public affairs at an exceptional time, Lewis was no stranger to personal tragedy. Already mentioned was his loss of both parents as a young child, left also without siblings. Only three of his seven children reached adulthood. Perhaps most traumatic was the fate that befell his wife. Lewis had married Elizabeth Annesley, his business partner’s sister, in 1745. While Lewis was away, in 1776, his house in Whitestone, in today’s Queens, New York, was destroyed by the British after the Battle of Brooklyn. Soldiers from a light cavalry troop pillaged the house, and a warship then opened fire. Worse, the British took his wife prisoner and held her for two years. Historical sources aver that the conditions of her captivity were inhumane in that the British denied her a bed, a change of clothing, or adequate food over several weeks.

Eventually, General Washington was apprised of her situation. He thereupon ordered the seizure of the wife of the British Pay-Master General and the wife of the British Attorney General for Pennsylvania. Both were to be held under the same conditions as Elizabeth Lewis. A prisoner exchange was then arranged, and Elizabeth was released in 1778. She returned to be with her husband in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, her captivity had so ravaged her health that she died not long afterwards, in June, 1779. This episode illustrates the suffering that befell families on both sides of what was, in essence, a civil war. It often was a war between neighbors, former friends, and even family members, not one between organized armies of strangers with different lands, cultures, and languages.

Francis Lewis retired from public service in 1781. Thereafter, he lived a life of leisure, with books and plenty of family time with his two sons and their children. A daughter had married an English naval officer and left North America, never to return, a none-too-rare sad consequence of the war, and one that befell Benjamin Franklin’s family, as well. Lewis died on December 31, 1802.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here For Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 47 - Guest Essayist: Richard K. Sala

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”[1]

In 1903, in Huntington, New York, President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a Fourth of July oration celebrating American independence. During his impassioned remarks, he noted that “[i]t is a good thing, on the Fourth of July […], for us to come together, and we have the right to express our pride in what our forefathers did […].”[2]

For Americans from “sea to shining sea,” the saga of American independence begins in July 1776.[3] For Philip Livingston, one of four New York delegates to sign the Declaration of Independence, the origins of this great epoch commenced some eleven years earlier under comparable duress and at similar risk.[4]

The second lord of Livingston Manor (an estate encompassing approximately 160,000 acres on the Hudson River, a home in Manhattan, and a forty-acre estate in Brooklyn Heights), a graduate of Yale University and a prosperous merchant of considerable wealth, Philip Livingston initially opposed American independence.[5] Livingston opined that “[…] the thought of establishing a republic in America, breaking off our connection with Great Britain, and becoming independent: [was] the most vain, empty, shallow, and ridiculous project that could possibly enter into the heart of man.”[6] Over time, and upon repeated transgressions against the colonies, Great Britain would erode Livingston’s fealty to the British Crown—beginning in 1765.

In March 1765, the British Parliament passed The Stamp Act, “the first direct tax on the American colonies […] to raise money for Britain. [The Act] taxed newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dice, and playing cards. Stamps, issued by Britain, were affixed to documents or packages to show that the Colonists had paid the tax.”[7] The enactment of the Stamp Act enraged the colonist. Parliament passed The Stamp Act absent colonial representation. This passage defied the colonists’ understanding of representative government. Not only were the colonists aware that “the British constitution guaranteed the right to be taxed only by consent, [but] they regarded this right as a product of natural as well as of British Law […].”[8] Colonists “regarded taxation […] not as an act of sovereign power by the whole legislature, but as a free gift of the people by their representatives.”[9]

In October 1765, in response to The Stamp Act, and without the requisite authorization from Great Britain to form a Congress, twenty-seven delegates of the colonies gathered in New York to synchronize a colonial response to The Stamp Act.[10] The gathering became known as The Stamp Act Congress. Philip Livingston was among the twenty-seven delegates. Interestingly, Philip was joined as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress by his cousin, Robert R. Livingston.[11]

Over the course of twelve days, The Stamp Act Congress drew up a statement of the rights and privileges of the British American Colonists.[12] This document is known as The Declaration of Rights and Grievances.[13] The tripartite effect of The Stamp Act Congress was momentous. First, the Parliament relented and repealed The Stamp Act as a result of the unified colonial response. Second, the colonies united in a way that seemed impossible before The Stamp Act Congress. Finally, “[t]he resolutions of the […] intercolonial assembl[y] in 1765 laid down the line on which Americans stood until they cut their connections with England” in 1776.[14]

Nearly eleven years later, Philip Livingston would pledge his life, considerable fortune, and sacred honor to American independence and sign the Declaration of Independence as the delegate from New York. As the fates would have it, Philip and Robert Livingston’s destinies were once again intertwined. Although Robert R. Livingston would not sign the Declaration of Independence, he was one of the Committee of Five responsible for drafting this Charter of Freedom.[15]

In August 1776, true to his oath, Livingston would flee New York after the Continental Army’s defeat at the Battle of Long Island—leaving his New York homes in the hands of the British. Two years later, under the pressure of an advancing British Army occupying Philadelphia, Livingston traveled to York, Pennsylvania, to attend a secret session of Congress. Without knowing whether the fledgling nation would survive, Philip Livingston died of congestive heart failure shortly after arriving in York. He was sixty-two years old.[16]

Richard Sala is a retired Marine Corps Judge Advocate and currently serves as the Academic Success Program Director and Assistant Professor of Law at Vermont Law School. Professor Sala teaches National Security Law, Constitutional Law, various bar preparation courses, and is the faculty advisor to the Vermont Law School chapter of The Federalist Society.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

[1] The Declaration of Independence para. 32 (U.S. 1776).

[2] Theodore Roosevelt, Remarks at the Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of Huntington, Long Island, New York Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/343692 (last visited Apr. 20, 2021).

[3] Fisher, William Arms, and Katharine Lee Bates. America the Beautiful. Oliver Ditson Company, Boston, MA, 1917. Notated Music. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.100010520/ (last visited on Apr. 20, 2021).

[4] National Archives, America’s Founding Documents, Signers of the Declaration of Independence. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/signers-factsheet (last visited Apr. 20, 2021).

[5] Denise Kierman & Joseph D’Agnese, Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed The Declaration of Independence, 68-69 (2009).

[6] Philip Livingston, The Other Side of the Question (1774), The Magazine of History With Notes and Queries. Extra numbers · Issues 49-52, Volume 13, 246 (1916).

[7] Library of Congress. Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774 to 1789. https://www.loc.gov/collections/continental-congress-and-constitutional-convention-from-1774-to-1789/articles-and-essays/timeline/1764-to-1765/ (last visited Apr. 20, 2021).

[8] Edmund S. Morgan & Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 118 (1995).

[9] Id at 88.

[10] Id at 108.

[11] Id.

[12] Id at 110.

[13] Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, Resolutions of the Continental Congress October 19, 1765.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolu65.asp (last visited Apr. 20, 2021).

[14] Edmund S. Morgan & Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis, 307 (1995).

[15] History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, “LIVINGSTON, Robert R.,” https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/L/LIVINGSTON,-Robert-R–(L000372)/ (April 20, 2021);

[16] Denise Kierman & Joseph D’Agnese, Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed The Declaration of Independence, 68-69 (2009).

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 46 - Guest Essayist: Jay McConville

For those of us who spent our formative years in the suburbs of Long Island, including the Village of Setauket where I grew up, the name William Floyd is familiar, though I would venture a guess that very few are likely to know the story behind the name. As families travelled around those areas, or perhaps to the beach, including the famous Fire Island, the children would hear the familiar words, the “William Floyd Parkway.” I vaguely remember being aware of a historic home named for William Floyd as well, but I have no recollection of being taught who the man was, or what he did to earn such recognition. I may have been taught something in passing, but there is no doubt that as a young boy I was unlikely to pay much attention to such things. Our collective ignorance of Mr. Floyd’s life, however, does not detract from the distinction of it. It is only a shame, as there in our little village of Setauket we lived on ground trampled by history, a history in which William Floyd was a central character. It is also a shame that during those formative years, more effort was not made to teach us of the momentous events that took place where we lived and played. Perhaps, with some more effort and respect for the past, we all would have grown up more grateful and more respectful of our nation and its founders.

Even to those of us who traveled the road named for him, and lived in the town that his family founded, William Floyd did not achieve the lasting fame of George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, or many others of the Founders and Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Yet together with them, he worked to bring about a new nation, conceived in liberty. He struggled and sacrificed, and did his duty, and his service to the future. He took the same pledge to risk his life, his (significant) fortune, and his sacred honor. Few know, however, of his life, and in that way, he was a man much like most of us. A man whose name, while respected during his time, will fade into history, and his years of service will go unappreciated by those who follow. He is one of the millions of American souls whose contributions comprise the fabric that has weaved itself into the tapestry of our nation.

Floyd was born in 1734 to a wealthy landowning family who had emigrated from Wales. His grandfather, Richard Floyd, founded the village of Setauket, where I grew up. The land was purchased by white settlers from the Setalcott tribe, one of the 13 native tribes of Long Island, which had its central location in that area at the time. William Floyd inherited significant lands from his father and, foregoing the educational opportunities available to a man of his wealth, he took to running those estates at only 21 years of age. He married Hannah Jones and they settled in to raise a family, steeped in the privileges of the landowning class. Floyd was a man of his times, which is a euphemistic way of saying that he owned slaves who worked his fields and tended to his operations. Slavery was then still a common practice around the world, but the concept behind it, especially the degradation of other humans before the law, had already begun to fall from favor. While this debate was prominent among the founders, Floyd, as far as history can tell us, was not an active supporter of abolition, and unlike many signers and political thinkers of those days, did not appear see a contradiction in the quest for liberty and the rights of man, and the slavery that supported his lifestyle. The census of 1820, a year before his death, still listed Floyd as a slaveholder (slavery did not end in New York until July 4, 1827).

Despite this glaring failing, Floyd was what we would call a reliable volunteer today. He was the person that the town turned to when they needed someone to run the committee, chair the meeting, represent the people at an event somewhere far away. Certainly, his wealth and status as a landowner must have first thrust him into positions of leadership, but it must have been his steadfast service and trustworthiness that kept him in positions of responsibility year after year, as the idea of a free and independent nation germinated across the colonies. Floyd was not a rabble-rouser, not a vocal rebel calling for revolution. He was a businessman, extremely wealthy, who sought independence from the abuses of England against his free enterprise. Respected by his community, he was appointed as a Colonel in the militia just as the Revolutionary War exploded across the Colonies. He would eventually achieve the rank of Major General, but his service was more organizational than combative. He was also selected to serve as a New York representative to the First Continental Congress beginning in September of 1774, and attended sessions in Philadelphia between then and 1776, when, along with the other original signers, he risked everything he had, and put his name to the Declaration of Independence. It was a risk that he took on freely, and one that he and his family would pay dearly for.

Many today are aware of the battles that took place on Long Island due to the popular television show “Turn,” a dramatic depiction of the events surrounding the capture, occupation, and eventually abandonment of Long Island by British forces. Many of these dramatized events take place in the Village of Setauket, and history records the Battle of Setauket as a major event in the war. As a boy I do remember being shown the bullet marks that are still visible in the old church and on the rock memorial that sits in the middle of the town. Floyd was in Philadelphia as a Delegate during this time, and when he returned to Long Island after the British left in 1777, he found his estate ransacked, his property stolen, and his lands plundered. His family had evacuated during the occupation, and the strain of the ordeal brought despair and sickness to his wife, who died in 1781.

Despair and loss, however, did not deter Floyd from his duties. Following his service in the Continental Congress, including multiple terms until 1789, Floyd was elected to the first United States Congress in 1789, serving one term. He ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of New York against the (still famous) John Jay. He was later elected as a Delegate to the New York Constitutional Convention in 1801 and to the State Senate in 1804. Having reestablished his estate, Floyd lived a long life, remarrying to Joanna Strong in 1784, and adding two additional children to the three that he had with Hannah Jones. He died in August 1821 at the age of 86. The William Floyd estate still stands on Long Island (although Floyd moved to Westernville, New York, in 1803), and is owned by the National Park Service as part of Fire Island National Seashore.

It was a life well lived, in times of struggle and change. Records from the time do not make much mention of Floyd. He was not a visible presence or vocal voice in the Congress. Records from the proceedings mention his presence, but his impression on other delegates might well be summarized in a contemporary’s letter to John Jay, that named William Floyd as one of the “good men, [who] never quit their chairs” (Grossman, 2014, p. 397). We should all be grateful to those, who like Floyd, never quit their chairs, and ensured the founding of our nation through their service and sacrifice.

Jay McConville is a military veteran, management professional, and active civic volunteer currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he held multiple key technology and management positions within the Aerospace and Defense industry, including twice as President and CEO. He served in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer, and has also been active in civic and industry volunteer associations, including running for elected office, serving as a political party chairman, and serving multiple terms as President of both his industry association’s Washington DC Chapter and his local youth sports association. Today he serves on the Operating Board of Directors of Constituting America. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Government from George Mason University, and a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College. Jay lives in Richmond with his wife Susan Ulsamer McConville. They have three children and two grandchildren.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

References:

Bayles, Richard (n.d.), Long Island Indians and The Early Settlers http://longislandgenealogy.com/indians.html

Grossman, M. (2015). Encyclopedia of the continental congresses. Grey House Publishing. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/lib/vcu/reader.action?docID=3299586

Landy, Craig A. (n.d.), Legal history matters; When did slavery end in New York, Historical Society of the New York Courts, https://history.nycourts.gov/when-did-slavery-end-in-new-york/

National Park Service (2020). William Floyd Estate, Fire Island National Seashore, https://www.nps.gov/fiis/planyourvisit/williamfloydestate.htm

Revolutionary War (2020). William Floyd, Revolutionary War, https://www.revolutionary-war.net/william-floyd/

Click Here for Next Essay 

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 45 - Guest Essayist: Robert Brescia

William Shakespeare said, “Some men were born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” It seems that Oliver Wolcott certainly had greatness thrust upon him in the events leading up to American independence, but also achieved greatness by his own stellar leadership throughout this crucial period in our national history.

Oliver Wolcott was born in Windsor, Connecticut on November 20, 1726. Often the case, we didn’t know then that a regular fellow from a small New England town would achieve such prominence as an American patriot. Not only did he eventually sign the United States Declaration of Independence, but also the Articles of Confederation as a representative of Connecticut. He served as the nineteenth

Governor of Connecticut and as a major general for the Connecticut Militia in the Revolutionary War under George Washington.

As the youngest of 14 children by colonial governor Roger Wolcott and Sarah Drake Wolcott, Oliver began showing his potential at an early age. He graduated from Yale College in 1747 at the top of his class. Shortly thereafter, military duties called – he led a militia company as a Captain in the French and Indian Wars, defending our northern border against French incursions. Returning to Goshen, Connecticut after the war ended, he practiced medicine with his brother, Alexander. On January 21, 1755, Oliver Wolcott married Laura Collins. They had five children together. Oliver then became a merchant and was subsequently elected as sheriff of Litchfield County, Connecticut, a role he sustained for the next twenty years. By 1774, Oliver was known as a wise and good leader especially in difficult situations. For these qualities and demonstrated leadership, he was appointed the town’s Counselor, a role he served in for twelve years. While he was fulfilling these duties, Oliver also took a position as a judge in the Court of Common Pleas.

From the beginning of his service to Connecticut, and as a principal delegate to the Continental Congress, he took a strong stand and position against the wrongs that Great Britain had been perpetuating on the colonists. He became well known for these positions, vehemently supporting independence and freedom against tyranny. In February 1776, he stated: “Our difference with Great Britain has become very great. What matters will issue in, I cannot say, but perhaps in a total disseverance from Great Britain.”

Willing to fight for these strong beliefs of freedom and self-determination, Wolcott led Connecticut’s Seventeenth Regiment of militia to New York, joining George Washington’s army. At that moment, then Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull appointed Wolcott as a Brigadier General, commanding all the state’s militia regiments in New York, later being promoted to Major General. Oliver never wavered in his fierce opposition to Great Britain, describing the British in his memoirs as “a foe who have not only insulted every principle which governs civilized nations but by their barbarities offered the grossest indignities to human nature.”

Wolcott was elected to the Continental Congress in 1775, serving as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Because he possessed such diplomatic skills, he was able to persuade the Indians to remain neutral in the Revolutionary War. It was this same set of skills that steered him into post-war pursuit of public service. He was elected as Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut in 1786, then Governor, succeeding Samuel Huntington, holding that position until his death in 1796.

His legacy can be characterized by the extraordinary amount and diverse nature of public service to his state and nation. In fact, historian Ellsworth Grant remembers Wolcott’s Revolutionary war efforts in stating that, “It is doubtful if any other official in Connecticut during this period carried so many public duties on his shoulders.” He was also remembered for his love of poetry and family.

Charles Goodrich had this to say about Oliver Wolcott in his book, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence:

Mr. Wolcott never pursued any of the learned professions, yet his reading was various and extensive. He cultivated an acquaintance with the sciences, through the works of some of the most learned men of Europe, and was intimately acquainted with history, both ancient and modern. He has the reputation, and it is believed justly, of having been an accomplished scholar. Mr. Wolcott was also distinguished for his love of order and religion. In his last sickness he expressed, according to Dr. Backus, who preached his funeral sermon, a deep sense of his personal unworthiness and guilt. For several days before his departure, every breath seemed, to bring with it a prayer. At length, he fell asleep. He was an old man, and full of years, and went to his grave distinguished for a long series of services rendered both to his state and nation. The memory of his personal worth, of his patriotism, his integrity, his Christian walk and conversation, will go down to generations yet unborn.

He did not sign the Declaration of Independence until later because of personal illness, becoming the penultimate signer, just before Matthew Thornton.

Robert Brescia, Ed.D., serves as a Board Director, Past Chairman, at Basin PBS Television. He has served in top leadership roles in education, corporate business, nonprofit, and defense with twenty-seven years of public service as an Airborne Ranger Cavalry Soldier, NCO, and Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Army. Mr. Brescia was appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to the State Board for Educator Certification.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 44 - Guest Essayist: Eric Wise
Public Domain Image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Williams_(Connecticut_politician)#/media/File:William_Williams_(delegate).jpg "William Williams of Connecticut: Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Pinch Hitting for the United States of America – Guest Essayist: J. Eric Wise"

Rick Miller, playing for Boston Red Sox, holds the 1983 American League record for the highest batting average in a season by a pinch hitter at .45714. Miller, however, is not New England’s greatest pinch hitter.

That title goes to a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the redundantly, patronymically named William Williams. Williams, a successful soldier and merchant of Lebanon, Connecticut, was elected to represent Connecticut on July 11, 1776, seven days after the Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence.

Oliver Wolcott had cast the vote on behalf of Connecticut, and Williams’ turn at bat came because the Declaration of Independence, although adopted on July 4, 1776, had to be prepared by clerks and circulated by messenger for signature later. The original Declaration of Independence thus bears William Williams’ name in addition to Oliver Wolcott’s.

Williams came from a good state. Connecticut is known as the Constitution State, and it gets that name due to the “plebesbyterian” genius of the early Puritans. Thomas Hooker, a Puritan contemporary of John Winthrop, Roger Williams, and John Cotton, led the adoption in 1639 of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in Hartford as a charter for the Connecticut River towns. The Fundamental Orders were the first charter government that did not refer to the authority of the King of England, but rather to the authority of God through the people.

As Hooker put it – fifty years before John Locke penned his Second Treatise on Government in 1689 – “the foundation of authority is laid, firstly in the free consent of the people … the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.”

Thus, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, animated by Hooker’s thought, anticipated by more than one hundred years the Declaration of Independence, which of course draws its authority from the laws of Nature and Nature’s God, the principle of equality, and the consent of the governed.

Williams came from a good family too, and married into an even better one. Williams was educated at Harvard, graduating in 1751 at age 20.  In 1755, Williams volunteered for the militia in the French and Indian War, and served in the Lake George area. Following the war, Williams spent his time in trade and government, rose to prominence, and in 1771, at the age of 40, married 25-year-old Mary Trumbull.

Mary was the daughter of Jonathan Trumbull, also a graduate of Harvard and Governor of Connecticut by royal appointment of the King of England. It is hard to imagine a better-connected New Englander than William Williams of 1771.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence all pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred Honor” to the success of the Revolution. Many paid dearly with the first two, though all in time gained honor. Williams, when he signed the Declaration, had achieved a great deal as a pre-Revolutionary American and had much at stake.

Williams had built and continued to build a record of daring for an established man. He was a member of the Sons of Liberty, a society which fought for the rights of Americans and against British taxation, until it was outlawed by the Stamp Act in 1765. Forced underground, the Sons of Liberty popularized the practice of tarring and feathering for the punishment of officials and loyalists, and were sponsors of the Boston Tea Party.

In 1774, Williams published a pseudonymous letter to the King of England from America, on the subject of the Coercive Act. Williams’ need for a pseudonym is a reminder that a telltale symptom of tyranny is the suppression of speech. In any event, Williams had crossed a line in his letter, accusing the King of England of the most wicked intentions to oppress the American people.

There was never a doubt then, when William Williams got his turn at bat, he would swing for the fences.

William Williams, pinch hitter and American hero, died in Lebanon Connecticut on August 2, 1811.

Eric Wise is an attorney practicing in New York.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 42 – Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

Roger Sherman was one of the most significant of our Founding Fathers but is little known and appreciated today. He was deeply involved in national affairs from 1774-1793 and signed five of our nation’s most important founding documents. No other early American leader signed as many. His rise from humble beginnings to a position of prominence among our nation’s finest is remarkable.

Sherman was born on April 19, 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts. His father, William, was a farmer and cordwainer (shoemaker) and taught Roger, his second oldest son, his profession. As was common with tradesmen’s children, Roger did not receive much formal education, only completing grammar school.

That said, William Sherman had an extensive library and Roger spent much of his free time reading and educating himself. Sherman showed a natural gift for mathematics and was able to teach himself surveying.

When Sherman’s father died in 1743, Roger moved the family to Connecticut where he was hired as the surveyor for New Haven County in 1745 and, later, for Litchfield County. He also met Elizabeth Hartwell and the couple was married on November 17, 1749. They had seven children together and their three oldest sons all served as officers in the Continental army.

The ever-aspiring Sherman next decided to study law on his own. By 1754, he was admitted to the bar and just a year later was appointed Justice of the Peace for Litchfield County and won an election to Connecticut’s General Assembly.

Elizabeth died in 1760, leaving Roger a widower with seven children. He soon met Rebecca Prescott, a twenty-year-old niece of his brother’s wife. They married in 1763 and had eight children together.

Over the next decade, as things started to heat in the colonies, Sherman held several political positions including Justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut, and became an advocate for the patriotic cause. The combination of his excellent record of service and his stance on the issues of the day led to his election as a delegate for Connecticut to the First Continental Congress in 1774, thus beginning his time on the national stage.

This legislative body met in Philadelphia to discuss their collective grievances with Parliament, primarily the recently enacted Coercive Acts which imposed harsh penalties on the colony of Massachusetts for their continued mischief. At this convention, Sherman agreed with and signed the two key documents created by this legislative body which signaled to King George that the colonists were not happy subjects.

One of these was a “Petition to the King” which outlined grievances against Parliament but largely held the King blameless, and the other was the Articles of Association (sometimes called the Continental Association) which implemented a boycott on English trade.

Congress adjourned in late October 1774 and Sherman returned home, but not for long. By May 1775, the relationship with England was getting worse and the fight at Lexington and Concord had already happened. Consequently, the colonies convened the Second Continental Congress and, once again, Sherman was chosen by Connecticut to represent the state.

A year into this convention, with no hope for a reconciliation with England, a Committee of Five was selected by Congress to draft what became our Declaration of Independence. This team comprised most of the heavy hitters of that era: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, as well as Roger Sherman. His selection gives clear indication of the respect Sherman’s peers had for him. Congress approved their draft and Sherman became one of its 56 signatories on July 4, 1776.

Another year passed and the war continued. Congress, on November 15, 1777, finally finished the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, essentially our first Constitution, which Sherman signed along with forty-eight others. Unfortunately, this system of government proved to be a failure and, in 1787, it was decided by our country’s leaders to convene a conference with the intention of improving it.

Sherman was selected to represent Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention and it was here he made his most significant mark. The conference was in danger of breaking down due to a conflict regarding how to determine representation in Congress. Large states like Virginia favored apportionment based on population and small states such as New Jersey wanted all states to have the same representation.

To break the impasse, Sherman crafted what came to be known as the Connecticut Compromise. It called for a lower house with representation based on population (the House of Representatives) and an upper house with equal representation (the Senate). Sherman’s plan was brilliant and quickly approved.

Finally, after much work, the delegates created and signed our current Constitution on September 17, 1787. By now, Sherman was 66 years old, the second oldest delegate at the Convention (Benjamin Franklin was the oldest), but there was no rest in sight.

After the new Constitution was ratified, Sherman was chosen to represent Connecticut in the House of Representatives in the first session of the new United States Congress in 1789. After serving two years, Sherman received his final political honor, being selected to serve as United States Senator for Connecticut, a position he held until his death on July 23, 1793.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should Roger Sherman and all he did for America matter to us today?

Roger Sherman is representative of the many great Americans who sacrificed and worked so diligently to create America. While our schoolbooks typically teach us about a few monumental figures like Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams, the yeoman’s work of creating this wonderful country of ours was done by so many forgotten figures.

Moreover, Roger Sherman, a farmer’s son with limited formal education, is a shining example of what people from modest circumstances and with few opportunities can accomplish in this great country of ours by applying themselves. This sort of rags-to riches story can only happen in America and we need to be reminded of that fact.

SUGGESTED READING: “Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic” is an excellent book written by Mark Hall. Published in 2012, it details both Sherman’s life and the role religion played in the founding of our country.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 43 - Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

Samuel Huntington was a patriot who devoted most of his life to serving his country. Moreover, he was a self-educated man who rose to some of the highest offices in the land by hard work and dedication.

Samuel was born on July 16, 1731 in Scotland Parish in the Town of Windham, Connecticut (today the Town of Scotland). His father, Nathaniel Huntington, had a 180-acre farm bordering Merrick Brook and was a successful, but not overly wealthy, farmer. His mother was Mehetabel Thurston, a very pious and virtuous woman. Together they raised ten children, four boys and six girls.

As the second son, Samuel saw his older brother sent off to Yale, while he stayed home to help on the farm. At age 16, his father apprenticed him to a cooper (a maker of barrels and casks) to learn the trade. Although he completed his training, his true interest lay in the study of law.

The only formal schooling Samuel received was from the common schools (community funded schools in early New England) in the immediate area. Not one to be put off, Samuel devoted his free time to reading as many law books as he could find, many supplied by two local attorneys, Eliphalet Dyer and Jedediah Elderkin.

On December 2, 1754, at the age of 23 and despite no formal schooling, Huntington was admitted to the bar in Windham. Six years later, Samuel moved to nearby Norwich, Connecticut to seek greater opportunities for his law practice. The next year, he married Martha Devotion, the daughter of his minister, and settled into domestic life. The couple did not have any children of their own, but when Martha’s sister Hannah, who had married Samuel’s brother, died in 1771, they raised their two children.

Huntington soon acquired a solid reputation and his legal practice flourished. By 1764, Norwich had selected him to represent their interests in the state General Assembly, an honor he held for the next decade.

The next year, Samuel was appointed the King’s Attorney (today’s District Attorney) for his area. In 1774, Governor Trumbull appointed Huntington to the Connecticut Superior Court, a post he held until 1784 when he was named to the Supreme Court.

After the battles at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, colonial leaders convened the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Connecticut chose Huntington to be one of its delegates to the conference. He took his seat in January 1776 and was a strong advocate for independence. Along with Oliver Wolcott and Roger Sherman, the other two delegates from Connecticut, he proudly signed the Declaration of Independence.

Huntington went home in 1777 and did not return to Congress until February 1778. In September 1779, when John Jay left for a diplomatic mission to Spain, Congress chose Huntington to replace him as President of Congress, a position of little power but indicative of the great respect his peers had for him.

His steady temperament and diplomatic personality had impressed his fellow delegates. Benjamin Rush considered Huntington “a sensible, candid and worthy man, and wholly free from State prejudices.”

In 1780, despite his wishes to the contrary, Congress selected him to be their President for another year. During this time, Huntington worked tirelessly to convince skeptical states of the need to adopt the Articles of Confederation, our first real constitution. That was accomplished on March 1, 1781 when the Articles officially became the law of the land.

In November 1783, Huntington left Congress for the last time, and returned home to Connecticut, but his public work was not done. He was chosen to be the state’s Lieutenant Governor in 1784 and 1785. Then, in 1786, Huntington was elected as Governor, a position he held until his death on January 5, 1796.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should Samuel Huntington and what he did for America matter to us today?

Samuel Huntington was a man who devoted much of his life to the service of his country. From the age of 33 until he passed away in his 64th year, Huntington served in some public capacity, including state assemblyman, Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, President of the Continental Congress, and Governor of his home state of Connecticut.

During his time, this Signer of the Declaration of Independence was so highly regarded that he was awarded honorary degrees from Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale. Additionally, his acquaintances included George Washington, John Adams, and Ben Franklin. That is impressive for any man, let alone one who was self-educated and began life as a farmer. A man like that deserves to be remembered by us today.

SUGGESTED READING: Connecticut Congressman: Samuel Huntington by Larry Gerlach is a book published in 1976 as part of Connecticut’s Bicentennial Commission. It covers the entire life of this remarkable man.

PLACES TO VISIT: Samuel Huntington’s birthplace and childhood home in Scotland, Connecticut is open for tours. The beautiful grounds include the 18th century house, museum, and acres of farmland bordering Merrick Brook.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 40 – Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

Stephen Hopkins was a Founding Father who was very influential during much of the 1700s in his home state of Rhode Island. In fact, he has been called “the greatest statesman of Rhode Island.” Moreover, he participated in all major pre-Revolutionary joint colonial conferences.

Hopkins was born in Providence in the Colony of Rhode Island on March 7, 1707 into a family with a long history in that area. His father, William, was descended from Thomas Hopkins who had moved to Providence from Plymouth in 1641 following Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island.

His mother, Ruth Wilkinson, was the granddaughter of Lawrence Wilkinson who arrived in Providence in 1652. Stephen grew up on a farm in what is now the town of Scituate (it broke off from Providence in 1731) receiving virtually no formal schooling. Instead, he read all the classics and was instructed by his mother and other relatives in subjects such as mathematics and surveying. By all accounts, Hopkins was very bright.

In 1726, Stephen married Sarah Scott with whom he had seven children. Hopkins became a surveyor and was soon a leading citizen in Scituate and, in 1735, at the age of 28, was named president of the town council. He also represented Scituate in the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1732 to 1741 and was named its Speaker in 1742.

Stephen moved to Providence in 1742 where his brother Esek lived and together they began a prosperous mercantile-shipping firm, including building and outfitting ships. His business acumen was largely responsible for transforming Providence into a thriving commercial center.

While growing his business, Hopkins was also growing his influence in state affairs. He served in the Provincial Assembly from 1744-1751 and became the Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Superior Court in 1751. In 1755, Hopkins was elected to the Governorship of Rhode Island, a position he held for nine of the next thirteen years.

In 1754, at the start of the French and Indian War, colonial leaders met at the Albany Congress to discuss how to best organize their efforts against the French. Rhode Island selected Hopkins to represent their interests at this conference.

At this meeting, Hopkins met Benjamin Franklin who introduced the so-called “Albany Plan,” the first effort to unify the energies and resources of the various colonies. Hopkins strongly supported this proposal, but it was not approved by the King’s officials because the governors of the separate colonies and the Ministry back in England feared losing their power.

As the years moved forward and the relationship between the Mother Country and her colonies worsened, Hopkins became an outspoken proponent of the rights of American colonists. In 1764, Hopkins published a pamphlet called The Rights of the Colonies Examined which detailed those rights. He stated, “British subjects are to be governed only agreeable to laws by which they themselves have in some way consented.” The paper was widely disseminated and praised throughout the colonies.

Ten years later, in 1774, Hopkins was named as a representative to the First Continental Congress where he strongly advocated separation from England. At this meeting, Hopkins stated, “…powder and ball will decide this question. The gun and bayonet alone will finish the contest in which we are engaged, and any of you who cannot bring your minds to this mode of adjusting this question had better retire in time.”

Hopkins was also selected to attend the Second Continental Congress in 1775. Other than his long-time friend Ben Franklin, Hopkins was the oldest delegate there. He suffered from “shaking palsy” and when he proudly signed the Declaration of Independence, his signature appeared unsteady. However, Hopkins declared, “My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”

Soon thereafter, Hopkins, whose health was failing, returned home. He lived long enough to see his country finally attain its independence from England. When Hopkins passed away on July 13, 1785, America had lost one of her truest Patriots.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should Stephen Hopkins and what he did for America matter to us today?

Stephen Hopkins was a man who devoted much of his life to helping his local community, colony/state, and country become a better place to live. Although he was self-educated, he attained the highest offices in Rhode Island, serving as that state’s Speaker of the General Assembly, Chief Justice of the Superior Court, Governor, and representative to both the First and Second Continental Congress.

Stephen Hopkins did all in his power to help create this great country of ours. We owe him our respect and gratitude for his efforts.

SUGGESTED READING: The Rights of Colonies Examined written by Stephen Hopkins in 1764 was one of the finest political pamphlets published in pre-Revolutionary America. It is an excellent read and recent reprints can be found online.

PLACES TO VISIT: The Governor Stephen Hopkins House is a museum and National Historic Landmark in Providence, Rhode Island. Originally built in 1707, Stephen Hopkins bought the house in 1742 and lived there for over forty years.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn. 

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 39 – Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts was an early voice calling for the American colonies to separate from England and declare independence. However, Gerry and his accomplishments are largely forgotten today.

Gerry was born on July 17, 1744 in Marblehead, Massachusetts. At that time, Marblehead was one of the leading seaports in North America. Gerry’s father was a prosperous merchant operating ships out of that port, primarily exporting dried cod to the Caribbean and Spain.

Elbridge received an excellent education as a child from private tutors and then attended Harvard where he graduated with two degrees, the second of which came in 1764. Gerry soon thereafter joined his father and two brothers in the family business.

In 1765, Parliament enacted the Stamp Act, the first of several legislative measures to raise revenue by taxing the colonies. The recently completed French and Indian War had depleted the British Treasury and England hoped to remedy this situation partly on the backs of their American subjects.

Gerry became an early opponent of these acts by Parliament, and he soon allied himself with Samuel Adams and other leading political figures in Massachusetts. In 1772, Gerry was elected to the Massachusetts Bay legislature which proved to be the start of a successful political career.

In 1775, as relations between England and its American colonies deteriorated, Gerry was assigned to lead a Committee of Safety charged with supplying the Continental Army which was surrounding Boston and the British army located there. His experience in the shipping business proved to be a great asset.

When the Second Continental Congress was convened in 1776, Gerry was selected by Massachusetts to be one of their representatives. At the convention, Gerry was a strong advocate for separating from England. John Adams stated, “If every man here was a Gerry, the liberties of America would be safe.” When the Declaration of Independence was adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776, Gerry proudly affixed his signature to this historic document.

Gerry continued to serve in Congress and was a signer of the Articles of Confederation, but he left that assembly in 1780 over a concern that too much power was being concentrated in the central government. In 1783, Gerry was persuaded to return to the Confederation Congress which was meeting in New York. While there, Elbridge met Ann Thompson and the two were married in 1786. Over the course of the next fifteen years, the couple had ten children.

When issues arose due to weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation, the states called the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to fix them. Gerry represented Massachusetts but was against the proposed Constitution because he felt the new document vested too much power in the federal government.

Gerry worried the country would drift towards monarchy or aristocratic rule with the new system of government. He also felt the Constitution should include a bill of rights guaranteeing personal freedoms to the people. As it turned out, Gerry was one of only three delegates to the Constitutional Convention that refused to sign the Constitution (George Mason and Edmond Randolph were the other two).

Following the establishment of the new Federal government, Gerry served two terms in the House of Representatives (1789-1793). He chose not to seek a third term and returned home to care for Ann, who was ill, and help care for the children. During this interval, Gerry maintained good relations with then Vice President John Adams.

When Adams became President in 1800, Adams selected Gerry, along with John Marshall and Charles Pinckney, to act as commissioners to France to settle some maritime disputes. This delegation ended badly when French representatives demanded bribes before starting negotiations and the Americans left France in disgust. This episode was called the XYZ Affair with the initials representing the three Frenchmen who demanded the bribes.

Gerry returned home to criticism that he had handled the situation poorly. Following this controversy, Gerry spent the next decade unsuccessfully trying to get elected as Governor of Massachusetts. Finally, in 1811, Gerry achieved his goal and served in this capacity until 1812.

Interestingly, one of his final acts as Governor was to sign a bill which created Congressional districts that benefitted his party, the Democratic-Republicans. One was shaped like a salamander and a cynical correspondent dubbed this district a “Gerrymander,” a name which is still widely used today.

Finally, in 1812, Gerry was selected to be President James Madison’s Vice President for Madison’s second term. It was felt that Gerry could help Madison, a Virginian, secure Northern votes. While serving in this office, Gerry died on November 23, 1814 and was buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Interestingly, Gerry is the only signer of the Declaration of Independence interred in our nation’s capital.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should Elbridge Gerry and what he did for America matter to us today?

Elbridge Gerry devoted the better part of his life to the service of his country. Starting in 1770, when he sat on a commission trying to enforce a ban on British goods to when he died in 1814 while Vice President of the United States, Gerry faithfully served America.

This gifted man served in the Second Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, the United States House of Representatives, and as Vice President. That is an impressive resume. Largely forgotten today, Elbridge Gerry deserves to be remembered for all he did to help create this great country of ours.

SUGGESTED READING: If you want to read more about our founding era, an excellent book is “The Founding Fathers; An Essential Guide to the Men Who Made America.” Published in 2007 and authored by Encyclopedia Britannica, it has concise narratives of our nation’s critical documents and Founding Fathers, including Elbridge Gerry.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 41 - Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

William Ellery of Rhode Island was a strong supporter of the American effort to gain its independence from England. He did this in many ways, but perhaps most significantly by signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Ellery was born on December 22, 1727 in Newport, Rhode Island. He was the second son of William Ellery and Elizabeth Almy. His father was a graduate of Harvard and a successful merchant. Young William did not attend any formal schools, but instead his learned father provided most of his instruction.

He was a fast learner and went to Harvard at the age of 16. Ellery graduated four years later in 1747 and, by all accounts, was a good student. William soon returned to Newport and entered the family business. Two years later, in 1750, he married Ann Remington with whom he had seven children.

Ellery then moved on from his father’s employment and became a customs collector and then later the Clerk of the Rhode Island General Assembly. While in this capacity, William was able to become familiar with writs, deeds, and other practices of the legal profession. He found he enjoyed this field and began studying law. William passed the Bar and set up his own practice in 1770 at the age of 43.

When relations between England and her American colonies soured in the 1760s, Ellery became a vocal opponent of British oppression and joined the Sons of Liberty, a group of like-minded Patriots. He stated, “To be ruled by Tories (supporters of England) when you may be ruled by the Sons of Liberty is debasing.”

Interestingly, two of the first acts of resistance in the colonies occurred in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay and were initiated by Ellery’s fellow Rhode Islanders. The first incident was the burning of the British ship Liberty, a craft used to collect maritime revenues, on July 19, 1769.  Then, on June 8, 1772, these same Rhode Islanders burned the British ship Gaspee, another customs vessel. In both cases, these ships had apprehended a boat owned by an American colonist for supposed customs violations.

When the Second Continental Congress was called in 1775 to address the deteriorating situation with England, Ellery let it be known he would gladly participate if needed. When Samuel Ward, one of Rhode Island’s delegates to this conference, died on March 26, 1776, state leaders selected Ellery to replace him.

Ellery joined this assemblage on May 16, 1776, and proudly affixed his signature to the Declaration of Independence when it was officially signed on August 2, 1776. He wrote to his brother Benjamin, “We have lived to see a period which a few years ago no human forecast could have imagined – to see these Colonies shake off and declare themselves independent of a state which they once gloried to call Parent.”

He continued to be an active participant in Congress until 1785, especially in maritime matters. Because of his experience as a shipping merchant, Ellery was named to the Marine Committee and the Admiralty Court. He also signed the Articles of Confederation in November 1777.

Unfortunately for Ellery, his involvement in the colonial cause cost him quite a bit of money. Besides not being available to do work for his paying legal clients, when the British captured Newport in 1778, they sought out Ellery’s home and burned it to the ground. This incident is a reminder of what our Founders sacrificed and risked promoting our quest for independence.

When the new Federal government was instituted in 1789, President George Washington named William as the Collector of Customs for the Newport District. Ellery held this post through many administrations until his death in 1820.

When Ellery died on February 15, 1820, he was 92 years old, one of only three signers (Charles Carroll of Carrollton and John Adams) who lived into their 90s. In his lifetime he outlived two wives, fathered 19 children, served five different Presidents as a customs’ official, and signed the Declaration of Independence. He had quite a life.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should William Ellery and what he did for America matter to us today?

William Ellery was an early and strong advocate for American independence. Despite having a lucrative law practice, Ellery gladly gave his time and energies to the Second Continental Congress.

He was highly respected by his contemporaries and his advice was sought on many matters. Although he spent most of his life in private pursuits, Ellery did all he could to help his country when it needed him most. That sort of life deserves to be remembered.

SUGGESTED READING: An excellent book on our founding principles like those stated in the Declaration of Independence is We Still Hold These Truths by Matthew Spalding. Published in 2009, it is well worth reading.

PLACES TO VISIT: The Naval War College Museum in Newport, Rhode Island is a great place to visit. Housed in Founders Hall, which was originally built in 1819, the museum has displays on the history of naval warfare and the naval activities that took place in Narragansett Bay.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae”, Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 38 – Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

Robert Treat Paine was an American patriot who helped our country gain its independence from England. He did this in many ways, but perhaps most significantly by signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Paine was born on March 11, 1731, in Boston near Old City Hall. His father was Reverend Thomas Paine, a Harvard educated minister, and his mother was Eunice Treat, the daughter of a preacher, and granddaughter of Governor Robert Treat of Connecticut. Soon after Robert’s birth, his father left full-time preaching and became a successful merchant.

Robert received an excellent education at the Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in America. He was a bright child and finished at the top of his class. He entered Harvard at the tender age of 14 and graduated four years later.

Due to Robert’s father losing his fortune in 1749, Robert knew he had to make his own way in the world. After teaching for a year, Robert went to sea as a merchant ship captain from 1751-1754. His business pursuits were not very lucrative and, in 1755, he began to study law under Judge Samuel Willard, a relative in Lancaster, Massachusetts. To help make ends meet, Paine continued to preach part-time in nearby Shirley.

In 1755, the French and Indian War had started. As any adventurous young man might do, Paine took a three-month break from his studies and volunteered as a chaplain on an expedition to assault Fort Saint-Frederic (today Crown Point). While the attack did not amount to much, it was a good experience for Paine and gave him an appreciation for the military and the needs of an army.

Upon returning, Robert resumed his legal studies and, in 1757, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. He initially set up shop in Boston and four years later he moved his practice to Taunton, Massachusetts. His ability soon made Paine a leading citizen in Taunton and his business flourished.

In 1766, at the age of 35, Paine’s mind turned to romance, and he began courting twenty-two-year-old Sally Cobb. Four years later, the couple was married at the Cobb family house called “the Chapel” in Attleborough, Massachusetts. Robert and Sally had eight children and, surprisingly for the times, all survived to adulthood.

By 1768, Paine had gotten actively involved in the patriotic cause. He served as Taunton’s delegate at a colonial conference to discuss the landing of British troops in Boston earlier that year. While Paine took a moderate stance regarding separating from the Mother Country, he recognized that the abuses of the English could not be tolerated.

Two years later, on March 5, 1770, these same troops quarreled with a group of Boston citizens (more of a violent mob if truth be told). The result of this encounter was the so-called Boston Massacre, in which five civilians were killed by the soldiers. Because the District Attorney was sick, Paine was selected to prosecute the soldiers who were charged with murder. The opposing counsel defending the men was John Adams, our future President. Adams won the case, but Paine won wide praise for his efforts.

As relations between the colonies and England grew worse, the First Continental Congress was called in 1774 to try and rectify the situation. Paine was selected to represent Massachusetts at this meeting, and he signed the Olive Branch Petition to King George which asked the King to be more reasonable to his American subjects. This request fell on deaf ears.

In 1775, after Lexington and Concord, colonial leaders assembled once more in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress. Paine was chosen again by Massachusetts to represent their interests. He took an active role in the debates and chaired a committee tasked with the logistics of supplying the Continental Army.

Paine proudly signed his name to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He wrote to his friend Joseph Palmer, “the issue is joined; and it is our comfortable reflection, that if by struggling we can avoid the servile subjection which Britain demanded, we remain a free and happy people.”

Returning home, Paine participated in many civic affairs. In 1777, he was named as Massachusetts’ first Attorney General, a position he held until 1790. Paine also served as an Associate Justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1790 to his retirement in 1804. He died on May 11, 1814 at the age of 83.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should Robert Treat Paine and what he did for America matter to us today?

By all accounts, Robert Treat Paine was a fine upstanding citizen who contributed to the greater good in his community. He was a good family man, and he had a deep-seated Christian faith. Although he spent most of his life in private pursuits, when his country needed him, Paine answered the call.

Despite having a lucrative law practice, he sacrificed his own work to help in the American cause at both the First and Second Continental Congress. Like so many forgotten Patriots, Paine quietly participated in the shaping of our new nation. We will always owe a debt of gratitude to these unsung heroes.

SUGGESTED READING: An excellent book on our war for independence is Robert Middlekauff’s “The Glorious Revolution; The American Revolution, 1763-1789.” Written in 2007, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and is very readable.

PLACES TO VISIT: Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, where the First Continental Congress met, is a great place to visit. Located in Independence National Historical Park, it is just a stone’s throw away from Independence Hall. It is a smaller, but beautiful building and worth a visit.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 37 – Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

If Americans know of John Adams at all, it is probably somewhat vaguely as a long-ago President. Adams’s tenures as Vice-President and President are not generally regarded among the memorable in American history. He was not charismatic, physically imposing, or politically adept. In seeming contrast to his Puritan roots, he also was rather vain. As a result, he did not come easily by loyal friends in the political world.

As Vice-President, he is probably best known for his efforts to devise titles for the President and others along the lines he had seen during his residence in the Dutch Republic, where top government officials were addressed as “His Highmightiness.” He proposed that the President be called some version of “His Excellency” or “His Majesty.” A Senate committee went further, reporting a proposal that the President should be addressed as “His Highness the President of the United States of America and the Protector of the Rights of the Same.” James Madison and many others raised objections about the monarchical tone, and, fortunately, the House refused to approve. For his diligent efforts in this matter, Adams was the target of many jocular “titles.” Senator Ralph Izard of South Carolina referred to the short, plump Adams as “His Rotundity,” and that biting remark stuck.

Despite some policy successes, including the build-up of the Navy, Adams’ single term as President was marked by foreign relations turmoil, such as the naval war with France, and domestic missteps, such as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Adams saw the office as a chore, and avoided his duties at a rate higher than any other occupant of the office. Samuel Eliot Morison relates that, in four years, Adams stayed away for 385 days, returning to his farm in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The Adams’ sojourns at their farm reflected a deep connection to their New England roots. In the 1770s and 1780s, there was probably no single American who was as influential in the overall development of revolutionary and constitutional theory as John Adams. His thoughts often reflected an enlightened Puritanism. During the Revolutionary War, Adams was a diligent and successful administrator. He was an ally and confidant of General George Washington, although, typical of the lack of mutual understanding among the elites from different colonies, Adams did not trust Washington unreservedly. Several times during and after the War, he was selected to undertake important diplomatic tasks. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, Adams was “always honest, often great, sometimes mad.”

Adams was an attorney. He had already made a name for himself, but still took a great professional risk, when he and two other attorneys defended a British officer and eight soldiers accused of murder in the “Boston Massacre” of March 5, 1770. After numerous provocations, and in fear of their safety, the soldiers had fired on a violent mob of colonials, five of whom were killed. The officer was tried for murder seven months later, the soldiers a couple of months after that. All were acquitted of the capital murder charges, although two soldiers were convicted of manslaughter. The trial produced one of Adams’ well-known quotations, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Adams’ stature as a member of the radical faction against the British helped him, as well as the soldiers, with the jury. So did his family connections. His cousin Samuel Adams was of similarly militant inclination against the British. Both cousins were trained in classical history and political theory. Both were skilled debaters, though neither was a particularly compelling oralist. But John was the more intellectual “office” type, while cousin Sam was the more hands-on troublemaker. John wrote resolves, treatises, and constitutions, while Sam focused on organizing protests and riots, writing proclamations, and distributing outlandish propaganda.

John Adams had become involved in the political struggle that would culminate in American independence, during the controversy over the writs of assistance that the British used to combat smugglers who sought to avoid the Sugar Act import duties. Writs of assistance were general search warrants whose open-ended nature the colonials saw as violations of their rights as Englishmen. James Otis, Jr., was hired to challenge these writs in Paxton’s Case in 1761.

Otis gave a long and forceful argument that the act authorizing these writs was void, because, “An act against the Constitution is void; an act against natural equity is void.” This was a novel assertion in English law. It challenged the supremacy of Parliament, and, contrary to long-established English constitutional custom, suggested that the courts could refuse to apply such an act to controversies before them. Otis lost his case. Still, his argument provided the germ for the gradual development of basic principles of American constitutional law about the relationship between constitutions and ordinary laws, and about the role of an independent judiciary. As to the writs of assistance, five years later, the British attorney general agreed with Otis about their invalidity. Today, they are prohibited under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Adams was well-acquainted with Otis and was in the audience at the trial. He was much impressed with the argument, which clearly influenced his later views of balanced government and his drafting of the Massachusetts constitution. Adams also promoted Otis as a leading patriot voice. Both joined in their opposition to the next issue, Parliament passing the Revenue Act of 1764. The colonial assemblies objected that such involuntary taxes were invalid, a sentiment that eventually was captured in the slogan coined by Otis, “No taxation without representation is tyranny.”

In the disputes leading to the Declaration of Independence, Adams emerged as a prominent political theorist for the cause. His work Novanglus, of February 6, 1775, rejected Parliament’s control over the colonies. Adams instead claimed that the colonies and Great Britain were separate states, united only through the person of the king in a dominion status similar to that of England and Scotland. Based on the American theory of representation, and the practical obstacles to American representation in Parliament, such as physical distance, the colonial assemblies governed the colonies, while Parliament governed Great Britain. In an apparent contradiction to this argument, he did allow that Parliament could be in charge of foreign policy and trade, but analogized this to a commercial treaty approved by the Americans explicitly or by custom, rather than an inherent power.

An important part of Adams’s theory in the Novanglus essay was that the colonies, separately and in union, had their own constitutions that were not subject to alteration by Parliament. There appeared the influence of Otis’ earlier arguments that distinguished between Parliament’s legislative powers and constitutional limits thereon. In separate publications, James Wilson and Thomas Jefferson, future signers of the Declaration reached the same conclusions, as well. All rejected the “empire theory,” under which Parliament exercised control over all parts. These three were part of the “radicals” who also opposed the First Continental Congress’ Declaration of Rights and Grievances adopted on October 14, 1774. Congress there had accepted Parliament’s inherent power over the colonies’ external commerce, while rejecting that body’s authority over other matters, such as revenue. Adams adamantly rejected the moderate federal structure that the Congress’ Declaration of Rights embraced. Instead, as he wrote in Novanglus, “I agree, that ‘two supreme and independent authorities cannot exist in the same state,’ any more than two supreme beings in one universe; And, therefore, I contend, that our provincial legislatures are the only supreme authorities in our colonies.”

As the drive to revolution became unstoppable, and the Second Continental Congress declared the colonial charters void, Adams wrote a letter to George Wythe of Virginia, which provided a written plan of government to be considered by that state. The letter eventually was published by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia as Thoughts on Government, and its influence on the Virginia convention’s work was evident to Adams’ contemporaries, and to Adams himself. As he wrote to James Warren, on June 16, 1776, “But I am amazed to find an Inclination So prevalent throughout all the southern and middle Colonies to adopt Plans, so nearly resembling, that in the Thoughts on Government.”

At the same time, the Second Continental Congress appointed Adams to the committee to propose a declaration of independence. The initial drafting task fell to his friend and future political rival, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson proposed that Adams write the declaration, but Adams demurred. It is said that Adams justified his refusal by telling Jefferson, “Reason first: You are a Virginian and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third: You can write ten times better than I can.”

With the war under way, Adams continued to serve in the Continental Congress. He, along with Benjamin Franklin and Edward Rutledge, composed a delegation sent to discuss a political accommodation with the British after a disastrous American military defeat on Long Island. The conference was requested by Admiral Lord Richard Howe, the supreme commander of British forces in North America, and his brother General William Howe, the commander-in-chief of the British land forces. The Howe brothers were Whigs and not unsympathetic to the American cause. Nevertheless, nothing came of the conference, and, as loyal officers of the king, the Howes turned to their job of settling the matter militarily.

The condition of the American army was deplorable, from a dearth of supplies and a lack of training and discipline. Adams was appointed head of the Board of War, the analog to the Secretary of Defense today. He immediately pressed Congress to accede to General Washington’s requests to maintain the army. Adams proposed that an enlistee who joined for the duration of the war be given $20 plus 100 acres land. To maintain discipline, punishments for various offenses were raised. For example, drunkenness on duty became punishable by 100 lashes instead of 39. The number of crimes subject to the death penalty was increased, as well. However, these Articles of War, written by Adams and based on their British counterpart, also provided proper procedures for the accused. Finally, Adams proposed creation of a military academy for better military training for officers, but nothing came of that until after the war.

Adams initially opposed alliance with France, but the desperate state of the American quest for independence eventually caused him to change his mind. As the war wound to a successful conclusion, Adams arrived in Paris as part of the five-member American delegation. Because several members, including Adams, distrusted the French diplomats, the Americans on November 30, 1782, made a separate preliminary treaty with Great Britain. It took nearly a year for the French and British to agree to their own terms, and peace was finally achieved on September 3, 1783.

Adams, who was an Anglophile by family roots and political philosophy, quickly wished to reestablish close commercial and diplomatic ties with Great Britain after the war. He became the first American minister to London in 1785. When he was received by George III, he hoped that “the old good nature and the old good humor” between the two countries would be rekindled. The king was willing, but the government was not. Efforts to enter a commercial treaty failed, due in part to the weakness of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation. The foreign department dismissively suggested that the states send delegations, instead. Adams left the post in 1788, frustrated and disappointed.

In addition to his numerous administrative and diplomatic duties, Adams continued to lead on another political issue, that of drafting constitutions and developing theoretical foundations for them. His principal success was the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. The people of the state had rejected a constitution proposed by the legislature in 1778. Like other “first wave” state constitutions of the 1770s, that version had mixed different powers, vested primary power in the legislature, and contained no bill of rights.

Adams, like most of the era’s contributors to American constitutional developments, had read the classic ancient political writers, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius, as well as more recent ones, such as Locke and Montesquieu. In their original languages. Adams, cousin Sam Adams, and James Bowdoin were selected by the Massachusetts convention in 1779 to draft a constitution to be submitted to the people. The two other members left the task to Adams.

The completed work, The Report of a Constitution, provided several cornerstones for future American constitutionalism. He proposed a government whose structure was more balanced among three independent branches than the legislature-centric state constitutions rushed out by the state legislatures during the drive to independence in the mid-1770s. Indeed, Article XXX of the Declaration of the Rights in Adams’s constitution offered an almost cartoonish version of an unyielding separation of powers. The Declaration also enumerated a long list of rights the legislature was prohibited from infringing. Finally, influenced by The Essex Result, a petition written by Theophilus Parsons against the proposed constitution of 1778, this new constitution was produced by a convention selected solely for that purpose, rather than by a legislative committee. Moreover, it was approved by town meetings, rather than by the legislature itself. This distinction between the function and status of ordinary legislatures and constitutional conventions became a critical catalyst in the development of American constitutional theory going forward and in the emergence of the judiciary’s power of constitutional review.

Adams’s creation influenced the next wave of state constitutions, as well as the drafters of the United States Constitution in 1787. Though substantially amended since then, the Massachusetts constitution is the oldest still in effect today.

The final work of Adams about constitutions, and perhaps his most comprehensive, was A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, written in three volumes over the course of a little more than a year beginning in 1786. It was a response to criticism by Baron Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, a French government official, of the emerging systems of separation of powers in the American state constitutions. Turgot and others dismissed those constitutions as just the British structure with a republican gloss. Governors who were independent of the legislatures mimicked the king, and bicameral legislatures the British Parliament, with the senates taking the role of the House of Lords. The criticism stung, as Adams himself had drafted such a “mixed government” for Massachusetts.

Defence takes the form of a series of letters as if written by a traveler around Europe. At the time, Adams was the American minister to the English court. His focus became writing, his diplomatic obligations taking a subsidiary role. Summoning his vast knowledge of history and political theory acquired through diligent research, he examined numerous republican constitutions from antiquity forwards. He aimed to expose the weaknesses of the democratic structures and “pure” systems of government favored by Turgot. History, the record of human experience, not ideology, was the sole reliable guide for Adams. Only balanced governments had survived the test of time, a lesson applied to the young American republics.

Like Aristotle and Polybius, Adams feared that pure forms, especially democracies, were unstable and inevitably led to tyranny, because of man’s lust for power due to his fallen nature. Classic republics fared little better, because they, too, relied on human virtue to sustain them. Adams doubted that Americans possessed sufficient virtue, though strong government direction through support of religion and morality might have a positive influence. In early 1776, he wrote that there was “so much Venality and Corruption, so much Avarice and Ambition, such a Rage for Profit and Commerce among all Ranks and Degrees of Men even in America” that put in question whether Americans had “public Virtue enough to support a Republic.” In contrast, much later he would say “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In between, his defense of the American state constitutions was founded on the practical recognition that virtue is not enough to ensure liberty.

Adams was not at the Philadelphia convention, but the first volume of Defence was well-known to many of the participants. Though Adams was criticized by some for what they saw as an abandonment of militant republicanism, the framers of the Constitution adopted a similar system. The “mixed government” of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1787 became the system of “checks and balances” of the United States Constitution which would augment reliance on the people’s virtue in sustaining liberty. As Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 51, to preserve liberty while allowing government to function, “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 36 – Guest Essayist: Jeanne McKinney

Samuel Adams believed that his ancestors’ voyage to America was rewarded by creating a society that “enjoyed more freedoms than anywhere in England,” writes Mark Puls in his biography of Samuel Adams. His family and other colonists lived under the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, a contract with the king that afforded them opportunities to pass laws and levy their own taxes. However, there was a tradeoff. The charter of 1691 turned Massachusetts, already relatively independent and autonomous, into a royal colony. William III was then the king of Britain and appointed his own governor and chief justice of the court, and the governor could veto legislation.

Adams was, at first, happy they lived with the same English liberties yet added privileges. Yet, when Britain began to expand their ruling hand, things changed. Adams became dissatisfied, resolutely opposed to British intervention and limits in their lives.

“Much of the credit for the Revolutionary stance of Bostonians belongs to Sam Adams and a group that came to be known as his ‘Sons of Liberty’ (or the ‘Boston Mob’ as some called them).” Boston in the 1760s was a hotbed of radical activism and violent protest against British colonial policy.

Adams was born on September 16, 1722 in Boston to his mother Mary Fifield and his father Samuel Adams Sr. He was the third child of twelve (only three lived past third birthdays). Samuel the younger cherished the stories of his Puritan ancestors who bore the difficult transatlantic journey to come to an untamed land seeking a better life.

Samuel Sr. and Mary raised their family in a house on Purchase Street, the church being the center of their universe. His father, a hard-working and successful malt shop brewery merchant, became a deacon. As a child Samuel was “unusually obedient” influenced by the religious piety and study of his mother and older sister who bore the same names. Deacon Adams, like any parent, wanted his children to have what he did not have.

Samuel first attended Boston Latin School, a feeder school for Harvard. Speaking Latin was a sign of refinement that set one apart in the blue-collar colonist society. He first considered ministry and in 1736, at 14 years age, entered Harvard to study theology. The prominent members of Boston society were merchants and ministers.

Samuel Fallows who wrote a book about Samuel Adams in 1903 said this,

“All the years have voices for them that will hear; and even the simple annals of the common place events have in them the heart of epic possibilities.”

Sam Adams was fascinated listening to his father, whose esteemed voice gained merit in political circles. Deacon Adams was a select member of the colonial legislature and political organizer. Leading men in Boston met at the Purchase Street home to seek advice while he helped form a popular party to offset the Loyalists. Younger Adams’ father was against Britain extending crown privileges, concerned the colonists would lose their rights.

Deacon Adam’s disputes intrigued his son. Intrigue turned to resentment when Jonathan Belcher, Royal governor and member of the Tory party, used his influence to put an end to the Land bank Deacon Adams started. It was hard times and many were poor and needed cash to invest in their farms, shops, businesses. Mechanics were desperate for tools and equipment and traders needed stock. The Land bank issued paper money replacing barter for trade.

Elitist Tory merchants and officials tied to Belcher formed a rival bank backed with silver deposits. They banned any member of the Land bank from using their offerings and removed Adams Sr. from his posts as a justice and soldier. Parliament issued an act to dissolve the Land bank in 1741. They applied a 1719 law “that held directors personally responsible for losses and cited another all-but-forgotten statute extending legislation in England to the colonies,” writes Puls. Despite protesting the act as “unconstitutional,” this threw the family into years-long legal battles and contentious efforts to hang on to the Adams estate that Adams Jr. would inherit.

The writings of John Locke enamored Adams. Locke maintained men and women were entitled to “life, liberty and property.” Also believing ‘government’ was bound to protect these rights. While at Harvard, he staged political debates, developing persuasive skills. He was unsettled on a career and his parents could not convince him to pursue a career in the ministry. Adams Jr. grew dislike for authority of any kind. He was independent in his convictions and motives.

He, with some friends, threw himself into a paper called the “Public Advertiser” publishing editorials and commentary from a Whig perspective. His first article argued that “[Loyalty] is founded in the love and possession of liberty.” Adams believed that allegiance should be given to laws not government leaders. He would become, along with John Hancock, Doctor Joseph Warren, and Doctor Benjamin Church the four leaders of the Boston Whigs. The key principles of the Whig party were to defend the people against tyranny and to advance human progress. In modern times, Americans began calling the Whigs “patriots” because of their immense love for America.

The trajectory of Sam Adams.

Sam Adams was financially dependent on his father, unlike his successful cousin John Adams, an attorney of stature. John would gain much notoriety defending the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre and winning a brilliantly-executed case using a jury of his own countrymen. Although cousins, the Adams’ were destined to become epic voices in the Revolution – they were very different in looks and approaches standing up to Britain. John was about the law and Sam was about protecting rights and property. John would join his cousin in the resistance when it was clearly evident one must accept the king’s laws, taxes and deteriorating rights. To oppose in open rebellion was a signal for great alarm. A future declaration from King George III promised any treasonous rebels death by hanging.

When Deacon Adams died in March 1748, son Samuel was lost and unstable having depended on his father for advice and money. This son of a maltster had no direction and now had to run the inherited brewery, plus manage the challenges of family and the fights to preserve their property. He developed a fondness for Elizabeth Checkley, the daughter of an esteemed pastor of the Old Congregational Church, and married her in October, 1749. Elizabeth gave birth to five children, but three did not live past infancy forcing a repeated cycle of grief. It was uncertain times as Adams embraced a lead in sowing the seeds of Boston’s unrest.

Adams continued to write articles about colonial rights diving deep into civic affairs by 1761. His concerns over property rights rapidly fueled his opposition to British imperial policies, thus turning him into “a fiery radical and rabble-rouser. He organized political opposition to the British in the Massachusetts colonial assembly and soon became the colony’s most effective Revolutionary propagandist.”

Although Adams suffered from a congenital palsy that made his lips and hands tremble, he was physically strong as an oak and “Every beat of his heart was for the liberties of his people.”

The core of resistance: British imperial policy and law.

Adams was against Britain sticking their noses deep into their lives. He knew as an elected tax collector from 1756-1764 the financial struggles that beset the people. His humanity got in the way of doing his job and a large sum of arrearages accumulated. The Tories turned this into an accusation against Adam’s honesty. Adams would go from an inefficient tax gatherer to become a leading patriot.

The Seven Years’ War from 1756-1763 (known as the French and Indian War in America) left England with enormous debt and defense burdens after gaining possession of French America and all India. The king tried to recover the losses from the labors of colonists. British Prime Minister Sir George Grenville set out to collect on the trade between America and the French West Indies.

The trade (that became smuggling) was essential for the colonists. Parliament demanded that all commerce be put through English hands. Officers of customs had authority to search houses of persons suspected of ‘smuggling.’ The people were outraged at the brash intrusion.

The Sugar Act was a tax imposed on the colonies in April 1764. It required the colonies to pay a tax to the crown for the importation of a variety of goods, primarily sugar. The tax schemes would go from sugar to royal stamps.

On the 24th of May of the same year, Adams submitted a paper to a town meeting of Boston which was “the first public denial of the right of Parliament to put the ‘Stamp Act scheme’ into effect,” writes Fallows.

Despite opposition, Great Britain imposed the Stamp Act in 1765. This was an outlandish attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation of all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets, cards, almanacs, and dice. These documents had to be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. Among the Stamp Act’s provisions was the charge of two pounds sterling for a college diploma. The tax had to be paid in British currency, not in colonial paper money.

On May 29, 1765, Patrick Henry made one of his famous speeches before the Virginia House of Burgesses to encourage the passage of the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions. Henry said, “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III… Henry was interrupted by cries from the opposition to which he replied, “If this be treason, make the most of it.” He later offered a semi-apology. Fallows writes the utterances of Henry were like the blasts of a trumpet sounding the approaching Revolution.

James Otis, Advocate – general (official advisor) to the government took up with the colonists.

Adams took notes when he delivered a five-hour speech during which Otis voiced the infamous cry of “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”

The colonists effectively nullified the Stamp Act by refusing to use the stamps. Riots, stamp burning, and intimidation of colonial stamp distributors took place. The Sons of Liberty formed in the summer of 1765 under the direct command of Adams. He called the ‘mob’ out whenever he determined that a protest was needed against British action. Adam’s Sons of Liberty destroyed the stamps wherever they encountered them. They tarred and feathered stamp agents, sacked homes and warehouses of the wealthy. Colonists passionately upheld their ‘Englishmen’ rights to be taxed only by their own consent through their own representative assemblies. For a century and a half prior, this was the practice.

The welcome news of the repeal of the Stamp act reached Boston on May 16th, 1766. Guns were continuously fired; blazing bonfires were kindled. Church bells poured out joyful peals. Yet Adams did not share in the celebration of Bostonians. To him there was a sting in the repeal. For in it – the Declaratory Act was contained giving Parliament the authority “to bind the Colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever.”

Though British statesmen Pitt and Pratt first gained the love of the colonists for denouncing the Stamp Act, they made a distinction between taxation and litigation, saying “while Parliament could not tax it could legislate.” Adams knew that a brood of “obnoxious measures” were coming to rouse the colonies to open revolt.

Adams held firm the colonists owed no allegiance to Parliament.

He would continue to oppose British measures to suppress the colonists. In May 1766, Sam Adams, Thomas Cushing, James Otis and a wealthy influential merchant named John Hancock were elected as Massachusetts’ representatives, destined to play a vital role in the coming severance of the colonies from the Mother country.

In March 1770, patriot blood was shed in the Boston Massacre. Sam Adams issued a threat to Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson that it was at his own peril if he refused to remove the British regiments from the city.

The Tea Act passed by Parliament in 1773 gave the British East India Tea Company a monopoly on tea sales in America. Sam Adams played a vital role in organizing the Boston Tea Party.

“Samuel Adams was the patient, persevering, ever watchful leader. His conspicuous ability in drafting documents became more and more apparent, and not a paper of any note was put forth which was not written by his pen,” writes Fallows in his book, coining history as ‘romantic, mysterious, inviting the imagination.’

“Better tidings will soon arrive. Our cause is just and righteous and we shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we show ourselves worthy of its aid and protection.” – Samuel Adams while encouraging wavering Continental Convention delegates in the gloomy winter of 1776-1777.

Among his accomplishments, he founded Boston’s Committee of Correspondence, which – like similar entities in other towns across the Colonies – proved a powerful tool for communication and coordination during the American Revolutionary War.

At first it was liberty within the laws of England for which Samuel Adams strove and that harmony be cultivated between Great Britain and the Colonies. But his views changed and he devoted himself body and soul as a firebrand for breaking the link that bound America to England, leading him to support and sign the Declaration of Independence.

Jeanne McKinney is an award-winning writer whose focus and passion is our United States active-duty military members and military news. Her Patriot Profiles offer an inside look at the amazing active-duty men and women in all Armed Services, including U.S. Marine Corps, Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard. Reporting includes first-hand accounts of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight against violent terror groups, global defense, tactical training and readiness, humanitarian and disaster relief assistance, next-generation defense technology, family survival at home, U.S. port and border protection and illegal immigration, women in combat, honoring the Fallen, Wounded Warriors, Military Working Dogs, Crisis Response, and much more. Starting in 2012, McKinney has won multiple San Diego Press Club “Excellence in Journalism Awards,” including eight “First Place” honors, as well as multiple second and third place recognition for her Patriot Profiles published printed articles. Including awards for Patriot Profiles military films. During the year 2020, McKinney has written and published dozens of investigative articles in her ongoing fight to preserve America the Republic, the Constitution, and its laws. One such story was selected for use in a legal brief in the national fight for 2020 election integrity.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Sources:

Father of the American Revolution, Puls, Mark, 2006. (Sam Adams early life)

https://www.reference.com/history/were-whigs-tories-revolutionary-war-f0692d22d7afbf8c

https://patriotshistoryusa.com/teaching-materials/bonus-materials/american-heroes-sam-adams-and-the-sons-of-liberty/

Library of Congress: Fallows, Samuel, 1835-1922.

https://archive.org/details/samueladams00fall/page/26/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/samueladams00fall/page/28/mode/2up

https://www.britannica.com/event/Stamp-Act-Great-Britain-1765

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Resolves

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765

 

Click Here for Next Essay 

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 35 – Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

For a man remembered for his signature, John Hancock was so very much more. He was an early and influential voice for independence. He was a successful businessman and smuggler in Boston. He was a man who possessed a very likeable and strong personality that brought people together from all the colonies at the Second Continental Congress, helping to achieve unity and friendship between the men there. He was simply, one of the key figures in our nation’s birth and early history.

John Hancock’s famous signature on the Declaration of Independence represents his personality. It is fancy and flashy and it is full of pomp. There is a popular myth that Hancock signed it with a large flourish so King George III could read it without glasses; however, the document that he and the other members of Congress signed was to remain in the new nation and not travel to England, so the king would not have ever seen it. Hancock’s signature was the first signature on the signed document. He was serving as President of the Second Continental Congress at the time of the signing and he served in that capacity until 1780.

Hancock was born in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1737. He was also a childhood friend of John Adams, whose family lived nearby. After his father passed away, he was sent to live with his wealthy uncle who ran a very successful shipping business. He was raised as a very privileged young man and learned his uncle’s trade from him. As part of his apprenticeship, John Hancock traveled to London in 1761 and was in attendance for the coronation of King George III, whom he would help to declare independence from in 1776. Hancock’s uncle died in 1764 and John inherited everything from him. He was now instantly a very successful and extremely wealthy businessman at age 27. Hancock was a very vain and yet charitable man. He would give away as much or more of his fortune than he kept to local charities and he was very flamboyant in his dress and stuck out among the population of Boston for his fancy clothes and style. He was also involved in several committees and was active in every part of Boston’s activities.

Hancock became involved in the events in Boston that would ultimately lead to the Declaration of Independence in the 1760s. He was a huge opponent of the Stamp Act and wrote several letters in support of opposing it. The costs of increased taxation caused Hancock to increase smuggling goods into the colonies. Rather than pay the unjust taxes, he would avoid them by bringing in his products illegally. He was arrested for doing so in 1768, when his ship the HMS Liberty was confiscated by British officials in Boston for not paying taxes for the Madeira wine that was on board. Hancock was later found not guilty of smuggling, but his ship was taken from him. The Liberty was later burned in 1769 as a protest of these actions. This was one of the first violent reactions against King George III and his policies toward the colonies.

The taxation policies toward the colonies kept producing more anger in them. The anger led to protests and boycotts and eventually violence, culminating in the Boston Massacre of 1770 when five colonists were killed at the hands of British soldiers who were being harassed by them. Hancock hated the violence that began to erupt in 1770 with the Boston Massacre, but he understood that British policies were unfair to the rights of the colonists and needed to be changed.

Hancock eventually became public enemy number one to British General Thomas Gage, who was the commander of British forces in the colonies in 1774-75. Gage felt that John Hancock and Sam Adams were the two principal factors in bringing the rebellion to Massachusetts and the colonies. They were to be killed as soon as a rebellion started. In fact, there was a point that General Gage decided that if any colonist denounced their previous rebellious activity, they would be pardoned. The only two who would not be, were Sam Adams and John Hancock! Their lives were in danger constantly and bounties were placed on their heads. The British army also just did not want to merely shoot them, as that was too quick of a death. The British wanted them to hang so they would suffer more.

Hancock and Sam Adams were also part of the reason that the British soldiers marched toward Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Hancock and Adams were staying in Lexington that night and were alerted by Paul Revere that the British army was on the way to capture them. Hancock wanted to fight the British at Lexington when they arrived, but Sam Adams convinced him that it was not their place to do so and that their duty was in government. Later on, that morning, the two men escaped. Hancock would later spend his own money to help fund the Continental Army in 1775 and throughout the war. He took his generous nature and applied it to the entire nation.

John Hancock passed away in 1793, while serving as the governor of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts. His funeral was a huge event in Boston as one of their Sons of Liberty had passed. Church bells tolled, businesses closed out of respect to him and he was laid to rest in Boston as one of the main voices of independence and an enduring legacy as one of our key Founding Fathers. He once said, “I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice. But I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.” His most public display of these words was his signature on the Declaration of Independence.

Val Crofts serves as Chief Education and Programs Officer at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. Val previously taught high school U.S. History, U.S. Military History and AP U.S. Government for 19 years in Wisconsin, and was recipient of the DAR Outstanding U.S. History Teacher of the Year for the state of Wisconsin in 2019-20. Val also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School as a social studies teacher for 9 years. He is also a proud member of the United States Semiquincentennial Commission (America 250), which is currently planning events to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 34 – Guest Essayist: Tom Hand

Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire was a man who excelled in all that he did, as a physician and surgeon, in the New Hampshire legislature, and as a judge. We are also indebted to Thornton for his efforts to help America gain her independence from England, including his signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This accomplished patriot was born in Lisburn, County Antrim, Ireland on March 3, 1714 to James and Elizabeth Thornton, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian farmers. Interestingly, Matthew was one of three signers of the Declaration of Independence born in Ireland, James Smith and George Taylor, both of Pennsylvania, being the other two.

In 1717, when Matthew was three years old, James emigrated his family to America in the present-day state of Maine. There, in 1722, Matthew’s young life almost ended when Indians attacked their settlement and the family had to flee in a canoe. Having enough of the wilderness, James moved his family to Worcester, Massachusetts.

It was here, at the Worcester Academy, that Matthew received his classical education. He did well in his studies and decided to pursue a life in medicine. While continuing to help his father on their farm, Thornton began his medical studies in nearby Leicester under the direction of Doctor Grout, a relative of the family.

At the young age of 26, Thornton moved to Londonderry, New Hampshire and set up a medical practice as both a physician and surgeon. His hard work and ability soon gained him an excellent reputation and his business flourished.

In 1745, he was appointed as a surgeon in the New Hampshire militia to accompany an expedition to capture Louisbourg, a French fortress in Nova Scotia. Under Thornton’s care only six men died of disease on this mission, a remarkably low number for that time period, and he was praised by his superiors.

For the next decade or so, Thornton applied himself to his medical practice in New Hampshire. By the mid-1750s, he was becoming more prominent in the community and began to think of life outside his work.

In 1758, Thornton’s life in public affairs began when he was elected as a delegate of Londonderry to the colonial assembly. Two years later, at the age of 46, he enhanced his personal life when he married 18-year-old Hannah Jack, a great beauty from Chester, New Hampshire. They had five children together, three boys and two girls.

As relations between England and America grew strained in the 1760s, Thornton was a vocal opponent of several British policies, including the Stamp Act of 1765. In 1775, following the fight at Lexington and Concord, New Hampshire’s Royal Governor, John Wentworth, fled the colony and Thornton was elected President of the Provincial Congress.

He soon was selected to lead a committee to draft a constitution for New Hampshire and their proposal was adopted by the legislature on January 5, 1776. Importantly, New Hampshire’s constitution was the first one adopted by any of the thirteen colonies. Thornton was then elected to be Speaker of the new state legislature.

In September of that year, Thornton was selected as a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was officially seated on November 4, 1776 and signed the engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence (the formal document on parchment paper), making Thornton one of six men who signed the document after the initial signing date of August 2.

Interestingly, the order of the signatures on the Declaration of Independence was determined by the location of each state. Specifically, the signers were arranged from the northernmost state, New Hampshire, to the southernmost, Georgia. Because Thornton was a late signer, there was no room for him to sign near the other men from New Hampshire and, consequently, he signed beneath the Connecticut delegation.

Due to health issues arising from a reaction to a smallpox vaccine he received, Thornton resigned from the Continental Congress and returned home to New Hampshire in the spring of 1777. He resumed his duties as an associate justice of the state Superior Court, a position he held until 1782, despite having no law degree. Finally, in 1784, at the age of 70, Thornton was elected to the New Hampshire Senate.

Thornton fully retired from the public eye in 1786 and spent the last years of his remarkable life on a farm he purchased on the banks of the Merrimac River, near Exeter, New Hampshire. There, besides managing his farm, he operated a ferry across the Merrimac.

WHY IT MATTERS: So why should Matthew Thornton and what he did for America matter to us today?

By all accounts, Matthew Thornton was highly regarded by his contemporaries. In fact, his original gravestone was inscribed “An Honest Man.”  Besides being a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thornton was a talented surgeon, served in the Second Continental Congress, was a judge, a Colonel in the militia, and both a state Representative and Senator.

Matthew Thornton spent the greater part of his life serving the public in some capacity. Starting with his time in the New Hampshire militia in 1745 until he retired from the state Senate in 1786, Thornton did what he could to make New Hampshire and his country a better place. A life like that is worth remembering.

SUGGESTED READING: The book Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire is an older book, written in 1903, by Charles Thornton Adams. It can be found on-line and is a nicely written, thorough account of Thornton’s life.

PLACES TO VISIT: The New Hampshire State House in Concord, New Hampshire, is one of the most beautiful state houses in the country. It is built in the Greek Revival style and topped with an incredible golden dome. It is open for tours and well worth a visit.

Until next time, may your motto be “Ducit Amor Patriae,” Love of country leads me.

Tom Hand is creator and publisher of Americana Corner. Tom is a West Point graduate, and serves on the board of trustees for the American Battlefield Trust as well as the National Council for the National Park Foundation. Click Here to Like Tom’s Facebook Page Americana Corner. Click Here to follow Tom’s Instagram Account.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 33 – Guest Essayist: Ron Meier

In 1776, 13 British colonies existed in America. Ask someone about the American Revolutionary era today and some colonies easily come to mind – Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York. The role of some colonies in the Revolution is not as well known.

New Hampshire is one of those less-well-known colonies. Almost everyone will agree that the American Revolution began on the greens of Lexington and Concord in April 1776, when British troops marched from Boston to find and destroy military supplies hidden there. Americans love the story of Paul Revere’s ride to warn the patriots there that “the Regulars are coming.”

Yet, just a few months earlier, in December 1775, Revere took a more perilous ride in deep snow to the New Hampshire coast to alert patriots that British troops and ships were coming to secure British military supplies there that were guarded by only a half-dozen British troops.  Hundreds of patriot militiamen mustered quickly, attacked the supply depot, captured and removed the munitions before a stronger British military contingent could arrive. Thus, New Hampshire citizens, whose state motto is “Live Free or Die,” might argue that the Revolutionary War began there and not in Lexington and Concord.

By the time of Revere’s more famous ride in April 1776, New Hampshire’s militias were as ready for war as those of Massachusetts.  As word spread far and wide of the British march and attack on Lexington and Concord, militiamen of New Hampshire mustered and hurried to support their patriot comrades in Massachusetts. New Hampshire Regiments were formed in May 1775 and in 1776. All or parts of the Regiments fought with distinction in major battles during the war to include the Boston Siege, Saratoga, Quebec, Trenton, among others. They were particularly effective in holding the line at Saratoga which became the major victory of the Northern Campaign.

William Whipple Jr. could not have anticipated his role in the colonies’ revolution and quest for independence. He was born in 1730 to a seagoing family. His father was a sea captain and his mother was the daughter of a distinguished ship-builder. Both families had become wealthy in their sea-related businesses.

Young William attended public schools and, unlike some of the more famous signers of the Declaration of Independence, did not attend college at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Rather, he followed his father to the sea, where ships, including the Whipple’s, often engaged in the profitable Triangle Trade, which delivered commodities from the American colonies and the West Indies to Europe, where the ships were loaded with manufactured goods for delivery to Africa and the American colonies. In Africa, slaves were often brought aboard the ships for delivery to the West Indies and the American colonies.

By the age of 21, young William commanded his own ship. The same year, his father died. While both his mother and father were wealthy from their families’ businesses, William, Jr., became wealthy in his own right as a ship’s Captain. In 1759, at the age of 29, William had amassed a fortune that had enabled him to retire from the sea. He then went into the merchant business with two brothers, where William, with his foreign trade experience on the sea, was able to expand his wealth in that business. Two slave boys worked for the Whipple’s business. One of them, Prince, would remain with William through all that followed.

William married in 1767, at the age of 37, Catherine Moffatt, daughter of a ship Captain. They had only one son, who died in 1773, about a year after his birth.

With the outbreak of the Revolution, William Whipple began his long career as a public servant. In June 1774 he was on a Committee to prevent the landing of tea in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He became a member of the Committee of Safety and was a member of the Provincial Convention held at Exeter.

In 1776, Whipple was sent by New Hampshire as one of its three delegates to the Continental Congress. With his seafaring experience and his family’s ship building experience, he was appointed to the Marine Committee. To run the British Navy’s blockades, the new country would need more ships and experienced ship Captains; Whipple’s background prepared him well for leading that effort. He also served as a superintendent of the commissary and quartermaster departments, attempting to bring efficiency to departments that seemed to have great difficulty supplying General George Washington’s forces with what they needed to fight the war.

Whipple was present in Congress during the drafting and editing of the Declaration of Independence and signed the Declaration, thereby putting his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor at great risk. He remained a member of Congress through 1779.

As the British military strategy evolved and threatened to end the revolution by cutting off New England from the rest of America, Whipple was appointed a General by New Hampshire’s Convention in 1777. He immediately set off for New York where British General John Burgoyne was moving troops south from Canada to isolate New England. He expected that his slave, Prince, would join his Brigade in the fight. But Prince retorted that a slave had no freedom for which to fight. Whipple is said to have immediately informed Prince that he was a free man, whereupon Prince joined his former master and fought the British throughout the war. Legend has it that, in Emanuel Leutze’s famous 1851 painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware, Leutze symbolically identified Prince as the young black soldier sitting in front of Washington on the boat.

At the decisive battle of Saratoga, a significant turning point in the war, General Whipple’s New Hampshire troops fought valiantly and Whipple was appointed by General Horatio Gates to deliver the terms of surrender to General Burgoyne. Whipple was then directed to deliver General Burgoyne to Cambridge where Burgoyne would board a ship bound for England.

General Whipple fought the next year, 1778, with General Sullivan in Rhode Island, where he was almost killed as a British artillery round exploded near him. Having released his own slave, Prince, from bondage, Whipple expressed hope that, as the Revolutionary War moved south, southern slaveholders would also free their slaves, enabling the blessings of liberty in the Declaration that he signed to be accorded to all Americans.

In 1780, General Whipple was elected to the New Hampshire Legislature; in 1782, he was appointed as a Superior Court judge. He had heart problems, which continued to affect his health, leading to his death in 1785 at the age of 55. He is buried with his family, as well as Prince, his former slave, in North Cemetery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran.  He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Ron won Constituting America’s Senior Essay contest in 2014 and is author of Common Sense Rekindled: A Rejuvenation of the American Experiment, featured on Constituting America’s Recommended Reading List.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 32 – Guest Essayist: Tara Ross

Josiah Bartlett was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts, but he studied medicine and began practicing in New Hampshire. He could be a bit unconventional for his time. On several occasions, for instance, he bucked the system of treating certain fevers by bleeding patients. Instead, he used cooling liquids.

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that his methods often worked better than those of his contemporaries? Bartlett’s practice thrived, and he was well-respected in his community.

As tensions with England began to rise, Bartlett was elected to New Hampshire’s legislature. He was serving as a member of that body during the Stamp Act controversy. One early historian notes that the Royal Governor attempted to bribe Bartlett into siding with the Crown, but Bartlett “rejected every overture.”

Indeed, Bartlett would serve the Patriot cause for years. In many ways, Bartlett’s service represents the kind of quiet, behind-the-scenes work that was so critical during our Revolution. These humble jobs don’t make for snazzy stories in history textbooks—yet where would we be without men such as these?

Bartlett was soon a leading member of the local Committee of Safety and a member of the state’s Provincial Congress. He was chosen to represent New Hampshire in the first Continental Congress, but he was prevented from attending when Loyalists burned down his home. Bartlett was chosen as a delegate again in 1775 and in 1776. On the latter occasion, he voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence.

He was the second person to sign that document, immediately after John Hancock.

Bartlett continued to serve the Patriot effort in many ways afterward. He still served in Congress, and he was a member of the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation. He provided medical assistance to New Hampshire troops under General John Stark. These men won an important victory at the Battle of Bennington. Bartlett later became a judge and a Chief Justice on the New Hampshire Superior Court. He served as a delegate to the New Hampshire state ratifying convention as the Constitution was being considered, and he advocated for its adoption. He was later elected as the chief executive of New Hampshire.

When he retired in 1794, he sent a message to the Legislature expressing his “grateful sense of the repeated marks of trust and confidence that my fellow-citizens have reposed in me.”

He died a little over a year later, having spent most of his adult life in public service.

Tara Ross is nationally recognized for her expertise on the Electoral College. She is the author of Why We Need the Electoral College (2019), The Indispensable Electoral College: How the Founders’ Plan Saves Our Country from Mob Rule (2017), We Elect A President: The Story of our Electoral College (2016), and Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College (2d ed. 2012). She is also the author of She Fought Too: Stories of Revolutionary War Heroines (2019), and a co-author of Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State (2008) (with Joseph C. Smith, Jr.). Her Prager University video, Do You Understand the Electoral College?, is Prager’s most-viewed video ever, with more than 60 million views. 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Excerpt originally published in its entirety at: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-josiah-bartlett-signer, used with permission.

Primary Sources:

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 31 – Guest Essayist: Winfield H. Rose

“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately” is commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The moment was not captured and preserved by Movietone News but, whether true or not, that sentence captures the gravity of the action those 56 men took when they signed the document that ended with the words “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Keep in mind that the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, was, in the summer of 1776, considering two closely-related but separate issues. The first was a declaration of independence and the second was the Declaration of Independence. The resolution to declare independence was introduced by Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee on June 7 and was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. Its first and most important paragraph reads as follows: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

The resolution was the subject of “intense debate” until June 10th, after which the delegates decided to delay the final vote “for 20 days, until July 1, to allow delegates from the middle colonies time to send for new instructions.” (McCullough, 118-119)

Interestingly, Congress did not wait for the adoption of Lee’s resolution to appoint a committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. It appointed such a committee immediately. Known as the “Committee of Five,” it consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston. Notice the word is “draft,” not “write,” clearly meaning the product would be subject to review and editing by Congress.

It was clear from the start that Jefferson would be the principal author, but how that decision was made is not clear. David McCullough, in his 2001 biography of Adams, says Jefferson offered the job to Adams but Adams declined for several reasons (pp. 119-120). Jefferson was from Virginia, was younger (33 v. 40) and possessed, as Adams said, a “peculiar felicity of expression.” That said, it can be asked why Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee, the author of the independence resolution, was not placed on the committee and then asked to chair it. The answer seems to be that Lee was a man of the spoken word whereas Jefferson was a man of the written word. When president, Jefferson discontinued delivering State of the Union addresses in person and it was not done again until Woodrow Wilson resumed the practice. Jefferson’s writing ability was well-known.  To borrow a phrase, it seems to have been a “self-evident truth” that Jefferson was the man for the job, and history affirms his choice.

Jefferson worked quickly, without access to his library, and produced a draft in about three weeks. The Franklin Institute website says that “Benjamin Franklin primarily served as the editor of the Declaration of Independence. His changes were believed to have been minimal, but, when the document went before the entire Continental Congress, the draft was more thoroughly changed by the larger body from Jefferson’s original text. The final document was passed on July 2, 1776 and ratified on July 4, 1776.”

While true, the above statement does not do justice to Franklin’s contribution. As the elder statesman not only of the committee but also of the Congress itself, Franklin knew and had helped make the history of the pre-revolutionary period. He had, for example, spent some 15 years in London, working with Edmund Burke, trying to explain to the British how their policies toward their North American colonies were driving them to independence. Thus, Franklin knew the truth of the grievances Jefferson listed in the document and, when he affixed his signature to it, it carried much weight.

The contributions of the other members of the committee do not seem to be many or significant. When finished, Jefferson gave copies to Franklin and Adams and asked for their input. They made “two or three” minor corrections in their own handwriting, whereupon Jefferson prepared a new draft and sent it to Congress. Two points should be noted here: (1) the Declaration’s climactic words in the first sentence of its final paragraph are lifted verbatim from Lee’s resolution: “ . . .  that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved; . . . ” and (2) Jefferson did not make copies for committee members Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman.  

At this point it was not clear that the work of the Committee of Five would amount to anything because the Lee resolution declaring independence remained unpassed. Without its adoption, the wording of the Declaration of Independence would not matter. Pursuant to its June 10, 1776 decision, Congress resumed debate on Lee’s resolution July 1. Delegate John Dickinson of Pennsylvania spoke against it, arguing that the risks and costs of independence were not justified. When he finished, there was no applause. (McCullough, p. 126)

Adams knew the burden of history lay on his shoulders and his response truly made him one of our great Founding Fathers. To quote McCullough, “No transcription was made. . . . That it was the most powerful and important speech heard in the Congress since it first convened, and the greatest speech of Adams’s life, there is no question. To Jefferson, Adams was ‘not graceful nor elegant, nor remarkably fluent,’ but spoke ‘with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats.’ ” (p. 127)

A vote was taken and the measure passed, but not decisively. They decided to postpone the final vote until the next day to allow time for more “politicking.” On July 2 the measure was adopted with twelve states voting “yes” and one (New York) abstaining. McCullough concludes that, “It was John Adams, more than anyone [else], who had made it happen.” (p. 129)

Speaking of New York, Robert R. Livingston, a member of Congress from that state, did not support the Lee resolution but abstained rather than vote against it. There is no evidence that he participated in or made any contributions to the Committee of Five, and he did not sign the Declaration of Independence after its adoption. He did, however, later support the ratification of the Constitution and served as Minister to France under President Jefferson during which time he played a significant role in the purchase of Louisiana.

Neither is there any evidence that committee member Roger Sherman of Connecticut participated in or made any contribution to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, but he did vote for it and sign it. His great service came later when he served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and proposed what is known as the Great Compromise or Connecticut Compromise on the character and composition of Congress.

When we have our annual July 4 celebrations, we do not think of the events of July 4, 1776 as anticlimactic, foregone conclusions, but they were. The big day was July 2 when Congress adopted both Lee’s declaration of independence and Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

Joined by Washington, Hamilton, Pulaski, von Steuben, Lafayette and others in the long effort to achieve rather than simply declare independence, these men became a marked band of brothers trying to create “the first new nation.” (Seymour Lipset) Success was far from certain. Yes, they were fighting for their homeland on their homeland, but the 13 colonies were a large and diverse territory with different histories and interests and were not accustomed to thinking of a single, common good.

Granted, the Atlantic Ocean protected the colonies and was an obstacle the British had to overcome, but Britain was the world’s great superpower at the time and its navy was well equipped for the challenge.

The mother country took its colonial empire in North America very seriously. That empire was making it rich and powerful, and it would not relinquish its colonies without a fight. How serious it was is borne out by what it did in the 19th century when it went on to assemble the largest noncontiguous empire the world has ever seen.

This band of colonial brothers (Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, 2000) knew the task that lay ahead would be hard and bitter. Did they rely on the protection of Divine Providence? If we can believe what they said, they did. The last paragraph of the Declaration begins with the words, “We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; . . .”

Also consider Franklin’s plea at the Constitutional Convention in the same room 11 years later when he said,

“In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance?

I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that ‘except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.”

These beautiful words are beyond improvement. Notice Franklin used the word “truth.” We should take him at his word. If not all born again themselves, that these early patriots were imbued with Judeo-Christian values is supported not only by Ellis, cited above, but also by Donald Lutz in his The Origins of American Constitutionalism (1988) and by Dreisbach et al in The Founders on God and Government (2004).

What would have happened to our patriot forefathers if they had lost the war for independence? It would not have been pretty. Franklin’s prediction most likely would have come true. If not, the difference would have been that they were summarily lined up and shot rather than hanged.   It is very doubtful that Cornwallis would have been as magnanimous with Washington as Washington was with him or that the British would have bothered with the legal niceties required by trials. Thus, they did lay their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor on the line. Thanks be to God!

Winfield H. Rose, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Murray State University.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 30 – Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

As we reach the end of the Declaration of Independence, we see in this section that the Framers have ended the document with great care to show who they were and what this new nation was going to be. The Second Continental Congress placed many of Richard Henry Lee’s words and ideas from his resolution of independence from June 7, 1776 in this section of the Declaration during the editing portion of the document. The words that Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed were the start of our independence process and the nation that emerged from that process. The process of the Declaration began with Lee’s resolution and ended with his words included in this final paragraph.

The United States was created in this document and the members of the Second Continental Congress tell us how serious they were in creating it, as well as telling the World how they would defend it for themselves and future generations of Americans. The United States is now its own nation and can conduct itself accordingly. The signers are also letting the world know they acted with the best intentions and they appeal to God for the final verdict on those intentions. They end this conclusion of text by stating that they fully understand that if they do not succeed, they will be charged with treason and executed. They were willing to give everything so that our new nation had a chance at survival. They are giving a well thought out legal argument and an exclamation point to the end of the Declaration. Eventually, 56 delegates will sign their name to it, creating the document that we see today at the National Archives.

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare…”

Here the 56 members of Congress will declare their independence to the World and they will state than mankind will not be the final judge of their revolutionary actions, but the Supreme Judge of the world will judge their actions, the Revolutionary War, their intentions and the righteousness (rectitude) of them. They believe that they are acting selflessly and for the cause of freedom for themselves and future generations. They are also representing their colonies and the inhabitants of them by being their representatives in Philadelphia. These actions will impact the citizens as well as the Framers of the Declaration and the members of Congress are well aware of that as they conclude this document.

“That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved..”

The United States is its own sovereign entity. They have every right to break from Great Britain and establish themselves as their own country. The British Parliament and king had mistreated the colonists and taxed them without their consent or a voice in the British parliament. As a result, the colonies left a tyrannical and unjust government to form their own system of government that they believed was more just and conducive to their overall and future happiness. There would be no connection to the king or Parliament in the future.

“..and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

How we will proceed as a new nation is proclaimed here. The United States will have the power of declaring war and peace, be in control of their own financial dealings and trade with other nations. They will have all the powers that nations had as they begin to forge their own path on the world stage.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

This pledge to each other at the end of the Declaration shows that the Founders trusted in each other and in God to protect them, their military forces and their new nation. They were ready to fight the most powerful army and navy in the world and they were willing to die if necessary. As Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” The Framers of the Declaration could not afford disunion in their ranks. If that took place, their cause could be lost. The members of Congress were unified. They promised to give their lives, their financial well-being and their honor to do what it took, even it meant losing everything dear to them. Victory was also not assured in the summer of 1776. It was, in fact, highly unlikely. These were intelligent men who had everything to lose and they accepted that possibility. Some did lose everything in their cause including their lives and fortunes.

Val Crofts serves as Chief Education and Programs Officer at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. Val previously taught high school U.S. History, U.S. Military History and AP U.S. Government for 19 years in Wisconsin, and was recipient of the DAR Outstanding U.S. History Teacher of the Year for the state of Wisconsin in 2019-20. Val also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School as a social studies teacher for 9 years. He is also a proud member of the United States Semiquincentennial Commission (America 250), which is currently planning events to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 29 – Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

The Declaration of Independence has been called “American Scripture” because of the justifiable reverence by Americans for this foundational document of natural rights republicanism. The Declaration was a seminal moment in the history of America and of the world. However, this fact can sometimes cloud understanding of the historical context of the Declaration.

The colonists and British went to war at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The siege of Boston lasted some nine months before the British departed and prepared a massive invasion force of redcoats and foreign mercenaries for New York. Still, most American colonists were reluctant to separate and preferred reconciliation with the mother country. They identified as English and were loyal subjects of the king who thought the dispute could be ended once a ministerial conspiracy against American rights was ended.

The ravages of war and pamphlets such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense finally pushed the Americans to declare independence but not before much deliberation and a titanic debate in the Second Continental Congress. On July 2, the Congress adopted the resolution for independence and the Declaration of Independence two days later.

The war followed from a decade of tyranny, taxes, and violations of the colonists’ right to govern themselves by their own consent. The colonists continually sent petitions to king and Parliament to protest these oppressions and humbly ask for a redress of grievances. The right of petition was a traditional right of Englishmen with a long history reaching back to the Magna Carta (1215) and the Bill of Rights (1689). The colonists were angry about the violations of their rights and liberties but were just as irate that their petitions were ignored or treated with disdain.

The coming of the Stamp Act initiated a decade of petitioning king and Parliament for the rights of the colonists as Englishmen especially no taxation without representation. For example, the Virginia House of Burgesses agreed to a petition in December 1764 that was largely drafted by planter, Landon Carter. The petition emphasized that it was humbly submitted with “all due reverence” and “in a respectful manner.” Most importantly, it claimed the “freedom which all men, especially those who derive their constitution from Britain, have a right to enjoy.” The Burgesses asserted that “a fundamental principle of the British Constitution” was that “the people are not subject to any taxes but such are laid on them by their own consent.”

The Stamp Act Congress issued a Declaration of Rights in Oct 1765 in the form of a petition as a “dutiful and loyal address” and “humble application” for colonial rights. The petition began with several important points that appeared in almost all petitions throughout the 1760s and 1770s. It emphasized that the colonial subjects owed allegiance to the king, but the colonists were “entitled to all the inherent rights and privileges of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great Britain.” Their rights were guaranteed by colonial charters, the British Constitution, and natural right. Therefore, the body made the usual assertion of no taxation without consent.

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act because of the complaints of British merchants not the various petitions that were carried across the Atlantic. The colonial boycotts significantly impacted the profits of British merchants who themselves petitioned king and Parliament for relief. However, in 1766, the Parliament coupled the repeal with the Declaratory Act reasserting its authority over the colonies. After the Stamp Act, the colonists dispatched hundreds of similar petitions with the above themes to Great Britain to protest the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act, and the Coercive Acts.

In July 1775, in the wake of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Second Continental Congress coupled the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms with one last highly significant petition to the British. In the Olive Branch Petition, the Congress focused on the war raging between the colonies and the British. The Olive Branch Petition blamed the “artful and cruel” ministers advising the king for causing open hostilities. The colonists begged the king for a reconciliation for “stopping the further effusion of blood” with their British brethren and “restore the former harmony” with them.

The Olive Branch Petition was ignored just like all the previous petitions. On August 23, George III responded by declaring the colonies in a state of open rebellion. However, it still took almost another year of war before the colonists declared independence. In the Declaration of Independence, one of the listed grievances addressed the ignored colonist petitions:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

The American political regime was a republic that recognized the importance of representation and the right of petition. The Constitution created a national Congress that was close to the sovereign people and would receive their petitions and listen to their grievances. The First Amendment formally recognized the right of petition: “Congress shall make no law…abridging…the right of the people…to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The right of petition has been the center of vigorous democratic debate and deliberation throughout American history. Abolitionists sent petitions against slavery and the slave trade as early as the First Congress in 1790 and in the 1830s and 1840s when petitions flooded Congress, and John Quincy Adams heroically battled against the Gag Rule. This one example demonstrates that the grievance about the right of petition was not an ancient complaint in a foundational document from hundreds of years ago with no relevance to today, but part of a vibrant democracy.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 


Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 28 – Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

“He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

“He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.” 

Abdicated: Renounced; relinquished without a formal resignation; abandoned.[i]

After skewering the Parliament for their obnoxious legislation, Thomas Jefferson returns now with more charges aimed at the King:

On July 5, 1775, a little more than two months after the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, the Continental Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition, assuring the King that the colonists remained your Majesty’s faithful subjects.” It was signed on July 8 and finally delivered to Britain’s colonial secretary, Lord Dartmouth, by the colonies’ representatives on August 21. The King would not receive it, just as he had turned away a previous petition. Instead, two days later, King George officially declared the American colonies to be in “open and avowed rebellion.[ii]

The “Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition” branded the American patriots “Traitors” and encouraged British subjects to report to authorities any persons they discovered to be carrying on “traitorous correspondence” with the rebels (this was well before Twitter).

“The Americans have only to return to their allegiance,” said John Lind in his Answer, “and by that very return, they are re-instated under the protection of the King.”[iii]

England was not unaccustomed to rebellions. Going all the way back to the Norman Invasion of 1066, various rebellions and uprisings had to be dealt with in the aftermath. Certainly, the nobles’ rebellion of 1215 that produced Magna Carta is another prime example. Several Scottish uprisings in the centuries afterward gave the English considerable practice at putting down armed rebellion. Jacobite rebellions in 1715 and 1745 attempted to install first James II and then his son “Bonnie Prince Charlie” to their “rightful throne.” The Jacobite rebellions finally ended when King George I was brought over from Hanover, Germany, to sit on the English throne. No, these “upstart American colonists” were certainly not unique in British history.

“waging War against us?”  In 1776, there would be plenty of that yet to come – as Jefferson was drafting these words, notice came to the Continental Congress that the British fleet was soon to arrive off New York City – but up to this point, the “war” had consisted only of the skirmishes at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and a couple instances of naval shelling. But, even without these, Jefferson would have been technically correct in his assessment: a naval blockade such as the King had imposed on American ports the previous year, was an act of war under international law.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

While most Americans can name a few of the significant land battles of the Revolutionary War: Long Island, Trenton, Saratoga, Yorktown, to name several, few could name one of the naval bombardments of coastal America nor any of the significant naval battles of the war.  The battle for Breeds (Bunker) Hill in June 1775 began with a ferocious naval bombardment of Charlestown. Falmouth, Massachusetts was attacked from the sea in October of that year. On New Year’s Day, 1776, British frigates bombarded Norfolk Virginia, burning a large part of the town to the ground.

As to naval battles, no doubt there would have been more if the Americans had more than a handful of ships. The greatest injury sustained from Britain’s vast navy lay in the cargo captured by British ships.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

While professional soldiers from the German State of Hesse-Kassel (Hessians) are commonly seen as the “mercenaries” Jefferson refers to, German soldiers from at least seven German states/regions made up the nearly 30,000 German professional soldiers hired by King George III, who, within the Holy Roman Empire remained known as the Prince-elector of Hanover (Germany). Individual Germans, notably, Frederick William Augustus and Baron von Steuben, volunteered their services to the Americans. After the war, only about 17,300 of the original 30,000 German soldiers opted to return to their homeland in the German states.  Many of the freed POWs chose instead to make a new life in America.

That these Hessians were truly professional soldiers is best exemplified by this excerpt from David Hackett Fisher’s wonderful book “Washington’s Crossing.” Hessian prisoners taken during the Battle of Trenton “were sent from Philadelphia to Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, and then on to western Virginia in 1777. They were escorted by a company of Pennsylvania militia. When they reached the Pennsylvania state line, all of the militia went home except the captain, who told the Hessians, ‘whose affections he had won by his humanity,’ that ‘they must march on without an escort, as he himself should hurry on to Winchester (Virginia),’ When he met them three days later in Winchester, every Hessian POW answered the roll call.”[iv]

In his Answer to the Declaration of Independence, John Lind dismisses the king’s hiring of foreign troops “to bring [the Americans] back to their duty” as a benevolent gesture of the King intended merely to reduce the risk to the lives of his “loyal subjects in Britain.” Later, Lind explains the hiring as a necessity since the British Army was simply not big enough for the task.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

“IMPRESS’MENT, noun. The act of impressing men into public service; as the impressment of seamen.”[v]

Great Britain had practiced impressment since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. “Press gangs” would roam taverns and pubs seeking those too inebriated to realize they were “joining” the Royal Navy. “When a seaman was confronted by the gang he was first given the opportunity to volunteer. If he accepted, he was later paid the bounty. Many seamen preferred to be pressed and to refuse the king’s shilling, since they could not be charged with desertion should they flee the service and later be caught.”[vi]  In the spring of 1757, three thousand British soldiers cordoned off New York City (it was a little smaller than) and plucked 800 “tradesmen and Negroes”out of the pubs and other favored gathering spots.   Four hundred of these were “retained in the service”.[vii]

Keeping a vast naval fleet manned and ready was hard enough in peacetime; it was impossible in wartime without the use of impressment.  Even the fledgling American Navy was forced to use impressment of American citizens in 1777.[viii] Yet, impressment of foreigners into service in the British Navy was against British law.[ix] In 1812, Americans would thus be protected, theoretically, from the practice; but the practice continued and became a major factor leading to the war. During the war for American Independence, however, Americans enjoyed no such protection.[x]  American sailors captured in a naval exchange with the Royal Navy could the next day find themselves fighting their own countrymen or, as Jefferson put it: fall[ing] themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” 

The “domestic insurrections” Jefferson refers to were slave rebellions.  There had been slave rebellions in the American colonies before so the British knew slaves, at least some of them, would fight their masters if given the opportunity.

The Stono Rebellion was the largest slave revolt to ever take place in the colonies. On Sunday, Sept. 9, 1739, supposedly a “day off” for slaves, about 20 slaves under the leadership of a man named Jemmy broke into a store, stole weapons and supplies and headed for the refuge of Spanish-ruled Florida, leaving 23 murder victims in their path.

But what Jefferson was most likely thinking of as he wrote these words was Virginia Governor Dunmore’s proclamation of November 7, 1775. The proclamation declared martial law in the colony and promised freedom for any slaves in Virginia who left their owners and joined the royal forces, becoming Black Loyalists.

In 1768, Britain decided to stop protecting the colonies from Indian attacks on the frontier. Various Indian tribes, eager to recoup land settled by the colonists, mounted attacks, some of them notoriously vicious.[xi]

This ends the complaints section of the Declaration of Independence.

As previously noted, the various complaints Jefferson raises in the Declaration, many the British had seen before, are an oft-overlooked section of this marvelous document. They show us in their reverse what good government is all about. And, it should not surprise us to find many of these “problems of government” solved in the Constitution.  The U.S. Constitution was an answer to problems. By understanding the problems, one better understands the solution.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at 

gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

[i] http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/Abdicated

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Rebellion

[iii] John Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, 1776, p. 94

[iv] David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004), 379

[v] http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/impressment

[vi] Roland G. Usher, Jr., Royal Navy Impressment During the American Revolution, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review , Mar., 1951, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Mar., 1951), pp. 673-688

[vii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment#British_North_America

[viii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment#British_North_America

[ix] https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/british-navy-impressment/

[x] https://www.nps.gov/articles/impressment.htm

[xi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Brown_school_massacre

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 27 – Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
House of Commons at Westminster, 1808, Parliament

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
– For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
– For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
– For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
– For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
– For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
– For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
– For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
– For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
– For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.”

In an earlier essay in this examination of the Declaration of Independence, we encounter Mr. Thomas Jefferson beginning to lay out the “facts” he wishes a “candid world” to consider as the colonists make their case for independence. These facts begin by pointing to actions of the King alone (“He has refused his Assent to Laws…”). Now Jefferson turns his attention to actions for which the King required the assistance of Parliament: “Acts of pretended Legislation.”

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:”

This is one of the most overlooked sentences in Jefferson’s Declaration.  Readers quickly skip past this sentence to get to the “pretended legislation” they know Jefferson is about to highlight. And we’ll get to that legislation soon enough; yet, there is much to glean from this simple sentence. But first we will need to lay a foundation, beginning with identifying the main characters Jefferson mentions. “He” is obviously King George III; “others” refers to Parliament. Together, King and Parliament have subjected the colonies to “a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution.” Our constitution? In 1776, eleven years before the U.S. Constitution is drafted? What possibly could Jefferson mean?

One common answer is that Jefferson refers here to the British Constitution. He could be claiming that Parliament and the King have repeatedly ignored or violated the British Constitution, particularly the 1689 Bill of Rights which forms a major part of Britain’s “unwritten constitution.”[1] And this is certainly a fair reading of the sentence. But could Jefferson have intended a different meaning?

In his first draft of the Declaration, the sentence read: “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions….”  Constitutions, in the plural, could only mean one thing: constitutions of the separate colonies, not the Constitution of Britain. But Jefferson is writing in June of 1776. At that time only three colonies had true constitutions; they had responded to a resolution of the Second Continental Congress, passed on May 10, 1775, which read:

Resolved, That it be recommended to the respective assemblies and conventions of the United Colonies, where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs have been hitherto established, to adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular, and America in general.”[i]

Adopting “such government” meant enacting a new constitution, and the colonies, at least some of them, soon began deliberating, and then writing. On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire became the first of the thirteen to approve its new constitution, thus separating itself from England a full six months before Congress would do so on behalf of all the colonies. Four days later, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was published in America. On April 12, South Carolina did likewise. On May 4, Rhode Island, concluding that its colonial charter described an adequate governmental structure they did not wish to re-design, nevertheless unilaterally declared independence from the Mother Country. Finally, on June 29, a day after Jefferson presented his final draft of the Declaration to the Congress, the Virginia Assembly approved its colony’s new Constitution.

So, which document or documents was Jefferson complaining had been violated: the English Constitution or the “Constitution” or constitutions of the colonies? Before answering, let’s be sure we understand what comprises a Constitution. For that we turn to Black’s Law Dictionary:

“The organic and fundamental law of a nation or state, which may be written or unwritten, establishing the character and conception of its government, laying the basic principles to which its internal life is to be conformed, organizing the government, and regulating, distributing, and limiting the functions of its different departments, and prescribing the extent and manner of the exercise of sovereign powers.”[ii] (Emphasis added)

If England was operating from an unwritten Constitution (and they were, and still are); could the colonies have been as well?

By 1776, many of the colonies had been self-governing for more than 150 years – Virginia since 1619. As Dr. Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College puts it: “They had built a society of self-government. They would live in no other kind.”[iii] Their charters comprised agreements between themselves and the King – there was no mention of Parliament in the Charters – and the colonial assemblies had seldom sought Parliament’s help in governing. Despite the occasional intrusion of the royal governor’s veto, for the most part, colonial self-government was working; the “character and conception of [their] government” was well established. Is it possible that the colonies had, by 1776, a well-established, but unwritten constitution? While we might expect recognizable differences in such a constitution from colony to colony, there must also have been a certain core of “basic principles to which [their] internal life [had been] conformed.” I believe it was this unwritten Constitution, rather than the English one, to which Jefferson referred. Dr. Arnn agrees.[iv]

Yes, the colonists were British subjects. Yes, they were subject to British law, but the King and his ministers and the Parliament had overlooked an important point: over the last 150 years the colonists had become a new people with a new taste for freedom enjoyed by few other people on earth, and they were not going to readily give it up to an emboldened bully called Parliament.

Others in this year’s 90-Day Study have no doubt highlighted the connection between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, a connection recognized even by the Supreme Court.[v] As we now review the “Acts of pretended Legislation,” we will encounter several examples of improper or otherwise “bad” government that were fixed, preempted if you will, in the drafting of the 1787 Constitution. Finally, I call your attention to a little-known document entitled: “An Answer to the Declaration of Congress” by British barrister John Lind. Neither the King nor Parliament answered Jefferson’s Declaration directly; they could not. To do so would, in their eyes, have given unwarranted credence to it;[2] instead they commissioned Mr. Lind to answer.[vi] As you might expect, Mr. Lind dismisses Jefferson’s allegation with a figurative wave of the hand.

Acts of pretended Legislation” points, as you might expect, to actual legislation recommended by the King and passed by the Parliament. I will refer to these acts where they can be identified.

  • “For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.” Not only “among us” but IN OUR VERY HOMES! After the French and Indian War concluded in 1763, the British left troops behind in America as a prudent measure in case the Indians (or the French) decided ignore the 1763 Treaty of Paris, quartering them in barracks built for that purpose or in public buildings. The 1765 Quartering Act required colonial legislatures to raise the necessary tax revenue to support the soldiers lodging. But, after the violent Stamp Act protests of 1765, the next year the Quartering Act was amended to allow lodging troops in public buildings such as pubs and ale houses, with compensation to the homeowners of course. As protests continued and expanded, Parliament began to see that even more troops were needed to keep the peace. The 1774 Quartering Act[vii] enabled troops to take over private homes without the owner’s permission. In early 1775, Parliament sent another 10,000 soldiers to the colonies, to be placed in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and other seaports. Lind’s reply to the Quartering complaint was the equivalent of “What did you expect during a revolt?” The Founders abhorrence of the quartering system led to the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
  • For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States. Soldiers with time off seemed to get into trouble without much effort, even to the point of murder. In 1768, British soldiers in Annapolis, Maryland, killed several citizens. The soldiers were tried but acquitted, a result which did not sit well with locals. Three years later, North Carolina Governor Tryon ordered troops to fire upon an angry assembly of citizens who had brought complaints to the court house, killing several of them. These soldiers were also arraigned for murder, and also acquitted. Need we mention the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770? The Administration of Justice Act of 1774,[viii] which Lind thinks Jefferson was referring to here, was commonly called the “Murder Act” by the colonists.
  • For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world. Various Navigation Acts since the late 17th Century had attempted to funnel trade to and from the colonies through British ports to enable taxes to be levied and revenue to be raised. In 1733, the Molasses Act applied heavy duties to the trade of sugar from the (cheaper) French West Indies while leaving sugar purchased from the British West Indies duty free, producing a new enterprise in America: smuggling. Finally, in December 1775, the King issued a proclamation (the Prohibitory Act) closing the American colonies to all commerce and trade, to begin the following March. Under international law, this was an act of war.
  • For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: The French and Indian War raised British national debt 70% over 7 short years. Even though the “Seven Years War” (as it was called in Europe) saw skirmishes also on the European continent and the oceans, Parliament saw the effort as basically bailing out the colonies; thus, the colonies would need to pay for their “salvation.” The Stamp Act of 1765 was one such effort. But, the issue of taxation without representation had been brewing for a long, long time.
  • For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury. In 1674, during the reign of Charles II, the British formed a Court of Admiralty in America, bypassing the long-established colonial legal system. In 1764, a Revenue Act created a so-called ‘super’ vice-admiralty court in Halifax, Nova Scotia, presided over by a Crown-appointed judge. Instead of being tried by a jury of their peers, colonists were sent for trial by a single judge paid directly by the Crown. Lind claims the Admiralty Courts were merely a response to ubiquitous piracy in American waters.
  • For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences. On April, 1774, Parliament passed “A bill for the impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them in the execution of the laws, or for the suppression of riots and tumults in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England.” (Don’t you just love these simple law titles?) The Governor or the Lieutenant Governor could now order colonists to be transported to another colony or even to Great Britain for trial. If you wanted witnesses to testify in your favor, guess who paid their transport and lodging? Sound fair? It should come as no surprise, then, to find our own U.S. Constitution read: The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed. (Article 3, Section 2)
  • For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies. This “neighbouring Province,” you might guess, was Canada. In 1774, Parliament passed a bill giving support to French Catholics in Quebec and expanding Canada’s border to encompass land desired by other colonies. Parliament’s plan was to create a safe place to mass British troops in case of open rebellion.[ix]
  • For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments. Attempts to confiscate colonial charters go back to at least 1686[x]. The Boston Port Bill of March, 1774 altered the Charter of Massachusetts and gave the King the right to choose the members of the Massachusetts Council. The King would now have complete control over the selection of judges and have the ability to appoint sheriffs. Popular town meetings were eliminated, and the election of jurors denied. Even some members of Parliament described the Act as “exorbitant usurpation.”
  • For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.”[xi] Colonial legislatures had been repeatedly suspended. When New York’s Assembly failed to comply with the 1766 Quartering Act, Parliament suspended the colony’s Governor and legislature in 1767 and 1769. The order was never carried out since the Assembly backed down and agreed to contribute the necessary funds to cover the quartering in that colony. “[I]n all cases whatsoever” could only refer to one thing: the Declaratory Act of 1766, passed as the Stamp Act was being repealed. Here, Jefferson uses the Act’s own words in ridicule.

One by one, Jefferson ticked off the acts of “pretended legislation,” exposing Parliament’s obnoxious meddling in colonial affairs. But, in so doing, he continued his exposition of the principles of good government begun earlier in the document. For example: if “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” is an example of bad government, Jefferson simultaneously points us to an example of good government: hold trials, if at all possible, in the locale where the crime was committed. And, what do we find in Article 3, Section 2 of our Constitution? “The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed…” (Emphasis added)

Studying the Declaration of Independence is a worthy goal, if nothing more, simply as an example of good writing. But, it can be so much more. Thoughtful study of Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration introduces us, if inadvertently, to a treatise on good government. Thank you, Mr. Jefferson.

After skewering the Parliament for their obnoxious legislation, Jefferson returns (in our next essay) to the King, with more charges.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).


Podcast By Maureen Quinn

 

[1] The British Constitution, to this day, is described as an “unwritten” Constitution. Unlike that of the United States, which encapsulates its constitution in a single document, thus making it a “written” constitution, Britain’s constitution is comprised of the Bill of Rights of 1689, Acts of Parliament, and Common law, law developed by the courts and judges through cases.

[2] Lind writes: “Ill would it become the dignity of an insulted Sovereign to descend to altercation with revolted subjects. This would be to recognise that equality and independence, to which subjects, persisting in revolt, cannot fail to pretend.”

[i] http://founding.com/founders-library/government-documents/federal-government-documents/resolutions-and-recommendations-of-the-continental-congress-1776/

[ii] Blacks Law Dictionary, 4th edition

[iii] Larry Arnn, The Founders’ Key (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2012), 31.

[iv] Ibid, 25.

[v] Gulf, C. & S. F. R. Co. v. Ellis ,  165 U.S. 150 (1897)

[vi] https://archive.org/details/cihm_20519/page/n5/mode/2up

[vii] 14 Geo III c.54 according to Lind

[viii] 14 Geo III c.39 aka The Administration of Justice Act, the colonists called this “The Murder Act”

[ix] 14 George III, c. 83 aka The Quebec Act, 1774

[x] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Oak

[xi] 6 Geo III c 12), aka the Declaratory Act

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 26 – Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.”

It was an article of faith among English and American advocates of classic republicanism of the 18th century that the military must be subject to civilian control. In the United States Constitution, that faith is manifested expressly in the President’s role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, including of the states’ militias when called into service of the United States. Moreover, the President, with the consent of the Senate, appoints military officers. In addition, at least five clauses of Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution assign to Congress various roles in controlling the armed forces of the United States and the states’ militias. One of those, prohibiting appropriations of funds for a term longer than two years, was seen by the framers as a cornerstone of control over the military. James Madison went so far as to claim in The Federalist No. 41: “Next to the effectual establishment of the union, the best possible precaution against danger from standing armies, is a limitation of the term for which revenue may be appropriated to their support.”

A similar spirit was manifested in the Articles of Confederation. Article IX of that document gave to Congress the power to appoint the high-level officers of the land forces in the service of the “united states” and all officers of the naval forces. Congress also would make the rules and regulations for those armed forces and direct their operations.

It was the asserted refusal of the British to subordinate their military forces in the colonies to civilian control that created one of the points of conflict leading to the American revolution. Both the Virginia Constitution of 1776 and the Declaration of Independence of the thirteen “united states” denounced the king’s “affect[ing] to render the Military independent of and superior to, the Civil power.” This was not in fact the case in Great Britain itself. The king and Parliament retained control of the military. Moreover, as opponents of the Constitution of 1787 pointed out later, military appropriations by Parliament were limited to a single year, even tighter than the proposed American restriction.

Therefore, the complaint was not against English constitutional custom regarding the relationship between the civil and military authorities, which was, in fact, quite republican in nature. The last time that the military in England was not under civilian control had been during the dictatorship of Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. Instead, the charge against George III arose out of the Americans’ experience with the British treatment of the colonial governments, particularly the events in Massachusetts Bay.

As early as 1765, the Quartering Act required any colony in which British troops were stationed to supply them with provisions and lodging. If lodging in barracks was unavailable, the soldiers might be housed in certain private buildings, typically in inns and establishments that sold alcohol. As a last resort, the troops were to be housed in unoccupied other private buildings. The colonists saw this as a form of taxation to which they had not consented through their assemblies. Moreover, this act appeared to presage the stationing of a standing peacetime army on American soil, another abomination in the eyes of conscientious republicans.

The Act was put to the test in New York. In 1766, the colony’s assembly, which had acted under its own quartering law until the beginning of 1764, refused to comply with the Act. With the 1,500 troops in New York City obliged to remain on their cramped ships, Parliament voted to suspend the assembly in 1767, though no concrete action was taken to enforce the suspension. In 1768, the assembly agreed to provide the funds demanded by the British for supplies for the troops, except the expenses for beer and rum. The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Hillsborough, acting on another vote by Parliament in 1769, thereupon suspended the assembly from further meetings. Once more, no further concrete action was taken, perhaps because a newly-elected assembly soon voted the full requisition.

The events of the mid-1770s brought about increasingly stern reactions from Parliament. The Boston Tea Party, in particular, was a catalyst for British resolve to bring the colonists to heel. The Boston Port Act of 1774 required the city to pay for the tea and for losses to British officials in the Boston riots. Until those obligations were satisfied, the port was sealed off to trade. The Act was enforced by British warships and several regiments of troops. More pointedly, the commanding-in-chief of British forces in North America, General Thomas Gage, was also appointed governor.

Gage replaced Thomas Hutchinson, a prominent local businessman and published historian. Hutchinson had deep family roots in New England, and his appointment was in line with emerging British policy to appoint reliable locals to these executive positions. Like many Loyalists, Hutchinson was torn between those family roots and his loyalty to the Crown. Attacked by both sides as too closely aligned with the other, his attempt to steer a middle course failed. Much of the blame was undeserved, but at a time when the utmost political sensibility and skill were required, Hutchinson too often was tone-deaf. Sam Adams and the other radicals blamed him for, well, pretty much everything. In turn, Lord North, the prime minister, blamed him for the deteriorating political situation in Massachusetts, which led to the appointment of General Gage. In another ironic twist, Gage eventually was removed from his offices, because the British thought him to be too lenient and sympathetic to the colonials.

The Massachusetts Government Act of May 20, 1774, altered the governing charter of Massachusetts Bay. Henceforth, the governor would appoint the council, which was previously elected by the colonial assembly. He also would appoint all lower court judges and nominate judges of the superior courts. Further, no town could call a meeting of its council more than once per year without the governor’s consent. In effect, this put both the judicial and legislative functions under more direct control of Gage, who, as noted, was the military commander.

Finally, Parliament passed the Quartering Act of June 2, 1774. This allowed the governor to order troops to be housed in private buildings without legislative authorization. From the British perspective, this was a reasonable imposition. It was to be used if no funds were appropriated by the colonial assemblies to find other quarters for the British soldiers, who had been forced to camp out on Boston Common for a long period. Recent historical research has determined that the Act, like its predecessors, only permitted quartering of troops in unoccupied buildings.

The locals, however, were convinced that the Act allowed troops to be housed in occupied homes. To them, this was yet another outrage against their liberties and a violation of what they saw as their ancient rights of Englishmen. After all, both the English Petition of Right of 1628 and the Declaration of Rights of 1689 had listed quartering of soldiers in homes without the consent of the owners or authorization by law among the grievances against the Stuart kings, Charles I and James II, respectively. It is no surprise then that, on independence, Article XXVII of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780 declared: “In time of peace no soldier ought to be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner; and in time of war such quarters ought not to be made but by the civil magistrate, in a manner ordained by the legislature.” At the time, “ought” meant a duty owed and was analogous to “must.” The Third Amendment to the Constitution contains an almost verbatim restriction.

The formal subordination of the military to the civil power remains today. In addition to the constitutional sections that deal with such subordination, an additional provision seeks to maintain at least a separation of the two. Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution prohibits anyone “holding any office under the United States [from being] a member of either house during his continuance in office.” Although the matter is not resolved, it appears from a decision of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, United States v. Lane, that a member of Congress could not serve as an appellate military judge. Senator Lindsey Graham was a member of the U.S. Air Force Standby Reserve, as well as a Senator, when he was appointed to serve as a military judge. The court held that a military judge was an officer of the United States, and that the “Incompatibility Clause” disqualified Graham.

However, the Lane court refused to address whether or not all service or status in the military reserve disqualified one from being a member of Congress. Presumably being an active member of the military would do so for various reasons, constitutional and practical. However, members of Congress have been officers in the reserves while simultaneously serving in their legislative capacity. Finally, the subordination principle does not apply to former military officers or to service in a non-legislative capacity, at least so long as the person is subject to removal by the president and civilian control over the military is retained.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.


Podcast By Maureen Quinn

Click Here for Next Essay 
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 25 – Guest Essayist: Val Crofts
BattleofLexington1775WWollen

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”

Here we observe yet another Grievance on the “evidence list” that the colonists are submitting to the world to prove their case for independence. This particular grievance may be the most impactful to them, their families and their daily lives. The British military were seen as an army of occupation in the colonies in the 1770s. They were also seen as an army that was depriving the colonists of their property without their consent, which led to the legal reasons behind the Declaration of Independence. British troops were also looked upon as a risk to the physical safety of the citizens of the colonies. Frequent confrontations occurred and the relationship between the mother country and her subjects was becoming more fragile every day. The colonists believed that the dangers and future threats that came from this occupation of a standing army was one of the most tyrannical behaviors of the king.

The above portion of the Declaration shows us the point in the document where this grievance, listed as a fact to a “candid world” described how King George III had held a military presence in a peaceful land and had the goal of terrorizing and harassing the people there. As a result of this military action and the other grievances stated in the Declaration, the colonies were moved to declare their independence in July of 1776. How did they arrive at this particular grievance? The colonists believed that the King acted as a tyrant by using his military forces to control, intimidate and dominate them, as well as their families, their livelihoods and their way of life. They also felt that he had unleashed his army on them, a defenseless people, with no army of their own to defend themselves.

The British had established a military presence in the 13 colonies since their inception in the 1600s. Military conflicts were a way of life in the colonies and they included wars with Native-Americans, the Dutch, Spain and France. The largest number of British troops were sent to the colonies during the French and Indian War in the 1750s and 60s. As a result of that conflict, Britain was plunged into tremendous debt and arrived at the conclusion that the colonies, who lived under the protection of the greatest military force on the planet, should pay for that protection from outside invasions and threats from Native Americans. That payment would come in the form of several Acts of Parliament resulting in taxation, bringing increased revenue to the British empire. When the colonists rebelled against these Acts and displayed behavior that King George III felt was dangerous and treasonous, he took action and sent more troops to the colonies to quiet the dissention. It did not work.

There were approximately 45,000 men in the British army in 1763. That number was roughly 48,000 at the start of the American Revolution in 1775. The army needed to be paid, fed and housed within the colonies and the British government took steps to do so through legislation such as the two Quartering Acts.

The first Quartering Act was created in 1765 as a way to make the American colonists pay for the housing and care of British soldiers. Britain felt that if their soldiers were going to be in the colonies protecting the citizens there, then the colonies should pay for it. The relationship between the soldiers and colonists was terrible in places like Boston, where soldiers had been brought in to enforce the laws. In some colonies that bordered the frontier, the protection of the British was received much more appreciatively, although the taxes and policies were still not. The tension-filled areas created great anger towards each other as a result. The Boston Massacre in 1770 was a direct result of this and led to the death of five colonists, which led to further anger and distrust on both sides. Tragically, British troops that were sent to keep the colonies in line and to protect them would eventually end up fighting a war here against them.

The second Quartering Act was part of the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts, passed in 1774 by King George III in response to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. The king was furious with the Tea Party participants and with the amount of money England lost because of it (over 1 million dollars in today’s currency). He wanted to make Boston pay for their actions and he wanted more soldiers in Boston to monitor the situation there. Eventually, the overflow of British soldiers led to a housing shortage for them. This Quartering Act stated that British soldiers could be housed in unoccupied buildings, barns, or “other buildings” that may be needed to house them. This Act was personal to the colonists in Boston, as well as all 13 colonies. It dealt with where to place British soldiers in the colonies among the people living there. Colonists did not want the British in their towns and definitely did not want British soldiers living with them. The anger at British troops being housed among the people of the colonies was so strong that Thomas Jefferson decided to include it in the list of grievances against King George III in the Declaration of Independence.

The increased aggression continued to mount on both sides throughout the 1770s and culminated in the “shot heard ‘round the World” on Lexington Green in April of 1775. From then until July of 1776, additional major battles were fought, including Bunker Hill and the Battle of Quebec. Hundreds of patriots had already died on battlefields in the 15 months leading up to the Declaration of Independence, as the “times of peace” had transitioned into times of war.

Val Crofts serves as Chief Education and Programs Officer at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. Val previously taught high school U.S. History, U.S. Military History and AP U.S. Government for 19 years in Wisconsin, and was recipient of the DAR Outstanding U.S. History Teacher of the Year for the state of Wisconsin in 2019-20. Val also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School as a social studies teacher for 9 years. He is also a proud member of the United States Semiquincentennial Commission (America 250), which is currently planning events to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

 

Essay 24 - Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

This Grievance in the Declaration of Independence focuses on the most visible aspect of “taxation without representation,” which was foundational to the American Revolution.

England was deep in debt after prevailing in the first worldwide war of the modern era. The Seven Years War (1756-1763) engaged all European countries, big and small, in a struggle for territorial and political dominance of the European Continent. It rapidly spread to battling over control of Colonies and trade routes throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans.

What was known as the “French and Indian War” in North America was just a small part of this larger world war.

After the British victory, British Prime Minister, Lord Grenville (1763-1765), desperately sought ways to pay off the crippling war debt. Grenville chose to ignore the fact that American Colonists paid, fought, and died to defeat France in North America. Instead, he promoted the concept that the beneficiaries of the war (American Colonists) should pay for it. He also asserted that American Colonists should pay for retaining twenty battalions of British soldiers that remained to pacify the people conquered in the former French territories.

Grenville’s first step was to enforce existing customs duties. Many British Customs officials managed collections through intermediaries while remaining in England. Grenville forced them to relocate to America as part of his general crack down on smuggling, lax enforcement, and spotty revenue collection. Expanded numbers of Customs Officers became more aggressive in using search warrants, called “writs of assistance,” to track down smuggled goods. Warehouses were seized and ships were captured to bolster Royal revenue collection. Royal Customs officials became a permanent and pervasive presence in Colonial seaports along the Atlantic coast.

Benjamin Franklin cautioned that “what England gained from taxes would be lost in trade.” A post-War economic recession proved him prophetic.

The shortfall in Customs revenue led to the Stamp Act of 1765, the first internal tax levied directly on American Colonists by the British Parliament. Prior to the Stamp Act, taxes were only levied by local government through their elected officials. Now a government, 3,500 miles away, was asserting control, without the knowledge, approval, or oversight of the Colonists.

The Stamp Act imposed a tax on all paper documents in the Colonies. This included legal documents, playing cards, newspapers, and land titles. Stamps had to be purchased with British sterling, rather than local paper currency, causing additional economic hardship. Proof of payment required affixing a Royal Stamp on documents, thus the name.

The February 1765 Parliament debate on the Stamp Tax reveals the growing chasm between King George III and his proponents versus the American Colonists:

Prime Minister Grenville:

“and now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from heavy weight of the burden which we lie under?”

Colonel Isaac Barré [Member of Parliament and friend of Benjamin Franklin] responded:

“They planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted ‘em in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable…

“They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of ‘em. As soon as you began to care about ‘em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over ’em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon ’em; men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them….

“They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defense, have exerted a valor amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defense of a country whose frontier while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument …. The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has, but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated.”

 

Barré’s reference to the “sons of liberty” became the moniker for the Boston Patriots for years to come.

Parliament passed the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765. Hundreds of Royal commissioned “Stamp Agents” arrived in major towns across the American Colonies. They were met with riots and attacks. In October 1765, representatives from nine of the Colonies met at the City Hall in New York City to coordinate opposition, a forerunner to the Continental Congresses. In the face of mounting opposition, and concerns for the safety of Royal Tax officials, the Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on February 22, 1766.

While seeming to address Colonial concerns, Parliament linked repealing the Stamp Act to passage of the Declaratory Act. This Act affirmed Parliament’s authority to pass any Colonial legislation it saw fit, without input, notice, or representation. The Declaratory Act galvanized Colonial concerns about “taxation without representation,” first raised with the Stamp Act.

Charles Townshend (August 1766-September 1767) became Prime Minister and developed additional imperatives for taxing the Colonies. It was no longer just about paying war debt; it was about consolidating Imperial power.

Raising taxes, and trade-based duties and fees, would provide enough money for the British Crown to “reimagine” Colonial administration by directly paying Colonial governors, judges, and other senior officials. American-based officials would now owe their livelihood directly to King George III instead of the Colonists and Colonial assemblies. By “liberating” royal officials from their financial dependence on American legislatures, Townshend hoped to eliminate the most tangible obstacle preventing regular enforcement of parliamentary laws and royal directives.

Higher revenue from the American Colonies was also to provide enough funds for Townsend to reduce the British Land Tax, consolidating his Party’s support in future elections.

The “Townshend Acts” created new taxes on numerous consumer goods. The Acts authorized and funded the hiring of the much referenced, “multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” Legions of Royal tax collectors and Customs Officers arrived from England to establish new or expanded operations in every major Colonial trading center.

Townshend died before his initiatives swept through the Colonies. Widespread opposition and protests led to the repeal of most taxes in April 1770. The controversial tax on tea remained.

The Tea Tax, and the “swarms of Officers,” remained daily reminders of oppression by unaccountable Royal officials. Arthur Lee, serving as an observer for Massachusetts before the British Parliament, mused whether any Member of Parliament actually:

“know us, or we him? No! Is he bound in duty and interest to preserve our liberty and property? No! Is he acquainted with our circumstances, situation, wants, etc.? No! What then are we to expect from him? Nothing but taxes without end!”

The ever-expanding and intrusive presence of tax collectors and customs officers merited several mentions in the “Petition to the King” as part of the documents issued by the First Continental Congress in 1774, and became one of the grievances within the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 23 - Guest Essayist: Steven H. Aden

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.”

The late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist declared that judicial independence is the “crown jewel” of America’s constitutional system. Given the paramount value the Founders placed on the right to a jury trial, this seems counterintuitive. Surely judges can’t make decisions “independently” from those made by juries, in most cases. (In criminal cases, juries have virtually unlimited authority to acquit; in civil cases, however, their decisions are subject to the judge’s review and may be set aside if they are patently unreasonable.) From whom should judges be independent, and to whose authority should they be accountable?

For the Colonists of the Revolutionary period, the answer was plain and simple: judges should be accountable to the people they serve, acting through their own legislatures, and not to the King alone. The Indictment, presented by the Declaration of Independence, charged that King George “[H]as made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.”

The experience of Massachusetts was still fresh in the minds of the Founders. An act of Parliament in 1773 had decreed that the salaries of judges would be paid by the King at his discretion, and forbidden them to receive salaries from the colony’s legislature. John Adams, a Bostonian and later contributor to the Declaration and America’s second president, observed, “This as the Judges Commissions were during pleasure made them entirely dependent on the Crown for Bread [as] well as office.” Adams explained:

It was by all Agreed, As the [Royal] Governor was entirely dependent on the Crown, and the [colonial] Council in danger of becoming so if the Judges were made so too, the Liberties of the Country would be totally lost, and every Man at the Mercy of a few Slaves of the Governor.

After the founding of the Republic, the focus shifted to the question of the new federal judiciary under Article III of the Constitution. The perceived danger of a centralized federal court system was a rallying point for anti-Federalists who opposed the Constitution of 1787, so much so that Alexander Hamilton famously assured the new states that the judiciary would be “the least dangerous” branch, as it had no army or police force to impose its will, nor the power over the treasury. The question of accountability would be solved in two ways: First, Sec. 1 of Article III provided that “[t]he judicial Power of the United States[] shall be vested in one [S]upreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish,” thereby making all federal courts below the Supreme Court accountable to the people through their Congress. Further, Sec. 1 said, all federal judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.” For Hamilton, protecting the salaries of federal judges was as critical as protecting their jobs: “In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will,” he cautioned. So, for the Framers of the Constitution, the balance between independence and accountability in the federal judicial system would be struck by appointing judges with lifetime tenure and salary security, who could only be removed by impeachment, like the president.

In the states, this balance has been sought in different ways. Although some states have a similar system of appointment and job security, a majority of states select at least higher-level judges by popular ballot, although some mandate that elections be held on a non-partisan basis. This form of popular selection has given rise to its own set of problems stemming from judges’ need to represent majoritarian views in order to be elected by a popular vote. In some states, a compromise approach has been adopted, by which judges are initially appointed by the governor from a list of candidates drawn up by an independent “judicial selection commission” and then subjected to a popular “retention election” some years into their tenure.

In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide if the federal constitution has anything to say about the fundamental fairness of state judicial elections. One of the largest coal companies in America, Massey Coal Co. of West Virginia, was facing a jury award against it for fraud in the amount of 50 million dollars. One of the justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court had refused to recuse himself from hearing Massey Coal’s appeal, even though he had received election campaign contributions amounting to $3 million from the Chairman of the Board of Massey Coal. The supreme court of West Virginia twice heard the appeal, and twice reversed the judgment against Massey Coal by a vote of 3-2. The second time, the justice who received Massey Coal’s largesse rejected the results of a public opinion poll that showed that over two-thirds of West Virginians doubted his ability to be fair and impartial in the case.

The U.S. Supreme Court concluded (albeit by a split 5-4 vote) that the federal constitution’s guarantee of due process of law required recusal under the circumstances. Echoing the Founders in the Declaration, and the Framers of the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s majority observed, “It is axiomatic that ‘[a] fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process….’ Under our precedents there are objective standards that require recusal when ‘the probability of actual bias on the part of the judge or decisionmaker is too high to be constitutionally tolerable.’”

So the federal guarantee of due process sets constitutional limits on the judicial selection systems of the sovereign states, the Court concluded. Massey Coal was a Rubicon so wide that many constitutional scholars and judges believe it should never have been crossed. But the lesson Massey Coal teaches is central to the federal system of dual sovereignty: that while states are not bound to emulate the federal judiciary’s means of calibrating judicial independence and accountability, whatever the means they choose to employ have to ensure the constitutional right to due process in all cases.

Steven H. Aden serves as Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel at Americans United for Life. Aden joined Americans United for Life in August 2017, overseeing all legal operations of America’s most effective pro-life organization. Aden is a highly experienced litigator, having appeared in court against Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry dozens of times and appointed by the attorneys general of six states to defend pro-life laws. A prolific author and analyst on sanctity of life issues and constitutional jurisprudence, Aden is admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Hawaii (inactive), and is a member of the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal circuit and district courts. He has practiced law since 1990 and earned his J.D. (cum laude) from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.A. from the University of Hawaii.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 22 - Guest Essayist: Steven H. Aden

“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.”

Judges are powerful people. Those who preside over criminal courts have the power to fine or imprison convicted defendants, up to limits set out by statute. Depending on their roles, other judges have the power to impose fines for civil wrongs, or to decide weighty matters involving marriage and the custody of children. Lesser judicial offices include administrative judges who preside over disputes relating to compensation for injured workers, social security payments for the injured and elderly, or labor disputes between workers and employers. In light of the power they wield over our everyday lives, who can hold judges accountable? Today and tomorrow, Constituting America considers how the Framers of the Declaration of Independence answered this question, and how their answer led to a system of judicial independence that has become the envy of the world.

To King George and the English at the time of the American Revolution, the sources of authority for all Englishmen, wherever they were in a widening world, were the Crown first, and through him, the Parliament. The Declaration’s “Indictment” of King George III levied two charges that turned on the English government’s refusal to accommodate the Colonists’ demand for courts and judges that were based in the Colonies and answerable for their decisions to the people of the Colonies. First, the Signers of the Declaration charged, “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.” In other words, the King had stymied attempts to establish Colonial courts with any real authority. Criminal trials by jury were available, but often only in England, a daunting journey. After all, it was over 3,000 miles by slow sailing vessel to London, a trip that took four to eight weeks, depending on the wind, and was always hazardous. At the end of that, would a jury comprised of Londoners truly be a “jury of one’s peers?” And what about the right to call witnesses in one’s defense – the foundation of due process? If they couldn’t make the dangerous and lengthy trip with the accused, he was out of luck.

The right to trial by jury, which had been guaranteed in the English Bill of Rights since 1689 (and, in fact, included in the Magna Carta in 1215), was the spark that lit the flame of the Revolution. The right to a jury trial had been recognized in every Colonial charter. The trial of newspaperman John Peter Zenger in 1735 for “seditious libel,” based upon publishing a column critical of the Royal Governor of New York’s decision to remove a judge from the bench, resulted in a verdict of “not guilty” from a jury of Zenger’s peers. The resulting freedom to publish even controversial opinions led to a growing clamor in the Colonies for other liberties. In response, the British Crown began to restrict both the autonomy of Colonial courts and the right to a jury trial.

Two of the “Intolerable Acts” of 1774, enacted by Parliament and approved by King George to punish the Colony of Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party, included stringent limits on the right to a jury trial. The Massachusetts Government Act granted the royal governor the power to choose judges, and county sheriffs – also appointed by the governor – could appoint jurors, resulting in Royal control over the colony’s judicial system. The Act for the Impartial Administration of Justice granted the governor the power to move a trial to another colony or to Great Britain if he determined that a “fair” trial could not be had at that location, thereby eliminating the right to a trial by one’s peers.

Things were coming to a head. Future president John Adams thundered, “Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Without them, we have no other fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle, and fed and clothed like swine and hounds.” And Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, would later write to essayist Thomas Paine (Common Sense), “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

In the next grievance, we’ll consider the second charge against King George and his judges: that he had made judges “dependent on his will alone” for their jobs and salaries.

Steven H. Aden serves as Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel at Americans United for Life. Aden joined Americans United for Life in August 2017, overseeing all legal operations of America’s most effective pro-life organization. Aden is a highly experienced litigator, having appeared in court against Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry dozens of times and appointed by the attorneys general of six states to defend pro-life laws. A prolific author and analyst on sanctity of life issues and constitutional jurisprudence, Aden is admitted to the bars of the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Hawaii (inactive), and is a member of the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal circuit and district courts. He has practiced law since 1990 and earned his J.D. (cum laude) from Georgetown University Law Center and his B.A. from the University of Hawaii.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

 

Essay 21 - Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”

In December 1773, King George III (reigned 1760-1820) suspended the “Plantation” or “Immigration” Act of 1740. His intent was to strike at the heart of the economic engine fueling economic independence among the American colonies. His other goal was to extinguish momentum for independent thought and religious expression. These actions formed the basis for this grievance in the Declaration of Independence.

George II (reigned 1727-1760) was the last foreign-born King of England. He supported expansive and permissive immigration to the American Colonies. In his world view, expanding population among the colonies generated demand for British goods. Skilled immigrants would increase the productivity and profitability of colonial agriculture, bringing healthy returns among Royal Charter holders and their investors.

Just as important, the attraction of America as a land of opportunity and tolerance served as a “safety valve” for removing “free thinking” or “nonconformist” Protestants, and restive Scots and Irish, from the “home country” through legally approved immigration. Church of England supporters and Royalists were more than happy to be rid of them after nearly 200 years of strife.

England also benefited from helping oppressed minorities, such as the Huguenots (French Protestants), leave Europe. It allowed England to gain the “moral high ground” in the geopolitical power struggles of the time. Bringing Scandinavian and German peoples to America forged important alliances while enriching the economic and cultural mix of the Colonies.

On June 1, 1740, the “Plantation” or “Immigration” Act of 1740 went into effect to streamline immigration and naturalization. It allowed any Protestant alien residing in any of their American colonies for seven years, without being absent from that colony for more than two months, to be deemed “his Majesty’s natural-born subjects of this Kingdom.” Over the course of several years, individual Colonies began to directly administer immigration and citizenship. Many colonies, led by Pennsylvania, expanded coverage to include Catholics and Jews.

Benjamin Franklin was an eloquent supporter of immigration:

Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them; the Laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of the Patronage of great Men; and everyone will enjoy securely the Profits of his Industry…

These new settlers to America create a growing demand for our merchandise, to the greater employment of our manufacturers…

Multitudes of poor People from England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany, have by this means in a few Years become wealthy Farmers. They create a continual demand for more Artisans of all the necessary and useful kinds, to supply those cultivators of the earth with houses, and with furniture & utensils of the grosser sorts which cannot so well be brought from Europe. Tolerably good Workmen in any of those mechanic arts, are sure to find employ, and to be well paid for their work, there being no restraints preventing strangers from exercising any art they understand, nor any permission necessary.”

These free-wheeling immigration and citizenship policies came to an abrupt end when George III became King.

The King’s Advisors raised concerns that non-English immigrants had little connection or loyalty to the “Mother Country” or its ruler. In this world view, the expanding and diversifying colonial population was creating an independent challenge to the economic and political power of England.

King George sent secret agents to America to assess the condition and “state-of-mind” of the colonists. “A large influx of liberty-loving German emigrants was observed, and the King was advised to discourage these immigrations.”

Based upon these reports and recommendations, George III began to delay and obstruct new migration from England and other parts of Europe. In his Royal Proclamation of 1763, he prevented settlement west of the Appalachians, hoping to limit further agricultural growth. This angered those wanting to settle in the west, and ignited opposition from those with significant investments in western real estate.

King George, and his Prime Minister, Lord North, took additional actions to end immigration, naturalization, and expansion of the Colonial economy. In December 1773, they forbid Colonial naturalization of aliens, under any conditions. A ban on royal land grants was finalized in February 1774.

England’s far reaching assault on colonial naturalization laws and suspending the “Plantation Act” was considered intolerable, and therefore, was included in the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence.

Fourteen years later, the “Plantation Act of 1740″ would be the model for the “Naturalization Act of 1790,” the first immigration policy of the new nation.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Click Here For Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 20 - Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.”

When Thomas Jefferson accused George III, in the Declaration of Independence, of having refused for a long time to permit elections for previously-dissolved colonial legislatures, he had several examples for reference. As early as 1768, Governor Sir Francis Bernard dissolved the Massachusetts assembly on the order of Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, after the assembly had circulated a letter to the other colonial assemblies about the constitutional defects of the Townshend Revenue Acts. This effectively left Boston without a government for a year.

A year before, in 1767, the British government had ordered the New York assembly suspended when it refused to comply with the Quartering Act of 1765. As a result, New York was without a government for most of 1767 to 1769, until an election in the fall of 1769 produced a more pliant assembly.

In October, 1774, after Parliament had adopted the Massachusetts Government Act earlier that year, General Thomas Gage, the governor, dissolved the colony’s assembly. The Act had several parts that struck against the colony’s self-government. It repealed the Massachusetts Bay Charter of 1691, made the hitherto elected council appointive by the governor, and prohibited town meetings more than once per year unless the governor consented. The Act also made other provincial offices, including many judgeships, appointive rather than elective, and those officers could be removed at any time by the governor. To add insult to injury, the first governor selected, General Gage, was also the military commander. This move placed the military authorities in charge of civil government.

From the British perspective, the Act was necessary to curb the radical tendencies of this most radical province. Unfortunately for the British, their political tactics failed in Massachusetts and likely hurt their overall strategy of both pacifying the colonies and advancing their new model of imperial administration. Instead, the Americans simply circumvented the restrictions by electing an ultra vires provincial congress, which met at Concord, elected John Hancock president, organized an administration, voted taxes, collected arms, drilled a militia, and operated the courts. This assemblage governed Massachusetts until the state’s constitution of 1780 was approved. The colony effectively was independent, and the royal governor’s authority was restricted to the city of Boston.

Similar events transpired in other colonies. In Virginia, the royal governor dissolved the House of Burgesses in May, 1774. Led by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, a rump portion of that assembly called for elections to a provincial congress to meet in Williamsburg on August 1. By the end of 1774, all colonies except Georgia, Pennsylvania and New York had followed suit. Those three fell in line the following year. So, while Jefferson’s charge in the Declaration of Independence was historically correct, the dissolutions of colonial assemblies about which he complained also quickly became irrelevant as a matter of practical government. If anything, those actions by the king and Parliament did not impede self-government, they made it more profound.

The English king long had the power to prorogue (that is, “suspend”) or dissolve Parliament and rule by decree. Charles I had used it to prevent Parliament from meeting for years. As the constitutional position of Parliament strengthened against the king in the 17th and 18th centuries, that power had to be used judiciously, if at all. One of the political missteps by James II that led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was his dissolution of Parliament after that body had refused to repeal the pro-Protestant Test Acts.

For the Americans, this authority to prorogue or dissolve legislative bodies and to delay elections was a threat to the independence of their assemblies, the principal protectors of liberty, and distorted the emerging conception of a functional separation of powers. Thus, Article X of the Virginia constitution of 1776, prohibited the governor from proroguing or dissolving the legislature. The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 carefully limited these powers to specified circumstances. The New York constitution was similar. The U.S. Constitution of 1787 goes further and restricts the president to only a limited power to adjourn Congress, but no power to prorogue or dissolve that body.

Jefferson’s observation that “the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise …” makes two points. First, it postulates that lawmaking, that is, the power to make rules that govern human actions, always exists. That power might be in Parliament, in the assemblies, the king, or the people as a whole. When the king declared the colonies in rebellion on August 23, 1775; when Parliament enacted the Prohibitory Act on December 22, 1775, which declared the colonies outside British protection, blockaded colonial ports, and made all colonial vessels lawful prizes subject to capture; and when the local assemblies were dissolved by the British authorities, the existing constitutional system had been abandoned. The actions of the Continental Congress and of the several former colonies separately in declaring independence and taking control of their fate by setting up new constitutional arrangements, was the inevitable result. After all, this was no different, in the eyes of Americans, than Parliament’s own actions in 1688-89 during the Glorious Revolution. Then, James II had abandoned the throne, which allowed Parliament to assume basic constitutional powers and create a new political order.

Second, the observation reflects Jefferson’s reading of John Locke and other social contract theorists. The British government’s abandonment of its constitutional relationship with the colonies had breached the contract on which the political commonwealth was based. Thus, the people were placed in a new “pre-political” condition. In this stage, each individual was sovereign over his or her own affairs. The legislative power had not been annihilated, but rested within each individual for himself or herself. As anticipated by the social contract theorists and reflected in the Declaration of Independence itself, these individuals would establish new forms of government in order better to secure their God-given inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By the consent of the governed, the legislative power would then be exercised by the people collectively as in a democracy, or, more likely, by an assembly elected by the people as in a republic.

That the British actions, especially those of King George, amounted to a breach of contract was bolstered by the function of royal charters in the constitutional status and political operation of the colonies. Those charters gave certain powers of self-government to the Americans through their elected assemblies and established the constitutional rights and obligations of all parties, including the king. Moreover, the general neglect of colonial affairs by the government in London over more than a century had accreted various political powers to the local assemblies through repeated practice that reflected a gradual evolution of constitutional custom. By ignoring those arrangements or, more blatantly, revoking them, as had happened in 1774 to Massachusetts Bay’s Charter of 1691, the king and Parliament had breached those contracts. In turn, the Americans were relieved of further obligations to abide by those arrangements, although, curiously, Connecticut and Rhode Island continued to use their royal charters, with appropriate modifications, as their state constitutions into the 19th century.

Jefferson’s complaint that “the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within,” seems disingenuous, coming from the American side. After all, the “convulsions within” typically were the products of provocateurs such as the Sons of Liberty or of colonial mobs incited by the rhetoric and actions of those provocateurs. The Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre, the Gaspee affair, and assorted other riots and acts of sabotage and unadulterated insurrection were deliberate actions by the Americans. The British responses, often ham-handed, might inflame tensions further, but they were reactive.

Nevertheless, Jefferson had a point. The principal purpose of government is to provide security against external and internal threats to the peace of the community. Whatever merit there is in today’s common perception that government is an indulgent parent that provides food, shelter and health care for all, if a government fails to fulfill the classic obligation of providing security, it will fall. In the Lockean social contract formulation, government is formed to secure one’s rights in one’s person and estate better than would exist otherwise. In Thomas Hobbes’s more pessimistic view of the human condition, security by any means is the be-all and end-all of government. Under either conception, failure to carry out that obligation is a breach of the social contract.

That same understanding of the core purpose of government is found in the Constitution. As John Jay wrote in The Federalist No. 3,

“Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to draw their attention, that of providing for their safety seems to be the first….At present I mean only to consider it as it respects security for the preservation of peace and tranquillity, as well against dangers, from foreign arms and influence, as against dangers arising from domestic causes.” [Emphasis in the original.]

Indeed, the adoption of the Constitution itself, in a manner contrary to the Articles of Confederation, was defended by James Madison in The Federalist No. 43 in language reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence,

“by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature’s God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society, are the objects to which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.”

The Constitution itself grants broad war powers to the president and Congress, along with the power of Congress of “calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” The president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, as well as of the militia when called into service of the United States, is also authorized to protect the security of the people from foreign invasion and domestic causes. As needed, courts have interpreted those powers expansively. True, Americans pay at least lip service to the idea that even those governmental powers are limited in some way by the Constitution. Courts have held that there also does not exist a formally distinct “Emergency” or “War” Constitution. Reality, however, is harsher. Jefferson himself, as well as Abraham Lincoln, and any number of politicians and judges have consistently recognized the paramount principle of self-preservation and security of the society, to which, in the end, all other considerations will be subordinated. This calculation is pithily expressed in the aphorism, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

The British government failed to carry out that fundamental obligation of assuring peace and domestic tranquillity, either by resolute military action or, preferably, by deft political maneuvering to adjust the constitutional order to accommodate the major American grievances and halt the drift towards full separation. It does not matter which side gets the credit or blame for specific events or particular political steps. The constituted government has legitimacy to govern only if it satisfies the reason for which it is formed. Failure to do so forfeits that government’s legitimacy, and the people will seek to establish another by any means available to them, even a replacement of the entire constitutional order by revolution.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 19 - Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”

In the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress included a list of grievances against the king. The colonists complained that they had suffered “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” One of the complaints was that the king had fundamentally violated the right of the colonists to government by the consent of the governed. They asserted specifically that George III had “dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”

The Declaration of Independence established free government in a natural rights republic based upon equality. From that equality flowed the idea that all members of the political regime equally gave their consent to a representative government. The Declaration stated the purpose of that government was to protect the rights of the people. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The American republican government was rooted upon a continuing consent of the sovereign people through their representatives in legislatures.

The American colonists consistently appealed to the principle of consensual government in the decade of resistance before the Declaration of Independence. The main argument of the American Revolution was “no taxation without representation.” The colonists were willing to pay taxes as British subjects. During the colonial period, colonial legislatures would tax the people by their consent and then offer some of the revenue to pay royal officials in the colonies or to the crown as a “free gift.”

However, the continued attempts at taxing the colonists in the Stamp Act (1765), Townshend Acts (1767), and Tea Act (1773), among other taxes, demonstrated to the colonists that the British ministry was bent on tyranny in the colonies. The British government was burdened by a massive debt incurred in fighting the Seven Years’ War and wanted the colonists to pay for thousands of redcoats stationed in forts out west. The Americans responded by demanding in countless pamphlets, newspapers, petitions, declarations of rights, and speeches that they could only be taxed by their consent.

The American colonists also forcefully resisted the taxes and other acts of tyranny, and asserted their rights in their colonial legislatures. In late 1765, General Thomas Gage stationed troops in New York and requested that New Yorkers comply with the Quartering Act by provisioning the troops. When the assembly refused several times over the next year, Parliament responded by passing the Suspension Act that suspended the New York legislature. Because the legislature would not submit to violations of property rights by a standing army in time of peace, the people were stripped of their right of self-government.

In 1767, the Townshend Acts introduced a series of taxes on the colonists for various goods including glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. In February 1768, the Massachusetts assembly adopted Samuel Adams’ proposal denouncing the taxes. It stated that the taxes were “infringements of their natural and constitutional rights” because the colonists did not give their consent. This Massachusetts Circular Letter appealed to other colonies to “harmonize with each other” in protesting the taxes. In London, the ministry was outraged by what it considered sedition and instructed Governor Francis Bernard to coerce the assembly to revoke the letter. When the assembly refused, Bernard suspended the legislature.

In Virginia, the House of Burgesses passed resolutions on May 16 that stated the “sole right of imposing taxes on the inhabitants of this his Majesty’s colony and dominion of Virginia, is now, and ever hath been, legally and constitutionally vested in the House of Burgesses.” The new royal governor, Lord Botetourt, responded, “I have heard of your resolves, and augur ill of their effect. You have made it my duty to dissolve you; and you are dissolved accordingly.”

The Burgesses marched down the street a short distance to the upper room of Raleigh Tavern where the people’s representatives appointed a committee to draw up a nonimportation agreement. They agreed to the boycott, which was drafted by George Mason with George Washington’s help, on the following day. For Washington, self-government was a moral principle and must be defended. “That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends.”

Perhaps the most infamous dissolution of a colonial legislature was introduced by the Coercive Acts which Parliament passed in 1774 to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. The Massachusetts Government Act wiped out town meetings and altered the Massachusetts charter and government to place it under royal control. This “Intolerable Act” was a gross violation of colonial self-government.

True to form, Virginia royal governor, Lord Dunmore then dissolved the House of Burgesses for resolving to hold a Day of Fasting and Prayer in support of Boston on June 1 to “give us one heart and one mind to firmly oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights.” The Burgesses again marched to Raleigh Tavern and agreed to boycott British goods. The indefatigable colonists then answered a Massachusetts call for the people’s representatives to assemble in Philadelphia for a Continental Congress to deliberate on “wise and proper measures” to preserve self-government.

In Federalist #39, James Madison described the republican principle of consent: “We may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period.” Madison’s quote represents the source of American resistance to British violations of colonial representative self-government and why the Declaration of Independence made its charge against George III.


Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including
Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 18 - Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner
Carpenter's Hall In Old City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.”

Public meetings and public records have been fundamental to representative government since its inception. They are the basis for resolving differences, forging agreements, and holding public officials accountable. They are integral to a free society.

It is not surprising that the British Crown’s assault on these fundamentals is among the top Grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence.

The escalating protests over onerous and draconian British Colonial policies and taxes crested with the “Boston Tea Party” on December 16, 1773. Sons of Liberty activists dumped over a million dollars (in 21st Century value) of tea into Boston Harbor.

Lord North, the British Prime Minister (1770-1790), retaliated with harsh measures to suppress dissent and disrupt the culture of self-government, which he viewed as the root cause of the chaos.

On May 2, 1774, North declared Massachusetts was “in a distempered state of disturbance and opposition to the laws of the mother country.”

On May 20, 1774, Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act, which nullified the Massachusetts Charter of 1691. Under the Act, Royal Governor Thomas Gage dissolved the Massachusetts provincial assembly. He then required them to meet in Salem, citing Boston as “unsafe.”

The move to Salem had the intended effect of forcing Massachusetts’ legislators to travel and find food and lodging in a small town of 1,600 instead of among the 16,000 population of Boston. The infrastructure for supporting legislative operations were nonexistent (stenographers, printers, legal offices, media, and messengers). Worse, there was no provision for moving any of the colony’s official records to Salem. Any research or reference entailed a day’s travel each way from Salem to Boston and back again. It achieved the British goal of “fatiguing them [legislators] into compliance with his measures.”

Similar actions were taken against the elected assemblies in Virginia and North Carolina. North Carolina’s legislature was forced from their colonial capital of Brunswick to meet in New Bern. In Virginia, Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the House of Burgesses and refused to call them back into session. In defiance of the Governor, the colonial representatives reconvened at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg.

Patrick Henry’s famous “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech was presented during another banned session held at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond (March 23, 1775).

The dislocation and dissolution of these Colonial Legislatures led to the same disruption and “discomfort” experienced by Massachusetts’ elected representatives. The goal of punishing opposition and suppressing dissent was achieved by forcing elected officials into “places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records.” It certainly interfered with the colony’s public business and prevented officials from “access to information necessary to conduct it.” Eventually, all Colonial Governors dissolved their legislatures.

The British Parliament also moved to eradicate local town meetings because, “a great abuse has been made of the power of calling them, and the inhabitants have, contrary to the design of their institution, been used to treat upon matters of the most general concerns, and to pass dangerous and unwarrantable resolves.”  Ongoing local meetings were replaced by annual meetings only called with the Colonial Governor’s permission, or not at all.

A series of five punitive acts were passed by Parliament intended to restrict public discourse and punish opponents. It was England’s hope the “Intolerable Acts” would intimidate rebellious Colonists into submission. The “Acts” ignited a firestorm of outrage throughout Colonial America. More importantly, it generated a unity of purpose and inspired a willingness for collective action among leaders in the previously fragmented American colonies.

The First Continental Congress met in the Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia from September 5 – October 26, 1774. All colonies, except Georgia, were represented. They issued the “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” which established a philosophy of government, and list of contentious issues, that would be echoed in the Declaration of Independence less than two years later.

The delegates created the “Continental Association,” which invoked non-importation, non-consumption of British goods, and non-exportation of American goods to England until the “Intolerable Acts” were rescinded.

King George and Lord North responded with a major show of force in Boston. As British troops became increasingly visible on the city’s streets, Governor Gage created a network of informants to identify and arrest dissidents.

Alerted to weapons being stockpiled in Lexington, Gage launched the fateful sortie that led to the “shot heard around the world.”

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 17 - Guest Essayist: Kyle A. Scott

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

With the population growth in the colonies, the local assemblies and legislative bodies grew in numbers and power. In New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina and Virginia, King George restricted the size of assemblies thereby denying new communities representation in the colonial assemblies. The colonists took it as their right to have their interests represented in a legislative body. Denying this denies their right to govern.

The colonists had been allowed to decide how they would be represented in localities. By voiding this practice, there was a breach of trust that threatened the colonists’ ability to pursue the public good as they understood it. John Locke wrote, “Governments are dissolved…when the legislative, or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust.” In this formulation, King George effectively dissolved the government by breaching the trust of the colonists. However, while this is a valid position, it is thin justification as it would give far too much leeway to those looking to dissolve the bonds between themselves and government.

Thomas Jefferson makes clear in the Preamble that a single violation of trust is not enough to justify a move to independence. To create a thicker justification, we must look at a tangentially related issue. Within the act of denying representation is lack of adherence to the rule of law as defined by long accepted practices in accordance with the public good. Instead of adhering to the practices of expanding representation in the assemblies when population growth dictated it prudent, King George replaced common practice with his will to control. Furthermore, rather than following standard practices—such as going through parliament or the colonial governments—to change the law, he acted with singular caprice.

By expanding their assemblies to accommodate population growth, the colonies were following the procedures and processes that had been in place up to that point. King George’s actions did not follow precedent and had no recourse to the common good or legal principle, but represented his will to control. This capricious decision based on nothing more than his will to exert power is a violation of the fundamental principle of what gives government legitimacy. When the King works for his good only it is a dereliction of duty and gives those governed the right to dissolve the bonds of government.

King George has acted not in the best interests of those he governed, which is what grants him authority to rule, but has acted in his own best interests in contradistinction to the good of the colonists. This is a consistent theme which ties all twenty-seven grievances together, and which receive their philosophical justification in the Preamble. Embedded within this grievance is an assumption of coequal branches of government with divided powers which substantiates the claim that the Declaration of Independence can be viewed as a governing document—one that bridges the common law and the codified constitution traditions. An executive—in this case a King—does not have the right to alter the legislature without a law being passed by that legislature which assumes a level of equality and divided power between two branches. It’s a tacit overthrow of monarchical rule and a presumption of equality that will define James Madison’s later project.

Kyle Scott, PhD, MBA serves on the Board of Trustees for the Lone Star College System and teaches political science at the University of Houston and is an affiliated scholar with the Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Health Policy and Medical Ethics. Kyle has authored over 70 op-eds, dozens of academic articles and five books, the most recent of which is The Limits of Politics: Making the Case for Literature in Political Analysis. He can be reached at kyle.a.scott@hotmail.com or on Twitter: @kanthonyscott.

Click Here for Next Essay
Click Here for Previous Essay
Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 16 – Guest Essayist: John McCurdy

“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them”

Everyone knows what paper money is. Even in the days of credit cards and Apple Pay, there is something reliable about a greenback, often with a founder’s face on it: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, or if you’re really lucky, Benjamin Franklin.

But paper money wasn’t always so reliable. The federal government only started issuing the paper currency about a hundred years ago. Before that, paper money carried with it a great deal of risk. Instead of the government, local banks printed paper money. But if that bank went out of business, your money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on!

Paper money was a big deal when men like Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin were founding the United States. With very little gold or silver in America, people needed a reliable medium of exchange to purchase goods and services.

Several colonial governments tried to address this issue. In 1690, Massachusetts issued the first paper currency in America, something it called “Tax Anticipation Notes.” These notes could be used as money. A merchant would accept them in exchange for kettles or Bibles because that merchant knew that the Colony of Massachusetts was guaranteeing the value of the notes.

When Great Britain went to war with France in the 1750s, many American colonies followed Massachusetts’s lead. They printed paper money and used this currency to pay for soldiers, weapons, and forts. As had been the case in Massachusetts, colonial merchants were happy to accept these notes because they knew that the government guaranteed their value.

But, British merchants hated colonial currency. Many British traders had extensive networks that stretched from India to Africa and the Caribbean. In such global trade, they did not trust paper money from Massachusetts or elsewhere in America. As a result, they pressured the British government to prohibit the colonies from printing their own money. In 1764, Parliament passed the Currency Act that did just that.

The Americans did not like the Currency Act because it took large amounts of money out of circulation. This was a particular problem when Parliament demanded that the colonists pay taxes to Britain. How could Americans pay their taxes with no money?

In 1765, Parliament passed a law requiring the colonists to pay for British soldiers stationed in North America. People living in New York especially hated this new law, so they came up with a compromise. What if they agreed to pay the soldiers with paper money?

In December 1769, the New York legislature voted to issue £120,000 in paper money. Of this, £2000 would go directly to the British army. The legislature then sent this plan to the New York Governor Cadwallader Colden as he had to sign the bill before it became law. Colden was unsure of what to do. The bill clearly violated the Currency Act, but if he vetoed the bill, then there would be no money for the troops. Ultimately, Governor Colden signed the bill into law, but first he attached a suspending clause.

Suspending clauses were typical in colonial America. Essentially, they stated that the law would not take effect until the king’s advisers had a chance to review the legislation and either approve it or reject it. The British government viewed this as a necessary means of keeping colonies from violating British laws like the Currency Act. The Americans, however, had a much darker view of suspending clauses. They saw them as way for the king to take away their rights by canceling laws passed by the legislatures.

That is what this passage in the Declaration of Independence refers to. Although the document does not mention paper money, the Currency Act, or New York, many people made this connection in 1776. The charge condemns King George III for not allowing the colonial governors from simply passing or vetoing laws. Also not stated is the implication that Americans would be better off choosing their own governors who could make their own judgment about bills passed by the legislature without looking to England for advice.

In the case of the New York’s paper money law, the king’s advisers allowed the colony to print its own currency. However, this money could only be used by the government to pay for things like supplying soldiers. This left a lot of Americans unhappy and moved them toward independence six years later.

Nearly two hundred and fifty years later, we have forgotten this part of the Declaration of Independence, but the issue of money continues to be important. Appropriately, it is the nation that the Declaration of Independence created that guarantees that our “Benjamins” are worth $100.

John G. McCurdy is Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University. He is the author of Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution. He regularly teaches courses on early American history.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 
Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 15 – Guest Essayist: Kyle A. Scott

“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

In the first grievance, we get a comprehensive view of the reason for declaring independence. While there are other grievances, and there are those that fall into a different category of grievance, the refusal to abide by law, and for the Crown to replace will for law, is the foundation of all claims justifying the move to independence.

The Preamble provides a statement about severing ties with Great Britain, a rebellious, and thus, lawless act. The Declaration of Independence was an act of treason from the view of Great Britain. To those unwedded from the historical record, or who have allegiances to the Crown, the signers were nothing more than disgruntled colonists looking to break away from Britain for no reason other than self-interest. The reason why most of us today do not view it as such is because the rebels were successful, and the U.S. has become the greatest republic on historical record. But that sort of post hoc justification is shallow and without merit. The goodness of the Declaration, and the intentions of the signers, is best found in the grievances as therein lies a justification for independence through the pursuit of the public good as achieved intentionally through the rule of law and proper governance.

There is a difference between just and unjust rebellion and the signers are making the case that their actions are just because of their commitment to the law and King George’s refusal to abide by law and accepted practice. John Locke, the obvious muse of Thomas Jefferson, wrote, “The difference betwixt a king and a tyrant to consist only in this, that one makes the laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the public, the end of government; the other makes all give way to his own will and appetite…Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins.” By positioning their actions within the context of law, those signing the Declaration position themselves within a tradition that authorized the dissolution of government when the rule of law was no longer in force.

The Declaration is usually read as a philosophical document rather than a governing document. A political theory can certainly be distilled from the Preamble and the grievances, but the grievances themselves serve as a governance structure. More than a theoretical justification for independence, or an articulation of high-minded ideals that a government ought to embody, the grievances lay out in practical terms how a government should function by providing the contrasting vision of legitimate government. An illegitimate government is ruled by an executive that refuses to assent to the laws; therefore, a legitimate government must have an executive that adheres to and enforces duly passed legislation.

Embodied with the first grievance is the political principle that laws passed by a representative body should be assented to by the executive body. Thus, the assumption is that there needs to be a separation between the legislative and executive functions of government and that those two bodies are equal. It also posits that the laws, and not the caprice or whim of those in government, ought to restrict the actions of the government. The primacy of the rule of law is clear throughout the Declaration, but the first grievance gives us a clear articulation of a separation of powers as being essential to—if not an assumed trait of—legitimate government. While itself a governing document, it does anticipate the modes and orders that would be codified in the U.S. Constitution.

Kyle Scott, PhD, MBA serves on the Board of Trustees for the Lone Star College System and teaches political science at the University of Houston and is an affiliated scholar with the Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Health Policy and Medical Ethics. Kyle has authored over 70 op-eds, dozens of academic articles and five books, the most recent of which is The Limits of Politics: Making the Case for Literature in Political Analysis. He can be reached at kyle.a.scott@hotmail.com or on Twitter: @kanthonyscott.

 


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 14 – Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.— Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

The Declaration of Independence serves as the cornerstone of our nation, and the men who created this statement of natural rights did not do so lightly. Their causes to break from Great Britain were not “light and transient causes” and they wanted to make sure that the world who was going to be reading this declaration would understand the events and circumstances that brought the colonies to the point of separation in the summer of 1776.

The above portion of the Declaration shows us the point in the document where the necessary change that is required by the colonies should be independence, as well as showing how we have arrived at this point and who is to blame. The document had previously stated that we were separating from Great Britain and started to explain the justification for doing so. It also details that the colonies are not taking this usurpation lightly, but have strong reasons for doing so. The Declaration details that most people throughout history have been content to suffer under oppressive forms of government, but these men are not. In this section, the writers of the Declaration are submitting to the world why they will not be suffering under the rule of King George III any longer.

A long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism..”  – The colonies had been enduring what they felt were abuses and usurpations (abuses of power with no right to do so) for years. The French and Indian War had ended in 1763 and the British Empire was heavily in debt as a result. The British felt that the American colonies were going to have to shoulder some of the burden of paying this debt.

The colonies were also told where they could and could not settle by the Proclamation of 1763, which told the colonists that they could not settle West of the Appalachian Mountains. The colonists were outraged by this and the subsequent taxes and acts that followed from 1763 through the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775. The colonists, as British subjects, also felt that their rights under the English Constitution were not being recognized or respected. Some colonists also believed that King George III was abusing his power at the expense of the colonists and that, because of this, he was not fit to be their king.

“..it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

After realizing that their king had betrayed them, the colonists now felt that they needed to do something about it. They believed that not only was it their right to get rid of the king and the British Empire as their rulers: it was their duty! They felt called to do this for themselves and the future generations of their new nation. The king’s actions had led the colonists to this place in history and their sense of betrayal was felt very heavily. The colonies then adopted measures to prevent these actions from continuing. Those who boycotted British goods and protested the king and Parliament’s legislation believed they were being deprived of their rights as free Englishmen and that they deserved representation by the British Parliament as a voice for their concerns as well. They took action when those rights were not given to them and those actions would lead the colonists towards revolution.

“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”

Most colonists had tried to maintain patience throughout the various acts of Parliament and the effects and consequences that had resulted from them. That patience partially came from the fact that most colonists believed a reconciliation would occur with the King. They wanted that to happen. They were British subjects and hoped for an amicable reunion. However, after several acts, taxes and policies that the colonists felt were unfair and oppressive of their rights as English subjects, they had had enough and felt that it was time to do something to remedy it. The colonist arrived at the conclusion that they needed to change their situation. By the summer of 1776, after over a year of open warfare, it was difficult, if not impossible to reconcile with the mother country. The colonists wanted to escape an oppressive government that they believed was not respecting them or looking out for them; they wanted a better life for themselves and their future ancestors. The results of that oppression now made it absolutely necessary for the colonists to change their form of government from a monarchy to, eventually, a republic.

“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

In the recent years of history (the 1760s and 1770s), the actions of the King and Parliament indicated to the colonists that England was trying to oppress them. An objective of these actions was to harm and mistreat the colonies. Furthermore, King George III also had an objective to rule as a tyrant. As a result of these actions, the colonies were now going to leave the British Empire.

“To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

The Declaration will now be transitioning to a list of grievances that will give the evidence to the world that will show how the colonists had been suffering under this monarch and his actions. These facts attempt to prove that the king is an oppressive ruler and an unfit king to these colonies. They will also attempt to show that he has been and will continue to be, an oppressive and tyrannical ruler, which is why we are declaring our independence.

Val Crofts serves as Chief Education and Programs Officer at the American Village in Montevallo, Alabama. Val previously taught high school U.S. History, U.S. Military History and AP U.S. Government for 19 years in Wisconsin, and was recipient of the DAR Outstanding U.S. History Teacher of the Year for the state of Wisconsin in 2019-20. Val also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School as a social studies teacher for 9 years. He is also a proud member of the United States Semiquincentennial Commission (America 250), which is currently planning events to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 13 – Guest Essayist: The Honorable David L. Robbins

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

The above passage in the United States Declaration of Independence, warns of revolution for “light and transient causes” by overthrowing government, long established. The British Monarchy dates to 1066 when England was conquered by the Normans. And, while some monarchs were removed forcefully, the monarchs ruled England since this early beginning. The Declaration of Independence was challenging a “long established” government that ruled England for 710 years, and the members of the Second Continental Congress were aware there would be challenges in forming a new nation.

The American revolutionary leaders included many well-educated, wealthy, businessmen. They all realized signing this document would be signing their death sentences if the revolution was unsuccessful. Plus, their links to England were not casual, but well embedded in colonial life. Family, customs, education, language, business, and even religion were long-term bonds between the colonies and England. But, actions by England had become insufferable.

The Founders of America did not necessarily want to change the whole world, even though they did, but after years of insufferable treatment by King George, his government and military, they believed they had to attempt to throw off the “forms to which they are accustomed.” The Founders pulled material from many different sources to form a new government, but they didn’t necessarily have all the answers to form a successful government to replace the British monarchy.

The initial Articles of Confederation were deemed inadequate by 1785, just two years after the end of the Revolutionary War. In 1786, Congress met and debated the Constitution of the United States. While the Constitution was deemed immensely superior to the Articles of Confederation, several states refused to ratify the new Constitution without additional assurances which produced the first ten amendments, referred to as the Bill of Rights.

The Constitution of the United States is an incredible document. It has survived over 230 years and after the original ten amendments, only 17 additional amendments have been approved, fewer than one every 13 years. Through the election of Representatives, Senators, and the President and Vice-President, this document permits peaceful change in our government via elections every two, four, and six years. Most of these “mini-revolutions” have been peaceful. However, the history of change in the United States has not always been peaceful.

The U.S. Civil War was about drastically different visions of government, society, and treatment of people. While these may not have been viewed as “light and transient causes,” the impacts were devastating to the entire country. The U.S. Civil War lasted over four years from April 12, 1861 to May 9, 1865 and cost over 655,000 lives.  It ended with massive changes and new amendments to the Constitution. The U.S. Revolutionary War, by contrast, resulted in approximately 25,000 American deaths and approximately 50,000 in total.

In 1968, the United States was in turmoil during a presidential election year with a war in Viet Nam, riots at home, the assassination of two prominent national leaders: one a civil rights leader and another a presidential candidate. During this chaos, a British pop music group, the Beatles, released a song called “Revolution” in August with lyrics to demand change while casting aside violence or destruction. The line from the song, “we all want to change the world” still resonates today as it did over 200 years ago.

Many individuals, organizations, and political groups over the history of the United States have pushed for change in our country, some minor, some drastic. Change is inevitable, but the Founders of the United States left a cautionary note in the Declaration of Independence, one hopefully taken to heart by both those wanting change and those resistant to change.

David L. Robbins serves as Public Education Commissioner in New Mexico.

 


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

Click Here for Next Essay 

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 12 - Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey

“…and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In declaring their independence from the British empire, Americans did not merely assert themselves. They declared “the causes which impel them to the Separation” and submitted facts, evidence “to a candid World.” In doing so, they selected a way of arguing that can be understood not only by Americans and Englishmen but by human beings as such. Human beings are by their nature capable of reasoning, of thinking according to the principle of non-contradiction. If I say, ‘Think of a circle,’ you know what I mean, so long as you know the meaning of the words in that sentence. If I say, ‘Think of a square,’ you also know what I mean. But if I say, ‘Think of a square circle,’ you don’t know what I could possibly mean. I have contradicted myself.

A formal argument founded on the principle of non-contradiction is called a logical syllogism. That is exactly what the Declaration of Independence is. A logical syllogism consists of one or more ‘major premises’—the foundations of the argument—one or more ‘minor premises’—typically, specific facts—followed by a conclusion. To give the standard example: ‘All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.’ The major premise is a general or foundational statement; the minor premise is a factual statement; the conclusion follows from the two premises. You could disprove the argument by showing that either or both premises is false, or that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises, that it somehow violates the principle of non-contradiction. So, for example, if the ‘Socrates’ you are referring to is an angel, the conclusion is wrong, since angels may not be mortal.

In the Declaration of Independence, the clause we are considering is one of the several main premises of the argument; the minor premises are the specific, factual charges against the British king and parliament. The major premises stated before this are the famous ones: that all men are created equal respecting their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that men institute government to secure those rights; that the governments they institute derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that, conversely, a people whose government violates their unalienable rights may rightly be abolished.

According to the logic of the argument, then, the “consent” of the governed cannot mean simply the assent of the governed. Consent can only mean assent to a government that really does secure the rights human beings have by nature, thanks to their Creator, before they form the government. Once they no longer consent to their government because it no longer serves the “end” or purpose a government ought to have, not only do we have the right to alter or abolish it, we also have the right, even the obligation, to frame a new government, one that does secure the rights they old government failed to secure.

How will we do that? By doing two things. First, we do it by “laying its foundations” on the foundations or major premises of the Declaration of Independence: the natural, unalienable rights of human beings. Second, we do it by founding a new regime, a regime which includes a government with a new “form,” a new structure, an architecture, which is logically consistent with those natural foundations. By so shaping the means to the end, the form of the government to the defense of natural rights, we can effect our safety and happiness—secure our natural rights in practice, not merely recognize them in theory.

This clause of the Declaration is the link between the Declaration and the preamble to the United States Constitution. Justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty are all elements of our safety and happiness as an independent, self-governing people. The Constitution lays out exactly the form or structure of the government designed to achieve those purposes, replacing the Articles of Confederation, which had not achieved them, which in turn had replaced the regime of the British empire, which had violated them.

Thus the right of revolution follows logically from the purpose of government, just as the purpose of government follows logically from the existence of unalienable natural rights in all human beings. In presenting their Declaration of Independence in the form of a logical syllogism, the American Founders justified their action not only to themselves, not only to their “British brethren,” but to a “candid world”—to all human beings who think rationally, wherever and whenever they live.

 

Will Morrisey is Professor Emeritus of Politics, Hillsdale College; Editor and Publisher, Will Morrisey Reviews

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 11 - Guest Essayist: James D. Best

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

The “right of the people to alter or abolish” their government is derived from our natural right to self-governance. The notion of self-governance is relatively new. In 1776, the world was ruled by royalty or warrior chieftains. Some upstart colonialists then penned the most revolutionary document in the history of man. Kings and queens no longer enjoyed a Divine Right to rule. Instead, the individual was now the one endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Like most revolutionary visions, this one didn’t suddenly spring onto the world stage. Baron de Montesquieu, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and many others had advocated that “consent of the governed” was dictated by the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Of course, not everyone accepted this concept—certainly not King George III or English nobility. It took seven years of warfare for the colonies to solidify their claim of self-governance.

“The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence, or veiled in fable, and perhaps the world has lost little it should regret. But the origins of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived.” — James Madison

The Founders, however, were steeped in this incendiary idea. Self-governance had been part of their experience in the New World. The colonists were subjects of England, but a round-trip sail across the great Atlantic put three to four months between them and their king. Self-rule started with the Pilgrims. The Mayflower Compact began by pledging loyalty to King James, but then decreed that the colonists would

“combine together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid: and by virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most convenient for the general good of the colony.”

Basically, the Mayflower Compact was a written statement declaring self-government in colonial America.

“under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government” —Declaration of Independence.

Geography may have allowed the early colonists to govern themselves, but it was the writings of the Enlightenment that declared that self-rule was a natural right. This grand idea eventually led to the Declaration of Independence, which asserted that it was the right of the people “to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” This founding principle basically said that the people themselves held the power to form a new government at any time and in any shape that met their needs. It was a radical concept used to justify radical action.

The power to “institute a new government” also conveys the power to “alter or to abolish it.” The 1787 replacement of the Articles of Confederation with our Constitution is a historical example of this concept. Since that date, we have not seen a need to abolish our government because we have been able to alter it continuously with amendments, laws, and political movements.

Our government at the national level is not a direct democracy. (Half of the states allow ballot initiatives which, if passed by a majority of the voters, have the force of law.) Instead, we elect representatives to write laws and a president to administer those laws. When the people’s will is thwarted, regular elections give them the opportunity to dismiss their representatives and appoint new ones. As a further safeguard, our government theoretically only has powers delegated by the people, reinforcing the concept that power resides with the people, not political leaders. The principle of self-governance is echoed in the 9th and 10th Amendments to the United States Constitution.

As long as people believe their voices count, fair and honest elections prevent the more drastic action of abolishment. Revolutions are bred when people believe their voices go unheard, especially in periods of hardship.

 

James D. Best is the author of Tempest at Dawn, a novel about the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Principled Action, Lessons From the Origins of the American Republic, and the Steve Dancy Tales.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here for Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 10 - Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

The Declaration of Independence laid down several important principles about free government predicated upon all humans being created with an equality of natural rights. From that equality flowed the idea that all who made a political regime through a social contract equally gave their consent to that government. The American polity was a republican form of government rooted upon a continuing consent of the sovereign people.

The American colonists were drawn to the principle of consensual government in the decade of resistance before the Declaration of Independence. The main argument of the American Revolution was, of course, “no taxation without representation.” The colonists were willing to pay taxes as British subjects, but they demanded in countless pamphlets, newspapers, petitions, declarations of rights, and speeches that they could only be taxed by their consent. This consent would be given in their colonial legislatures since they were not and could not reasonably be represented in Parliament.

In 1774, George Washington said it well when he described it with a practical example: “I think the Parliament of Great Britain hath no more Right to put their hands into my Pocket, without my consent, than I have to put my hands into yours, for money.” Washington thought it was violated constitutional and natural rights. Taxation without consent was “repugnant to every principle of natural justice…that it is not only repugnant to natural Right, but Subversive of the Laws & Constitution of Great Britain itself.”

In Federalist #39, James Madison described the principle of consent:

“We may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society…It is sufficient for such a government that the persons administering it be appointed, either directly or indirectly, by the people.”

Madison’s quote points us to important considerations about consensual republican government. First, it derives its power from the sovereign people. Second, it is governed by representatives of the people (from among the people) they have elected directly or indirectly in free elections.

The Constitution contained several provisions that institutionalized popular consent. “We the People” established the constitutional government divided into three branches of government with the Congress, and specifically the House of Representatives, representing the people most directly. As Madison wrote, “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” The Constitution provided for free direct and indirect elections and limited terms of office. The document guaranteed “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

Representative government was naturally and reasonably based fundamentally upon majority rule. The majority, however, was guided and limited by the principles of natural law and natural justice. Madison explained in Federalist #51: “It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.” Thomas Jefferson agreed in his First Inaugural: “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” According to the founders, majority tyranny was just as bad as tyranny of the few or one. Majority rule was only just if minority rights were protected.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of popular consent and majority rule was challenged. John Calhoun’s “concurrent majority” created the idea that the means of preventing supposedly tyrannical majority rule was by allowing the minority to have a veto on what it believed unjust. Concurrence was virtually akin to unanimity and laid the basis for nullification. Stephen Douglas’ view of “popular sovereignty” advocated that the people of each state govern their affairs however they want including owning slaves. Douglas’ “don’t care” policy on slavery was a gross violation of natural rights and justice by an oppressive majority against a racial minority. His relativist stance on popular government did not accord with the ideas of Madison and Jefferson above about majority rule/minority rights.

In his First Inaugural, Abraham Lincoln reasserted the underlying principle of majority rule and consent. Lincoln focused attention on the need for a sense of restraint in popular government and the checks and balances and other devices that help provide limits. Moreover, he noted that republican governments based upon the consent of the governed are rooted in free and reasonable deliberation and persuasion are necessary in shaping just majorities. But, it also means that the minority must submit to just rule. It cannot reject majority rule because it disagrees with a chosen course of action or does not win the debate. Lincoln said:

“A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people, Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left.”

The twentieth century witnessed several challenges to consensual self-government. The executive agencies of the administrative state that were overseen by experts in the public interest were seen as a counter to the messy, slow, and deliberative lawmaking of Congress. The later rise of the “imperial presidency” subverted the other branches of government and popular consent. Many observers argued that an “imperial judiciary” allowed unelected judges to substitute their personal views for the will of the people. Today, many are concerned that big tech elites and their political allies attempt to control and limit popular will. The debate has continued and will endure because of the central importance of the constitutional principle of consent in the American regime and national character.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.


Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here For Next Essay

Click Here For Previous Essay 

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 9 - Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
Founding Fathers John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge, PA, bronze sculpture by Stan Watts at Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge

“that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,”

According to Mr. Thomas Jefferson, it is a self-evident truth (or, if you prefer: a “sacred and undeniable truth”[1]) “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,”

This is one of the most memorable and yet controversial statements in English prose. Memorable it has become due to its striking simplicity. Controversial? It shouldn’t be. Jefferson is writing to the Americans of 1776; but his words also apply to Americans of 2021. A truth is a truth.

In 1776, Jefferson’s was a claim few would dispute or even take much notice of; it expressed an idea that had been “hackneyed about” in America for fifty to a hundred years. This was, simply, “an expression of the American Mind” of 1776. But today? While only 1 in 10 Americans believe there is no God at all, only about half of Americans believe God is an active participant in their lives.[2] Only 40% of Americans believe God actually created the world as Jefferson alludes,[3] and fewer still believe in the existence of God-given rights. Some today even claim there is danger in insisting that rights come from God. Instead, these people insist that these rights come from “human progress.”[4] There are grave implications to this alternative view, as we will see in a moment.

But, as author Brian Vanyo points out:

the Founding Fathers and other Natural Law philosophers did not take for granted that God existed. They did not base their strong conviction in God on religious dogma. Rather, they deduced that God must exist because an alternative conclusion was irrational…Belief in God was so common among the founding generation that further validation of God’s existence was often unnecessary and unwelcome.” [5]

Jefferson claimed these unalienable rights were an endowment – a gift – from our Creator: natural rights result from “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Later in life, in the only book he ever wrote, Jefferson reiterated this view.[6] The colonists had been making this claim to their King – that these were their natural rights, and they were being violated – for many years.

The standard formula up until 1776 had been: “Life + Liberty + Property = Our Fundamental Natural Rights.” [7] Why did Jefferson now substitute “pursuit of happiness”?  Some scholars insist Jefferson borrowed the “pursuit of happiness” idea from John Locke. Locke indeed explored this idea in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (published 1689), which Jefferson no doubt studied. And it is undisputed that Jefferson modeled other phrases in the Declaration after Locke.[8]  But “pursuit of happiness” and similar phrases were commonly encountered during the Founding period. Take this excerpt from a 1773 Election Sermon by Pastor Simeon Howard:

“In a state of nature, or where men are under no civil government, God has given to every one liberty to pursue his own happiness in whatever way, and by whatever means he pleases, without asking the consent or consulting the inclination of any other man, provided he keeps within the bounds of the law of nature. Within these bounds, he may govern his actions, and dispose of his property and person, as he thinks proper, Nor has any man, or any number of men, a right to restrain him in the exercise of this liberty, or punish, or call him to account for using it. This however is not a state of licentiousness, for the law of nature which bounds this liberty, forbids all injustice and wickedness, allows no man to injure another in his person or property, or to destroy his own life.”[9]

Much has been written dissecting Jefferson’s choice of “pursuit of happiness” over “property,”[10] so I won’t take more time with the subject here other than to say there is no evidence that suggests Jefferson did not believe the right to property to also be a natural right.

Alexander Hamilton concurred that God was the source of the colonists’ rights. Answering an essayist calling himself “The Farmer,” Hamilton wrote:

The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice. Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society…The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”[11]

So did James Wilson:

“What was the primary and principal object in the institution of government? Was it – I speak of the primary and principal object – was it to acquire new rights by a human establishment? Or was it, by human establishment, to acquire new security for the possession or the recovery of those rights, to the enjoyment or acquisition of which we were previously entitled by the immediate gift, or by the unerring law, of our all-wise and all-beneficent Creator? The latter, I presume, was the case…”[12]

And John Adams:

I say RIGHTS, for such they have, undoubtedly, antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.”[13]

And John Dickinson:

Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness… We claim them from a higher source – from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power without taking our lives. In short they are founded on the immutable maxims of reason and justice.”[14]

The prevailing understanding of the founding era was that God was the source of natural rights, period. But, even in the founding era that understanding was beginning to change, and the change has picked up speed in the modern era.

Today, it is not uncommon to encounter people claiming that man himself is the source of his rights. When interviewing controversial Judge Roy Moore, then Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, CNN commentator Chris Cuomo famously declared:  “Our rights do not come from God, your Honor, and you know that, they come from man.”

But, there is a problem with this belief, a big problem. If our rights come from man, i.e., from the laws we human beings enact, then how can these rights ever be considered unalienable? Does this mean certain men can pass a civil law creating a certain civil right with the understanding that future men will somehow be prevented from revoking that law and thus revoking the right it created? Manmade rights can simply not be unalienable.

Could there be a middle ground where both unalienable and alienable rights are part of the human condition? What if both Cuomo and Moore are right each in their own unique way?

I think we must acknowledge that man can indeed create rights through civil law. The right to vote, for instance (some insist it is a privilege, not a right), could not be a natural right. In the hypothetical state of nature, voting would have no meaning, there being no society and no government. So, some rights, as Cuomo insists, do indeed “come from man.” These rights must be considered alienable. The law that creates a right for certain individuals to vote today can easily be revoked tomorrow.

But, what then of natural rights, rights that would be part of the human condition were there no society, no government? Some today suggest that even these need not have a Heavenly source – as most of the Founders would insist – but that these rights became part of the human condition as man “evolved.”

The idea that human beings have inherent rights, inherent to being human, goes back to antiquity, but it began to gain significant adherents during The Enlightenment. One of those new adherents was Englishman Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism, Bentham explained the “fundamental axiom” of his philosophy as the principle that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” Bentham famously called the idea of natural rights sourced in God as “nonsense upon stilts.”

John Dewey thought that “[n]atural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology.”[15]

We do find some Founders using the “inherent” terminology; George Mason begins the Virginia Declaration of Rights by stating:

“That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”[16]

George Washington spoke of inherent natural rights in a Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, August 17, 1790.[17]

Even Jefferson himself wrote that “Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.[18]

However, “inherent” and “natural” rights are not irreconcilable concepts.  Being inherent does not exclude God as the ultimate source. If God, as Creator, wished his human creations to understand they had these rights, he need only “embed” them into our consciousness. Both Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10 remind us that God’s law will be “written upon our hearts;” is it not reasonable to assume our rights are “inscribed” there as well?

We will not settle the “inherent” versus “natural” argument today, suffice it to say that if you like your rights “unalienable,” you best look to God as their source.

Which natural rights exist?  How many are there?

Note that in our subject phrase Jefferson points to only “certain” unalienable rights as included in the Creator’s endowment. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” are among the rights created and given by God. Jefferson thus implies that other rights, beyond these three, are part of God’s endowment. This understanding, that there are other, perhaps even uncountable natural rights, was also part of the “American Mind,” so much so that we see it codified in the Ninth Amendment.[19]

One of the frequent objections to including a Bill of Rights in the Constitution was that “it would not only be useless, but dangerous, to enumerate a number of rights which are not intended to be given up; because it would be implying, in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the exception might be impaired by the government without usurpation; and it would be impossible to enumerate every one…”[20]

James Madison, in proposing the Bill of Rights on the floor of Congress in 1789, acknowledged the power of this objection but showed it had been anticipated. He said: “This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the 4th resolution (which would eventually become the Ninth Amendment).”[21]

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

But, we can see an obvious question arise here: if there are unenumerated rights which government should not “deny or disparage,” what are they? Who gets to identify or “enumerate” them? The Framers of the Constitution gave us no hint.

Thus far in our country’s history we have let the court system identify them. In 1965, the Supreme Court identified, for the first time, a right to privacy lurking in a “penumbra” of the Constitution. Eight years later the Justices expanded this right to include the “right” to terminate the life of an unborn baby. In 2008, the court pulled out of the “inkblot”[22] of the Ninth Amendment the “right” of two homosexuals to marry.

Note, however, that the Constitution begins not with the words: “We the Congress,” “I the President,” or even “We the Judges.” The Constitution represents a contract between the American people and the government the document creates. The people are sovereign; they hold the ultimate political power over the government. It is We the People who have the rightful authority to identify the rights we wish secured by the words of the Constitution. And the rightful mechanism for bringing those rights into the security of the Constitution is amendment, not judicial decree.

Thomas Jefferson’s words are as sacred and undeniable today as they were 245 years ago. Since Congress has declared the Declaration of Independence to be part of the Organic Law of the United States,[23] we would do well to reflect on and heed them.

Natural rights?  I’ll take mine unalienable, please.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at  gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Podcast by Maureen Quinn

[1] These were Jefferson’s words in the original draft of the Declaration.

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/

[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx

[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201610/the-danger-claiming-rights-come-god

[5] Brian Vanyo, The American Ideology, Taking Back our Country with the Philosophy of our Founding Fathers, Liberty Publishing, 2012. p. 20-21.

[6] “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785.

[7] See both Declaration and Resolves, October 14, 1774 and A Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms, July 6, 1775

[8] See Two Treatises on Government, Bk II

[9] A sermon preached to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery-Company, in Boston, New-England, June 7th, 1773. : Being the anniversary of their election of officers, by Pastor Simeon Howard, accessed at: https://christiancivicfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/artillery-sermon-on-liberty-simeon-howard.pdf

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness

[11] The Farmer Refuted, 1775

[12] Mark David Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1742-1798 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997) pp. 1053-1054

[13] A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

[14] An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados, 1766

[15] John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action, 1935, page 17.

[16] George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776, accessed at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/virginia-declaration-of-rights.

[17] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135

[18] Letter to John Cartwright, 1824.

[19] “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

[20] James Iredell, speaking at the North Carolina Ratifying Convention, July 29, 1788.

[21] https://usconstitution.net/madisonbor.html

[22] “An inkblot” is the way Judge Robert Bork characterized the Ninth Amendment in his unfruitful confirmation hearing for a seat on the Supreme Court.

[23] https://uscode.house.gov/browse/frontmatter/organiclaws%26edition=prelim

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here For Previous Essay 

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Essay 8 - Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

The Declaration of Independence made a bold assertion about human nature and natural rights. The central claim that “all men are created equal” had profound implications for the American regime of liberty. The “self-evident truth” of human equality meant that humans had equal natural rights, equally gave their consent to create a republican government, had equal dignity, and were equal under the law.

Throughout history, most societies were either monarchies, aristocracies, or despotisms. In those societies, leaders and elite social classes (or those of a certain ethnicity or religion) had certain rights and privileges that common people did not have. These societies were characterized by inequality.

The Enlightenment and ideas of John Locke significantly influenced the founders’ belief that all humans were created equal and had equal natural rights. The Declaration stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The nature of the political regime was then shaped by this idea of natural human equality.

Again, influenced by Locke, the Declaration stated that all were equally free and independent to give their consent to create a free, representative government. The Declaration stated, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This was the basis of social contract or social compact theory. It created an equal citizenry and self-governance in a republic.

The citizens in the republican government enjoyed equality under the Constitution. The Constitution created an equal rule of law for all in which they could enjoy their liberties. It equally protected the individual rights of all citizens and guaranteed due process. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution reads, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Constitution banned titles of nobility and aristocratic privileges showing that it was a republican constitution not one that supported oligarchy, or rule by the few.

The principle of equality protected the liberties of all citizens to create a just society. All citizens enjoyed equal political liberty by giving their consent to representative government at all levels and by participating in government. All possessed freedom of conscience regarding their religious beliefs and worship. They also had economic equality. This understanding of equality did not mean that all people had the same amount of income or property, but that they had property rights and ought to have equal opportunity to pursue their happiness and keep the fruits of their labor in a free society. During the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln explained that the idea, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it,” is the “tyrannical principle” of monarchy and slavery.

Human beings had the same natural rights and enjoyed equality under the law in the political regime, but they were unequal in some important and obvious ways. The founders understood that human beings can never be perfectly equal in society because of the differences among individuals. Humans are unequal in physical strength, intelligence, talents, abilities, and character. Thus, individuals have different faculties, abilities, and virtues to make use of in pursuing their happiness. These differences result in social inequalities especially in terms of how much wealth a person might earn or some advantages in opportunities. Republican government must guard against allowing natural inequalities to create the conditions under which oligarchy and tyranny rule, but it can never create a utopian society of perfect equality.

For the founders, human equality was an axiomatic principle that was universally true for all people at all times. However, the principle was increasingly challenged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Senator John C. Calhoun called the equality principle an “utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race” and the idea of equality of the races “an error.” In the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney opined that, “it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included,” in the Declaration of Independence. In his 1858 debates with Lincoln, Senator Stephen Douglas stated, “I hold that the signers of the Declaration of Independence had no reference to negroes at all when they declared all men to be created equal.” In 1861, the vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, said that the “corner-stone [of the Confederate States of America] rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

Many abolitionists and statesmen, including Frederick Douglass and Lincoln, took exception to the arguments of the opponents of black equality and inclusion in the Declaration of Independence. Their repeated claims that blacks were equal human beings endowed with equal natural rights was a significant demand for racial egalitarianism.

The equality principle continued to influence American thinking about their republican regime. While Lincoln continued to believe in the self-evident truth of the Declaration, he conceded that it was being fundamentally challenged before and during the Civil War. Lincoln was a student of ancient Greek mathematician Euclid and used the language of a proposition in the Gettysburg Address. The proposition of human equality was either true or false, and he believed in its truth and that it could be proven. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He opened the speech by stating, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” Using the biblical language of the Gettysburg Address, King rhetorically appealed to the liberty and equality of the Emancipation Proclamation and Declaration of Independence. He referred to the equality principle of the Declaration of Independence as a “promissory note” because it had been unfulfilled for black Americans. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” King had not given up on the American ideal of equality. Black Americans attended the March on Washington and demonstrated peacefully in places like Birmingham to make that promise a reality.

The principle of equality has powerfully stood at the core of the American regime for more than two centuries. The challenges and debates over the principle have animated American deliberations about their national character of their free government and free society throughout that time and will continue to do so.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here For Previous Essay 

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 7 - Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

The Americans of the founding period were a strongly Protestant people of various denominations including dissenting Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists. Some historians have estimated that Protestants made up over 98% of the American population. Their Protestantism was characterized by a strong dissenting tradition against religious and civil tyranny as well as a strong streak of individualism.

Their Protestantism—especially the Puritan tradition—was also exemplified by appeals to the natural law in its covenant theology that was consistent with Lockean social compact theory. Covenant theology caused Americans to view themselves as a Chosen People of a new Israel who formed a covenant with God. The natural law of covenant theology was consistent with both reason and revelation as they reconciled their reason and faith in the natural law and natural rights philosophy of the American Revolution.

The American founders drew from a variety of traditions in arguing for their natural rights and liberties. Ancient thought from Greece and Rome, the English tradition, and the ideas of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers combined with Protestantism for a rich tapestry. While the Enlightenment provided a strong influence on the founders, the contribution of their religious beliefs has often been downplayed or ignored. The average American colonial farmer or artisan may not have read John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government or ancient philosophy, but they heard dissenting religious ideals and Lockean principles from the pulpit at religious services.

Toward the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson had cause to reflect on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote to Henry Lee in 1825 about the purpose of the Declaration:

“This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent…it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day.”

The “harmonizing sentiments” of the 1760s and 1770s supported a natural law opposition to British tyranny in the American colonies. James Otis was one of the earliest articulators of natural law resistance. In 1764, he wrote, “Should an act of Parliament be against any of his natural laws, which are immutably true, their declaration would be contrary to eternal truth, equity, and justice, and consequently void.”

In 1774, Thomas Jefferson expressed the same sentiments in his Summary View of the Rights of British America. In the pamphlet, he wrote that God was the author of natural rights inherent in each human being. The Americans were “a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate… the God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”

A year later, a young Alexander Hamilton wrote a pamphlet, Farmer Refuted, in which he eloquently described the divine source of universal rights. “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

These “expressions of the American mind” were common formulations of natural rights that influenced the Declaration of Independence. The four mentions of God in the document demonstrate their understanding of the divine, but it also showed that God was the author of good government according to natural law.

First, the Declaration appeals to the “separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” This first mention of God is that of Protestant and Enlightenment natural law. They saw God as the author of truth in the moral order of the universe. This moral order defined their thinking about republican self-government.

Second, the Declaration asserts that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” God is the Creator and author of natural rights in this formulation. Since rights are from a higher authority, no earthly power can violate an individual’s inherent rights. Interestingly, God here acts as a supreme legislator who makes the natural law and grants natural rights.

Third, the Declaration appealed to “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.” God is a judge who authored the idea of justice and who judges human actions. God here represents the judicial branch of government.

Fourth, the Declaration stated that, “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Americans believed that God was a providential God who intervened in human affairs and protected his Chosen People. This conception of God represents the executive branch of government.

The Declaration of Independence was a reflection that the American natural rights republic was rooted in the natural law. Reason and divine revelation supported the natural law that shaped a good government built upon the understanding of human nature and the rights given to humans by God.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

 

Click Here for Next Essay

Click Here For Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 6 - Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

On June 7, 1776, delegate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia rose to move in the Second Continental Congress, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved….” The motion was not immediately considered, because four states, lacking instructions from their assemblies, were not prepared to vote. Nevertheless, Congress appointed a committee of five to prepare a declaration of independence. The committee, composed of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson, assigned the task of preparing the initial draft to Jefferson.

After numerous revisions by Adams and Franklin and, eventually, by Congress itself, the final draft and report were presented to Congress on July 2, 1776. Formal adoption of the Declaration had to await a vote on Lee’s motion for independence. That was approved by the states the same day, with only the New York delegation abstaining. After a few more minor changes, the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776. Copies were sent to the states the next day, and it was publicly read from the balcony at Independence Hall on the 8th. Finally, on August 2nd, the document was signed.

General Washington, at New York, received a copy and a letter from John Hancock. The next day, July 9, Washington had the Declaration read to his troops. Whereas those troops responded with great enthusiasm for the cause, reaction elsewhere to the Declaration was divided, to say the least. Supporters of independence were aware of the momentousness of the occasion. As Washington’s commander of artillery, Henry Knox, wrote, “The eyes of all America are upon us. As we play our part posterity will bless or curse us.” Others were less impressed. The anti-independence leader in Congress, John Dickinson, dismissed it as a “skiff made of paper.”

The Declaration’s preamble embraced four themes fundamental to Western political philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries: Natural law and rights, popular sovereignty exercised through the consent of the governed, the compact basis of the legitimate state, and the right of revolution.

The idea of a universal moral law, obligatory on earthly rulers and to which human law must conform, went back at least to the Stoics nearly two millennia prior, and indirectly even to Aristotle’s conception of natural justice. Cicero, among Roman writers, and the Christian Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas, among medieval Scholastics, postulated the existence of a natural order directed by universal laws. Humans were part of this order created by God and governed by physical laws. More important for these writers was the divinely-ordained universal moral law, in which humans participated through their reason and their ability to express complex abstract concepts. By virtue of its universality and its moral essence, this natural law imposed moral obligations on all, ruler and ruled alike. All were created equal, and all were equal before God and God’s law. Viewed from a metaphysical and practical perspective, these obligations provided the best path to individual flourishing within a harmonious social order in a manner that reflected both the inherent value of each person and man’s nature as a social creature. The need to meet these universal obligations of the natural moral law necessarily then gave rise to certain universal rights that all humans had by nature.

However, the shattering of universal Christendom in the West, with its concomitant shattering of the idea of a universal moral law and of a political order based thereon, changed the conception of natural law, natural rights and the ethical state. No longer was it man’s reason that must guide his actions and his institutions, including government and law, for the purpose of realizing the ends of this order. Rather, in the emerging modernity, there was a “turn to the subject” and, in the words of the ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras, “man [became] the measure of all things.”

Political legitimacy and, thereby, the basis for political and legal obligation came to rest on individual acts of will. The most prominent foundation for this ethical structure was the construct of the “social contract” or “social compact.” “Natural law” became deracinated of its moral content and was reduced to describing the rules which applied in a fictional state of nature in which humans lived prior to the secular creation of a political commonwealth, in contrast to the civil law that arose after that creation. Natural rights were those that sovereign individuals enjoyed while in the state of nature, in contrast to civil rights, such as voting, which were created only within a political society.

Although expositors of the social contract theory appeared from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and came from several European cultures, the most influential for the American founding were various English and colonial philosophers and clergymen. Most prominent among them was John Locke.

Locke’s version of the state of nature is not as bleak and hostile as was that of his predecessor Thomas Hobbes. Nor, however, is it a romanticized secular Garden of Eden as posited by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing a century later. For Locke, existence in the state of nature allows for basic social arrangements to develop, such as the family, economic relationships, and religious congregations. However, despite Locke’s general skepticism about the Aristotelian epistemology then still dominant at the English universities, he agreed with the ancient sage that human flourishing best proceeds within a political commonwealth. Accordingly, sovereign individuals enter into a compact with each other to leave the state of nature and to surrender some of their natural rights in order to make themselves and their estates more secure. They agree to arbitrate their disputes by recourse to a judge, and to be governed by civil law made by a legislator and enforced by an executive. Under a second contract, those sovereign individuals collectively then convey those powers of government to specified others in trust to be exercised for the benefit of the people.

Thus, the political commonwealth is a human creation and derives its legitimacy through the consent of those it governs. This act of human free will is unmoored from some external order or the command of God. For Hobbes, the suspected atheist, human will was motivated to act out of fear.

Locke allows for much greater involvement by God, in that God gave man a nature that “put him under strong Obligations of Necessity, Convenience, and Inclination to drive him into Society, ….” Moreover, the natural rights of humans derive from the inherent dignity bestowed on humans as God’s creation. The human will still acts out of self-interest, but the contract is a much more deliberate and circumscribed bargain than Hobbes’s adhesion contract. For Locke, the government’s powers are limited to achieve the purposes for which it was established, and nothing more. With Hobbes, the individual only retained his inviolate natural right to life. With Locke, the individual retains his natural rights to liberty and property, as well as his right to life, all subject to only those limitations that make the possession of those same rights by all more secure. Any law that is inimical to those objectives and tramples on those retained rights is not true law.

There remained the delicate issue of what to do if the government breaches its trust by passing laws or otherwise acting in a manner that make people less secure in their persons or estates. Among private individuals, such a breach of fiduciary duty by a trustee would result in a court invalidating the breach, ordering fitting compensation, and, perhaps, removing the trustee. If the government breached such a duty, recourse to the English courts was unavailable, since, at least as to such constitutional matters, the courts had no remedial powers against the king or Parliament.

Petitions to redress grievances were tried-and-true tools in English constitutional theory and history. But what if those petitions repeatedly fell on deaf ears? One might elect other members of the government. But, what if one could not vote for such members and, consequently, was not represented therein? What if, further, the executive authority was not subject to election? A private party may repudiate a contract if the other side fails to perform the material part of the bargain. Is there a similar remedy to void the social contract with the government and place oneself again in a state of nature? More pointedly, do the people collectively retain a right of revolution to replace a usurping government?

This was the very situation in which many Americans and their leaders imagined themselves to be in 1776. Previous writers had been very circumscribed about recognizing a right of revolution. Various rationales were urged against such a right. Thomas Aquinas might cite religious reasons, but there was also the very practical medieval concern about stability in a rough political environment where societal security and survival were not to be assumed. Thomas Hobbes could not countenance such a right, as it would return all to the horrid state of nature, where life once again would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Moreover, as someone who had experienced the English Civil War and the regicide of Charles I, albeit from his sanctuary in France, and who was fully aware of the bloodletting during the contemporaneous Thirty Years’ War, revolution was to be avoided at all cost.

Locke was more receptive than Hobbes to some vague right of revolution, one not to be exercised in response to trivial or temporary infractions, however. Left unclear was exactly who were the people to exercise such a right, and how many of them were needed to legitimize the undertaking. Locke wrote at the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. His main relevant work, the Second Treatise on Civil Government, was published in 1689, though some scholars believe that it was written earlier. The Catholic king, James II, had been in a political and religious struggle with Parliament and the Church of England. When Parliament invited the stadholder (the chief executive) of the United Netherlands to bring an army to England to settle matters in favor of itself, James eventually fled to France.

Parliament declared the throne vacant, issued a Declaration of Rights and offered the throne to William and his wife, Mary. In essence, by James’s flight, the people of England had returned to an extra-political state of nature where they, through the Parliament, could form a new social contract.

The American Revolution and Jefferson’s writings in the Declaration of Independence follow a similar progression. When King George declared the colonies to be in rebellion on August 23, 1775, and Parliament passed the Prohibitory Act in December of that year, they had effectively placed the colonies outside the protection of the law and into a state of nature. At least that was the perception of the colonists. Whatever political bands once had existed were no more. In that state of nature, the Americans were free to reconstitute political societies on the basis of a social contract they chose.

That project occurred organically at the state level. Massachusetts had been operating as an independent entity since the royal governor, General Thomas Gage, had dissolved the General Court of the colony in June, 1774. That action led to the extra-constitutional election by the residents of a provincial congress in October. Thereafter, it was this assemblage that effectively governed the colony. The other colonies followed suit in short order.

In Virginia, a similar process occurred in the summer of 1774. It culminated two years later in the “Declaration of Rights and the Constitution or Form of Government,” begun by a convention of delegates on May 6, 1776, and formally approved in two stages the following month. The initial document was a motley combination of a plan of government, a declaration of independence, and a collection of enumerated rights and high-sounding political propositions. In the part regarding independence, the accusations against King George are remarkably similar, often verbatim, precursors to Jefferson’s language in the Declaration of Independence of the “united States” two months later. George Mason, whom Jefferson praised as the “wisest man of his generation,” was the principal author. Still, it may have been Jefferson himself who proposed this language through the drafts he submitted to the Virginia convention.

Both documents, the Virginia declaration and the Declaration of Independence, cite as a reason for “dissolv[ing] the Political Bands” that the king had abandoned the government by declaring the Americans out of his protection. George III, like James II a century before, had breached the social contract and forced a return to an extra-political state of nature. The Declaration of Independence merely formalized what had already occurred on the ground. With those bands broken, the next step, that of forming a new government, already taken by Virginia and other states, now lay before the “united States.”

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/

 

 

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

 

 

Click Here For Next Essay

Click Here For Previous Essay 

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 5 - Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
AppleGoldSilverFrame

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln had occasion to reflect upon the principles of the American Founding. Using a biblical metaphor, he thought that the Declaration of Independence was an “apple of gold” because it contained the foundational principles of the new country. The Constitution was the “picture of silver” framing the apple with the structures of republican government. In the mind of Lincoln—and those of the Founders—an inextricable link bound together the two documents in creating a free government.

The Declaration of Independence and Constitution seem to have had different purposes. The Declaration was an assertion of independence that included laying down the Enlightenment and Lockean principles of natural rights and republican self-government based upon consent. The Constitution created the framework of the national government with three separate branches operating with certain powers. However, a close reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution reveal a common set of republican principles as Lincoln saw it with his metaphor.

The Declaration of Independence affirmed the republican principle of popular government. The people were the source of all sovereignty, or authority, in the representative government and gave their consent for it to govern. It stated, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The Constitution was significantly rooted in popular sovereignty. The Preamble to the Constitution agreed that the new constitutional government was to be based upon the principle of popular sovereignty. It began, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union.” The previous government under the Articles of Confederation (1781-1789) did not have sufficient powers to govern the nation adequately so the Framers decided to create a new government with powers to achieve its ends.

The Constitution supported popular sovereignty in several ways. The Congress, and especially the House of Representatives, was closest to the people and represented them. As James Madison wrote in Federalist #51, “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” The people directly or indirectly elected several offices in free elections and for fixed terms. In addition, the people and their representatives were responsible for ratifying the Constitution as fundamental law in popular ratifying conventions.

Republican government was predicated upon majority rule of the sovereign people and their representatives. Majority rule was based upon reason as well as justice in preserving minority rights. President Thomas Jefferson reminded Americans of the moral basis for majority rule in his First Inaugural Address: “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect.”

The core principle—the “apple of gold—of the Declaration of Independence was human equality in natural rights. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” This principle of equality was enshrined in the constitutional government and closely related to building a just and equal political order.

The Constitution created a system whereby all were equal under the law and equal in their rights. The Fifth Amendment reads, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In Federalist #51, Madison recognized the defining importance of justice when he wrote, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.”

The Declaration supports the rule of law based upon popular consent. The people form a government with a rule of law to protect their rights. They have the power to overthrow a tyrannical government but have a responsibility to “institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” A rule of law allows citizens to live their lives peacefully and civil society to function normally.

The Declaration claimed that the natural rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” were self-evident. Political, economic, and religious liberty were among the fundamental and inalienable rights of the individual. The very purpose of republican government is to protect liberty, and its powers would be limited to achieve that goal.

The weakness of the Articles of Confederation actually endangered liberty by allowing unjust laws and little power to govern properly to preserve liberty. The more robust constitutional system was intended to do a better job of preserving liberty with laws that were more just and national security that was more vibrant.

The Founders created a free constitutional republic so that Americans might govern themselves by their own consent through their representatives. Limited government meant that its powers were restricted to guarding the people’s rights and governing effectively so that the people might live their lives freely. A free people would pursue their happiness and interact amicably in the public square for a healthy civil society.

In Federalist #1, Alexander Hamilton explained the entire purpose of establishing free government based upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He stated that Americans had the opportunity and responsibility to form good government by “reflection and choice,” not by “accident and force.” The United States was founded uniquely upon a set of principles and ideals.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence. 

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

 

Click Here For Next Essay

Click Here For Previous Essay 

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 4 - Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

There are two recognized types of war, war between nations (“international war”) and war within a nation (“civil war”). In a civil war, some portion of the inhabitants forcibly seeks political change. The goal often is to replace the existing constitutional government with their own by taking over the entire structure or by separating themselves and seeking independence from their current compatriots.

A civil war may be an insurrection or a rebellion, the stages being distinguished by a rebellion’s higher degree of organization of military forces, creation of a formal political apparatus, greater popular participation, and more sophistication and openness of military operations. By those measures, the American effort began as an insurrection during the localized, brief, and poorly organized eruptions in the 1760s and early 1770s. Various petitions, speeches, and resolves opposing the Revenue Act, the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, and others, were reactive, not strategic. Even circular letters among colonial governments for unified action, such as that by the Massachusetts assembly in February, 1768, against the Townshend Acts, or hesitant steps toward union, such as the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, were of that nature. Much rhetoric was consumed along with impressive quantities of Madeira wine, but tactical successes were soon superseded by the next controversy.

In similar vein, local bands of the Sons of Liberty, the middle-class groups of rabble-rousers that emerged in 1765, fortified in their numbers by wharf-rats and other layabouts, might destroy property, intimidate and assault royal officials, and harass locals seen as insufficiently committed to opposing an often-contrived outrage du jour. They might incite and participate in violent encounters with the British authorities. But, while they engaged in melodramatic and, to some Americans, satisfying political theater, they were no rebel force. Moreover, the political goals were limited, focused on repeal or, at least, non-enforceability of this or that act of Parliament.

Yet, those efforts, despite their limited immediate successes, triggered discussions of constitutional theory and provided organizational experience. In that manner, they laid the groundwork that, eventually, made independence possible, even if no one could know that and few desired it. Gradually, the vague line between insurrection and rebellion was crossed. The consequences of the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord have made it clear, in retrospect, that, by the spring of 1775, a rebellion was under way.

The Second Continental Congress met on May 10, 1775, and, in contrast to its predecessor, did not adjourn after concluding a limited agenda. Rather, it began to act as a government of a self-regarding political entity, including control over an organized armed force and a navy. Congress sent diplomatic agents abroad, took control over relations with the Indian tribes, and sent a military force under Benedict Arnold north against the British to “assist” Canada to join the American coalition. It appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the “Army of the United Colonies.” That army, and other forces, achieved several tactical military successes against the British during 1775 and early 1776, although the Canadian expedition narrowly failed.

Still, something was lacking. The scope of the effort was not matched by an equally ambitious goal. The end was not in focus. Certainly, repeal of the Coercive Acts, which had been enacted in the spring of 1774, urgently needed to be achieved. Those acts had closed the port of Boston, brought the government of Massachusetts under more direct royal control by eliminating elected legislative offices, and authorized the peacetime quartering of troops in private homes. These laws appeared reasonable from the British perspective. Thus, the Quartering Act intended to alleviate the dire conditions of British soldiers who were forced to sleep on Boston Common. The Government and Administration of Justice Act was to ensure, in part, fair trials for British officials and soldiers accused of murder as had happened in 1770 in the “Boston Massacre.” At the same time, though these acts were limited to Massachusetts, many colonists feared that a similar program awaited them. These laws were so despised that they were collectively known to Americans also as the “Intolerable Acts.”

Was there to be more? In unity lay strength, and the Second Continental Congress was tasked with working out an answer. But Congress was more follower than leader, as delegates had to wait for instructions from their colonial assemblies. That meant the process was driven by the sentiments of the people in the colonies, and the Tory residents of New York thought differently than the Whigs of beleaguered Massachusetts. Within each colony, sentiments, quite naturally, also varied. The more radical the potential end, the less likely people were to support it. Even as late as that spring of 1775, there existed no clear national identity as “American.” People still considered themselves part of the British Empire. The rights that they claimed were denied them by the government in London were the “ancient rights of Englishmen.” The official American flag, used by the armed forces until June, 1777, was composed of the familiar, to us, thirteen red and white stripes in its field, but its canton was the British Union Jack. Without irony, Congress’s military operations were made in the name of the king. General Washington was still toasting the king each night at the officer’s mess in Cambridge while besieging the British forces in Boston.

The gentlemen who met in Philadelphia came from the colonial elite, as would be expected. But they were also distinguished in sagacity and learning, more so than one has come to expect from today’s Congress drawn from a much larger population. Almost none favored independence. Those few that did, the Adams cousins from Massachusetts, Sam and John; the Lees of Virginia, Francis Lightfoot and Richard Henry; Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania; and Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, the “Sam Adams of the South” as he came to be known, kept their views under wraps. Instead, the goal initially appeared to be some sort of conciliation within a new constitutional relationship of yet-to-be-determined form. Many delegates had also served in the First Continental Congress dedicated to sending remonstrances and petitions. On the other hand, Georgia had not sent delegates to the First, so its delegation consisted entirely of four novices. Peyton Randolph of Virginia was chosen president, as he had been of the First Continental Congress. He was soon replaced by John Hancock when Randolph had to return to Virginia because of his duties as Speaker of the House of Burgesses.

One person missing from the assemblage was Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania. He had attended the First Continental Congress, where he had drafted a plan of union between the colonies and Britain. Parliament would control foreign affairs and external trade. As to internal colonial affairs, Parliament and a new American parliament would each effectively have veto power over the acts of the other. His plan would have recognized a degree of colonial sovereignty, but within the British system. It was rejected by one vote, six colonies to five, because a more confrontational proposal, the Suffolk Resolves, had recently been adopted by the towns around Boston which outflanked his proposal politically. Congress instead endorsed the Resolves, and voted to expunge Galloway’s plan from the record. Still, his proposal was a prototype for the future federal structure between the states and the general government under the Articles of Confederation. Repulsed by what he saw as the increasing radicalism of the various assemblies, he maintained his allegiance to the king. By 1778, he was living in London and advising the British government.

Congress sought to thread the needle between protecting the Americans from intrusive British laws and engaging in sedition and treason. In constitutional terms, it meant maintaining a balance between the current state of submission to a Parliament and a ministry in which they saw themselves as unrepresented, and the de facto revolution developing on the ground. The first effort, by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, was the “Declaration on the Causes of Taking Up Arms.” It declared, “We mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us…. We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separation from Great Britain, and establishing independent States.” Then why the effort? “[W]e are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice.” Note the problem: not the king, not even Parliament, but “irritated ministers.” The path to resolution of the conflict, it seemed, was to appeal to the king himself, who, it was surmised, must have been kept in the dark about the dire state of affairs of his loyal colonial subjects by his ministers’ perfidy.

On July 8, 1775, Congress adopted the “Olive Branch Petition,” also drafted by John Dickinson. That gentleman, a well-respected constitutional lawyer, member of the First Continental Congress, and eventual principal drafter of the Articles of Confederation in 1777, wanted to leave no diplomatic stone unturned to avoid a breach with Great Britain. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison relates remarks attributed to John Adams about the supposed reasons for Dickinson’s caution. According to Adams, “His (Dickinson’s) mother said to him, ‘Johnny you will be hanged, your estate will be forfeited and confiscated, you will leave your excellent wife a widow, and your charming children orphans, beggars, and infamous.’ From my Soul, I pitied Mr. Dickinson…. I was very happy that my Mother and my Wife…and all her near relations, as well as mine, had been uniformly of my Mind, so that I always enjoyed perfect Peace at home.” A new topic of study thus presents itself to historians of the era: the effect of a statesman’s domestic affairs on his view of national affairs.

The Petition appealed to the king to help stop the war, repeal the Coercive Acts, restore the prior “harmony between [Great Britain] and these colonies,” and establish “a concord…between them upon so firm a basis as to perpetuate its blessing ….” Almost all who signed the later Declaration of Independence signed the Petition, largely to placate Dickinson and, for some, to justify more vigorous future measures. As feared by many, and hoped by some, on arrival in London, the American agents were told that the king would not receive a petition from rebels.

British politicians were as unsure and divided about moving forward as their American counterparts in Congress. But George III could rest assured of the support of his people, judging by the 60,000 that lined the route of his carriage from St. James Palace to the Palace of Westminster on the occasion of his speech to both houses for the opening of Parliament on October 26, 1775. The twenty-minute speech, delivered in a strong voice, provides a sharp counterpoint to the future American Declaration of Independence. Outraged by the attempted invasion of Canada, a peaceful and loyal colony, the king already on August 23 had declared that an open rebellion existed.

He now affirmed and elaborated on that proclamation. Leaders in America were traitors who in a “desperate conspiracy” had inflamed people through “gross misrepresentation.” They were feigning loyalty to the Crown while preparing for rebellion. Now came the bill of particulars against the Americans: “They have raised troops, and are collecting a naval force. They have seized the public revenue, and assumed to themselves legislative, executive, and judicial powers, which they already exercise in the most arbitrary manner…. And although many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty…the torrent of violence [by the Americans] has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence till a sufficient force shall appear to support them.”

Despite these provocations, he and the Parliament had acted with moderation, he assured his audience, and he was “anxious to prevent, if it had been possible, the effusion of the blood of my subjects, and the calamities which are inseparable from a state of war.” Nevertheless, he was determined to defend the colonies which the British nation had “encouraged with many commercial advantages, and protected and defended at much expense of blood and treasure.” He bemoaned in personal sorrow the baleful effects of the rebellion on his faithful subjects, but promised to “receive the misled with tenderness and mercy,” once they had come to their senses. Showing that his political sense was more acute than that of many Americans, as well as many members of Parliament, the king charged that the true intent of the rebels was to create an “independent empire.”

Two months later, Parliament followed the king’s declaration with an act to prohibit all commerce with the colonies and to make all colonial vessels subject to seizure as lawful prizes, with their crews subject to impressment into the Royal Navy.

The king’s speech was less well-received in the colonies, and it gave the radicals an opportunity to press their case that the king himself was at the center of the actions against the Americans. It was critical to the radicals’ efforts towards independence that the natural affinity for the king that almost all Americans shared with their countrymen in the motherland be sundered. Some snippets about the king’s character from the historian David McCullough illustrate why George III was popular. After ascending the throne in 1760 at age 22, “he remained a man of simple tastes and few pretensions. He liked plain food and drank but little, and wine only. Defying fashion, he refused to wear a wig…. And in notable contrast to much of fashionable society and the Court, … the king remained steadfastly faithful to his very plain Queen, with whom [he ultimately would produce fifteen children].”  Recent depictions of him as unattractive, dull, and insane, are far off the mark. He was tall, well above-average in looks at the time, and good-natured. By the 1770s, he was sufficiently skilled in the political arts to wield his patronage power to the advantage of himself and his political allies. One must not forget that, but a decade earlier, colonial governments had voted to erect statues in his honor. It was the very affability of George III and his appeal as a sort of “people’s king” that made it imperative for Jefferson to portray him in the Declaration of Independence as the ruthless and calculating tyrant he was not.

Between November, 1775, and January, 1776, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland still explicitly instructed their delegates to vote against independence. But events soon overtook the fitfulness of the state assemblies and Congress. Parliament’s actions, once they became known, left no room for conciliation. The colonies effectively had been declared into outlawry and, in Lockean terms, reverted to a “state of nature” in relation to the British government. The struggles in the colonial assemblies between moderates who had pressed for negotiation and radicals who pushed for independence now tilted clearly in favor of the latter.

Yet before news of Parliament’s actions reached the colonies, another event proved to be even more of a catalyst for the shift from conciliation to independence. In January, 1776, Thomas Paine, an English corset maker brought to Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin, published, anonymously, a pamphlet titled “Common Sense.” Paine ridiculed monarchy and denounced George III as a particularly despicable example. The work’s unadorned but stirring prose, short length, and simplistically propagandistic approach to political systems made it a best seller that delivered an electric jolt to the public debate. The extent to which it influenced the deliberations of Congress is unclear, however.

The irresolution of the Congress, it must be noted, was mirrored by the fumblings of Parliament. The Americans had many friends for their cause in London, even including various ministries, some of which nevertheless were reviled in the colonies. This had been the case beginning the prior decade, when American objections to a particular act of Parliament resulted in repeal of the act, only to be followed by another that the Americans found unacceptable, whereupon the dance continued. Still, the overall trend had been to tighten the reins on the colonies. But that did not deter Edmund Burke, a solid—but at times exasperated—supporter of the Americans, to introduce a proposal for reconciliation in Parliament in November, 1775. Unfortunately, it was voted down. Others, including Adam Smith and Lord Barrington, the secretary at war, urged all British troops to be removed and the Americans to be allowed to determine whether, and under what terms, they wished to remain in union with Britain.

Other proposals for a revised union were debated in Parliament even after the Americans declared independence. These proposals resembled the dominion structure that the British, having learned their lesson too late, provided for many of their colonies and dependencies in subsequent generations. The last of these, the Conciliatory Bill, which actually was passed on February 17, 1778, gave the Americans more than they had demanded in 1775. Too late. The American alliance with France made peace impossible. Had those proposals, allowing significant control by the colonists over local affairs, been adopted in a timely manner, the independence drive well may have stalled even in 1776. Even Adams, Jefferson, and other radicals of those earlier years had urged a dominion structure, whereby the Americans would have controlled their own affairs but would have remained connected to Britain through the person of the king. The quote attributed to the former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban about the Arabs of our time might as well have applied to the British of the 1770s, “[They] never miss[ed] an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Reflecting the shifting attitudes in the assemblies, and responding to the seemingly inexorable move to independence by the states, the Second Continental Congress also bent to the inevitable. The Virginia House of Burgesses on May, 15, 1776, appointed a committee to draft a constitution for an independent Commonwealth, and directed its delegates in Congress to vote for independence. Other states followed suit. Finally, Richard Henry Lee moved in Congress, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” The die was cast.

Joerg W. Knipprath is an expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/

Podcast by Maureen Quinn. 

 

 

Click Here For Next Essay 

Click Here For Previous Essay 

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 3 - Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

In an 1857 speech criticizing the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), Abraham Lincoln commented that the principle of equality in the Declaration of Independence was “meant to set up a standard maxim for a free society.” That maxim, however, that the Declaration of Independence and its principles have been debated and contested throughout history.

American constitutional democracy needs vigorous deliberation and debate by citizens and their representatives. This civil and political dialogue helps Americans understand the principles and ideas upon which their country was founded and the means of working on achieving them. Indeed, throughout American history, many Americans appealed to the Declaration of Independence to make liberty and equality a reality for all.

In the 1770s and 1780s, enslaved persons in New England immediately appealed to the natural rights principles of the Declaration and state constitutions as they petitioned state legislatures and sued in state courts for freedom and the abolition of slavery. For example, a group of free blacks in New Hampshire stated, “That the God of nature gave them life and freedom, upon the terms of the most perfect equality with other men; That freedom is an inherent right of the human species, not to be surrendered, but by consent.” As a result, they won their freedom and helped to end slavery there.

The women and men who assembled at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights adopted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances. The document was modeled after the Declaration of Independence, but changed the language to read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”

The Declaration of Independence was one of the centerpieces of the national debate over slavery. Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison all invoked the Declaration of Independence in denouncing slavery. Douglass stated that the Declaration “contains a true doctrine—that ‘all men are born equal.’” Douglass thought the document was an expression of the “eternal laws of the moral universe.” Garrison publicly burned the Constitution because he believed it to be a pro-slavery document, but always upheld the principles of the Declaration.

On the other hand, Senators Stephen Douglas and John Calhoun, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens all denied that the Declaration of Independence was meant to apply to black people. Calhoun thought slavery a “positive good” and asserted that the idea that all men are created equal was “the most false and dangerous of all political errors” because black persons were inferior and subordinate to the white race. Stephens stated,

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man…our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Abraham Lincoln’s political philosophy and statesmanship was rooted upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence and their realization according to constitutional means. He consistently held that the Declaration of Independence had universal natural rights principles that were “applicable to all men and all time.” In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln stated that the nation was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The expansion of American world power in the wake of the Spanish-American War of 1898 triggered another debate using the Declaration of Independence. Supporters of American expansion argued that the country would bring the ideals of liberty and self-government to those people who had not previously enjoyed them. On the other hand, anti-imperialists countered that American empire violated the Declaration of Independence by taking away the liberty of self-determination and consent from Filipinos and Cubans.

Politicians of differing perspectives viewed the Declaration in opposing ways during the early twentieth century. Progressives such as Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson argued that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were important for an earlier period in American history to gain independence from Great Britain and set up the new nation. However, they argued, modern America faced new challenges introduced by an industrial economy and needed a new set of principles based upon equality of condition.

Progressive John Dewey represented this line of thinking when he wrote,

“The ideas of Locke embodied in the Declaration of Independence were congenial to our pioneer conditions that gave individuals the opportunity to carve their own careers….But the majority who call themselves liberal today are committed to the principle that organized society must use its powers to establish the conditions under which the mass of individuals can possess actual as distinct from merely legal liberty.”

Modern conservatives such as President Calvin Coolidge argued that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence should be preserved and respected. On the 150th anniversary of the Declaration, Coolidge stated that the principles formed the American creed and were still the basis of American republican institutions. Coolidge was a conservative who wanted to preserve the past, “reaffirm and reestablish” American principles, and generate a “reverence and respect” for principles of the Declaration and American founding. They were still applicable regardless of how much society changed. Indeed, Americans needed to revere the principles precisely because of rapid social change.

Modern American social movements for justice and equality called upon the Declaration of Independence and its principles. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr., stated in his “I Have a Dream” speech:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

King demanded that the United States live up to its “sacred obligation” of liberty and equality for all.

The natural rights republican ideals of the Declaration of Independence influenced the creation of American constitutional government founded upon liberty and equality. They also shaped the expectations that a free people would live in a just society. Achieving those ideals has always been part of a robust and dynamic debate among the sovereign people and their representatives.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence. 

 

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn

 

Click Here For Next Essay 

Click Here For Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay 2 - Guest Essayist: George Landrith
King John signing Magna Carta, 1215. Depicted is a signature, though typically an official seal would be affixed. Illustration by James William Edmund Doyle, 1864.

The Magna Carta created the moral and political premise that, in many ways, the American founding was built upon. The Magna Carta came to represent the idea that the people can assert their rights against an oppressive ruler and that the power of government can be limited to protect those rights. These concepts were clearly foundational and central to both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

First, a bit of history about Magna Carta — its full name was Magna Carta Libertatum which is Latin for “Great Charter of Freedoms.” But, it became commonly known as simply Magna Carta or the “Great Charter.” It was written in 1215 to settle an intense political dispute between King John of England and a group of barons who were challenging King John’s absolute right to rule. The terms of the charter were negotiated over the course of three days. When they reached agreement on June 15, 1215, the document was signed by the King and the barons at Runnymede outside of London.

This was a time when kings asserted the absolute right to rule, and that they were above the law and that they were personally chosen to rule by God. At this time, even questioning the King’s power was both treasonous and an act of defiance to God himself.

The Magna Carta limited the king’s absolute claim to power. It provided a certain level of religious freedom or independence from the crown, protected barons from illegal imprisonment, and limited the taxes that the crown could impose upon the barons, among other things. It did not champion the rights of every Englishman. It only focused on the rights of the barons. But, it was an important start to the concept of limiting the absolute power of governments or kings that claimed God had given them the absolute right to rule.

Magna Carta is important because of the principles it stood for and the ideas that it came to represent — not because it lasted a long time. Shortly after signing the charter, King John asked Pope Innocent III to annul it, which he did. Then there was a war known as the First Barons War that began in 1215 and finally ended in 1217.

After King John died in 1216, the regency government of John’s nine-year-old son, Henry III reissued the Magna Carta, after having stripped out some of its more “radical” elements in hopes of reuniting the country under his rule. That didn’t work, but at the end of the war in 1217, the original Magna Carta’s terms became the foundation for a peace treaty.

Over the following decades and centuries, the importance of Magna Carta ebbed and flowed depending on the current king’s view of it and his willingness to accept it, or abide by it its concepts. But subsequent kings further legitimized or confirmed the principles of Magna Carta — often in exchange for some grant of new taxes or some other political concession. But the path towards limited government and individual rights had been planted and continued to grow.

Despite its relatively short political life as a working document, Magna Carta created and memorialized the idea that the people had the right to limit the powers of their government and they had the right to protect basic and important rights. By the end of the Sixteenth Century, the political lore of Magna Carta grew and the idea of an ancient source for individual rights became cemented in the minds of reform-minded political scholars, thinkers and writers.

Obviously, it wasn’t as written in 1215 a document that protected the rights of the average Englishman. It only protected English barons. But the concepts of individual rights and the limitations of governmental power had grown and were starting to mature. Magna Carta was the seed of those powerful concepts of freedom and constitutionally limited government.  By the 17th and 18th Centuries, those arguing for reforms and greater individual rights and protections used Magna Carta as their foundation. These ideas are at the very center of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

As English settlers came to the shores of North America, they brought with them charters under the authority of the King. The Virginia Charter of 1606 promised the English settlers all the same “liberties, franchises and immunities” as people born in England.[1]  The Massachusetts Bay Company charter acknowledged the rights of the settlers to be treated as “free and natural subjects.”[2]

In 1687, William Penn, an early American leader, who had at one point been imprisoned in the Tower of London for his political and religious views, published a pamphlet on freedom and religious liberty that included a copy of the Magna Carta and discussed it as a source of fundamental law.[3] American scholars began to see Magna Carta as the source of their guaranteed rights of trial by jury and habeas corpus (which prevented a king from simply locking up his enemies without charges or due process). While that isn’t necessarily correct history, it is part of the growth of the seed of freedom and liberty that Magna Carta planted.

By July 4, 1776, the idea that government could, and should be, limited by the consent of its citizens and that government must protect individual rights was widely seen as springing forth from Magna Carta. The beautiful and important words penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration spring from the fertile soil of Magna Carta:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Obviously, Thomas Jefferson’s ideas of liberty and freedom had developed a great deal since Magna Carta was penned in 1215. But, it is impossible to read Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence and not see the common DNA.

When the Founders debated, drafted and ratified the U.S. Constitution, it is also clear they were creating a set of rules and procedures to limit and check the power of government and to guarantee basic, individual rights.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” is a concept that comes from Magna Carta. Our constitutional guarantees of “a speedy trial” as found in the Sixth Amendment are also founded in the political thought that grew from Magna Carta. The Constitution’s guarantee of the “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus” (Art.1, Sec. 9) is also a concept that grew from Magna Carta.

Even the phrase “the law of the land” comes from Magna Carta’s history. And now we use that phrase in the United States to describe our Constitution which we proudly label “the law of the land.”

To this day, Magna Carta is an important symbol of liberty in both England and the United States.

The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are in my estimation the two most important and influential political documents ever written. What they did to provide promote and protect the freedom, opportunity and security of the average person is almost impossible to overstate. As British Prime Minister William Gladstone said in 1878, “the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”[4]

I believe Gladstone was correct. But, Magna Carta was an important development in political thought and understanding about government power and individual rights. It is difficult to imagine the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution without the foundational elements provided by Magna Carta.

George Landrith is the President of Frontiers of Freedom. Frontiers of Freedom, founded in 1995 by U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, is an educational foundation whose mission is to promote the principles of individual freedom, peace through strength, limited government, free enterprise, free markets, and traditional American values as found in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here For The Next Essay

Click Here To View The Previous Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

[1] The Library of Congress (www.loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/rights-of-englishmen-in-british-america.html#obj022) as shown on 2/13/2021.

[2] The Library of Congress (www.loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/rights-of-englishmen-in-british-america.html#obj023) as shown on 2/13/2021.

[3] Ralph V. Turner, Magna Carta: Through the Ages (2003).

[4] William E. Gladstone, “Kin Beyond Sea,” The North American Review, September–October 1878, p. 185-86.

Introduction: Revolutionary Importance of the Declaration of Independence by The Honorable Michael Warren

The importance of the Declaration of Independence can hardly be overstated. It established for the first time in world history a new nation based on the First Principles of the rule of law, unalienable rights, limited government, the Social Compact, equality, and the right to alter or abolish oppressive government.

Contrary to the beliefs of some, the American Revolution was not fought for lower taxes or to protect slavery. In fact, the tea tax which provoked the Boston Tea Party actually lowered the price of tea, and many of the Founding Fathers were opposed to slavery.

Indeed, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence announces for the whole world to see our underlying motivation for the American Revolution:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The Declaration announced the Founding Fathers’ belief in the “truth” –

there was no relative moralism here. They believed some truths were so obvious, that they were “self-evident,” that is, that they need not be proven: 2 + 2 = 4, not a cow. You, our dear reader, are not the moon. This essay is in English, not water. The Founders declared, against the historical experiences and beliefs of the ages, six founding First Principles, all of which were quite revolutionary at the time, and remain revolutionary today:

1. The Rule of Law: Although not articulated expressly, undergirding the entire Declaration of Independence is the idea of the rule of law. In other words, the government and the People are both bound by the law. The reason we needed to declare independence was because the British Empire was no longer following the fundamental unwritten English Constitution. Until 1776, it was just assumed that most rulers did not need to follow the law, and that huge swaths of the privileged were exempt from the laws that applied to the vast majority of the People. The Declaration of Independence declared – no more! The law should apply equally to all in society, whether they be in the government or the masses, the richest or the most poor. We turned the world upside down.

2. Equality: All men are created equal. This idea is perhaps the most controversial of them all, because the Founding Fathers fell so short of its ideal in practice. But, the Founding Fathers were the very first to proclaim that a nation should be dedicated in this belief. It is based on the belief that the Creator (Nature and Nature’s God) created all people, and therefore we are all equal in His eyes and under our law. Until 1776, no government was established on equality or even declared it should be so. Instead, inequality was the key historical reality and belief of the day. A privileged few lorded over subjects. It was done as a matter of tradition and codified into the law. We fell short in our reality, but we were the first to commit our nation to equality.

3. Unalienable Rights: We are used to thinking we have rights that government must respect, but this was quite revolutionary in 1776. In fact, the People were “subjects” and had “privileges” which means that the government lorded over the people and the people could only do was permitted by the government. A right means the People do not have to seek permission from the government. Moreover, “unalienable” means that the rights cannot be taken away, they are born within each person and can never be taken away by the government. “Alienability” is an old-fashioned word for the ability “to sell” or “transfer” something. Because our rights come from God, they cannot be sold or taken away. Today, too many act like their rights come from government, and they need to ask for permission to do things. Not so. No other society in human society has rested on the foundation of unalienable rights.

4. Social Compact: The idea of the Social Compact is that the People have come together and created a government to protect their unalienable rights. If we don’t have a government, we have the natural right to defend ourselves, but without a police force, we have to resort to vigilante justice. By allowing the government to create a police force, fire department, border patrol, and military, we have given up some of our unalienable rights to self-defense and agreed to abide by the government. This means that the government rests on the consent of the People and only acts justly with that consent. Before 1776, likely no government believed in a true Social Compact, they usually took power by force and violence, and coerced its subjects to follow its dictates.

5. Limited Government. Because the government is formed to protect our unalienable rights, the just limit of its powers is to protect those rights and some ancillary powers. To ensure that the government remains free and just, we limit its powers and authority. In most of human history, governments were developed with the opposite belief that they were unlimited unless they carved out some privileges to their subjects.

6. Reform and Revolution: If a government becomes unjust and violates our unalienable rights, we have the right to reform or even abolish it. That is, after all, the whole point of the Declaration of Independence. If reform failed, and the government undertook a long train of abuses with the intention to assert an absolute despotism on the People, then the People have the right – in fact, the duty – to overthrow the government and start anew. We are a revolutionary people and had no intention of giving away the rights we enjoyed.

Religious texts aside, the Declaration of Independence may be the most important document in human history. It totally upended the prevailing orthodoxy about government and has led to momentous changes across time and the world. Certainly we have fallen short, over and over again, of its ideals. But without the First Principles of the Declaration of Independence, we would live in the total darkness of oppression as mankind had for a millennia before.

Judge Michael Warren is the co-creator of Patriot Week (www.PatriotWeek.org), author of America’s Survival Guide, and host of the Patriot Lessons: American History & Civics Podcast.

 

Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

 

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

Essay One - Guest Essayist: Judge Michael Warren

The importance of the Declaration of Independence can hardly be overstated. It established for the first time in world history a new nation based on the First Principles of the rule of law, unalienable rights, limited government, the Social Compact, equality, and the right to alter or abolish oppressive government.

Contrary to the beliefs of some, the American Revolution was not fought for lower taxes or to protect slavery. In fact, the tea tax which provoked the Boston Tea Party actually lowered the price of tea, and many of the Founding Fathers were opposed to slavery.

Indeed, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence announces for the whole world to see our underlying motivation for the American Revolution:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The Declaration announced the Founding Fathers’ belief in the “truth” –

there was no relative moralism here. They believed some truths were so obvious, that they were “self-evident,” that is, that they need not be proven: 2 + 2 = 4, not a cow. You, our dear reader, are not the moon. This essay is in English, not water. The Founders declared, against the historical experiences and beliefs of the ages, six founding First Principles, all of which were quite revolutionary at the time, and remain revolutionary today:

1. The Rule of Law: Although not articulated expressly, undergirding the entire Declaration of Independence is the idea of the rule of law. In other words, the government and the People are both bound by the law. The reason we needed to declare independence was because the British Empire was no longer following the fundamental unwritten English Constitution. Until 1776, it was just assumed that most rulers did not need to follow the law, and that huge swaths of the privileged were exempt from the laws that applied to the vast majority of the People. The Declaration of Independence declared – no more! The law should apply equally to all in society, whether they be in the government or the masses, the richest or the most poor. We turned the world upside down.

2. Equality: All men are created equal. This idea is perhaps the most controversial of them all, because the Founding Fathers fell so short of its ideal in practice. But, the Founding Fathers were the very first to proclaim that a nation should be dedicated in this belief. It is based on the belief that the Creator (Nature and Nature’s God) created all people, and therefore we are all equal in His eyes and under our law. Until 1776, no government was established on equality or even declared it should be so. Instead, inequality was the key historical reality and belief of the day. A privileged few lorded over subjects. It was done as a matter of tradition and codified into the law. We fell short in our reality, but we were the first to commit our nation to equality.

3. Unalienable Rights: We are used to thinking we have rights that government must respect, but this was quite revolutionary in 1776. In fact, the People were “subjects” and had “privileges” which means that the government lorded over the people and the people could only do was permitted by the government. A right means the People do not have to seek permission from the government. Moreover, “unalienable” means that the rights cannot be taken away, they are born within each person and can never be taken away by the government. “Alienability” is an old-fashioned word for the ability “to sell” or “transfer” something. Because our rights come from God, they cannot be sold or taken away. Today, too many act like their rights come from government, and they need to ask for permission to do things. Not so. No other society in human society has rested on the foundation of unalienable rights.

4. Social Compact: The idea of the Social Compact is that the People have come together and created a government to protect their unalienable rights. If we don’t have a government, we have the natural right to defend ourselves, but without a police force, we have to resort to vigilante justice. By allowing the government to create a police force, fire department, border patrol, and military, we have given up some of our unalienable rights to self-defense and agreed to abide by the government. This means that the government rests on the consent of the People and only acts justly with that consent. Before 1776, likely no government believed in a true Social Compact, they usually took power by force and violence, and coerced its subjects to follow its dictates.

5. Limited Government. Because the government is formed to protect our unalienable rights, the just limit of its powers is to protect those rights and some ancillary powers. To ensure that the government remains free and just, we limit its powers and authority. In most of human history, governments were developed with the opposite belief that they were unlimited unless they carved out some privileges to their subjects.

6. Reform and Revolution: If a government becomes unjust and violates our unalienable rights, we have the right to reform or even abolish it. That is, after all, the whole point of the Declaration of Independence. If reform failed, and the government undertook a long train of abuses with the intention to assert an absolute despotism on the People, then the People have the right – in fact, the duty – to overthrow the government and start anew. We are a revolutionary people and had no intention of giving away the rights we enjoyed.

Religious texts aside, the Declaration of Independence may be the most important document in human history. It totally upended the prevailing orthodoxy about government and has led to momentous changes across time and the world. Certainly we have fallen short, over and over again, of its ideals. But without the First Principles of the Declaration of Independence, we would live in the total darkness of oppression as mankind had for a millennia before.

Judge Michael Warren is the co-creator of Patriot Week (www.PatriotWeek.org), author of America’s Survival Guide, and host of the Patriot Lessons: American History & Civics Podcast.

 


Podcast by Maureen Quinn.

 

Click Here For The Next Essay

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

Click Here To View the Schedule of Topics From Our 2021 90-Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor 

 

May I share with you why, in spite of all the challenges our nation faces, I am hopeful, even optimistic for its future?

I’m optimistic because of students like Courtney, a 17-year-old in Texas, who used her talents as a singer and lyricist to write and produce an original music video to teach Constitutional principles to high school students.

I’m optimistic because of students like Simran, a 13-year-old in Georgia, who in an essay about the Constitution was able to explain how the Constitution’s separation of powers and checks and balances protect our freedoms.

I’m optimistic because of students like Gianna, a 15-year-old in Virginia who built a Constitution-themed website to teach students, including a section depicting “The Amendments in LEGO’s” – a must-see!

I’m optimistic because of students like Elise, an 8-year-old in Texas, who began her poem We The People with these lines: “Without the Constitution/We’d be lost/With no rules and no order/It’d be pure chaos.”

I’m optimistic because of students like Joaddan, a 17-year-old in Maryland, who produced a public service announcement to encourage civil civic conversations.

How was I fortunate enough to see all these inspiring original projects? They’re just a small sample of the thousands of entries Constituting America Founder Janine Turner and I have received over the past few years for Constituting America’s We The Future Contest.

Amid roiling debate about what the Constitution means and even whether it’s worth keeping, these students represent tremendous hope for the future – and that’s why I’m writing you today, with a special opportunity to sponsor and support these wonderful young people.

It’s easy today to find stories about young people who don’t understand the Constitution or its history – and who of course don’t value the freedoms or honor the responsibilities embedded in it.

But studying the Framers of the Constitution reminds us that hope for the future is part of America’s DNA – and spending time with the We the Future Contest winners always reminds me of that same truth.

Each year, the We the Future Contest draws entries from students in kindergarten through college. We welcome films, public service announcements (PSA’s) essays, speeches, songs, artwork, and STEM and entrepreneurial categories, as students use their specialties and passions to creatively express what the Constitution means to them.

Their creations form the backbone of a public awareness campaign that has so far achieved 163 million winning song impressions on 81 radio stations, 18.9 million household views of PSA’s via 275 television stations, and 60,000 views of our winning films at 76 different film festivals.

Our older contest winners earn college scholarships, and our middle school – grad school/teacher winners join us for an all-expenses-paid trip to a major city where they receive mentoring from national leaders in politics, journalism, entertainment, and the arts.

Our most recent group of winners visited the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., where they received exclusive tours of the White House and State Department, and even had a private question-and-answer session with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

A highlight of the trip is the chance for each of our winners to receive personal mentoring from outstanding individuals in their fields!

Students entering original short videos have received mentoring from acclaimed filmmaker Gary Sinise. Those penning original songs about the Constitution have spent time with country music legend Vince Gill. And those with a talent for writing have gotten advice from anchor and historian Bret Baier.

Taking the time and care to mentor our winners at this level will propel their careers as future cultural leaders – singers, songwriters, screenwriters, directors, actors, and journalists – who truly understand and appreciate the Constitution.

Already, many of these bright and patriotic young people are continuing to give of their talents in teaching and inspiring others long after the contest is over. We the Future Contest winners have co-hosted our new Constitutional Chats podcasts, performed during our Constitution Day celebrations, and volunteered as peer teachers.

This is why Janine and I are so optimistic for the future of our nation! With your support, we are building a nationwide network of young people who are deeply attached to the Constitution and its principles and committed to helping others learn about them.

More broadly, this program is inspiring the younger generation to see our founding principles and documents, and the history that undergirds them, as something exciting and inspiring; we are creating a generation who not only understands the Constitution, but who is passionately attached to it.

That’s why we’re asking you to share in this special opportunity to sponsor our We The Future Contest winners’ scholarships and mentoring programs.

Your special gift of $500 will sponsor the marketing and promotion of the best contest entries through social media and online channels, ensuring that these messages reach an audience of millions.

Your special gift of $1,000 will provide a scholarship to one high-school contest winner, setting him or her on a path to be one of America’s future leaders, continuing to champion the Constitution.

Your special gift of $2,500 will sponsor one student winner’s scholarship prize and mentoring, offering the experience of a lifetime and the chance to keep developing his or her leadership, creative, and intellectual abilities.

Your special gift of $5,000 or more will sponsor an age category: Middle School, High School, College or Teacher/Grad Student.

Truly, a gift of any amount will help. Please consider giving whatever amount you deem appropriate. Whether that’s $100 or $10,000, I can assure you it will be put to good use, inspiring young people to appreciate and hold dear our United States Constitution.

Your support for the We the Future Contest makes it possible for Constituting America to identify, mentor, and activate the nation’s most promising young advocates for the system of ordered liberty that the Framers envisioned.

I hope you’ll make a special gift today to help recognize the amazing young people who are our 2020-2021 We the Future Contest winners.

I know that they’ll give us all plenty of cause for the optimism that is truly America’s birthright.

Sincerely,
Cathy Gillespie, President

PS – Click here to get to know all our We The Future Contest winners and view their winning works! And watch for our Winner Wednesday Newsletters launching soon!

Click here to sponsor our winners now!

Constituting America is pleased to award Jacob Mott with a “Best Essay On Film Award”!

Jacob L. Mott is an 18 year old from Chester, New York, who attends Chester Academy as a senior. He’s interned for NY State Senator James Skoufis, Defense Attorney Benjamin Ostrer, and the Orange County (NY) Sheriff’s Office. He also founded a youth environmental organization called The GreenTeenMovement, was chosen to go to Boys State (NY), was briefly a journalist for his town’s local paper, and was recently a member on his town’s Police Reform Bill Committee. His involvement within school include Youth in Government, Mock Trial, and Key Club. He’s currently the head organizer of the 2021 “World Children’s Day Fundraiser Festival”, set to be held in Orange County, New York.

Jacob wishes to pursue a life in humanitarian work and public service, seeking to participate in AmeriCorps, join the Peace Corps after college, work with and/or the United Nations, and run for public office within the United States. Jacob also enjoys reading, podcasts, documentaries, travel, volunteering for places such as his local food bank, participating in community service projects, hosting and attending get-togethers with friends, spending time with family, hiking, campfires, spiritual activity, fireworks, and sharing a smile.

Watch Jacob’s winning essay here:

Our Interview With Jacob

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
Scholarships.com

What inspired your work?
What I know, and what I do not know; what I’ve experienced, and what I’ve been ignorant to; history, and progress; nature and the cosmos, with all the beauty and chaos which lay embedded within; and those who I love, as well as those who’ve been left behind.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
That after around 50 takes, I begin to become just a tad flustered…

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
By self education, spreading its ideals through mind, word, and body, as well by achieving a higher level of humanity, so a deeper meaning is retained.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
We respond at times with insightful thought and research, veracity, companionship and fellowship, and vision, while at other times we respond with visceral boost, passionate emphasis , and driven compassion; these attitudes and motives are nonetheless inseparable.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
History provides for a gateway – albeit at times a distorted one – into the realm of the past, and thus, human civilization and nature in all her glory and turmoil. By becoming better versed in this vast, bountiful, and complicated, field (if they so desire) can better understand what has and hasn’t worked before under particular circumstances, as well to become better equipped to give into self-surrender to the service of all which is worthy (again, if so desired).


Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?

Most of Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Mount Rushmore, (and although they may not technically be perceived as “U.S. historical site”), the Puebloan cliff dwellings, and national parks.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I try to stay away from this question as well as the one immediately following, as I believe that for me, the danger of narrowing my accessibility to new ideas, people, and the like would prove detrimental to my personal duties.

Who is your greatest role model?
See above.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
My life’s mission, implied before, is self-surrender to what I see as right; that is, to human rights, democracy, a healthy planet (seeing as how we only have one), international cooperation, and economic prosperity.

How do you spend your free time?
Reading, podcasts, documentaries, travel, volunteer work, participating in community service projects, hosting and attending get-togethers with friends, spending time with family, hiking, campfires, spiritual activity, fireworks, and sharing a smile. Observing the wonderful quagmire which is life, it seems best to try and live three in one while time still allows.

What are your plans for the future?
-There is currently a date set to move on with the “World Children’s Day Fundraiser Festival” (which was postponed because of COVID-19) in which we will be holding an event at a local venue with live music, food trucks, contests, and other general activities in order to raise money which will to donated to UNICEF and Food Bank of the Hudson Valley 50/50.
-I’ll be spending roughly a month this summer with The Christian Appalachian Project in Kentucky in order to provide humanitarian services
Then I’ll be heading off to college to receive a degree (hopefully in three years instead of four) .
-From that point on it will be a mix of public service, elected office, and work with international organizations and NGOs.
-If everything up to this point has not been spoiled by unforeseen interruptions, I would like to own a ranch, travel, and continue to spread the aforementioned beliefs before my time is spent.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
By giving my entire life towards the causes mentioned before, only relinquishing if fate deems it a necessity.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
While this has been covered much better by people much smarter and better suited than I, a brief statement which I feel qualified to provide is this: The Constitution has survived for over 240 years, and has allowed for our country and all whom reside within it to march on towards something greater (notice how that “greater” may mean different things to different people). To put it bluntly, it’s one of the (if not the best) governmental tools within our civic arsenal. How we use it from this point onwards, is up to us.

“Best Drama” In Constituting America’s “We The Future” Short Film Category

My name is Yashica Nabar, 16, and I’m in 11th grade attending the Law Academy at Creekview High School. I still have memories of when I was seven years old and would run around my house, creating small films to show my family and friends. Most kids my age enjoyed taking part in sports like basketball, soccer and track. However, I enjoyed finding little ways to spread a message to people around the world. I always found myself having a deep admiration for singing, dancing and public speaking as it gives you a platform to express every feeling that can possibly be expressed! I got my first emceeing gig when I was twelve years old. This experience unlocked an “ah hah” moment of excitement for using my words to make a positive impact on others. Twelve years old was also the age that I appeared on Chopped Junior, a cooking competition on Food Network Channel. The second that I walked into my first interview in front of the camera, I knew that this was the field that I wanted to go into. The ambience of preparing a television production from setting up the equipment to the hot coffee in the hands of the entire crew, the pure bliss that has to do with being behind and in front of the camera can’t be matched by any other type of excitement in the world. That’s why creating a short film for Constituting America’s “We The Future Contest” was an opportunity that I had to take!

In the future, I hope to go on to spread positive messages on television as a talk show host or as a political journalist. No matter what anyone desires to pursue in their future, Constituting America is the place to learn more about the opportunities, morals and values that our country holds, along with of course…The Constitution of America! Thank you Constituting America for allowing me and thousands of other kids an opportunity to get the platform to make positive change in our country and to make possible our dreams to pursue a higher education!

 

Watch Yashica’s Winning Short Film below:

Our Interview With Yashica

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
This was the first time that I have applied to this scholarship and I am completely grateful about my work being featured!

How did you hear about the contest?
My teacher who teaches a Political Science class in my school suggested that I apply for the scholarship. The scholarship was also listed on a scholarship sheet by @collegeproprep on instagram.

What inspired your work?
After hearing about my parents’ journey from Bombay, India to Dallas, Texas; I felt thankful that the United States provided opportunities for them to find happiness and achieve their wildest dreams. Because certain rights in the Constitution are guaranteed, America has worked to become a place of diversity and acceptance. This very idea inspired me to pay tribute to the amendments in the constitution that has made America the “power nation” of the world.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While creating my short film, I learned to truly appreciate the stability that our country has guaranteed. Because we are guaranteed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the employees and employers of America can work together to enforce the “law of the land” to provide a safe and just environment for all.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
As I’m involved in my school’s law academy program, I intend to learn and educate others about the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution through participation in mock trial and debate tournaments. Making sure that young Americans are aware of the rights we are guaranteed is a passion of mine that I will work to make a career out of.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
When learning about history or the U.S. Constitution, my friends mostly have a confounded interest in how each amendment is enforced and utilized throughout the justice system in America. They often post instagram stories relating to Constitutional amendments/rights in order to continue educating others about the use of each right.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I greatly enjoy learning about what occurred in the past to make the future so evolved! U.S. History has always been one of my favorite subjects in school as it has set a basis for how our country has reacted to major tragedies/triumphs.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit? I would love to visit the White House or Capitol Hill to observe exactly where our congressmen discuss ongoing laws that shape our day to day lives as Americans.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Barack Obama are my biggest inspirations in political history as they have paved the way for more constructive, open-minded thinking which is what our political system needed. Not only have they fought for the rights of minorities (racial and gender), but they have also used their platforms to advocate for the voiceless.

Who is your greatest role model?
One of my biggest role models is Anderson Cooper. He evaluates every politician and political issue in terms of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and with pure logic. Rather than steering a certain way because his political party supports a certain topic, he addresses issues in a logical way that would benefit the good of America. He has also become one of the biggest political journalists in America, which inspires me to pursue the same career!

What in your life are you most passionate about?
In my life, I’m most passionate about immersing myself in creativity. Whether it’s creating short films, singing, dancing, playing an instrument or motivational speaking; I deeply enjoy finding new ways to inspire others and find peace within myself.

How do you spend your free time?
I often spend my free time going out with my friends and exploring the world. To immerse yourself in creativity, you have to seek adventure and constantly learn more about the world around you. Going hiking, exploring coffee shops and trying new cuisines often sparks an exciting thrill that stimulates my passion to quench my curiosity.

What are your plans for the future?
My plans for my future include pursuing political broadcasting or motivational speaking. I desire to give others confidence in themselves either if its by directly addressing their emotions or sharing stories of events happening around them that could inspire them to be better American citizens.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I could do one super impactful thing to help people, I would tell them that every struggle and obstacle that seems too hard to overcome, will soon become better. Living life simply helps one see it for its simplicity. This very concept will take people so far in such a fast-paced generation where we rely on our phones for happiness. Finally learning to drop the social media accounts and going out to explore nature will immensely help not only the country, but the world. I could then see us making wonderful innovations and treating each other with more love and acceptance than ever before.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is still relevant today as it secures our rights to voice our opinions and understand the judicial systems policies in case of an emergency.

Best Cinematic Ensemble, High School Short Film Category

This is the second time this trio has created and won a division of Constituting America!  Wyatt Hensley is 16 and a sophomore from Joplin MO.  He is active in the FFA, student council, t.v. productions, as well as DECA and FBLA.  He also is an Eagle Scout!  On Sundays, Wyatt can be found serving at his church.  Wyatt is a member of the youth advisory board for Constituting America and has appeared on Constitutional Chats.  He enjoys spending time with family and friends.  He loves American history and to travel to places. Unsure of where his schooling will take him, he would like to take all that he has learned and become a park ranger at the National Historical Sites.

Jonah Hensley is an 18 year old senior from Joplin.  He is involved in leadership positions in FFA (local and area), student council, DECA, FBLA, the National English Honor Society, and National Honor Society.  He is also an Eagle Scout and active in his church.   Jonah will graduate from Joplin High School with his Associates Degree from the local community college. In his spare time, he enjoys working out.   Jonah has served on the youth advisory board for Constituting America and has helped with the Constituational Chats.  He will be attending Midway University in Kentucky on swimming and academic scholarships while majoring in Criminal Justice and minoring in Biology.

Halley Moak is 17 years old and is home schooled.  She also attends Estes Park High School and Front Range Community College.  She has served the past ten years on the Youth Advisory Board for Constituting America, served on the Youth Advisory Board for Young Rider magazine and volunteers extensively for the Estes Park Rooftop Rodeo.  Halley participates in Young Chatauqua, rides for Berthoud Equestrians Interscholastic Equestrian Association team and shows her Thoroughbred “My King” in in numerous Colorado Hunter Jumper Association shows.  A state grand champion hunt seat rider for three years, Halley is passionate about both horses and history!  She will attend Midway University in 2021 where she will ride for their Varsity Hunt Seat Team and major in Equine Studies with concentrations in Equine Rehabilitation and Equine Management.

Click Below to Watch Their Winning Short Film!

Hello! My name is Lindsey Larkin. I am a life-long homeschooler and graduate of the Classical Conversations Challenge program (May 2021). I have a great love of history and the American Constitution and I hope to continue sharing the importance of the American founding with others.

I enjoy public speaking and have emceed at both state and national events. In 2019, I was selected to serve as a social media representative at the National 4-H Legacy Awards, where I interviewed nationally acclaimed 4-H alumnae. I have won 4-H state public speaking contests in extemporaneous speech, prepared speech, and radio speaking.

I have served as Maryland 4-H State Council President since 2020 and routinely lead statewide meetings, events, and community outreach activities involving youth, teens, and adults;
as well as, develop content for youth state leadership programs.

After applying, I was selected to participate in 4-H leadership trips across the nation. Most notably, I presented to the U.S. Department of Energy in D.C. at National 4-H Conference and had the distinguished honor to be selected and to serve on the Youth Leadership Design Team 2019 at National 4-H Congress. In 2021, I was fortunate enough to win the Voice of Democracy Contest at districts and placed 3rd in the state contest. Additionally, I currently intern at my local U.S. Congressional District Office.

As a Marylander, I love Old Bay, seafood, and entering craft projects in the state fair. In my opinion, out of all of the state flags, ours is #1!

I am so grateful to Constituting America for their efforts in promoting the U.S. Constitution and our American principles of freedom. Winning this contest has been a dream of mine and I am so excited to join Constituting America in their mission!

Watch Lindsey’s Winning Short Film below:

https://vimeo.com/521624003[/embed

Our Interview With Lindsey

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
Back in March during the early weeks of the pandemic, I listened to Constituting America’s Zoom program with my family and this was where I first heard about the contest from founder, Janine Turner and former We the Future contest winner, Tova Love Kaplan. Listening to them inspired me to learn more about it on the Constituting America website.

What inspired your work?
As Americans, we constantly hear about how horrible our country is. Whether it be from politicians, media outlets, or academia, it’s hard to have any kind of insight into how our freedoms compare to those of other nations. My goal for this video was to compare and contrast American freedoms to those of other countries.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned that while many countries might currently have human rights laws similar to those outlined in our American Constitution, they are not always set in stone, and they are subject to change. This is alarming to me as an American because throughout history we have seen countless dictators and corrupt officials take advantage of citizens for personal gain. If my freedoms were not specifically outlined in a permanent document, like our American Constitution, I would not feel secure as a citizen.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
This year I hope to be more vocal about my love for the U.S. Constitution and American history. Like so many others, I sometimes feel uncomfortable sharing strong opinions regarding my support for the U.S. Constitution because I don’t want to be ostracized in this politically polarized time. However, supporting the American Constitution should never be a politically charged issue because this document is the foundation of our nation. This year, I will continue to challenge myself to speak up and share the importance of the American Constitution with others.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most of my friends really are not that interested. However, I do have a few friends who love history and see the value of the Constitution.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
Our American story is one of great struggle and exceptional triumph. America is not perfect, but despite this, we have risen up to fight against injustices and worked tirelessly to create solutions to global problems. This is what I love about our American story.

Our American founding is so special and unique. It amazes me how our Framers had such foresight into our nation’s future and how they sought to create and implement a government meant to serve every American, not just the elite.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I have always wanted to visit Mount Rushmore! I love learning about its history and about the people who built this great monument.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I am really inspired by Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus. They were a Jewish couple, who lived in Philadelphia. They lived during the rise of anti-Semitic persecution in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.
The Krauses stepped in to save fifty Jewish children by finding foster parents in America to take them in. The hope was that the children would be united with their parents once they were permitted to immigrate to America. Sadly, not every child got a happy reunion.
What’s so impactful about this story is that the Krauses took action when few would. They did not wait for someone else to step in and help. Instead, they themselves took the charge.

Who is your greatest role model?
I have always looked up to C.S. Lewis, but even more so now that I have spent time reading his work. He was an incredibly deep thinker and one of the greatest Christian apologists of his time. He had the rare ability to explain complex ideas in a way that just about anyone could understand. I would consider myself extraordinarily lucky if I am a fourth as eloquent as he was.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am really passionate about teaching myself new skills. It’s absolutely thrilling to see a challenge, face it head-on, and achieve great success. For instance, I had always wanted purple hair but didn’t want to spend hundreds at a salon to achieve the mermaid hair of my dreams. During the summer of 2020, I decided to do it myself and it was a success! Most recently, I fell in love with a $1000 prom dress and decided to recreate it on my own. I taught myself how to sew and created the prom dress of my dreams for a fraction of the cost. If I don’t know how to do something, I just give it some research and get to work.

How do you spend your free time?
I dedicate a lot of my time to the 4-H program where I serve as Maryland 4-H State Council President and routinely lead statewide meetings, events, and community outreach activities involving youth, teens, and adults. I also love to paint, craft, and create. My motto is, “You can never have too much sparkle!”

What are your plans for the future?
I am headed off to Hillsdale College in the fall of 2021 and am excited to pursue all of the great opportunities that the school has to offer. Following my undergrad, I hope to study law.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Over the course of my high school career, I have learned many things, but one of the most valuable lessons I learned was that there are two sides to every issue. I was taught this in a debate class where I was forced to research both sides of a topic regardless of whether I agreed with it or not. It was an eye-opening experience that continues to shape my perspective. If I had the power to do one thing, it would be to show people that there are more ways to look at an issue than meets the eye.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
I believe that the American Constitution is just as relevant today as it was over two centuries ago. Times may have changed, but human nature and the principles of government have not. When a small group of people hold enormous amounts of power over a large group of people, they will likely prioritize their selfish interests over the legitimate needs of the citizen. The American Constitution actively prevents “power hoarding” by spreading out government into three separate branches. Our Constitution may have been ratified way back in 1788, but it still rings true in the 21st-century.

Gerald Huesken is a Social Studies teacher, focused on World History and Government & Economics, at Elizabethtown Area High School in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, Mr Huesken has been teaching at Etown for the better part of a decade. At the high school, he serves not only as a teacher, but also a club advisor and assistant director / drill instructor for the Elizabethtown Area High School Marching Band. His 11th Grade Government & Economics class is a well-designed effort to get students not only to understand the workings of government and the US Constitution, but also think about it in their day-to-day lives and connect it with current issues and events with their own community. Mr Huesken also holds a Masters degree in History from Millersville University of Pennsylvania and a Masters degree in Education from Wilkes University. He serves locally as a researcher and historian of local history, teaches an elective course on state and local history of Pennsylvania and the Etown community, and is a published historian, having had research appear in publications like the Journal of Lancaster County History. A state certified K-12 online educator by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Mr Huesken lives in Elizabethtown with his wife, Emily, his children Olivia and Owen, and their many family dogs and cats. Feel free to check out more of what is going on in Mr Huesken classroom at his district website: https://www.etownschools.org/Domain/629.

Click here to download Mr. Huesken’s Honorable Mention Lesson Plan, The Preamble Video Challenge!

Click here to download The Preamble Video Challenge Student Handout

Click here for the playlist to Mr. Huesken’s students’ work

 

Samir is currently an MBA student at Emory University in Atlanta. He’s an Army veteran with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a cavalry officer; he still serves in the Army Reserves.  He has a strong interest in entrepreneurship and real estate.  He graduated from West Point with a degree in Economics and Arabic language.
Click here or below to watch Samir’s winning speech!

Our Interview With Samir

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
By searching the web for scholarships.

What inspired your work?
As a military officer, I swore an oath to the Constitution and have pledged my life to it. Why wouldn’t I want to write about it and what it means to me?

What did you learn while creating your entry?
How incredibly genius the document really is. It’s not overly prescriptive which, in my opinion, has led it to be an enduring document through the past two centuries.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan on making more speeches and writing essays as well posting on my own social media on how the US Constitution is important.
Winning this scholarship has boosted my confidence in my writing and ability to communicate. I never really did much writing before; putting together my speech was unexpectedly very empowering.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most roll their eyes but I still talk about it anyway. After a few minutes however, I think a few people actually start to understand how important the document is and why we should use it as guiding principles of how we govern ourselves.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love that brave men had the courage to stand up to tyranny when the odds were not in their favor. I’ve learned that when something is important enough, like freedom, you pursue it even if the odds are not in your favor.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I want to visit Benjamin’s Franklin’s printing shop. For me, the birthplace of America started here. Franklin, in my view is the First American (as one of his biographer’s titled him).

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Benjamin Franklin

Who is your greatest role model?
Benjamin Franklin

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I’m passionate about economic empowerment. I teach part-time at a local university and nothing gives me more joy than to teach students how to be independent and how our economic system is really the best medium for pursuing freedom.

How do you spend your free time?
Reading science fiction and playing sports. I’m in the middle of preparing to climb a few very tall mountains.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to achieve a degree of business success before pursuing elected office.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
​It would be that all Americans have a personal responsibility to our Country. I think that gets lost on people now that we have achieved incredible heights in human comfort and prosperity. I get the impression that a lot of Americans think this is a given not something that has to be protected everyday. ​

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is our guiding document for governance. It has a direct impact, especially today, on how we resolve arguments and ​how we as a Country can move forward. Sure, the bureaucracy of government exists but without the Constitution, I think it could be so much worse. The concept of checks and balances and a government not promoting religion are two hallmarks of our society which has and will continue to serve us well.

My name is Melanie and I’m in the 8th grade. I enjoy creative STEM projects, coding and watching movies.

I am the student council Vice-President at my school. In 2018 and 2019, I won grants from the City of Las Vegas Youth Neighborhood Association Partnership Program (YNAPP) which rewards grants to youth who want to make positive changes in their neighborhoods. I completed projects to help youth with special needs in my community. In 2020, I was selected and honored to serve as a Youth member of the board for YNAPP.

I currently hold a 4.0 GPA in Advanced and Leadership classes at my school and was named student of the month for September.

Read About Melanie’s Winning Stem Project In Her Own Words!

I am so excited to share with you my United States Constitution Middle School STEM Project! I am a “STEM Girl” who enjoys building websites and robots!  I’m currently in Robotics in school and will take Advanced STEM next semester. That’s why I knew I had to do the STEM Project to talk about our country’s beautiful constitution.

Here is my website! https://scholarship12345.wixsite.com/usconstitution

Here are the results of the Quiz and Survey!

Quiz Results: https://tinyurl.com/y4s5rar3

Survey Results: https://tinyurl.com/yy2g4jhd

On my website, you will see beautiful colorful backgrounds, videos, quotes, photos, a quiz, and a survey. I had so much fun finding everything and adding them to my site. I chose the backgrounds of red, white, and blue because they represent our flag which stands for freedom. The quote from Abraham Lincoln is so inspirational to me because he knew, even back then, the importance of the constitution.

Please make sure to click under the “Click Here to Learn More” buttons because I have a video.  These videos of previous Presidents like Ronald Reagan, I believe, are important to our country’s history of freedom. The video of Abraham Lincoln is my favorite because it comes from Disneyland’s “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” presentation.  Every time my family visits Disneyland, we would watch the presentation and talk about how we are so proud to be American.

Thank you for holding the workshop! I live in Las Vegas so I was in school for part of it but what I was able to go to, gave me more information about the importance of Freedom of Speech. I learned it is very important to hold up the Constitution, even if it is different than what the media is saying. Also, I learned how the United States Constitution plays a huge role in our civil liberties as American citizens.

What I enjoyed most about making this website was having a quiz and survey for anyone to take!  I found out wonderful information about what people think and how much people currently know about our American Constitution.

I plan to implement this information in my everyday life by being proud to be an American and make others aware that the American Constitution stands for freedom.

Thank you for the opportunity to make this website and share it with you and a whole lot of people across the United States.

Our Interview With Melanie!

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this is the first time I have entered this contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about it online.

What inspired your work?
The Disneyland ride/show “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” because of the technology in the show and the incorporation of America’s freedoms.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned interesting facts about the Constitution that I didn’t even realize before doing this project. I also learned how to format a website better. Also, the importance of “creative commons” videos that you can use to not have copyright issues.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I will talk to others in my classes about the Constitution and how it is important for everyone.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
We all believe it’s important to the United States and Our freedoms.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love U.S. History because it reminds me of our past and how we became who we are today. History is being made everyday and we are able to vote on candidates that form our government.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Lincoln Memorial or Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
George Washington, because he helped found the country we live in today.

Who is your greatest role model?
My local city Councilwoman Michele Fiore because she is kind and helped me put in the first wheelchair swing in a public park in the City of Las Vegas.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I have a passion for learning new ideas or information every week. For example, in STEM we attempt various ways to solve a problem which makes me learn new information all the time.

How do you spend your free time?
During my free time, I enjoy watching interesting shows/movies, talking to my friends, and trying new travel/food experiences.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future, I plan to go to college and major in the medical field. I am considering becoming a doctor or biomedical engineer.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Create a medical device that would help people with thyroid issues or cancer.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The constitution is relevant today because it provides us with freedoms like speech and voting rights.

Federalist Paper 62 “The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?” Alexander Hamilton/James Madison

 

Let your voice be heard that you support limiting the size and length of bills, and making bills coherent for the American people and members of Congress to read and understand.

FormButton

The Truth Act*makes the bills simple not “voluminous” and easy to understand not “incoherent” for both legislators and the American people.† Thus, it will be beneficial to the people, and to the Republic, that “laws are made by men of their own choice.”

T-The bills (including amendments) put forth by legislators are to be limited to single subjects,†and THIRTY pages, with U.S.†legal code interpretations in the side margins. An accompanying version of the bill is to be written in 5th grade reading level for easy and nationwide comprehension.

R-The bills (and consequent amendments) are to be READ by the legislators – the new amendments are to be underlined with the old version included for clarity. They are to be available for the American people to read – at least thirty days before voting.

U-The bills (and consequent amendments) are to be UNDERSTOOD by the legislators.

T-Before voting on the bills, Congressmen and Senators are to TESTIFY under oath that they have read and understood the bills and consequent amendments to the bills.

H-The American people are to HEAR the proposed – and final – version of the bills. The bills are to be read on camera and put online so that the people may HEAR (as well as read) the bill at least 30 days before voting on the bill occurs.

The indeterminably disastrous†effects of such voluminous and incoherent bills such as the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Dodd Frank, the Patriot Act and the upcoming Immigration Bill are all examples of bills that were/are too voluminous and incoherent for both legislators and the American people, leading to America’s demise and Americans  loss of liberty.

FormButton

——————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Follow The Truth Act on Facebook and Twitter:

——————————————————————————————————————————————————–


Add your name to the Truth Act Petition by filling out the form below, and receive email updates and information on how to spread the word in your community

[constantcontactapi formid=”1″]

Thank you to the Truth Act Petition Signers Below:

Kevin Kennedy
Sherry Haut
Joseph Harrah
Ken Crawford
Kim Beautrow
Schley Carr
Tina Howard
Alex Murphy
Donald Muse
Sheila A Clemmons
Lynette Nickel
Robert Marsh
Steve Jones
Bill Finlay
Valerie O’neal
Stacie Jacobs
Amanda Hughes
Kurt Dreyer
Reid Davis
Richard Noonan
Robert Heard
Patti Campbell
Ralph L Overmyer Sr.
Chuck Morreale
Teresa Johnson
E Brown
Gary Moore
Dwight Cribb
Judy Miller
C..M. Mc Cullin
Phillip Lemkin
Charlie Colvin
Mark Manning
Walter Curtin
Donna Johnston
William Hyland
Allen Millett
Edwin Fish
Edmund Anaya
David Falkner
Tanya Fischer
James Georgeson
Christopher Folmar
Paul Debaggis
Phil Hesse
Earl Fajkus
Thomas Macdonald
Jamie Bell
Cathy Gillespie
F. Dwayne Conner
Cheri Moreno
Cheri Moreno
Butch Lanclos
Frank Castleman
Debbie Hewitt
Matthew Hickey
John L Knox
Matt Horne
Christopher Nicholson
Kyle Heffner
Timothy Bills
David Bruckner
Dexter Liu
Brian Gallacchi
Jeff Magee
Dennis Means
Patricia Gongola
Theresa Bovee
Robert Anderson
Gregory Mcdonald
Kelsey Moore
Stephen Dolloff
David Dringman
Jeff Davis
Rick Baker
Darryl Evans
Jonathan R. Fierro
Barry Hester
David Henefield
Charlie Bourgeois
Robert Medinger
Philip Hunt
Jeff Cooper
David Grant
Trinidad Pena
Sara Garcia
Robert Allen
David Henderson
Pamela Patrou
Regina Bartlein
G,H,G, Mitte
George Flores
Annette Bacon
James Leal
Eleanor Fortier
Alan Coleman
Joseph Nutter
Patrick Greenwell
Rickey Jones
Robert Garcia
Thomas Hardie
Edward Myers
William & Ronda Delafield
Anthony Guarini
Nancy Couden
Glenda Derish
Jacqueline Mccoy
Daniel Okabayashi
Todd Buckman
Ronald Bessire
Mariann Benway
Philip Cochran
Vince Hranicky
Susan Mcdonald
David Brockie
David Nicoara
Russ Jackson
M Hatcher
Mason Appel
Gregg Dykes
Pj Donner
Christine Hranicky
Daryl Dunaway
Edward Calame
Stephen Dunning
Larry Hernandez
Jeff Maggard
Debra Nichols
Kevin Mccrory
Doug Freeman
Mark Baker
Richard Hargraves
Randy Napolitano
Brad Essex
Robyn Harper
David Cochran
Melonie Mackey
Kelley Cahill
Lisa Johnstone
Jason Marshall-lang
Ralph L. Angelo, Jr.
Mike O'connell
Jerry Mindolovich
Kelly Limbaugh
Ray & Debra Carlson
Dennis Mcfarland
Carrie Glasgow
George Crain
Don Brand
Edwin Chisholm
Barbara Borgert
Malcolm Mcclinhie
Larry Campbell
Peter Agud
Judy Lekanides
Susan Jones
Rich Parker
James Lane
Craig Caudle
Floyd Mack
William Noyes
Michael Corrigan
Kenneth Benway
William Melvin
Michael Dibuono
Connie Bowser
Mark Horne
David Deurloo
Anne Bloch
Kenneth Bloch
James Kinsey
Cindy Cain
Richard Armstrong
Dana Mason
Tina Busby
Tim Beljavskis
Mike Nebgen
Jill Brimmer
Walter Diebert
Jake Katilus
Frank Fundak
Mark Defelice
Tom Einhorn
Elizabeth Gillanders
Scott Bird
Richard Mills
David Flaherty
John Morgan
Tim Brownfield
Donald Gillanders
Dianna Maynard
Shane Mcpherson
Winston Handwerker
Dean Bouillion
Susan Nielsen
Brett Froemke
Carl Griffing
Kenny Bryant
Carol Forrest
Frank Hughes
Ken Foyt
Timothy Mitchell
John Hume
Art Felker
Wayne Church
Robert Falco
James Diano
Steven Anderson
Bob Bryant
Julius Just
Gregory Mercer
Carl Miller
Brian Heien
Fred Barnett
Richard Brant
Anna Cervantes
Weatherly Hardy
Miroslav Nerad
David Dranschak
Paul Johnston
Greg Coughran
William Leonard
David Longacre
Frederick Jauch
Anne Bloch
Ken Brown
Mark Boyatt
Kevin Daniel
Darren Linder
Galen Cloud
Diana Monnich
Todd Hawks
Fredna Mcgehee
Martha Mcgehee
Ray Hicks
Rick Kitchens
Danny Cordova
Mark Carnahan
Michael Amowitz
Melanie Cervantes
Carmala Carpenter
Scott Brittin
Sandra Ozanich
Margo Ontiveros
Edwin Klein
George Devlin
Sean Boal
Elaine Nause
Marjy Chamberlin
Vicki Fry
Joseph Lacerenza
Lisa Payne
Jill Herring
Edward Douglas
Catherine Achenbach
Philip Accaria
Frank Grillo
Christine Gritt
Paula Marshall
Rita Anderson
Christie Allen
Christine Melnikov
Leta Eckroth
Cary Hearn
John Jordan
Beth Calvert
Mark Daugherty
Meredith Mascitello
Scott Gibson
Michele Freeman
Ron Mcpeak
David Jacquet
Barbara Juarez
Tierrah Brant
Jill Mccluskey
Neil Digiammatteo
Sue Leslie
James Knight
Lenora Naylor
Dale Horton
Mike Brusky
Joseph Bailey
Tom Osullivan
David Burchfield
Dolores Mulligan
Nina Ives
Marianne Buren
Linda Galgay
Joan Christie
Susan Breit
Arthur Heller
Joseph Cantone
John P. Dineen
Sally Aram
Charles Link
Barbara Baldwin
Victor Imparato
Ward Lathrop
Gerald Friend
Clarence Greene
Barbara Lathrop
Ryan Dodd
Betty Hawkins
James Els
Christine Monteith
Rex Housley
Steve Magee
Max Courtney
Kristopher Lyons
James Henson
Kathleen Craft
Thomas Hannan
Donna Dudley
Johannah Bruggeman
Vince Iuliano
Ronald Payne
Marlene Brewer
Cathy Gillespie
Nicholas Delgiudice
Pamela Butcher
Paul Meroni
Arline Gordon
Alfredo Gonzalez
Rick Bacher
Liz Bacher
Cathy Grippi
James Gaetano
Michael Duncan
Craig Daliessio
Richard Hatch
Randy Johnson
Eileen Hart
Richard Bernath
Daniel Harms
Jeff Glass
John Allen
Drew Dietrich
Brian Borrego
Charles Dahlquist
Joshua Lassonde
Jason Hill
Frank Morrow
Cliff Bosely
Amy Larchuk
Ed Manning
Kathleen Cassidy
David Freburg
Bryan Bustard
Marcel Jeannin
Jodi Joseph
Robert Folwell
Willow Howlett
Stacy Lewcun
Holly Davis
Shawna Kearley
John Hilderbrand
Lara Leitner
Frank Drackman
Robert Gilbert
David Draper
Richard Mullis
Christopher Bertling
Joe Frappier
Bonnie Barnes
Jon Barsanti, Jr.
Shannon Fox
George Becker
Ron Bernier
Nancy Gotobed
Harriet Doran
Karol Hancock
Harold Belcher
Paul Bowser
R C Lewis
Jack Coleman
Cynthia Hager
Laura Ludwig
John Henderson
Robert Lehnert
Israel Maskill
Robert Kenney
Carol Cumbie
Edward Hainsworth
Anne Dahlman
Perry Branson
Kathy Kauffman
John Cameron
Helen Clarke
Robby Bowling
Jeff Meier
Eric Carlstrom
Geoff Hall
Greg Diem
Walter Long
Cheryl Cairns
Michael George
Robert Johnson
Wayne Moore
David Denn
Stuart Creque
Deborah Hamilton
Stephen Hotstream
Rick Lawhorn
Meg Loisel
Scott Glover
Gerald Matheny
Ken Grossman
James Culotta Ii
Robert Leydon
Neal Paul
Stephen Huffman
David Norris
Richard Bernstein
Robin Hinderliter
Michael Marshall
Christopher Coughlin
George Abihider
Loretta Fairley
Scott Draper
Keith Holloway
Jason Alberts
Patricia Comiskey
David Hall
Kelly Kunst
Lisa Harrington
Tab Nesbit
Janet M Merritt
Michael Parrish
Kurt Hanke
Elaine Gottschalk
Jayme Fulkerson
Victoria Casares
Tracy Dains
Jeff Bobeck
Donald Donham
Samuel Kevin Cordell
Carol Malig
Daniel Gardner
Julia Newman
Ronald Mead
Robert Folwell
Karen E Cusano
Susan Davis
B. Paul Hablinski Sr.
Pete Dupuis
Lois Chookessi
Terry Ashmore
Rick Muelver
Darrin Diffee
William And Ann Cummins
John Hosie
Jeff Cooper
Terry Brewer
Peter G Klarman
Ben Giacalone
Sherry George
Mark Brotherton
Daniel Obrian
Susan B Currie
Ron Jenkins
John Morgan
Jimmy Asbill
David Kirby
Edward Bird
Eustis Gunter
Jacqueline Lynn
Frank Bejar Jr
Cathy Meyer
Robert Dorn
Diane Gilliland
David Loehr
Von Lute
Freddie Luquis
Mark Berlinger
Edward Fleck
Gerry Fortain
Martin Gauer
Bryan Grooms
Ladell Crookston
Gerald Laytin
Greg Mayhew
Salvatore Larosa
James Olvera
James Hull
Amy Anweiler
Charlton Colasont
James Holton
Evan Dewitt
Michael Healy
Nina Colegrove
Rick Bennette
Debra Clarke
Seth Howard
Michele Dearth
Jerry Curtis
Janet Legerski
Elizabeth Dickey
Jim Bunds
Jessica Lindsey
Tom Deam
William Pendleton
Maury Polse
Teresa Tierney
Malcolm Ready
Dale Thatcher
Michael Soden
James Raley
Donna Roberts
Cristi Ritchey
Tj Scott
Peter Sowatskey
Rose Marie Tomm-uchachote
Elizabeth Vedell
Margaret Plunkett
Maureen Quinn
William Turner
Embree Walker
Steve Romey
Timothy Tribbett
Gary Seifert
Raymond Whitehead
Lavorna Tester
Todd Pipkin
Bernard Pettie
Larry Wimber
Mary Thornberry
Glenn Tapley
Debra Ray
Jason Todd
Christine Wightman
Bumface Twat
Laine Ragsdale
Larry Schamber
James Readel
Jose Pineda
Mark Stradley
Karen Spillman
Donald Short
Heather Smith
Wendy Spaeth
Michael Williamson
Richard Williamson
Sandra Shelley Hernandez
Earl Whitehall
Jeff Weaver
Donald Wallin
William Thurnau
Ronald Tiracchia
Elmer Workman
Kenneth Ware
Noell Reed Jr.
Rick Shaw
Heather Tindall
Carol Valbracht
Mike Pepper
Lauren Terry
Wallace Shell
Barbara Riley
Betsy Scardino
William Whiting
John Seiler
James Stewart
Pamela Wright
Gary Surber
Stephen Vogler
John Roche
Harry Rhoades
David Scott
Stephen Walsh
David Turnbull
Victoria Shelton
Robert Steadman
David Robbins
Sandra Westmoreland
James Williams
Jacque Stroh
Rhonda Villa
Rick Valentine
Robert Stevens
Austin Ward
Jane Whittaker
Susie Scott
David Rempel
Thomas Pinnow
Mary Slone
Jean Van Wyckhouse
Gary Winckler
Harley Rhodes
Pamela Richmond
Scott Poreda
Woodrow Windischman
James Stonaker
William F. Pylate
Rick Utiger
Joshua Venable
Steven C. Ronilo
Samuel Peoples
Tammie Webb
Steven Ziegenbein
Cheryl Ries
Barney Stokes
Forrest Sealey
Wayne Root
Scott Rembe
Mark Tarrien
Louis Pror
Jerry Waller
Norma Turner
Robin Ulery
Patsy Shaul
Rudy Ruiz
Benjamin Wilkinson
Benjamin Qualls
Robert Trumbature
Eliseo Quiroga
Sandra Smith
Michael Spencer
Daniel Romero
Chas. Weldon
Patrick Switzer
Ronald Reed
Valerie Risher
Rocky Phipps
Chuck Trott
Foster Roberts
Doug Wilkey
Pat Shannon
Carolyn Zewe
Terri Wyatt
Craig Puchta
Robin Whitworth
David Stroud
Wendy Wills
Marcia Scattergood
Mitzi Webster
Joe Shermer
Nancy Trump
Morgan Stanton
Michael Redus
Pamela Richardson
John Pullins
Betsy Smith
Joe Santomo
Christine Rivera
Dot Ruest
Linda Walker
Genevieve Tripodi
Andrea Plattner
Mark Pritchett
Jordan Yentsch
Dennis Westervelt
Johnny Spivey
Margaret Sapir
Mary Lou Vaught
Doug Tweedie
Patricia Warnock
Rick Westcott
Joseph Rival
Braden Sweet
Peg Stueck
Dennie Riffett
Gary Perkins
Sylvia Withrow
Donna Shkursky
Robert Ryan
Patrice Schoppe
Terryl Welty
John Young
Jack Wheeler
Melanie Pever
Donald Wojtaszek
Melinda Petkovsky
Sheri Riddle
Elijah Vangordan
David Stipes
Cynthia Poole
Mario Yarnell-gonzalez
Arlon Webb
Scott Showers
Janine Turner-show
Janine Turner-reelingspirit
Janine Turner-sbcglobal
Richard And Carol Robinson
Linda Santarone
Patrick Potter
Virginia Valentino
Anna Runions
Lisa Rogers
Jeff Pendleton
Julyette Willmann
Tom Simons
Robert Rickert Iii
Joseph Velasquez
Terry Roberts
Tara Thompson
William E. Woodruff
Joe Reid
Marybeth Rambush
Li Tyler
Tracy Wackerman
Paul Stewart
Ronald Rutledge
Randy Plesea
L Ranney
Frank Purpera
Nicholas Psaltos
Jimmie Young
Lee Rini
Terri Reves
Constance Rossman
Brenda Smith
Fred Schaider
Joe Shawler
Elaine Wilhelm
Bryan Pettengill
Pauline Seeber
Curt Walker
Jeffrey Ward
Alan Phillips
Neil Rowland
Lloyd Stambaugh Jr
Marianne Turner
Mark Tebor
Alan Seevers
Gene Werner
Eugene Tighe
Ellis W Venia Jr
Freda York
Mitzi Smith
Bob Yeager
Steven Reeder
Joseph Russo
Mike Weigel
Danny Scallon
Randy Wright
Frank Puff
Roy Wilt
Walter Wilt
John L. Picou
Ralph Wind
Jeffery Tester
Tina Tillman
Marcelo Urias
William Riley
Robert Sommers
Leo Southworth
Allan Shaw
Hyman Tanner
Elizabeth Pike
Jeff Roach
Henry Phillips
Virginia Southern
Alan Wright

*The Truth Act is a work in progress. Send me your comments/suggestions!

David Edelman has been a Social Studies teacher and Peer Instructional Coach in NYC Public Schools for over a decade. David provides instructional coaching, mentoring and professional learning to colleagues, in addition to teaching Government & Economics classes. His classroom serves as a learning lab and demonstration classroom to foster inter and intra school collaboration. David teaches at Union Square Academy for Health Sciences (USA) a new, unscreened, public high school with a Career & Technical Education focus in NY, NY. Most of David’s students will be first in their family to attend college. Students at USA take hands on lab classes in either dentistry or pharmacy technology, in addition to receiving a standard liberal arts education. All students have paid internships and professional mentors who expose students to their careers. It was David’s service in AmeriCorps NCCC, a yearlong national service program similar to the domestic Peace Corps that solidified David’s desire to follow in his mother’s footsteps and become a public school teacher. David was invited by Representative Carolyn McCarthy in 2007 to testify before Congress to reauthorize AmeriCorps and advocate for the GIVES Act. These experiences helped foster his desire to center learning on student led activism and civic engagement. When David isn’t teaching, he’s probably having fun with his two daughters Mila and Sophia and his wife Dahlia in Forest Hills, Queens. You can learn more about David, his teaching and see examples of his students’ work at his website www.cagebustingclassrooms.com

Click here for David’s winning lesson plan: How has The Supreme Court interpreted The Bill of Rights as it applies to schools and students? 

 

Our Interview With David

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes. This was the first year I entered

How did you hear about the contest?
The UFT newsletter!

What inspired your work?
This is one of my students favorite lessons and it exemplifies the attributes of the 4Rs of learning: Realness, Relevance, Rigor and Relationships

What did you learn while creating your entry?
For much of US history, freedom of speech was interpreted very narrowly as the government wouldn’t have the power to issue press permits. It didn’t invoke the almost universal lack of censorship as we know it today until around World War I after the questionable Supreme Court decision in of Debs v. United States. In the era of social media and distance learning, The Supreme Court now has their hands full in regards to reinterpreting what constitutes being in the educational sphere and when it comes to protecting Constitutional rights.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I have been supporting my own students in developing projects. The constituting America contests illustrate a “cagebusting classroom,” thinking beyond the four walls of the classroom for meaningful, deep learning with real world implications like…having your song or speech shared on TV or radio across the country!

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My brother is a law professor. My mom is a retired teacher. Most colleagues and my close friends are quite interested in politics and government, so not surprisingly they ask me a lot of constitutional questions. I am equally involved in adult learning.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
The Constitution of the United States is both the world’s oldest active codified constitution and the world’s shortest. The implications of this for our country are fascinating.


Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to hear oral arguments at in US Supreme Court.


Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?

Based upon a recent podcast I listened to, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Our say-almost-anything approach to free speech is actually relatively recent, and you can trace it back to one guy, The Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Although he made questionable judicial decisions, he loved to challenge his own thinking and I find it inspirational that he was able to make logic U-turns on the Constitution in an era of echo chamber partisanship. “The best test of truth, is the competition in the market of ideas.”


Who is your greatest role model?

My mother. She helped guide me to become the educator I am today.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Teaching and learning. Plus Freedom of speech, press and expression.

How do you spend your free time?
I listen to a lot of podcasts. I am really into learning about tea, street art, identifying wild edible plants, but most of my time these days involve my two daughters and changing diapers.


What are your plans for the future?

To continue to elevate student voice and student led activism. I’ve visited the contiguous 48 states. Maybe I can drive to Alaska and sail to Hawaii?

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Help educators and students reach their full potential, become more civically engaged and ensure learning is fun!

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Equipping citizens with a deeper understanding of the Constitution, as well as the Supreme Court decisions, will help raise the level of political debate to a standard worthy of the promise and ideals mentioned in the Preamble. It would also offer significant protection against the manipulation of the public by politicians and news outlets.

Carson Winkie is the son of Ken and Leslie Winkie, and the youngest of five children. Carson, a graduate of Bridgeport High School, served as the Student Body president throughout his senior year. He is currently serving as the governor of West Virginia Boys State and as a senator to the American Legion Boys Nation. He was appointed as the secretary of Homeland Security while at Boys Nation. In the Winter of his senior year, Carson was selected as 1 of 2 students from West Virginia to represent his state in the United States Senate Youth Program. This competitive national program aims to instill profound knowledge of the American political process and a lifelong commitment to public service. Athletically, he was the captain of his high school football team and helped lead his team to win the West Virginia AA State Championship Football Game. After the game, Carson was named the State Championship MVP and also broke a record for having the most carries in a WV State Championship game, 43 carries. He also received the distinction of First Team All State for his linebacker position. Carson is an advocate for community service and he always tries to help in anything he can. He has volunteered since his sophomore year in the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, where he helps develop young high school leaders. He has also volunteered for Wreaths Across America placing wreaths to honor each veteran in his local community. Throughout high school, Carson was an active member in National Honor Society and was valedictorian of his class. Additionally, Carson was recognized as an AP Scholar with Distinction in his junior and senior years. He has lettered in both academics and orchestra throughout his high school experience. Outside of highschool, Carson is a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Stonewood, WV. As a parishioner, he has assisted in the delivery of items to homebound parishioners and played cello for services. 

Carson is going to attend Harvard this fall (2020) with an interest in either a public service or pre-med concentration. While at Harvard, Carson will also be a member of the Varsity Football Team.

Lawson is a retired Air Force pilot (26 years, served in Viet Nam), retired airline pilot (flew domestic and international routes), retired farmer, and retired Track/Cross Country coach. He and his wife have 3 children—one daughter with 3 grandchildren, two sons (both served in the Army, one still in the Army Reserve with deployments to Iraq & Afghanistan). Staying active (physically & mentally) and following/supporting the grandchildren’s activities are the primary focus. Lawson is a graduate of the USAF Academy with a BS in Chemistry and a MBA from Southern Illinois University/Edwardsville.

 

Lawson Barclay’s Winning Essay

“I am afraid that many Americans take our freedom for granted. Americans are privileged to live in the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave.’ Many assume that the freedoms that presently exist will continue far into the future.

Depending on one’s age, parents or grandparents served in the armed forces during WWII or worked on the home front to provide food and supplies for the war effort. Tom Brokaw labeled these men and women as ‘The Greatest Generation.’ This generation grew up during the Great Depression and went on to fight WWII or provide labor to produce materials for the war effort. Everyone contributed in one way or another.

My parents were part of that generation. Until Brokaw’s book, I characterized them as ‘old school.’ ” Click here to read the rest of Lawson’s Winning essay!

 

Aubrey Jackman was born and raised in Tooele, Utah. Growing up, she loved being the middle of seven children in her family. After High School, Aubrey served an 18-month volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Seattle, Washington area. Aubrey enjoys spending her free time playing sports, such as basketball and tennis. She is an avid sports fan and aspires to be an athletic coach in the future. She now attends Brigham Young University with her husband, Makay. Aubrey is a Junior, majoring in Family Studies but has always enjoyed exploring technology and finding new ways to create.

Aubrey describes her STEM Project: 

To summarize my STEM project, I realized that a lot of people do not know simple facts about the United States Constitution. I created an online website, quiz, and study help to aid those interested in becoming more familiar with the Constitution. I wanted to design a website that would catch the attention of my peers in order to increase their excitement about this vital document. I wanted to promote the Constitution in a way that would inspire this website and survey’s visitors to gain more understanding of the importance of this lasting document. This is the link to the website: https://knowtheconstitutio.wixsite.com/learn.
Included on the website is a quiz I created. I chose some questions that most people do not generally know, in an effort to help them realize they need to know more! This quiz also contains simple facts that each of us should know and understand. It is important to understand how our rights are protected and how our government is run. We are blessed to have this organized document that fulfills that need. A direct link to the survey I created is here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FVTXY9Z.
To make learning convenient, on the website I created an option to click on a button labeled “study here” which directly sends the user to a “Quizlet” page. Here, I created digital flash cards with simple facts about the United States Constitution and its amendments. This gives the user several choices and styles of learning to best fit their personal learning needs. This is the direct link to that Quizlet study guide and flashcards: https://quizlet.com/1343560/27-amendments-best-definitions-flash-cards/.
Toward the bottom of the website, I created a timeline visual aid of the dates that each amendment was added to the Constitution. This helped me better understand how the Constitution is a living document and I hope this timeline will teach others the same truth. I also included another option to learn more by clicking a direct link to constitutingamerica.org where I myself have found new and interesting information about the United States Constitution.
Results of the survey from 65 participants can be found at this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-52BSLQDY/.

Our Interview With Aubrey

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
No, I actually entered last year as well but didn’t win and decided to try again this year.

How did you hear about the contest?
Jacob and Emily VanDerwerken

What inspired your work?
I wanted to design a way for people to recognize how much they actually knew about the U.S. Constitution, so I designed a survey with simple questions about its details. I didn’t want them to be left with a low score on the survey and no way to increase their knowledge, so I connected it on a website with more information about the Constitution and a link to a website full of flashcards with additional facts and information to study.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
When I was creating my entry, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible in order to attract more of an audience. I realized that there is so much to the Constitution and so many pieces I could focus on and go into a lot of depth with. There is always more I can learn about the Constitution, which was another thing I realized while creating my entry.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to spread the word to my peers about the importance of the U.S. Constitution by inviting them to tune into our weekly podcasts with guests discussing the Constitution. Constituting America has other great opportunities to learn more whether through their book club and their contest! I have been sharing details about the contest with family and peers because that is another great way to learn more.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I have a lot of friends who really enjoy their history classes and learning more about U.S. history specifically. However, when I had them fill out the survey I created, I realize that some of them don’t know simple details about the Constitution itself. They responded by letting me know they realized they need to learn more about this important document and that they didn’t know as much as they thought they did. I was excited that the simple survey gave them the nudge to realize they needed to do more to educate themselves.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love that our Founding Fathers weren’t afraid to do something different. They worked as a team to form a system that would support and promote freedom of individuals. I love learning about each person in history and their individual impact on our country and how it has formed to the country we have today.


Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?

Pearl Harbor is on my bucket list of historical sites to visit. I think this was not only an impactful place for our country, but something that impacted the rest of the world. The country united at this point in time, like they had before. I think that it would be an inspiring place full of respect and reverence. I am also really excited to visit Washington D.C. and hopefully see the historical sites there, including the Capitol, White House, the Smithsonian, and other sites.


Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?

Benjamin Franklin inspires me to think outside the box. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, even when it wasn’t the most popular opinion. He was a very bright man who put his talent and understanding to a useful purpose in bettering his community and future of his country.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is my mom. With my dad, she raised seven children and that was her full-time job! I can’t imagine it being very easy and she sacrificed a lot to do it. We didn’t always appreciate all she did for us while growing up, but she continued to love and give anyway. I look at her example of selflessness and generosity and it inspires me to be better to everyone around me. Even when credit wasn’t given where it was due, she didn’t give up. She continues to sacrifice, serve, and love when no one is watching and sometimes even recognizing her actions. I know that life is like this sometimes and that we just have to keep pushing forward and trust that we are doing the best we can. I watch as she does all she can to keep her family close and united. She is a leader, a fighter, a caring and compassionate woman that I aspire to be like one day.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I would say I am most passionate about my family, school, and sports. I love to spend time with my family, whether we are singing, playing games, or just sitting around talking with each other. I have always loved school and improving myself by gaining more education. I’m passionate about always doing my best and giving my full effort to really learn and understand the material I am taught. Lastly, I love sports! I played basketball all growing up and still love to play any time I can! I’m passionate about showing the guys that girls can play well too!

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time, I love to be outside! I enjoy going camping and hiking up in the beautiful mountains. I really enjoy exercising in any form such as swimming, tennis, pickleball, basketball, running, and more! I love spending time with family and friends whether we are singing, playing games, eating, or just sitting around and talking. I also enjoy cooking and trying out new recipes that are healthy and tasty!


What are your plans for the future?

My husband and I currently attend Brigham Young University and will graduate in April 2022. After that, I can pursue more education in order to become a social worker. Before I do that, I am excited to become a mom and raise a family with my husband. We both grew up in Utah but would love to venture out and move to a different state to raise our kids.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Something my parents have been saying lately is to “judge less and love more.” If I could do something impactful to help people, it would be to spread this concept! I think that our country and our world could use a whole lot less judgement and more love. Accepting differences of any kind and coming together in love of our country and our freedom would be breathtaking. It starts with one and then grows to more through example and encouragement. We can love by supporting others in their accomplishments, whether small or big. We can love by not jumping to conclusions. We can love by forgiving and allowing others to change for the better. These opportunities to influence and love others are endless.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution influences every part of each day. From the smallest decisions to the largest, the Constitution protects my freedom and agency. I can choose my own career path, I can choose where to live, I can choose what to believe, I can choose what to say. America wouldn’t be the country it is without the United States Constitution.

Magda Smith is a sophomore at Cornell University. She is interested in creating positive change through policy and promoting nuance, empathy, and open-mindedness in political discussions. In her free time, she loves to read and go on walks. Magda’s essays, songs, and poems have won several national and international awards including a Merit Award from the National YoungArts Foundation and a Gold Medal, a Silver Medal, and 28 more honors from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Over the summer and autumn of 2020, she worked as a researcher with the Global Student Policy Alliance to create ​a database​ of every country in the world’s climate policies.

 

Click Here or below To Watch Magda Smith’s Winning Speech!

Our Interview With Magda

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
I was looking through a list of student contests the day of the deadline and happened to stumble across this one, and the question aligned perfectly with my interests.

What inspired your work?
I’ve been concerned about political polarization for several years. The people I know andcare about seem to be growing steadily more and more convinced that the other side istheir enemy, wants them literally dead, and is sharpening its knives to come and destroy everything they care about. Not only is this a tad overdramatic, it could hardly be farther from reality—I know I’m only a naively optimistic teenager with a lifetime to “see the truth,” but the more people I talk to on different sides of the political aisle, the more convinced I am that most Americans share common hopes, common fears, and common values. We all want to do what’s right. We all want to see our loved ones healthy and happy. We all want to be proud of the world we leave behind for our children. Why should we let ourselves forget this merely because we have different visions of how to get there?

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I suppose I learned that applying the day of the deadline sometimes works out in the
end. 🙂

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I’m always interested in talking to people about their political views and the arguments, dreams, goals, and values that undergird them. Regarding the Constitution, I’d like to suggest to everyone that they form their opinion about it through careful, nuanced
analysis. I’d like to challenge both the people who dismiss the Constitution as yet another symbol of oppressive government and the people who revere it as though it is sacred- as though it is evidence that other types of government are uniformly evil.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends love talking about history and I love discussing it with them. Two of my best friends want to run for office in opposing political parties, so it’s endlessly fascinating to me to talk with them about their opinions on contemporary political issues and how history shapes their perspectives. Both of my friends draw many of their political beliefs from respect for the Constitution, which makes it all the more interesting to see where they diverge. And this last fact, I think, confirms my thesis that most Americans of supposedly opposing sides are much more alike than we are different!

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I like that the United States is a nation of dreams and dreamers, who have stood strong against seemingly insurmountable tides to advocate for progress, freedom, and equal rights. While this is easy to forget today, the idea that “all men are created equal” and endowed “with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” seemed like a crazy, unbelievable, undreamable dream when first set forth in the Declaration of Independence. The actions of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and other brave activists towards the abolition of slavery seemed at the time to be an even more undreamable dream, but one similarly rooted in the idea that all human beings are intrinsically equal and intrinsically deserving of certain rights. The women’s rights movement, the LGBT rights movement, the movement against segregation, and various other campaigns for equal rights in the United States all began as dreams, but they succeeded thanks to their advocates’ ability to weave those dreams together with the dreams of the entire nation in a common American language: the language of freedom, faith, independence, and opportunity. I like that throughout the United States’ history, there have been many beautiful times when empathy prevailed over division and kindness prevailed over resentment. I like that these times all have their roots in seemingly undreamable dreams, including the great dream of ideals set forth in the first line of the Declaration of Independence and the great dreams of concrete reality that succeeded in part due to their interconnectedness as parts of a larger history. I like that, although terrible atrocities have scarred the pages of the American story, we still dare to dream these dreams, we still dare to embrace the potential of the United States, and we still dare to believe that the best parts of our nation’s history are worth aspiring to.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
It would be fascinating to tour the offices of the top U.S. government officials and federal agencies and get to ask the people who work there questions about what they do. Most of it is probably top secret, so I wouldn’t get to learn much, but it would be incredibly interesting to get to see the day-to-day operations of these institutions regardless.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Definitely Frederick Douglass. I think he’s incredible. His ability to always approach people with empathy as individuals, in what could easily be called the starkest and most black-and-white (literally) of situations, is nothing if not amazing to me. If it weren’t for that ability—the ability to speak to the best in people, to connect across differences, to emphasize our common humanity, to refuse the easy path of generalizations and tribalism, to never stop fighting for the beautiful potential in everyone and everything—we would live in a world without art, without honor, without friendship, and without love. However gargantuan my problems seem in the moment, they pale in comparison to those Douglass faced in his life, and if he could never let himself be subsumed in resentment, never give in to mass hatred, and always aspire to what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature,” so can I!

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model who is currently alive is Daryl Davis, who I talked about in my speech. He’s a black man who decided to start going to KKK meetings and talking to the Klan members as a fellow human being, somehow not being cowed by the possibility that they might kill him, and swayed over 200 members’ minds, causing them to submit their robes to Davis, denounce their former ideology, and shake his hand as an equal. A lot of people don’t believe in heroes and think that the power of friendship to overcome villainy is confined to the pages of comic books, but, well, I disagree.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I’m most passionate in my life about telling stories, capturing human emotion and understanding the human experience in a way that is meaningful to people. I think stories are the most powerful things in the world, stronger than rock or steel or iron—stories can make or break armies, can win wars, can raise empires, can save worlds or destroy them, can shift the course of history through the stirring of a human heart or the changing of a human mind.
When I was in high school, I often told stories through poetry, but now I much prefer telling stories through songs. My prefered medium may change as I get older, but I’m certain I will always be happiest immersed in stories, reveling in their power, hoping to counterbalance the ugliest stories people have told with the kindest, to contribute my own to the common language of the human species.

How do you spend your free time?
I write songs! I hope to start releasing them soon. I have written an album that I am very excited about, which explores the experience of being a teenage girl in high school through the stories of 15 different girls. I really want to get a record deal and create this album, which is titled Possibility. As of now, I plan to release several of my songs independently and hope that people will like them.

What are your plans for the future?
I want my legacy to be the hearts I’ve touched and the kindness I’ve left behind. I don’t want to ever find myself cutting corners because it’s easy or making small concessions against my principles and then convincing myself it’s for some greater good down the road. More specifically, I want to pursue singing and songwriting at whatever level I can, depending whether people like the music I create. I want to keep telling stories that move people and help them get through their day and hopefully make their lives better! I will be a sophomore at Cornell University next year, studying Government and International Relations.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I want to create music that is meaningful to people and helps them get through their day. I hope that when I release my songs, I can find a way to get them to people and people will find them meaningful. I know that for me, music has gotten me through a lot and vastly improved my life. I would often look forward to the end of the school or work day so that I could listen to my favorite songs on the bus home. I would like to do the same for others—I hope to make music that inspires people, makes them feel and think, shows them that they’re not alone in what they’re going through, and gives them something to look forward to even if their day has gone terribly.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is perhaps the most important piece of political theory ever written, and it is relevant on the basis of its longstanding impact and influence. The Constitution offers a moral justification for a system of government in a way that is different from virtually all of its historical alternatives—governments typically justify their legitimacy through force, through order, or through a supposed mandate of Heaven, but the American Constitution makes a vastly different claim: this government is legitimate because all people are equally are entitled to certain rights, the government exists to protect those rights, and the people comprising the government are selected by the people they serve. The Constitution tells a story, a story that shapes the United States and its people. Everyone in the United States, everyone in a Western democracy, and really everyone in the world has interacted in some way with the story of the United States, and whatever one thinks about that story, it is undeniably relevant. The Constitution is also, of course, relevant because it is the supreme law of the land in the most powerful superpower the world has ever known, with the largest economy, strongest military, and most substantial direct influence on the rest of the world in all of history.

Emmalisa Horlacher, 23, Best College Song Winner, grew up in Utah but spent recent years living in Virginia where she got to tour the Museum of National History displaying the Constitution as well as visit multiple Civil War sites. She is currently attending BYU and is in the process of applying for the Media Arts Program. She is involved in two Art Internships for Future House Publishing company and The Valley New Media Project. She spends free-time doing freelance video editing work for Peter Myers. She loves to write, sing, volunteer and work on creative projects like making pop-up cards and wire wrapped rings.

Corbin Jones, Best College Song Winner: My name is Corbin Jones. I Currently live in Provo Utah, I have lived in Huntsville, Alabama and in the Portland area. I am one of 8 kids and have grown up with a family that are very strong supporters of the constitution. I grew up taking several classes about the founding of the country, and have been a huge advocate for supporting America and the beliefs it was founded upon. I have played guitar since I was fourteen years old and play the piano and ukulele as well. Music is a very big part of my life. I love to play sports, camp, just be outdoors and be with other people. I am a product design major at Brigham Young University. I spent two years on a mission trip for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Northern California, serving and teaching people.

Click here or below to watch Emmalisa Horlacher & Corbin Jones’ winning song!

Click here for the lyrics!

Our Interview With Emmalisa and Corbin!

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Emmalisa: Yes.
Corbin: Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
Emmalisa: My friend was doing a blog to submit for this contest. He told me about the different categories and I wanted to write a song. So I got my super talented friend Corbin to help me with the music and I’d do focus on the lyrics.
Corbin: My partner that I made the song with told me about it and we entered.

What inspired your work?
Emmalisa: The Constitution. While writing it I listened to an audio reading of the Constitution about three or four times. Then I pointed out specific words and phrases that I wanted to use. I really wanted to express how much I love this document. But the idea that we have to choose it, I suppose that came from my time at Southern Virginia University. In one of my classes we learned about the social contract where it is the people who have to choose to be governed by the laws they are living. That made me wonder, how many people my age have chosen this government or do they complain about having inherited it? Do people my age understand the power they have to change the laws and systems they do not agree with? The four fathers gave us a great legacy, we have to choose to live the legacy they gave us.
Corbin: Emmalisa did most of the lyrics, we edited what she had to fit some fun music that I made and Altered some of the words. Are both love the principles of the constitution and wanted to show that in the best way we could.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
Emmalisa: Ha! I learned how many syllables are in the word tranquility. Trying to fit that word onto a short line was quite the challenge! And of course I got to delve deeper into the constitution and the words it says to the people and the context behind its creation.
Corbin: I learned about some of the patriotic themes that even music that I write can have. I haven’t written patriotically like this and I liked it.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Emmalisa: I want to share my song with my peers. Also, a leader of my church, Dallin Oaks, recently gave a speech about the U.S. Constitution. I’d like to share that with my friends and family. He shared some amazing things that were very inspiring in support of the document. I want to study his words and apply them by being even more familiar with the Constitution and with how I can contribute to my local government.
Corbin: Maybe show them the song, teach them some, and stand up for what I believe about constitutional rights.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Emmalisa: Well, a lot of friends and family also have an appreciation for the Constitution, not quite the same kind of obsession that I do, but at least an appreciation.
Corbin: They love to have in-depth conversations about it. Sometimes we will talk about how our right are being affected in this day and age and use examples of modern situations.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
Emmalisa: Oh man, I think what I love most about U.S History and the forming of our government is the relationship between the individuals and the country as a whole. Each man specifically who went to Congress needed to be well read and familiar with men, passions, and logic. The individual quality of them was expected to be high but that did not determine their stances on specific things. They were each very unique with very specific ideas that all differed. With all those different ideas being contributed, they all still managed to compromise. They compromised! That is incredible that that many people were all able to come to an agreement on the formation of a country that would eventually rise to become a world power.
Corbin: The founding fathers went against the bigger power and sacrificed all for other pole to have freedom and rights.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Emmalisa: Mount Rushmore. Never been
Corbin: Mount Rushmore.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Emmalisa: George Washington- The dude had an incredible life. He could have been king, but instead he wanted to go back home and go back to the life of a farmer, the life he loved.

Joseph Smith- His influence have shaped religions all over the world. He suffered so much and his influence has helped me learn about Christ.
Corbin: George Washington. He was very proactive and had so much influence. He sacrificed so much for others.

Who is your greatest role model?
Emmalisa: Jesus Christ. I believe in him and in what he did for mankind, for me. I love what he teaches me and how it inspires me to become a better person on a daily basis.
Corbin: General Douglas MacArthur. He did so much in the pacific for us in WW2.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Emmalisa: My testimony of Christ. I also really love media, specifically kid’s cartoon shows.
Corbin: Music and the people I love.

How do you spend your free time?
Emmalisa: I create stories. In so many different ways. I create stories.
Corbin: I do a lot of product design and I love it a lot. I love sports and music. These take up a lot of my time.

What are your plans for the future?
Emmalisa: I want to create media that helps to bring families together. Specifically things that teach uplifting and inspiring morals. I want to help entertain by bringing healthy positive humor into people’s lives. I have been deeply affected by the media I’ve watched in my life. I hope to be able to affect others the same, in positive ways.
Corbin: Become an entrepreneur in product design and start businesses.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Emmalisa: Teach them their worth.
Corbin: Teach others how to learn. Knowing how to learn new things quickly is one thing I wish everyone knew how to do.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Emmalisa: Because of how much choice it gives the people. Because of the rights it protects.
Corbin: We have basic rights that can be taken away if we are not careful. We need our freedom and we need to stand for it.

Gianna Voce is a 15-year-old homeschool student from Northern Virginia. She has been interested in  STEM from an early age, teaching herself Python before starting a Girls Who Code club for homeschooled students. She is currently exploring an interest in programming, cybersecurity, and website design. She plans to graduate early and hopes to pursue a degree in engineering and data science. She has served her community in various ways through her involvement in American Heritage Girls, Wreaths Across America, welcoming veterans on Honor Flights at Dulles Airport, and volunteering at her local library and food pantry. Her outside interests including reading, art, writing, Krav Maga, hiking, skiing, and mountain biking.

Click here to view Gianna’s Winning STEM Project – a Constitution Website with sections for each age group! Explore her Middle School “Lego Amendments!”

 

Our Interview With Gianna!

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was my first time.

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about this contest from the Constituting America website.

What inspired your work?
I knew I wanted to enter the STEM category to be able to create something inter-actable for kids to learn more about the Constitution in a fun way. I chose a website because I really enjoy web design and it would very accessible to others.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
From doing research to add to the website, I learned a lot more about the depth of the Constitution and the way our government runs, in general.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I have actually shared the website with a few different teachers, both elementary, middle, and high school, who have told me they plan to incorporate it into their lessons.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Some of my friends really enjoy studying U.S. History and are always open to debate about the Constitution.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love how unique the forming was and how the relevance of the documents has able to survive so many decades and changes.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit Ellis Island! I find the history fascinating and it would be very interesting to see where my family came to America.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I find many people of history to be inspiring and it’s hard to choose just one; however, I greatly admire Virginia Hall who was an OSS spy in WWII and the first woman and civilian to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross!

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is my father because of how hardworking, intelligent, and persevering he is.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about using science and problem solving to aid and inform others.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time I love reading, writing, drawing, and spending time outdoors.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future I hope to get degrees in Engineering and Forensic Chemistry, then work as an Intelligence Analyst for the FBI or CIA.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would make STEM resources more available to kids everywhere, because playing around with code or test tubes today could lead to making groundbreaking discoveries or products in the future that can have huge, helpful impacts on so many people to come.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because it is the basis and heart of our government and our rights and is what keeps the country going after 200 years and will keep it going in the future.

Colt is a 16-year-old homeschool student living on a small cattle ranch in Florida. When he is not studying, Colt enjoys making Lego displays for local Lego exhibitions, including the Florida State Fair. Colt is the worship leader for his youth group, where he sings and plays guitar on Wednesday nights and for a children’s youth program on Saturday evenings. He grew up in Creation Happened’s creation apologetics ministry (creationhappened.org). Colt has interviewed scientists in the creation apologetics field all over the country. He was present at the opening of the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, where he, at ten years old, interviewed Ken Ham about the attraction. Additionally, this young man volunteers to help scientist and renowned speaker Dr. Jason Lisle, the Biblical Science Institute founder. Colt hosts a podcast called Creation Happened’s Believe it or Not, available on Apple podcasts.

 

Click here or scroll down to listen to Colt’s Winning Song!

Our Interview With Colt Jaxon

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
I am a “huge” fan of Vince Gill. I saw a video on YouTube of him giving a tour of his guitar room to previous contest winners. That incredible video prompted me to look up the website for Constituting America.

What inspired your work?
It is frightening living in this time when governments all over the world are trampling on people’s rights. To see outright tyranny in a close neighbor like Canada makes me thankful that we have the Constitution and the Supreme Court to protect us from the whims of politicians.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I researched the Constitution and realized that we Americans owe a lot to our 4th President, James Madison. He did a lot of hard work on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
Honestly, having the song helps. Whenever I sing it for people, I get several questions about why I wrote it and why the First Amendment is important.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most of my friends are very interested in history. I am a home-schooled kid, and most homeschoolers hit United States history pretty hard.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I think Americans are very fortunate that we chose George Washington as our first President. He could have easily set himself up as a king. Instead, he set the standard for all future Presidents. Clearly, the U.S. Constitution is our forefather’s most impressive achievement. It is the premiere document of its kind in the world. Even though the United States is a relatively young country, our Constitution is the oldest (fully codified) Constitution globally.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I have traveled around the United States, from the battle site at Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to the Alamo in San Antonio. I have yet to go to Washington, D.C. I would like to go to the National Archives and see the original Constitution.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I am a Munroe, so I am very interested in the history of the Munroe family in the United States. Sixteen of the Minute Men at the Battle of Lexington, Massachusetts, the first battle of the Revolutionary War, were from the Munroe family. The Munroe Tavern still stands in Lexington. Family history records that Sergeant “Billy” Munroe fired the famed “shot heard around the world.” Sergeant William Munroe was also the guard stationed outside of the house where Samual Adams and John Hancock were sleeping when Paul Revere came to warn them about the coming invasion of Lexington and Concord. He refused to let Revere into the house, and only after Hancock heard the commotion was Revere allowed to enter. I am a direct descendant of Sergeant William Munroe.

Because there was only one Munro clan in Scotland, all people who are named Munro, Munroe, Monro, Monroe are from the same family. So I have also always been inspired by my ancestor President James Monroe.

Who is your greatest role model?
I am a Christian, so obviously, the greatest role model and the one that we should all strive to emulate is Jesus Christ.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about the Lord Jesus and his plans for me. It is a fantastic feeling to lead a group of my peers to worship Him through my music. While I am passionate about music, I am also grateful and humbled that the Lord gave me this gift.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend a lot of time learning to play music (I recently bought a banjo) and writing songs. I also enjoy making Star Wars Lego displays for Lego shows. In addition, I make videos for our family ministry, Creation Happened, and I have a podcast, Creation Happened’s Believe it or Not. I help with the ministry when we do events. As a family, we often help out Biblical Science Institute started by our friend, astrophysicist Dr. Jason Lisle. In May, I will help him by selling books at his table at the Florida Homeschool Convention. I love doing this because I like to talk to the kids about apologetics and astronomy. I have also recently started the Brooksville Florida chapter of a Turning Point, the youth organization started by Charlie Kirk.

What are your plans for the future?
I am planning to go to college. I always have thought that I would become an Apologist, but I may also do something in music since this is also my passion.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
As a Christian, I am commanded to make disciples, so I plan to use my music to share my faith with others.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Our government is a Constitutional Republic. It’s literally the backbone of our political system, the thing our government is based on. The Constitution protects us from tyranny. If interpreted correctly by the Supreme Court, it’s the only hope of sustaining the “American” way of life.

Courtney is a very active 17-year-old junior at Midway High School in Waco, Texas. She is a member of the National Honor Society, founder and president of her school’s Trivia Club, and serves as an officer in the Spanish Club. Courtney’s Business Professionals of America Start-up Enterprise team has advanced to nationals and placed in the top ten teams in the nation. She is also in two varsity choirs at her high school and has been recognized on the regional level in state vocal competitions. She loves to write music, sing, and excels in playing the piano, guitar, and ukulele and loves to share her gift of music to bless others. However, Courtney’s greatest passion is her faith and serving God. She is actively involved in her church where she also plays and sings in the youth worship band. Courtney looks forward to pursuing a career in business/entrepreneurship and Spanish. When she was just nine years old, her mother authored a book for those who need hope in difficult circumstances, so Courtney decided to organize her friend to make beaded bracelets and sell them in local gift shops and online. For each bracelet she sold, she and her mom were able to donate a book to hospitals, hospice and cancer centers, churches and others who need hope. Through Courtney’s Creations, she has raised more than $12,000 and donated more than 1,000 books. Courtney loves to express her heart and creativity in arts and crafts, songwriting and all things music-related. She loves the mission of Constituting America and is delighted to be part of raising the awareness and importance of our nation’s Constitution!

 

Click here or scroll down to listen to Courtney’s Winning Song!

Our Interview With Courtney

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was my first time entering the contest!

How did you hear about the contest?
I was on the founding youth advisory board, so I first heard about it when I was introduced to CA. Also I have been on the email list for a while and was reminded of the contest there.

What inspired your work?
The constitution and the freedom it gives me. I am an outspoken Christian and the freedom for me to not only practice my faith but speak openly about it spurs me on in every aspect of life.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While writing the lyrics, I had to dive a little deeper into the history of the constitution and from that I learned even more about the founding fathers and the social environment that inspired the constitution. It reassured my faith in our nation and its founders.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to spread the word about the importance of the constitution by not only encouraging my friends to become involved with Constituting America but also by urging them to really understand the principles set forth in the Constitution. I want everyone to recognize those principles are the basis for the freedoms they enjoy every day. Our whole lives are built upon the truths written in this document, and I think that is simple and ground-breaking for many.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends and I thoroughly enjoy talking about history and the Constitution. We are amazed at the extensive progress our nation has made over the last four centuries, and yet we find it very intriguing that the challenges to protect our freedoms in 1787 are comparable, in some ways, to the challenges we still face today.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love that the US prioritizes the wellbeing and freedoms of its citizens. The whole purpose of the government throughout our history is “How can we band together to improve this nation?” While there have been many poor examples of this throughout history, I do believe the overwhelming sense of pride has been rooted in an attitude of freedom and individual rights. That’s what makes the government so admirable. Even in times of factions and conflict, we are still a nation that wants the best for its people, even if we may not always agree on what that may be.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit the site of the Battle of Gettysburg. I think it would be so powerful to stand in the place that served as a turning point for our nation from yet again a period of darkness to freedom.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Abraham Lincoln is one of the most influential people in history. Not only was he a popular leader, his humility and kind spirit came through in everything he did. Something not many people know is that he was an incredible storyteller who drew together politicians of all different views to join together in laughter. That is something I greatly admire. I think our country has lost its ability to unite despite differences, and it is something I aspire to advocate for in my lifetime.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is my grandmother. She is someone who lived her entire life in servitude to the Lord. She grew up with little money, and when she married my grandfather, they together raised five children on very little income. It was later in their lives that my grandfather’s company became a very successful business. From that point on, they both used their money to help others, start charities, and give back in every way possible. My grandmother was one of the most kind, humble, loving people you would ever meet. She constantly reminded me what it means to serve others. She opened her home to any person who needed it. There have been many families that lived there temporarily between homes or jobs, and countless others who passed through or stayed for shorter visits. She loved to cook and invited others into her home regularly to enjoy those meals. I have never known someone so charitable and above all—joyful. She exuded joy in every aspect of her life, and that is something I aspire to do as well.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I would say I am most passionate about music. I play five different instruments, and I also sing. I take voice lessons, sing in two different varsity choirs in my high school, play and sing in the worship band at my church, and I lead worship for my small group. I write music in my free time and I am currently recording an EP to release. I love the unity of music and yet the diversity. It is a way to express your emotions and thoughts and opinions while making something beautiful that others can enjoy. Music has so much power, and it is something that touches everyone’s lives in one way or another.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend a lot of my free time—which I have very little of— with friends and family, in addition to pursuing my musical interests. I also love to make silly videos and record music. Both of my older brothers like making music as well, so they’ve shown me some tips and tricks and encourage me in my own musical pursuits. I also love to go on spontaneous adventures. Sometimes the most fun is when you do something unplanned and unstructured.

What are your plans for the future?
In my future I plan to go to a four-year university and then hope to move to Spain. I have always dreamed of traveling the world, and I have a deep love for Spanish and the Spanish culture. I plan on living and teaching English abroad and using my extra time to travel and record music. Eventually, I plan to move back stateside and find a job, start a family, and continue making music in addition to whatever profession I pursue.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I could do one super impactful thing to help people, I would advocate for more money to go toward teacher salaries. I strongly believe teachers are the foundation of the world. Most people who are able to achieve their dreams can attribute much of their success to their teacher and the education they received. Teachers have a profound effect on society at large and yet the profession of teaching is extremely underfunded. Imagine what the world would be like if our teachers were appropriately compensated for the value of the work they do.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The constitution is relevant today because the idea of freedom is something that still pertains to each person. We still live in a society where we must protect and proclaim our rights, and that is what the Constitution does. It is a proclamation of the people. It is the livelihood of the people of our country. The Constitution is relevant today because people are relevant today.

 

Lily Cring is a 17-year-old senior at Western High School in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. She is President of the Theatre and Drama Club, President of her Chorus, and a National Speech & Debate competitor. She has a passion for contributing to her community, and in her free time is an intern for a non-profit that organizes student-led programs for feeding underprivileged children. She has a special place in her heart for cows and has sworn off eating beef for that reason. She has been accepted to attend the University of Central Florida in the fall.

Click here for Lily’s winning PSA

Our Interview With Lily

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
I first entered a contest in 2020. My sister had won before and we learned what a great scholarship program it was, so I entered. I was over the moon to find out I had won in 2020 and 2021.

How did you hear about the contest?
From my older sister, Isabella.

What inspired your work?
For my generation, it can sometimes feel like we are disconnected from our democracy. I wanted to show that we have power in our voices in the way our government is set up.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
A lot about editing and continuity – it’s amazing what you can do with a few wigs and a video editing program!

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
When I send people my PSA’s, I always get really good reactions. Mostly, they say they “never looked at it that way.” I love to use my work to inspire others my age to use their vote and their voice.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends are pretty open minded, and we all firmly believe in using our freedom of speech and freedom of protest in order to make a change.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
How our form of government is built to change with the will of the people. The Constitution can be amended! And thanks to that, I’ll be able to vote for the first time in 2022.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit Mount Rushmore.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
John Jay is really inspirational to me. Not only was he a founding father, but he was the first chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Who is your greatest role model?
My role model is my dad. He was always taught me to love others and use my voice to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about equality and fair treatment for all – animals and humans alike!

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time listening to music, loving animals, and volunteering at my local food bank.

What are your plans for the future?
I’m currently going to school planning to pursue environmental law. I hope to be an animal rights activist someday!

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Many people would say world peace, I think the first attainable step towards that is ending food insecurity.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because it protects our right to use our voice. It teaches us that we are not powerless in the laws and legislations being passed.

Lily Cring is 16 years old and a Junior at Western High School in Ft. Lauderdale. She is on the Executive Board for her theatre and drama department as well as a National Speech & Debate competitor. She has a passion for contributing to her community and In her free time, is an intern for a non-profit that organizes student-led programs for feeding underprivileged children. She has a special place in her heart for cows and has sworn off eating beef for that reason.

Click here for Lily’s winning PSA

Joaddan Villard is a junior at Laurel High School. She originally began editing in 4th grade with the oh so famous “Movie Maker.” Now 17, she enjoys editing in her free time. Never passing up an opportunity to try something new, many things have helped her reach where she is today. Joaddan has participated in many programs such as Fresh Films where she won in the Quad Cities category. Not letting her film desire die, she also created a FIlm CLub at her school. Though Joaddan aspires to join the entertainment industry, that does not stop her from expanding her horizons. Other than editing, Joaddan also enjoys debating and speeches. Joaddan has won a Barack Obama Oratorical Contest and Multiple local film festivals. Energetic, multilingual, and optimistic, she aspires that one day her voice will be heard by people everywhere.

Click here or below to view Joaddan’s winning PSA!

Our Interview With Joaddan

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes it was!

What inspired your work?
I really like public speaking and speaking in general. I liked the topic of civic conversations because it’s basically saying, “We have free speech… Why not use it?” We’re filtering ourselves unnecessarily. Honestly, everyday information we may think is common or taboo could really help someone who wasn’t taught the basics.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned about civic conversations. I did not even know what the topic meant before creating the video, but I ended up doing a ton of research and I found out how much I liked the topic and agreed with its meaning. Say what you want to say, people!

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
This year and last year was crazy. So many events went on that it’s probably going down in history. One of my favorite things that occurred was actually the rallies/protests for equality and freedom. Equality is something that I love to talk about, and the oppressed’s given rights are right there in the constitution, so when I’m speaking about “life, liberty, and justice for all,” (Declaration of Independence) I always end up naming the constitution to back up my points.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Depending on who I’m talking with, many of them actually like it. My friends and I are huge Hamilton fans so anything during that time period, if it’s in a song, it’s in our heads. Though the Constitution wasn’t directly mentioned in Hamilton, just because of the time period, they still react positively.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how unfinished it is. We’re still writing history and we still have a chance to make our mark. Also, I love how funny it is. It could be because I’m a huge Hamilton fan, but you can really see how history repeats itself.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Funnily enough, I live in Maryland and have only been there about once. I’d love to see the MLK statue, and hopefully get to visit/see the white house! How do I live so close and have never seen it before?

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Definitely Martin Luther King Jr. I love his speeches and his voice and his fight for freedom. My favorite quote to this day is, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

Who is your greatest role model?
My sisters. I have two older sisters who I look up to a lot, although I’m sure they don’t know it.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
My family, I’d do anything for them.

How do you spend your free time?
Writing, reading, video editing, and learning new things.

What are your plans for the future?
I plan to become Jordan Peele famous. Not everyone knows who he is, but he’s successful enough to not have to worry about many tedious problems. I also love the group of people who do know who he is.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
This is going to sound so cheesy, but give people money. Money is literally what controls people in America and can be the difference between life and death. Almost everyone needs money, and although those who have more money than they could ever spend aren’t forced to give it
away and I won’t berate them, I still feel as though if you don’t know how you could spend it, then why don’t you just give some away? It won’t make much of a difference anyways.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Because though it can be “bent” depending on who it’s used against, it’s still someone that runs our country and keeps the country from falling apart. Many people use the Constitution everyday, whether it’s owning a gun, or expressing themselves.

Margaret Alvine is a 19-year-old Freshman at John Paul the Great Catholic University in San Diego, majoring in Communications Media with an emphasis in Graphic Design.

A proud alum of the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association, Margaret enjoys public speaking and performing. Last year, her speech Historical Amnesia, on the importance of learning from history, placed 9th in the NCFCA Region II Championships.

The French Revolution and its similarities and differences from the American Revolution have always interested her, and the First Amendment Rights gave her an interesting way to explore why these two supposedly similar revolutions had such different outcomes. In her senior year of high school, her essay on Religious Freedom won Constituting America’s high school essay contest. She is so excited to have won again and have more opportunities to work with Constituting America.

In her spare time, Margaret writes apologetics pieces (explanations of Catholic beliefs) for the Marian Ministry at JPCatholic, and is involved with Swing Dance Club, Photography Club, Improv Team, and Sketch Comedy Club. She enjoys singing, dancing, and discussing books, life, and work with friends.

Watch Margaret’s Winning Speech Below:

Our Interview With Margaret

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
No. I also entered in 2020, as a high schooler.

How did you hear about the contest?
Originally, I heard about it on a scholarship search website.

What inspired your work?
I have always been interested in why the French Revolution and American Revolution were so very different, despite their proclaimed identical goals of liberty. Last year, I had just taken AP European History, and been bemoaning how complex and difficult the French Revolution was to study due to the constant heaving revolutions. And of course, isn’t it wonderfully ironic that the French Revolution began as a revolution against a monarch and ended in a dictatorship?

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I was able to delve a lot more into why the two revolutions were so very different, which I really enjoyed. I discovered a lot more details about specific incidents of lack of freedom in the French Revolution. Many history books try to take a much more positive view to the French Revolution, especially their attitude towards reason and religion, so it was good to research more and discover what their attitude and actions truly were, and why there was such a period of constant upheaval.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
By encouraging my friends to vote, and to use their rights. Also by encouraging them to create an entry for the Constituting America Contest!

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
There’s a lot of variety among my friends, but many of them enjoy discussing both. Some of my friends lean more towards random history facts, while some lean towards active engagement to raise awareness about certain constitutional rights. I am also glad to have met so many people through Constituting America who also love discussing history and the Constitution!

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love that the founders were able to take human weakness into account and factor it into their plan, while at the same time keeping an optimistic outlook on the future. It’s also nothing short of amazing that all of these great minds with such strong and often opposing viewpoints were able to work together like they did.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Although I am aware that Longfellow’s poem Paul Revere’s Ride is a romanticization, it really works. It has remained one of my favorite poems since I was little, and it would be amazing to see the places mentioned in the poem.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I find it really inspiring that George Washington was able to hold the Founding Fathers together the way he did. It goes to show that your character really is more important than any skills you may or may not have— although he was certainly a very skilled man as well!

Who is your greatest role model?
One person who I draw from a lot is the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He was able to be a Catholic and a Supreme Court Justice without sacrificing either, and he showed the importance of working with people and making friends through his relationships with people such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who he definitely disagreed with in many cases.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Finding truth, goodness, and beauty, and sharing them with others.

How do you spend your free time?
Singing or listening to folk songs, dancing (I love Contra and Swing), learning ASL, drawing or writing, and of course reading. Also playing at the park, or playing card games with my friends.

What are your plans for the future?
For the immediate future, I will keep working towards my degree. After I graduate, I hope to work for a nonprofit dedicated to helping people, or in education.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would like to create places that preserve and encourage folk dance, music, and arts and crafts, and help to foster community. I think it’s really sad that often we don’t know or care who lives right next to us.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Well, for starters, it is still the basis of our government! If for no other reason, it’s relevant and it matters because it forms the basis for our laws and systems. Of course, I think it matters still more because it provides a system of checks and balances which, annoying as we may find them, help to protect our rights.

Margaret Alvine is an 18-year-old homeschooled high school Senior. She has been homeschooled all her life, along with her six younger siblings. She currently lives in the Mojave Desert in Southern California.

Her interest in the Constitution grew through her sophomore AP US Government class, which she really enjoyed. She also enjoys reading the speeches of the late Antonin Scalia, former Supreme Court judge, and looks up to him as an example of a life lived in faith and reason. She is excited for this opportunity to help inform others about our wonderful Constitution.

She competes in multiple speech categories in National Christian Forensics and Communication Association (NCFCA), including a persuasive speech on the necessity of historical knowledge to a free people. In addition to her schoolwork and extracurriculars, Margaret teaches Religious Education at her parish, and this year has shifted online due to Covid.

In Margaret’s spare time, she enjoys crafting and other forms of designing, playing flute and recorder, coming up with skits with her sister, reading, and engaging others in conversation.

Click here to read Margaret’s winning high school essay

Our Interview With Margaret

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, it was.

How did you hear about the contest?
A Scholarships search page.

What inspired your work?
At first, I was thinking about writing about the tenth amendment. However, though I was interested in writing about how important it is to not assume that our rights are limited to the Bill of Rights, my beginning attempts were not that great. About that time, my family was closely following the struggles for religious freedom in San Francisco, just as some time previously we had written a letter to the State legislature regarding the proposed laws which infringed upon the Seal of the Confessional. As we followed the news and watched those speaking against the intrusions on Religious freedoms, I thought, “Why not write about the right to religious freedom?” I’ve always been interested in the evolution of laws regarding religion in this country, and the fact that it was the first right specified in the Bill of Rights, so I decided to go ahead.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned a lot about the evolution of religious laws in the US, and a little about COVID laws.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
One way I will help inform others is through my NCFCA speech on American History. In my persuasive speech, I attempt to persuade people to take an active interest in our nation’s founding principles, and follow them through the ages.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Due to the pandemic, I have not had as many opportunities to have long, in person discussions with friends as I would like. However, in the opportunities I have had to talk to friends both new and old, discussing history and the Constitution is always an interesting topic when it comes up. Admittedly, though the opportunities have been rarer, the Constitution has been more likely to come up as we try to make sense of current events and pandemic laws, and determine what is rational or not, and what is Constitutional or not.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
For the founding specifically, I love the historical message about learning from history: the way that the founders refused to follow the idea of facing unprecedented challenges, and instead used ideas and successes and failures from history to form the Constitution and argue for or against it. For all of History, seeing the way events from the past form our present thrills me, and it can be comforting at times to learn how often people thought that the world as they knew it was over, and then it wasn’t.


Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Living on the West Coast, I have had the opportunity to visit many amazing historical sites such as forts established by Lewis and Clark and pieces of the Oregon Trail. I also had the opportunity to see several things such as the actual Declaration of Independence when I was younger than six. Now that I am older, I would be interested in re-visiting sites from the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Convention. I would also be interested in seeing a homestead of Laura Ingalls, whose books have been a favorite of mine since I was old enough to check out CDs from the library.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
That’s a hard one, there are a lot of great figures in American History… Abraham Lincoln is one historical figure I have found inspirational. Since I enjoy public speaking, I am amazed by his power as a public speaker, as well as his humility. A style of debate is even named after his method of debating his opponent: Lincoln Douglass debate. Lincoln’s honesty and devotion to doing the right thing also inspire me. I found it really interesting and even influential to my educational decisions that Lincoln felt it necessary to memorize Euclid before he could be an effective lawyer. One last thing I like about Lincoln is a story about his childhood. I’m not sure if it’s a legend or not, but I heard a story somewhere that one day Lincoln was told not to walk on the freshly washed floor with his muddy feet. Nothing daunted, he wiped his feet, grabbed a friend with muddy feet, and held him upside down so that he made muddy prints on the ceiling. Naturally, he cleaned it up after he had his laugh.

Who is your greatest role model?
One of my role models is the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In fact, it was reading his speeches on religious freedom that got me particularly interested in how the court’s opinions have changed. I look up to him as a model of faith and reason working together, and appreciate his desire to interpret the Constitution from the words, not by their “spirit”.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Truth.

How do you spend your free time?
Gardening, crafting, reading, playing with my siblings, talking or writing letters to my friends, playing flute or recorder, sewing, baking.

What are your plans for the future?
I do not yet have set plans, but I do know that I will be going on to attend a Catholic College where I can grow in faith and pursue truth, and both grow in the “art of being human” as well as prepare for a career where I can make a positive impact for truth.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
Lead people to care about truth and goodness and seek them both.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
Because it continues to protect our freedoms, to give us peaceful means to change our government. After the French Revolution, they had revolution after revolution. After the American Revolution, we had peaceful transfers of power. The rights the Constitution protects and the system it sets up still give Americans great freedoms, even if we are becoming complacent and willing to give them away.

Natalie is a senior at Purdue University, majoring in agribusiness with a concentration in food marketing and certificate in public policy. She calls the beautiful Washington State home, where she grew up milking cows on her family’s dairy farm, surfing and hiking in God’s creation, and developing a love for American political history. Specifically, her interest lies in the American revolution and the foundational government (her Benjamin Franklin costume is still in her closet!). She is incredibly grateful to have been immersed in this eclectic assortment of interest areas. After graduating amid the COVID restrictions of 2020, she packed her bags and headed to Indiana for college.

Since coming to Purdue, Natalie has enjoyed studying the intersection of agriculture and politics through an economic lens. She has pursued internships in policy and economics, continued political advocacy, and, of course, remained steadfast in her earnest pursuit of constitutional and governmental knowledge through her time in college. In her free time, she enjoys reading, being outside, and spontaneous ice cream runs with her roommates.

Blending her interests in dairy and policy, Natalie plans on pursuing a career where she works to improve the public perception and economic viability of dairy and American agriculture through policy.

Click here to read Natalie’s Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Natalie

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes! This is my first time entering the contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest through a scholarship database.

What inspired your work?
I grew up as a political minority in my school, which forced collaboration with people bearing an adverse political opinion as mine. Through history classes, government classes, and extracurricular activities, I grew to appreciate political discourse, and I believe that our differences made our bond stronger. I think the classroom was a microcosm of society, and difference of opinion and thought should be celebrated.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While writing this essay, I learned how much I valued the diversity in my life. Prior, I had not taken too much time to reflect on this.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I bring the Constitution up in conversation an abnormal amount. I believe that the best way to educate on the Constitution is to naturally integrate it into daily conversation. I am also the treasurer of my school’s Young Americans for Freedom, and plan to educate in a more traditional manner this way.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Generally, my friends respond positively to talking about the Constitution. I have great conversations with my friends about the reasoning behind and implication of different rights outlined in the Constitution and subsequent amendments.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love the idea that these men build a government from scratch, drawing from the mistakes of prior empires to create a withstanding nation. I love that America is unique from any other prior culture. We have a history of fierce independence, earnest innovation, and staunch morals, which are demonstrated by our past.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit Independence Hall in Philadelphia to be inspired by the radical founders and soak in some patriotic spirit.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Thomas Jefferson is the most influential and inspirational American historical figure to me because of his zeal for American rural communities. He used his agrarian background and his love for classical studies to form trade and domestic policy. He was a staunch advocate for education for all children, including girls. His writings on freedom and equality continue to inspire students generations later. I strive to have his eloquence of writing and ardent commitment to sound policy.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role models are my parents. I feel incredibly blessed to call such loving and resilient people mom and dad. Dairy farming is not easy, but their continuous perseverance and faith set an example of a strong worth ethic. My mom and dad are really my rocks and I hope to be as caring and steadfast when I become a parent.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about agricultural advocacy. I believe there is a gap between farmers and consumers greater than ever before, and I want to bring people closer to where their food comes from. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation and misconception around American agriculture. This disconnect can be mitigated through collaborative advocacy and farm-to-fork education for all segments of consumers from school kids to adults. Agricultural and food literacy is necessary to ensure food security, and it is worth fighting for.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time reading or doing anything outside! I enjoy classic literature and exploring God’s creation wherever I can. Studies and internships have taken me all over the United States, and I love hiking and paddleboarding wherever I’m at—I have a goal of visiting every National Park!

What are your plans for the future?
I plan to graduate from Purdue in December. My career goal is to promote and improve the economic viability of American agriculture.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would work toward building stable economies in nations experiencing war or famine. Hopefully, this would mitigate political corruption and status-quo humanitarian aid, so these nations can work toward development instead of struggling for survival.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
While the Constitution is certainly a breathing document, it is also withstanding. The rights outlined in the Constitution and amendments are meant to hold true through the ages. It is important to understand our rights as Americans in case they are ever in question.

Hi, I’m Wyatt Powers, a 6th grader at a Christian school in Texas. I love to do lots of things like drawing, reading, drama, speech & debate, and learning history. When I’m not inside doing those things, I’m outside doing something else. I run cross country and am on swim, basketball, and football teams.

I became interested in history when I got a book about the presidents when I was about 4, and subsequently memorized them when I turned 5. After that, I would read about history, watch history themed movies, listen to audiobooks and do all I could to study up on the subject. All that to say, I LOVE history.

This bio wouldn’t be complete without me talking about Jesus. He came into my life when I was in kindergarten, and we’ve been best friends since. My faith has been encouraged by going to a Christian school.

When I go to college, I would like to double major in Pre-law (If offered) and American History, with a minor in political science. After that, I want to go to law school and become a lawyer. With the law experience, I will be ready to run for public office. My highest aspiration is to become President of the United States and have a PhD in History/Political Sciences.

I would like to thank my science teacher who made entering this contest a test grade so we would try our hardest. I’d also like to thank Jesus, Constituting America, and my parents for helping me out. God bless the USA.

Click here to see Wyatt’s Winning Stem Project: A Website On The U.S. Constitution!
Our Interview With Wyatt

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
No, I entered in elementary school for art.

How did you hear about the contest?
My science teacher assigned an entry as a project.

What inspired your work?
The STEM category, escape room, and website from last year’s winners, as well as my love for history.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned how to make a website, as this was my first. I also learned a lot about the founding fathers and Constitution.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to show the website when the winners are announced.  Also, my school will do some promotion for our winners on their social media pages and newsletter to all school families.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Most of them are interested in the things on the website.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I like that I can look back on the mistakes they made then, so I don’t make them now.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
The White House.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Probably Abe Lincoln, because he was great under the pressure of the Civil War. Also, he was incredibly honest.

Who is your greatest role model?
My Dad.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Probably history or law.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time reading, drawing, and listening to audio books.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to be an attorney.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would give a bunch of money to help children’s hospitals.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It gives us all of our rights and others can’t take them away, try as they might.

 

 

Claire Zhu is a sophomore at Bridgewater-Raritan High School in New Jersey. She learned to code during the COVID-19 pandemic and since then has been dedicated to growing her knowledge and challenging herself. She also works outside of school to help her community by teaching Python classes to young kids over Zoom. In her free time, Claire enjoys listening to music, baking, and teaching herself new hobbies such as crocheting and playing the guitar.
At school, Claire is taking an AP U.S. History class where she learns extensively about American history and participates in debates, mock trials, and speeches. Her research about the Constitution has not only helped her in the class, but also improved her general understanding of the American government. She hopes that users of her ChatBot can learn something new about the Constitution and the country that they live in.

 

Click here to see her Winning Stem Project!

 

Our Interview With Claire

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes! This was my first time and it was a really great experience! I learned a lot and had fun challenging myself. I will definitely be applying to the contest next year as well.

How did you hear about the contest?
I actually heard about the contest on an Instagram post about upcoming scholarships and contests. I was intrigued by the fact that it seemed to be related to history and noticed that it was available for high schoolers, which seemed like a perfect opportunity for me.

What inspired your work?
A chatbot was not actually my original idea, I wanted to make some kind of game instead. There was this one specific iCivics game about the branches of power that I thought was really fun and I wanted to recreate it. But, after doing some research on the Constitution itself, I noticed how well separated each part of the Constitution was – with the Preamble, Articles, and Amendments – and it would work perfectly for a chatbot.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned a lot more about Python and using it to develop a project. I had some prior experience with the language, but working on my ChatBot helped me get first-hand experience applying my knowledge. Something cool I learned was how to get each letter to type out one by one like a typewriter – I think it adds a nice unique touch. I also learned a ton about the Constitution itself. I had always known the basics of the Constitution from history classes, but after researching it more in-depth, I was able to understand the specifics of each part a little bit more.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I would love to share my chatbot with my peers and my teacher in my U.S. History class. I think they would really enjoy it, especially since we have been learning about American history all year. I think it would also be really cool if I could reach out to some of my elementary and middle schools and share my work with young students.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Many of my friends take the same U.S. History class as I and we often discuss the topics we are learning in the class. Whether that be funny phrases from the textbook or interesting fun facts, I always have a good time talking about cool American history.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that U.S. history is always surprising and interesting. There’s always something new to learn and connect with. I love watching our country grow and develop over time, and it really puts my life into perspective when comparing it to the decades of the past.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit Yellowstone! I’m not sure it’s considered a historical site, but it has a lot of interesting landmarks that I feel like everyone needs to see at once in their life. My family is a big hiking family, so I would love to explore some of the beautiful trails. I’ve also always wanted to see a geyser and learn more about the supervolcano there, hopefully before it erupts!

Who is your greatest role model?
One of my greatest role models is my older sister. We spend a lot of time together and know each other very well. I have loved watching my sister grow up through the years and learn who she is and what she wants. I can admit that as the oldest, she has really helped pave the way for me and I will always be grateful to her for that.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I’m passionate about not wasting time in my life and working hard to get what I want. I often overthink, and I try to constantly remind myself to just take that leap of faith. I try to take advantage of all opportunities coming my way and put my all into them, no matter how difficult or challenging something is. This is really important to me because I often hold myself back from great experiences simply due to embarrassment or anxiety.

How do you spend your free time?
I like to spend my free time learning and trying new things. This includes not only coding, but also crocheting, playing the guitar, and crafting. I like watching interesting movies that either have a crazy plot or beautiful visuals. When I get the chance, I often hang out with my friends and my sister by getting good food or visiting New York City.

What are your plans for the future?
I’ve always wanted to work in a STEM-related field, whether that be computer science or engineering. Math and sciences are the most interesting subjects for me, though history is not far behind! In the near future, I’m going to continue to work hard and push myself to get into the best college I can.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
This is a pretty loaded question since our world has been pretty bleak recently, but I would say in the scope of what I can do personally, I would just want to make my community and the people around me happier. Whether that be complimenting a stranger or volunteering at events, I want to help people by making a small but important impact.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
I think the Constitution is incredibly relevant today since it is the foundation of all our laws and government. It regulates not only how the country itself works, but also every citizen’s personal rights. The Constitution was the defining document of the past and it will continue to be significant throughout our future.

Alexis is a 17 year old high school senior from Chandler, Arizona. She splits her time between Arizona College Prep High School and the East Valley Institute of Technology Radio/Audio Production Program. You can hear her on the local radio station 88.7 the Pulse. In her free time, Alexis loves to play guitar and bass. She also enjoys crocheting, knitting and baking. She has always been an active part of her community. She is a member of the same Girl Scout troop that she joined in Kindergarten. She also completed over 100 service hours during high school and plans to continue volunteering throughout her college years. Alexis is a high achieving student who will begin attending the W.A. Franke Honors College at the University of Arizona in the fall 2023 semester where she plans to major in engineering.

Click here to read her Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Alexis

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was my first time entering.

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest through my school.

What inspired your work?
This year, I took AP U.S. Government and Politics, which helped me develop a stronger understanding and sense of pride in our government’s foundations, especially the Constitution.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned a lot about the historical relevance of our First Amendment rights. I have always known they were important, but seeing their extensive history showed me how they are key to keeping our republic whole. I also had not thought deeply about all of the different freedoms that are included in the First Amendment. There are so many important rights in that one amendment to the Constitution.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
We are all able to have discussions on the importance of the U.S. Constitution in class. Outside of class, having discussions and talking about real-life situations can also help spread the word.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Usually any discussions we have about history or the Constitution occur in classes. I hope to meet more people in college who share my interest in these subjects.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
It is amazing that the founders of our country were so wise that they could create a system of government that has thrived for over two centuries. Their ideas have been an example for many other countries that have used our Constitution as a model for their own constitutions.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to go to Independence Hall to see the Liberty Bell.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
James Madison is an inspiration to me for his pivotal role in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Without him, we would not be the nation we are today.

Who is your greatest role model?
One of my role models is my Mom. She is an amazing person who has taught me that I can do anything I put my mind toward.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about making a difference in the world. I have spent a lot of time volunteering throughout high school. I want to continue to make an impact for the rest of my life. I think that I can make a positive difference in the world by going into engineering. Engineers have the ability to impact the world by creating new inventions or improving existing products or designs to enhance everyone’s lives.

How do you spend your free time?
I enjoy crocheting, knitting and designing patterns. I also like to play guitar and bass and write music.

What are your plans for the future?
Right now, I am focusing on going to college at the University of Arizona to study engineering, and after college I will start my career.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
As a future engineer, I would love to make an impact on the world through scientific research. Developing new technologies that can improve people’s quality of life is my goal for my career.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is the basis of our government. Without it, we would not be the country we are today. It is a living document that has changed and grown with our country and it will continue to change. It is the supreme law of the land and it protects the rights of all American citizens and ensures that we can remain free.

Emily Schutte is a sophomore at Hillsdale College studying Rhetoric and Public Address. Home for her is the innovative state of Ohio where she grew up as the middle of seven kids. Emily grew up in a household where God, music, and family were extremely important. She developed a love for her country through the patriotism of her family and through her years competing in the American Legion’s oratorical competition. While in college, she has worked as a writer for the Collegian, the college newspaper, the college’s climbing wall, and with the radio station as a newscaster. She is involved in the Catholic Society and plays viola in the college orchestra.

After college, Emily hopes to enrich her community through involvement in local politics and by starting a family in which her children will be nurtured with the same love of God, music, family, and country she is so blessed to have.

Click here to read Emily’s Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Emily

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
This was not the first time I applied. I applied last year as well.

How did you hear about the contest?
I was searching for scholarships related to Americanism since it is a topic about which I am passionate.

What inspired your work?
My work was inspired by my love of this country and the values of her founding.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned that it is important to exercise rights as a citizen of this country or else I may lose them.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to spread the word through conversations with friends and by example through engaging in the political system through voting, especially in this presidential election year.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends are all fairly conservative and are advocates of the Constitution and history. They are generally interested in discussing them both.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love that the Constitution is meant to give citizens the space to self-govern.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
As the great granddaughter of an Italian immigrant, I would love to visit the site which welcomed my great grandfather into this country: The Statue of Liberty.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Calvin Coolidge is the most influential and inspirational American historical figure to me.

Who is your greatest role model?
I don’t know if I could decide between my parents. Both my mother and my father are my greatest role models.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am passionate about my Catholic faith.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time I read, crochet, hang out with friends, swing dance, play games with my friends and family, sing, play viola and piano, and rock climb.

What are your plans for the future?
My future plans include eventually getting married and having a family and being involved in my community through local politics.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
It has been on my heart to join the Board of Education in my local community and reform the education system. Whether this be “super impactful” or not, I believe it is a duty I owe to the community.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because it remains the law of the land and thus still impacts our laws, our government, and individual people.

Jade Carlile is a 16-year-old junior from Highland, UT, who loves being actively involved in her community and a variety of hobbies. She has founded both the PSI Alpha National Psychology Honor Society and the Latino Culture Society at her school and is actively engaged in Model UN, Chess Club, The Floor-Political Debate Club, and the National Honor Society within her school. Outside of school, her curiosity extends to neuroscience, and she has participated in programs at both UW and Stanford. She is also interning at The Neuro Clinic to study clinical magnetic stimulation. Beyond academics, Jade enjoys photography, cooking, baking, and is a proud member of the largest girls’ tackle football league in the country, where the game and her teammates mean everything to her.

Click here to read Jade’s Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Jade

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this is the first time I’ve entered the contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest online, from an instagram list of the top America-focused essay contests.

What inspired your work?
I was inspired by the marginalized groups around the world who struggle through a slow fight for justice because they haven’t been given the same democratic foundation as Americans.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
While preparing for my essay, I was able to develop my understanding of complex historical fights for justice that I’d only understood on a surface level before.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
In my politically-based extracurriculars, I plan to encourage incorporation of Constitutional arguments into every discussion so we can focus on the Constitution’s importance in forming personal opinions.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Many of my friends were made through a political debate club, so they love discussing the Constitution and, despite their different interpretations of it, people my age attach a lot of respect to it.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
In my government class, I keep finding myself grateful and amazed that the founding fathers were so thorough. It’s rare that a document that old would hold up for that long, but every word is still applicable to contemporary issues because the framers managed to create something so predictive.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would love to visit Mesa Verde! Beyond being amazing architecturally, I think it represents the strong presence of the indigenous in the Southwest, where I’m from.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Dolores Huerta is someone I’ve always looked up to. She demonstrates what it means to fight for your community. She means a lot to me as a Latina. She mobilized change for labor workers and her perseverance towards change informs the type of person I want to become.

Who is your greatest role model?
My Mom has always been my greatest role model, she’s the most vibrant, fun and loving person I know and I look up to her a lot.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I really like the idea of doing as much as you can: saying yes to everything, taking every opportunity, meeting as many people as possible, pushing yourself to make the most of your time without being complacent in being bored with life.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend a lot of my free time on a football field, running endless tackle and blocking drills. I love every second of it. Football’s always been one of my passions and my team has become like a second family.

What are your plans for the future?
Eventually, I’d like to go to graduate school for neuroscience, but before that I really care about seeing the world. I want to see as many countries as possible, meet new people from every corner of the world, and see as much of the planet as I can.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I’d want to create an initiative that provides pro bono legal counseling to immigrants that don’t have the resources to pay for services themselves.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is an important framework for everything we do going forward. If we forget the Constitution then we forget our purpose. It reminds us what our values are, where we came from, and informs where we want to go.

My name is Nissi Xavier. I am an eighth grader at Magsig middle school, in Centerville Ohio. I love to be involved in different activities and events! At school, I am involved in many clubs and activities such as speech and debate, orchestra, volleyball, art club, student council, student ambassadors, and more. Outside of school some of my hobbies include volleyball, reading, and playing my violin. I am also a 2nd degree Black Belt in Taekwondo.

Volunteering is a major part in my life. I am part of a group at our local library that hosts events and fundraisers, called TAB (Teen Advisory Board). I also volunteer monthly at a senior living facility. A small group of friends and I sing songs and play music on our instruments for the seniors. It never ceases to put a smile on my face! I also volunteer at my church on Sundays at the nursery. Giving back to my community is a major aspect of my upbringing, so I enjoy doing my part to make the people around me happy.

I know it’s far away, but when I graduate high school, I would like to go to med school and eventually work in the medical field, specifically as a dermatologist.

Throughout my middle school career, my favorite subject has always been social studies. I love learning about our past and current day events! I would just like to say I would not be where I am today without the many influences in my life such as my faith, teachers and friends – who inspire me and make me aspire to be the best version of myself possible.

One of my favorite verses from the Bible is Proverbs 3:5-6…Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. This verse never ceases to humble and remind me that all my success comes from God!

Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents for always encouraging me and telling me I can succeed in anything and everything I do.

Click here to read Nissi’s Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Nissi

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was the first time I entered

How did you hear about the contest?
My parents informed me about it. They heard about it through social media.

What inspired your work?
When I looked at the prompt – the first concept that I thought explained this the best was the scenario in my social studies class about the social contract. My social studies teacher definitely played a big part in inspiring my work.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I never knew that the first amendment can be abbreviated as RAPPS, it is now really helpful and easy to remember.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I am very close to many of my peers and classmates, I have been telling them about this contest and what a great opportunity it is! Many of them said they would be willing to try it next year.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Many of them are interested in what I’m talking about because they already have background knowledge about this from class.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how the founding and forming of our government is so unique, and how it has influenced the establishment of democratic governments around the world.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Mount Rushmore

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
Thomas Jefferson – 3rd president of the United States. He was an incredibly smart man and invented many things, and the primary author of the declaration of independence, when he was just 33 years old.

Who is your greatest role model?
My parents – they believe in me and want the best for me more than anyone else in the world!

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about my faith, family, friends and my sport – volleyball.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time reading, playing volleyball, and spending time with family and friends

What are your plans for the future?
I plan on going to med school once I graduate high school. I want to work towards becoming a dermatologist!

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would be a good citizen and affect people within my sphere of influence.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
We need to know what goes on in our country, as well as the rights we have as the citizens of this nation. The Constitution can help us know all the rights we have.

I am Steven Jiang, an 8th grader at Whitney Young Academic Center in Chicago, IL. I have many hobbies, including drawing, playing soccer, and learning new things. Usually, in my spare time, I browse through online courses to learn subjects such as biology, computer programming, and world history. Each month, I try to focus on a particular area to learn more about.

At school, I participate in many extracurricular activities including Math Team, Science Olympiad, Business Professionals of America, the school newspaper, and more. I also enjoy running on both the cross country and track teams for Whitney Young, and I especially enjoy the 1.5 mile and 800m events.

My interest in the humanities, particularly US history, began when I memorized all the Presidents in third grade. Since then, I have participated twice in National History Day, becoming a National Finalist one year and placing first place nationally last year. In addition, I was a semi-finalist in the National History Bee.

To me, analytical writing is a very meticulous process that requires extensive thought beforehand. I only choose to write about topics that are complex and open to debate. In light of recent world events and my own research into the subject, I feel like I have a lot to express regarding the role of our political system in society.

I would like to thank Constituting America for giving me this unique opportunity and for promoting civic education in schools across America.

Click here to read Steven’s Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Steven

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?
I discovered the Constituting America website while conducting research on the US Constitution.

What inspired your work?
In light of the current global political climate, I feel like the Constitution is more and more relevant with each passing day. I often keep this in mind when I learn about current events.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned about the importance of peaceful transitions of power from one leader to the next.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I look forward to having conversations with people about political events that directly influence our lives. Of course, history shapes the present, so we are constantly reminded to dig deeper and discover root causes.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I am friends with people who share the interests of following current political events, especially during elections, and discussing their impact on society.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
Although the Founding Fathers had their flaws, the system that they established has prevailed through the test of time. The balance of power within society facilitates peace and stability. The freedoms outlined in the Constitution allowed for grassroots change throughout US history. What is fascinating about US history is that it is a complex and multi-faceted story with many distinct narratives from different groups of people.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit Ellis Island and Angel Island, the entry checkpoints for immigrants that arrived in the US throughout many decades. These historic sites represent hope and progress for immigrants that were seeking the ideals of the American Dream.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
President Jimmy Carter exemplified what it meant to be an honest and hardworking leader. Despite the economic decline and hardships during his term, he worked hard for the people of America. Even during the Iran Hostage Crisis, he negotiated tirelessly while taking full responsibility. He was also an early advocate for renewable energy. Following his term, Carter has been influential in his diplomatic and charity work throughout the globe, and serves as a role model for all Americans.

Who is your greatest role model?
My parents are my greatest role models.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about learning something new and making the most out of each day.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time, I enjoy reading, drawing, running, watching soccer, and learning new things.

What are your plans for the future?
I have not decided on a specific career path yet, but I will try to have a well-rounded high school experience and pursue as many interests as possible.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would raise money to help fund technology for education in schools, especially for underprivileged children, so that they can be prepared for success.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution defines the relationship between society and its government, as well as the individual and the collective. What is profound about the Constitution is that it is not a stagnant document; rather, it evolves with social progress through amendments and varying interpretations through the court system. These debates will always continue and contribute to a healthy democracy.

My name is Trijal Tagadur. I am a 7th grader at Piney Grove Middle School in the city of Cumming, GA. My favorite hobby is reading books such as novels and informational books. I often pore into books related to leadership, history, and science. I love writing because of the thoughtfulness and uniqueness behind literature. I also enjoy coding, practicing my guitar, and playing on my PS4. I love playing for my local soccer club, UFA. I have participated in writing competitions such as Young Georgia Authors and VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). For Young Georgia Authors, I won at my grade level for four years in a row and once was awarded honorable mention at the State level. At the district level, I came second in the VFW competition. I have participated in math competitions like AMC8, MathLeague, and Perennial Math. I also took part in Battle of the Books, Vex Robotics, chess, and oratorical competitions. I have a second degree black belt in Taekwando. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this meaningful competition. Researching on topics related to this ignited a desire to learn more about the origins of our nation. This has made me continue to have a significant fondness for American history. I can’t wait to see what other adventures await me, which I will certainly look forward to.

Click here to read Trijal’s Winning Essay!

Our Interview With Trijal

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this was my first time entering this contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
My Social Studies teacher had posted information about this contest on our class page. As I looked through the information that was provided, I was very intrigued by this competition and decided to enter.

What inspired your work?
The story of our amazing and unique nation inspired me to write this essay in the way that I have done so. I always found it incredible that the people living in the colonies would find the strength and willingness to rise against a world power to protect their deserved rights.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned several absorbing and fascinating facts about the origins of our country. It was fun to look into the beginnings of our great country in detail.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I believe that if I self-educate myself on the importance of the Constitution, it will greatly impact my peers. This way I may pass on the knowledge that our Constitution withholds.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My classmates enjoy learning and comprehending American history. Back in 4th grade, we loved learning about the beginnings of our country, including the founding fathers, the Constitution, and the American Revolution. Even now, my peers enjoy learning about history in general.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love dissecting the fundamental guiding philosophies and ethical principles underlying our Founding Fathers’ central outlooks on how to run this country as a democracy and republic, aligning the dogma of Enlightenment thinkers with radically innovative ideas at the time of civil liberties, religious protections, and legal representation for all.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
There are several historical sites that I would like to visit. These include the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, Independence Hall, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument are tributes to two of the most significant people in US history. Independence hall and Gettysburg represent two esteemed events in the span of the history of America.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I think both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are the two most influential American historical figures for me. They had incredible leadership during certain tough times that held our country together.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role models are my parents because I look up to them most of all. All the ethics and values that I hold dear are based on the two of them. They have taught me certain life lessons that I hope to utilize later in life.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
This is a tough one since I’m passionate about several things. These include soccer, writing, and nature.

How do you spend your free time?
I spend my free time reading books, playing soccer, and spending time with my beloved family.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future, I aim to study well through the rest of my school years before I head to college. I seek to get into a significant university and study there for around 3-7 years. I am still debating on what career path to choose, but I know whichever path that I select, I shall give my utmost effort for it.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I believe that I would attend to the necessities that people all around the globe lack access to. We are all part of the word “humanity” and doing the aforementioned would lift all of humanity higher. In addition, this would content my willingness to be able to give back to society.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is as relevant today as it was two hundred years ago. It still protects US citizens’ rights and freedoms today. US citizens are still able to enjoy and cherish the freedoms that are written boldly in the Constitution.

My name is Simran and I am an 8th grade student at Lakeside Middle. I enjoy reading, running, baking and playing clarinet not necessarily in that order.

Some of my accomplishments are receiving STEM award in Vex Robotics Competition in 5th grade, making to County Honor Band in the 6th grade and the District Honor Band in 8th grade. I have participated in essay contests before and won third place for “Enlighten America Contest” by B’nai B’rith International. Other contests include Young Georgia Authors where I was the winning entry for Lakeside in 7th grade and another entry was for Veteran of Foreign Wars.

Not only have I entered essay contests I also participate in math competitions including MathCounts, AMC 8 and AMC 10.

I had an amazing time writing for the Constituting America contest and am looking forward to the trip to Washington DC, meeting mentors and doors of opportunity it would open up for me.

Click here to read Simran’s Winning Essay!

Cailyn White is from Keller, TX. She is 9 years old and in 4th grade. She is participating in the homeschool program at Grapevine Faith with her younger sister. She loves drawing and doing arts and crafts. She also enjoys tap dancing, swimming, and spending time with friends.

 

 

 

Click here or scroll down to view Cailyn’s winning artwork.

Our Interview With Cailyn

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes

How did you hear about the contest?
Through my school Grapevine Faith

What inspired your work?
Learning about the U.S. in history class

What did you learn while creating your entry?
The different symbols that represent our country

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I plan to talk to them and show them my drawing

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
They ask me more questions

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
It is interesting to learn about how we started.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
Mount Rushmore

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights

Who is your greatest role model?
My mom because she works hard to take care of me and my sister

What in your life are you most passionate about?
Music, Art, Dance and my faith

How do you spend your free time?
Doing arts and crafts, tap dancing

What are your plans for the future?
Be an artist

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would help anyone who needed food or shelter.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
It takes the government’s power in the hands of the people.

Hello, my name is Kristine Le, and I am a 5th grader from California! Right now, I am 10 years old, but for too long because it is almost my birthday. I really like reading fiction novels and drawing art in my free time. I consider myself a bookworm because I love reading books. In the summer, I usually participate in the public library reading contest. As a matter of fact, I am honored to be a member of the One Million Word Club of my school district. During the summer, I like to swim because I have so much fun whenever I splash against the cool water in a pool. In addition, I also like to hang out with my friends. One of my special accomplishments is that I received a perfect score on the ELA section on the state test. My favorite sport is tetherball, which I play at school almost every day. I enjoy it very much because I feel that it helps strengthen my eye-hand coordination. My favorite animal is a dog because I myself have a precious dog named Toby. Sometimes, my family and I take him on walks around my neighborhood or the park. Whenever I go to my after-school program, I pick up the trash on the ground so it will be safe and clean for any animals that enter the school. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity!

Click here to read Kristine’s poem!

Our Interview With Kristine

Was this the first time you entered the contest
This is the first time I have heard about this contest.

How did you hear about the contest?
When my sister mentioned such an impressive contest to me, I was so ecstatic because it gave me a chance to share my knowledge!

What inspired your work?
I took a combination of what I learned from the news channel and the history workbook I was given in school.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned that the Constitution has given so many rights to American citizens.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I will talk about it with them whenever I can.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
My friends don’t seem involved with Constitution talk because they are unfamiliar with it.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I love how they balance and work as a great team to make our nation thrive.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit the Statue of Liberty in New York to learn more about the area because it seems to have a lot of history.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
My favorite inspirational historical figure is Susan B. Anthony because she was a part of the women’s rights movement, which is extremely important. Without her, who knows what women would be doing right now?

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is my mom because she gives me advice and takes care of me throughout my life.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
For me, reading books is what makes me most passionate. One of my favorite books is called “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling.

How do you spend your free time?
My free time is spent playing outside, with my family, or playing a game called Roblox.

What are your plans for the future?
In the future, I want to enroll in a good college and major in genetics.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
If I were able to, I would want to cure cancer to help people live better lives.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant today because it helps connect all the fifty states!

Hello, my name is Haven I am 10 years old in the 4th grade, and I live in Oklahoma . I am young equestrian, I ride Saddleseat with my horse named Lily. I am also learning Hunt and when I get older I will learn Hunter jumper, ( if my mom will think about it ) . I love being outside and hanging out at the stables with Lily. I also really love art, so I was excited about entering this contest. In school I like art, English, Science, the most . I love reading!!! I read things like fantasy, mystery and adventure. Wings of Fire is kind of perfect for that, and so it is my all time favorite book series.  Last year I entered this contest expecting nothing of it. I found out about it at school in social studies in Mrs. Ivester’s class when we watched the presentation on it . I learned so much about the constitution. Thank you so much for this opportunity!

Click here or scroll down to view Haven’s winning artwork.

Loren Griffin Crayton, age 10, is an energetic and outgoing 4th grader who lives in Texas. Loren wakes up with a smile and loves learning and keeping busy with sports and other activities. Loren recently earned his black belt at 9 years old, and also enjoys lap swimming, playing baseball, basketball, and spending quality time with his family and teammates. In his spare time, Loren takes guitar lessons and is currently preparing for his winter recital. Loren has an appreciation for the creative arts and often visits museums, plays and musicals with his Mom and Dad on family vacations and during family outings. Loren recently attended his first Broadway show in NYC, and was super excited to meet the Tony award winning actor who played MJ in the musical. Loren also saw Hamilton in Dallas and now wants to enter a talent show after being inspired by these experiences. Loren continues to amaze his parents with his fearlessness in trying new things and not shying away from a challenge. Loren entered the Constituting America art competition just to try something new, and he thought he would have a different perspective from other kids. Loren’s family is excited to experience the next chapter in his journey!

 

Click here or scroll down to view Loren’s winning artwork.

Our Interview With Loren

Was this the first time you entered the contest?

Yes.

How did you hear about the contest?

The art teacher at the elementary school encouraged all students in 4th grade to participate.

What inspired your work?

First my mom encouraged me to participate when I said I wasn’t very good at art.  She recommended that I just give my perspective, and that it would be unique because it would be mine.  I thought about the flag and what it means to me.  Everyone is important and the flag is about justice and everyone coming together and lifting each other up, like the hands. 

What did you learn while creating your entry?

Stay positive and don’t doubt myself.  My Mom and Dad tell me all the time to put forth my best effort, and give things a try before saying I can’t do something.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?

I plan to speak with my teacher and ask can I show a picture of my art entry to my class and tell them about the “Flag of Justice.”  We are learning about the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War now, and I think it would be fun for my friends to talk about what the U.S. Constitution means to them. I can pass out different color notecards and create a poster board of responses from my classmates.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?

Generally history is not their favorite subject or talking about the Constitution.  However, when it is fun and the teacher makes it interesting, then kids become interested.  We did a social studies project in school and we had to pretend we were an important person from Texas Revolution time.  We had to write in a journal and pretend to be that person and that was fun.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?

I like learning about the important people who formed our government and how they had to work together to do a lot of things to build this country.  It is also interesting because a lot of it is still around today, and in place today like how the government represents the people and we have courts.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?

I went to visit the MLK  monument in Washington D.C. a few years ago.  I would like to go back and see some of the other monuments like the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. 

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and his use of the constitution in his speeches is very inspiring.  Last year, I dressed as Dr. King and gave a speech at the school’s state pageant. 

Who is your greatest role model?

Mom and  Dad

What in your life are you most passionate about?

I love helping others and making sure everyone is having a good time and smile.

How do you spend your free time?

I love playing baseball and doing fun things with my family and friends.  My family loves to travel and vacations are always fun.

What are your plans for the future?

I would like to play basketball and baseball in college, and then hopefully professional sports.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?

I would start a charity to help the homeless so that people who live on streets and under bridges can get more help.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?

The Constitution helps me remember the people who protected our rights, and all of the people who have worked hard to fight for this country.

Addie Nester, 11, is a 5th grader at Grapevine Faith Christian School and lives in Texas with her parents and older sister. Addie has been drawing practically since she was old enough to hold a pencil and takes a sketchbook everywhere she goes. Addie especially loves drawing her own versions of book characters and is also trying to perfect her ability to draw humans. When Addie isn’t sketching you can typically find her reading, playing tennis, or spending time with her two dogs. Addie also enjoys the great outdoors, helping others, and hopes to one day have a career as either a cartoonist, photographer, or possibly an architect or interior designer. It will be exciting to see where Addie’s talent takes her!

 

Click here or scroll down to view Addie’s winning artwork.

Our Interview With Addie

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
My art teacher from Grapevine Faith Christian School, Mrs. Gorman, told me about the contest.

What inspired your work?
The theme, Three Branches of Government, inspired me to draw a literal interpretation. It was a play on words.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned more about the architecture of the buildings and how to challenge my artistic abilities since I’ve never drawn many structures before.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
It would be great if Constituting America could talk to my school! I can also talk to my friends.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
It’s hard to get kids (5th graders) to talk about history and the Constitution, but my teachers are good at telling us about how we are lucky to live in such a great country. My 8th grade sister loves talking about history and the Constitution, though.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I love that we live in a free country! I’m also thankful for laws which help keep us safe.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I’d love to see Mt. Rushmore. Now that is impressive art! It’s hard to believe someone carved those faces into the side of stone.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I think Thomas Edison is interesting. I think it’s impressive that he created so many valuable things, such as the light bulb and one of the first motion picture cameras.

Who is your greatest role model?
I can’t narrow it down to just one person. I look up to my teachers, my tennis coach and my parents. I really look up to how my mom takes care of our family…especially when we are rascals.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
ART!

How do you spend your free time?
I read, play tennis, play with my dogs and also practice improving my drawing skills. I take a sketch book with me everywhere I go.

What are your plans for the future?
I would love to be a cartoonist, animator, photographer, architect, tennis player, interior designer or anything along the lines of utilizing art and creativity.

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I wish I could get more people to stay off social media because I think they would be happier if they spent more time outside or visiting with their loved ones.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The Constitution is relevant because it helps protect our rights.

Advika is a 4th Grader in Texas. She loves to draw,  swim, sing and ride her bike. Advika likes to tinker around in the kitchen and makes curious snacks by mixing strange ingredients we wouldn’t normally use together. She likes trying different cuisines and make an inter- continental experimental fusion which are tried out on us. Advika is also a Cub Scout and she loves to spend time with her Grandparents. Lately, she’s been trying to Kayak on her own and get into one without flipping it over. 

 

Click here or scroll down to view Advika’s winning artwork.

  

Our Interview with Advika

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes, this year was the first time I entered the contest.

What inspired your work?
I realized that it was the 100th anniversary from when the 19th amendment was passed, so I decided that I would draw a bald eagle protecting the women to celebrate that.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned about many women who were included in the Women’s Suffrage movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
I usually have conversations with my friends and we discuss the constitution while at lunch or during social studies group discussions.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
Some of my friends are interested in US history and like to ask our Social Studies teacher questions about it but others are the more chatty kind and are not really interested. It depends on where a person’s interests are focused.

What do you love about U.S History and the forming of our government?
I like that the people in the government are voted on, and that the positions are not passed down which then gives any skilled person a chance.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield, the 6000 acre Civil War military park to envision how the battle took place.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
To me, Susan B Anthony is the most inspirational historical figure because she was one of the leaders of the Women’s Suffrage movement and also because of her determined personality to reach her goal.

Who is your greatest role model?
My greatest role model is my mother because she always looks out for me and sets a great example of who I want to be when I grow up which is focused and hardworking

What in your life are you most passionate about?
I think I am most passionate about my schooling.

How do you spend your free time?
In my free time I like to doodle, origami, paint and read books.

What are your plans for the future?
When I grow up I want to be an archaeologist and uncover the mystery of the Stonehenge. This ancient Stonehenge is in the UK and was created during the Neolithic period. Strangely, the large stones used to create the Stonehenge were slightly blue. The mystery behind this is that these blue stones can be found in only one place in the UK and that place is over 120miles away. What is so important about these stones that the Neolithic people would bother transporting them all that way to build Stonehenge?

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I would start more food banks and build more shelters for the homeless.

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The constitution sets some basic rules down to help keep our country going. For example, it divides the government into 3 separate parts and fairly distributes power instead of giving all the power to one person like in monarchy and there are checks and rules to power.

Mary Crosby, Best Middle School Song Winner from Washington State
Mary Crosby was born in Mount Vernon, Washington in 2007. She is the 5th of six Crosby children and is homeschooled. She has always enjoyed playing music and started violin at the age of six. At seven, Mary added piano and has since taught herself guitar, ukulele, and mandolin. Mary’s family has always valued public speaking skills, so she started learning these skills from a young age. Mary currently competes in the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association. She currently competes in 5 speech events: Apologetics, Impromptu, Informative, Digital, and Duo Interpretation. Last year, Mary won first place in the Digital Presentation category for Region II. Recently discovering a love of teaching younger students, Mary has taken on piano, violin, and ukulele students. She enjoys teaching others and learning right along with them.

Mary is so excited to be a part of Constituting America and can’t wait to learn even more about music from her mentor this year.

Click here or below to watch Mary’s Winning Song!

Elise Esparza, Winner, Best Poem

Elise Esparza is a 10 year old fifth grader from Reagan Elementary in Cedar Park, Texas. She loves to write, draw, dance, swim, and ride her bike. Elise’s love for writing was passed down from her late grandmother, Nam Kỳ Cô Nương, who was a prolific Vietnamese poet. Though Elise resides in Texas, she typically spends her summers in Los Angeles, California, where she was born. In addition to her creative and athletic endeavors, Elise likes to cook (and eat!). She started a cooking channel on YouTube when she was 6 years old called “Baking with Elise.” Elise is extremely excited and honored to be the Best Poem winner for 2020. She knows that her grandmother would be proud of her.

Click here or scroll down to read Elise’s Winning Poem

We the People

Without the Constitution
We’d be lost
With no rules and no order
It’d be pure chaos
Not one, not two, but three branches of government
Ensure that “We the People”
Are the boss

The legislative branch makes the laws
And the executive branch carries them out
But the judicial branch interprets the laws
And can say, “Hey! That’s not what the Constitution is about!”

It’s a system of checks and balances
And it’s the highest law of the land
The U.S. Constitution of America
Meant to protect every child, woman, and man

Our Interview With Elise

Was this the first time you entered the contest?
Yes!

How did you hear about the contest?
Through Gabriella Tommasi, who is a past winner and youth ambassador.

What inspired your work?
I watched old episodes of “Schoolhouse Rock!” I liked how the “Schoolhouse Rock!” videos explained government procedures in a way that was understandable to kids. I wanted to do the same with my poem.

What did you learn while creating your entry?
I learned the true meaning of the Constitution being the “highest law of the land.” I found this fascinating, that a historical document, a piece of paper, written hundreds of years ago, is what all citizens of America must obey.

How do you plan to spread the word this year to your peers about the importance of the U.S Constitution?
My school announced my win over the morning announcements. My classmates were very excited for me. I will encourage more of my friends and classmates to enter Constituting America’s next contest.

How do your friends respond to history or talking about the Constitution?
I think my friends talk about issues that they hear in their house–issues like racism, gun control, and immigration. However, I don’t think kids realize that these are all constitutional issues.

What do you love about U.S. History and the forming of our government?
I like that our government is for the people, and that even though the Constitution is the highest law of the land, “we the people” can change the Constitution to fit the needs of our current times.

Which U.S. historical site would you like to visit?
I would like to visit the White House in Washington, D.C. Then I would like to visit Niagara Falls. This is the exact trip my mom took when she was a child.

Which American historical figure is most influential/inspirational to you?
I recently saw the movie, “The Miracle Worker.” Both Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller were able to accomplish so much because of education and determination, and because they had each other.

Who is your greatest role model?
My late grandmother, who was also a poet, is my greatest role model. She always had a fresh and intelligent perspective on things. You could never win an argument against her. I get my flair for winning arguments from her.

What in your life are you most passionate about?
What’s most important to me is that people are healthy, and are free to live a peaceful life. I would also like to find a way to fight cancer.

How do you spend your free time?
I like to swim, draw, write, ride my bike, play video games, and cook!

What are your plans for the future?
I want to be a lawyer, because I like writing and winning arguments!

If you could do one super impactful thing to help people, what would it be?
I try to be kind to the environment. I recycle, I pick up trash, and I do not use a lot of plastic. A stable planet is the basis for everything, including the Constitution!

Why is the Constitution relevant today?
The need to have rules and order are important as long as people want to live together in a society.

Elhaam Atiq, 10, is a proud Texan who lives in Richmond, TX. She is the second child to her parents and has 2 sisters.  Her winning artwork depicts the diversity we see in America today and how this is a strength that adds to our country’s greatness.

Elhaam is a member of her school’s National Elementary Honor Society (NEHS), Art Club and Destination Imagination Team. As a Girl Scout, Elhaam is very good at taking up responsibility and leading a team. She has developed entrepreneurial skills by actively participating in Cookie sales. Elhaam loves community service and jumps at the opportunity to take a leading role. At a local relief center, she sorted clothes for needy refugee families locally and abroad. She helped to lead a bake sale which raised funds for a service project for the Hispanic Muslim community.

She loves to spend time with her grandparents and often indulges in conversation of how life was 30 years ago. In her free time, Elhaam enjoys making Tik Tok videos and pranking her sisters. She has been swimming for years and is a skilled swimmer.

Elhaam loves camping and travelling. Her best vacation was the trip to Europe in the summer of 2019 in which she explored different cultures, languages and cuisines. Even though Elhaam was born with a congenital heart defect, she is a healthy, strong and happy girl today who values the gift of life.

Click Here to view Elhaam’s Winning Artwork or scroll down!

Click Here To Sign up for the Daily Essay!

Click Here To Read the Declaration of Independence

Essay 1 – Introduction

Our beloved Auction Coordinator Mollie McCreary has passed away, or transitioned, as she liked to say. Mollie worked for Constituting America from 2014  to just a few weeks before she passed. Mollie was a dear friend to us all at Constituting America, and to our wonderful donors who make our Constitution Education programs possible. Mollie used to say “we have the most wonderful donors. I just love them all.”

Mollie’s dear friends have shared these thoughts, which perfectly capture her spirit and essence:

“Today, the world lost a most indomitable woman. One who never gave up; who overcame obstacle after obstacle. Until one last obstacle was just too much. Cancer was finally just too big. A published author, a mom, a friend. She loved life, a good laugh, and her scotch. She was the embodiment of southern hospitality known for her great meals, charm, and wit. My world is just a little bleak right now. I will miss you.”

“I will miss Mollie so much. I am sorry I never got to meet her in person but I always felt I knew her for years. I thought the world of her. She was one of the most kind, considerate, thoughtful people I have had the pleasure to know,” Cher McCoy

“Mollie was the BEST FRIEND I’ve ever had…despite never meeting in person.
But regardless I will miss this wonderful Christian woman forever. She could make your day, inspire you to do your best, and just exuded enthusiasm for whatever the task at hand.
God has a strong believer and dedicated servant in His presence today. Her loved ones are in my thoughts and prayers.
Mollie will ever be in my memories. I will miss her.” Chuck Clowdis

“Mollie McCreary was a friend and inspiration to everyone around her, and even while fighting an illness that took strength from her physically, she remained positive and encouraging. Mollie always had a smile to share and was never bitter. She loved life and made the most of every day. Mollie was a leader who lifted others up so they could shine and be their best. She is dearly missed,” Amanda Hughes

Mollie will be missed. Even in the face of a terminal illness Mollie remained upbeat and joyful. I had the pleasure of visiting her and sitting on her porch with my dog. Mollie, we love you and will miss you forever” Bobby Rodriguez

“Mollie had reached out to me when I needed guidance when I fell ill. She was a shining light that radiated with love, bringing me comfort. She was loving, kind and especially a brave soul, she knew when it was her time to be with the Lord, and with the Lord she went. She was everything that I still strive to be and Mollie will forever be in my heart,” Cindy Sue Clark

“Mollie was a great friend & dedicated coworker. I’ll miss our phone chats about work, family, Ireland & the musings of every day life. Mollie was passionate about her work & always thinking of ways to make our auctions more successful !I loved her stories about her travels, the people she met & adventures she had! I’ll miss her so very much but take comfort that she is in heaven reunited with her darling daughter. We’ll miss you dear Mollie.” ? Love, Jeanette Kraynak

“I knew Mollie through emails that we exchanged when it was time to offer up items for the Constituting America auction. I never personally met her or spoke to her on the phone, but every single communication I had with her made it abundantly clear that she was a very special person, as she was just so incredibly kind and complimentary.
May God bless and comfort her family and loved ones, as I know this wonderful woman will be greatly missed,” Brian Karadashian

Horace Cooper is a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, co-chairman of the Project 21 National Advisory Board and a legal commentator. Horace averages over 400 talk radio appearances per year representing the National Center and Project 21, in addition to regular television appearances and interviews by the print media. He taught constitutional law at George Mason University in Virginia and was a senior counsel to U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Horace is also a member of Constituting America’s Leadership board has written numerous essays for our 90 Day Study and is a longtime friend to all of us at Constituting America.

 

Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey

To secure the unalienable natural rights of the American people, the American Founders designed a republican regime. Republics had existed before: ancient Rome, modern Switzerland and Venice. By 1776, Great Britain itself could be described as a republic, with a strong legislature counterbalancing a strong monarchy—even if the rule of that legislature and that monarchy over the overseas colonies of the British Empire could hardly be considered republican. But the republicanism instituted after the War of Independence, especially as framed at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, featured a combination of elements never seen before, and seldom thereafter.

The American definition of republicanism was itself unique. ‘Republic’ or res publica means simply, ‘public thing’—a decidedly vague notion that might apply to any regime other than a monarchy. In the tenth Federalist, James Madison defined republicanism as representative government, that is, by a specific way of constructing the country’s ruling institutions. The Founders gave republicanism a recognizable form beyond ‘not-monarchy.’ From the design of the Virginia House of Burgesses to the Articles of Confederation and finally to the Constitution itself, representation provided Americans with real exercise of self-rule, while at the same time avoiding the turbulence and folly of pure democracies, which had so disgraced themselves in ancient Greece that popular sovereignty itself had been dismissed by political thinkers ever since. Later on, Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address shows how republicanism must defend the rule of law against mob violence; even the naming of Lincoln’s party as the Republican Party was intended to contrast it with the rule of slave-holding plantation oligarchs in the South.

The American republic had six additional characteristics, all of them clearly registered in this 90-Day Study. America was a natural-rights republic, limiting the legitimate exercise of popular rule to actions respecting the unalienable rights of its citizens; it was a democratic republic, with no formal ruling class of titled lords and ladies or hereditary monarchs; it was an extended republic, big enough to defend itself against the formidable empires that threatened it; it was a commercial republic, encouraging prosperity and innovation; it was a federal republic, leaving substantial political powers in the hands of state and local representatives; and it was a compound republic, dividing the powers of the national government into three branches, each with the means of defending itself against encroachments by the others.

Students of the American republic could consider each essay in this series as a reflection on one or more of these features of the American regime as designed by the Founders, or, in some cases, as deviations from that regime. Careful study of what the Declaration of Independence calls “the course of events” in America shows how profound and pervasive American republicanism has been, how it has shaped our lives throughout our history, and continues to do so today.

A Natural-Rights Republic

The Jamestown colony’s charter was written in part by the great English authority on the common law, Sir Edward Coke. Common law was an amalgam of natural law and English custom. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded shortly thereafter, was an attempt to establish the natural right of religious liberty. And of course the Declaration of Independence rests squarely on the foundation of the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God as the foundation of unalienable natural rights, several of which were given formal status in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. As the articles on Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1831, the Dred Scott case in 1857, the Civil Rights amendments of the 1860s, and the attempt at replacing plantation oligarchy with republican regimes in the states after the Civil War all show, natural rights have been the pivot of struggles over the character of America. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the early civil rights leaders invoked the Declaration and natural rights to argue for civic equality, a century after the civil war. As a natural-rights republic, America rejects in principle race, class, and gender as bars to the protection of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In practice, Americans have often failed to live up to their principles—as human beings are wont to do—but the principles remain as their standard of right conduct.

A Democratic Republic

The Constitution itself begins with the phrase “We the People,” and the reason constitutional law governs all statutory laws is that the sovereign people ratified that Constitution. George Washington was elected as America’s first president, but he astonished the world by stepping down eight years later; he had no ambition to become another George III, or a Napoleon. The Democratic Party which began to be formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison when they went into opposition against the Adams administration named itself for this feature of the American regime. The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, providing for popular election of U. S. Senators, the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing voting rights for women, and the major civil rights laws of the 1960s all express the democratic theme in American public life.

An Extended Republic

Unlike the ancient democracies, which could only rule small territories, American republicanism gave citizens the chance of ruling themselves in a territory large enough to defend itself against the powerful states and empires that had arisen in modern times. All of this was contingent, however, on Jefferson’s idea that this extended republic would be an “empire of liberty,” by which he meant that new territories would be eligible to join the Union on an equal footing with the original thirteen states. Further, every state was to have a republican regime, as stipulated in the Constitution’s Article IV, section iv. In this series of Constituting America essays, the extension of the extended republic is very well documented, from the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Mexican War of 1848, to the purchase of Alaska and the Transcontinental Railroad of the 1960s, to the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. The construction of the Panama Canal, the two world wars, and the Cold War all followed from the need to defend this large republic from foreign regime enemies and to keep the sea lanes open for American commerce.

A Commercial Republic

Although it has proven itself eminently capable of defending itself militarily, America was not intended to be a military republic, like ancient Rome and the First Republic of France. The Constitution prohibits interstate tariffs, making the United States a vast free-trade zone—something Europe could not achieve for another two centuries. We have seen Alexander Hamilton’s brilliant plan to retire the national debt after the Revolutionary War and the founding of the New York Stock Exchange in 1792. Above all, we have seen how the spirit of commercial enterprise leads to innovation: Eli Morse’s telegraph; Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone; Thomas Edison’s phonography and light bulb; the Wright Brothers’ flying machine; and Philo Farnworth’s television. And we have seen how commerce in a free market can go wrong if the legislation and federal policies governing it are misconceived, as they often were before, during, and sometimes after the Great Depression.

A Federal Republic

A republic might be ‘unitary’—ruled by a single, centralized government. The American Founders saw that this would lead to an overbearing national government, one that would eventually undermine republican self-government itself. They gave the federal government enumerated powers, leaving the remaining governmental powers “to the States, or the People.” The Civil War was fought over this issue, as well as slavery, the question of whether the American Union could defend itself against its internal enemies. The substantial centralization of federal government power seen in the New Deal of the 1930s, the Great Society legislation of the 1960s, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 have renewed the question of how far such power is entitled to reach.

A Compound Republic

A simple republic would elect one branch of government to exercise all three powers: legislative, executive, and judicial. This was the way the Articles of Confederation worked. The Constitution ended that, providing instead for the separation and balance of those three powers. As the essays here have demonstrated, the compound character of the American republic has been eroded by such notions as ‘executive leadership’—a principle first enunciated by Woodrow Wilson but firmly established by Franklin Roosevelt and practiced by all of his successors—and ‘broad construction’ of the Constitution by the Supreme Court. The most dramatic struggle between the several branches of government in recent decades was the Watergate controversy, wherein Congress attempted to set limits on presidential claims of ‘executive privilege.’ Recent controversies over the use of ‘executive orders’ have reminded Americans of all political stripes that government by decree can gore anyone’s prized ox.

The classical political philosophers classified the forms of political rule, giving names to the several ‘regimes’ they saw around them. They emphasized the importance of regimes because regimes, they knew, designate who rules us, the institutions by which the rulers rule, the purposes of that rule, and finally the way of life of citizens or subjects. In choosing a republican regime on a democratic foundation, governing a large territory for commercial purposes with a carefully calibrated set of governmental powers, all intended to secure the natural rights of citizens according to the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, the Founders set the course of human events on a new and better direction. Each generation of Americans has needed to understand the American way of life and to defend it.

Will Morrisey is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College, editor and publisher of Will Morrisey Reviews, an on-line book review publication.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), sometimes casually referred to as “Obamacare,” a sobriquet that Obama himself embraced in 2013. The ACA covered 900 pages and hundreds of provisions. The law was so opaque and convoluted that legislators, bureaucrats, and Obama himself at times were unclear about its scope. For example, the main goal of the law was presented as providing health insurance to all Americans who previously were unable to obtain it due to, among other factors, lack of money or pre-existing health conditions. The law did increase the number of individuals covered by insurance, but stopped well short of universal coverage. Several of its unworkable or unpopular provisions were delayed by executive order. Others were subject to litigation to straighten out conflicting requirements. The ACA represented a probably not-yet-final step in the massive bureaucratization of health insurance and care over the past several decades, as health care moved from a private arrangement to a government-subsidized “right.”

The law achieved its objectives to the extent it did by expanding Medicaid eligibility to higher income levels and by significantly restructuring the “individual” policy market. In other matters, the ACA sought to control costs by further reducing Medicare reimbursements to doctors, which had the unsurprising consequence that Medicare patients found it still more difficult to get medical care, and by levying excise taxes on medical devices, drug manufacturers, health insurance providers, and high-benefit “Cadillac plans” set-up by employers. The last of these was postponed and, along with most of the other taxes, repealed in December, 2019. On the whole, existing employer plans and plans under collective-bargaining agreements were only minimally affected. Insurers had to cover defined “essential health services,” whether or not the purchaser wanted or needed those services. As a result, certain basic health plans that focused on “catastrophic events” coverage were substandard and could no longer be offered. Hence, while coverage expanded, many people also found that the new, permitted plans cost them more than their prior coverage. They also found that the reality did not match Obama’s promise, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

The ACA required insurance companies to “accept all comers.” This policy would have the predictable effect that healthy (mostly young) people would forego purchasing insurance until a condition arose that required expensive treatment. That, in turn, would devastate the insurance market. Imagine being able to buy a fire policy to cover damage that had already arisen from a fire. Such policies would not be issued. Private, non-employer, health insurance plans potentially would disappear. Some commentators opined that this was exactly the end the reformers sought, at least secretly, so as to shift to a single-payer system, in other words, to “Medicare for all.” The ACA sought to address that problem by imposing an “individual mandate.” Unless exempt from the mandate, such as illegal immigrants or 25-year-olds covered under their parents’ policy, every person must purchase insurance through their employer or individually from an insurer through one of the “exchanges.” Barring that, the person had to pay a penalty, to be collected by the IRS.

There have been numerous legal challenges to the ACA. Perhaps the most significant constitutional challenge was decided by the Supreme Court in 2012 in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (NFIB). There, the Court addressed the constitutionality of the individual mandate under Congress’s commerce and taxing powers, and of the Medicaid expansion under Congress’s spending power. These two provisions were deemed the keys to the success of the entire project.

Before the Court could address the case’s merits, it had to rule that the petitioners had standing to bring their constitutional claim. The hurdle was the Anti-Injunction Act. That law prohibited courts from issuing an injunction against the collection of any tax, in order to prevent litigation from obstructing tax collection. Instead, a party must pay the tax and sue for a refund to test the tax’s constitutionality. The issue turned on whether the individual mandate was a tax or a penalty. Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that Congress had described this “shared responsibility payment” if one did not purchase qualified health insurance as a “penalty,” not a “tax.” Roberts noted that other parts of the ACA imposed taxes, so that Congress’s decision to apply a different label was significant. Left out of the opinion was the reason that Congress made what was initially labeled a “tax” into a “penalty” in the ACA’s final version, namely, Democrats’ sensitivity about Republican allegations that the proposed bill raised taxes on Americans.

Having confirmed the petitioners’ standing, Roberts proceeded to the substantive merits of the challenge to the ACA. The government argued that the health insurance market (and health care, more generally) was a national market in which everyone would participate, sooner or later. While this is a likely event, it is by no means a necessary one, as a person might never seek medical services. If, for whatever reason, people did not have suitable insurance, the government claimed, they might not be able to pay for those services. Because hospitals are legally obligated to provide some services regardless of the patient’s ability to pay, hospitals would pass along their uncompensated costs to insured patients, whose insurance companies in turn would charge those patients higher premiums. The ACA’s broadened insurance coverage and “guaranteed-issue” requirements, subsidized by the minimum insurance coverage requirement, would ameliorate this cost-shifting. Moreover, the related individual mandate was “necessary and proper” to deal with the potential distortion of the market that would come from younger, healthier people opting not to purchase insurance as sought by the ACA.

Of course, Congress could pass laws under the Necessary and Proper Clause only to further its other enumerated powers, hence, the need to invoke the Commerce Clause. The government relied on the long-established, but still controversial, precedent of Wickard v. Filburn. In that 1942 case, the Court upheld a federal penalty imposed on farmer Filburn for growing wheat for home consumption in excess of his allotment under the Second Agricultural Adjustment Act. Even though Filburn’s total production was an infinitesimally small portion of the nearly one billion bushels grown in the U.S. at that time, the Court concluded, tautologically,  that the aggregate of production by all farmers had a substantial effect on the wheat market. Thus, since Congress could act on overall production, it could reach all aspects of it, even marginal producers such as Filburn. The government claimed that the ACA’s individual mandate was analogous. Even if one healthy individual’s failure to buy insurance would scarcely affect the health insurance market, a large number of such individuals and of “free riders” failing to get insurance until after a medical need arose would, in the aggregate, have such a substantial effect.

Roberts, in effect writing for himself and the formally dissenting justices on that issue, disagreed. He emphasized that Congress has only limited, enumerated powers, at least in theory. Further, Congress might enact laws needed to exercise those powers. However, such laws must not only be necessary, but also proper. In other words, they must not themselves seek to achieve objectives not permitted under the enumerated powers. As opinions in earlier cases, going back to Chief Justice John Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden had done, Roberts emphasized that the enumeration of congressional powers in the Constitution meant that there were some things Congress could not reach.

As to the Commerce Clause itself, the Chief Justice noted that Congress previously had only used that power to control activities in which parties first had chosen to engage. Here, however, Congress sought to compel people to act who were not then engaged in commercial activity. However broad Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce had become over the years with the Court’s acquiescence, this was a step too far. If Congress could use the Commerce Clause to compel people to enter the market of health insurance, there was no other product or service Congress could not force on the American people.

This obstacle had caused the humorous episode at oral argument where the Chief Justice inquired whether the government could require people to buy broccoli. The government urged, to no avail, that health insurance was unique, in that people buying broccoli would have to pay the grocer before they received their ware, whereas hospitals might have to provide services and never get paid. Of course, the only reason hospitals might not get paid is because state and federal laws require them to provide certain services up front, and there is no reason why laws might not be adopted in the future that require grocers to supply people with basic “healthy” foods, regardless of ability to pay. Roberts also acknowledged that, from an economist’s perspective, choosing not to participate in a market may affect that market as much as choosing to participate. After all, both reflect demand, and a boycott has economic effects just as a purchasing fad does. However, to preserve essential constitutional structures, sometimes lines must be drawn that reflect considerations other than pure economic policy.

The Chief Justice was not done, however. Having rejected the Commerce Clause as support for the ACA, he embraced Congress’s taxing power, instead. If the individual mandate was a tax, it would be upheld because Congress’s power to tax was broad and applied to individuals, assets, and income of any sort, not just to activities, as long as its purpose or effect was to raise revenue. On the other hand, if the individual mandate was a “penalty,” it could not be upheld under the taxing power, but had to be justified as a necessary and proper means to accomplish another enumerated power, such as the commerce clause. Of course, that path had been blocked in the preceding part of the opinion. Hence, everything rested on the individual mandate being a “tax.”

At first glance it appeared that this avenue also was a dead end, due to Roberts’s decision that the individual mandate was not a tax for the purpose of the Anti-Injunction Act. On closer analysis, however, the Chief Justice concluded that something can be both a tax and not be a tax, seemingly violating the non-contradiction principle. Roberts sought to escape this logical trap by distinguishing what Congress can declare as a matter of statutory interpretation and meaning from what exists in constitutional reality. Presumably, Congress can define that, for the purpose of a particular federal law, 2+2=5 and the Moon is made of green cheese. In applying a statute’s terms, the courts are bound by Congress’s will, however contrary that may be to reason and ordinary reality.

However, when the question before a court is the meaning of an undefined term in the Constitution, an “originalist” judge will attempt to discern the commonly-understood meaning of that term when the Constitution was adopted, subject possibly to evolution of that understanding through long-adhered-to judicial, legislative, and executive usage. Here, Roberts applied factors the Court had developed beginning in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. in 1922. Those factors compelled the conclusion that the individual mandate was, functionally, a tax. Particularly significant for Roberts was that the ACA limited the payment to less than the price for insurance, and that it was administered by the IRS through the normal channels of tax collection. Further, because the tax would raise substantial revenue, its ancillary purpose of expanding insurance coverage was of no constitutional consequence. Taxes often affect behavior, understood in the old adage that, if the government taxes something, it gets less of it.

Roberts’s analysis reads as the constitutional law analogue to quantum mechanics and the paradox of Schroedinger’s Cat, in that the individual mandate is both a tax and a penalty until it is observed by the Chief Justice. His opinion has produced much mirth—and frustration—among commentators, and there were inconvenient facts in the ACA itself. The mandate was in the ACA’s operative provisions, not its revenue provisions, and Congress referred to the mandate as a “penalty” eighteen times in the ACA. Still, he has a valid, if not unassailable, point. A policy that has the characteristics associated with a tax ordinarily is a tax. If Congress nevertheless consciously chooses to designate it as a penalty, then for the limited purpose of assessing the policy’s connection to another statute which carefully uses a different term, here the Anti-Injunction Act, the blame for any absurdity lies with Congress.

The Medicaid expansion under the ACA was struck down. Under the Constitution, Congress may spend funds, subject to certain ill-defined limits. One of those is that the expenditure must be for the “general welfare.” Under classic republican theory, this meant that Congress could spend the revenue collected from the people of the several states on projects that would benefit the United States as a whole, not some constituent part, or an individual or private entity. It was under that conception of “general welfare” that President Grover Cleveland in 1887 vetoed a bill that appropriated $10,000 to purchase seeds to be distributed to Texas farmers hurt by a devastating drought. Since then, the phrase has been diluted to mean anything that Congress deems beneficial to the country, however remotely.

Moreover, while principles of federalism prohibit Congress from compelling states to enact federal policy—known as the “anti-commandeering” doctrine—Congress can provide incentives to states through conditional grants of federal funds. As long as the conditions are clear, relevant to the purpose of the grant, and not “coercive,” states are free to accept the funds with the conditions or to reject them. Thus, Congress can try to achieve indirectly through the spending power what it could not require directly. For example, Congress cannot, as of now, direct states to teach a certain curriculum in their schools. However, Congress can provide funds to states that teach certain subjects, defined in those grants, in their schools. The key issue usually is whether the condition effectively coerces the states to submit to the federal financial blandishment. If so, the conditional grant is unconstitutional because it reduces the states to mere satrapies of the federal government rather than quasi-sovereigns in our federal system.

In what was a judicial first, Roberts found that the ACA unconstitutionally coerced the states into accepting the federal grants. Critical to that conclusion was that a state’s failure to accept the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid would result not just in the state being ineligible to receive federal funds for the new coverage. Rather, the state would lose all of its existing Medicaid funding. As well, here the program affected—Medicaid—accounted for over 20% of the typical state’s budget. Roberts described this as “economic dragooning that leaves the States with no real option but to acquiesce in the Medicaid expansion.” Roberts noted that the budgetary impact on a state from rejecting the expansion dwarfed anything triggered by a refusal to accept federal funds under previous conditional grants.

One peculiarity of the opinions in NFIB was the stylistic juxtaposition of Roberts’s opinion for the Court and the principal dissent, penned by Justice Antonin Scalia. Roberts at one point uses “I” to defend a point of law he makes, which is common in dissents or concurrences, instead of the typical “we” or “the Court” used by a majority. By contrast, Scalia consistently uses “we” (such as “We conclude that [the ACA is unconstitutional.” and “We now consider respondent’s second challenge….”), although that might be explained because he wrote for four justices, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and himself. He also refers to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s broadly as “the dissent.” Most significant, Scalia’s entire opinion reads like that of a majority. He surveys the relevant constitutional doctrines more magisterially than does the Chief Justice, even where he and Roberts agree, something that dissents do not ordinarily do. He repeatedly and in detail criticizes the government’s arguments and the “friend-of the-court” briefs that support the government, tactics commonly used by the majority opinion writer.

These oddities have provoked much speculation, chiefly that Roberts initially joined Scalia’s opinion, which would have made it the majority opinion, but got cold feet. Rumor spread that Justice Anthony Kennedy had attempted until shortly before the decision was announced to persuade Roberts to rejoin the Scalia group. Once that proved fruitless, it was too late to make anything but cosmetic changes to Scalia’s opinion for the four now-dissenters. Only the justices know what actually happened, but the scenario seems plausible.

Why would Roberts do this? Had Scalia’s opinion prevailed, the ACA would have been struck down in its entirety. That would have placed the Court in a difficult position, especially during an election year, having exploded what President Obama considered his signature achievement. The President already had a fractious relationship with the Supreme Court and earlier had made what some interpreted as veiled political threats against the Court over the case. Roberts’s “switch in time” blunted that. The chief justice is at most primus inter pares, having no greater formal powers than his associates. But he is often the public and political figurehead of the Court. Historically, chief justices have been more “political” in the sense of being finely attuned to maintaining the institutional vitality of the Court. John Marshall, William Howard Taft, and Charles Evans Hughes especially come to mind. Associate justices can be jurisprudential purists, often through dissents, to a degree a chief justice cannot.

Choosing his path allowed Roberts to uphold the ACA in part, while striking jurisprudential blows against the previously constant expansion of the federal commerce and spending powers. Even as to the taxing power, which he used to uphold that part of the ACA, Roberts planted a constitutional land mine. Should the mandate ever be made really effective, if Congress raised it above the price of insurance, the “tax” argument would fail and a future court could strike it down as an unconstitutional penalty. Similarly, if the tax were repealed, as eventually happened, and the mandate were no longer supported under the taxing power, it could threaten the entire ACA.

After NFIB, attempts to modify or eliminate the ACA through legislation or litigation continued, with mixed success. Noteworthy is that the tax payment for the individual mandate was repealed in 2017. This has produced a new challenge to the ACA as a whole, because the mandate is, as the government conceded in earlier arguments, a crucial element of the whole health insurance structure. The constitutional question is whether the mandate is severable from the rest of the ACA. The district court held that the mandate was no longer a tax and, thus, under NFIB, is unconstitutional. Further, because of the significance that Congress attached to the mandate for the vitality of the ACA, the mandate could not be severed from the ACA, and the entire law is unconstitutional. The Fifth Circuit agreed that the mandate is unconstitutional, but disagreed about the extent that affects the rest of the ACA. The Supreme Court will hear the issue in its 2020-2021 term in California v.. Texas.

On the political side, the American public seems to support the ACA overall, although, or perhaps because, it has been made much more modest than its proponents had planned. So, the law, somewhat belatedly and less boldly, achieved a key goal of President Obama’s agenda. That success came at a stunning political cost to the President’s party, however. The Democrats hemorrhaged over 1,000 federal and state legislative seats during Obama’s tenure. In 2010 alone, they lost a historic 63 House seats, the biggest mid-term election rout since 1938, plus 6 Senate seats. The moderate “blue-dog” Democrats who had been crucial to the passage of the ACA were particularly hard hit. Whatever the ACA’s fate turns out to be in the courts, the ultimate resolution of controversial social issues remains with the people, not lawyers and judges.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

For those old enough to remember, September 11, 2001, 9:03 a.m. is burned into our collective memory. It was at that moment that United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Everyone was watching. American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower seventeen minutes earlier. For those few moments there was uncertainty whether the first crash was a tragic accident. Then, on live television, the South Tower fireball vividly announced to the world that America was under attack.

The nightmare continued. As horrifying images of people trapped in the burning towers riveted the nation, news broke at 9:37 a.m. that American Flight 77 had plowed into the Pentagon.

For the first time since December 11, 1941, Americans were collectively experiencing full scale carnage from a coordinated attack on their soil.

The horror continued as the twin towers collapsed, sending clouds of debris throughout lower Manhattan and igniting fires in adjoining buildings. Questions filled the minds of government officials and every citizen: How many more planes? What were their targets? How many have died? Who is doing this to us?

At 10:03 a.m., word came that United Flight 93 had crashed into a Pennsylvania field. Speculation exploded as to what happened. Later investigations revealed that Flight 93 passengers, alerted by cell phone calls of the earlier attacks, revolted causing the plane to crash. Their heroism prevented this final hijacked plane from destroying the U.S. Capitol Building.

That final accounting was devastating: 2,977 killed and over 25,000 injured. The death toll continues to climb to this day as first responders and building survivors perish from respiratory conditions caused by inhaling the chemical-laden smoke. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.

How this happened, why this happened, and what happened next compounds the tragedy.

Nineteen terrorists, most from Saudi Arabia, were part a radical Islamic terrorist organization called al-Qaeda “the Base.” This was the name given the training camp for the radical Islamicists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani, was the primary organizer of the attack. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi, was the leader and financier. Their plan was based upon an earlier failed effort in the Philippines. It was mapped out in late 1998. Bin Laden personally recruited the team, drawn from experienced terrorists. They insinuated themselves into the U.S., with several attending pilot training classes. Five-man teams would board the four planes, overpower the pilots, and fly them as bombs into significant buildings.

They banked on plane crews and passengers responding to decades of “normal” hijackings. They would assume the plane would be commandeered, flown to a new location, demands would be made, and everyone would live. This explains the passivity on the first three planes. Flight 93 was different, because it was delayed in its departure, allowing time for passengers to learn about the fate of the other planes. Last minute problems also reduced the Flight 93 hijacker team to only four.

The driving force behind the attack was Wahhabism, a highly strict, anti-Western version of Sunni Islam.

The Saudi Royal Family owes its rise to power to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792). He envisioned a “pure” form of Islam that purged most worldly practices (heresies), oppressed women, and endorsed violence against nonbelievers (infidels), including Muslims who differed with his sect. This extremely conservative and violent form of Islam might have died out in the sands of central Arabia were in not for a timely alliance with a local tribal leader, Muhammad bin Saud.

The House of Saud was just another minor tribe, until the two Muhammads realized the power of merging Sunni fanaticism with armed warriors. Wahhab’s daughter married Saud’s son, merging their two blood lines to this day. The House of Saud and its warriors rapidly expanded throughout the Arabia Peninsula, fueled by Wahhabi fanaticism. These various conflicts always included destruction of holy sites of rival sects and tribes. While done in the name of “purification,” the result was erasing the physical touchstones of rival cultures and governments.

In the early 20th Century, Saudi leader, ibn Saud, expertly exploited the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and alliances with European Powers, to consolidate his permanent hold over the Arabian Peninsula. Control of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest sites, gave the House of Saud the power to promote Wahhabism as the dominant interpretation of Sunni Islam. This included internally contradictory components of calling for eradicating infidels while growing rich from Christian consumption of oil and pursuing lavish hedonism when not in public view.

In the mid-1970s Saudi Arabia used the flood of oil revenue to become the “McDonalds of Madrassas.” Religious schools and new Mosques popped up throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This building boom had nothing to do with education and everything to do with spreading the cult of Wahhabism. Pakistan became a major hub for turning Wahhabi madrassas graduates into dedicated terrorists.

Wahhabism may have remained a violent, dangerous, but diffused movement, except it found fertile soil in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was called the graveyard of empires as its rugged terrain and fierce tribal warriors thwarted potential conquerors for centuries. In 1973, the last king of Afghanistan was deposed leading to years of instability. In April 1978, the opposition Communist Party seized control in a bloody coup. The communist tried to brutally consolidate power, which ignited a civil war among factions supported by Pakistan, China, Islamists (known as the Mujahideen), and the Soviet Union. Amidst the chaos, U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubbs was killed on February 14, 1979.

On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, killing their ineffectual puppet President, and ultimately bringing over 100,000 military personnel into the country. What followed was a vicious war between the Soviet military and various Afghan guerrilla factions. Over 2 million Afghans died.

The Reagan Administration covertly supported the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgents, primarily aiding the secular pro-west Northern Alliance. Arab nations supported the Mujahideen. Bin Laden entered the insurgent caldera as a Mujahideen financier and fighter. By 1988, the Soviets realized their occupation had failed. They removed their troops, leaving behind another puppet government and Soviet trained military.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Afghanistan was finally free. Unfortunately, calls for reunifying the country by reestablishing the monarchy and strengthening regional leadership went unheeded. Attempts at recreating the pre-invasion faction ravaged parliamentary system only led to new rounds of civil war.

In September 1994, the weak U.S. response opened the door for the Taliban, graduates from Pakistan’s Wahhabi madrassas, to launch their crusade to take control of Afghanistan.  By 1998, the Taliban controlled 90% of the country.

Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda warriors made Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan their new base of operations. In exchange, Bin Laden helped the Taliban eliminate their remaining opponents. This was accomplished on September 9, 2001, when suicide bombers disguised as a television camera crew blew-up Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic pro-west leader of the Northern Alliance.

Two days later, Bin Laden’s plan to establish al-Qaeda as the global leader of Islamic terrorism was implemented with hijacking four planes and turning them into guided bombs.

The 9-11 attacks, along with the earlier support against the Soviets in Afghanistan, was part of Bin Laden’s goal to lure infidel governments into “long wars of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender.” He believed this would lead to economic collapse of the infidels, by “bleeding” them dry. Bin Laden outlined his strategy of “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy” in a 2004 tape released through Al Jazeera.

On September 14, amidst the World Trade Center rubble, President George W. Bush addressed those recovering bodies and extinguishing fires using a bullhorn:

“The nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens”

A rescue worker yelled, “I can’t hear you!”

President Bush spontaneously responded: “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

Twenty-three days later, on October 7, 2001, American and British warplanes, supplemented by cruise missiles fired from naval vessels, began destroying Taliban operations in Afghanistan.

U.S. Special Forces entered Afghanistan. Working the Northern Alliance, they defeated major Taliban units. They occupied Kabul, the Afghan Capital, on November 13, 2001.

On May 2, 2011, U.S. Special Forces raided an al-Qaeda compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing Osama bin Laden.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Don Ritter

In October of 1989, hundreds of thousands of East German citizens demonstrated in Leipzig, following a pattern of demonstrations for freedom and human rights throughout Eastern Europe and following the first ever free election in a Communist country, Poland, in the Spring of 1989. Hungary had opened its southern border with Austria and East Germans seeking a better life were fleeing there. Czechoslovakia had done likewise on its western border and the result was the same.

The East German government had been on edge and was seeking to reduce domestic tensions by granting limited passage of its citizens to West Germany. And that’s when the dam broke.

On November 9, 1989, thousands of elated East Berliners started pouring into West Berlin. There was a simple bureaucratic error earlier in the day when an East German official read a press release he hadn’t previously studied and proclaimed that residents of Communist East Berlin were permitted to cross into West Berlin, freely and, most importantly, immediately. He had missed the end of the release which instructed that passports would be issued in an orderly fashion when government offices opened the next day.

This surprising information about free passage was spread throughout East Berlin, East Germany and, indeed, around the word like a lightning bolt. Massive crowds gathered near-instantaneously and celebrated at the heavily guarded Wall gates which, in a party-like atmosphere amid total confusion, were opened by hard core communist yet totally outmanned Border Police, who normally had orders to shoot-to-kill anyone attempting to escape. A floodgate was opened and an unstoppable flood of freedom-seeking humanity passed through, unimpeded.

Shortly thereafter, the people tore down the Wall with every means available. The clarion bell had been sounded and the reaction across communist Eastern Europe was swift. Communist governments fell like dominoes.

The Wall itself was a glaring symbol of totalitarian communist repression and the chains that bound satellite countries to the communist Soviet Union. But the “bureaucratic error” of a low-level East German functionary was the match needed to set off an explosion of freedom that had been years in-the-making throughout the 1980s. And that is critical to understanding just why the Cold War came to an end, precipitously and symbolically, with the fall of the Wall.

With the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States, Margaret Thatcher to Prime Minister of Great Britain and the Polish Cardinal, Jean Paul II becoming Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the foundation was laid in the 1980s for freedom movements in Soviet Communist-dominated Eastern Europe to evolve and grow. Freedom lovers and fighters had friends in high places who believed deeply in their cause. These great leaders of the West understood the enormous human cost of communist rule and were eager to fight back in their own unique and powerful way, leading their respective countries and allies in the process.

Historic figures like labor leader Lech Walesa, head of the Polish Solidarity Movement and Czech playwright Vaclav Havel, an architect of the Charter 77 call for basic human rights had already planted the seeds for historic change. Particularly in Poland, the combination of Solidarity and the Catholic Church, supported staunchly in the non-communist world by Reagan and Thatcher, anti-communism flourished despite repression and brutal crackdowns.

And then, there was a new General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. When he came to power in 1985, he sought to exhort workers to increase productivity in the economy, stamp out the resistance to Soviet occupation in Afghanistan via a massive bombing campaign and keep liquor stores closed till 2:00 pm. However, exhortation didn’t work and the economy continued to decline, Americans gave Stinger missiles to the Afghan resistance and the bombing campaign failed and liquor stores were being regularly broken into by angry citizens not to be denied their vodka. The Afghan war was a body blow to a Soviet military, ‘always victorious’ and Soviet mothers protested their sons coming back in body bags. The elites (“nomenklatura”) were taken aback and demoralized by what was viewed as a military debacle in a then Fourth World country. “Aren’t we supposed to be a superpower?”

Having failed at run-of-the-mill Soviet responses to problems, Gorbachev embarked on a bold-for-the-USSR effort to restructure the failing Soviet economy via Perestroika which sought major reform but within the existing burdensome central-planning bureaucracy. On the political front, he introduced Glasnost, opening discussion of social and economic problems heretofore forbidden since the USSR’s beginning. Previously banned books were published. Working and friendly relationships with President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were also initiated.

In the meantime, America under President Reagan’s leadership was not only increasing its military strength in an accelerated and expensive arms race but was also opposing Soviet-backed communist regimes and their so-called “wars of national liberation” all over the world. The cold war turned hot under the Reagan Doctrine. President Reagan also pushed “Star Wars,” an anti-ballistic missile system that could potentially neutralize Soviet long-range missiles. Star Wars, even if off in the future, worried Gorbachev’s military and communist leadership of an electronically and computer technology-challenged Soviet Union.

Competing economically and militarily with a resurgent anti-communist American engine firing on all cylinders became too expensive for the economically and technologically disadvantaged Soviet Union. There are those who say the USSR collapsed of its own weight, but they are wrong. If that were so, a congenitally overweight USSR would have collapsed a lot earlier. Gorbachev deserves a lot of credit to be sure but there should be no doubt, he and the USSR were encouraged to shift gears and change course. Unfortunately for communist rulers, their reforms initiated a downward spiral in their ability to control their citizens. Totalitarian control was first diminished and then lost. Author’s note: A lesson which was not lost on the rulers of Communist China.

Summing up: A West with economic and military backbone plus spiritual leadership, combined with brave dissident and human rights movements in Eastern Europe and the USSR itself, forced changes in behavior of the communist monolith. Words and deeds mattered. When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” before the British Parliament, the media and political opposition worldwide was aghast… but in the Soviet Gulag, political prisoners rejoiced. When President Reagan said “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” consternation reigned in the West… but the people from East Germany to the Kremlin heard it loud and clear.

And so fell the Berlin Wall.

The Honorable Don Ritter, Sc. D., served seven terms in the U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania including both terms of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Dr. Ritter speaks fluent Russian and lived in the USSR for a year as a Nation Academy of Sciences post-doctoral Fellow during Leonid Brezhnev’s time. He served in Congress as Ranking Member of the Congressional Helsinki Commission and was a leader in Congress in opposition to the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Danny de Gracia

It’s hard to believe that this year marks thirty years since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August of 1990. In history, some events can be said to be turning points for civilization that set the world on fire, and in many ways, our international system has not been the same since the invasion of Kuwait.

Today, the Iraq that went to war against Kuwait is no more, and Saddam Hussein himself is long dead, but the battles that were fought, the policies that resulted, and the history that followed is one that will haunt the world for many more years to come.

Iraq’s attempts to annex Kuwait in 1990 would bring some of the most powerful nations into collision, and would set in motion a series of events that would give rise to the Global War on Terror, the rise of ISIS, and an ongoing instability in the region that frustrates the West to this day.

To understand the beginning of this story, one must go back in time to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, where a crucial ally of the United States of America at the time – Iran – was in turmoil because of public discontent with the leadership of its shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Iran’s combination of oil resources and strategic geographic location made it highly profitable for the shah and his allies in the West over the years, and a relationship emerged where Iran’s government, flush with oil money, kept America’s defense establishment in business.

For years, the shah had been permitted to purchase nearly any American weapons system he pleased, no matter how advanced or powerful it may be, and Congress was only all too pleased to give it to him.

The Vietnam War had broken the U.S. military and hollowed out the resources of the armed services, but the defense industry needed large contracts if was to continue to support America.

Few people realize that Iran, under the Shah, was one of the most important client states in the immediate post-Vietnam era, making it possible for America to maintain production lines of top-of-the-line destroyers, fighter planes, engines, missiles, and many other vital elements of the Cold War’s arms race against the Soviet Union. As an example, the Grumman F-14A Tomcat, America’s premier naval interceptor of 1986 “Top Gun” fame, would never have been produced in the first place if it were not for the commitment of the Iranians as a partner nation in the first batch of planes.

When the Iranian Revolution occurred, an embarrassing ulcer to American interests emerged in Western Asia, as one of the most important gravity centers of geopolitical power had slipped out of U.S. control. Iran, led by an ultra-nationalistic religious revolutionary government, and armed with what was at the time some of the most powerful weapons in the world, had gone overnight from trusted partner to sworn enemy.

Historically, U.S. policymakers typically prefer to contain and buffer enemies rather than directly opposing them. Iraq, which had also gone through a regime change in July of 1979 with the rise of Saddam Hussein in a bloody Baath Party purge, was an rival to Iran, making it a prime candidate to be America’s new ally in the Middle East.

The First Persian Gulf War: A Prelude

Hussein, a brutal, transactional-minded leader who rose to power through a combination of violence and political intrigue, was one to always exploit opportunities. Recognizing Iran’s potential to overshadow a region he himself deemed himself alone worthy to dominate, Hussein used the historical disagreement over ownership of the strategic, yet narrow Shatt al-Arab waterway that divided Iran from Iraq to start a war on September 22, 1980.

Iraq, flush with over $33 billion in oil profits, had become formidably armed with a modern military that was supplied by numerous Western European states and, bizarrely, even the Soviet Union as well. Hussein, like Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler, had a fascination for superweapons and sought to amass a high-tech military force that could not only crush Iran, but potentially take over the entire Middle East.

In Hussein’s bizarre arsenal would eventually include everything from modified Soviet ballistic missiles (the “al-Hussein”) to Dassault Falcon 50 corporate jets modified to carry anti-ship missiles, a nuclear weapons program at Osirak, and even work on a supergun capable of firing telephone booth-sized projectiles into orbit nicknamed Project Babylon.

Assured of a quick campaign against Iran and tacitly supported by the United States, Hussein saw anything but a decisive victory, and spent almost a decade in a costly war of attrition with Iran. Hussein, who constantly executed his own military officers for making tactical withdrawals or failing in combat, denied his military the ability to learn from defeats and handicapped his army by his own micromanagement.

Iraq’s Pokémon-like “gotta catch ‘em all” model of military procurement during the war even briefly put it at odds with the United States on May 17, 1987, when one of its heavily armed Falcon 50 executive jets, disguised on radar as a Mirage F1EQ fighter, accidentally launched a French-acquired Exocet missile against a U.S. Navy frigate, the USS Stark. President Ronald Reagan, though privately horrified at the loss of American sailors, still considered Iraq a necessary counterweight to Iran, and used the Stark incident to increase political pressure on Iran.

While Iraq had begun its war against Iran in the black, years of excessive military spending, meaningless battles, and rampant destruction of the Iraqi army had taken its toll. Hussein’s war had put the country in over $37 billion dollars in debt, much of which had been owed to neighboring Kuwait.

Faced with a strained economy, tens of thousands of soldiers returning wounded from the war, and a military that was virtually on the brink of deposing Saddam Hussein just as he had deposed his predecessor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr in 1979, Iraq had no choice but to end its war against Iran.

Both Iran and Iraq would ultimately submit to a UN brokered ceasefire, but ironically, what would be one of the decisive elements in bringing the first Persian Gulf war to a close would not be the militaries of either country, but the U.S. military, when it launched a crippling air and naval attack against Iranian forces on April 18, 1988.

Iran, which had mined important sailing routes of the Persian Gulf as part of its area denial strategy during the war, succeeded on April 14, 1988 in striking the USS Samuel B. Roberts, an American frigate deployed to the region to protect shipping.

In response, the U.S. military retaliated with Operation: Praying Mantis which hit Iranian oil platforms (which had since been reconfigured as offensive gun platforms), naval vessels, and other military targets. The battle, which was so overwhelming in its scope that it actually was and remains to this day as the largest carrier and surface ship battle since World War II, resulted in the destruction of most of Iran’s navy and was a major contributing factor in de-fanging Iran for the next decade to come.

Kuwait and Oil

Saddam Hussein, claiming victory over Iran amidst the UN ceasefire, and now faced with a new U.S. president, George H.W. Bush in 1989, felt that the time was right to consolidate his power and pull his country back from collapse. In Hussein’s mind, he had been the “savior” of the Arab and Gulf States, who had protected them during the Persian Gulf war against the encroachment of Iranian influence. As such, he sought from Kuwait a forgiveness of debts incurred in the war with Iran, but would find no such sympathy. The 1990s were just around the corner, and Kuwait had ambitions of its own to grow in the new decade as a leading economic powerhouse.

Frustrated and outraged by what he perceived was a snub, Hussein reached into his playbook of once more leveraging territorial disputes for political gain and accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil by means of horizontal slant drilling into the Rumaila oil fields of southern Iraq.

Kuwait found itself in an unenviable situation neighboring the heavily armed Iraq, and as talks over debt and oil continued, the mighty Iraqi Republican Guard appeared to be gearing up for war. Most political observers at the time, including many Arab leaders, felt that Hussein was merely posturing and that it was a grand bluff to maintain his image as a strong leader. For Hussein to invade a neighboring Arab ally was unthinkable at the time, especially given Kuwait’s position as an oil producer.

On July 25, 1990, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with President Saddam Hussein and his deputy, Tariq Aziz on the topic of Kuwait. Infamously, Glaspie is said to have told the two, “We have no opinion on your Arab/Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

While the George H.W. Bush administration’s intentions were obviously aimed at taking no side in a regional territorial dispute, Hussein, whose personality was direct and confrontational, likely interpreted the Glaspie meeting as America backing down.

In the Iraqi leader’s eyes, one always takes the initiative and always shows an enemy their dominance. For a powerful country such as the United States to tell Hussein that it had “no opinion” on Arab/Arab conflict, this was most likely a sign of permission or even weakness that the Iraqi leader felt he had to exploit.

America, still reeling from the shadow of the Vietnam War failure and the disastrous Navy SEAL incident in Operation: Just Cause in Panama, may have appeared in that moment to Hussein as a paper tiger that could be out-maneuvered or deterred by aggressive action. Whatever the case was, Iraq stunned the world when just days later on August 2, 1990 it invaded Kuwait.

The Invasion of Kuwait

American military forces and intelligence agencies had been closely monitoring the buildup of Iraqi forces for what appeared like an invasion of Kuwait, but it was still believed right up to the moment of the attack that perhaps Saddam Hussein was only bluffing. The United States Central Command had set WATCHCON 1 – or Watch Condition One – the highest state of non-nuclear alertness in the region just prior to Iraq’s attack, and was regularly employing satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, and electronic surveillance platforms to observe the Iraqi Army.

Nevertheless, if there is one mantra that perfectly encapsulates the posture of the United States and European powers from the beginnings of the 20th century to the present, it is “Western countries too slow to act.” As is often the result with aggressive nations that challenge the international order, Iraq plowed into Kuwait and savaged the local population.

While America and her allies have always had the best technologies, the best weapons, and the best early warning systems or sensors, these historically for more than a century have been rendered useless because they often provide information that is not actionably employed to stop an attack or threat. Such was the case with Iraq, where all of the warning signs were present that an attack was imminent, but no action was taken to stop them.

Kuwait’s military courageously fought Iraq’s invading army, and even notably fought air battles with their American-made A-4 Skyhawks, some of them launching from highways after their air bases were destroyed. But the Iraqi army, full of troops who had fought against Iran and equipped with the fourth largest military in the world at that time, was simply too powerful to overcome. 140,000 Iraqi troops flooded into Kuwait and seized one of the richest oil producing nations in the region.

As Hussein’s military overran Kuwait, sealed its borders, and began plundering the country and ravaging its civilian population, the worry of the United States immediately shifted from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia, for fear that the kingdom might be next. On August 7, 1990, President Bush commenced “Operation: Desert Shield,” a military operation to defend Saudi Arabia and prevent any further advance of the Iraqi army.

At the time that Operation: Desert Shield commenced, I was living in Hampton Roads, Virginia and my father was a lieutenant colonel assigned to Tactical Air Command headquarters at the nearby Langley Air Force Base, and 48 F-15 Eagle fighter planes from that base immediately deployed to the Middle East in support of that operation. In the days that followed, our base became a flurry of activity and I remember seeing a huge buildup of combat aircraft from all around the United States forming at Langley.

President Bush, who himself had been a fighter pilot and U.S. Navy officer who fought in World War II, was all too familiar with what could happen when a megalomaniacal dictator started invading their neighbors. Whatever congeniality of convenience existed between the U.S. and Iraq to oppose Iran was now a thing of the past in the wake of the occupation of Kuwait.

Having fought against both the Nazis and Imperial Japanese in WWII, Bush saw many similarities of Adolf Hitler in Saddam Hussein, and immediately began comparing the Iraqi leader and his government to the Nazis in numerous speeches and public appearances as debates raged over what the U.S. should do regarding Kuwait.

As retired, former members of previous presidential administrations urged caution and called for long-term sanctions on Iraq rather than a kinetic military response, the American public, still captivated by the Vietnam experience, largely felt that the matter in Kuwait was not a concern that should involve military forces. Protests began to break out across America with crowds shouting “Hell no, we won’t go to war for Texaco” and others singing traditional protest songs of peace like “We Shall Overcome.”

Bush, persistent in his beliefs that Iraq’s actions were intolerable, made every effort to keep taking the moral case for action to the American public in spite of these pushbacks. As a leader seasoned by the horrors of war and combat, Bush must have known, as Henry Kissinger once said, that leadership is not about popularity polls, but about “an understanding of historical cycles and courage.”

On September 11, 1990, before a joint session of Congress, Bush gave a fiery address that to this day still stands as one of the most impressive presidential addresses in history.

“Vital issues of principle are at stake. Saddam Hussein is literally trying to wipe a country off the face of the Earth. We do not exaggerate,” President Bush would say before Congress. “Nor do we exaggerate when we say Saddam Hussein will fail. Vital economic interests are at risk as well. Iraq itself controls some 10 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. Iraq, plus Kuwait, controls twice that. An Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait would have the economic and military power, as well as the arrogance, to intimidate and coerce its neighbors, neighbors who control the lion’s share of the world’s remaining oil reserves. We cannot permit a resource so vital to be dominated by one so ruthless, and we won’t!”

Members of Congress erupted in roaring applause at Bush’s words, and he issued a stern warning to Saddam Hussein: “Iraq will not be permitted to annex Kuwait. And that’s not a threat, that’s not a boast, that’s just the way it’s going to be.”

Ejecting Saddam from Kuwait

As America prepared for action, in Saudi Arabia, another man would also be making promises to defeat Saddam Hussein and his military. Osama bin Laden, who had participated in the earlier war in Afghanistan as part of the Mujahideen that resisted the Soviet occupation, now offered his services to Saudi Arabia, pledging to use a jihad to force Iraq out of Kuwait in the same way that he had forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The Saudis, however, would hear none of it; having already received the protection of the United States and its powerful allies, bin Laden, seen as a useless bit player on the world stage, was brushed aside.

Herein the seeds for a future conflict would be sown, as not only did bin Laden take offense to being rejected by the Saudi government, but the presence of American military forces on holy Saudi soil was seen as blasphemous to him and a morally corrupting influence on the Saudi people.

In fact, the presence of female U.S. Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia seen without traditional cover or driving around in vehicles, caused many Saudi women to begin petitioning their government – and even in some instances, committing acts of civil disobedience – for more rights. This caused even more outrage among a number of fundamentalist groups in Saudi Arabia, and lent additional support, albeit covert in some instances, to bin Laden and other jihadist leaders.

Despite these cultural tensions boiling beneath the surface, President Bush successfully persuaded not only his own Congress but the United Nations as well to empower the formation of a global coalition of 35 nations to eject Iraqi occupying forces from Kuwait and to protect Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf from further aggression.

On November 29, 1990, the die was cast when the United Nations passed Resolution 678, authorizing “Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 [withdraws from Kuwait] … to use all necessary means … to restore international peace and security in the area.”

Subsequently, on January 15, 1991, President Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to leave Kuwait. Hussein ignored the threat, believing that America was weak, and its public easily susceptible to knee-jerk reactions at the sight of losing soldiers from its prior experience in Vietnam. Hussein believed that he could not only cause the American people to back down, but that he could unravel Arab support for the UN coalition by enticing Israel to attack Iraq. As such, he persisted in occupying Kuwait and boasted that a “Mother of all Battles” was to commence, in which Iraq would emerge victorious.

History, however, shows us that this was not the case, and days later on the evening of January 16, 1991, Operation: Desert Shield became Operation: Desert Storm, when a massive aerial bombardment and air superiority campaign commenced against Iraqi forces. Unlike prior wars which combined a ground invasion with supporting air forces, the start of Desert Storm was a bombing campaign that consisted of heavy attacks by aircraft and naval-launched cruise missiles against Iraq.

The operational name “Desert Storm” may have in part been influenced by a war plan developed months earlier by Air Force planner, Colonel John A. Warden who conceived an attack strategy named “Instant Thunder” which used conventional, non-nuclear airpower in a precise manner to topple Iraqi defenses.

A number of elements from Warden’s top secret plan were integrated into the opening shots of Desert Storm’s air campaign, as U.S. and coalition aircraft knocked out Iraqi radars, missile sites, command headquarters, power stations, and other key targets in just the first night alone.

Unlike the Vietnam air campaigns which were largely political and gradual escalations of force, the Air Force, having suffered heavy losses in Vietnam, wanted as General Chuck Horner would later explain, “instant” and “maximum” escalation so that their enemies could not have time to react or rearm.

This was precisely what happened, such to the point that the massive Iraqi air force would be either annihilated by bombs on the ground, shot down by coalition combat air patrols, or forced to flee into neighboring Iran.

A number of radical operations and new weapons were employed in the air campaign of Desert Storm. For one, the U.S. Air Force had secretly converted a number of nuclear AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCMs) into conventional, high explosive precision guided missiles and equipped them on 57 B-52 bombers for a January 17 night raid called Operation: Senior Surprise.

Known internally and informally to the B-52 pilots as “Operation: Secret Squirrel,” the cruise missiles knocked out numerous Iraqi defenses and opened the door for more coalition aircraft to surge against Saddam Hussein’s military.

The Navy also employed covert strikes against Iraq, also firing BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) that had also been converted to carry high explosive (non-nuclear) warheads. Because the early BGM-109s were guided and aimed by a primitive digital scene matching area correlator (DSMAC) that took digital photos of the ground below and compared it with pre-programmed topography in its terrain computer, the flat deserts of Iraq were thought to be problematic in employing cruise missiles, so the Navy came up with a highly controversial solution: secretly fire cruise missiles into Iran – a violation of Iranian airspace and international law – then turn them towards the mountain ranges as aiming points, and fly them into Iraq.

The plan worked, however, and the Navy would ultimately rain down on Iraq some 288 TLAMs that destroyed hardened hangars, runways, parked aircraft, command buildings, and scores of other targets in highly accurate strikes.

Part of the air war came home personally to me when a U.S. Air Force B-52, serial number 58-0248, participated in a night time raid over Iraq when it was accidentally fired upon by a friendly F-4G “Wild Weasel” that mistook the lumbering bomber’s AN/ASG-21 radar-guided tail gun as an Iraqi air defense platform. The Wild Weasel fired an AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) at the B-52 that hit and exploded in its tail, but still left the aircraft in flyable condition.

At the time, my family had moved to Andersen AFB in Guam, and 58-0248 made for Guam to land for repairs. When the B-52 arrived, it was parked in a cavernous hangar and crews immediately began patching up the aircraft. My father, always wanting to ensure that I learned something about the real world so I could get an appreciation for America, brought me to the hangar to see the stricken B-52, which was affectionately given the nickname “In HARM’s Way.”

I never forgot that moment, and it caused me to realize that the war was more than just some news broadcast we watched on TV, and that war had real consequences for not only those who fought in it, but people back home as well. I remember feeling an intense surge of pride as I saw that B-52 parked in the hangar, and I felt that I was witnessing history in action.

Ultimately, the air war against Saddam Hussein’s military would go on for a brutal six weeks, leaving many of his troops shell-shocked, demoralized, and eager to surrender. In fighting Iran for a decade, the Iraqi army had never known the kind of destructive scale or deadly precision that coalition forces were able to bring to bear against them.

Once the ground campaign commenced against Iraqi forces on February 24, 1991, that portion of Operation: Desert Storm only lasted a mere 100 hours before a cease-fire would be called, not because Saddam Hussein had pleaded for survival, but because back in Washington, D.C., national leaders watching the war on CNN began to see a level of carnage that they were not prepared for.

Gen. Colin Powell, seeing that most of the coalition’s UN objectives had been essentially achieved, personally lobbied for the campaign to wrap up, feeling that further destruction of Iraq would be “unchivalrous” and fearing the loss of any more Iraqi or American lives. It was also feared that if America had actually tried to make a play for regime change in Iraq in 1991, that the Army would be left holding the bag in securing and rebuilding the country, something that not only would be costly, but might turn the Arab coalition against America. On February 28, 1991, the U.S. officially declared a cease-fire.

The Aftermath

Operation: Desert Storm successfully accomplished the UN objectives that were established for the coalition forces and it liberated Kuwait. But a number of side effects of the war would follow that would haunt America and the rest of the world for decades to come.

First, Saddam Hussein remained in power. As a result, the U.S. military would remain in the region for years as a defensive contingent, not only continuing to inflame existing cultural tensions in Saudi Arabia, but also becoming a target for jihadist terrorist attacks, including the Khobar Towers bombing on June 25, 1996 and the USS Cole bombing on October 12, 2000.

Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist group would ultimately change the modern world as we knew it when his men hijacked commercial airliners and flew them into the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It should not be lost on historical observers that 15 of the 19 hijackers that day were Saudi citizens, a strategic attempt by bin Laden to drive a wedge between the United States and Saudi Arabia to get American military forces out of the country.

9/11 would also provide an opportunity for George H.W. Bush’s son, President George W. Bush, to attempt to take down Saddam Hussein. Many of the new Bush Administration members were veterans of the previous one during Desert Storm, and felt that the elder Bush’s decision not to “take out” the Iraqi dictator was a mistake. And while the 2003 campaign against Iraq was indeed successful in taking down the Baathist-party rule in Iraq and changing the regime, it allowed many disaffected former Iraqi officers and jihadists to rise up against the West, which ultimately led to the rise of ISIS in the region.

It is my hope that the next generation of college and high school students who read this essay and reflect on world affairs will understand that history is often complex and that every action taken leaves ripples in our collective destinies. A Holocaust survivor once told me, “There are times when the world goes crazy, and catches on fire. Desert Storm was one such time when the world caught on fire.”

What can we learn from the invasion of Kuwait, and what lessons can we take forward into our future? Let us remember always that allies are not always friends; victories are never permanent; and sometimes even seemingly unrelated personalities and forces can lead to world-changing events.

Our young people, especially those who wish to enter into national service, must study history and seek to possess, as the Bible says in the book of Revelation 17:9 in the Amplified Bible translation, “a mind to consider, that is packed with wisdom and intelligence … a particular mode of thinking and judging of thoughts, feelings, and purposes.”

Indeed, sometimes the world truly goes crazy and catches on fire, and some may say that 2020 is such a time. Let us study the past now, and prepare for the future!

Dr. Danny de Gracia, Th.D., D.Min., is a political scientist, theologist, and former committee clerk to the Hawaii State House of Representatives. He is an internationally acclaimed author and novelist who has been featured worldwide in the Washington Times, New York Times, USA Today, BBC News, Honolulu Civil Beat, and more. He is the author of the novel American Kiss: A Collection of Short Stories.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
Ronald Reagan Speech, Brandenburg Gate & Berlin Wall 1987

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” – Ronald Reagan

After World War II, a Cold War erupted between the world’s two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. Germany was occupied and then divided after the war as was its capital, Berlin. The Soviet Union erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 as a symbol of the divide between East and West in the Cold War and between freedom and tyranny.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the superpowers entered into a period of détente or decreasing tensions. However, the Soviet Union took advantage of détente to use revenue from rising oil prices and arms sales to engage in a massive arms build-up, supported communist insurrections in developing nations around the globe, and invaded Afghanistan.

Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 during a time of foreign-policy reversals including the Vietnam War and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. He blamed détente for strengthening and emboldening the Soviets and sought to improve American strength abroad.

As president, Reagan instituted a tough stance towards the Soviets that was designed to reverse their advances and win the Cold War. His administration supported the Polish resistance movement known as Solidarity, increased military spending, started the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and armed resistance fighters around the world, including the mujahideen battling a Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.

Reagan had a long history of attacking communist states and the idea of communism itself that shaped his strategic outlook. In the decades after World War II, like many Americans, he was concerned about Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe spreading elsewhere. In 1952, Reagan compared communism to Nazism and other forms of totalitarianism characterized by a powerful state that limited individual freedoms.

“We have met [the threat] back through the ages in the name of every conqueror that has ever set upon a course of establishing his rule over mankind,” he said. “It is simply the idea, the basis of this country and of our religion, the idea of the dignity of man, the idea that deep within the heart of each one of us is something so godlike and precious that no individual or group has a right to impose his or its will upon the people.”

In a seminal televised speech in 1964 called “A Time for Choosing,” Reagan stated that he believed there could be no accommodation with the Soviets. “We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, ‘Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we are willing to make a deal with your slave-masters.’”

Reagan targeted the Berlin Wall as a symbol of communism in a 1967 televised town hall debate with Robert Kennedy. “I think it would be very admirable if the Berlin Wall should…disappear,” Reagan said, “We just think that a wall that is put up to confine people, and keep them within their own country…has to be somehow wrong.”

In 1978, Reagan visited the wall and heard the story of Peter Fechter, one of hundreds who were shot by East German police while trying to escape to freedom over the Berlin Wall. As a result, Reagan told an aide, “My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic.  It is this: We win and they lose.”

As president, he continued his unrelenting attack on the idea of communism according to his moral vision of the system.  In a 1982 speech to the British Parliament, he predicted that communism would end up “on the ash heap of history,” and that the wall was “the signature of the regime that built it.”  When he visited the wall during the same trip, he stated that “It’s as ugly as the idea behind it.” In a 1983 speech, he referred to the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”

Reagan went to West Berlin to speak during a ceremony commemorating the 750th anniversary of the city and faced a choice. He could confront the Soviets about the wall, or he could deliver a speech without controversy.

In June 1987, many officials in his administration and West Germany were opposed to any provocative words or actions during the anniversary speech. Many Germans also did not want Reagan to deliver his speech anywhere near the wall and feared anything that might be perceived as an aggressive signal. Secretary of State George Schultz and Chief of Staff Howard Baker questioned the speech and asked the president and his speechwriters to tone down the language. Deputy National Security Advisor Colin Powell and other members of the National Security Council wanted to alter the speech and offered several revisions. Reagan demanded to speak next to the Berlin Wall and determined that he would use the occasion to confront the threat the wall posed to human freedom.

Reagan and his team arrived in West Berlin on June 12. He spoke to reporters and nervous German officials, telling them, “This is the only wall that has ever been built to keep people in, not keep people out.” Meanwhile, in East Berlin, the German secret police and Russian KGB agents cordoned off an area a thousand yards wide opposite the spot where Reagan was to speak on the other side of the wall. They wanted to ensure that no one could hear the message of freedom.

Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate with the huge, imposing wall in the background. “As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.”

Reagan challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev directly, stating, “If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

He finished by predicting the wall would not endure because it stood for oppression and tyranny. “This wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.” No one imagined that the Berlin Wall would fall only two years later on November 9, 1989, as communism collapsed across Eastern Europe.

A year later, Reagan was at a summit with Gorbachev in Moscow and addressed the students at Moscow State University. “The key is freedom,” Reagan boldly and candidly told them. “It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream – to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters.” Ronald Reagan believed that he had a responsibility to bring an end to the Cold War and destroy all nuclear weapons to benefit both the United States as well as the world for an era of peace. He dedicated himself to achieving this goal. Partly due to these efforts, the Berlin Wall fell by 1989, and communism collapsed in the Soviet Union by 1991.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

The election of Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1980 was one of the two most important elections of the 20th Century. It was a revolution in every way.

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) decisively defeated one term incumbent Herbert Hoover by 472-59 Electoral votes. His election

ushered in the era of aggressive liberalism, expanding the size of government, and establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Roosevelt’s inner circle, his “brain trust,” were dedicated leftists, several of whom conferred with Lenin and Stalin on policy issues prior to 1932.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan decisively defeated one-term incumbent Jimmy Carter by 489-49 Electoral votes. His election ended the liberal era, shrunk the size of government, and rebuilt America’s military, diplomatic, economic, and intelligence capabilities. America reestablished its leadership in the world, ending the Soviet Empire, and the Soviet Union itself.

Reagan was a key leader in creating and promoting the conservative movement, whose policy and political operatives populated and guided his administration. He was a true “thought leader” who defined American conservatism in the late 20th Century. Through his writings, speeches, and radio program, Reagan laid the groundwork, and shaped the mandate, for one of the most impactful Presidencies in American history.

The road from Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to Reagan’s Revolution began in 1940.

FDR, at the height of his popularity, choose to run for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt steered ever more leftward, selecting Henry Wallace as his running mate. Wallace would run as a socialist under the Progressive Party banner in 1948. Republican Wendell Willkie was the first private sector businessman to become a major party’s nominee.

Willkie had mounted numerous legal challenges to Roosevelt’s regulatory overreach. While losing, Willkie’s legacy inspired a generation of economists and activists to unite against big government.

As the allied victory in World War II became inevitable, the Willkie activists, along with leading conservative economists from across the globe, established policy organizations, “think tanks,” and publications to formulate and communicate an alternative to Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Human Events, the premiere conservative newspaper, began publishing in 1944. The Foundation for Economic Education was founded in 1946.

In 1947, conservative, “free market,” anti-regulatory economists met at the Mont Pelerin resort at the base of Mont Pelerin near Montreux, Switzerland. The greatest conservative minds of the 20th Century, including Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman, organized the “Mont Pelerin Society” to counter the globalist economic policies arising from the Bretton Woods Conference.  The Bretton Woods economists had met at the Hotel Washington, at the base of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, to launch the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Conservative writer and thinker, William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review on November 19, 1955. His publication, more than any other, would serve to define, refine and consolidate the modern Conservative Movement.

The most fundamental change was realigning conservatism with the international fight against the Soviet Union, which was leading global Communist expansion. Up until this period, American conservatives tended to be isolationist. National Review’s array of columnists developed “Fusionism” which provided the intellectual justification of conservatives being for limited government at home while aggressively fighting Communism abroad. In 1958, the American Security Council was formed to focus the efforts of conservative national security experts on confronting the Soviets.

Conservative Fusionism was politically launched by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) during the Republican Party Platform meetings for their 1960 National Convention. Conservative forces prevailed. This laid the groundwork for Goldwater to run and win the Republican Party Presidential nomination in 1964.

The policy victories of Goldwater and Buckley inspired the formation of the Young Americans for Freedom, the major conservative youth movement. Meeting at Buckley’s home in Sharon, Connecticut on September 11, 1960, the YAF manifesto became the Fusionist Canon. The conservative movement added additional policy centers, such as the Hudson Institute, founded on July 20, 1961.

Goldwater’s campaign was a historic departure from traditional Republican politics. His plain-spoken assertion of limited government and aggressive action against the Soviets inspired many, but scared many more. President John F. Kennedy’s assassination had catapulted Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson into the Presidency. LBJ had a vision of an even larger Federal Government, designed to mold urban minorities into perpetually being beholding to Democrat politicians.

Goldwater’s alternative vision was trounced on election day, but the seeds for Reagan’s Conservative Revolution were sown.

Reagan was unique in American politics. He was a pioneer in radio broadcasting and television. His movie career made him famous and wealthy. His tenure as President of the Screen Actors Guild thrust him into the headlines as Hollywood confronted domestic communism.

Reagan’s pivot to politics began when General Electric hired him to host their popular television show, General Electric Theater. His contract included touring GE plants to speak about patriotism, free market economics, and anti-communism. His new life within corporate America introduced him to a circle of conservative businessmen who would become known as his “Kitchen Cabinet.”

The Goldwater campaign reached out to Reagan to speak on behalf of their candidate on a television special during the last week of the campaign. On October 27, 1964, Reagan drew upon his GE speeches to deliver “A Time for Choosing.” His inspiring address became a political classic, which included lines that would become the core of “Reaganism”:

“The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So, we have come to a time for choosing … You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream—the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

The Washington Post declared Reagan’s “Time for Choosing” “the most successful national political debut since William Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with his Cross of Gold speech.” It immediately established Reagan as the heir to Goldwater’s movement.

The promise of Reagan fulfilling the Fusionist vision of Goldwater, Buckley, and a growing conservative movement inspired the formation of additional groups, such as the American Conservative Union in December 1964.

In 1966, Reagan trounced two-term Democrat incumbent Pat Brown to become Governor of California, winning by 57.5 percent. Reagan’s two terms became the epicenter of successful conservative domestic policy attracting top policy and political operatives who would serve him throughout his Presidency.

Retiring after two terms, Reagan devoted full time to being the voice, brain, and face of the Conservative Movement. This included a radio show that was followed by over 30 million listeners.

In 1976. the ineffectual moderate Republicanism of President Gerald Ford led Reagan to mount a challenge. Reagan came close to the unprecedented unseating of his Party’s incumbent. His concession speech on the last night of the Republican National Convention became another political classic. It launched his successful march to the White House.

Reagan’s 1980 campaign was now aided by a more organized, broad, and capable Conservative Movement. Reagan’s “California Reaganites” were linked to Washington, DC-based “Fusionists,” and conservative grassroots activists who were embedded in Republican Party units across America. The Heritage Foundation had become a major conservative policy center on February 16, 1973. A new hub for conservative activists, The Conservative Caucus, came into existence in 1974.

Starting in 1978, Reagan’s inner circle, including his “Kitchen Cabinet,” worked seamlessly with this vast network of conservative groups: The Heritage Foundation, Kingston, Stanton, Library Court, Chesapeake Society, Monday Club, Conservative Caucus, American Legislative Exchange Council, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the Eagle Forum, and many others. They formed a unified and potent political movement that overwhelmed Republican moderates to win the nomination and then buried Jimmy Carter and the Democrat Party in November 1980.

After his landslide victory, which also swept in the first Republican Senate majority since 1956, Reaganites and Fusionists placed key operatives into Reagan’s transition. They identified over 17,000 positions that affected Executive Branch operations. A separate team identified the key positions in each cabinet department and major agency that had to be under Reagan’s control in the first weeks of his presidency.

On January 21, 1981, Reagan’s personnel team immediately removed every Carter political appointee. These Democrat functionaries were walked out the door, identification badge taken, files sealed, and their security clearance terminated. The Carter era’s impotent foreign policy and intrusive domestic policy ended completely and instantaneously.

Reagan went on to lead one of the most successful Presidencies in American history. His vision of a “shining city on a hill” continues to inspire people around the world to seek better lives through freedom, open societies, and economic liberty.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner
Iranian Students Climb Wall of U.S. Embassy, Tehran, Nov. 1979

The long tragic road to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks began with President Jimmy Carter, and his administration’s involvement in the Iranian Revolution, and their fundamentally weak response to the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

The Iranian Hostage Crisis was the most visible act of the Iranian Revolution. Starting on November 4, 1979, and lasting for 444 days, 52 Americans were imprisoned in brutal conditions. The world watched as the Carter Administration repeatedly failed to free the hostages, both through poor diplomacy and the rescue attempt fiasco.

The result was the crippling of U.S. influence throughout the Middle East and the spawning of radical Islamic movements that terrorize the world to this day.

Islam’s three major sects, Sunni, Shiite, and Sufi, all harbor the seeds of violence and hatred. In 1881 a Sufi mystic ignited the Mahdi Revolt in the Sudan leading to eighteen years of death and misery throughout the upper Nile. During World War II, the Sunni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem befriended Hitler and helped Heinrich Himmler form Islamic Stormtrooper units to kill Jews in the Balkans.

After World War II, Islam secularized as mainstream leaders embraced Western economic interests to tap their vast oil and gas reserves.

Activists became embroiled in the Middle East’s Cold War chess board, aiding U.S. or Soviet interests.

The Iranian Revolution changed that. Through the success of the Iranian Revolution, Islamic extremists of all sects embraced the words of Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini:

“If the form of government willed by Islam were to come into being, none of the governments now existing in the world would be able to resist it; they would all capitulate.”

Islamic dominance became an end in and of itself.

This did not have to happen at all.

Iran has been a pivotal regional player for 2,500 years. The Persian Empire was the bane of ancient Greece. As the Greek Empire withered, Persia, later Iran, remained a political, economic, and cultural force. This is why their 1979 Revolution and subsequent confrontation with the U.S. inspired radicals throughout the Islamic world to become the Taliban, ISIS and other terrorists of today.

Iran’s modern history began as part of the East-West conflict following World War II. The Soviets heavily influenced and manipulated Iran’s first elected government. On August 19, 1953, British and America intelligence toppled that government and returned Shah Mohammad Reza to power.

“The Shah” as he became known globally, was reform minded. He launched his “White Revolution” to build a modern, pro-West, pro-capitalist Iran in 1963. The Shah’s “Revolution” built the region’s largest middle class, and broke centuries of tradition by enfranchising women. It was opposed by many traditional powers, including fundamentalist Islamic leaders like the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini’s agitation for violent opposition to the Shah’s reforms led to his arrest and exile.

Throughout his reign, the Shah was vexed by radical Islamic and communist agitation. His secret police brutally suppressed fringe dissidents. This balancing act between western reforms and control worked well, with a trend towards more reforms as the Shah aged. The Shah enjoyed warm relationships with American Presidents of both parties and was rewarded with lavish military aid.

That was to change in 1977.

From the beginning, the Carter Administration expressed disdain for the Shah. President Carter pressed for the release of political prisoners. The Shah complied, allowing many radicals the freedom to openly oppose him.

Not satisfied with the pace or breadth of the Shah’s human rights reforms, Carter envoys began a dialogue with the Ayatollah Khomeini, first at his home in Iraq and more intensely when he moved to a Paris suburb.

Indications that the U.S. was souring on the Shah emboldened dissidents across the political spectrum to confront the regime. Demonstrations, riots, and general strikes began to destabilize the Shah and his government. In response, the Shah accelerated reforms. This was viewed as weakness by the opposition.

The Western media, especially the BBC, began to promote the Ayatollah as a moderate alternative to the Shah’s “brutal regime.” The Ayatollah assured U.S. intelligence operatives and State Department officials that he would only be the “figure head” for a western parliamentary system.

During the fall of 1978, strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country. The Carter Administration, led by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and U.S. Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan, coalesced around abandoning the Shah and helping install Khomeini, who they viewed as a “moderate clergyman” who would be Iran’s “Ghandi-like” spiritual leader.

Time and political capital were running out. On January 16, 1979, The Shah, after arranging for an interim government, resigned and went into exile.

The balance of power now remained with the Iranian Military.

While the Shah was preparing for his departure, General Robert Huyser, Deputy Commander of NATO and his top aides, arrived in Iran. They were there to neutralize the military leaders. Using ties of friendship, promises of aid, and assurance of safety, Huyser and his team convinced the Iranian commanders to allow the transitional government to finalize arrangements for Khomeini becoming part of the new government.

Many of these Iranian military leaders, and their families, were slaughtered as Khomeini and his Islamic Republican Guard toppled the transitional government and seized power during the Spring of 1979.  “It was a most despicable act of treachery, for which I will always be ashamed,” admitted one NATO general years later.

While Iran was collapsing, so were America’s intelligence capabilities.

One of President Carter’s earliest appointments was placing Admiral Stansfield Turner in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Turner immediately eviscerated the Agency’s human intelligence and clandestine units. He felt they had gone “rogue” during the Nixon-Ford era. He also thought electronic surveillance and satellites could do as good a job.

Turner’s actions led to “one of the most consequential strategic surprises that the United States has experienced since the CIA was established in 1947” – the Embassy Takeover and Hostage Crisis.

The radicalization of Iran occurred at lightning speed. Khomeini and his lieutenants remade Iran’s government and society into a totalitarian fundamentalist Islamic state. Anyone who opposed their Islamic Revolution were driven into exile, imprisoned, or killed.

Khomeini’s earlier assurances of moderation and working with the West vanished. Radicalized mobs turned their attention to eradicating all vestiges of the West. This included the U.S. Embassy.

The first attack on the U.S. Embassy occurred on the morning of February 14, 1979. Coincidently, this was the same day that Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped and fatally shot by Muslim extremists in Kabul. In Tehran, Ambassador Sullivan surrendered the U.S. Embassy and was able to resolve the occupation within hours through negotiations with the Iranian Foreign Minister.

Despite this attack, and the bloodshed in Kabul, nothing was done to either close the Tehran Embassy, reduce personnel, or strengthen its defenses. During the takeover, Embassy personnel failed to burn sensitive documents as their furnaces malfunctioned. They installed cheaper paper shredders. During the 444-day occupation, rug weavers were employed to reconstruct the sensitive shredded documents, creating global embarrassment of America.

Starting in September 1979, radical students began planning a more extensive assault on the Embassy. This included daily demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy to trigger an Embassy security response. This allowed organizers to assess the size and capabilities of the Embassy security forces.

On November 4, 1979, one of the demonstrations erupted into an all-out conflict by the Embassy’s Visa processing public entrance. The assault leaders deployed approximately 500 students. Female students hid metal cutters under their robes, which were used to breach the Embassy gates.

Khomeini was in a meeting outside of Tehran and did not have prior knowledge of the takeover. He immediately issued a statement of support, declaring it “the second revolution” and the U.S. Embassy an “America spy den in Tehran.”

What followed was an unending ordeal of terror and depravation for the 66 hostages, who through various releases, were reduced to a core of 52. The 2012 film “Argo” chronicled the audacious escape of six Americans who had been outside the U.S. Embassy at the time of the takeover.

ABC News began a nightly update on the hostage drama. This became “Nightline.” During the 1980 Presidential campaign, it served as a nightly reminder of the ineffectiveness of President Carter.

On April 24, 1980, trying to break out of this chronic crisis, Carter initiated an ill-conceived, and poorly executed, rescue mission called Operation Eagle Claw. It ended with crashed helicopters and eight dead soldiers at the staging area outside of the Iranian Capital, designated Desert One. Another attempt was made through diplomacy as part of a hoped for “October Surprise,” but the Iranians cancelled the deal just as planes were being mustered at Andrews Air Force Base.

Carter paid the price for his Iranian duplicity. On November 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan obliterated Carter in the worst defeat suffered by an incumbent President since Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Don Ritter

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 marked THE crucial turning point in winning the Cold War with Russia-dominated Communism, the USSR.

Reagan’s rise to national prominence began with the surge in communist insurgencies and revolutions worldwide that began after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, and all South Vietnam to the communists. After 58,000 American lives and trillions in treasure lost over the tenures of five American Presidents, the United States left the Vietnam War and South Vietnam to the communists.

Communist North Vietnam in league with fellow communist governments in Russia and China accurately saw the weakening of a new American President, Gerald Ford, and a new ‘anti-war’ Congress as a result of the ‘Watergate’ scandal and President Richard Nixon’s subsequent resignation. In the minds of the communists, it was a signal opportunity to forcibly “unify,” read invade, the non-communist South with magnum force, armed to the teeth by both the People’s Republic of China and the USSR. President Nixon’s Secret Letter to South Vietnamese President Thieu pledging all-out support of U.S. air and naval power if the communists broke the Paris Peace Agreement and invaded was irrelevant as Nixon was gone. With the communist invasion beginning, seventy-four new members of Congress, all anti-war Democrats guaranteed the ”No” vote on the Ford Administration’s Bill to provide $800 million for ammunition and fuel to the South Vietnamese military to roll their tanks and fly their planes. That Bill lost in Congress by only one vote. The fate of South Vietnam was sealed. The people of South Vietnam, in what seemed then like an instant, were abandoned by their close American ally of some 20 years. Picture that.

Picture the ignominy of it all. Helicopters rescuing Americans and some chosen Vietnamese from rooftops while U.S. Marines staved off the desperate South Vietnamese who had worked with us for decades. Picture Vietnamese people clinging to helicopter skids and airplane landing gears in desperation, falling to their death as these aircraft ascended. Picture drivers of South Vietnamese tanks and pilots of fighter planes not able to engage for want of fuel. Picture famous South Vietnamese Generals committing suicide rather than face certain torture and death in Re-Education Camps, read Gulags with propaganda lessons. Picture perhaps hundreds of thousands of “Boat People,” having launched near anything that floated to escape the wrath of their conquerors, at the bottom of the South China Sea. Picture horrific genocide in Cambodia where Pol Pot and his henchmen murdered nearly one-third of the population to establish communism… and through it all, the West, led by the United States, stayed away.

Leonid Brezhvnev, Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and his Politburo colleagues could picture it… all of it. The Cold War was about to get hot.

The fall of the non-communist government in South Vietnam and the election of President Jimmy Carter was followed by an American military and intelligence services-emasculating U.S. Congress. Many in the Democratic Party took the side of the insurgents. I remember well, Sen. Tom Harkin from Iowa claiming that the Sandinista Communists (in Nicaragua) were more like “overzealous Boy Scouts” than hardened Communists. Amazing.

Global communism with the USSR in the lead and America in retreat, was on the march.

In just a few years, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, repressive communist-totalitarian regimes had been foisted on the respective peoples by small numbers of ideologically committed, well-trained and well-armed (by the Soviet Union) insurgencies. “Wars of national liberation” and intensive Soviet subversion raged around the world. Think Angola and Southern Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. Think the Middle East and the Philippines, Malaysia and Afghanistan (there a full-throated Red Army invasion) in Asia.

Think Central America in our own hemisphere and Nicaragua where the USSR and their right hand in the hemisphere, communist Cuba, took charge along with a relatively few committed Marxist-Leninist Nicaraguans, backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union, even creating a Soviet-style Politburo and Central Committee! On one my several trips to the region, I personally met with Tomas Borge, the Stalinist leader of the Nicaraguan Communist Party and his colleagues. Total Bolsheviks. To make things even more dangerous for the United States, these wars of national liberation were also ongoing in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

A gigantic airfield that could land Soviet jumbo transports was being completed under the Grenadian communist government of Maurice Bishop. Warehouses with vast storage capacity for weapons to fuel insurgency in Latin America were built. I personally witnessed these facilities and found the diary of one leading Politburo official, Liam James, who was on the payroll of the Soviet Embassy at the time. They all were but he, being the Treasurer of the government, actually wrote it down! These newly-minted communist countries and other ongoing insurgencies, with Marxist-Leninist values in direct opposition to human freedom and interests of the West, were being funded and activated by Soviet intelligence agencies, largely the KGB and were supplied by the economies of the Soviet Union and their Warsaw Pact empire in Eastern and Central Europe. Many leaders of these so-called “Third World” countries were on Moscow’s payroll.

In the words of one KGB General, “The world was going our way.” Richard Andrew, ‘The KGB and the Battle for the Third World’ (based on the Mitrokhin archives). These so-called wars of national liberation didn’t fully end until some ten years later, when the weapons and supplies from the Soviet Union dried up as the Soviet Empire began to disintegrate, thanks to a new U.S. President who led the way during  the 1980s.

Enter Ronald Wilson Reagan. To the chagrin of the Soviet communists and their followers worldwide, it was the beginning of the end of their glory days when in January of 1981, Ronald Reagan, having beaten the incumbent President, Jimmy Carter, in November, was sworn in as President of the United States. Ronald Reagan was no novice in the subject matter. President Reagan had been an outspoken critic of communism over three decades. He had written and given speeches on communism and the genuinely evil nature of the Soviet Union. He was a committed lover of human freedom, human rights and free markets. As Governor of California, he had gained executive experience in a large bureaucracy and during that time had connected with a contingent of likeminded political and academic conservatives. The mainstream media was ruthless with him, characterizing him as an intellectual dolt and warmonger who would bring on World War III. He would prove his detractors so wrong. He would prove to be the ultimate Cold Warrior, yet a sweet man with an iron fist when needed.

When his first National Security Advisor, Richard Allen, asked the new President Reagan about his vision of the Cold War, Reagan’s response was, “We win, they lose.” Rare moral clarity rarely enunciated.

To the end of his presidency, he continued to be disparaged by the mainstream media, although less aggressively. However, the American people grew to appreciate and even love the man as he and his team, more than anyone would be responsible for winning the Cold War and bringing down a truly “Evil Empire.” Just ask those who suffered most, the Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Rumanian, Baltic, and yes, the Russian people, themselves. To this very day, his name is revered by those who suffered and still suffer under the yoke of communism.

Personally, I have often pondered that had Ronald Reagan not been elected President of the United States in 1980, the communist behemoth USSR would be standing strong today and the Cold War ended with communism, the victor.

The Honorable Don Ritter, Sc. D., served seven terms in the U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania including both terms of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Dr. Ritter speaks fluent Russian and lived in the USSR for a year as a Nation Academy of Sciences post-doctoral Fellow during Leonid Brezhnev’s time. He served in Congress as Ranking Member of the Congressional Helsinki Commission and was a leader in Congress in opposition to the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
President Nixon Farewell Speech to White House Staff, August 9, 1974

On Thursday, August 8, 1974, a somber Richard Nixon addressed the American people in a 16-minute speech via television to announce that he was planning to resign from the Presidency of the United States. He expressed regret over mistakes he made about the break-in at the Democratic Party offices at the Watergate Hotel and the aftermath of that event. He further expressed the hope that his resignation would begin to heal the political divisions the matter had exacerbated. The next day, having resigned, he boarded a helicopter and, with his family, left Washington, D.C.

Nixon had won the 1972 election against Senator George McGovern of South Dakota with over 60% of the popular vote and an electoral vote of 520-17 (one vote having gone to a third candidate). Yet less than two years after what is one of the most overwhelming victories in American elections, Nixon was politically dead. Nixon has been described as a tragic figure, in a literary sense, due to his struggle to rise to the height of political power, only to be undone when he had achieved the pinnacle of success. The cause of this astounding change of fortune has been much debated. It resulted from a confluence of factors, political, historical, and personal.

Nixon was an extraordinarily complex man. He was highly intelligent, even brilliant, yet was the perennial striver seeking to overcome, by unrelenting work, his perceived limitations. He was an accomplished politician with a keen understanding of political issues, yet socially awkward and personally insecure. He was perceived as the ultimate insider, yet, despite his efforts, was always somehow outside the “establishment,” from his school days to his years in the White House. Alienated from the social and political elites, who saw him as an arriviste, he emphasized his marginally middle-class roots and tied his political career to that “silent majority.” He could arouse intense loyalty among his supporters, yet equally intense fury among his opponents. Nixon infamously kept an “enemies list,” the only surprise of which is that it was so incomplete. Seen by the Left as an operative of what is today colloquialized as the “Deep State,” yet he rightly mistrusted the bureaucracy and its departments and agencies, and preferred to rely on White House staff and hand-picked loyal individuals. Caricatured as an anti-Communist ideologue and would-be right-wing dictator, Nixon was a consummately pragmatic politician who was seen by many supporters of Senator Barry Goldwater and Governor Ronald Reagan as insufficiently in line with their world view.

The Watergate burglary and attempted bugging of the Democratic Party offices in June, 1972, and investigations by the FBI and the Government Accountability Office that autumn into campaign finance irregularities by the Committee to Re-Elect the President (given the unfortunate acronym CREEP by Nixon’s opponents) initially had no impact on Nixon and his comprehensive political victory. In January, 1973, the trial of the operatives before federal judge John Sirica in Washington, D.C., revealed possible White House involvement. This perked the interest of the press, never Nixon’s friends. These revelations, now spread before the public, caused the Democratic Senate majority to appoint a select committee under Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina for further investigation. Pursuant to an arrangement with Senate Democrats, Attorney General Elliot Richardson named Democrat Archibald Cox, a Harvard law professor and former Kennedy administration solicitor general, as special prosecutor.

Cox’s efforts uncovered a series of missteps by Nixon, as well as actions that were viewed as more seriously corrupt and potentially criminal. Some of these sound rather tame by today’s standards. Others are more problematic. Among the former were allegations that Nixon had falsely backdated a gift of presidential papers to the National Archives to get a tax credit, not unlike Bill Clinton’s generously-overestimated gift of three pairs of his underwear in 1986 for an itemized charitable tax deduction. Another was that he was inexplicably careless in preparing his tax return. Given the many retroactively amended tax returns and campaign finance forms filed by politicians, such as the Clintons and their eponymous foundations, this, too, seems of slight import. More significant was the allegation that he had used the Internal Revenue Service to attack political enemies. Nixon certainly considered that, although it is not shown that any such actions were undertaken. Another serious charge was that Nixon had set up a secret structure to engage in political intelligence and espionage.

The keystone to the impeachment was the discovery of a secret taping system in the Oval Office that showed that Nixon had participated in a cover-up of the burglary and obstructed the investigation. Nixon, always self-reflective and sensitive to his position in history, had set up the system to provide a clear record of conversations within the Oval Office for his anticipated post-Presidency memoirs. It proved to be his downfall. When Cox became aware of the system, he sought a subpoena to obtain nine of the tapes in July, 1973. Nixon refused, citing executive privilege relating to confidential communications. That strategy had worked when the Senate had demanded the tapes; Judge Sirica had agreed with Nixon. But Judge Sirica rejected that argument when Cox sought the information, a decision upheld 5-2 by the federal Circuit Court for the District of Columbia.

Nixon then offered to give Cox authenticated summaries of the nine tapes. Cox refused. After a further clash between the President and the special prosecutor, Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to remove Cox. Both Richardson and Assistant Attorney General William Ruckelshaus refused and resigned. However, by agreement between these two and Solicitor General Robert Bork, Cox was removed by Bork in his new capacity as Acting Attorney General. It was well within Nixon’s constitutional powers as head of the unitary executive to fire his subordinates. But what the President is constitutionally authorized to do is not the same as what the President politically should do. The reaction of the political, academic, and media elites to the “Saturday Night Massacre” was overwhelmingly negative, and precipitated the first serious effort at impeaching Nixon.

A new special prosecutor, Democrat Leon Jaworski, was appointed by Bork in consultation with Congress. The agreement among the three parties was that, though Jaworski would operate within the Justice Department, he could not be removed except for specified causes and with notification to Congress. Jaworski also was specifically authorized to contest in court any claim of executive privilege. When Jaworski again sought various specific tapes, and Nixon again claimed executive privilege, Jaworski eventually took the case to the Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, Chief Justice Warren Burger’s opinion in the 8-0 decision in United States v. Nixon (William Rehnquist, a Nixon appointee who had worked in the White House, had recused himself) overrode the executive privilege claim. The justices also rejected the argument that this was a political intra-branch dispute between the President and a subordinate that rendered the matter non-justiciable, that is, beyond the competence of the federal courts.

At the same time, in July, 1974, with bipartisan support, the House Judiciary Committee voted out three articles of impeachment. Article I charged obstruction of justice regarding the Watergate burglary. Article II charged him with violating the Constitutional rights of citizens and “contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch,” which dealt with Nixon’s alleged attempted misuse of the IRS, and with his misuse of the FBI and CIA. Article III charged Nixon with ignoring congressional subpoenas, which sounds remarkably like an attempt to obstruct Congress, a dubious ground for impeachment. Two other proposed articles were rejected. When the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release the tapes, that of June 23, 1972, showed obstruction of justice by the President instructing his staff to use the CIA to end the Watergate investigation. The tape was released on August 5. Nixon was then visited by a delegation of Republican Representatives and Senators who informed him of the near-certainty of impeachment by the House and of his extremely tenuous position to avoid conviction by the Senate. The situation having become politically hopeless, Nixon resigned, making his resignation formal on Friday, August 9, 1974.

The Watergate affair produced several constitutional controversies. First, the Supreme Court addressed executive privilege to withhold confidential information. Nixon’s opponents had claimed that the executive lacked such a privilege because the Constitution did not address it, unlike the privilege against self-incrimination. Relying on consistent historical practice going back to the Washington administration, the Court found instead that such a privilege is inherent in the separation of powers and necessary to protect the President in exercising the executive power and others granted under Article II of the Constitution. However, unless the matter involves state secrets, that privilege could be overridden by a court, if warranted in a criminal case, and the “presumptively privileged” information ordered released. While the Court did not directly consider the matter, other courts have agreed with Judge Sirica that, based on long practice, the privilege will be upheld if Congress seeks such confidential information. The matter then is a political question, not one for courts to address at all.

Another controversy arose over the President’s long-recognized power to fire executive branch subordinates without restriction by Congress. This is essential to the President’s position as head of the executive branch. For example, the President has inherent constitutional authority to fire ambassadors as Barack Obama and Donald Trump did, or to remove U.S. Attorneys, as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did. Jaworski’s appointment under the agreement not to remove him except for specified cause interfered with that power, yet the Court upheld that limitation in the Nixon case.

After Watergate, in 1978, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act that provided a broad statutory basis for the appointment of special prosecutors outside the normal structure of the Justice Department. Such prosecutors, too, could not be removed except for specified causes. In Morrison v. Olson, in 1988, the Supreme Court, by 7-1, upheld this incursion on executive independence over the lone dissent of Justice Antonin Scalia. At least as to inferior executive officers, which the Court found special prosecutors to be, Congress could limit the President’s power to remove, as long as the limitation did not interfere unduly with the President’s control over the executive branch. The opinion, by Chief Justice Rehnquist, was in many ways risible from a constitutional perspective, but it upheld a law that became the starting point for a number of highly-partisan and politically-motivated investigations into actions taken by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, and by their subordinates. Only once the last of these Presidents was being subjected to such oversight did opposition to the law become sufficiently bipartisan to prevent its reenactment.

The impeachment proceeding itself rekindled the debate over the meaning of the substantive grounds for such an extraordinary interference with the democratic process. While treason is defined in the Constitution and bribery is an old and well-litigated criminal law concept, the third basis, of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” is open to considerable latitude of meaning. One view, taken by defenders of the official under investigation, is that this phrase requires conduct amounting to a crime, an “indictable offense.” The position of the party pursuing impeachment, Republican or Democrat, has been that this phrase more broadly includes unfitness for office and reaches conduct which is not formally criminal but which shows gross corruption or a threat to the constitutional order. The Framers’ understanding appears to have been closer to the latter, although the much greater number and scope of criminal laws today may have narrowed the difference. However, what the Framers considered sufficiently serious impeachable corruption likely was more substantial than what has been proffered recently. They were acutely aware of the potential for merely political retaliation and similar partisan mischief that a low standard for impeachment would produce. These and other questions surrounding the rather sparse impeachment provisions in the Constitution have not been resolved. They continue to be, foremost, political matters addressed on a case-by-case basis, as demonstrated the past twelve months.

As has been often observed, Nixon’s predicament was not entirely of his own making. In one sense, he was the victim of political trends that signified a reaction against what had come to be termed the “Imperial Presidency.” It had long been part of the progressive political faith that there was “nothing to fear but fear itself” as far as broadly exercised executive power, as long as the presidential tribune using “a pen and a phone” was subject to free elections. Actions routinely done by Presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Nixon’s predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, now became evidence of executive overreach. For example, those presidents, as well as others going back to at least Thomas Jefferson had impounded appropriated funds, often to maintain fiscal discipline over profligate Congresses. Nixon claimed that his constitutional duty “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed” was also a power that allowed him to exercise discretion as to which laws to enforce, not just how to enforce them. In response, the Democratic Congress in 1974 passed the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Supreme Court in Train v. City of New York declared presidential impoundment unconstitutional and limited the President’s authority to impound funds to whatever extent was permitted by Congress in statutory language.

In military matters, the elites’ reaction against the Vietnam War, shaped by negative press coverage and antiwar demonstrations on elite college campuses, gradually eroded popular support. The brunt of the responsibility for the vast expansion of the war lay with Lyndon Johnson and the manipulative use of a supposed North Vietnamese naval attack on an American destroyer, which resulted in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. At a time when Nixon had ended the military draft, drastically reduced American troop numbers in Vietnam, and agreed to the Paris Peace Accords signed at the end of January, 1973, Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution of 1973 over Nixon’s veto. The law limited the President’s power to engage in military hostilities to specified situations, in the absence of a formal declaration of war. It also basically required pre-action consultation with Congress for any use of American troops and a withdrawal of such troops unless Congress approved within sixty days. It also, somewhat mystifyingly, purported to disclaim any attempt to limit the President’s war powers. The Resolution has been less than successful in curbing presidential discretion in using the military and remains largely symbolic.

Another restriction on presidential authority occurred through the Supreme Court. In United States v. United States District Court in 1972, the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s program of warrantless electronic surveillance for domestic security. This was connected to the Huston Plan of warrantless searches of mail and other communications of Americans. Warrantless wiretaps were connected on some members of the National Security Council and several journalists. Not touched by the Court was the President’s authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance of foreigners or their agents for national security-related information gathering. On the latter, Congress nevertheless in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which, ironically, has expanded the President’s power in that area. Because it can be applied to communications of Americans deemed agents of a foreign government, FISA, along with the President’s inherent constitutional powers regarding foreign intelligence-gathering, can be used to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision. It has even been used in the last several years to target the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump.

Nixon’s use of the “pocket veto” and his imposition of price controls also triggered resentment and reaction in Congress, although once again his actions were hardly novel. None of these various executive policies, by themselves, were politically fatal. Rather, they demonstrate the political climate in which what otherwise was just another election-year dirty trick, the Watergate Hotel burglary, could result in the historically extraordinary resignation from office of a President who had not long before received the approval of a large majority of American voters. Nixon’s contemplated use of the IRS to audit “enemies” was no worse than the Obama Administration’s actual use of the IRS to throttle conservative groups’ tax exemption. His support of warrantless wiretaps under his claimed constitutional authority to target suspected domestic troublemakers, while unconstitutional, hardly is more troubling than Obama’s use of the FBI and CIA to manipulate the FISA system into spying on a presidential candidate to assist his opponent. Nixon’s wiretapping of NSC officials and several journalists is not dissimilar to Obama’s search of phone records of various Associated Press reporters and of spying on Fox News’s James Rosen. Obama’s FBI also accused Rosen of having violated the Espionage Act. The Obama administration brought more than twice as many prosecutions—including under the Espionage Act—against leakers than all prior Presidents combined. That was in his first term.

There was another, shadowy factor at work. Nixon, the outsider, offended the political and media elites. Nixon himself disliked the bureaucracy, which had increased significantly over the previous generation through the New Deal’s “alphabet agencies” and the demands of World War II and the Cold War. The Johnson Administration’s Great Society programs sped up this growth. The agencies were staffed at the upper levels with left-leaning members of the bureaucratic elite. Nixon’s relationship with the press was poisoned not only by their class-based disdain for him, but by the constant flow of leaks from government insiders who opposed him. Nixon tried to counteract that by greatly expanding the White House offices and staffing them with members who he believed were personally loyal to him. His reliance on those advisers rather than on the advice of entrenched establishment policy-makers threatened the political clout and personal self-esteem of the latter. What has been called Nixon’s plebiscitary style of executive government, relying on the approval of the voters rather than on that of the elite administrative cadre, also was a threat to the existing order. As Senator Charles Schumer warned President Trump in early January, 2017, about the intelligence “community,” “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Nixon, too, lived that reality.

Once out of office, Nixon generally stayed out of the limelight. The strategy worked well. As seems to be the custom for Republican presidents, once they are “former,” many in the press and among other “right-thinking people” came to see him as the wise elder statesman, much to be preferred to the ignorant cowboy (and dictator) Ronald Reagan. Who, of course, then came to be preferred to the ignorant cowboy (and dictator) George W. Bush. Who, of course, then came to be preferred to the ignorant reality television personality (and dictator) Donald Trump. Thus, the circle of political life continues. It ended for Nixon on April 22, 1994. His funeral five days later was attended by all living Presidents. Tens of thousands of mourners paid their respects.

The parallel to recent events should be obvious. That said, a comparison between seriousness of the Watergate Affair that resulted in President Nixon’s resignation and the Speaker Nancy Pelosi/Congressman Adam Schiff/Congressman Jerry Nadler impeachment of President Trump brings to mind what may be Karl Marx’s only valuable observation, that historic facts appear twice, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Danny de Gracia

The story of how men first set foot on the Moon one fateful day on July 20, 1969, will always be enshrined as one of America’s greatest contributions to history. When the first humans looked upwards to the night sky thousands of years ago, they must have marveled at the pale Moon looming in the heavens, set against the backdrop of countless stars. Inspired by the skies, and driven by a natural desire for exploration, humans must have wondered what was out there, and if it would be somehow possible to ever explore the distant heavens above.

Indeed, even the Bible tells us that the patriarch of faith, Abraham, was told by God in Genesis 15:5, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them. So shall your descendants be.”

The word given to Abraham may have been more than just an impressive way of promising an elderly man way past the age of conception that he would bear many children; it seems more like an invitation that mankind’s destiny belongs not merely on Earth, but among the stars of the limitless cosmos, as a spacefaring civilization.

Early Beginnings

For most of mankind’s history, space travel was relegated to wild myths, hopeless dreams, and fanciful science fiction. The first hurdle in reaching for the stars would be mastering staying aloft in Earth’s atmosphere, which by itself was no easy task. Observing birds, humans for millennia had tried to emulate organic wings with little to no success, not truly understanding the science of lift or the physics of flight.

Like Icarus of Greek mythology, the 11th century English Benedictine monk Eilmer of Malmesbury attempted to foray into the skies by fashioning wings as a kind of primitive glider, but he only succeeded in flying a short distance before he crashed, breaking his legs. Later, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier would give mankind a critical first in flight when he took off aboard the Montgolfier hot air balloon in 1783.

Ironically, it would not be benevolent inspiration that would free mankind from his millennia-old ties to the ground beneath his feet, but the pressing demands of war and increasing militarization of the planet. As the Industrial Age began, so also arose the age of warfare, and men knew from countless battles that whoever held the high ground could defend any stronghold or defeat any army. And what greater high ground could afford victory, than the heavens themselves?

Once balloons had been proven an effective and stable means of flight, militaries began to use them as spotting platforms to see enemy movements from a distance and provide accurate targeting for artillery. Notably, during the American Civil War, balloons made for a kind of early air forces for both the Union and Confederacy.

When the Wright Brothers at last mastered the art of controlled and powered flight in a fixed-wing aircraft on December 17, 1903, less than a decade later after the invention of the airplane, the First World War would erupt and aircraft and blimps would become crucial weapons in deciding the outcome of battles.

Germany’s defeat, which was seen by many Germans as something that should not have happened and should never happen again, stirred people like the former army lance corporal Adolf Hitler to pursue more advanced aerial weapons as a means of establishing military superiority.

Even as propeller planes were seen as the ultimate form of aircraft by most militaries of the time, in the late 1930s, German engineers Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt were already envisioning spacecraft to attack enemies from orbit. In 1941, they conceived plans for the Silbervogel (“Silver Bird”), a rocket-powered space bomber that could take off into low Earth orbit, descend, and bounce off the outer atmosphere like a tossed stone skipping across a pond to reach an enemy target even half a world away.

Fortunately for the United States, the Silbervogel would never be produced, but other German scientists would be working on wonder weapons of their own, one of them being Wernher von Braun, an engineer who had childhood dreams of landing men on the Moon with rockets.

Working at the Peenemünde Army Research Center, von Braun infamously gave Nazi Germany the power to use V-2 rockets, a kind of early ballistic missile that could deliver a high-explosive warhead hundreds of miles away. One such V-2 rocket, MW 18014, test launched on June 20, 1944, became the first man-made object to cross above the Kármán line – Earth’s atmospheric edge of space – when it reached an apogee of 176 kilometers in flight.

While these weapons did not win the war for Nazi Germany, they aroused the interest of both the United States and the Soviets, and as the victorious Allies reclaimed Europe, a frantic effort to capture German scientists for their aerospace knowledge would become the prelude to a coming Cold War.

The Nuclear Age and Space

The use of the Fat Man and Little Boy atomic bombs against Japan brought to light a realization among planners in both the United States and the Soviet Union: The next battleground for control of the planet would be space. Between the difficulty in intercepting weapons like the V-2 rocket, and the destructive capability of the atom bomb, the nations that emerged victorious in WWII all saw potential in combining these technologies together.

At the end of WWII, both the Soviet Union and the United States brought back to their countries numerous German scientists and unused V-2 rockets for the purposes of creating their own next-generation of missiles.

The early V-2 rockets developed by von Braun for Nazi Germany were primitive and inaccurate weapons, but they had demonstrated the capability to carry objects, such as an explosive warhead, in high ballistic arcs over the earth. Early atomic bombs were bulky and extremely heavy, which meant that in order to deliver these weapons of mass destruction across space, larger rockets would need to be developed.

It is no accident then that the early space launchers of both the Soviet Union and the United States were, in fact, converted intercontinental ballistic missiles (or ICBMs) meant for delivering nuclear payloads. The first successful nuclear ICBM was the Soviet R-7 Semyorka (NATO reporting name SS-6 “Sapwood”), which would be the basis for the modified rocket 8K71PS No. M1-1PS, that sent Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, into orbit on October 4, 1957.

The success of the Soviets in putting the first satellite into orbit awed the entire world, but was disturbing to the President Dwight D. Eisenhower White House, because it was not lost on the U.S. military that this accomplishment was more or less a demonstration of nuclear delivery capabilities by the Russians.

And while the United States in 1957 had an overwhelming superiority in nuclear weapons numbers relative to the Soviets, the nuclear doctrine of the early Cold War was structured around a bluff of “massive retaliation” created by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that intended to minimize the proliferation of new conflicts – including space –  by threatening atomic use as the default response.

“If an enemy could pick his time and place and method of warfare,” Dulles had said in a dinner before the Council on Foreign Relations in January 1954, “and if our policy was to remain the traditional one of meeting aggression by direct and local opposition, then we needed to be ready to fight in the Arctic and in the Tropics; in Asia, the Near East; and in Europe; by sea, by land, and by air; with old weapons, and with new weapons.”

A number of terrifying initial conclusions emerged from the success of Sputnik. First, it showed that the Soviets had reached the ultimate high ground before U.S./NATO forces, and that their future ICBMs could potentially put any target in the world at risk for nuclear bombardment.

To put things into perspective, a jet plane like the American B-47, B-52, or B-58 bombers of the time, took upwards of 8 hours or more cruising through the stratosphere to strike a target from its airbase. But an ICBM, which can reach speeds of Mach 23 or faster in its terminal descent from orbit, can hit any target in the world in 35 minutes or less from launch. This destabilizing development whittled down the U.S. advantage, as it gave the Soviets the possibility of firing first in a surprise attack to “decapitate” any superior American or NATO forces that might be used against them.

The second, and more alarming perception paved by the Soviet entry into space was that America had dropped the ball and been left behind, not only technologically, but historically. In the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev sought to gut check the integrity of both the United States and the NATO alliance by showcasing novel technological accomplishments, such as the Sputnik launch, to cast a long shadow over Western democracies and to imply that communism would be the wave of the future.

In a flurry of briefings and technical research studies that followed the Sputnik orbit, von Braun and other scientists in the U.S. determined that while the Soviets had beaten the West into orbit, the engineering and industrial capabilities of America would ultimately make it feasible for the U.S. over the long term to accomplish a greater feat, in which a man could be landed on the Moon.

Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, later to be vice president to the young, idealistic John F. Kennedy, would be one of the staunchest drivers behind the scenes in pushing for America’s landing on the Moon. The early years of the space race were tough to endure, as NASA, America’s fledgling new civilian space agency, seemed – at least in public – to always be one step behind the Soviets in accomplishing space firsts.

Johnson, a rough-on-the-edges, technocratic leader who saw the necessity of preventing a world “going to sleep by the light of a communist Moon” pushed to keep America in the space fight even when it appeared, to some, as though American space rockets “always seemed to blow up.” His leadership would put additional resolve in the Kennedy administration to stay the course, and may have arguably ensured America being the first and only nation to land men on the Moon.

The Soviets would score another blow to America when on April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he made a 108-minute orbital flight, launched on the Vostok-K 8K72K rocket, another R-7 ICBM derivative.

But a month later on May 5, 1961, NASA began to catch-up with the Soviets when Alan Shepard and his Freedom 7 space capsule successfully made it into space, brought aloft by the Mercury-Redstone rocket which was adapted from the U.S. Army’s PGM-11 short range nuclear ballistic missile.

Each manned launch and counter-launch between the two superpowers was more than just a demonstration of scientific discovery; they were suggestions of nuclear launch capabilities, specifically, the warhead throw weight power of either country’s missiles, and a thinly veiled competition of who, at any given point in time, was winning the Cold War.

International Politics and Space

President Kennedy, speaking at Rice University on September 12, 1962, just one month before the Cuban Missile Crisis, hinted to the world that the Soviet advantage in space was not quite what it seemed to be, and that perhaps some of their “less public” space launches had been failures. Promising to land men on the Moon before the decade ended, Kennedy’s “Moon speech” at Rice has been popularly remembered as the singular moment when America decided to come together and achieve the impossible, but this is not the whole story.

In truth, ten days after giving the Moon speech, Kennedy privately reached out to Khrushchev pleading with him to make the landing a joint affair, only to be rebuffed, and then to find himself in October 14 of that same year ambushed by the Soviets with offensive nuclear missiles pointed at the U.S. in Cuba.

Kennedy thought himself to be a highly persuasive, flexible leader who could peaceably talk others into agreeing to make political changes, which set him at odds with the more hard-nosed, realpolitik-minded members of both his administration and the U.S. military. It also invited testing of his mettle by the salty Khrushchev, who saw the youthful American president – “Profiles in Courage” aside – as inexperienced, pliable, and a pushover.

Still, while the Moon race was a crucial part of keeping America and her allies encouraged amidst the ever-chilling Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis deeply shook Kennedy and brought him face-to-face with the possibility of a nuclear apocalypse.

Kennedy had already nearly gone to nuclear war once before during the now largely forgotten Berlin Crisis of 1961 when his special advisor to West Berlin, Lucius D. Clay, responded to East German harassment of American diplomatic staff with aggressive military maneuvers, but the Cuba standoff had become one straw too heavy for the idealistic JFK.

Fearing the escalating arms race, experiencing sticker shock over the growing cost of the Moon race he had committed America to, and ultimately wanting to better relations with the Soviet Union, a year later on September 20, 1963 before the United Nations, Kennedy dialed his public Moon rhetoric back and revisited his private offer to Khrushchev when he asked, albeit rhetorically, “Why, therefore, should man’s first flight to the Moon be a matter of national competition?”

The implications of a joint U.S.-Soviet Moon landing may have tickled the ears of world leaders throughout the General Assembly, but behind the scenes, it agitated both Democrats and Republicans alike, who not-so-secretly began to wonder if Kennedy was “soft” on communism.

Even Kennedy’s remarks to the press over the developing conflict in Vietnam during his first year as president were especially telling about his worldview amidst the arms race and space race of the Cold War: “But we happen to live – because of the ingenuity of science and man’s own inability to control his relationships with one another – we happen to live in the most dangerous time in the history of the human race.”

Kennedy’s handling of the Bay of Pigs, Berlin, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his more idealistic approaches to the openly belligerent Soviet Union began to shake the political establishment, and the possibility of ceding the Moon to a kind of squishy, joint participation trophy embittered those who saw an American landing as a crucial refutation of Soviet advances.

JFK was an undeniably formidable orator, but in the halls of power, he was beginning to develop a reputation in his presidency as eroding America’s post-WWII advantages as a military superpower and leader of the international system. His rhetoric made some nervous, and suggestions of calling off an American Moon landing put a question mark over the future of the West for some.

Again, the Moon race wasn’t just about landing men on the Moon; it was about showcasing the might of one superpower over the other, and Kennedy’s attempts to roll back America’s commitment to space in favor of acquiescing to a Moon shared with the Soviets could have potentially cost the West the outcome of the Cold War.

As far back as 1961, NASA had already sought the assistance of the traditionally military-oriented National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to gain access to top secret, exotic spy technologies which would assist them in surveying the Moon for future landings, and would later enter into memorandums of agreement with the NRO, Department of Defense, and Central Intelligence Agency. This is important, because the crossover between the separations of civilian spaceflight and military/intelligence space exploitation reflects how the space race served strategic goals rather than purely scientific ones.

On August 28, 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and NASA Administrator James Webb had signed an MOA titled “DOD/CIA-NASA Agreement on NASA Reconnaissance Programs” (Document BYE-6789-63) which stated “NRO, by virtue of its capabilities in on-going reconnaissance satellite programs, has developed the necessary technology, contractor resources, and management skills to produce satisfactory equipments, and appropriate security methods to preserve these capabilities, which are currently covert and highly sensitive. The arrangement will properly match NASA requirements with NRO capabilities to perform lunar reconnaissance.”

Technology transfers also went both ways. The Gemini space capsules, developed by NASA as part of the efforts to master orbital operations such as spacewalks, orbital docking, and other aspects deemed critical to an eventual Moon landing, would even be considered by the United States Air Force for a parallel military space program on December 16, 1963. Adapting the civilian Gemini design into an alternate military version called the “Gemini-B,” the Air Force intended to put crews in orbit to a space station called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), which would serve as a reconnaissance platform to take pictures of Soviet facilities.

While the MOL program would ultimately be canceled in its infancy before ever actually going online by the President Richard Nixon Administration in 1969, it was yet another demonstration of the close-knit relationship between civilian and military space exploration to accomplish the same interests.

Gold Fever at NASA

Whatever President Kennedy’s true intentions may have been moving forward on the space race, his unfortunate death two months after his UN speech at the hands of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas on November 22, 1963 would be seized upon as a justification by the establishment to complete the original 1962 Rice University promise of landing an American first on the Moon, before the end of the decade.

Not surprisingly, one of Johnson’s very first actions in assuming the presidency after the death of Kennedy was to issue Executive Order 11129 on November 29, 1963, re-naming NASA’s Launch Operations Center in Florida as the “John F. Kennedy Space Center,” a politically adroit maneuver which ensured the space program was now seen as synonymous with the fallen president.

In world history, national icons and martyrs – even accidental or involuntary ones – are powerful devices for furthering causes that would ordinarily burnout and lose interest, if left to private opinion alone. Kennedy’s death led to a kind of “gold fever” at NASA in defeating the Soviets, and many stunning advances in space technology would be won in the aftermath of his passing.

So intense was the political pressure and organizational focus at NASA that some began to worry that corners were being cut and that there were serious issues that needed to be addressed.

On January 27, 1967, NASA conducted a “plugs out test” of their newly developed Apollo space capsule, where launch conditions would be simulated on the launch pad with the spacecraft running on internal power. The test mission, designated AS-204, had been strongly cautioned against by the spacecraft’s manufacturer, North American Aviation, because of the fact that it would take place at sea level and with pure oxygen, where the pressure would be dangerously higher than normal atmospheric pressure. Nevertheless, NASA proceeded with the test.

Veteran astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Ed White, who crewed the test mission, would perish when an electrical malfunction sparked a fire that spread rapidly as a result of the pure oxygen atmosphere of the capsule. Their deaths nearly threatened to bring the entire U.S. space program to a screeching halt, but NASA was able to rise above the tragedy, adding the loss of their astronauts as yet another compelling case for making it to the Moon before the decade would end.

On January 30, 1967, the Monday that followed the “Apollo 1” fire, NASA flight director Eugene F. Kranz gathered his staff together and gave an impromptu speech that would change the space agency forever.

“Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect,” he began. “Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it.”

He would go on to say, “We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would be a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: Tough and Competent. ‘Tough’ means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control, we will know what we stand for.”

“‘Competent’ means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills; Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today, you will go back to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room, these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.”

And “tough and competent” would be exactly what NASA would become in the days, months, and years to follow. The U.S. space agency in the wake of the Apollo fire would set exacting standards of professionalism, quality, and safety, even as they continued to increase in mastery of the technology and skills necessary to make it to the Moon.

America’s Finest Hour

Unbeknownst to U.S. intelligence agencies, the Soviets had already fallen vastly far behind in their own Moon program, and their N1 rocket, which was meant to compete with the U.S. Saturn V rocket, was by no means ready for manned use. Unlike NASA, the Soviet space program had become completely dependent on a volatile combination of personalities and politics, which bottlenecked innovation, slowed necessary changes, and in the end, made it impossible to adapt appropriately in the race for the Moon.

On December 21, 1968, the U.S. leapt into first place in the space race when Apollo 8 entered history as the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth, orbit the Moon, and return. Having combined decades of military and civilian science, overcome terrible tragedies, and successfully applied lessons learned into achievements won, NASA could at last go on to attain mankind’s oldest dream of landing on the Moon with the Apollo 11 mission, launched on July 16, 1969 from the Kennedy Space Center launch complex LC-39A.

Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” E. Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins would reach the Moon’s orbit on July 19, where they would survey their target landing site at the Sea of Tranquility and begin preparations for separation from the Command Module, Columbia, and landing in the Lunar Module, The Eagle.

On Sunday, July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin would leave Collins behind to pilot the Apollo Command Module and begin their descent to the lunar surface below. Discovering their landing area strewn with large boulders, Armstrong took the Lunar Module out of computer control and manually steered the lander on its descent while searching for a suitable location, finding himself with only a mere 50 seconds of fuel left. But at 8:17 pm, Armstrong would touch down safely, declaring to a distant Planet Earth, “Houston, Tranquility Base here, The Eagle has landed!”

Communion on the Moon

As if to bring humanity full circle, two hours after landing on the surface of the Moon, Aldrin, a Presbyterian, quietly and unknown to NASA back on Earth, would remove from his uniform a small 3” x 5” notecard with a hand-written passage from John 15:5. Taking Communion on the Moon, Aldrin would read within the Lunar Module, “As Jesus said: I am the Vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in Me, and I in Him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without Me.”

Abraham, the Bible’s “father of faith,” could almost be said to have been honored by Aldrin’s confession of faith. In a sense, the landing of a believing astronaut on a distant heavenly object was like a partial fulfillment of the prophecy of Genesis 15:5, in which Abraham’s descendants would be like the stars in the sky.

Later, when Armstrong left the Lunar Module and scaled the ladder down to the Moon’s dusty surface, he would radio back to Earth, “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” Due to a 35-millisecond interruption in the signal, listeners would not hear the “one small step for a man” but instead, “one small step for man,” leaving the entire world with the impression that the NASA astronauts had won not just a victory for America, but for humankind, as a whole.

After planting Old Glory, the flag of the United States of America in the soft lunar dust, the Moon race had officially been won, and the Soviets, having lost the initiative, would scale back their space program to focus on other objectives, such as building space stations and attempting to land probes on other planets. The Soviets not only lost the Moon race, but their expensive investment that produced no propaganda success would also, ultimately, cost them the Cold War as well.

America would go on to send men to the Moon a total of six times and with twelve different astronauts between July 20, 1969 (Apollo 11) and December 11, 1972 (Apollo 17). The result of the U.S. winning the Moon race would be the caper of assuring the planet that the Western world would not be overtaken by the communist bloc, and many useful technologies which were employed either for the U.S. civilian space program or military aerospace applications would later find themselves in commercial, everyday use.

While other nations, including Russia, the European Union, Japan, India, China, Luxembourg, and Israel all have successfully landed unmanned probes on the Moon, to this date, only the United States holds the distinction of having placed humans on the Moon.

Someday, hopefully soon, humans will return once again to the Moon, and even travel from there to distant planets, or even distant stars. But no matter how far humanity travels, the enduring legacy of July 20, 1969 will be that freedom won the 20th century because America, not the Soviets, won the Moon race.

Landing on the Moon was a global victory for humanity, but getting there first will forever be a uniquely American accomplishment.

Dr. Danny de Gracia, Th.D., D.Min., is a political scientist, theologist, and former committee clerk to the Hawaii State House of Representatives. He is an internationally acclaimed author and novelist who has been featured worldwide in the Washington Times, New York Times, USA Today, BBC News, Honolulu Civil Beat, and more. He is the author of the novel American Kiss: A Collection of Short Stories.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
USS.Maddox1960s

On March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman delivered a speech advocating assistance to Greece and Turkey to resist communism as part of the early Cold War against the Soviet Union. The speech enunciated the Truman Doctrine, which led to a departure from the country’s traditional foreign policy to a more expansive direction in global affairs.

Truman said, “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Protecting the free world against communist expansion became the basis for the policy of Cold War containment.

The United States fought a major war in Korea in the early 1950s to halt the expansion of communism in Asia especially after the loss of China in 1949. Although President Dwight D. Eisenhower had resisted the French appeal to intervene in Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the United States gradually increased its commitment and sent thousands of military advisers and billions of dollars in financial assistance over the next decade.

In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson was in the midst of a presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater and pushing his Great Society legislative program through Congress. He did not want to allow foreign affairs to imperil either and downplayed increased American involvement in the war.

Administration officials were quietly considering bombing North Vietnam or sending ground troops to interdict the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. Meanwhile, the United States Navy was running covert operations in the waters off North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin.

On August 2, the destroyer USS Maddox and several U.S. fighter jets from a nearby carrier exchanged fire with some North Vietnamese gunboats. The U.S. warned North Vietnam that further “unprovoked” aggression would have “grave consequences.” The USS Turner Joy was dispatched to patrol with the Maddox.

On August 4, the Maddox picked up multiple enemy radar contacts in severe weather, but no solid proof confirmed the presence of the enemy. Whatever the uncertainty related to the event, the administration proceeded as if a second attack had definitely occurred. It immediately ordered a retaliatory airstrike and sought a congressional authorization of force. President Johnson delivered a national television address and said, “Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met….we seek no wider war.”

On August 7, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution which authorized the president “to take all necessary measures to repeal any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent any further aggression.” The House passed the joint resolution unanimously, and the Senate passed it with only two dissenting votes.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution became the basis for fighting the Vietnam War. World War II remained the last congressional declaration of war.

President Johnson had promised the electorate that he would not send “American boys to fight a war Asian boys should fight for themselves.” However, the administration escalated the war over the next several months.

On February 7, 1965, the Viet Cong launched an attack on the American airbase at Pleiku. Eight Americans were killed and more than one hundred wounded. President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara used the incident to expand the American commitment significantly but sought a piecemeal approach that would largely avoid a contentious public debate over American intervention.

Within a month, American ground troops were introduced into Vietnam as U.S. Marines went ashore and were stationed at Da Nang to protect an airbase there. The president soon authorized deployment of thousands more troops. In April, he approved Operation Rolling Thunder which launched a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

It did not take long for the Marines to establish offensive operations against the communists. The Marines initiated search and destroy missions to engage the Viet Cong. They fought several battles with the enemy, requiring the president to send more troops.

In April 1965, the president finally explained his justification for escalating the war, which included the Cold War commitment to the free world. He told the American people, “We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure.”

As a result, Johnson progressively sent more and more troops to fight in Vietnam until there were 565,000 troops in 1968. The Tet Offensive in late January 1968 was a profound shock to the American public which had received repeated promises of progress in the war. Even though U.S. forces recovered from the initial shock and won on overwhelming military victory that effectively neutralized the Viet Cong and devastated North Vietnamese Army forces, President Johnson was ruined politically and announced he would not run for re-election. His “credibility gap” contributed to growing distrust of government and concern about an unlimited and unchecked “imperial presidency” soon made worse by Watergate.

The Vietnam War contributed to profound division on the home front. Hundreds of thousands of Americans from across the spectrum protested American involvement in Vietnam. Young people from the New Left were at the center of teach-ins and demonstrations on college campuses across the country. The Democratic Party was shaken by internal convulsions over the war, and conservatism dominated American politics for a generation culminating in the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Eventually, more than 58,000 troops were lost in the war. The Cold War consensus on containment suffered a dislocation, and a Vietnam syndrome affected morale in the U.S. military and contributed to significant doubts about the projection of American power abroad. American confidence recovered in the 1980s as the United States won the Cold War, but policymakers have struggled to define the purposes of American foreign policy with the rise of new global challenges in the post-Cold War world.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Dan Morenoff

It took almost a century for Congress, and President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964, putting America back on the side of defending the equality before the law of all U.S. Citizens. That act formally made segregation illegal. It legally required states to stop applying facially neutral election laws differently, depending on the race of the citizen trying to register and vote. If the Civil Rights Act of 1957 had raised expectations by showing what was now possible, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 again dramatically raised expectations to actual equal treatment by governments.

But the defenders of segregation were not yet done. They continued to pursue the “massive resistance” to integration that emerged in the year between Brown I and Brown II.[1] They continued to refuse to register black voters, to use “literacy” tests (which tested esoteric knowledge, rather than literacy) only to deny black citizens the chance to register, and to murder those who didn’t get the message.

Jimmie Lee Jackson was one such victim of last-ditch defiance. In February 1965, Jackson, an Alabamian church deacon, led a demonstration in favor of voting rights in his hometown of Marion, Alabama; as he did so, state troopers beat him to death. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (in apparent coordination with the White House) responded by organizing a far larger march for voting rights, one that would cover the 54 miles from Selma, Alabama to the capitol in Montgomery. On March 7, 1965, that march reached the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, where national and international television cameras captured (and broadcast into living rooms everywhere) Alabama state troopers gassing and beating unarmed demonstrators.  When the SCLC committed to continuing the march, others flocked to join them. Two days later, as a federal court considered enjoining further state action against the demonstrators, a mob lynched James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston who had flown in for that purpose.

Johnson Returns to Congress

Less than a week later, President Johnson had called Congress into a special session and began it with a nationally televised Presidential address to a Joint Session.[2] Urging “every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country” to join him in working “for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy,” President Johnson, the heavily accented man-of-the-South that Senator Richard Russell, a Democrat from Georgia, once had connived to get into the Presidency, compared the historical “turning point” confronting the nation to other moments “in man’s unending search for freedom” including the battles of “Lexington and Concord” and the surrender at “Appomattox.” President Johnson defined the task before Congress as a “mission” that was “at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.” The President identified the core issue – that “of equal rights for American Negroes” – as one that “lay bare the secret heart of America itself[,]” a “challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values, and the purposes, and the meaning of our beloved nation.”

He said more. President Johnson recognized that “[t]here is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans — not as Democrats or Republicans. We are met here as Americans to solve that problem.”  And still more:

“This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: ‘All men are created equal,’ ‘government by consent of the governed,’ ‘give me liberty or give me death.’ Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives.

“Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man’s possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position.  It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being. To apply any other test – to deny a man his hopes because of his color, or race, or his religion, or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.

“Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.

“There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right.  There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.

“Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes. Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application, he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of State law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write.

“For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books – and I have helped to put three of them there – can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. In such a case our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath.

“We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in. And we ought not, and we cannot, and we must not wait another eight months before we get a bill. We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone.

“But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too.  Because it’s not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

“The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this nation. His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change, designed to stir reform.  He has called upon us to make good the promise of America.  And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for his persistent bravery, and his faith in American democracy.

“For at the real heart of [the] battle for equality is a deep[-]seated belief in the democratic process. Equality depends not on the force of arms or tear gas but depends upon the force of moral right; not on recourse to violence but on respect for law and order.

“And there have been many pressures upon your President and there will be others as the days come and go. But I pledge you tonight that we intend to fight this battle where it should be fought – in the courts, and in the Congress, and in the hearts of men.”

The Passage and Success of the Voting Rights Act

Congress made good on the President’s promises and fulfilled its oath.  The Voting Rights Act, the crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement, was signed into law in August 1965, less than five (5) months after those bloody events in Selma.

The VRA would allow individuals to sue in federal court when their voting rights were denied. It would allow the Department of Justice to do the same. And, recognizing that “voting discrimination … on a pervasive scale” justified an “uncommon exercise of congressional power[,]” despite the attendant “substantial federalism costs[,]” it required certain states and localities, for a limited time, to obtain the approval (or “pre-clearance”) of either DOJ or a federal court sitting in Washington, DC before making any alteration to their voting laws, from registration requirements to the location of polling places.[3]

And it worked.

The same Alabama Governor and Democrat, George Wallace, who (on first losing re-election) had promised himself never to be “out-segged” again and who, on getting back into office in 1963, had proclaimed “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever[!]” would win re-election in 1982 by seeking and obtaining the majority support of Alabama’s African Americans. By 2013, “African-American voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in five of the six States originally covered by [the pre-clearance requirement], with a gap in the sixth State of less than one half of one percent;”[4] the percentage of preclearance submissions drawing DOJ objections had dropped about 100-fold between the first decade under pre-clearance and 2006.[5]

At long last, with only occasional exceptions (themselves addressed through litigation under the VRA), American elections were held consistent with the requirements of the Constitution and the equality before the law of all U.S. Citizens.

Dan Morenoff is Executive Director of The Equal Voting Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Southern states might now be required by law to integrate their public schools, but, by and large, they didn’t yet do so.  That would follow around 1970 when a pair of events forced the issue: (a) a University of Southern California football team led by O.J. Simpson drubbed the University of Alabama in the Crimson Tide’s 1970 home opener – so allowing Alabama Coach Bear Bryant to finally convince Alabama Governor George Wallace that the state must choose between having competitive football or segregated football; and (b) President Nixon quietly confronting the Southern governments that had supported his election with the conclusion of the American intelligence community that their failure to integrate was costing America the Cold War – they must decide whether they hated their black neighbors more than they hated the godless Communists.  However ironically, what finally killed Jim Crow was a love of football and a hatred of Marxism.

[2] See, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/lbjweshallovercome.htm.

[3] Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529, 133 S.Ct. 2612, 2620 and 2624 (2013) (each citing South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 308 and 334 (1966)); and at 2621 (citing Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193, 202-03 (2009)), respectively.

[4] Id. at 2626.

[5] Id.

Guest Essayist: Dan Morenoff

For a decade after the Civil War, the federal government sought to make good its promises and protect the rights of the liberated as American citizens.  Most critically, in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress created U.S. Citizenship and, in the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Congress guaranteed all American Citizens access to all public accommodations. Then, stretching from 1877 to the end of the century following the close of the Civil War, the federal government did nothing to assure that those rights were respected. Eventually, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court started to admit that this was a problem, a clear failure to abide by our Constitution. But the Supreme Court (in Brown II) also made clear that it wouldn’t do anything about it.

So things stood, until a man in high office made it his business to get the federal government again on the side of right, equality, and law. That man was Lyndon Baines Johnson. And while this story could be told in fascinating, exhaustive detail,[1] these are its broad outlines.

Jim Crow’s Defenders

Over much of the century following the Civil War’s close, the American South was an accepted aberration, where the federal government turned a blind-eye to government mistreatment of U.S. Citizens (as well as to the systematic failure of governments to protect U.S. Citizens from mob-rule and racially-tinged violence), and where the highest office White Southerners could realistically dream of attaining was a seat in the U.S. Senate from which such a Southerner could keep those federal eyes blind.[2], [3] So, for the decades when it mattered, Southern Senators used their seniority and the procedures of the Senate (most prominently the filibuster, pioneered the previous century by South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun in the early 1800s) to block any federal ban on lynching, to protect the region’s racial caste system from federal intrusion, and to steadily steer federal money into the rebuilding of their broken region.  For decades, the leader of these efforts was Senator Richard Russell, a Democrat from Georgia and an avowed racist, if one whose insistence on the prerogatives of the Senate and leadership on other issues nonetheless earned him the unofficial title, “the Conscience of the Senate.”

LBJ Enters the Picture

Then Lyndon Baines Johnson got himself elected to the Senate as a Democrat from Texas in 1948. He did so through fraud in a hotly contested election. The illegal ballots counted on his behalf turned a narrow defeat into an 87-vote victory that triggered his Senate colleagues calling him “Landslide Lyndon” for the rest of his career.

By that time, LBJ had established a number of traits that would remain prominent throughout the rest of his life. Everywhere he went, LBJ consistently managed to convince powerful men to treat him as if he was their professional son. For a few examples, LBJ had convinced the president of his college to treat him alone among decades of students as a preferred heir. For another, as a Congressman, he managed to convince Sam Rayburn, a Democrat from Texas and Speaker of the House for 17 of 21 years, a man before whom everyone else in Washington coward, to allow LBJ to regularly walk up to him in large gatherings to kiss his bald head. And everywhere he went, LBJ consistently managed to identify positions no one else wanted that held potential leverage and therefore could be made focal points of enormous power. When LBJ worked as a Capitol-Hill staffer, he turned a “model Congress,” in which staffers played at being their bosses, into a vehicle to move actual legislation through the embarrassment of his rivals’ bosses. On a less positive note, everywhere he went, LBJ had demonstrated (time and again) an enthusiasm for verbally and emotionally abusing those subject to his authority such as staffers, girl-friends, his wife…, sometimes in the service of good causes and other times entirely in the name of his caprice and meanness.

In the Senate, LBJ followed form. He promptly won the patronage of Richard Russell, convincing the arch-segregationist both that he was the Southerner capable of taking up Russell’s mantle after him and that Russell should teach him everything he knew about Senate procedure.  Arriving at a time that everyone else viewed Senate leadership positions as thankless drudgery, LBJ talked his way into being named his party’s Senate Whip in only his second Congress in the chamber. Four years later, having impressed his fellow Senators with his ability to accurately predict how they would vote, even as they grew to fear his beratings and emotional abuse, LBJ emerged as Senate Majority Leader. And in 1957, using as instigation the support of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, for such a measure and the recent Supreme Court issuance of Brown, LBJ managed to convince Russell both that the Senate must pass the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction, a comparatively weak bill, so palatable to Russell as a way to prevent the passage of a stronger one and that Russell should help him pass it to advance LBJ’s chances of winning the Presidency in 1960 as a loyal Southerner. Substantively, that 1957 Act created the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, a clearinghouse for ideas for further reforms, but one with no enforcement powers. The Act’s real power, though, wasn’t in its substance. Its real power lay in what it demonstrated was suddenly possible: where a weak act could pass, a stronger one was conceivable. And where one was conceivable, millions of Americans long denied equality, Americans taught by Brown, in the memorable phraseology of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. that “justice too long delayed is justice denied” would demand the passage of the possible.

The Kennedy Years

Of course, Johnson didn’t win the Presidency in 1960. But, in part thanks to Rayburn and Russell’s backing, he did win the Vice Presidency. There, he could do nothing, and did. President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, didn’t trust him, the Senate gave him no role, and Bobby Kennedy, the President’s in-house proxy and functional Prime Minister, officially serving as Attorney General, openly mocked and dismissed Johnson as a washed up, clownish figure. So as the Civil Rights Movement pressed for action to secure the equality long denied, as students were arrested at lunch-counters and freedom riders were murdered, LBJ could only take the Attorney General’s abuse, silently sitting back and watching the President commit the White House to pushing for a far more aggressive Civil Rights Act, even as it had no plan for how to get it passed over the opposition of Senator Russell and his block of Southern Senators.

Dallas, the Presidency, and How Passage Was Finally Obtained

Not long before his assassination in 1963, President Kennedy proposed stronger legislation and said the nation “will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.” But, when an assassin’s bullet tragically slayed President Kennedy on a Dallas street, LBJ became the new president of the United States. The man with a knack for finding leverage and power where others saw none suddenly sat Center Stage, with every conceivable lever available to him. And he wasted no time deploying those levers. Uniting with the opposition party’s leadership in the Senate, Everett Dirksen, a Republican from Illinois, was the key man who delivered the support of eighty-two percent (82%) of his party’s Senators, President Johnson employed every tool available to the chief magistrate to procure passage of the stronger Civil Rights Act he had once promised Senator Russell that the 1957 Act would forestall.

The bill he now backed, like the Civil Rights Act of 1875, would outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in public accommodations through Title II. It would do more. Title I would forbid the unequal application of voter registration laws to different races. Title III would bar state and local governments from denying access to public facilities on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Title IV would authorize the Department of Justice to bring suits to compel the racial integration of schools. Title VI would bar discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin by federally funded programs and activities. And Title VII would bar employers from discriminating in hiring or firing on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

This was the bill approved by the House of Representatives after the President engineered a discharge petition to force the bill out of committee. This was the bill filibustered by 18 Senators for a record 60 straight days. This was the bill where that filibuster was finally broken on June 10, 1964, the first filibuster of any kind defeated since 1927. After the lengthy Democrat filibuster in the Senate, the bill was finally passed 73-27. The Senate passed that Civil Rights bill on June 19, 1964. The House promptly re-passed it as amended by the Senate.

On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on national television. Finally, on the same day that John Adams had predicted 188 years earlier would be forever commemorated as a “Day of Deliverance” with “Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other[,]” the federal government had restored the law abandoned with Reconstruction in 1876. Once more, the United States government would stand for the equality before the law for all its Citizens.

Dan Morenoff is Executive Director of The Equal Voting Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Robert Caro has, so far, written four (4) books over as many decades telling this story over thousands of pages.  The author recommends them, even as he provides this TLDR summation.  Caro’s books on the subject are: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, and The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power.

[2] Black Southerners, almost totally barred from voting, could not realistically hope for election to any office over this period.  It is worth noting, however, that the Great Migration saw a substantial portion of America’s Black population move North, where this was not the case and where such migrants (and their children) could and did win elective office.

[3] The exception proving the rule is President Woodrow Wilson.  Wilson, the son of a Confederate veteran, was born in Virginia and raised mostly in South Carolina.  Yet he ran for the Presidency as the Governor of New Jersey, a position be acquired as a result of his career at Princeton University (and the progressive movement’s adoration of the “expertise” that an Ivy League President seemed to promise).  Even then, Wilson could only win the Presidency (which empowered him to segregate the federal workforce) when his two predecessors ran against each other and split their shared, super-majority support.

Guest Essayist: Robert L. Woodson, Sr.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the launch of a nationwide War on Poverty in 1964, momentary hope arose that it would uplift the lives of thousands of impoverished Americans and their inner-city neighborhoods. But the touted antipoverty campaign of the 60s is a classic example of injury with the helping hand.

Regardless of intention—or mantras—the ultimate measure of any effort to reduce poverty is the impact it has on its purported beneficiaries. After more than 60 years and the investment of $25 trillion of tax-payers’ money, poverty numbers have virtually remained the same, while conditions in low-income neighborhoods have spiraled downward.

While impoverished Americans may not be rising up, what has become a virtual “poverty industry” and the bureaucracy of welfare system has prospered, expanding to 89 separate programs spread across 14 government programs and agencies.  In sum, 70% of anti-poverty funding has not reached the poor but has been absorbed by those who serve the poor. As a consequence, the system has created a commodity out of the poor with perverse incentives to maintain people in poverty as dependents. The operative question became not which problems are solvable, but which ones are fundable.

I had first-hand experience of power and money grabs that followed the launch of Johnson’s antipoverty agenda. As a young civil rights leader at the time of its introduction, I was very hopeful that, at long-last, policies would be adopted that would direct resources to empower the poor to rise. I was working for the summer in Pasadena, California, leading a work project with the American Friends Service Committee in the year after the Watts riots and the government’s response with the War on Poverty.

Initially, the anti-poverty money funded grassroots leaders in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods who had earned the trust and confidence of local people and had their best interests at heart. But many of the local grassroots leaders who were paid by the program began to raise questions about the functions of the local government and how it was assisting the poor. These challenges from the residents became very troublesome to local officials and they responded by appealing to Washington to change the rules to limit the control that those grassroots leaders could exercise over programs to aid their peers.

One of the ways the Washington bureaucracy responded was to institute a requirement that all outreach workers had to be college-educated as a condition of their employment. Overnight, committed and trusted workers on the ground found themselves out of a job. In addition, it was ruled that the allocation and distribution of all incoming federal dollars was to be controlled by a local anti-poverty board of directors that represented three groups: 1/3 local officials, 1/3 business leaders and 1/3 local community leaders. I knew from the moment those structural changes occurred that the poverty program was going to be a disaster and that it would serve the interests of those who served the poor with little benefit to its purported beneficiaries.

Since only a third of the participants on the board would be from the community, the other two-thirds were careful to ensure that the neighborhood residents would be ineffective and docile representatives who would ratify the opportunistic and often corrupt decisions they made. In the town where I was engaged in civil rights activities, I witnessed local poverty agencies awarding daycare contracts to business members on the board who would lease space at three times the market-value rate.

Years of such corruption throughout the nation were later followed by many convictions and the incarceration of people who were exploiting the programs and hurting the poor. When they were charged with corruption, many of the perpetrators used the issue of race to defend themselves. The practice of using race as a shield of defense against charges for corrupt activity continues to this day. The disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick received a 28-year sentence for racketeering, bribery, extortion and tax crimes. Last year, more than 40 public and private officials were charged as part of a long-running and expanding federal investigation into public corruption in metro Detroit, including fifteen police, five suburban trustees, millionaire moguls and a former state senator. Much of the reporting about corruption in the administration of poverty programs never rose to the level of public outrage or indignation and were treated as local issues.

Yet the failure of the welfare system and the War on Poverty is rooted in something deeper than the opportunistic misuse of funds. Its most devastating impact is in undermining pillars of strength that have empowered the black community to survive and thrive in spite of oppression: a spirit of enterprise and mutual cooperation, and the sustaining support of family and community.

In the past, even during periods of legalized discrimination and oppression, a spirit of entrepreneurship and agency permeated the black community. Within the first 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, black Americans had accumulated a personal wealth of $700 million. They owned more than 40,000 businesses and more than 930,000 farms, Black commercial enclaves in Durham, North Carolina and the Greenwood Avenue section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were known as the Negro Wall Street. When blacks were barred from white establishments and services, they created their own thriving alternative transit systems. When whites refused to lend money to blacks, they established more than 103 banks and savings and loans associations and more than 1,000 inns and hotels. When whites refused to treat blacks in hospitals, they established 230 hospitals and medical schools throughout the country.

In contrast, within the bureaucracy of the burgeoning poverty industry, low-income people were defined as the helpless victims of an unfair and unjust society. The strategy of the liberal social engineers is to right this wrong by the redistribution of wealth, facilitated by the social services bureaucracy in the form of cash payments or equivalent benefits. The cause of a person’s poverty was assumed beyond their power and ability to control and, therefore, resources were given with no strings attached and there was no assumption of the possibility of upward mobility towards self-sufficiency. The empowering notions of personal responsibility and agency were decried as “blaming the victim” and, with the spread of that mentality and the acceptance of a state of dependency the rich heritage of entrepreneurship in the black community fell by the wayside.

Until the mid-60s, in 85% of all black families, two parents were raising their children. Since the advent of the Welfare State, more than 75% of black children were born to single mothers. The system included penalties for marriage and work through which benefits would be decreased or terminated. As income was detached from work, the role of fathers in the family was undermined and dismissed. The dissolution of the black family was considered as necessary collateral damage in a war that was being waged in academia against capitalism in America, led by Columbia University professors Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven who promoted a massive rise of dependency with a goal to overload the U.S. public welfare system and elicit “radical change.”

Reams of research has found that youths in two-parent families are less likely to become involved in delinquent behavior and drug abuse or suffer depression and more likely to succeed in school and pursue higher education. As generations of children grew up on the streets of the inner city, drug addiction and school drop-out rates soared. When youths turned to gangs for identity, protection, and a sense of belonging, entire neighborhoods became virtual killing fields of warring factions. Statistics from Chicago alone bring home the tragic toll that has been taken. Within Fathers’ Day weekend, 104 people were shot across the city, 15 of them, including five children, fatally. Within a three-day period of the preceding week, a three-year-old child was shot and killed in the South Austin community, the third child under the age of 10 who was shot.

In the midst of this tragic scenario, the true casualties of the War on Poverty have been its purported beneficiaries.

Robert L. Woodson, Sr. founded the Woodson Center in 1981 to help residents of low-income neighborhoods address the problems of their communities. A former civil rights activist, he has headed the National Urban League Department of Criminal Justice, and has been a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Foundation for Public Policy Research. Referred to by many as “godfather” of the neighborhood empowerment movement, for more than four decades, Woodson has had a special concern for the problems of youth. In response to an epidemic of youth violence that has afflicted urban, rural and suburban neighborhoods alike, Woodson has focused much of the Woodson Center’s activities on an initiative to establish Violence-Free Zones in troubled schools and neighborhoods throughout the nation. He is an early MacArthur “genius” awardee and the recipient of the 2008 Bradley Prize, the Presidential Citizens Award, and a 2008 Social Entrepreneurship Award from the Manhattan Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society. – President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Anne Arbor, MI, May 22, 1964

In America in 1964, the seeds of the later discontent of the 1960s were being planted. The nation had just suffered an horrific assassination of an enormously charismatic president, John F. Kennedy, we were in the midst of an intense national conversation on race and civil rights, and we were just starting to get mired in a military conflict in Southeast Asia.

We were also getting into a presidential election, and while tackling poverty in America wasn’t a centerpiece, President Johnson started giving a series of speeches talking about transforming the United States into a “Great Society”—a concept that was going to be the most-massive series of social welfare reforms since Franklin Roosevelt’s post-depression “New Deal” of the 1930s.

In that time, there was serious debate over whether the federal government even had the power to engage in what had, traditionally, been state-level social support work—or, previously, private charitable work. The debate centered around the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause, the actionable part of the Constitution building on the Preamble’s “promote the general welfare” language, saying in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 that, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;” (emphasis added)

Proponents of an increased federal role in social service spending have argued that “welfare” for this purpose means just what politicians today proffer that it does: that “welfare” means social service spending, and that because the Constitution grants Congress this power, such power is expansive (if not unlimited).

But this flies in the face of the whole concept of the Constitution itself—which is the idea of a federal government of limited, carefully-enumerated powers. The founders were skeptical of powerful, centralized government (and had fought a revolution over that very point), and the debate of just how powerful, how centralized was at the core of the Constitutional Convention’s debates.

Constitutional author (and later president) James Madison said this in Federalist 41:

It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’’ amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases.

In 1831, he also said, more plainly:

With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

This was, essentially, the interpretation of the clause that stood for nearly 150 years—only to be largely gutted in the wake of FDR’s New Deal programs. As discussed in the essay on FDR’s first 100 days, there was great back and forth within the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the New Deal—with certain members of the court eventually apparently succumbing to the pressure of a proposed plan to “stack” the Supreme Court with newer, younger members.

A series of cases, starting with United States v. Butler (1936) and then Helvering v. Davis (1937), essentially ruled that Congress’ power to spend was non-reviewable by the Supreme Court… that there could be no constitutional challenge to spending plans, that if Congress said a spending plan was to “promote the general welfare” then that’s what it was.

Madison was right to be fearful—when taken into the context of an expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause, it gives the federal government near-unlimited power. Either something is subject to federal regulation because it’s an “item in or related to commerce” or it’s subject to federal spending because it “promotes the general welfare.”

Building on this, LBJ moved forward with the Great Society in 1964, creating a series of massive spending and federal regulatory programs whose goal was to eliminate poverty and create greater equity in social service programs.

Problematically, LBJ created a series of “task forces” to craft these policies—admittedly because he didn’t want public input or scrutiny that would lead to criticism of the work his administration was doing.

Normally, when the executive branch engages in policymaking, those policies are governed by a series of rules aimed at ensuring public participation—both so that the public can offer their ideas at possible solutions, but also to ensure that the government isn’t abusing its powers.

Here, the Johnson administration did no such thing—creating, essentially, a perfect storm of problematic policymaking: a massive upheaval of government policy, coupled with massive spending proposals, coupled with little public scrutiny.

Had they allowed for greater public input, someone might have pointed out what the founders knew: that there was a reason such social support has traditionally been either the purview of local governance or private charity, that such programs are much more effective when they are locally-driven and/or community based. Local services work because they better understand the challenges their local communities face.

And private charities provide more-effective services because they not only have a vested-interest in the outcomes, that vested-interest is driven by building relationships centered around faith and hope. If government programs are impersonal, government programs whose management is far-removed from the local communities is far worse.

The end result is two-fold:  faceless entitlement bureaucracies whose only incentive is self-perpetuation (not solving problems), and people who have little incentive to move themselves off of these programs.

Thus, Johnson’s Great Society was a massive failure. Not only did it not end poverty, it created a devastating perpetual cycle of it. Enormous bureaucratic programs which still exist today—and which, despite pressures at various points in time (the work of President Bill Clinton and the GOP-led Congress after the 1994 election at reforming the nation’s welfare programs as one example), seem largely resistant to change or improvement.

The founders knew that local and private charity did a better job at promoting “the general welfare” of a community than a federal program would. They knew the dangers of expansive government spending (and the power that would accrue with it). Once again, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said in New York v. United States (1992), the “Constitution protects us from our own best intentions.”

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty. He teaches in the Public Policy Program at the College of William & Mary

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joshua Schmid

The Cold War was a time of immense tension between the world’s superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. However, the two never came into direct conflict during the first decade and a half and rather chose to pursue proxy wars in order to dominate the geopolitical landscape. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 threatened to reverse this course by turning the war “hot” as the leader of the free world and the leader of the world communist revolution squared off in a deadly game of nuclear cat and mouse.

At the beginning of the 1960s, some members of the Soviet Union’s leadership desired more aggressive policies against the United States. The small island of Cuba, located a mere 100 miles off the coast of Florida, provided Russia with an opportunity. Cuba had recently undergone a communist revolution and its leadership was happy to accept Soviet intervention if it would minimize American harassments like the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offered to place nuclear missiles on Cuba, which would put him within striking range of nearly any target on the continental U.S. The Cubans accepted and work on the missile sites began during the summer of 1962.

Despite an elaborate scheme to disguise the missiles and the launch sites, American intelligence discovered the Soviet scheme by mid-October. President John F. Kennedy immediately convened a team of security advisors, who suggested a variety of options. These included ignoring the missiles, using diplomacy to pressure the Soviets to remove the missiles, invading Cuba, blockading the island, and strategic airstrikes on the missile sites. Kennedy’s military advisors strongly suggested a full-scale invasion of Cuba as the only way to defeat the threat. However, the president ultimately overrode them and decided any attack would only provoke greater conflict with the Russians. On October 22, Kennedy gave a speech to the American people in which he called for a “quarantine” of the island under which “all ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back.”

The Russians appeared unfazed by the bravado of Kennedy’s speech, and announced they would interpret any attempts to quarantine the island of Cuba as an aggressive act. However, as the U.S. continued to stand by its policy, the Soviet Union slowly backed down. When Russian ships neared Cuba, they broke course and moved away from the island rather than challenging the quarantine. Despite this small victory, the U.S. still needed to worry about the missiles already installed.

In the ensuing days, the U.S. continued to insist on the removal of the missiles from Cuba. As the haggling between the two nations continued, the nuclear launch sites became fully operational. Kennedy began a more aggressive policy that included a threat to invade Cuba. Amidst these tensions, the most harrowing event of the entire Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. The Soviet submarine B-59 neared the blockade line and was harassed by American warships dropping depth charges. The submarine had lost radio contact with the rest of the Russian navy and could not surface to refill its oxygen. The captain of B-59 decided that war must have broken out between the U.S. and Soviet Union, and proposed that the submarine launch its nuclear missile. This action required a unanimous vote by the top three officers onboard. Fortunately, the executive officer cast the lone veto vote against what surely would have been an apocalyptic action.

Eventually, Khrushchev and Kennedy reached an agreement that brought an end to the crisis. The Russians removed the missiles from Cuba and the U.S. promised not to invade the island. Additionally, Kennedy removed missiles stationed near the Soviet border in Turkey and Italy as a show of good faith. A brief cooling period between the two superpowers would ensue, during which time a direct communication line between the White House and the Kremlin was established. And while the Cold War would continue for three more decades, never again would the two blocs be so close to nuclear annihilation as they were in October 1962.

Joshua Schmid serves as a Program Analyst at the Bill of Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was a geopolitical struggle around the globe characterized by an ideological contest between capitalism and communism, and a nuclear arms race. An important part of the Cold War was the space race which became a competition between the two superpowers.

Each side sought to be the first to achieve milestones in the space race and used the achievements for propaganda value in the Cold War. The Soviet launch of the satellite, Sputnik, while a relatively modest accomplishment, became a symbolically important event that triggered and defined the dawn of the space race. The space race was one of the peaceful competitions of the Cold War and pushed the boundaries of the human imagination.

The Cold War nuclear arms race helped lead to the development of rocket technology that made putting humans into space a practical reality in a short time. Only 12 years after the Russians launched a satellite into orbit around the Earth, Americans sent astronauts to walk on the moon.

The origins of Sputnik and spaceflight occurred a few decades before World War II, with the pioneering flights of liquid-fueled rockets in the United States and Europe. American Robert Goddard launched one from a Massachusetts farm in 1926 and continued to develop the technology on a testing range in New Mexico in the 1930s. Meanwhile, Goddard’s research influenced the work of German rocketeer Hermann Oberth who fired the first liquid-fueled rocket in Europe in 1930 and dreamed of spaceflight. In Russia, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky developed the idea of rocket technology, and his ideas influenced Sergei Korolev in the 1930s.

The greatest advance in rocket technology took place in Nazi Germany, where Werner von Braun led efforts to build V-2 and other rockets that could hit England and terrorize civilian populations when launched from continental Europe. Hitler’s superweapons never had the decisive outcome for victory as he hoped, but the rockets had continuing military and civilian applications.

At the end of the war, Russian and Allied forces raced to Berlin as the Nazi regime collapsed in the spring of 1945. Preferring to surrender to the Americans because of the Red Army’s well-deserved reputation for brutality, von Braun and his team famously surrendered to Private Fred Schneikert and his platoon. They turned over 100 unfinished V-2 rockets and 14 tons of spare parts and blueprints to the Americans who whisked the scientists, rocketry, and plans away just days before the Soviet occupation of the area.

In Operation Paperclip, the Americans secretly brought thousands of German scientists and engineers to the United States including more than 100 German rocket scientists from Von Braun’s team to the United States. The operation was controversial because of Nazi Party affiliations, but few were rabid devotees to Nazi ideology, and their records were cleared. The Americans did not want them contributing to Soviet military production and brought them instead to Texas and then to Huntsville, Alabama, to develop American rocket technology as part of the nuclear arms race to build immense rockets to carry nuclear warheads. Within a decade, both sides had intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in their arsenals.

During the next decade, the United States developed various missile systems producing rockets of incredible size, thrust, and speed that could travel large distances. Interservice rivalry meant that the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force developed and built their own competing rocket systems including the Redstone, Vanguard, Jupiter-C, Polaris, and Atlas rockets. Meanwhile, the Soviets were secretly building their own R-7 missiles erected as a cluster rather than staged rocket.

On October 4, 1957, the Russians shocked Americans by successfully launching a satellite into orbit. Sputnik was a metal sphere weighing 184 pounds that emitted a beeping sound to Earth that was embarrassingly picked up by U.S. global tracking stations. The effort was not only part of the Cold War, but also the International Geophysical Year in which scientists from around the world formed a consortium to share information on highly active solar flares and a host of other scientific knowledge. However, both the Soviets and Americans were highly reluctant to share any knowledge that might have relationship to military technology.

While American intelligence had predicted the launch, Sputnik created a wave of panic and near hysteria. Although President Dwight Eisenhower was publicly unconcerned because the United States was preparing its own satellite, the American press, the public, and Congress were outraged, fearing the Russians were spying on them or could rain down nuclear weapons from space. Moreover, it seemed as if the Americans were falling behind the Soviets. Henry Jackson, a Democratic senator from the state of Washington, called Sputnik “a devastating blow to the United States’ scientific, industrial, and technical prestige in the world.” Sputnik initiated the space race between the United States and Soviet Union as part of the Cold War superpower rivalry.

A month later, the Soviets sent a dog named Laika into space aboard Sputnik II. Although the dog died because it only had life support systems for a handful of days, the second successful orbiting satellite—this one carrying a living creature—further humiliated Americans even if they humorously dubbed it “Muttnik.”

The public relations nightmare was further exacerbated by the explosion of a Vanguard rocket carrying a Navy satellite at the Florida Missile Test Range on Patrick Air Force Base on Cape Canaveral. on December 6. The event was aired on television and watched by millions. The launch was supposed to restore pride in American technology, but it was an embarrassing failure. The press had a field-day and labeled it “Kaputnik” and “Flopnik.”

On January 31, 1958, Americans finally had reason to cheer when a Jupiter-C rocket lifted off and went into orbit carrying a thirty-one-pound satellite named Explorer. The space race was now on and each side competed to be the first to accomplish a goal. The space race also had significant impacts upon American society.

In 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act to spend more money to promote science, math, and engineering education at all levels. To signal its peaceful intentions, Congress also created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a civilian organization to lead the American efforts in space exploration, whereas the Russian program operated as part of the military.

In December 1958, NASA announced Project Mercury with the purpose of putting an astronaut in space which would be followed by Projects Gemini and Apollo which culminated in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. The space race was an important part of the Cold War and also about the spirit of human discovery and pushing the frontiers of knowledge and space.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

While speaking on June 14, 1954, Flag Day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower talked about the importance of reaffirming religious faith in America’s heritage and future, that doing so would “constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.” In 1864 during the Civil War, the phrase “In God We Trust” first appeared on U.S. coins. On July 30, 1956, “In God We Trust” became the nation’s motto as President Eisenhower signed into law a bill declaring it, along with having the motto printed in capital letters, on every United States denomination of paper currency.

The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.” George Washington, 1778.[i]

It becomes a people publicly to acknowledge the over-ruling hand of Divine Providence and their dependence upon the Supreme Being as their Creator and Merciful Preserver . . .” Samuel Huntington, 1791.[ii]

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Associate Justice William O. Douglas, 1952.[iii]

One of the most enduring battles in American politics has been over the question of whether America is or ever was a Christian Nation. For Supreme Court Associate Justice David Brewer the answer was simple: yes. The United States was formed as and, in Brewer’s 1892 at least, still was, a Christian Nation. The Justice said as much in Church of the Holy Trinity vs. United States. But his simple answer did not go unsupported.

“[I]n what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it…Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all…Nevertheless, we constantly speak of this republic as a Christian Nation – in fact, as the leading Christian Nation of the world. This popular use of the term certainly has significance. It is not a mere creation of the imagination. It is not a term of derision but has substantial basis – on which justifies its use. Let us analyze a little and see what is the basis.”[iv]

Brewer went on, of course, to do just that.

Regrettably, it lies beyond the scope of this short essay to repeat Brewer’s arguments. In 1905, Brewer re-assembled them into a book: The United States a Christian Nation. It was republished in 2010 by American Vision and is worth the read.[v]  For the purposes of this essay I will stipulate, with Brewer, that America is a Christian nation. If that be the case, it should come as no surprise that such a nation would take the advice of Samuel Huntington and openly acknowledge its trust in God on multiple occasions and in a variety of ways: on its coinage, for instance. How we came to do that as a nation is an interesting story stretching over much of our history.

Trusting God was a familiar concept to America’s settlers – they spoke and wrote of it often. Their Bibles, at least one in every home, contained many verses encouraging believers to place their trust in God,[vi] and early Americans knew their Bible.[vii] Upon surviving the perilous voyage across the ocean, their consistent first act was to thank the God of the Bible for their safety.

Benjamin Franklin’s volunteer Pennsylvania militia of 1747-1748 reportedly had regimental banners displaying “In God We Trust.”[viii] In 1776, our Declaration of Independence confirmed the signers had placed “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”[ix] In 1814, Francis Scott Key penned his famous poem which eventually became our national anthem. The fourth stanza contains the words: “Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’”

In 1848, construction began on the first phase of the Washington Monument (it was not completed until 1884). “In God We Trust” sits among Bible verses chiseled on the inside walls and “Praise God” (“Laus Deo” in Latin) can be found on its cap plate. But it would be another thirteen years before someone suggested putting a “recognition of the Almighty God” on U.S. coins.

That someone, Pennsylvania minister M. R. Watkinson, wrote to Salmon P. Chase, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, and suggested that such a recognition of the Almighty God would “place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed.” Watkinson suggested the words “PERPETUAL UNION” and “GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.” Chase liked the basic idea but not Watkinson’s suggestions. He instructed James Pollock, Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, to come up with a motto for the coins: “The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins. You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition (emphasis mine).

Secretary Chase “wordsmithed” Director Pollock’s suggestions a bit and came up with his “tersest” words: “IN GOD WE TRUST,” which was ordered to be so engraved by an Act of Congress on April 22, 1864. First to bear the words was the 1864 two-cent coin.

The following year, another Act of Congress allowed the Mint Director to place the motto on all gold and silver coins that “shall admit the inscription thereon.” The motto was promptly placed on the gold double-eagle coin, the gold eagle coin, and the gold half-eagle coin. It was also minted on silver coins, and on the nickel three-cent coin beginning in 1866.

One might guess that the phrase has appeared on all U.S. coins since 1866 – one would be wrong.

The U.S. Treasury website explains (without further details) that “the motto disappeared from the five-cent coin in 1883, and did not reappear until production of the Jefferson nickel began in 1938.” The motto was also “found missing from the new design of the double-eagle gold coin and the eagle gold coin shortly after they appeared in 1907. In response to a general demand, Congress ordered it restored, and the Act of May 18, 1908, made it mandatory on all coins upon which it had previously appeared” [x] (emphasis added). I’m guessing someone got fired over that disappearance act. Since 1938, all United States coins have borne the phrase. None others have had it “go missing.”

The date 1956 was a watershed year.  As you read in the introduction to this essay, that year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law (P.L. 84-140) which declared “In God We Trust” to be the national motto of the United States. The bill had passed the House and the Senate unanimously and without debate. The following year the motto began appearing on U.S. paper currency, beginning with the one-dollar silver certificate. The Treasury gradually included it as part of the back design of all classes and denominations of currency.

Our story could end there – but it doesn’t.

There is no doubt Founding Era Americans would have welcomed the phrase on their currency had someone suggested it, but it turns out some Americans today have a problem with it – a big problem.

America’s atheists continue to periodically challenge the constitutionality of the phrase appearing on government coins. The first challenge occurred in 1970; Aronow v. United States would not be the last. Additional challenges were mounted in 1978 (O’Hair v. Blumenthal) and 1979 (Madalyn Murray O’Hair vs W. Michael Blumenthal). Each of these cases was decided at the circuit court level against the plaintiff, with the court affirming that the “primary purpose of the slogan was secular.”

Each value judgment under the Religion Clauses must therefore turn on whether particular acts in question are intended to establish or interfere with religious beliefs and practices or have the effect of doing so. [xi]

Having the national motto on currency neither established nor interfered with “religious beliefs and practices.”

In 2011, in case some needed a reminder, the House of Representatives passed a new resolution reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States by a 396–9 vote (recall that the 1956 vote had been unanimous, here in the 21st century it was not).

Undaunted by the courts’ previous opinions on the matter, atheist activist Michael Newdow brought a new challenge in 2019 — and lost in the Eighth Circuit. The Supreme Court (on April 23, 2020) declined to hear the appeal. At my count, Newdow is now 0-5. His 2004 challenge[xii] that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance violated the First Amendment was a bust, as was his 2009 attempt to block Chief Justice John Roberts from including the phrase “So help me God” when administering the presidential oath of office to Barack Obama. He tried to stop the phrase from being recited in the 2013 and 2017 inaugurations as well – each time unsuccessfully.

In spite of atheist challenges, or perhaps because of them, our national motto is enjoying a bit of resurgence of late, at least in the more conservative areas of the country:

In 2014, the Mississippi legislature voted to add the words, “In God We Trust” to their state seal.

In 2015, Jefferson County, Illinois decided to put the national motto on their police squad cars. Many other localities followed suit, including York County, Virginia, and Bakersfield, California, in 2019.

In March, 2017, Arkansas required their public schools to display posters which included the national motto. Similar laws were passed in Florida (2018), Tennessee (2018), South Dakota (2019) and Louisiana (2019).

On March 3, 2020, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill that would require all public buildings in the state to display the motto. Kansas, Indiana, and Oklahoma are considering similar bills.

But here is the question which lies at the heart of this issue: Does America indeed trust in God?

I think it is clear that America’s Founders, by and large did – at least they said and acted as though they did. But when you look around the United States today, outside of some limited activity on Sunday mornings and on the National Day of Prayer, does America actually trust in God? There is ample evidence we trust in everything, anything, but God.

Certainly we seem to trust in science, or what passes for science today.  We put a lot of trust in public education, it would seem, even though the results are quite unimpressive and the curriculum actually works to undermine trust in God. Finally, we put a lot of trust in our elected officials even though they betray that trust with alarming regularity.[xiii]

Perhaps citizens of the United States need to see our motto on our currency, on school and court room walls to simply remind us of what we should be doing, and doing more often.

“America trusts in God,” we declare. Do we mean it?

“And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.” Psalm 9:10 ESV

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people. CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[i] Letter to Thomas Nelson, August 20, 1778.

[ii] Samuel Huntington was a signer of the Declaration Of Independence; President of Congress;
Judge; and Governor of Connecticut.  Quoted from A Proclamation for a Day of Fasting, Prayer and Humiliation, March 9, 1791.

[iii] Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952).

[iv] Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892).

[v] https://store.americanvision.org/collections/books/products/the-united-states-a-christian-nation

[vi] Examples include: Psalm 56:3, Isaiah 26:4, Psalm 20:7, Proverbs 3:5-6 and Jeremiah 17:7.

[vii] “Their many quotations from and allusions to both familiar and obscure scriptural passages confirms that [America’s Founders] knew the Bible from cover to cover.” Daniel L. Driesbach, 2017, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, Oxford University Press, p.1

[viii] See https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161178

[ix] Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 1776.

[x] https://www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/in-god-we-trust.aspx

[xi] https://openjurist.org/432/f2d/242/aronow-v-united-states

[xii] Newdow v. United States, 328 F.3d 466 (9th Cir. 2004)

[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

In 1919, Dwight Eisenhower was part of a U.S. Army caravan of motor vehicles traveling across the country as a publicity stunt. The convoy encountered woeful and inadequate roads in terrible condition. The journey took two months by the time it was completed.

When Eisenhower was in Germany after the end of World War II, he was deeply impressed by the Autobahn because of its civilian and military applications. The experiences were formative in shaping Eisenhower’s thinking about developing a national highway system in the United States. He later said, “We must build new roads,” and asked Congress for “forward looking action.”

As president, Eisenhower generally held to the postwar belief called “Modern Republicanism.” This meant that while he did not support a massive increase in spending on the federal New Deal welfare state, he would also not roll it back. He was a fiscal conservative who supported decreased federal spending and balanced budgets, but he advocated a national highway system as a massive public infrastructure project to facilitate private markets and economic growth.

The postwar consumer culture was dominated by the automobile. Americans loved their large cars replete with large tail fins and abundant amounts of chrome. By 1960, 80 percent of American families owned a car. American cars symbolized their geographical mobility, consumer desires, and global industrial predominance. They needed a modern highway system to get around the sprawling country. By 1954, President Eisenhower was ready to pitch the idea of a national highway system to Congress and the states. He called it, “The biggest peacetime construction project of any description every undertaken by the United States or any other country.”

In July, Eisenhower dispatched his vice-president, Richard Nixon, to the meeting of Governors’ Conference to win support. The principle of federalism was raised with many states in opposition to federal control and taxes.

That same month, the president asked his friend, General Lucius Clay, who was an engineer by training and supervised the occupation of postwar Germany, to manage the planning of the project and present it to Congress. He organized the President’s Advisory on a National Highway Program.

The panel held hearings and spoke to a variety of experts and interests including engineers, financiers, construction and trucking companies, and labor unions. Based upon the information it amassed, the panel put together a plan by January 1955.

The plan proposed 41,000 miles of highway construction at an estimated cost of $101 billion over ten years. It recommended the creation of a federal highway corporation that would use 30-year bonds to finance construction. There would be a gas tax but no tolls or federal taxes. A bill was written based upon the terms of the plan.

The administration sent the bill to Congress the following month, but a variety of interests expressed opposition to the bill. Southern members of Congress, for example, were particularly concerned about federal control because it might set a precedent for challenging segregation. Eisenhower and his allies pushed hard for the bill and used the Cold War to sell the bill as a means of facilitating evacuation from cities in case of a nuclear attack. The bill passed the Senate but then stalled in the House where it died during the congressional session.

The administration reworked the bill and sent it to Congress again. The revised proposal created a Highway Trust Fund that would be funded and replenished with taxes primarily on gasoline, diesel oil, and tires. No federal appropriations would be used for interstate highways.

The bill passed both houses of Congress in May and June 1956, and the president triumphantly signed the bill into the law creating the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways on June 29.

The interstate highway system transformed the landscape of the United States in the postwar period. It linked the national economy, markets, and large cities together. It contributed to the growth of suburban America as commuters could now drive their cars to work in cities or consumers could drive to shopping malls. Tourists could travel expeditiously to vacations at distant beaches, national parks, and amusement parks like Disneyland. Cheap gas, despite the taxes to fund the highways, was critical to travel along the interstates.

The interstate highway system later became entwined in national debates over energy policy in the 1970s when OPEC embargoed oil to the United States. Critics said gas-guzzling cars should be replaced by more efficient cars or public transportation, that American love of cars contributed significantly to the degradation of the environment, and that America had reached an age of limits.

The creation of the interstate highway system was a marvel of American postwar prosperity and contributed to its unrivaled affluence. It also symbolized some of the challenges Americans faced. Both the success of  completing the grand public project and the ability to confront and solve new challenges represented the American spirit.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Dan Morenoff

You can count on one hand the number of Supreme Court decisions that normal people can identify by name and subject. Brown is one of them (and, arguably, both the widest and most accurately known). Ask any lawyer what the most important judicial decision in American history is, and they will almost certainly tell you, with no hesitation, Brown v. Board of Education. It’s the case that, for decades, Senators have asked every nominee to become a judge to explain why is right.

It’s place in the public mind is well-deserved, even if it should be adjusted to reflect more accurately its place in modern American history.

Backstory: From Reconstruction’s Promise to Enshrinement of Jim Crow in Plessy

Remember the pair of course reversals that followed the Civil War.

Between 1865 and 1876, Congress sought to make good the Union’s promises to the freedmen emancipated during the war. In the face of stiff, violent resistance by those who refused to accept the war’s verdict, America amended the Constitution three (3) times, with: (a) the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery; (b) the Fourteenth Amendment: (i) affirmatively acting to create and bestow American citizenship on all those born here, (ii) barring states from “abridg[ing] the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States[,]” and (iii) guaranteeing the equal protection of the laws; and (c) the Fifteenth Amendment barring states from denying American citizens the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Toward the same end, Congress passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, and the Ku Klux Klan Act. They created the Department of Justice to enforce these laws and supported President Grant in his usage of the military to prevent states from reconstituting slavery under another name.

Until 1876. To solve the constitutional crisis of a Presidential election with no clear winner, Congress (and President Hayes) effectively, if silently, agreed to effectively and abruptly end all that. The federal government removed troops from former Confederate states and stopped trying to enforce federal law. And the states “redeemed” by the violent forces of retaliation amended their state constitutions and passed the myriad of laws creating the “Jim Crow” regime of American apartheid.  Under Jim Crow, races were separated, the public services available to an American came to radically differ depending on that American’s race, and the rights of disfavored races became severely curtailed. Most African Americans were disenfranchised, then disarmed, and then subjected to mob-violence to incentivize compliance with the “redeemer” community’s wishes.

One could point to a number of crystallizing moments as the key point when the federal government made official that it and national law would do nothing to stop any of this. But the most commonly cited is the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of the Supreme Court, issued in 1896. It was a case arising out of New Orleans and its even-then-long-multi-hued business community. There, predictably, there were companies and entrepreneurs that hated these laws interfering with their businesses and their ability to provide services to willing buyers on the (racially integrated) basis they preferred. A particularly hated law passed by the State of Louisiana compelled railroads (far and away the largest industry of the day) to separate customers into different cars on the basis of race. With admirable truth in advertising, the Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law formed and went to work to rid New Orleans of this government micromanagement. Forgotten in the long sweep of history, the Committee (acting through the Pullman Company, one of America’s largest manufacturers at the time) actually won their first case at the Louisiana Supreme Court, which ruled that any state law requiring separate accommodations in interstate travel violated the U.S. Constitution (specifically, Article I’s grant of power to Congress alone to regulate interstate travel). They then sought to invalidate application of the same law to train travel within Louisiana as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. With coordination between the various actors involved, Homer Plessy (a man with 7 “white” and 1 “black” great-grandparent(s) purchased and used a seat in the state-law required “white” section of a train that the train company wanted to sell him; they then assured a state official knew he was there, was informed of his racial composition, and would willingly arrest Mr. Plessy to create the test case the Committee wanted. It is known to us as Plessy v. Ferguson.[1] This time, though, things didn’t go as planned: the trial court ruled the statute enforceable and the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld its application to Mr. Plessy. The Supreme Court of the United States accepted the case, bringing the national spotlight onto this specific challenge to the constitutionality of the states’ racial-caste-enforcing laws. In 1896, over the noteworthy, highly-praised, sole dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan, the Supreme Court agreed that, due to its language requiring “equal, but separate” accommodations for the races (and without ever really considering whether the accommodations provided actually were “equal”), the separate car statute was consistent with the U.S. Constitution; they added that the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended “to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social … equality … of the two races.”

For decades, the Plessy ruling was treated as the federal government’s seal of approval for the continuation of Jim Crow.

Killing Jim Crow

Throughout those decades, African Americans (and conscientious whites) continued to object to American law treating races differently as profoundly unjust. And they had ample opportunities to note the intensity of the injustice. A sampling (neither comprehensive, nor fully indicative of the scope) would include: Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the federal work force, the resurgence of lynchings following the 1915 rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan (itself an outgrowth of the popularity of Birth of a Nation, the intensely racist film that Woodrow Wilson made the first ever screened at the White House), and the spate of anti-black race riots surrounding America’s participation in World War I.

For the flavor of those riots, consider the fate of the African American community living in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In the spring of 1921, Greenwood’s professional class had done so well that it became known as “Negro Wall Street” or “Black Wall Street.” On the evening of May 31, 1921, a mob gathered at the Tulsa jail and demanded that an African American man accused of attempting to assault a white woman be handed over to them. When African Americans, including World War I veterans, came to the jail in order to prevent a lynching, shots were fired and a riot began. Over the next 12 hours, at least three hundred African Americans were killed. In addition, 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, two movie theaters, a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes, and a bus system were utterly destroyed. The Tulsa race riot (perhaps better styled a pogrom, given the active participation of the national guard in these events) has been called “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history.”[2]

But that is far from the whole story of these years. What are today described as Historically Black Colleges and Universities graduated generations of students, who went on to live productive lives and better their communities (whether racially defined or not). They saw the rise of the Harlem Renaissance, where African American luminaries like Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston acquired followings across the larger population and, indeed, the world. The Negro Leagues demonstrated through the national pastime that the athletic (and business) skills of African Americans were equal to those of any others;[3] the leagues developed into some of the largest black-owned businesses in the country and developed fan-followings across America. Eventually, these years saw Jackie Robinson, one of the Negro Leagues’ brightest stars, sign a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1945 and “break the color barrier” in 1947 as the first black Major Leaguer since Cap Anson successfully pushed for their exclusion in the 1880s.[4] He would be: (a) named Major League Baseball’s Rookie of the Year in 1947; (b) voted the National League MVP in 1949; and (c) voted by fans as an All Star six (6) times (spanning each of the years from 1949-1954). Robinson also led the Dodgers to the World Series in four (4) of those six (6) years.

For the main plot of our story, though, the most important reaction to the violence of Tulsa (and elsewhere)[5] was the “newfound sense of determination” that “emerged” to confront it.[6] Setting aside the philosophical debate that raged across the African American community over the broader period on the best way to advance the prospects of those most impacted by these laws,[7] the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the “NAACP”) began to plan new strategies to defeat Jim Crow.”[8]  The initial architect of this challenge was Charles Hamilton Houston, who joined the NAACP and developed and implemented the framework of its legal strategy after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1922, the year following the Tulsa race riot.[9]

Between its founding in 1940, under the leadership of Houston-disciple Thurgood Marshall,[10] and 1955, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund brought a series of cases designed to undermine Plessy.  Houston had believed from the outset that unequal education was the Achilles heel of Jim Crow and the LDF targeted that weak spot.

The culmination of these cases came with a challenge to the segregated public schools operated by Topeka, Kansas. While schools were racially segregated many places, the LDF specifically chose to bring its signature case against the Topeka Board of Education, precisely because Kansas was not Southern, had no history of slavery, and institutionally praised John Brown;[11] the case highlighted that its issues were national, not regional, in scope.[12]

LDF, through Marshall and Greenberg, convinced the Supreme Court to reverse Plessy and declare Topeka’s school system unconstitutional. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren handed down the unanimous opinion of the Court. Due to months of wrangling and negotiation of the final opinion, there were no dissents and no concurrences. With a single voice the Supreme Court proclaimed that:

…in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

These sweeping tones are why the decision holds the place it does in our collective imagination. They are why Brown is remembered as the end of legal segregation. They are why Brown is the most revered precedent in American jurisprudence.

One might have thought that they would mean an immediate end to all race-based public educational systems (and, indeed, to all segregation by law in American life). Indeed, as Justice Marshall told his biographer Dennis Hutchison in 1979, he thought just that: “the biggest mistake [I] made was assuming that once Jim Crow was deconstitutionalized, the whole structure would collapse – ‘like pounding a stake in Dracula’s heart[.]’”

But that was not to be. For the Court to get to unanimity, the Justices needed to avoid ruling on the remedy for the violation they could jointly agree to identify. So they asked the parties to return and reargue the question of what to do about it the following year. When they again addressed the Brown case, the Supreme Court reiterated its ruling on the merits from 1954, but as to what to do about it, ordered nothing more than that the states “make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance” and get around to “admit[ting children] to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed.”

So the true place of Brown in the story of desegregation is best reflected in Justice Marshall’s words (again, to Dennis Hutchison in 1979): “…[i]n the twelve months between Brown I and Brown II, [I] realized that [I] had yet to win anything….  ‘In 1954, I was delirious. What a victory!  I thought I was the smartest lawyer in the entire world. In 1955, I was shattered.  They gave us nothing and then told us to work for it. I thought I was the dumbest Negro in the United States.’”

Of course, Justice Marshall was far from dumb, however he felt in 1955.  But actual integration didn’t come from Brown. That would have to wait for action by Congress, cajoling by a President, and the slow development of the cultural facts-on-the-ground arising from generations of white American children growing up wanting to be like, rooting for, and seeing the equal worth in men like Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, and Larry Doby.

Dan Morenoff is Executive Director of The Equal Voting Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] In the terminology of the day, Mr. Ferguson was a “Carpetbagger.”  A native of Massachusetts who had married into a prominent abolitionist family, Mr. Ferguson studied law in Boston before moving to New Orleans in 1865.  He was the same judge who, at the trial court level, had ruled that Louisiana’s separate cars act could not be constitutionally applied to interstate travel.  Since Plessy’s prosecution also was initially conducted in Mr. Ferguson’s courtroom, he became the named defendant, despite his own apparent feelings about the propriety of the law.

[2] All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education, by Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. W.W. Norton & Company (2004).

[3] In 1936, Jesse Owens did the same on an amateur basis at the Berlin Olympics.

[4] Larry Doby became the first black American League player ever weeks later (the AL had not existed in the 1880s).

[5] There were parallel riots in Omaha and Chicago in 1919.

[6] See, All Deliberate Speed, in Fn. 2, above.

[7] The author recommends delving into this debate.  Worthy samples of contributions to it the reader might consider include: (a) Booker T. Washington’s 1895 Address to Atlanta’s Cotton States and International Exposition (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/); and (b) W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk.

[8]  See, All Deliberate Speed, in Fn. 2, above.

[9] Houston was the first African American elected to the Harvard Law Review and has been called “the man who killed Jim Crow.”

[10] Later a Justice of U.S. Supreme Court himself, Justice Marshall was instrumental in the NAACP’s choice of legal strategies.  But LDF was not a one-man shop.  Houston had personally recruited Marshall and Oliver Hill, the first- and second-ranked students in the Law School Class of 1933 at Howard University – itself, a historically black institution founded during Reconstruction – to fight these legal battles.  Later, Jack Greenberg was Marshall’s Assistant Counsel was and hand-chosen successor to lead the LDF

[11] The Kansas State Capitol, in Topeka, has featured John Brown as a founding hero since the 1930s (https://www.kshs.org/places/capitol/graphics/tragic_prelude.jpg).

[12] This was all the more true when the case was argued before the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court had consolidated Brown for argument with other cases from across the nation.  Those cases were Briggs v. Elliot (from South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (from Virginia), Belton (Bulah) v. Gebhart (from Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (District of Columbia).

Juneteenth’s a celebration of Liberation Day
When word of emancipation reached Texas slaves they say.
In sorrow were we brought here to till a harvest land.
We live and died and fought here
‘Til freedom was at hand.

They tore apart our families
They stole life’s nascent breath.
Turned women into mammies
And worked our men to death.

They shamed the very nation
Which fostered freedom’s birth
It died on the plantation
Denying man his worth.

But greed and misplaced honor
Brought crisis to a head
And Justice felt upon her
The weight of Union Dead.

They fought to save a nation.
And yet they saved its soul
From moral condemnation
And made the country whole.

But when the war was waning
And the battle was in doubt.
The soldiers were complaining
An many dropping out.

There seemed but one solution
Which might yet save the day.
Although its execution
Loomed several months away.

The Congress was divided.
The Cabinet as well.
Abe did his best to hide it.
And no one did he tell.

He meant to sign an order
To deal the South a blow.
The Mason Dixon border
And the Rebel states below

Would now have to contend with
The Freedman on their land.
For slavery had endeth
For woman, child and man.

The time 18 and 63
The first day of the year.
But June of 65 would be
The time we would hold dear.

For that would be when Freedom’s thought
First saw full light of day.
And justified why men had fought
And died along the way.

Now every June we celebrate
What Lincoln had in mind
The day he did emancipate
The bonds of all mankind.

Copyright All rights reserved  www.thecoleportersociety.org

Noah Griffin, America 250 Commissioner, is a lifelong student of history and is founder and artistic director of the Cole Porter Society.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Don Ritter

Little focused the public’s mind in the early 1950s like the atom bomb and the potential for vast death and destruction in the event of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Who can forget the classroom drills where students dropped to the floor and hid under their desks ostensibly to reduce exposure to an exploding atomic bomb? It was a prevailing subject of discussion amongst average people as well as elites in government, media and the arts.

The Soviet Union had attained “the bomb” in 1949, four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With the atom bomb at their disposal, the leadership of the Soviet Union was likely emboldened to accelerate its deeply felt ideological imperative to spread communism opportunistically. Getting an A-bomb led to a military equality with the United States that far reduced the threat of nuclear retaliation against their superior land armies in the event of an East-West military confrontation. The blatant invasion of South Korea, supported by the U.S. by communist North Korea in 1950 with total Soviet political and logistical commitment and indeed, encouragement, was likely an outcome of the Soviets possessing the atomic bomb.

In January of 1950, British intelligence, on information provided by the FBI, arrested East Germany-born and a British-educated and citizen, atomic scientist, Klaus Fuchs, who was spying for the Soviet Union. Fuchs had worked at the very highest level at Los Alamos on the American project to develop an atom bomb and was passing secrets to American Communist Party members who were also spying for the Soviet Union. He admitted his espionage and provided names of his American collaborators at Los Alamos. Those connections led to the arrest of Julius Rosenberg in June of 1950 on suspicion of espionage and two months later, his wife Ethel on the same charge.

Julius Rosenberg, an electrical engineer, and his wife Ethel were dedicated members of the Communist Party USA and had been working for years for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) delivering secret American work on advanced weaponry such as radar detection, jet engines and guided missiles. In hindsight, that information probably exceeded the value of atomic secrets given to the Soviet Union although consensus is that the Rosenbergs’ bomb design information confirmed the direction of Soviet bomb development. Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass was working at Los Alamos and evidence brought to light over the years strongly suggest that Ethel was the one who recruited her brother to provide atom bomb design secrets to her husband and worked hand-in-glove with him in his espionage activities.

The Rosenbergs, never admitting their crimes, were tried and convicted on the charge of “conspiracy to commit espionage.” The Death Penalty was their sentence. They professed their innocence until the very end when in June 1953, they were electrocuted at Sing Sing prison.

Politically, there was another narrative unfolding. The political Left in the United States and worldwide strongly supported the Rosenbergs’  innocence, reminiscent of their support for former State Department official Alger Hiss who was tried in 1949 and convicted in 1950 of perjury and not espionage as the Statute of Limitations on espionage had expired. The world-renowned Marxist intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre called the Rosenberg trial a “legal lynching.” On execution day, there was a demonstration of several hundred outside Sing Sing paying their last respects. For decades to follow, the Rosenbergs’ innocence became a rallying cry of the political Left.

Leaders on the political and intellectual Left blamed anti-communist fervor drummed up by McCarthyism for the federal government’s pursuit of the Rosenbergs and others accused of spying for the Soviet Union. At the time, there was great sympathy on the Left with the ideals of communism and America’s former communist ally, the Soviet Union, which had experienced great loss in WW II in defeating hated Nazi fascism. They fervently believed the Rosenbergs’ plea of innocence.

When the Venona Project, secret records of intercepted Soviet messages, were made public in the mid-1990s, with unequivocal information pointing to the Rosenbergs’ guilt, the political Left’s fervor for the Rosenbergs was greatly diminished. Likewise, with material copied from Soviet KGB archives (the Vassillyev Notebooks) in 2009. However, some said, (paraphrasing) “OK, they did it but U.S. government Cold War mentality and McCarthyism were even greater threats” (e. g. the Nation magazine, popular revisionist Historian Howard Zinn).

Since then, the Left and not only the Left, led by the surviving sons of the Rosenbergs, have focused on the unfairness of the sentence, particularly Ethel Rosenberg’s, and that she should have not received the death penalty. Federal prosecutors likely hoped that such a charge would get the accused to talk, implicate others and provide insights into Soviet espionage operations. It did not. The Rosenbergs became martyrs to the Left and likely as martyrs, continued to better serve the Soviet communist cause than serving a prison sentence. Perhaps that was even their reason for professing innocence.

Debate continues to this day. But these days it’s over the severity of the sentence as just about all agree the Rosenbergs were spies for the Soviet Union. In today’s climate, there would be no death sentence but at the height of the Cold War…

However, there is absolutely no doubt that they betrayed America by spying for the Soviet Union at a time of great peril to America and world.

Don Ritter is President and CEO Emeritus (after serving eight years in that role) of the Afghan American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) and a 15-year founding member of the Board of Directors. Since 9-11, 2001, he has worked full time on Afghanistan and has been back to the country more than 40 times. He has a 38-year history in Afghanistan.

Ritter holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from Lehigh University and a Masters and Doctorate from MIT in physical-mechanical metallurgy. After MIT, where his hobby was Russian language and culture, he was a NAS-Soviet Academy of Sciences Exchange Fellow in the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era for one year doing research at the Baikov Institute for Physical Metallurgy on high temperature materials. He speaks fluent Russian (and French), is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and recipient of numerous awards from scientific and technical societies and human rights organizations.

After returning from Russia in 1968, he spent a year teaching at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he was also a contract consultant to General Dynamics in their solid-state physics department. He then returned, as a member of the faculty and administration, to his alma-mater, Lehigh University. At Lehigh, in addition to his teaching, research and industry consulting, Dr. Ritter was instrumental in creating a university-wide program linking disciplines of science and engineering to the social sciences and humanities with the hope of furthering understanding of the role of technology in society.

After10 years at Lehigh, Dr. Ritter represented Pennsylvania’s 15th district, the “Lehigh Valley” from 1979 to 1993 in the U.S. House of Representatives where he served on the Science and Technology and Energy and Commerce Committees. Ritter’s main mission as a ‘scientist congressman’ was to work closely with the science, engineering and related industry communities to bring a greater science-based perspective to the legislative, regulatory and political processes.

In Congress, as ranking member on the Congressional Helsinki Commission, he fought for liberty and human rights in the former Soviet Union. The Commission was Ritter’s platform to gather congressional support to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion and occupation during the 1980s. Ritter was author of the “Material Assistance” legislation and founder and House-side Chairman of the “Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan.”

Dr. Ritter continued his effort in the 1990’s after Congress as founder and Chairman of the Washington, DC-based Afghanistan Foundation. In 2003, as creator of a six million-dollar USAID-funded initiative, he served as Senior Advisor to AACC in the creation of the first independent, free-market oriented Chamber of Commerce in the history of the country. Dr. Ritter presently is part of AACC’s seminal role in assisting the development of the Afghan market economy to bring stability and prosperity to Afghanistan. He is also a businessman and investor in Afghanistan.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Don Ritter

World War II ended in 1945 but the ideological imperative of Soviet communism’s expansion did not. By 1950, the Soviet Union (USSR) had solidified its empire by conquest and subversion in all Central and Eastern Europe. But to Stalin & Co., there were other big fish to fry. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945 between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, the USSR was asked to participate in ending the war in the Pacific against Japan. Even though Japan’s defeat was not in doubt, the atom bomb would not be tested until July and it was not yet known to our war planners if it would work.

An invasion of Japan, their home island, was thought to mean huge American and allied casualties, perhaps half a million, a conclusion reached given the tenacity which Japanese soldiers had defended islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. So much blood was yet to be spilled… they were fighting to the death. The Soviet Red Army, so often oblivious to casualties in their onslaught against Nazi Germany, would share in the burden of invasion of Japan.

Japan had controlled Manchukuo (later Manchuria).  The Korean peninsula was dominated by Japan historically and actually annexed early in the 20th century. Islands taken from Czarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 were also in play.

Stalin and the communist USSR’s presence at the very end of the war in Asia was solidified at Yalta and that is how they got to create a communist North Korea.

Fast forward to April of 1950, Kim Il Sung had traveled to Moscow to discuss how communist North Korea, might take South Korea and unify the peninsula under communist rule for the communist world. South Korea or the Republic of Korea (ROK) was dependent on the United States. The non-communist ROK was in the middle of the not abnormal chaos of establishing a democracy, an economy, and a new country. Their military was far from ready. Neither was that of the U.S.

Kim and Stalin concluded that South was weak and ripe for adding new realm to their communist world. Stalin gave Kim the go-ahead to invade and pledged full Soviet support. Vast quantities of supplies, artillery and tanks would be provided to the Army of North Korea for a full-fledged attack on the South. MIG-15 fighter aircraft, flown by Soviet pilots masquerading as Koreans would be added. Close by was Communist China for whom the USSR had done yeoman service in their taking control. That was one large insurance policy should things go wrong.

On June 25, 1950, a North Korean blitzkrieg came thundering down on South Korea. Closely spaced large artillery firing massive barrages followed by tanks and troops, a tactic perfected in the Red Army’s battles with the Nazis, wreaked havoc on the overpowered South Korean forces. Communist partisans infiltrated into the South joined the fray, against the ROK. The situation was dire as it looked like the ROK would collapse.

President Harry Truman decided that an expansionist Soviet communist victory in Korea was not only unacceptable but that it would not stop there. He committed the U.S. to fight back and fight back, we did. In July of 1950, the Americans got support from the UN Security Council to form a UN Command (UNC) under U.S. leadership. As many as 70 countries would get involved eventually but the U.S. troops bore the brunt of the war with Great Britain and Commonwealth troops, a very distant second.

It is contested to this day as to why the USSR under Stalin had not been there at the Security Council session to veto the engagement of the UN with the U.S. leading the charge. The Soviets had walked out in January and did not return until August. Was it a grand mistake or did Stalin want to embroil America in a war in Asia so he could more easily deal with his new and possibly expanding empire in Europe? Were the Soviets so confident of a major victory in Korea that would embarrass the U.S. and signal to others that America would be weakened by a defeat in Korea, and thus be unable to lead the non-communist world?

At a time when ROK and U.S. troops were reeling backwards, when the communist North had taken the capital of the country, Seoul, and much more, Supreme UN Commander, General Douglas McArthur had a plan for a surprise attack. He would attack at a port twenty-five miles from Seoul, Inchon, using the American 1st Marine Division as the spearhead of an amphibious operation landing troops, tanks and artillery. That put UNC troops north of the North Korean forces in a position to sever the enemy’s supply lines and inflict severe damage on their armies. Seoul was retaken. The bold Inchon landing changed the course of the Korean war and put America back on offense.

While MacArthur rapidly led the UNC all the way to the Yalu River bordering China, when Communist China entered the war, everything changed. MacArthur had over-extended his own supply lines and apparently had not fully considered the potential for a military disaster if China entered the war. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) counterattacked. MacArthur was sacked by Truman. There was a debate in the Truman administration over the use of nuclear weapons to counter the Chinese incursion.

Overwhelming numbers of Chinese forces employing sophisticated tactics, and a willingness to take huge casualties, pushed the mostly American troops back to the original dividing line between the north and south, the 38th parallel (38 degrees latitude)… which, ironically, after two more years of deadly stalemate, is where we and our South Korean allies stand today.

Looking back, airpower was our ace in the hole and a great equalizer given the disparity in ground troops. B-29 Superfortresses blasted targets in the north, incessantly. Jet fighters like the legendary F-86 Sabre jet dominated the Soviet MIG-15s.  But if you discount nuclear weapons, wars are won by troops on the ground, and on the ground, we ended up where we started.

33, 000 Americans died in combat. Other UNC countries lost about 7,000. South Korea, 134,000. North Korea, 213,000. The Chinese lost an estimated 400,000 troops in combat! Civilians all told, 2.7 million, a staggering number.

The Korean war ended in 1953 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was the U.S. President. South Korea has evolved from a nation of rice paddies to a modern industrial power with strong democratic institutions and world-class living standards. North Korea, under communist dictatorship, is one of the poorest and most repressive nations on earth yet they develop nuclear weapons. China, still a communist dictatorship but having adopted capitalist economic principles, has surged in its economic and military development to become a great power with the capacity to threaten the peace in Asia and beyond.

Communist expansion was halted by a hot war in Korea from 1950 to 1953 but the Cold War continued with no letup.

A question for the reader: What would the world be like if America and its allies had lost the war in Korea.

Don Ritter is President and CEO Emeritus (after serving eight years in that role) of the Afghan American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) and a 15-year founding member of the Board of Directors. Since 9-11, 2001, he has worked full time on Afghanistan and has been back to the country more than 40 times. He has a 38-year history in Afghanistan.

Ritter holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from Lehigh University and a Masters and Doctorate from MIT in physical-mechanical metallurgy. After MIT, where his hobby was Russian language and culture, he was a NAS-Soviet Academy of Sciences Exchange Fellow in the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era for one year doing research at the Baikov Institute for Physical Metallurgy on high temperature materials. He speaks fluent Russian (and French), is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and recipient of numerous awards from scientific and technical societies and human rights organizations.

After returning from Russia in 1968, he spent a year teaching at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he was also a contract consultant to General Dynamics in their solid-state physics department. He then returned, as a member of the faculty and administration, to his alma-mater, Lehigh University. At Lehigh, in addition to his teaching, research and industry consulting, Dr. Ritter was instrumental in creating a university-wide program linking disciplines of science and engineering to the social sciences and humanities with the hope of furthering understanding of the role of technology in society.

After10 years at Lehigh, Dr. Ritter represented Pennsylvania’s 15th district, the “Lehigh Valley” from 1979 to 1993 in the U.S. House of Representatives where he served on the Science and Technology and Energy and Commerce Committees. Ritter’s main mission as a ‘scientist congressman’ was to work closely with the science, engineering and related industry communities to bring a greater science-based perspective to the legislative, regulatory and political processes.

In Congress, as ranking member on the Congressional Helsinki Commission, he fought for liberty and human rights in the former Soviet Union. The Commission was Ritter’s platform to gather congressional support to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion and occupation during the 1980s. Ritter was author of the “Material Assistance” legislation and founder and House-side Chairman of the “Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan.”

Dr. Ritter continued his effort in the 1990’s after Congress as founder and Chairman of the Washington, DC-based Afghanistan Foundation. In 2003, as creator of a six million-dollar USAID-funded initiative, he served as Senior Advisor to AACC in the creation of the first independent, free-market oriented Chamber of Commerce in the history of the country. Dr. Ritter presently is part of AACC’s seminal role in assisting the development of the Afghan market economy to bring stability and prosperity to Afghanistan. He is also a businessman and investor in Afghanistan.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Don Ritter

When Time Magazine was at its heyday and the dominant ‘last word’ in American media, over a ten-year period, Whittaker Chambers was its greatest writer and editor. He was a founding editor of National Review along with William F. Buckley. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously from President Ronald Reagan in 1984. His memoir, Witness, is an American classic.

But all that was a vastly different world from his earlier life as a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in the 1920s and spy for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) in the 1930s.

We recognize Chambers today for the nation’s focus given to his damning testimony in the Alger Hiss congressional investigations and spy trials from 1948-50 and a trove of documents called the Pumpkin Papers.

Alger Hiss came from wealth and was a member of the privileged class, attended Harvard Law School and was upwardly mobile in the State Department reaching high-ranking positions with access to extremely sensitive information. He was an organizer of the Yalta Conference between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. He helped create the United Nations and in 1949, was President of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In Congress in 1948, based on FBI information, a number of Americans were being investigated for spying for the Soviet Union dating back to the early 1930s and during WW II, particularly in the United States Department of State. These were astonishing accusations at the time. When an American spy for the Soviets, Elizabeth Bentley, defected and accused Alger Hiss and a substantial group of U.S. government officials in the Administration of Franklin Roosevelt of spying for the Soviet Union, Hiss vehemently denied the charges. Handsome and sophisticated, Hiss was for a lifetime, well-connected, well-respected and well-spoken. He made an extremely credible witness before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Plus, most public figures involved in media, entertainment and academe came to his defense.

Whittaker Chambers, by then a successful editor at Time, reluctantly and fearing retribution by the GRU, was subpoenaed before HUAC to testify. He accused Hiss of secretly being a communist and passing secret documents to him for transfer to Soviet Intelligence. He testified that he and Hiss had been together on several occasions. Hiss denied it. Chambers was a product of humble beginnings, divorced parents, a brother who committed suicide at 22 and was accused of having psychological problems. All this was prequel to his adoption – “something to live for and something to die for” – of the communist cause. His appearance, dress, voice and demeaner, no less his stinging message, were considered less than attractive. The comparison to the impression that Hiss made was stark and Chambers was demeaned and derided by Hiss’ supporters.

Then came the trial in 1949. During the pre-trial discovery period, Chambers eventually released large quantities of microfilm he had kept hidden as insurance against any GRU reprisal, including murder. Eliminating defectors was not uncommon in GRU practice then… and exists unfortunately to this day.

A then little-known Member of Congress and member of HUAC, one Richard Nixon, had gained access to the content of Chambers’ secret documents, and adamantly pursued the case before the Grand Jury. Nixon at first refused to give the actual evidence to the Grand Jury but later relented. Two HUAC investigators went to Chambers’ farm in Westminster, Maryland, and from there, guided by Chambers, to his garden. There in a capped and hollowed out orange gourd (not a pumpkin!) were the famous “Pumpkin Papers.” Contained in the gourd were hundreds of documents on microfilm including four hand-written pages by Hiss, implicating him as spying for the Soviet Union.

Hiss was tried and convicted of perjury as the statute of limitations on espionage by then had run out. He was sentenced to two five-year terms and ended up serving three and a half years total in federal prison.

Many on the political Left refused to believe that Alger Hiss was guilty and to this day there are some who still support him. However, the Venona Papers released by the U.S. National Security Agency in 1995 which contained intelligence intercepts from the Soviet Union during Hiss’ time as a Soviet spy showed conclusively that Hiss was indeed a Soviet spy. The U.S. government at the highest levels knew all along that Hiss was a spy but in order to keep the Venona Project a secret and to keep gathering intelligence from the Soviet Union during nuclear standoff and the Cold War, it could not divulge publicly what it knew.

Alger Hiss died at the ripe old age of 92, Whittaker Chambers at the relatively young age of 61. Many believe that stress from his life as a spy, and later the pervasive and abusive criticism he endured, weakened his heart and led to his early death.

The Hiss case is seminal in the history of the Cold War and its impact on America because it led to the taking sides politically on the Left and on the Right, a surge in anti-communism on the Right and the reaction to anti-communism on the Left. At the epicenter of the saga is Whittaker Chambers.

Author’s Postscript:

To me, this is really the story of Whittaker Chambers, whose brilliance as a thinker and as a writer alone did more to unearth and define the destructive nature of communism than any other American of his time. His memoir, Witness, a best-seller published in 1952, is one of the most enlightening works of non-fiction one can read. It reflects a personal American journey through a dysfunctional family background and depressed economic times when communism and Soviet espionage, were ascendant, making the book both an educational experience and page-turning thriller. In Witness, as a former Soviet spy who became disillusioned with communism’s murder and lies, Chambers intellectually and spiritually defined its tyranny and economic incompetence to Americans in a way that previously, only those who experienced it personally could understand. It gave vital insights into the terrible and insidious practices of communism to millions of Americans.

Don Ritter, Sc.D., served in the United States House of Representatives for the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. As founder of the Afghanistan-American Foundation, he was senior advisor to the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) and the Afghan International Chamber of Commerce (AICC). Congressman Ritter currently serves as president and CEO of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce. He holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from Lehigh University and a M.S. and Sc. D. (Doctorate) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.I.T, in Physical Metallurgy and Materials Science. For more information about the work of Congressman Don Ritter, visit http://www.donritter.org/

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Don Ritter

It was a time when history hung in the balance. The outcome of a struggle between free and controlled peoples – democratic versus totalitarian rule – was at stake.

Here’s the grim picture in early 1948. Having fought for 4 years against the Nazis in history’s biggest and bloodiest battles, victorious Soviet communist armies have thrown back the Germans across all of Eastern and Central Europe and millions of Soviet troops are either occupying their ‘liberated’ lands or have installed oppressive communist governments. Soviet army and civilian losses in WW II are unimaginable, and soldiers killed number around 10 million. Perhaps 20 million when civilians are included. Josef Stalin, the murderous Soviet communist dictator is dead set on not giving up one inch.

Czechoslovakia has just succumbed to communist control in February under heavy Soviet pressure. Poland fell to the communists back in 1946 with Stalin, reneging on his promise to American President Roosevelt and British Prime Minster Churchill at Yalta for free elections, instead installed a Soviet puppet government while systematically eradicating Polish opposition. Churchill had delivered his public-awakening “Iron Curtain” speech 2 years earlier. The major Allies, America, Great Britain and France, are extremely worried about Stalin and the Red Army’s next moves.

Under agreements between the Soviet Union and the allies – Americans, British and French – the country of Germany is divided into 4 Economic Zones, each controlled by the respective 4 countries. The Allies control the western half and the Soviet Union (USSR), the eastern. Berlin itself, once the proud capital of Germany, is now a wasteland of rubble, poverty and hunger after city-shattering house-to-house combat between Nazi and Soviet soldiers. There’s barely a building left standing. There’s hardly any men left in the city. They are either killed in battle or taken prisoner by the Red Army. Berlin, a hundred miles inside the Soviet-controlled Zone in eastern Germany, is also likewise divided between the Allies and the USSR.

That’s the setting for what is to take place next in the pivotal June of 1948.

The Allies had for some time decided that a democratic, western-oriented Germany would be the best defense against further Soviet communist expansion westward. Germany, in a short period of time, had made substantial progress towards democratization and rebuilding. This unnerved Stalin who all along had planned for a united Germany in the communist orbit and the Soviets were gradually increasing pressure on transport in and out of Berlin.

The Allies announced on June 1 of 1948 the addition of the French Zone to the already unified Brit and American zones. Then, on June 18, the Allies announced the creation of a common currency, the Deutschmark, to stimulate economic recovery across the three allied Zones. Stalin and the Soviet leadership, seeing the potential for a new, vital, non-communist Western Germany in these actions, on June 24, decided to blockade Berlin’s rails, roads and canals to choke off what had become a western-nation-allied West Germany and West Berlin.

Stalin’s chess move was to starve the citizens of the city by cutting off their food supply, their electricity, and their coal to heat homes, power remaining factories and rebuild. His plan also was to make it difficult to resupply allied military forces. This was a bold move to grab West Berlin for the communists. Indeed, there were some Americans and others who felt that Germany, because of its crimes against humanity, should never again be allowed to be an industrial nation and that we shouldn’t stand up for Berlin. But that opinion did not hold sway with President Truman.

What Stalin and the Soviet communists didn’t count on was the creativity, ingenuity, perseverance and capacity of America and its allies.

Even though America had nuclear weapons at the time and the Soviet Union did not, it had pretty much demobilized after the war. So, rather than fight the Red Army, firmly dug in with vast quantities of men, artillery and tanks in eastern Germany and risk another world war, the blockade would be countered by an airlift. The greatest airlift of all time. Food, supplies and coal would be transported to the people of Berlin, mainly on American C54s flown by American, British, French and other allied pilots. But only America had the numbers of aircraft, the amount of fuel and the logistical resources, to actually do what looked to Stalin and the Soviets to be impossible.

One can only imagine the enormity of the 24-7 activity. Nearly 300,000 flights were made from June 24 of 1948 till September 30, 1949. Flights were coming in every 30 seconds at height of the airlift. It was a truly amazing logistical achievement to work up to the delivery of some three and a half thousand tons daily to meet the city’s needs. Think of the energy and dedication of the pilots and mechanics, those involved in the supply chains and the demanding delivery schedules… the sheer complexity of such an operation is mind-boggling.

Stalin, seeing the extent of Allied perseverance and capability over a year’s time and meanwhile, suffering an enormous propaganda defeat worldwide, relented.

Think of the Americans who led this history-making endeavor, all the men and women, from the Generals to the soldiers, airmen and civilians and their achievement on behalf of creating a free and prosperous Germany. A free Germany that sat side-by-side in stark contrast with the brutal communist east. To them, known as the “the greatest generation,” we owe our everlasting gratitude for victory in this monumental first ‘battle’ of the Cold War.

Don Ritter, Sc.D., served in the United States House of Representatives for the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. As founder of the Afghanistan-American Foundation, he was senior advisor to the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) and the Afghan International Chamber of Commerce (AICC). Congressman Ritter currently serves as president and CEO of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce. He holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from Lehigh University and a M.S. and Sc. D. (Doctorate) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.I.T, in Physical Metallurgy and Materials Science. For more information about the work of Congressman Don Ritter, visit http://www.donritter.org/

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

The fall of 1939 saw dramatic changes in world events that would alter the course of history. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland to trigger the start of World War II but imperial Japan had been ravaging Manchuria and China for nearly a decade. Even though the United States was officially neutral in the world war, President Franklin Roosevelt had an important meeting in mid-October.

Roosevelt met with his friend, Alexander Sachs, who hand-delivered a letter from scientists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard. They informed the president that German scientists had recently discovered fission and might possibly be able to build a nuclear bomb. The warning prompted Roosevelt to initiate research into the subject and beat the Nazis.

The United States entered the war after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the Roosevelt administration began the highly secretive Manhattan Project in October 1942. The project had facilities in far-flung places and employed the efforts of more than half a million Americans across the country. The weapons research laboratory resided in Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

As work progressed on a nuclear weapon, the United States waged a global war in the Pacific, North Africa, and Europe. The Pacific witnessed a particularly brutal war against Japan. After the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the Americans launched an “island-hopping” campaign. They were forced to eliminate a tenacious and dug-in enemy in heavy jungles in distant places like Guadalcanal. The Japanese forces gained a reputation for suicidal banzai charges and fighting to the last man.

By late 1944, the United States was closing in on Japan and invaded the Philippines. The U.S. Navy won the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but the Japanese desperately launched kamikaze attacks that inflicted a heavy toll, sinking and damaging several ships and causing thousands of American casualties. The nature of the attacks helped confirm the Americans believed they were fighting a fanatical enemy.

The battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa greatly shaped American views of Japanese barbarism. Iwo Jima was a key island for airstrips to bomb Japan and U.S. naval assets as they built up for the invasion of Japan. On February 19, 1945, the Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions landed mid-island after a massive preparatory bombardment. After a dreadful slog against an entrenched enemy, the Marines took Mt. Suribachi and famously raised an American flag on its heights.

The worst was yet to come against the nearly 22,000-man garrison in a complex network of tunnels. The brutal fighting was often hand-to-hand. The Americans fought for each yard of territory by using grenades, satchel charges, and flamethrowers to attack pillboxes. The Japanese fought fiercely and sent waves of hundreds of men in banzai charges. The Marines and Navy lost 7,000 dead and nearly one-third of the Marines who fought on the island were casualties. Almost all the defenders perished.

The battle for Okinawa was just as bloody. Two Marine and two Army divisions landed unopposed on Okinawa on April 1 after another relatively ineffective bombardment and quickly seized two airfields. The Japanese built nearly impregnable lines of defense, but none was stronger than the southern Shuri line of fortresses where 97,000 defenders awaited.

The Marines and soldiers attacked in several frontal assaults and were ground up by mine fields, grenades, and pre-sighted machine-guns and artillery covering every inch. For their part, the Japanese launched several fruitless attacks that bled them dry. The war of attrition finally ended with 13,000 Americans dead and 44,000 wounded. On the Japanese side, more than 70,000 soldiers and tens of thousands of Okinawan civilians were killed. The naval battle in the waters surrounding the island witnessed kamikaze and bombing attacks that sank 28 U.S. ships and damaged an additional 240.

Okinawa was an essential staging area for the invasion of Japan and additional proof of the fanatical nature of the enemy. Admiral Chester Nimitz, General Douglas MacArthur, and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were planning Operation Downfall—the invasion of Japan—beginning with Operation Olympic in southern Japan in the fall of 1945 with fourteen divisions and twenty-eight aircraft carriers, followed by Operation Coronet in central Japan in early 1946.

While the U.S. naval blockade and aerial bombing of Japan were very successful in grinding down the enemy war machine, Japanese resistance was going to be even stronger and more fanatical than Iwo Jim and Okinawa. The American planners expected to fight a horrific war against the Japanese forces, kamikaze attacks, and a militarized civilian population. Indeed, the Japanese reinforced Kyushu with thirteen divisions of 450,000 entrenched men by the end of July and had an estimated 10,000 aircraft at their disposal. Japan was committed to a decisive final battle defending its home. Among U.S. military commanders, only MacArthur underestimated the difficulty of the invasion as he was wont to do.

Harry Truman succeeded Roosevelt as president when he died on April 12, 1945. Besides the burdens of command decisions in fighting the war to a conclusion, holding together a fracturing alliance with the Soviets, and shaping the postwar world, Truman learned about the Manhattan Project.

While some of the scientists who worked on the project expressed grave concerns about the use of the atomic bomb, most decision-makers expected that it would be used if it were ready. Secretary of War Henry Stimson headed the Interim Committee that considered the use of the bomb. The committee rejected the idea of a demonstration or a formal warning to the Japanese in case it failed and strengthened their resolve.

On the morning of July 16, the “gadget” nuclear device was successfully exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The test was code-name “Trinity,” and word was immediately sent to President Truman then at the Potsdam Conference negotiating the postwar world. He was ecstatic and tried to use it to impress Stalin, who impassively received the news because he had several spies in the Manhattan project. The Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding unconditional surrender from Japan or face “complete and utter destruction.”

After possible targets were selected, the B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, carried the uranium atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy from Tinian Island. The Enola Gay dropped Little Boy over Hiroshima, where the blast and resulting firestorm killed 70,000 and grievously injured and sickened tens of thousands of others. The Japanese government still adamantly refused to surrender.

On August 9, another B-29 dropped the plutonium bomb Fat Man over Nagasaki which was a secondary target. Heavy cloud cover meant that the bomb was dropped in a valley that restricted the effect of the blast somewhat. Still, approximately 40,000 were killed. The dropping of the second atomic bombs and the simultaneous invasion of Manchukuo by the Soviet Union led to the Emperor Hirohito to announce Japan’s surrender on August 15. The formal surrender took place on the USS Missouri on September 2.

General MacArthur closed the ceremony with a moving speech in which he said,

It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice…. Let us pray that peace now be restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed.

World War II had ended, but the Cold War and atomic age began.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joshua Schmid

‘A Date Which Will Live in Infamy’

The morning of December 7, 1941 was another day in paradise for the men and women of the U.S. armed forces stationed at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base on Oahu, Hawaii. By 7:30 am, the air temperature was already a balmy 73 degrees. A sense of leisure was in the air as sailors enjoyed the time away from military duties that Sundays offered. Within the next half hour, the serenity of the island was shattered. Enemy aircraft streaked overhead, marked only by a large red circle. The pilots—who had been training for months for this mission—scanned their surroundings and set their eyes on their target: Battleship Row. The eight ships—the crown of the United States’ Pacific fleet—sat silently in harbor, much to the delight of the oncoming Japanese pilots, who began their attack.

Since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the relationship between the United States and Japan had significantly deteriorated. Over the course of the ensuing decade, the U.S. imposed embargoes on strategic materials such as oil and froze Japanese assets to deter the Empire of the Rising Sun’s continual aggressions in the Pacific. For many in the American political and military leadership, it became not a question whether violent conflict would erupt between the two nations but rather when. Indeed, throughout the month of November 1941, the two military commanders at Pearl Harbor—Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short—received multiple warnings from Washington, D.C. that conflict with Japan somewhere in the Pacific would very soon be a reality. In response, Kimmel and Short ordered that aircraft be moved out of their hangars at Pearl Harbor and lined up on runways in order to prevent sabotage. Additionally, radar—a new technology that had not yet reached its full capabilities—began operation a few hours a day on the island of Oahu. Such a lackluster response to war warnings can largely be attributed to the fact that American intelligence suspected that the initial Japanese strike would fall on U.S. bases in the remote Pacific such as at the Philippines or Wake Island. The logistical maneuvering it would take to carry out a large-scale attack on Pearl Harbor—nearly 4,000 miles from mainland Japan—seemed ludicrously impossible.

Such beliefs, of course, were immediately drowned out by the wails of the air raid sirens and the repeated message, “Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill” on the morning of what turned out to be perhaps the most momentous day of the entire twentieth century. The Japanese strike force launched attacks from aircraft carriers in two waves. Torpedo and dive bombers attacked hangars and the ships anchored in the harbor while fighters provided strafing runs and air defense. In addition to the eight American battleships, a variety of cruisers, destroyers, and support ships were at Pearl Harbor.

A disaster quickly unfolded for the Americans. Many sailors had been granted leave that day given it was a Sunday. These men were not at their stations as the attack began—a fact that Japanese planners likely expected. Members of the American radar teams did in fact spot blips of a large array of aircraft before the attack. However, when they reported it to their superiors, they were told it was incoming American planes. The American aircraft that were lined up in clusters on runways to prevent sabotage now made easy targets for the Japanese strike force. Of the 402 military aircraft at Pearl Harbor and the surrounding airfields, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged. Only a few American pilots were able to take off—those who did bravely took on the overwhelming swarm of Japanese aircraft and successfully shot a few down. Ships in the harbor valiantly attempted to get under way despite being undermanned, but with little success. The battleship Nevada attempted to lumber its way out of the narrow confines but her captain purposefully scuttled it to avoid blocking the harbor after it suffered multiple bomb hits. All eight of the battleships took some form of damage, and four were sunk. In the most infamous event of the entire attack, a bomb struck the forward magazine of the battleship Arizona, causing a mass explosion that literally ripped the ship apart. Of the nearly 2,500 Americans killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, nearly half were sailors onboard the Arizona. In addition to the battleships, a number of cruisers, destroyers, and other ships were also sunk or severely damaged. In contrast, only 29 Japanese planes were shot down during the raid. The Japanese fleet immediately departed and moved to conduct other missions against British, Dutch, and U.S. holdings in the Pacific, believing that they had achieved the great strike that would incapacitate American naval power in the Pacific for years to come.

On the morning of the attack at Pearl Harbor, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Saratoga was in port at San Diego on a mission. The other two carriers in the Pacific fleet were also noticeably absent from Pearl Harbor when the bombs began to fall. Japanese planners thought little of it in the ensuing weeks—naval warfare theory at the time was fixated on the idea of battleships dueling each other from long range with giant guns. Without their battleships, how could the Americans hope to stop the Japanese from dominating in the Pacific? However, within a year and a half, these three carriers would win a huge victory at the Battle of Midway and helped turn the tide in the Pacific in favor of the Americans and made it a carrier war.

The victory at Midway would give morale to an American people already hard at work since December 7, 1941 at mobilizing its entire society for war in one of the greatest human efforts in history. Of the eight battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor, all but the Arizona and Oklahoma were salvaged and returned to battle before the end of the war. In addition, the U.S. produced thousands of ships between 1941-1945 as part of a massive new navy. In the end, rather than striking a crushing blow, the Japanese task force merely awoke a sleeping giant who eagerly sought to avenge its wounds. As for the men and women who fought and died on December 7, 1941—a date that President Franklin Roosevelt declared would “live in infamy”—they will forever be enshrined in the hearts and minds of Americans for their courage and honor on that fateful day.

Joshua Schmid serves as a Program Analyst at the Bill of Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

In 1992, United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor enunciated an axiomatic principle of constitutional governance, that the Constitution “protects us from our own best intentions,” dividing power precisely so that we might resist the temptation to concentrate that power as “the expedient solution to the crisis of the day.”[1] It is a sentiment that echoes through American history, as there has been a constant “push-pull” between the demands of the populace and the divisions and restrictions on power as laid out by the Constitution.

Before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term, the concept of a 100-Day agenda simply didn’t exist. But, since 1933, incoming new administrations have been measured by that arbitrary standard—what they plan on accomplishing in those first hundred days, and what they actually accomplished.

The problem, of course, is that public policy decision making should not only be a thorough and deliberative process, but in order to protect the rights of the public, must allow for significant public input. Without that deliberation, without that public participation, significant mistakes can be made. This is why policy made in a crisis is almost always bad policy—and thus Justice O’Connor’s vital warning.

FDR came into office with America under its most significant crisis since the Civil War. Nearly three and a half years into an economic disaster—nearly a quarter of the population was out of work, banks and businesses were failing, millions of Americans were completely devastated and looking for real answers.

The 1932 presidential election was driven by this crisis. Incumbent President Herbert Hoover was seen as a “do-nothing” president, whose efforts at stabilizing the economy through tariffs and tax increases hadn’t stemmed the economic tide of the Great Depression. FDR had built a reputation as governor of New York for action, and on the campaign trail raised a series of ambitious plans that he intended to enact that he called “The New Deal.” Significant portions of this New Deal were to be enacted during those first 100 days in office.

This set a standard that later presidents would be held to: what they wanted to accomplish during those first hundred days, and how those goals might compare to the goals laid out by FDR.

At the core of those enactments were the creation of three major federal programs: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the National Industrial Recovery Administration. Of these three, the FDIC remains in existence today, with its mission largely unchanged: to guarantee the monetary accounts of bank customers, and, in doing so, ensure that banks aren’t closed down because of customers suddenly withdrawing all their money from a bank and closing their accounts.

This had happened with great frequency following the stock market crash of 1929—and such panicked activity was known, popularly, as a “bank run.”[2]

FDR was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. On March 6, he closed the entire American banking system! Three days later, on March 9, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act—which essentially created the FDIC. Three days later, on Sunday, March 12, FDR gave the first of his “fireside chats,” assuring the nation that when the banks re-opened the following day, the federal government would be protecting Americans’ money.

But there were massive questions over the constitutionality of much of FDR’s New Deal proposals, and many of them were challenged in federal court. At the same time, a number of states were also attempting their own remedies for the nation’s economic morass—and in challenges to some of those policies, the Supreme Court upheld them, citing a new and vast interpretation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, with sweeping ramifications.

In the Blaisdell Case[3], the Supreme Court upheld a Minnesota law that essentially suspended the ability of mortgage holders from collecting mortgage monies or pursuing remedies when monies had not been paid.  The court said that due to the severe national emergency created by the Great Depression, government had vast and enormous power to deal with it.

But critics have understood the serious and longstanding ramifications of such decisions. Adjunct Scholar at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute and NYU law professor Richard Epstein said of Blaisdell that, “trumpeted a false liberation from the constitutional text that has paved the way for massive government intervention that undermines the security of private transactions. Today the police power exception has come to eviscerate the contracts clause.”

In other words—in a conflict between the rights of private parties under the contracts clause and the power of government under the commerce clause, when it comes to emergencies, the power of government wins.

Interestingly enough, due to a series of New Deal programs that had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, in 1937, FDR attempted to change the make-up of the court in what became known as the “court-packing scheme.” The proposal essentially called for remaking the balance of the court by appointing an additional justice (up to six additional) for every justice who was over the age of 70 years and 6 months.

Though the legislation languished in Congress, the pressure was brought to bear on the Supreme Court and Associate Justice Owen Roberts began casting votes in support of FDR’s New Deal programs—fundamentally shifting the direction of federal power towards concentration, a shift that continued until the early 1990s, when the high court began issuing decisions (like New York v. United States) that limited the power of the federal government and the expansive interpretation of the commerce clause.

But it’s the sweeping power for the federal government to act within a declared emergency, and the impact of the policies that are created within that crisis that is of continued concern. Much in the same way that the lack of deliberation during FDR’s first 100 days led to programs that had sweeping and lasting impact on public life, and created huge unintended consequences, we are seeing those same mistakes played out today—the declaration of a public emergency, sweeping polices created without any real deliberation and public input, and massive (and devastating consequences) to businesses, jobs, and society in general.

If we are to learn anything from those first hundred days, it should be that we shouldn’t let a deliberative policy process be hijacked, and certainly not for political reasons. Moreover, when polices are enacted without deliberation, we should be prepared for the potential consequences of that policy… and adjust those policies accordingly when new information presents itself (and when the particular crisis has passed). Justice O’Connor was correct—the Constitution does protect us from our own best intentions.

We should rely on it, especially when we are in a crisis.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.  He teaches in the Public Policy program at the College of William and Mary.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] New York v. US, 505 US 144 (1992)

[2] Bank runs were so engrained in the national mindset that Frank Capra dramatized one in his famous film, It’s A Wonderful Life. In it, the Bedford Falls Bank is the victim of a run and “saved” by the film’s antagonist, Mr. Potter.  Potter offers to “guarantee” the Bailey Building and Loan, but, knowing it would give Potter Control, the film’s hero, George Bailey, uses his own money to keep his firm intact.

[3] Home Building and Loan Association v Blaisdell, 290 US 398 (1934)

Guest Essayist: John Steele Gordon

Wall Street, because it tries to discern future values, is usually a leading indicator. It began to recover, for instance, from the financial debacle of 2008 in March of the next year. But the economy didn’t begin to grow again until June of 2009.

But sometimes Wall Street separates from the underlying economy and loses touch with economic reality. That is what happened in 1929 and brought about history’s most famous stock market crash.

The 1920’s were a prosperous time for most areas of the American economy and Wall Street reflected that expansion. But rural America was not prospering. In 1900, one-third of all American crop land had been given over to fodder crops to feed the country’s vast herd of horses and mules. But by 1930, horses had largely given way to automobiles and trucks while the mules had been replaced by the tractor.

As more and more agricultural land was turned over to growing crops for human consumption, food prices fell and rural areas began to fall into depression. Rural banks began failing at the rate of about 500 a year.

Because the major news media, then as now, was highly concentrated in the big cities, this economic problem went largely unnoticed. Indeed, while the overall economy rose 59 percent in the 1920s, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 400 percent.

The Federal Reserve in the fall of 1928, raised the discount rate from 3.5 percent to 5 percent and began to reduce the increase in the money supply, in hopes of getting the stock market to cool off.

But by then, Wall Street was in a speculative bubble. Fueling that bubble was a very misguided policy by the Fed. It allowed member banks to borrow at the discount window at five percent. The banks in turn, loaned the money to brokerage houses at 12 percent. The brokers then loaned the money to speculators at 20 percent. The Fed tried to use “moral suasion” to get the banks to stop borrowing in this way. But if a bank can make 7 percent on someone else’s money, it is going to do so. The Fed should have just closed the window for those sorts of loans, but didn’t.

By Labor Day, 1929, the American economy was in a recession but Wall Street still had not noticed. On the day after Labor Day, the Dow hit a new all-time high at 381.17. It would not see that number again for 25 years. Two days later the market began to wake up.

A stock market analyst of no great note, Roger Babson, gave a talk that day in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and said that, “I repeat what I said at this time last year and the year before, that sooner or later a crash is coming.” When news of this altogether unremarkable prophecy crossed the broad tape at 2:00 that afternoon, all hell broke loose. Prices plunged (US Steel fell 9 points, AZT&T 6) and volume in the last two hours of trading was a fantastic two million shares.

Remembered as the Babson Break, it was like a slap across the face of an hysteric, and the mood on the Street went almost in an instant from “The sky’s the limit” to “Every man for himself.”

For the next six weeks, the market trended downwards, with some plunges followed by weak recoveries. Then on Thursday, October 23rd, selling swamped the market on the second highest volume on record. The next morning there was a mountain of sell orders in brokerage offices across the country and prices plunged across the board. This set off a wave of margin calls, further depressing prices, while short sellers put even more pressure on prices.

A group of the Street’s most important bankers met at J. P. Morgan and Company, across Broad Street from the exchange.

Together they raised $20 million to support the market and entrusted it to Richard Whitney, the acting president of the NYSE.

At 1:30, Whitney strode onto the floor and asked the price of US Steel. He was told that it had last traded at 205 but that it had fallen several points since, with no takers.

“I bid 205 for 10,000 Steel,” Whitney shouted. He then went to other posts, buying large blocks of blue chips. The market steadied as shorts closed their positions and some stocks even ended up for the day. But the volume had been an utterly unprecedented 13 million shares.

The rally continued on Friday but there was modest profit taking at the Saturday morning session. Then, on Monday, October 28th, selling resumed as rumors floated around that some major speculators had committed suicide and that new bear pools were being formed.

On Tuesday, October 29th, remembered thereafter as Black Tuesday, there was no stopping the collapse in prices. Volume reached 16 million shares, a record that would stand for nearly 40 years, and the tape ran four hours late. The Dow was down a staggering 23 percent on the day and nearly 40 percent below its September high.

Prices trended downwards for more than another month, but by the spring of 1930 the market, badly over sold by December, had recovered about 45 percent of its autumn losses. Many thought the recession was over. But then the federal government and the Federal Reserve began making a series of disastrous policy blunders that would turn an ordinary recession into the Great Depression.

John Steele Gordon was born in New York City in 1944 into a family long associated with the city and its financial community. Both his grandfathers held seats on the New York Stock Exchange. He was educated at Millbrook School and Vanderbilt University, graduating with a B.A. in history in 1966.

After college he worked as a production editor for Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) for six years before leaving to travel, driving a Land-Rover from New York to Tierra del Fuego, a nine-month journey of 39,000 miles. This resulted in his first book, Overlanding. Altogether he has driven through forty-seven countries on five continents.

After returning to New York he served on the staffs of Congressmen Herman Badillo and Robert Garcia. He has been a full-time writer for the last twenty years. His second book, The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street, a history of Wall Street in the 1860’s, was published in 1988. His third book, Hamilton’s Blessing: the Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt, was published in 1997. The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power, 1653-2000, was published by Scribner, a Simon and Schuster imprint, in November, 1999. A two-hour special based on The Great Game aired on CNBC on April 24th, 2000. His latest book, a collection of his columns from American Heritage magazine, entitled The Business of America, was published in July, 2001, by Walker. His history of the laying of the Atlantic Cable, A Thread Across the Ocean, was published in June, 2002. His next book, to be published by HarperCollins, is a history of the American economy.

He specializes in business and financial history. He has had articles published in, among others, Forbes, Forbes ASAP, Worth, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pages, the Washington Post’s Book World and Outlook. He is a contributing editor at American Heritage, where he has written the “Business of America” column since 1989.

In 1991 he traveled to Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Japan with the photographer Bruce Davidson for Schlumberger, Ltd., to create a photo essay called “Schlumberger People,” for the company’s annual report.

In 1992 he was the co-writer, with Timothy C. Forbes and Steve Forbes, of Happily Ever After?, a video produced by Forbes in honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the magazine.

He is a frequent commentator on Marketplace, the daily Public Radio business-news program heard on more than two hundred stations throughout the country. He has appeared on numerous other radio and television shows, including New York: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns, Business Center and Squawk Box on CNBC, and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. He was a guest in 2001 on a live, two-hour edition of Booknotes with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN.

Mr. Gordon lives in North Salem, New York. His email address is jsg@johnsteelegordon.com.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

An admirer of inventors Bell, Edison, and Einstein’s theories, scientist and inventor Philo T. Farnsworth designed the first electric television based on an idea he sketched in a high school chemistry class. He studied and learned some success was gained with transmitting and projecting images. While plowing fields, Farnsworth realized television could become a system of horizontal lines, breaking up images, but forming an electronic picture of solid images. Despite attempts by competitors to impede Farnsworth’s original inventions, in 1928, Farnsworth presented his idea for a television to reporters in Hollywood, launching him into more successful efforts that would revolutionize moving pictures.

On September 3, 1928, Philo Farnsworth, a twenty-two year old inventor with virtually no formal credentials as a scientist, demonstrated his wholly electronic television system to reporters in California. A few years later, a much improved television system was demonstrated to larger crowds of onlookers at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, proving to the world that this new medium could broadcast news, entertainment, and educational content across the nation.

Farnsworth had come far from his boyhood roots in northern Utah and southern Idaho. He was born in a log cabin lacking indoor plumbing or electrical power. His family moved to a farm outside of Rigby, Idaho, when Farnsworth was a young boy. For the first time, Farnsworth could examine electrical appliances and electric generators in action. He quickly learned to take electrical gadgets apart and put them back together again, often making adaptations to improve their function. He also watched each time the family’s generator was repaired. Soon, still a  young boy, he could do those repairs himself. Farnsworth was a voracious reader of science books and magazines, but also devoured what is now termed science fiction, although that term was not in use during his youth. He became a skilled violinist, possibly because of the example of his idol, Albert Einstein, who also played the instrument.[1]

Farnsworth excelled in his classes in school, particularly in mathematics and other sciences, but he did present his teachers and school administrators with a bit of a problem when he repeatedly appealed to take classes intended for much older students. According to school rules, only high school juniors and seniors were supposed to enroll in the advanced classes, but Farnsworth determined to find courses that would challenge him intellectually. The school resisted his entreaties, but one chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, agreed to tutor Philo and give him extra assignments both before and after school.

One day, Farnsworth presented a visual demonstration of an idea that he had for transmitting visual images across space. He later claimed that he had come up with the basic idea for this process one year earlier, when he was only fourteen. As he was plowing a field on his family farm, Philo had seen a series of straight rows of plowed ground. Farnsworth thought it might be possible to represent visual images by breaking up the entire image into a sequence of lines of various shades of light and dark images. The images could be projected electronically and re-assembled as pictures made up of a collection of lines, placed one on top of another. Farnsworth  believed that this could be accomplished based on his understanding of Einstein’s path-breaking work on the “photoelectric effect” which had discovered that a particle of light, called a photon, that hit a metal plate would displace electrons with some residual energy transferred to a free-roaming negative charge, called a photoelectron.[2] Farnsworth had developed a conceptual model of a device that he called an “image dissector” that could break the images apart and transmit them for reassembly at a receiver. He had no means of creating this device with the resources he had at hand, but he did develop a model representation of the device, along with mathematical equations to convey the causal mechanisms. He presented all of this on the blackboard of a classroom in the high school in Rigby.   Tolman was stunned by the intellectual prowess of the fifteen year old standing in front of him. He thought Farnsworth’s model might actually work, and he copied down some of the drawings from the blackboard onto a piece of paper, which he kept for years.[3] It is fortunate for Farnsworth that Tolman held on to those pieces of paper.

Farnsworth was accepted into the United States Naval Academy but very soon was granted an honorable discharge under a provision permitting new midshipman to leave the university and the service to care for their families after the death of a parent. Farnsworth’s father had died the previous year, and Farnsworth returned to Utah, where his family had relocated after the sale of the farm. Farnsworth enrolled at Brigham Young University but worked at various jobs to support himself, his mother, and his younger siblings. As he had in high school, Farnsworth asked to be allowed to register in advanced classes rather than take only freshman level course work. He quickly earned a technical certificate but no baccalaureate degree. While in Utah, Farnsworth met, courted and eventually married his wife, “Pem,” who would later help in his lab creating and building instruments. One of her brothers would also provide lab assistance. One of Farnsworth’s job during his time in Utah was with the local Community Chest. There he met George Everson and Leslie Gorrell, who were regional Community Chest administrators who were experienced in money-raising. Farnsworth explained his idea to them about electronic television, which he had never before done to anyone except his father, now deceased, and his high school teacher, Justin Tolman. Everson and Gorrell were impressed with Farnsworth’s idea, although they barely understood most of the science behind it. Everson and Gorrell invited Farnsworth to travel with them to California to discuss his research with scientists from the California Institute of Technology (a.k.a., Cal Tech). Farnsworth agree to do so, and made the trek to Los Angeles to meet first with scientists and then with bankers to solicit funds to support his research.     When discussing his proposed electronic television model, Farnsworth became transformed from a shy, socially awkward, somewhat tongue-tied young man to a confident and articulate advocate of his project. He was able to explain the broad outline of his research program in terms that lay people could understand. He convinced Gorrell and Everson to put up some money and a few years later got several thousand more dollars from a California bank.[4]

Philo and Pem Farnsworth re-located first to Los Angeles and then to San Francisco to establish a laboratory. Farnsworth believed that his work would progress more quickly if he were close to a number of other working scientists and technical experts at Cal Tech and other universities. Farnsworth also wanted to be near to those in the motion picture industry who had technical expertise. With a little start-up capital, Farnsworth and a few other backers incorporated their business, although Farnsworth did not create a publicly traded corporation until several years later. At the age of twenty-one, in 1927, Farnsworth filed the first two of his many patent applications. Those two patents were approved by the patent office in 1930. By the end of his life he had three hundred patents, most of which dealt with television or radio components. As of 1938, three-fourths of all patents dealing with television were by Farnsworth.[5]

When Farnsworth began his work in California, he and his wife and brother-in-law had to create many of the basic components for his television system. There was very little that they could simply buy off-the-shelf at any sort of store that they could simply assemble into the device Farnsworth had in mind. So much of their time was devoted to soldering wires and creating vacuum tubes, as well as testing materials to determine which performed best. After a while, Farnsworth hired some assistants, many of them graduate students at Cal Tech or Stanford. One of his assistants, Russell Varian, would later make a name for himself as a physicist in his own right and would become one of the founders of Silicon Valley. Farnsworth’s lab also had many visitors, including Hollywood celebrities such as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, as well as a number of scientists and engineers. One visitor was Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian émigré with a PhD in electrical engineering who worked for Westinghouse Corporation. Farnsworth showed Zworykin not only his lab but also examples of most of his key innovations, including his image dissector. Zworykin expressed admiration for the devices that he observed, and said that he wished that he had invented the dissector. What Farnsworth did not know was that a few weeks earlier, Zworykin had been hired away from Westinghouse by David Sarnoff, then the managing director and later the president of the Radio Corporation of America (a.k.a., RCA). Sarnoff grilled Zworykin about what he had learned from his trip to Farnsworth’s lab and immediately set him to work on television research. RCA was already a leading manufacturer of radio sets and would soon become the creator of the National Broadcasting Corporation (a.k.a., NBC). After government antitrust regulators forced RCA to divest itself of some of its broadcasting assets, RCA created the American Broadcasting Corporation (a.k.a., ABC) as a separate company[6]. RCA and Farnsworth would remain competitors and antagonists for the rest of Farnsworth’s career.

In 1931, Philco, a major radio manufacturer and electronics corporation entered into a deal with Farnsworth to support his research. The company was not buying out Farnsworth’s company, but was purchasing non-exclusive licenses for Farnsworth’s patents. Farnsworth then moved with his family and some of his research staff to Philadelphia.   Ironically, RCA’s television lab was located in Camden, New Jersey, just a few miles away. On many occasions, Farnsworth and RCA could receive the experimental television broadcasts transmitted from their rival’s lab. Farnsworth and his team were working at a feverish pace to improve their inventions to make them commercially feasible. The Federal Radio Commission, later known as the Federal Communications Commission, classified television as a merely experimental communications technology, rather than one that was commercially viable and subject to license. The commission wished to create standards for picture resolution and frequency bandwidth. Many radio stations objected to television licensing because they believed that television signals would crowd out the bandwidth available for their broadcasts.   Farnsworth developed the capacity to transmit television signals over a more narrow bandwidth than any competing televisions’ transmissions.

Personal tragedy struck the Farnsworth family in 1932 when Philo and Pem’s young son, Kenny, still a toddler, died of a throat infection, an ailment that today could easily have been treated with antibiotics. The Farnsworths decided to have the child buried back in Utah, but Philco refused to allow Philo time off to go west to bury his son. Pem made the trip alone, causing a rift between the couple that would take months to heal. Farnsworth was struggling to perfect his inventions, while at the same time RCA devoted an entire team to television research and engaged in a public relations campaign to convince industry leaders and the public that it had the only viable television system. At this time, Farnsworth’s health was declining. He was diagnosed with ulcers and he began to drink heavily, even though Prohibition had not yet been repealed. He finally decided to sever his relationship with Philco and set up his own lab in suburban Philadelphia. He soon also took the dramatic step of filing a patent infringement complaint against RCA in 1934.[7]

Farnsworth and his friend and patent attorney, Donald Lippincott, presented their argument before the patent examination board that Farnsworth was the original inventor of what was now known as electronic television and that Sarnoff and RCA had infringed on patents approved in 1930. Zworykin had some important patents prior to that time but had not patented the essential inventions necessary to create an electronic television system. RCA went on the offensive by claiming that it was absurd to claim that a young man in his early twenties with no more than one year of college could create something that well-educated scientists had failed to invent. Lippincott responded with evidence of the Zworykin visit to the Farnsworth lab in San Francisco. After leaving Farnsworth, Zworykin had returned first to the labs at Westinghouse and had duplicates of Farnsworth’s tubes constructed on the spot. Then researchers were sent to Washington to make copies of Farnsworth’s patent applications and exhibits. Lippincott also was able to produce Justin Lippincott, Philo’s old and then retired teacher, who appeared before the examination board to testify that the basic idea of the patent had been developed when Farnsworth was a teenager. When queried, Tolman removed a yellowed piece of notebook paper with a diagram that he had copied off the blackboard in 1922. Although the document was undated, the written document, in addition to Tolman’s oral testimony, may have convinced the board that Farnsworth’s eventual patent was for a novel invention.[8]

The examining board took several months to render a decision. In July of 1935, the examiner of interferences from the U.S. Patent Office mailed a forty-eight page document to the parties involved. After acknowledging the significance of inventions by Zworykin, the patent office declared that those inventions were not equivalent to what was understood to be electronic television. Farnsworth’s claims had priority.   The decision was appealed in 1936, but the result remained unchanged.  Beginning in 1939, RCA began paying royalties to Farnsworth.

Farnsworth and his family, friends, and co-workers were ecstatic with the outcome when the patent infringement case was decided. For the first time, Farnsworth was receiving the credit and the promise of the money that he thought he was due. However, the price he had paid already was very high. Farnsworth’s physical and emotional health was declining. He was perpetually nervous and exhausted. As unbelievable as it may sound today, one doctor advised him to take up smoking to calm his nerves. He continued to drink heavily and his weight dropped.      His company was re-organized as the Farnsworth Television & Radio Corporation and had its initial public offering of stock in 1939.    Whether out of necessity or personal choice, Farnsworth’s work in running his lab and his company diminished.

While vacationing in northern, rural Maine in 1938, the Farnsworth family came across a plot of land that reminded Philo of his home and farm outside of Rigby. Farnsworth bought the property, re-built an old house, constructed a dam for a small creek, and erected a building that could house a small laboratory. He spent most of the next few years on the property. Even though RCA had lost several patent infringement cases against Farnsworth, the company was still engaging in public demonstrations of television broadcasts in which it claimed that David Sarnoff was the founder of television and that Vladimir Zworykin was the sole inventor of television. The most significant of these demonstrations was at the World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows, New York. Many reporters accepted the propaganda that was distributed at that event and wrote up glowing stories of the supposedly new invention. Only a few years before, Farnsworth had demonstrated his inventions at the Franklin Institute, but the World’s Fair was a much bigger venue with a wider media audience. In 1949, NBC launched a special televised broadcast celebrating the 25th anniversary of the creation of television by RCA, Sarnoff, and Zworykin. No mention was made of Farnsworth at all.[9]

The FCC approved television as a commercial broadcast enterprise, subject to licensure, in 1939. The commission also set standards for broadcast frequency and picture quality. However, the timing to start off a major commercial venture for the sale of a discretionary consumer product was far from ideal. In fact, the timing of Farnsworth’s milestone accomplishments left much to be desired. His first patents were approved shortly after the nation entered the Great Depression. His inventions created an industry that was already subject to stringent government regulation focused on a related but potentially rival technology: radio. Once television was ready for mass marketing, the nation was poised to enter World War II. During the war, production of televisions and many other consumer products ceased and resources were devoted to war-related materiel. Farnsworth’s company and RCA both produced radar and other electronics equipment. Farnsworth’s company also produced wooden ammunition boxes. Farnsworth allowed the military to enjoy free use of his patents for radar tubes.[10]

Farnsworth enjoyed royalties from his patent for the rest of his life.   However, his two most important patents were his earliest inventions.  The patents were approved in 1930 for a duration of seventeen years. In 1947, the patents became part of the public domain. It was really only in the late 1940s and 1950s that television exploded as a popular consumer good, but by that time Farnsworth could receive no royalties for his initial inventions. Other, less fundamental components that he had patented did provide him with some royalty income. Before the war, Farnsworth’s company had purchased the Capehart Company of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and eventually closed down their Philadelphia area facility and moved their operations entirely to Indiana. A devastating wildfire swept through the countryside in rural Maine, burning down the buildings on Farnsworth’s property, only days before his property insurance policy was activated. Farnsworth’s company fell upon hard times, as well, and eventually was sold to International Telephone and Telegraph. Farnsworth’s health never completely recovered, and he took a disability retirement pension at the age of sixty and returned to Utah.   In his last few years, Farnsworth devoted little time to television research, but did develop devices related to cold fusion, which he hoped to use to produce abundant electrical power for the whole world to enjoy. As of now, cold fusion has not been a viable electric power generator, but it has proved useful in neutron production and medical isotopes.

Farnsworth died in 1971 at the age of sixty-four. At the time of his death, he was not well-known outside of scientific circles. His hopes and dreams of television as a cultural and educational beacon to the whole world had not been realized, but he did find some value in at least some of what he could see on the screen. About two years before he died, Philo and Pem along with millions of other people around the world saw Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. At that moment, Philo turned to his wife and said that he believed that all of his work was worthwhile.

Farnsworth’s accomplishments demonstrated that a more or less single inventor, with the help of a few friends, family members, and paid staff, could create significant and useful inventions that made a mark on the world.[11] In the long run, corporate product development by rivals such as RCA surpassed what he could do to make his brainchild marketable.   Farnsworth had neither the means nor the inclination to compete with major corporations in all respects. But he did wish to have at least some recognition and some financial reward for his efforts. Unfortunately, circumstances often wiped out what gains he received. Farnsworth also demonstrated that individuals lacking paper credentials can also accomplish significant achievements. With relatively little schooling and precious little experience, Farnsworth developed devices that older and more well-educated competitors could not. Sadly, Farnsworth’s experiences display the role of seemingly chance events in curbing personal success. Had he developed his inventions a bit earlier or later, avoiding most of the Depression and the Second World War, he might have gained much greater fame and fortune. None of us, of course, choose the time into which we are born.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1]  Schwartz, Evan I. 2002. The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television. New York: HarperCollins.

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/einstein-s-legacy-the-photoelectric-effect/

[3] Schwartz, op cit.

[4] Schwartz, op cit.

[5] Jewkes, J. “Monopoly and Economic Progress.” Economica, New Series, 20, no. 79 (1953): 197-214

[6] Schwartz, op cit.

[7] Schwartz, op cit.

[8] Schwartz, op cit.

[9] Schwartz, op cit.

[10]Schwartz, op cit.

[11]Lemley, Mark A. 2012. “The Myth of the Sole Inventor.” Michigan Law Review 110 (5): 709–60.

 

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

Americans have long held the belief that they are exceptional and have a providential destiny to be a “city upon a hill” as a beacon for democracy for the world.

Unlike the French revolutionaries who believed that they were bound to destroy monarchy and feudalism everywhere, the American revolutionaries laid down the principle of being an example for the world instead of imposing the belief on other countries.

In 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams probably expressed this idea best during a Fourth of July address when he asserted the principle of American foreign policy that:

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

While the Spanish-American War raised a debate over the nature of American expansionism and foundational principles, the reversal of the course of American diplomatic history found its fullest expression in the progressive presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

Progressives such as President Wilson embraced the idea that a perfect world could be achieved with the spread of democracy and adoption of a greater international outlook instead of national interests for world peace. As president, Wilson believed that America had a responsibility to spread democracy around the world by destroying monarchy and enlightening people in self-government.

When World War I broke out in August 1914 after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Wilson declared American neutrality and asked a diverse nation of immigrants to be “impartial in thought as well as in action.”

American neutrality was tested in many different ways. Many first-generation American immigrants from different countries still had strong attachments and feelings toward their nation of origin. Americans also sent arms and loans to the Allies (primarily Great Britain, France, and Russia) that undermined claims of U.S. neutrality. Despite the sinking of the liner Lusitania by a German U-boat (submarine) in May 1915 that killed 1,200 including 128 Americans, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned because he thought the U.S. should protest the British blockade of Germany as much as German actions in the Atlantic.

Throughout 1915 and 1916, German U-boats sank several more American vessels, though Germany apologized and promised no more incidents against merchant vessels of neutrals. By late 1916, however, more than two years of trench warfare and stalemate on the Western Front had led to millions of deaths, and the belligerents sought for ways to break the stalemate.

On February 1, 1917, the German high command decided to launch a policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare in which all shipping was subject to attack. The hope was to knock Great Britain out of the war and attain victory before the United States could enter the war and make a difference.

Simultaneously, Germany curiously sent a secret diplomatic message to Mexico offering territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in exchange for entering the war against the United States. British intelligence intercepted this foolhardy Zimmerman Telegram and shared it with the Wilson administration. Americans were predictably outraged when news of the telegram became public.

On April 2, President Wilson delivered a message to Congress asking for a declaration of war. He focused on what he labeled the barbaric and cruel inhumanity of attacking neutral ships and killing innocents on the high seas. He spoke of American freedom of the seas and neutral rights but primarily painted a stark moral picture of why the United States should go to war with the German Empire which had violated “the most sacred rights of our Nation.”

Wilson took an expansive view of the purposes of American foreign policy that reshaped American exceptionalism. He had a progressive vision of remaking the world by using the war to spread democratic principles and end autocratic regimes. In short, he thought, “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

Wilson argued that the United States had a duty as “one of the champions of the rights of mankind.” It would not merely defeat Germany but free its people. Americans were entering the war “to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life.”

Wilson believed that the United States had larger purposes than merely defending its national interests. It was now responsible for world peace and the freedom of all.  “Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people.”

At the end of the war and during the Versailles conference, Wilson further articulated this vision of a new world with his Fourteen Points and proposal for a League of Nations to prevent future wars and ensure a lasting world peace.

Wilson’s vision failed to come to come to fruition. The Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles because it was committed to defending American national sovereign power over declaring war. The great powers were more dedicated to their national interests rather than world peace. Moreover, the next twenty years saw the spread of totalitarian, communist, and fascist regimes rather than progressive democracies. Finally, World War II shattered his vision of remaking the world.

Wilson’s ideals were not immediately adopted, but in the long run helped to reshape American foreign policy. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw increasing Wilsonian appeals by American presidents and policymakers to go to war to spread democracy throughout the world.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Michael Warren

Before outbreak of the American Revolution, colonies were deeply embedded in the patriarchal traditions and customs of the entire world. All cultures and civilizations had placed women in a subordinate position in the political and social realm. However, the Declaration of Independence raised the consciousness of at least some women and men about the inequality that was embedded in the legal and cultural regimes. Women became serious contributors to the American Revolution war effort, and some, such as Abigail Adams (wife of Colossus of Independence and President John Adams) questioned why they should not be entitled to equality declared in the Declaration.

Unfortunately, the idea of gender equality was scoffed at by most both men and women. For the most part, women were supreme in their social sphere of family and housekeeping, but were to have no direct political or legal power.

The political patriarchy did not consider women able to possess the correct temperament, stamina, or talents to be full participants in the American experiment. Justice Joseph Bradley of the United States Supreme Court, in a concurring opinion upholding the Illinois Bar’s prohibition of women from the practice of law, epitomized these sentiments:

[T]he civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many occupations of civil life.

However, the hunger for freedom and equality could not be contained. With the strengthening of the abolitionist movement came a renewed interest in women’s suffrage. A groundbreaking women’s suffrage conference – the first of its kind in the world – was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others in Seneca Falls New York in 1848. At the heart of the conference was the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, written by Stanton and adopted by the conference on July 20, 1848. Paralleling the Declaration of Independence, the power of the statement is understood best by simply reading a key passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

 

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation–in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

The Seneca Falls conference and declaration was just the beginning. During the lead to and aftermath of the Civil War, the women’s suffrage movement gathered strength and momentum. The Fourteenth Amendment, which gave all men the right to vote regardless of race or prior servitude, was bittersweet. The ratification of the amendment split the suffragists and abolitionists movements – some within both movements wanted women to be included in the Fourteenth Amendment, and others did not want to jeopardize its passage by including women in light of the overwhelming bias against women’s suffrage at that time. The suffragists lost, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave all men – but not women – their due.

It took several more generations of determined suffragists to enact constitutional change with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. The territory of Wyoming in 1869 was the first to give women the right to vote. It would take over 50 years before the women’s right to vote was a constitutional right. The movement only happened with the great tenacity, persistence, brilliance, and courage of the women and men suffragists that slowly but surely turned the nation toward universal suffrage. Parades, protests, hunger strikes, speaking tours, book tours, and countless other tactics were used to change the tide.

The Nineteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, ratified by the States on August 18, 1920, and effective on August 26, 1920.  It simply provides:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Short, but revolutionary. Honor the sacrifices of generations before us and defend – and exercise – the right to vote for women and all Americans.

Michael Warren serves as an Oakland County Circuit Court Judge and is the author of America’s Survival Guide, How to Stop America’s Impending Suicide by Reclaiming Our First Principles and History. Judge Warren is a constitutional law professor, and co-creator of Patriot Week www.PatriotWeek.org.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

On March 3, 1917, 162 words changed the course of World War I and the history of the 20th Century.

Germany officially admitted to sending the “Zimmermann Telegram,” which exposed a complex web of international intrigue, to keep America out of World War I.  It was this, and not the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, that led to the U.S. entering the European war.

The Zimmermann Telegram was a message sent by Arthur Zimmermann, a senior member of the German Foreign Office in Berlin, to Ambassador Heinrich von Eckardt in the German Embassy in Mexico City. It outlined Germany’s plans to support Mexico in a war with the United States should America enter the European War:

We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain, and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace.

The story of how this telegram became the pivotal document of World War I reads like a James Bond movie.

America was neutral during the early years of the “Great War.” It also managed the primary transatlantic telegraph cable. European governments, on both sides of the war, were allowed to use the American cable for diplomatic communications with their embassies in North and South America. On a daily basis, messages flowed, unfettered and unread, between diplomatic outposts and European capitals.

Enter Nigel de Grey and his “Room 40” codebreakers.

British Intelligence monitored the American Atlantic cable, violating its neutrality. On January 16, 1917, the Zimmerman Telegram was intercepted and decoded. De Grey and his team immediately understood the explosive impact of its contents. Such a documented threat might force the U.S. into declaring war on Germany. At the time, the “Great War” was a bloody stalemate and unrest in Russia was tilting the outcome in favor of Germany.

De Grey’s challenge was how to orchestrate the telegram getting to American officials without exposing British espionage operations or the breaking of the German codes. He and his team created an elaborate ruse. They would invent a “mole” inside the German Embassy in Mexico City. This “mole” would steal the Zimmermann Telegram and send it, still encrypted, to British intelligence.

The encryption would be an older version, which the Germans would consider a mistake and assume it was such an old code it was already broken. American-based British spies confirmed that the older code, and its decryption, was already in the files of the American Telegraph Company.

On February 19, 1917, British Foreign Office officials shared the older encoded version of Zimmermann Telegram with U.S. Embassy officials.  After decoding it and confirming its authenticity, it was sent on to the White House Staff.

President Woodrow Wilson was enraged and shared it with American newspaper reporters on February 28. At a March 3, 1917 news conference, Zimmermann confirmed the telegram stating, “I cannot deny it. It is true.” German officials tried to rationalize the Telegram as only a contingency plan, legitimately protecting its interests should America enter the war against them.

On April 4, President Wilson finally went before a Joint Session of Congress requesting a Declaration of War against Germany. The Senate approved the Declaration on April 4 and the House on April 6.  It took forty-four days for American public opinion to coalesce around declaring war.

Why the delay?

Americans were deeply divided on intervening in the “European War.” Republicans were solidly isolationist. They had enough votes in the Senate to filibuster a war resolution. They were already filibustering the “Armed Ship Bill” which authorized the arming of American merchant ships against German submarines. German Americans, a significant voter segment in America’s rural areas and small towns, were pro-German and anti-French. Irish Americans, a significant Democratic Party constituency in urban areas, were anti-English. There was also Wilson’s concern over Mexican threats along America’s southern border.

Germany was successful in exploiting America’s division and its isolationism. At the same time, Germany masterfully turned Mexico into a credible threat to America.

The Mexican Revolution provided the perfect environment for German mischief. Germany armed various factions and promoted the “Plan of San Diego” which detailed Mexico’s reclaiming Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Even before the outbreak of the “Great War,” Germany orchestrated media stories and planted disinformation among Western intelligence agencies to create the impression of Mexico planning an invasion of Texas. German actions and rumors sparked a bloody confrontation between U.S. forces and Mexican troops in Veracruz on April 9, 1914.

After years of preparation, German agents funded and inspired Pancho Villa’s March 9, 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico. In retaliation, on March 14, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered General John “Black Jack” Pershing, along with 10,000 soldiers and an aviation squadron, to invade northern Mexico and hunt down Villa. Over the next ten months, U.S. forces fought twelve battles on Mexican soil, including several with Mexican government forces.

The costly and unsuccessful pursuit of Villa diverted America’s attention away from Europe and soured U.S.-Mexican relations.

Germany’s most creative method for keeping America out of World War I was a fifteen-part “Preparedness Serial” called “Patria.” In 1916, the German Foreign Ministry convinced William Randolph Hearst to produce this adventure story about Japan helping Mexico reclaim the American Southwest.

“Patria” was a major production. It starred Irene Castle, one of the early “mega-stars” of Hollywood and Broadway. Castle’s character uses her family fortune to thwart the Japan-Mexico plot against America. The movie played to packed houses across America and ignited paranoia about the growing menace on America’s southern border.  Concerns over Mexico, and opposition to European intervention, convinced Wilson to run for re-election on a “He kept us out of war” platform.  American voters narrowly re-elected Wilson, along with many new isolationist Congressional candidates.

“Patria,” and other German machinations, clouded the political landscape and kept America neutral until April 1917. Foreign interference in the 1916 election, along with chasing Pancho Villa, may have kept America out of WWI completely except that Zimmerman’s Telegram, outlining Germany’s next move, was intercepted by British Intelligence. It awakened Americans to a real threat.

Words really do matter.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Amanda Hughes

Prior to World War I, oceanic travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans had to route dangerous passages around southern South America. Considerations for a way to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific were present for centuries. More recent among these include survey expeditions Ulysses S. Grant in 1869, who wrote as an Army Captain in 1852 of disease and other tragedies during military travels while crossing the Isthmus of Panama, “The horrors of the road in the rainy season are beyond description.” A survey by Grant  included Panama where it was found that the current route of the Panama Canal was nearly the same as what was proposed by Grant’s survey.

Other efforts by Count Ferdinand de Lesseps of France, who built Egypt’s Suez Canal, led the charge to begin construction on a canal across the isthmus of Panama in 1880. By 1888, challenges such as illness from yellow fever, malaria along with constant rain and mud slides resulted in ending plans by the French.

Further attempts to diminish the lengthy and costly trek began with a United States negotiation with Great Britain with Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer who served as British minister to Washington, and United States Secretary of State John M. Clayton. A sense that a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts was viewed as necessary in order to maintain American strength throughout the world. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 allowed for the United States and Britain to maintain joint control by quelling rivals over a proposed canal idea for construction through Nicaragua, northwest of Panama. That agreement was replaced by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty during President William McKinley’s Administration in 1901 by United States Secretary of State John Hay and British Ambassador Lord Julian Pauncefote. This agreement replaced the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 because movement toward building the canal was still had not occurred. Since no action was being taken toward construction after several decades, requests that the United States hold charge over the canal’s construction and control brought about the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty where Britain agreed the United States should take control of the project.

In June 1902, Congress passed H.R. 3110, the Hepburn Bill named for Representative William Peters Hepburn which also became known as the Panama Canal Act of 1902 and the Spooner Act. The bill approved construction of a canal in Nicaragua connecting the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific ocean. Senator John Coit Spooner offered an amendment to the bill that would provide the president, who was Theodore Roosevelt at that time, authorization to purchase the French company that canceled construction in the late 1800s and allow the United States to purchase the rights, assets and site for construction on land owned by Columbia for a canal through Panama not to exceed $40,000,000.

An isthmian canal was especially viewed as imperative by Congress by 1902 in order to improve United States defense. The USS Maine had exploded in Cuba and the USS Oregon that was stationed on the West Coast would need a long two months to arrive on the Atlantic side near the Caribbean to aid in the Spanish-American War. In a Senate speech, Senator Spooner mentioned:

“I want…a bill to be passed here under which we will get a canal. There never was greater need for it than now. The Oregon demonstrated [that] to our people.”

Conflicts regarding sovereignty over Panama continued past earlier agreements made. By 1903, The United States aided a revolution to help Panama gain independence from Columbia, establishing the Republic of Panama through the Hay-Herrán Treaty of 1903. United States Secretary of State John Hay and Tomás Herrán, Columbian Foreign Minister signed the treaty, but Columbia’s congress would not accept it.

That same year, Secretary Hay, and Phillippe Bunau-Varilla representing Panamanian interests signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903, and ratified by the Senate in 1904. While tensions still remained, the new agreement provided independence for Panama and the agreement allowed the United States to build and use a canal without limit. This increased the Canal Zone and gave the United States, in effect, sovereign power including authority to maintain order in the affected area.

Finally able to go ahead with the project, President Roosevelt selected a committee for an Isthmian Canal Commission to see the canal through, including a governor and seven members. The commission was previously arranged by President William McKinley who was assassinated in 1901. Other presidential involvement was especially present by Howard Taft who served as President after Roosevelt. As Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, Taft visited the canal more and participated the most over the longest time. The commission under Roosevelt was arranged to have a representative from the Army and Navy and the group would report to the secretary of war. The United States Army engineers were involved in the planning, supplies, and construction throughout. President Roosevelt argued that: “the War Department ‘has always supervised the construction of the great civil works and…been charged with the supervision of the government of all the island possessions of the United States.’”

Approved, yet fraught with many build challenges, the Panama Canal under control of the United States began in 1904 with construction at the bottom of Culebra Cut, formerly called Gaillard Cut, with 160 miles of track laid at the bottom of the canal. The track would need to be be moved continually to keep up with the shoveling of the surrounding ground and to keep construction materials arriving along the canal route using hundreds of locomotives. Locomotives were used to haul dirt, called dirt trains, along the route. Wet slides caused by rain and slipping of softer dirt were among many hindrances to construction. Other slides, some of which occurred during dry seasons, were caused by faults in the earth due to cuts in the sidewalls of the canal. The slides expanded into the cuts, but the workers kept at their tasks. Rock drills were used to set dynamite shots. Six million pounds of explosives per year were used to cut the nine mile canal. The first water to enter the Panama Canal flowed in from the Chagres River. The Chagres Basin is filled by the Gatun Lake, formed by the man-made Gatun Dam on the Atlantic end of the canal.

Led by Lt. Col. George Washington Goethals of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, improvements began for how the canal would work. The American engineers redesigned the canal so that two sets of three locks would have one set at the entrance of the Pacific side, and the other set on the Atlantic side. It was the largest canal lock system built at that time. The lock chambers were 1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide and up to 81 feet tall, equipped with gates, and allowed for two-way traffic. The large ships and containers are accommodated by the width of the canal. The locks were designed to raise and lower ships in the water controlled by dams and spillways. The engineering marvel of the locks and dam system proved cost effective by saving money, construction time and providing safety. An earth dam was designed with a man-made lake to limit excavation. It was also the largest dam in the world at the time of construction, intended to maintain the elevation of water level. The dam allowed millions of gallons of water to be released daily through the canal, with a top thick underwater spillway that offered protection from flooding.

Col. William C. Gorgas who served as Surgeon General of the Army during World War I, previously worked to prevent disease and death during construction of the canal. Col. Gorgas worked to eradicate major threats of yellow fever and malaria which was viewed as a much greater threat than all of the other diseases combined. He mentioned during a 1906 medical conference, “ malaria in the tropics is by far the most important disease to which tropical populations are subject,” because “the amount of incapacity caused by malaria is very much greater than that due to all other diseases combined.”

The total cost of the canal to America, as completed in 1914, is estimated at $375,000,000 dollars. The total included $10,000,000 paid to Panama and $40,000,000 to the French company. Fortifying the canal cost an additional $12,000,000. Thousands of workers were employed throughout construction from many countries. The jobs were often dangerous, but those overseeing the project made efforts to protect from injury and loss of life.

In 1964, Panama protested control over the canal by the United States which led to the Permanent Neutrality Treaty that Panama wanted in order to make the canal open to all nations, and a Panama Canal Treaty providing joint control over the canal by the United States and Panama. These treaties were signed in September 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader Brig. Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera. Complete control over the Panama Canal was transferred to Panama in 1999.

Engineers whose efforts to put forth unprecedented technological construction ideas overcame seeming insurmountable odds cutting the fifty miles of canal through mountains and jungle. Completed and opened on August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal offered a waterway through the isthmus of Panama connecting the oceans, creating fifty miles of sea-level passage. The American cargo and passenger ship, SS Ancon, was the first to officially pass through the Panama Canal in 1914. A testament to American innovation and ingenuity, the American Society of Civil Engineers has recognized the Panama Canal as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

Amanda Hughes serves as Outreach Director, and 90 Day Study Director, for Constituting America. She is author of Who Wants to Be Free?, and a story contributor for the anthologies Loving Moments, and Moments with Billy Graham.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

In 1788, as the United States Constitution was adopted, senators would be elected by state legislatures to protect the states from the federal government increasing its own power. Problems related to the election of senators later resulted in lengthy senate vacancies. A popular vote movement began as a solution, but it failed to consider importance of separation of powers as designed by the Framers to protect liberty and maintain stability in government. The popular vote was an attempt to hamper the more deliberative body that is the United States Senate, and succumb to the more passionate, immediate will of the people, so on April 8, 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted.

We’ve all heard the phrase: “shooting oneself in the foot.” Grammerist.com reminds us: To shoot oneself in the foot means to sabotage oneself, to make a silly mistake that harms yourself in some fashion. The phrase comes from a phenomenon that became fairly common during the First World War. Soldiers sometimes shot themselves in the foot in order to be sent to the hospital tent rather than being sent into battle.”[i]

Can a state, one of the United States, be guilty of “shooting itself in the foot?” How about multiple states? How about thirty-six states all at once? Not only can they be, I believe they have been guilty, particularly as it regards the Seventeenth Amendment. Let me explain.

“Checks and balances, checks and balances,” we hear the refrain often and passionately these days. The phrase “Checks and balances” is part of every schoolchild’s introduction to the Constitution. In May 2019, when President Donald Trump exerted executive privilege to prevent the testimony before Congress of certain White House advisors, NBC exclaimed: “Trump’s subpoena obstruction has fractured the Constitution’s system of checks and balances”[ii] I’m not certain the Framers of the Constitution would agree with NBC as exerting executive privilege has been part of our constitutional landscape since George Washington,[iii] and if exerting it “fractures” the Constitution, the document would have fallen into pieces long, long ago. As we will see, a significant “fracturing” of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances did occur in this country, but it occurred more than a hundred years before President Donald Trump took office.

The impeachment power is intended to check a rogue President. The Supreme Court checks a Constitution-ignoring Congress, as does the President’s veto. Congress can check (as in limit) the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and reduce or expand the number of justices at will. There are many examples of checks and balances in the Constitution. The framers of the document, distrustful as they were of human nature, were careful to give us this critical, power-limiting feature.[iv] But which was more important: the checks or the balances?

Aha, trick question. They are equally important (in my opinion at least). And sometimes a certain feature works as both a check and a balance. The one I have in mind is the original feature whereby Senators were to be appointed by their state legislatures.

We all know the story of how the Senate came into being which was the result of Roger Sherman’s great compromise. It retained the “one-state-one-vote” equality the small states enjoyed with the large states under the Articles of Confederation while also creating a legislative chamber, the House, where representation was based on a state’s population. Their six-year terms allowed them to take “a more detached view of issues coming before Congress.”[v] But how should these new Senators be selected: by the people, as in the House, or otherwise?

On July 7, 1787 the Constitutional Convention unanimously adopted a proposal by John Dickinson and Roger Sherman that the state legislatures elect this “Second Branch of the National Legislature.”  Why not the people? Alexander Hamilton explains:

“The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious men; and that some firm barrier against these operations was necessary. They, therefore, instituted your Senate.”[vi] (Emphasis added)

The Senate was to avoid the “impulses” of popularly-elected assemblies and provide a “barrier”  to such impulses when they might occur in the other branch.

James Madison explains in Federalist 62 who particularly benefits from this arrangement:

It is … unnecessary to [expand] on the appointment of senators by the State legislatures. Among the various modes which might have been devised for constituting this branch of the government, that which has been proposed by the convention is probably the most congenial with the public opinion. It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems.”[vii] (Emphasis added)

Appointment by the state legislatures gave the state governments a direct voice in the workings of the federal government. Madison continues:

“Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people (in the House), and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; ….” (Emphasis added)

For those with lingering doubt as to who the Senators were to represent, Robert Livingston explained in the New York Ratifying Convention: “The senate are indeed designed to represent the state governments.”[viii] (Emphasis added)

Perhaps sensing the potential to change the mode of electing Senators in the future, Hamilton cautioned: “In this state (his own state of New York) we have a senate, possessed of the proper qualities of a permanent body: Virginia, Maryland, and a few other states, are in the same situation: The rest are either governed by a single democratic assembly (ex: Pennsylvania), or have a senate constituted entirely upon democratic principles—These have been more or less embroiled in factions, and have generally been the image and echo of the multitude.[ix] Hamilton refers here to those states where the state senators were popularly elected.

The careful balance of this system worked well until the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the Progressive Era.

Gradually there arose a “feeling” that some senatorial appointments in the state legislatures were being “bought and sold.”  Between 1857 and 1900, Congress investigated three elections over alleged corruption. In 1900, the election of Montana Senator William A. Clark was voided after the Senate concluded that he had “purchased” eight of his fifteen votes.

Electoral deadlocks became another issue. Occasionally a state couldn’t decide on one or more of their Senators. One of Delaware’s Senate seats went unfilled from 1899 until 1903.

Neither of these problems was serious, but they both provided fodder for those enamored with “democracy.” But bandwagons being what they are, some could not resist. Some states began holding non-binding primaries for their Senate candidates.

Under mounting pressure from Progressives, by 1910, thirty-one state legislatures were asking Congress for a constitutional amendment allowing direct election of senators by the people. In the same year several Republican senators who were opposed to such reform failed re-election. This served as a “wake-up call” to others who remained opposed. Twenty-seven of the thirty-one states requesting an amendment also called for a constitutional convention to meet on the issue, only four states shy of the threshold that would require Congress to act.

Finally, on May 13, 1912, Congress responded. A resolution to require direct elections of Senators by the citizens of each state was finally introduced and it quickly passed. In less than a year it had been ratified by three-quarters of the states and was declared part of the Constitution by Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan on May 31, 1913, two months after President Woodrow Wilson took office.

The Seventeenth Amendment has been cheered by the Left as a victory for populism and democracy, and bemoaned by the Right as a loss for states’ rights or “The Death of Federalism!” Now, millions in corporate funding pours into Senate election campaigns. Senators no longer consult with their state legislatures regarding pending legislation. Why should they? They now represent their state’s citizens directly. The interests of the state governments need not be considered.

For the states to actually ask Congress for this change seems incredibly near-sighted. Much of the encroachment by the Federal Government on policy matters which were traditionally the purview of the states can, I believe, be traced to the Seventeenth Amendment.

We repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. What about repealing the Seventeenth?  Many organizations and individuals have called for it. Every year he was in office, Senator Zell Miller of Georgia repeatedly called for its repeal. A brief look at who supports repeal and who opposes it reveals much. In support of repeal are the various Tea Party organizations, National Review magazine and others on the Right. Opposed, predictably enough, sit the LA Times and other liberal organizations. Solon magazine called the repeal movement “The surprising Republican movement to strip voters of their right to elect senators.” Where this supposed right originates is not explained in the article.

The wisdom of America’s Founders continues to amaze us more than 200 years later. Unfortunately, the carefully balanced framework of government they devised has been slowly chipped away by Supreme Court decisions and structural changes, like the Seventeenth Amendment. Seeing that the states willingly threw away their direct voice in the federal government, my sympathy for them is limited, but repeal of this dreadful amendment is long overdue.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[i] https://grammarist.com/idiom/shoot-oneself-in-the-foot/

[ii] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-subpoena-obstruction-has-fractured-constitution-s-system-checks-ncna1002101

[iii] https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/a-brief-history-of-executive-privilege-from-george-washington-through-dick-cheney.html

[iv] See Federalist 51

[v] Bybee, Jay S. (1997). “Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sirens’ Song of the Seventeenth Amendment”. Northwestern University Law Review. Northwestern University School of Law. p. 515.

[vi] Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

[vii] James Madison, Federalist 62

[viii] Robert Livingston, New York Ratifying Convention, 24 Jun 1788.

[ix] Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

During the summer of 1896, twenty-five-year-old Orville Wright was recovering from typhoid fever in his Dayton, Ohio home. His brother, Wilbur Wright, was reading to Orville accounts of a German glider enthusiast named Otto Lilienthal who was killed in a crash flying his glider. The brothers started reading several books about bird flight and even applying the mechanics of it to powered human flight.

Despite the dreams of several visionaries who were studying human flight, the Washington Post proclaimed, “It is a fact that man can’t fly.” The Wright Brothers were amateurs who might just be able to prove the newspaper wrong. They had tinkered with mechanical inventions since they were boys. They had owned a printing press and now a bicycle shop and were highly skilled mechanics. They did not have the advantages of great wealth or a college education, but they had excellent good work habits and perseverance. They were enthusiastically dedicated and disciplined to achieve their goal.

On May 30, 1899, Wilbur wrote a letter to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He stated, “I have been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight ever since I [was] a boy.” He added, “My observations since have only convinced me more firmly that human flight is possible and practicable.” He requested any reading materials that the Smithsonian might be willing to send. He received a packet full of recent pamphlets and articles including those of Samuel Pierpont Langley who was the Secretary of the Smithsonian.

The Wright brothers voraciously read the Smithsonian materials and books about bird flight. Based upon their study, they first built a glider that allowed them to acquire vast knowledge about the mechanics necessary to fly. They knew that this was a necessary step toward powered flight.

The Wright brothers next found a suitable location to test out their glider flights in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, because that site had the right combination of steady, strong winds and soft sand dunes on which to crash land. They even flew kites and studied the flight of different birds to measure the air flow in the test area.

On October 19, 1900, Wilbur climbed aboard a glider and flew nearly 30 miles per hour for about 400 feet. They made several more test flights and carefully recorded data about them. Armed with this knowledge and experience, they returned to Dayton and made alterations to the glider during the winter. They returned to Kitty Hawk the following summer for additional testing.

The Wright brothers spent the summer of 1901 acquiring mounds of new data, taking test flights, and tinkering constantly on the design. The brothers experienced their share of doubts that they would be successful. During one low moment, Wilbur lamented that “not in a thousand years would man ever fly.” However, they encouraged each other, and Orville stated that “there was some spirit that carried us through.” During that winter, they even built a homemade wind tunnel and continued to re-design the glider based upon their practical discoveries in Kitty Hawk and theoretical experiments in Dayton.

During the fall of 1902, they made their annual pilgrimage to their camp at Kitty Hawk where they worked day and night. During one sleepless night, Orville developed an idea for a movable rear rudder for better control. They installed a rudder, and the modification helped them achieve even greater success with the glider flights. They knew they were finally ready to test a motor and dared to believe that they might fly through the air in what would become an airplane.

The Wright brothers spent hundreds of hours over the next year testing motors, developing propellers, and finding solutions to countless problems. Orville admitted, “Our minds became so obsessed with it that we could do little other work.” In December 1903, they reached Kitty Hawk and unpacked their powered glider for reassembly at their camp.

On December 17, five curious locals braved the freezing cold to watch Orville and Wilbur Wright as they prepared their flying machine. Wilbur set up their camera on its wooden tripod a short distance from the plane. Dressed in a suit and tie, Orville climbed aboard the bottom wing of the bi-plane and strapped himself in while the motor was warming up.

At precisely 10:35 a.m., Orville launched down the short track while Wilbur ran beside, helping to steady the plane. Suddenly, the plane lifted into the air, and Orville became the first person to pilot a machine that flew under its own power. He flew about 120 feet for nearly twelve seconds. It was a humble yet historic flight.

When Orville was later asked if he was scared, he joked, “Scared?  There wasn’t time.” They readied the plane for another flight and a half-hour later, Wilbur joined his brother in history by flying “like a bird” for approximately 175 feet. They flew farther and farther that day, and Wilbur went nearly half a mile in 59 seconds. They sent their father a telegram sharing the news of their success, and as he read it, he turned to their sister and said, “Well, they’ve made a flight.”

One witness of the Wright Brothers’ first flight noted the character that made them successful. “It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea, and they had faith.” President William Howard Taft also praised the hard work that went into the Wright Brothers’ achievement. “You made this discovery,” he told them at an award ceremony “by keeping your noses right at the job until you had accomplished what you had determined to.” The Wright brothers’ flight was part of a long train of technological innovations that resulted from American ingenuity and spirit.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

In late January 1898, President William McKinley dispatched the U.S.S. Maine to Cuban waters to protect American citizens and business investments during ongoing tensions between Spain and its colony, Cuba. The event eventually sparked a war that dramatically culminated a century of expansion and led Americans to debate the purposes of American foreign policy at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Events only ninety miles from American shores were increasingly involving the United States in Cuban affairs during the late 1890s.

Cuban revolutionaries had fought a guerrilla war against imperialist Spain starting in 1895, and Spain had responded by brutally suppressing the insurgency. General Valeriano Weyler, nicknamed “the butcher,” forced Cubans into relocation camps to deny the countryside to the rebels. Tens of thousands perished, and Cuba became a cause célèbre for many Americans.

Moreover, William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and other newspaper moguls publicized the atrocities committed by Spain’s military and encouraged sympathy for the Cuban people. Hearst knew the power he held over public opinion, telling one of his photographers, “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.”

During the evening of February 15, all was quiet as the Maine sat at anchor in Havana harbor. At 9:40 p.m., an explosion shattered the silence and tore the ship open, killing 266 sailors and Marines aboard. Giant gouts of flames and smoke flew hundreds of feet into the air. The press immediately blamed Spain and called for war with the sensationalist style of reporting called “yellow journalism.” The shocked public clamored for war with the popular cry, “Remember the Maine!” Hearst had also recently printed an insulting private letter from the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Don Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, that called McKinley “weak.”

President McKinley had sought alternatives to war for years and continued to seek a diplomatic solution despite the war fervor. However, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt repositioned naval warships close to Cuba and ordered Commodore George Dewey to attack the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in the Philippines. Roosevelt thought McKinley had “no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.” Despite McKinley’s best efforts, Congress declared war on April 25. Roosevelt quickly resigned and received approval to raise a cavalry regiment, nicknamed the “Rough Riders.”

Roosevelt felt it was his patriotic duty to serve his country. “It does not seem to me that it would be honorable for a man who has consistently advocated a warlike policy not to be willing himself to bear the brunt of carrying out that policy.” Moreover, Roosevelt praised “the soldierly virtues” and sought the strenuous life for himself and the country, which he believed had gone soft with the decadence of the Gilded Age. He wanted to test himself in battle and win glory.

Roosevelt went to Texas to train the eclectic First Volunteer Cavalry regiment of tough western cowboys and American Indians and Patriotic Ivy League athletes. Commander Roosevelt felt comfortable with both groups of men because he had attended Harvard and owned a North Dakota ranch. His regiment trained in the dusty heat of San Antonio, in the shadow of the Alamo, under him and Congressional Medal of Honor winner Colonel Leonard Wood.

The regiment loaded their horses and boarded trains bound for the embarkation point at Tampa, Florida. On June 22, the Rough Riders and thousands of other American troops landed unopposed at Daiquirí on the southern coast of Cuba. Many Rough Riders were without their horses and started marching toward the Spanish army at the capital of Santiago.

The Rough Riders and other U.S. troops were suffering from the tropical heat and forbidding jungle terrain. On June 24, hidden Spanish troops ambushed the Americans near Las Guasimas village. After a brief exchange resulting in some casualties on both sides, the Spanish withdrew to their fortified positions on the hills in front of Santiago. By June 30 the Americans had made it to the base of Kettle Hill, where the Spanish were entrenched and had their guns sighted on the surrounding plains.

American artillery was brought forward to bombard Kettle Hill, and Spanish guns answered. Several Rough Riders and men from other units were cut down by flying shrapnel. Roosevelt himself was wounded slightly in the arm. He and the entire army grew impatient as they awaited orders to attack.

When the order finally came, a mounted Roosevelt led the assault. The Rough Riders were flanked on either side by the African American “Buffalo Soldiers” of the regular Ninth and Tenth cavalry regiments, commanded by white officer John “Black Jack” Pershing. The American troops charged up the incline while firing at the enemy. Roosevelt had dismounted and led the charge on foot. The Spanish fired into American ranks and killed and wounded dozens. Soon, they were driven off. When Spaniards atop adjacent San Juan Hill fired on the Rough Riders, Roosevelt prepared his men to attack that hill as well.

After much confusion in the initial charge, Roosevelt rallied his troops. Finally, he jumped over a fence and again led the charge with the support of rattling American Gatling guns. The Rough Riders and other regiments successfully drove the Spaniards off the hill and gave a great cheer. They dug into their positions and collapsed, exhausted after a day of strenuous fighting. The Americans took Santiago relatively easily, forcing the Spanish fleet to take to sea where it was destroyed by U.S. warships. The Spanish capitulated on August 12.

Roosevelt became a national hero and used the fame to catapult his way to become governor of New York, vice-president, and president after McKinley was assassinated in 1901. Although the 1898 Teller Amendment guaranteed Cuban sovereignty and independence, the United States gained significant control over Cuban affairs with the Platt Amendment in 1901 and Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904. The United States also built the Panama Canal for trade and national security.

In the Philippines, Admiral Dewey sailed into Manila Bay and wiped out the Spanish fleet there on May 1, 1898. However, the Filipinos, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, rebelled against the American control just as they had against the Spanish. The insurrection resulted in the loss of thousands of American and Filipino lives. Americans established control there after suppressing the revolt in 1902.

The Spanish-American War was a turning point in history because the nation assumed global responsibilities for a growing empire that included Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam (as well as Hawaii separately). The Spanish-American War sparked a sharp debate between imperialists and anti-imperialists in the United States over the course of American foreign policy and global power. The debate continued throughout the twentieth century known as the “American Century” due to its power and influence around the world.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

On February 15, 1898, an American warship, U.S.S. Maine, blew up in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. A naval board of inquiry reported the following month that the explosion had been caused by a submerged mine. That conclusion was confirmed in 1911, after a more exhaustive investigation and careful examination of the wreck. What was unclear, and remains so, is who set the mine. During the decade, tensions with Spain had been rising over that country’s handling of a Cuban insurgency against Spanish rule. The newspaper chains of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer had long competed for circulation by sensationalist reporting. The deteriorating political conditions in Cuba and the harshness of Spanish attempts to suppress the rebels provided fodder for the newspapers’ “yellow” journalism. Congress had pressured the American government to do something to resolve the crisis, but neither President Grover Cleveland nor President William McKinley had taken the bait thus far.

With the heavy loss of life that accompanied the sinking, “Remember the Maine” became a national obsession. Although Spain had very little to gain from sinking an American warship, whereas Cuban rebels had much to gain in order to bring the United States actively to their cause, the public outcry was directed against Spain. The Spanish government previously had offered to change its military tactics in Cuba and to allow Cubans limited home rule. The offer now was to grant an armistice to the insurgents. The American ambassador in Spain believed that the Spanish government would even be willing to grant independence to Cuba, if there were no political or military attempt to humiliate Spain.

Neither the Spanish government nor McKinley wanted war. However, the latter proved unable to resist the new martial mood and the aroused jingoism in the press and Congress. On April 11, 1898, McKinley sent a message to Congress that did not directly call for war, but declared that he had “exhausted every effort” to resolve the matter and was awaiting Congress’s action. Congress declared war. A year later, McKinley observed, “But for the inflamed state of public opinion, and the fact that Congress could no longer be held in check, a peaceful solution might have been had.” He might have added that, had he been possessed of a stiffer political spine, that peaceful solution might have been had, as well.

The “splendid little war,” in the words of the soon-to-be Secretary of State, John Hay, was exceedingly popular and resulted in an overwhelming and relatively easy American victory. Only 289 were killed in action, although, due to poor hygienic conditions, many more died from disease. Psychologically, it proved cathartic for Americans after the national trauma of the Civil War. One symbolic example of the new unity forged by the war with Spain was that Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee, former Confederate generals, were generals in the U.S. Army.

Spain signed a preliminary peace treaty in August. The treaty called for the surrender of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The status of the Philippines was left for final negotiations. The ultimate treaty was signed in Paris on December 10, 1898. The Philippines, wracked by insurrection, were ceded to the United States for $2 million. The administration believed that it would be militarily advantageous to have a base in the Far East to protect American interests.

The war may have been popular, but the peace was less so. The two-thirds vote needed for Senate approval of the peace treaty was a close-run matter. There was a militant group of “anti-imperialists” in the Senate who considered it a betrayal of American republicanism to engage in the same colonial expansion as the European powers. Americans had long imagined themselves to be unsullied by the corrupt motives and brutal tactics that such colonial ventures represented in their minds. McKinley, who had reluctantly agreed to the treaty, reassured himself and Americans, “No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose.” But, with a nod to Rudyard Kipling’s urging that Americans take on the “white man’s burden,” McKinley cast the decision in republican missionary garb, “If we can benefit those remote peoples, who will object? If in the years of the future they are established in government under law and liberty, who will regret our perils and sacrifices?”

The controversy around an “American Empire” was not new. Early American republicans like Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Marshall, among many others, had described the United States in that manner and without sarcasm. The government might be a republic in form, but the United States would be an empire in expanse, wealth, and glory. Why else acquire the vast Louisiana territory in 1803? Why else demand from Mexico that huge sparsely-settled territory west of Texas in 1846? “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” painted Emanuel Leutze in 1861. Manifest Destiny became the aspirational slogan.

While most Americans cheered those developments, a portion of the political elite had misgivings. The Whigs opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. To many Whigs, the latter especially was merely a war of conquest and the imposition of American rule against the inhabitants’ wishes. Behind the republican facade lay a more fundamental political concern. The Whigs’ main political power was in the North, but the new territory likely would be settled by Southerners and increase the power of the Democrats. That movement of settlers would also give slavery a new lease on life, something much reviled by most Whigs, among them a novice Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.

Yet, by the 1890s, the expansion across the continent was completed. Would it stop there or move across the water to distant shores? One omen was the national debate over Hawaii that culminated in the annexation of the islands in 1898. Some opponents drew on the earlier Whig arguments and urged that, if the goal of the continental expansion was to secure enough land for two centuries to realize Jefferson’s ideal of a large American agrarian republic, the goal had been achieved. Going off-shore had no such republican fig leaf to cover its blatant colonialism.

Other opponents emphasized the folly of nation-building and trying to graft Western values and American republicanism onto alien cultures who neither wanted them nor were sufficiently politically sophisticated to make them work. They took their cue from John C. Calhoun, who, in 1848, had opposed the fanciful proposal to annex all of Mexico, “We make a great mistake in supposing that all people are capable of self-government. Acting under that impression, many are anxious to force free Governments on all the people of this continent, and over the world, if they had the power…. It is a sad delusion. None but a people advanced to a high state of moral and intellectual excellence are capable in a civilized condition, of forming and maintaining free Governments ….”

With peace at hand, the focus shifted to political and legal concerns. The question became whether or not the Constitution applied to these new territories ex proprio vigore: “Does the Constitution follow the flag?” Neither President McKinley nor Congress had a concrete policy. The Constitution, having been formed by thirteen states, along the eastern slice of a vast continent, was unclear. The Articles of Confederation had provided for the admission of Canada and other British colonies, such as the West Indies, but that document was moot. The matter was left to the judiciary, and the Supreme Court provided a settlement of sorts in a series of cases over two decades called the Insular Cases.

Cuba was easy. Congress’s declaration of war against Spain had been clear: “The United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.” In Neely v. Henkel (1901), the Court unanimously held that the Constitution did not apply to Cuba. Effectively, Cuba was already a foreign country outside the Constitution. Cuba became formally independent in 1902. In similar manner, the United States promised independence to the Philippine people, a process that took several decades due to various military exigencies. Thus, again, the Constitution did not apply there, at least not tout court, as the Court affirmed beginning in Dorr v. U.S. in 1904. That took care of the largest overseas dominions, and Americans could tentatively congratulate themselves that they were not genuine colonialists.

More muddled was the status of Puerto Rico and Guam. In Puerto Rico, social, political, and economic conditions did not promise an easy path to independence, and no such assurance was given. The territory was not deemed capable of surviving on its own. Rather, the peace treaty expressly provided that Congress would determine the political status of the inhabitants. In 1900, Congress passed the Foraker Act, which set up a civil government patterned on the old British imperial system with which Americans were familiar. The locals would elect an assembly, but the President would appoint a governor and executive council. Guam was in a similar state of dependency.

In Downes v. Bidwell (1901), the Court established the new status of Puerto Rico as neither outside nor entirely inside the United States. Unlike Hawaii or the territories that were part of Manifest Destiny, there was no clear determination that Puerto Rico was on a path to become a state and, thus, was already incorporated into the entity called the United States. It belonged to the United States, but was not part of the United States. The Constitution, on its own, applied only to states and to territory that was expected to become part of the United States. Puerto Rico was more like, but not entirely like, temporarily administered foreign territory. Congress determined the governance of that territory by statute or treaty, and, with the exception of certain “natural rights” reflected in particular provisions of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution applied only to the extent to which Congress specified.

These cases adjusted constitutional doctrine to a new political reality inaugurated by the sinking of the Maine and the war that event set in motion. The United States no longer looked inward to settle its own large territory and to resolve domestic political issues relating to the nature of the union. Rather, the country was looking beyond its shores and was emerging as a world power. That metamorphosis would take a couple of generations and two world wars to complete, the last of which triggered by another surprise attack on American warships.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

The Massacre at Wounded Knee, part of the Ghost Dance War, marked the last of the Indian Wars and the end of one of the bloodiest eras in American History, the systematic and deliberate slaughter of Native American peoples and their way of life. It was an American Holocaust. During a 500 year period, approximately 100,000,000 Native Americans were killed as citizens of the United States pushed West in the name of manifest destiny and destroyed the Native American territories that had been their home for thousands of years. These events will never take a place on the front of our history books, but they must never lose their place in our national memory.

Armed conflict was still prevalent in the American West in the 1880s between the U.S. Army and the Native American population, even after most of the tribes there had been displaced or had their populations reduced in great numbers. The Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 had been the most fierce of the wars with the Sioux, which had started in the mid-1850s, when Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had gone to war to defend the Black Hills after the U.S. violated the treaty that they had signed stating the land was the property of the Sioux. After the Battle of Little Bighorn, a gradual depletion of Sioux forces occurred and Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877.

The remaining Sioux were spread out in their reservations and eventually were placed onto a central reservation in the Dakota territory and were practicing a ritual known as the Ghost Dance. The dance was supposed to drive the white men from Native American territory and restore peace and tranquility to the region. Settlers were frightened by the dance and they said it had a “ghostly aura” to it, thus giving it its name.

In response to the settlers’ fears, U.S. commanders arrested several leaders of the Sioux, including Chief Kicking Bear and Chief Sitting Bull, who was later killed.

Two weeks after Sitting Bull’s death, U.S. troops demanded that all the Sioux immediately turn over their weapons. As they were peacefully doing so, one deaf Sioux warrior did not understand the command to turn over his rifle. As his rifle was being taken from him, a shot went off in the crowd. The soldiers panicked and open fired on everyone in the area.

As the smoke cleared, 300 dead Lakota and 25 dead U.S. soldiers were laying on the ground. Many more Lakota were later killed by U.S. troops as they fled the reservation. The massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last of the Indian Wars. Twenty U.S. soldiers were later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions during this campaign. The National Congress of American Indians has called on the U.S. government to rescind some or all of these medals, but they have not yet taken action to do so.

The American public’s reaction to the massacre was positive at first but over time as the scale and gravity of the massacre was revealed, the American people began to understand the brutal injustice that occurred during this encounter. Today, we need to remember the Massacre at Wounded Knee for the human cost and to make sure that events like this never happen again in our nation. We also need to make sure to honor and remember all Americans and their histories, even when it is not easy to read or take responsibility. For how can we truly be a nation where all are created equal if the treatment of our histories are not?

Val Crofts is a Social Studies teacher from Janesville, Wisconsin. He teaches as Milton High School in Milton, Wisconsin, and has been there 16 years. He teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics, U.S. History and U.S. Military History. Val has also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School for seven years, teaching several Social Studies courses for them. Val is also a member of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Paul Israel

By the time Thomas Edison began his effort to develop an incandescent electric light in September 1878, researchers had been working on the problem for forty years. While many of them developed lamps that worked in the laboratory and for short-term demonstrations, none had been able to devise a lamp that would last in long-term commercial use.  Edison was able to succeed where others had failed because he understood that developing a successful commercial lamp also required him to develop an entire electrical system. With the resources of his laboratory, he and his staff were able to design not only a commercially successful lamp but the system that made it possible.

At the time, Edison’s work on telegraphs and telephones largely defined the limits of his knowledge of electrical technology. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he did not even have experience with arc lights and dynamos. Yet he confidently predicted that he could solve the problem and after only a few days of experiment during the second week of September 1878 he announced that he had “struck a bonanza.”  He believed he had solved the problem of creating a long-lasting lamp by designing regulators that would prevent the lamp filament (he was then using platinum and related metals) from melting. Edison reached this solution by thinking of electric lights as analogous to telegraph instruments and lamp regulators as a form of electromechanical switch similar to those he used in telegraphy. Edison’s regulators used the expansion of metals or air heated by the electric current to divert current from the incandescing element in order to prevent it from destruction by overheating. Edison was soon designing lamp regulators in the same fertile manner that he had previously varied the relays and circuits of his telegraph designs.

Edison was also confident that his insights regarding high-resistance lamps and parallel circuits would be key to designing a commercial electric lighting system. Because the regulator temporarily removed the lamp from the circuit, he realized that he had to place the lamps in parallel circuits so that each individual lamp could be turned on and off without affecting any others in the circuit. This was also desirable for customers used to independently operated gas lamps. Even more important was Edison’s grasp of basic electrical laws. He was virtually alone in understanding how to produce an economical distribution system. Other researchers had been stymied by the cost of the copper conductors, which would require a very large cross section to reduce energy lost as excess heat in the system. However, large copper conductors would make the system too expensive. Edison realized that by using high-resistance lamps he could increase the voltage proportionately to the current and thus reduce the size and cost of the conductors.

Edison initially focused his work on the lamp because he saw it as the critical problem and thought that standard arc-lighting dynamos could easily meet the requirements of an incandescent lighting system.  However, after experimenting with one of these dynamos, Edison began to doubt their suitability for his purposes. With the expectation of funds from the newly formed Edison Electric Light Company, he ordered other machines and began to design his own generators as well. By January 1879, Edison’s understanding of generators had advanced sufficiently “after a few weeks hard study on magneto electric principles,” for him to start his machinists building a new design. Edison’s ability to experiment with generators was greatly enhanced by his new financial resources that enabled him to build a large machine shop that could produce not only fine instruments like telegraphs and lamps, but also generators—”in short all the means to set up & test most deliberately every point of the Electric Light.” With the new facilities, machinery, and assistants made possible by his financial backers, Edison could pursue research on a broad front. In fact, by the end of May, he had developed his standard generator design. It would take much longer to develop a commercial lamp.

Just as the dynamo experiments marked a new effort to build up a base of fundamental knowledge, so too did lamp experiments in early 1879 begin to reflect this new spirit of investigation. Instead of continuing to construct numerous prototypes, Edison began observing the behavior of platinum and other metals under the conditions required for incandescence. By studying his filaments under a microscope, he soon discovered that the metal seemed to absorb gases during heating, suggesting that the problem lay less in the composition of the metal than in the environment in which it was heated. The most obvious way to change the environment was to use a vacuum. By improving the existing vacuum-pump technology with the assistance of an experienced German glassblower, Edison was able to better protect his filaments and by the end of the summer he had done away with his complicated electromechanical regulators. The improved vacuum pumps developed by the laboratory staff helped to produce a major breakthrough in the development of a commercial lamp.

Although Edison no longer required a regulator for his platinum filaments and the lamps lasted longer, they were too expensive for commercial use. Not only was platinum a rare and expensive metal, but platinum filaments did not produce the high resistance he needed for his distribution system. With much better vacuum technology capable of preventing the oxidation of carbon filaments, Edison decided to try experimenting with a material that was not only much cheaper and more abundant, but which also produced high-resistance filaments.

The shift to carbon was a product of Edison’s propensity for working on several projects at once. During the spring and summer of 1879, telephone research at times overshadowed the light as Edison sought to improve his instrument for the British market. A crucial element of Edison’s telephone was the carbon button used in his transmitter. These buttons were produced in a little shed at the laboratory complex where day and night kerosene lamps were burned and the resulting carbon, known as lampblack, was collected and formed into buttons. The reason for turning to this familiar material lies in another analogy. Almost from the beginning of the light research, Edison had determined that the most efficient form for his incandescing element would be a thin wire spiral which would allow him to decrease radiating surface so as to reduce the energy lost through radiation of heat rather than light. The spiral form also increased resistance. It was his recognition that the lampblack could be rolled like a wire and then coiled into a spiral like platinum that led Edison to try carbon as a filament material.

Although Edison’s basic carbon-filament lamp patent, filed on November 4, 1879, still retained the spiral form, the laboratory staff had great difficulty in actually winding a carbon spiral. Instead, Edison turned to another form of carbon “wire”–a thread. During the night of October 21–22, the laboratory staff watched as a cotton-thread filament burned for 14 1/2 hours with a resistance of around 100 ohms. This date of this experiment would later be later be associated with the invention of the electric light, but at the time Edison treated it not as a finished invention but rather as the beginning of a new experimental path. The commercial lamp would require another year of research.

Nonetheless, by New Year’s Day 1880, Edison was able to demonstrate his system to the public. Over the course of the next year, he and his staff worked feverishly to bring his system to a state of commercial introduction. In the process, he turned the Menlo Park laboratory into an R&D center, with an emphasis on development. By spring, the staff which previously consisted of some twelve or fifteen experimenters and machinists, was greatly expanded, at times reaching as many as sixty men. Work on the various component was delegated to new members of the staff and over the course of the year, work progressed on each element of the system, including the generator, meter, underground conductors, safety fuses, lamp fixtures and sockets, and the commercial bamboo-carbon filament. By the time all these ancillary components were developed and manufacturing underway in the spring of 1881, Edison had spent over $200,000 on research and development.  Commercial introduction required several thousand additional dollars of research as well as $500,000 to install the first central station system in downtown New York City, which opened on September 4, 1882, four years after Edison first began his research. Though he claimed merely to “have accomplished all I promised,” Edison had done even more by starting a new industry and reorganizing the process of invention.

Historian, Dr. Paul Israel, a former Californian, moved East to NJ over 30 years ago to do research for a book on Thomas Edison & the electric light. Today he is the Director and General Editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University, the New Jersey State University. 

The Thomas A. Edison Papers Project, a research center at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, is one of the most ambitious editing projects ever undertaken by an American university.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Paul Israel

In mid-July 1877, while working to develop an improved telephone for the Western Union Telegraph Company, Thomas Edison conceived the idea of recording and reproducing telephone messages. Edison came up with this extraordinary idea because he thought about the telephone as a form of telegraph, even referring to it as a “speaking telegraph.” Thus, on July 18, he tried an experiment with a telephone “diaphragm having an embossing point & held against paraffin paper moving rapidly.” Finding that sound “vibrations are indented nicely” he concluded, “there’s no doubt that I shall be able to store up & reproduce automatically at any future time the human voice perfectly.”

At the time Edison was also working on his repeating telegraph known as the translating embosser. This device recorded an outgoing message as the operator sent it, enabling automatic, rapid retransmission of the same message on other lines. This would be particularly desirable for long press-wire articles that required very skilled operators to transmit and receive. The incoming, high-speed message recorded by the embosser at each receiving station could be transcribed at a slower speed by an operator using a standard sounder. Edison thought his telephone recorder could be used in a similar fashion by allowing the voice message to be “reproduced slow or fast by a copyist & written down.”

Busy with telephone and translating embosser experiments, Edison put this idea aside until August 12, when he drew a device he labeled “Phonograph,”  which looked very much like an automatic telegraph recorder he had developed a few years earlier. For many years, researchers were fooled by another drawing containing the inscription “Kreuzi Make This Edison August 12/77.” However, the text for this drawing, which was published twice in the mid-1890s without the inscription, was added during the 40th anniversary of the invention to represent the drawing from which machinist John Kruesi constructed the first phonograph.

Over the next few months, Edison periodically experimented with “apparatus for recording & reproducing the human voice,” using various methods to record on paper tape. The first design for a cylinder recorder, apparently still using paper to record on, appeared in a notebook entry of September 21. However, it was not until November 5, that he first described the design that John Kruesi would beginning making at the end of the month. “I propose having a cylinder 10 threads or embossing grooves to the inch cylinder 1 foot long on this tin foil of proper thickness.” As Edison noted, he had discovered after “various experiments with wax, chalk, etc.” that “tin foil over a groove is the easiest of all= this cylinder will indent about 200 spoken words & reproduce them from same cylinder.” On November 10, he drew a rough sketch of this new tinfoil cylinder design. This drawing looks very similar to the more careful sketch he later inscribed “Kreuzi Make This Edison August 12/77.”  It also resembles the large drawing Edison made on November 29, which may have been used by Kruesi while he was making the first phonograph during the first six days of December.

These drawings of the tinfoil cylinder phonograph looked very much like those for the cylinder version of Edison’s translating embosser while a disc design was based on another version of his translating embosser. The disc translating embosser can be found today at the reconstructed Menlo Park Laboratory at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.  This device also became part of the creation myth for the phonograph when it appeared in the 1940 Spencer Tracy movie Edison the Man. In the movie an assistant accidentally starts the embosser with a recording on it, resulting in a high-pitched sound that leads Edison to the idea of recording sound.

Although Edison did not have a working phonograph until December, he had drafted his first press release to announce the new invention on September 7. Writing in the third person he claimed that

“Mr. Edison the Electrician has not only succeeded in producing a perfectly articulating telephone.…far superior and much more ingenious than the telephone off Bell…but has gone into a new and entirely unexplored field of acoustics which is nothing less than an attempt to record automatically the speech of a very rapid speaker upon paper; from which he reproduces the same Speech immediately or year’s afterwards or preserving the characteristics of the speakers voice so that persons familiar with it would at once recognize it.

This text and its drawings of a paper-tape phonograph would become the basis for a letter to the editor by Edison’s associate Edward Johnson that appeared in the November 17 issue of Scientific American. Not surprisingly, when this was republished in the newspapers it was met with skepticism.

On December 7, the day after Kruesi finished making the first tinfoil cylinder phonograph, Edison took the machine to Scientific American’s offices in New York City, accompanied by Johnson and laboratory assistant Charles Batchelor. He amazed the staff when he placed the little machine on the editor’s desk and turned the handle to reproduce a recording he had already made. As described in an article in the December 22 issue, “the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night.”

By the New Year, Edison had an improved phonograph that he exhibited at Western Union headquarters, where it attracted the attention of the New York newspapers. These first public demonstrations produced a trickle of articles that soon turned into a steady stream and by the end of March had become a veritable flood. Edison soon became as famous as his astounding invention. Reports soon began calling Edison “Inventor of the Age,” the “Napoleon of Invention,” and most famously “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”

Edison had grand expectations for his invention as did the investors in the newly formed Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. However, Edison and his associates were unable to turn the tinfoil phonograph from a curiosity suitable for exhibitions and lectures into a consumer product. The phonograph’s real drawback was not the mechanical design on which they focused their efforts but the tinfoil recording surface.  Compared to later wax recording surfaces developed in the 1880s, tinfoil recordings had very poor fidelity and also deteriorated rapidly after a single playback. As a result, for the next decade the phonograph remained little more than a scientific curiosity.

Historian, Dr. Paul Israel, a former Californian, moved East to NJ over 30 years ago to do research for a book on Thomas Edison & the electric light. Today he is the Director and General Editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University, the New Jersey State University. 

The Thomas A. Edison Papers Project, a research center at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, is one of the most ambitious editing projects ever undertaken by an American university.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Dan Morenoff

Usually, breaking down history into chapters requires imposing arbitrary separations. Every once in a while, though, the divisions are clear and real, providing a hard-stop in the action that only makes sense against the backdrop of what it concludes, even if it explains what follows.

For reasons having next-to-nothing to do with the actual candidates,[1] the Presidential election of 1876 provided that kind of page-break in American history. It came on the heels of the Grant Presidency, during which the victor of Vicksburg and Appomattox sought to fulfill the Union’s commitments from the war (including those embodied in the post-war Constitutional Amendments) and encountered unprecedented resistance. It saw that resistance taken to a whole new level, which threw the election results into chaos and created a Constitutional crisis. And by the time Congress had extricated itself from that, they had fixed the immediate mess only by creating a much larger, much more costly, much longer lasting one.

Promises Made

To understand the transition, we need to start with the backdrop.

Jump back to April 1865. General Ulysses S. Grant takes Richmond, the Confederate capitol. The Confederate government collapses in retreat, with its Cabinet going its separate ways.[2] Before it does, Confederate President Jefferson Davis issues his final order to General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia: keep fighting! He tells Lee to take his troops into the countryside, fade into a guerrilla force, and fight on, making governance impossible. Lee, of course, refuses and surrenders at Appomattox Courthouse. A celebrating Abraham Lincoln takes a night off for a play, where a Southern sympathizer from Maryland murders him.[3] Before his passing, Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves and won the war (in part, thanks to the help of the freedmen who had joined the North’s army), so saving the Union. His assassination signified a major theme of the next decade: some’s refusal to accept the war’s results left them willing to cast aside the rule of law and employ political violence to resist the establishment of new norms.

Leaving our flashback: Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln in office, but in nothing else. Super-majorities in both the House and Senate hated him and his policies and established a series of precedents enhancing Congressional power, even while failing to establish the one they wanted most.[4] Before his exit from the White House, despite Johnson’s opposition: (a) the States had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery); (b) Congress had passed the first Civil Rights Act (in 1866, over his veto); (c) Congress had proposed and the States had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment (“constitutionalizing” the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by: (i) creating federal citizenship for all born in our territory; (ii) barring states from “abridg[ing] the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States[;]” (iii) altering the representation formula for states in Congress and the electoral college, and (iv) guaranteeing the equal protection of the laws); and (d) in the final days of his term, Congress formally proposed the Fifteenth Amendment (barring states from denying or abridging the right to vote of citizens of the United States “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”).

Notice how that progression, at each stage, was made necessary by the resistance of some Southerners to what preceded it. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery? Bedford Forrest, a low-ranking Confederate General, responded by reversing Lee’s April decision: in December 1865, he founded the Ku Klux Klan (effectively, Confederate forces reborn) to wage the clandestine war against the U.S. government and the former slaves it had freed, which Lee refused to fight.  Their efforts (and, after Johnson recognized them as governments, the efforts of the Southern states to recreate slavery under another name) triggered passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment. Southern states nonetheless continued to disenfranchise black Americans. So, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to stop them. Each step required the next.

And the next step saw America, at its first chance, turn to its greatest hero, Ulysses S. Grant, to replace Johnson with someone who would put the White House on the side of fulfilling Lincoln’s promises. Grant tried to do so. He (convinced Congress to authorize and then) created the Department of Justice; he backed, signed into law, and had DOJ vigorously prosecute violations of the Enforcement Act of 1870 (banning the Klan and, more generally, the domestic terrorism it pioneered using to prevent black people from voting), the Enforcement Act of 1871 (allowing federal oversight of elections, where requested), and the Ku Klux Klan Act (criminalizing the Klan’s favorite tactics and making state officials who denied Americans either their civil rights or the equal protection of law personally liable for damages). He readmitted to the Union the last states of the old Confederacy still under military government, while conditioning readmission on their recognition of the equality before the law of all U.S. citizens. Eventually, he signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1875, guarantying all Americans access to all public accommodations.

And over the course of Grant’s Presidency, these policies bore fruit.  Historically black colleges and universities sprang up. America’s newly enfranchised freedmen and their white coalition partners elected governments in ten (10) states of the former Confederacy. These governments ratified new state constitutions and created their states’ first public schools. They saw black Americans serve in office in significant numbers for the first time (including America’s first black Congressmen and Senators and, in P.B.S. Pinchback, its first black Governor).

Gathering Clouds

But that wasn’t the whole story.

While the Grant Administration succeeded in breaking the back of the Klan, the grind of entering a second decade of military tours in the South shifted enough political power in the North to slowly sap support for continued, vigorous, federal action defending the rights of black Southerners. And less centralized terrorist forces functioned with increasing effectiveness. In 1872, in conjunction with a state election marred by thuggery and fraud, one such “militia” massacred an untold number of victims in Colfax, Louisiana. Federal prosecution of the perpetrators foundered when the Supreme Court gutted the Enforcement Acts as beyond Congress’s power to enact.

That led to more such “militias” often openly referring to themselves as “the military arm of the Democratic Party” flowering across the country.  And their increasingly brazen attacks on black voters and their white allies allowed those styling themselves “Redeemers” of the region to replace, one by one, the freely elected governments of Reconstruction first in Louisiana, then in Mississippi, then in South Carolina… with governments expressly dedicated to restoring the racial caste system.  “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, the leader of a parallel massacre of black Union army veterans living in Hamburg, South Carolina, used his resulting notoriety to launch a political career spanning decades. Eventually, he reached both the governor’s mansion and the U.S. Senate, along the way, becoming the father of America’s gun-control laws, because it was easier to terrorize and disenfranchise the disarmed.

By 1876, with such “militias” enjoying a clear playbook and, in places, support from their state governments, the stage was set for massive fraud and duress trying to swing a presidential election. Attacks on black voters, and their allies, intended to prevent a substantial percentage of the electorate from voting, unfolded on a regional scale. South Carolina, while pursuing such illegal terror, simultaneously claimed to have counted more ballots than it had registered voters. The electoral vote count it eventually sent to the Senate was certified by no one – that for Louisiana was certified by a gubernatorial candidate holding no office. Meanwhile, Oregon sent two different sets of electoral votes: one certified by the Secretary of State, the other certified by the Governor, cast for two different Presidential candidates.

The Mess

The Twelfth Amendment requires states’ electors to: (a) meet; (b) cast their votes for the President and Vice President; (c) compile a list of vote-recipients for each (to be signed by the electors and certified); and (d) send the sealed list to the U.S. Senate (to the attention of the President of the Senate). It then requires the President of the Senate to open the sealed lists in the presence of the House and Senate to count the votes.

Normally, the President of the Senate is the Vice President. But Grant’s Vice President, Henry Wilson, had died in 1875 and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment’s mechanism to fill a Vice Presidential vacancy was still almost a century away. That left, in 1876, the Senate’s President Pro Tempore, Thomas W. Ferry (R-MI) to serve as the acting President of the Senate. But given the muddled state of the records sent to the Senate, Senate Democrats did not trust Ferry to play this role. Since the filibuster was well established by the 1870s, the Senate could do nothing without their acquiescence. More, they could point to Johnson-Administration precedents enhancing Congressional authority to demand that resolution of disputed electoral votes be reached jointly by both chambers of Congress, which they preferred, because Democrats had taken a majority of the lower House in 1874.

No one agreed which votes to count. No one agreed who could count them. And the difference between sets was enough to deliver the majority of the electoral college to either major party’s nominees for the Presidency and Vice Presidency. And all of this came at the conclusion of an election already marred by large-scale, partisan violence.

Swapping Messes

It took the Congress months to find its way out of this morass. Eventually, it did so through an unwritten deal. On March 2, 1877, Congress declared Ohio Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States over Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Hayes, in turn, embraced so-called “Home Rule,” removing all troops from the old Confederacy and halting the federal government’s efforts to either enforce the Civil Rights Acts or make real the promises of the post-war Constitutional Amendments.

With the commitments of Reconstruction abandoned, the “Redeemers” promptly completed their “Redemption” of the South from freely, lawfully elected governments. They rewrote state constitutions, broadly disenfranchised those promised the vote by the Fifteenth Amendment, and established the whole Jim-Crow structure that ignored (really, made a mockery of) the Fourteenth Amendment’s guaranties.

Congress solved the short-term problem by creating a larger, structural one that would linger for a century.

Dan Morenoff is Executive Director of The Equal Voting Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican nominee, was the Governor of Ohio at the time who had served in the Union army as a Brigadier General; Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic nominee, was the Governor of New York at the time, and earlier had been among the most prominent anti-slavery, pro-union Democrats to remain in the party in 1860.  Indeed, in 1848, Tilden was a founder of Martin Van Buren’s Free Soil Party, who attacked the Whigs (which Hayes then supported) as too supportive of slave-power.

[2] CSA President Jefferson Davis broke West, with the intention of reaching Texas and Arkansas (both unoccupied by the Union and continuing to claim authority from that rump-Confederacy).  His French-speaking Louisianan Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin broke South, pretending to be a lost immigrant peddler as he wound his way to Florida, then took a raft to Cuba as a refugee.  He won asylum, there, with the British embassy and eventually rode to London with the protection of the British Navy – alone among leading Confederates, Benjamin had a successful Second Act, in which he became a leading British lawyer and author of the world’s leading treatise on international taxation.

[3] To this day, it is unclear to what degree John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate operative.  He certainly spied for the CSA.  No correspondence survives to answer whether his assassination of Lincoln was a pre-planned CSA operation or freelancing after Richmond’s fall.

[4] He survived impeachment by a single vote.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

In the mid-nineteenth century, the providential idea of Manifest Destiny drove Americans to move west. They traveled along various overland trails and railroads to Oregon, California, Colorado, and the Dakota Territory in search of land and gold. Native Americans who lived and hunted in the West were alarmed at white encroachment on their lands, which were usually protected by treaties. The conflict led to several violent clashes throughout the West.

Tensions with Native Americans simmered in the early 1870s. The Transcontinental Railroad contributed to western development and the integration of national markets, but it also intruded on Native American lands. Two military expeditions were dispatched to Montana to protect the railroad and its workers in 1872. In 1874, gold was reportedly discovered in the Black Hills in modern-day South Dakota within the Great Sioux Reservation. By the end of 1875, 15,000 prospectors and miners were in the Black Hills searching for gold.

Some Indians resisted. Sitting Bull was an elite Lakota Sioux war leader who had visions and dreams. Moreover, Oglala Lakota supreme war chief Crazy Horse had a reputation as a fierce warrior. They resisted the reservations and American encroachment on their lands and were willing to unite and fight against it.

In early November 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant met with General Philip Sheridan and others on Indian policy at the White House. They issued an ultimatum for all Sioux outside the reservation to go there by January 31, 1876 or be considered hostile. The Sioux ignored it. Sitting Bull said, “I will not go to the reservation. I have no land to sell. There is plenty of game for us. We have enough ammunition. We don’t want any white men here.”

That spring, the Cheyenne, Oglala, and Sioux tribes in the area decided to unite through the summer and fight the Americans. In the spring, Sitting Bull called for warriors to assemble at his village for war. Nearly two thousand warriors assembled, many were armed with the latest repeating Springfield rifles.

That spring, Sitting Bull had visions of victory over the white man. In mid-May, he fasted and purified himself in a ritual called the Sun Dance. After 50 small strips of flesh had been cut from each arm, he had a vision of whites coming into their camp and suffering a great defeat.

After discovering the approximate location of Sitting Bull’s village, General Alfred Terry met with Colonel George Custer and Colonel John Gibbon on the Yellowstone River to formulate a plan. They agreed upon a classic hammer and anvil attack in which Custer would proceed down the Rosebud River and attack the village, while Terry and Gibbon went down the Yellowstone and Little Bighorn Rivers to block any escape. Custer had 40 Arikara scouts with him to find the enemy.

On June 23 and 24, the Arikara scouts found evidence that Sitting Bull’s village had recently occupied the area. The exhausted Seventh Cavalry stopped for the night at 2 a.m. on June 25. The scouts meanwhile sighted a massive herd of ponies and sent a message to wake Custer. When a frightened scout, Bloody Knife, warned they would “find enough Sioux to keep us fighting two or three days,” Custer arrogantly replied, “I guess we’ll get through them in one day.” His greater fear was that the village would escape his clutches. He ordered his men to form up for battle.

Around noon, Custer led the Seventh into the valley and divided his men as he had during the Battle of Washita. He sent Captain Frederick Benteen to the left with 120 men to block any escape, while Custer and Major Marcus Reno advanced on the right along the Sun Dance Creek.

Custer and Reno spotted 40 to 50 warriors fleeing toward the main village. Custer further divided his army, sending Reno in pursuit and himself continuing along the right flank. Prodding his men with some bluster, Custer told them, “Boys, hold your horses. There are plenty of them down there for all of us.”

Reno’s men crossed the Little Bighorn and fired at noncombatants. Hundreds of Indian warriors started arriving to face Reno. Reno downed a great deal of whiskey and ordered his soldiers to dismount and form a skirmish line. They were outnumbered and were quickly overwhelmed by the Native Americans’ onslaught and running low on ammunition.

Reno’s men retreated to some woods along the bank of the river to find cover but were soon flushed out, though fifteen men remained there, hidden and frightened. The warriors routed Reno’s troops and killed several during their retreat back across the river. Reno finally organized eighty men on a hill and fought off several charges.

Benteen soon reinforced Reno as did the fifteen men from the thicket who also made it to what is now called Reno Hill, and the pack train with ammunition and supplies arrived as well. No one knew where Custer was. The men built entrenchments made of ammunition and hardtack boxes, saddles, and even dead horses. For more than three hours in the 100-degree heat, they fought off a continuous stream of attacking warriors by the hundreds and were saved only by the arrival of darkness. Reno’s exhausted and thirsty men continued to dig in and fortify their barricades.

The attacks resumed around that night and lasted all morning. Benteen and Reno organized charges that momentarily pushed back the Sioux and Cheyenne, and a few men sneaked down to the Little Bighorn for water. The fighting lasted until mid-afternoon when the warriors broke off to follow the large dust cloud of the departing village. The soldiers on the hill feared a trick and kept watch all night for the enemy’s return.

General Terry’s army was camped to the north when his Crow scouts reported to him at sunrise on June 26 that they had found the battlefield where two hundred men of the Seventh Regiment had been overwhelmed and killed making a last stand on a hill. The next day, Terry arrived at Last Stand Hill and morosely confirmed that Custer and his men were dead. The bad news sobered the celebration of the United States’ centennial when it arrived in the East.

Despite the destruction of Custer and his men at Little Bighorn, the Indian Wars of the late nineteenth century were devastating for Native American tribes and their cultures. Their populations suffered heavy losses, and they lost their tribal grounds for hunting and agriculture. In the early twentieth century, the U.S. government restricted most Indians to reservations as Americans settled the West. Many Americans saw the reservation system as a more humane alternative to war, but it wrought continued damage to Native American cultures.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

An attorney representing Alexander Graham Bell and his business partner, Gardiner Hubbard, filed a patent application for an invention entitled an “Improvement in Telegraphy” on February 14, 1876. That same day, Elisha Gray, a prominent inventor from Highland Park, Illinois, had applied for a patent caveat for a similar invention from the same office. On March 7, Bell’s patent was approved by the patent office and the battle over the rights to the invention that we now know as the telephone began. The eventual outcome would shape the development of a major industry and the opportunities for communication and social interaction for the entire country.

The invention came from an unlikely source. Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born teacher of elocution and tutor to the deaf whose family had migrated to Ontario, Canada, after the death of two of Bell’s siblings. Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander Graham Bell’s father, believed that their new home in Ontario offered them a better, more healthful climate. The elder Bell was a student of phonetics who had developed a system of “Visible Speech” to allow deaf people the chance to speak intelligibly. Melville Bell lectured periodically at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and his son Alexander moved to Boston permanently to assume a teaching position at the Boston University.[1]

Though trained in acoustics and the science behind the sounds of the human voice, Bell did not have a strong understanding of electrical currents or electromagnetism. But early on he realized that the magnetic field of an electrical current was capable of vibrating objects, such as a tuning fork, which could create audible sounds. As he was learning of how electrical currents could be used for sound production, other researchers such as Joseph Stearns and Thomas Edison were developing a system of telegraph transmission in which multiple signals could be sent over the same wire at the same time. These systems relied upon sending the series of dots and dashes at different frequencies. Bell joined that research to find a better “multiplex” telegraph. In order to develop what Bell called a “harmonic telegraph,” Bell needed more funds for his lab. Much of his funding came from a notable Boston attorney, Gardiner Hubbard, who hired Bell as a teacher of his daughter, Mabel, who had become deaf after a bout with scarlet fever. Hubbard, who had a dislike for Western Union’s dominance in long-distance telegraph service, encouraged and subsidized Bell’s research on telegraphy. Hubbard and another financial backer, Thomas Sanders, formed a partnership with Bell, with an agreement that all three hold joint ownership of the patent rights for Bell’s inventions. Bell made significant progress on his research, and had more success in his private life. Mabel Hubbard, who was his student, became his betrothed. Despite the initial objections of her father, Mabel married Bell shortly after her eighteenth birthday.[2]

Other inventers were hard at work on similar lines of research. Daniel Drawbaugh, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, and especially Elisha Gray all were developing alternative versions of what would soon be known as the telephone while Bell was hard at work on his project.  Most of these models involved a variable resistance method of modifying the electrical current by dipping wires into a container of liquid, often mercury or sulfuric acid, to alter the current flowing to a set of reeds or diaphragm that would emit various sounds. Most of these researchers knew more about electrical currents and devices than Bell did. But Bell had a solid understanding of the human voice. Even though his research began as an effort to improve telegraphy, Bell realized that the devices that he created could be designed to replicate speech. His patent application in February of 1876 was for a telephone transmitter that employed a magnetized reed attached to a membrane diaphragm when activated by an undulating current. The device described in the patent application could transmit sounds but not actual speech. Months later, however, Bell’s instrument was improved sufficiently to allow him to convey a brief, audible message to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, who was in another part of his laboratory. In the summer of 1876, Bell demonstrated the transmission of audible speech to an amazed crowd at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Elisha Gray attempted to demonstrate his version of the telephone at the same exhibition, but was unable to convey the sound of human voices. The following year, Bell filed and received a patent for his telephone receiver, assuring his claim to devices that would both transmit and receive voice communications.[3]

In 1877, Bell and his partners formed the American Bell Telephone Company, a corporation that would later be known as American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The corporation and Bell personally were soon involved in a number of lawsuits alleging patent infringement and, in one case, patent cancellation. There were many litigants over the years, but the primary early adversary was Western Union, which had purchased the rights to Elisha Gray’s telephone patent. The United States federal government also was involved in a suit for patent cancellation, alleging that Bell gained his patents fraudulently by stealing the inventions of others. The lawsuit with Western Union was settled in 1879 when the corporation forfeited claims on the invention of the telephone in return for twenty percent of Bell’s company’s earnings for the duration of the patent.[4] The other lawsuits meandered through multiple courts over several years until several were consolidated before the United States Supreme Court. Ultimately, a divided court ruled in favor of Bell’s position in each case. The various opinions and appendices were so voluminous that when compiled they made up the entire volume of United States Reports, the official publication of Supreme Court opinions.[5]

The court decisions ultimately granted vast scope to the Bell patent and assigned an enormously profitable asset to Bell’s corporation. The firm that became AT&T grew into one of the largest corporations in the world.[6] Years earlier, the telegraph had transformed communication, with huge impacts on the operation of industry and government. But although the telegraph had enormous impact upon the lives of ordinary Americans, it was not widely used by private individuals for their personal communications. Almost all messages were sent by businesses and government agencies. Initially, this was the common practice for telephone usage. But with the dawn of the twentieth century, telephones became widely used by private individuals. More phones were available in homes rather than just in offices. Unlike telegrams, which were charged by the word, telephone service for local calls were priced with a flat monthly rate. As a result, telephone service was enjoyed as a means of communication for social purposes, not just commercial activities.    Within a hundred years of Bell’s initial patent, telephones could be found in almost every American home.[7]

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Billington, David P. “Bell and the Telephone.” In Power, Speed, and Form: Engineers and the Making of the Twentieth Century, 35-56. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006.

[2] Billington, op cit.

[3] Stone, Alan. “Protection of the Newborn.” In Public Service Liberalism: Telecommunications and Transitions in Public Policy, 51-83. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

[4] MacDougall, Robert. “Unnatural Monopoly.” In The People’s Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age, 92-131. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

[5] The Telephone Cases.  126 US 1.

[6] Beauchamp, Christopher. “Who Invented the Telephone? Lawyers, Patents, and the Judgments of History.” Technology and Culture 51, no. 4 (2010): 854-78.

[7] MacDougall, Robert. “Visions of Telephony.” In The People’s Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age, 61-91. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

 

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

Our National Parks are the most visible manifestation of why America is exceptional.

America’s Parks are the physical touchstones that affirm our national identity. These historical Parks preserve our collective memory of events that shaped our nation and the natural Parks preserve the environment that shaped us.

National Parks are open for all to enjoy, learn, and contemplate. This concept of preserving a physical space for the sole purpose of public access is a uniquely American invention. It further affirms why America remains an inspiration to the world.

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the law creating Yellowstone as the world’s first National Park.

AN ACT to set apart a certain tract of land lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a public park. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming … is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed there from …

The Yellowstone legislation launched a system that now encompasses 419 National Parks with over 84 million acres. Inspired by Grant’s act, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand established their own National Parks during the following years.

Yellowstone was not predestined to be the first National Park.

In 1806, John Colter, a member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, joined fur trappers to explore several Missouri River tributaries. Colter entered the Yellowstone area in 1807 and later reported on a dramatic landscape of “fire and brimstone.”  His description was rejected as too fanciful and labeled “Colter’s Hell.”

Over the years, other trappers and “mountain men” shared stories of fantastic landscapes of water gushing out of the ground and rainbow-colored hot springs. They were all dismissed as fantasy.

After America’s Civil War, formal expeditions were launched to explore the upper Yellowstone River system. Settlers and miners were interested in the economic potential of the region.

In 1869, Charles Cook, David Folsom, and William Peterson led a privately financed survey of the region. Their journals and personal accounts provided the first believable descriptions of Yellowstone’s natural wonders.

Reports from the Cook-Folsom Expedition encouraged the first official government survey in 1870. Henry Washburn, the Surveyor General of the Montana Territory, led a large team known as the Washburn-Langford-Doan Expedition to the Yellowstone area. Nathaniel P. Langford, who co-led the team, was a friend of Jay Cook, a major investor in the Northern Pacific Railway. Washburn was escorted by a U.S. Cavalry Unit commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane. Their team, including Folsom, followed a similar course as the Cook-Folsom 1869 excursion, extensively documenting their observations of the Yellowstone area. They explored numerous lakes, mountains, and observed wildlife. The Expedition chronicled the Upper and Lower Geyser Basins. They named one geyser Old Faithful, as it erupted once every 74 minutes.

Upon their return, Cook combined Washburn’s and Folsom’s journals into a single version. He submitted it to the New York Tribune and Scribner’s for publication. Both rejected the manuscript as “unreliable and improbable” even with the military’s corroboration. Fortunately, another member of Washburn’s Expedition, Cornelius Hedges, submitted several articles about Yellowstone to the Helena Herald newspaper from 1870 to 1871. Hedges would become one of the original advocates for setting aside the Yellowstone area as a National Park.

Langford, who would become Yellowstone’s first park superintendent, reported to Cooke about his observations. While Cooke was primarily interested in how Yellowstone’s wonders and resources could attract railroad business, he supported Langford’s vision of establishing a National Park. Cooke financed Langford’s Yellowstone lectures in Virginia City, Helena, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

On January 19, 1871, geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden attended Langford’s speech in Washington, D.C. He was motivated to conduct his next geological survey in the Yellowstone region.

In 1871, Hayden organized the first federally funded survey of the Yellowstone region. His team included photographer William Henry Jackson, and landscape artist Thomas Moran. Hayden’s reports on the geysers, sulfur springs, waterfalls, canyons, lakes and streams of Yellowstone verified earlier reports. Jackson’s and Moran’s images provided the first visual proof of Yellowstone’s unique natural features.

The various expeditions and reports built the case for preservation instead of exploitation.

In October 1865, acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, was the first public official recommending that the Yellowstone region should be protected. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley was suggesting “Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever.”

Hayden became another leader for establishing Yellowstone as a National Park. He was concerned the area could face the same fate as the overly developed and commercialized Niagara Falls area. Yellowstone should, “be as free as the air or water.” In his report to the Committee on Public Lands, Hayden declared that if Yellowstone was not preserved, “the vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land, will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of years to prepare.”

Langford, and a growing number of park advocates, promoted the Yellowstone bill in late 1871 and early 1872.  They raised the alarm that “there were those who would come and make merchandise of these beautiful specimen.”

Their proposed legislation drew upon the precedent of the Yosemite Act of 1864, which barred settlement and entrusted preservation of the Yosemite Valley to the state of California.

Park advocates faced spirited opposition from mining and development interests who asserted that permanently banning settlement of a public domain the size of Yellowstone would depart from the established policy of transferring public lands to private ownership (in the 1980s, $1 billion of exploitable deposits of gold and silver were discovered within miles of the Park).  Developers feared that the regional economy would be unable to thrive if there remained strict federal prohibitions against resource development or settlement within park boundaries. Some tried to reduce the proposed size of the park so that mining, hunting, and logging activities could be developed.

Fortunately, Jackson’s photographs and Moran’s paintings captured the imagination of Congress. These compelling images, and the credibility of the Hayden report, persuaded the United States Congress to withdraw the Yellowstone region from public auction. The Establishment legislation quickly passed both chambers and was sent to President Grant for his signature.

Grant, an early advocate of preserving America’s unique natural features, enthusiastically signed the bill into law.

On September 8, 1978, Yellowstone and Mesa Verde were the first U.S. National Parks designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Yellowstone was deemed a “resource of universal value to the world community.”

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Brian Pawlowski

The stories of our history connect generations across time in remarkable ways. The same giddy fascination Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant held for the potential of the railroad in the nineteenth century is present in countless children today. They tear through books like Locomotive by Brian Floca until the pages are nearly torn from constant re-reading. It is a wonderful book that conveys both the magnitude and the majesty of the transcontinental railroad in an accessible way. A more thorough treatment of the railroad, Nothing in the World Like It: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869, written by historian Stephen Ambrose perhaps summarized it best by noting that, “Next to winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery, building the first transcontinental railroad, from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, was the greatest achievement of the American people in the 19th century.”[1] Making this achievement all the more remarkable is the fact that it was hatched as the Civil War was raging: a project to connect a continent that was at war with itself.

In 1862, only a few months after the Union victory at Shiloh and just a month before the battle of Antietam, Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act into law. It called for the construction of a railway from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California. It appropriated government lands and bonds to corporations that would do the work, the first time government dollars were granted to any entity other than states. The companies, the Union Pacific starting in Omaha, and the Central Pacific begun in Sacramento, were in direct competition to lay as much track as possible and complete the nearly 2,000 miles that would be necessary for the railroad.

Construction technically began in 1863 but the war demanded men and material in such large proportion that no real progress was made until 1865. After the war, the railroads became engines of economic development that attracted union veterans and Irish immigrants in droves to the Union Pacific’s efforts. The Central Pacific sought a similar workforce, but the population of Irish immigrants in California at the time was not a sustainable source of labor. Instead, thousands of Chinese immigrants sought employment with the railroad. Initially there was resistance to Chinese workers. Fears of racial inferiority pervaded much of California at that time and many felt the Chinese were listless and lazy. These fears dissipated quickly, however, as the Chinese worked diligently, with skill and ingenuity that allowed them to push through the Sierra Nevada mountains. Before it was done, nearly 20,000 Chinese laborers took part building the railroad, employing new techniques and utilizing new materials like nitroglycerin to carve a path for the tracks in areas where no one thought it could be done.

In the summer of 1867, the Central Pacific finally made it through the mountains. While the entire effort represented a new level of engineering brilliance and innovation for its time, the Central Pacific’s thrust through the mountains surpassed expectations. To chart a course for rail through granite, an impediment no one in history to that time had crossed on anything other than horse or foot, ushered in a new era of more rapid continental movement. Before the railroad era, it took nearly four or five months to get from the east coast to the west. Upon completion, however, the trip could take as little as three and a half days.[2] Absent the ability to go through the mountains, this would not have been possible.

Throughout 1867 and 1868, both rail companies worked feverishly to lay more track than their counterpart. Government subsidies for the work increased and more track laid meant more money earned. The amounts were different and were measured by the mile, thus reflecting the difficulty the Central Pacific faced in conquering the mountains. By not having mountainous terrain to contend with, the Union Pacific made incredible progress and reached Wyoming by 1867. But the Union Pacific had challenges of a different sort. Rather than conquering nature, they had to conquer humans.

Native American plains tribes, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, knew the railroad would be a permanent feature on land that was prime hunting ground for the buffalo. They saw the construction as an existential threat. As the railroad continued on into the plains, new settlements sprang up in its shadow, on territory the tribes claimed as their own.[3] There was bound to be a fight. The railway companies called on the government to send the army to pacify the territory and threatened that construction could not continue without this aid. The government complied and as work resumed, army soldiers protected them along the construction route.

As the summer of 1869 approached, a standoff occurred between the companies on the location where they would join the railroad together. Ulysses S. Grant, by then the President, threatened to cut off federal funding until a meeting place was agreed to and ultimately, with the help of a congressional committee and the cold, hard reality of needing cash, they agreed on Promontory Summit, Utah. On May 10, 1869, a 17.6 karat golden spike was hammered home, finishing the railway and connecting the coasts.

The completion of the transcontinental railway brought about an era of unprecedented western expansion, economic development, and population migration. At the same time, it caused more intense conflict between those moving and developing the west and the Native American Indian tribes. Years of conflict would follow, but the settlement of the west continued. And with the new railroad in place, it continued at a rapid pace as more and more people boarded mighty locomotives to head west toward new lands and new lives. As Daniel Webster, a titan of the era remarked nearly twenty years earlier, the railway “towers above all other inventions of this or the preceding age” and it now had continental reach and power.[4] America endured the scourge of Civil War and achieved the most magnificent engineering effort of the era only five years after the guns fell silent at Appomattox.

Brian Pawlowski holds an MA in American History, is a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s state leadership network, and served as an intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing in the World Like It: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2000), 17.

[2] History.com, Transcontinental Railroad, September 11, 2019, https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/transcontinental-railroad.

[3] H.W. Brands, Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 295.

[4] Ambrose, 357.

Guest Essayist: Kyle A. Scott

The Seventeenth Amendment was passed by Congress May 13, 1912 and ratified on April 8, 1913. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan certified the ratification on May 31, 1913. Once the Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution, citizens had the right to directly cast ballots for their state’s two senators. The Amendment changed Article I, Section 3, clauses 1 and 3 of the Constitution that had previously stipulated senators were to be elected by state legislatures. By allowing for the direct election of senators, a barrier was removed between the people and the government that moved the U.S. closer to democracy and away from a republican form of government.

At the time the U.S. Constitution was being drafted, there was a clear apprehension toward monarchy but also an aversion toward democracy. The founders were suspicious of the capricious tendencies of the majority and considered democracy to be mob rule. With direct elections of members in the House of Representatives every two years, representatives could be swept into and out of office with great efficiency and would therefore bow to the will of the majority. If some interest that ran counter to the common good, but nonetheless gained the favor of the majority, the House would be ill-incentivized to look after the common good. The Senate, as it was not directly elected by the people, could be a check on the passions of the majority. In Federalist Paper #63 Publius wrote, “an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.”

Prior to the formation of the United States it was assumed that republics could only be small in scale. James Madison refuted such luminaries as Baron de Montesquieu in offering a solution to the problem of scale by introducing multiple layers of checks and balances into a federal regime that included a check on democratic rule at the national level. With the senate serving as a bulwark against the threat of tyranny by the majority, every viable interest could be given representation in the national debate. Now that this bulwark has been replaced with democratic elections, the president is now the only elected official at the national level shielded—at least somewhat—from public opinion as the president is elected not by the people but through the Electoral College.

At the time the Constitution was being drafted, some in Philadelphia believed there was a strong push for states’ rights. The Articles of Confederation provided a weak central government and the new states were reluctant to give up their power to a central body as they had just thrown off the yoke of tyranny hoisted upon them by a centralized governing body. The election of senators by state legislatures was one way to assuage those concerns. In Federalist Paper #62, Publius writes, “Among the various modes which might have been devised for constituting this branch of the government, that which has been proposed by the convention is probably the most congenial to public opinion. It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government.” It was thought that the state’s interests would be represented in the Senate and popular interests would be represented in the House. With these sets of interests competing, the popular good would be represented in any bill that would be able to make its way through both chambers of congress. This was the very core of the theory of our constitutional government as envisioned and understood by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Both Madison and Hamilton argued that ambition should be made to counteract ambition and through the competition of ambitions the common good would be realized. It is only in republican government that the negative effects of faction can be mitigated and the positive aspects funneled into the realization of the common good. “The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater the number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.” (Federalist Paper #10).

The risks associated with democratization threaten the balance and principles republican regimes aspire to. Democracy aspires to nothing but its own will. Direct democracy offers too few safeguards against whimsy and caprice. In democracies, individuals are left to put their interests above all others and be guided by little more than immediate need as long-term planning is disincentivized.

Understanding the ramifications of further democratization is a timely topic as it is likely to be widely discussed in popular media in the upcoming presidential election. We see in every election a push for eliminating the Electoral College. With every passing election the cries for reform grow louder. Those who value republican principles should equip themselves to defend republican principles and institutions with evidence and theory and not rely on self-interest, cliché, or partisan allegiance. If interested, reread the Federalist Papers, but also, go back and read the press clippings from 1912-1913 and look for parallels to today. What you will find is a sense of connectedness with previous eras that will let the reader know these are permanent questions worth taking seriously.

Kyle Scott, PhD, MBA, currently works in higher education administration and has taught American politics, Constitutional Law, and political theory for more than a decade at the university level. He is the author of five books and more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles. His most recent book is The Federalist Papers: A Reader’s Guide. Kyle can be contacted at kyle.a.scott@hotmail.com.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: David Shestokas

RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!!

It’s difficult to determine a precise moment when Russia came to dominate recent American news and politics. The events that may have spun Russia into part of America’s daily discussions may have been accusations of Russia’s involvement in the 216 elections.

Since then, Russia and the villainous Vladimir Putin have been a daily part of our political discourse. Even as the novel coronavirus raged, mentions of Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Lt. General Michael Flynn broke through coverage of the pandemic.

RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES, THE EARLY DAYS

Russia has not always been a mortal enemy in the American story. America’s Founders reached out to Russia in our earliest days. In December, 1780, the United States sent its first envoy to St. Petersburg, then Russia’s capital. The envoy, Francis Dana, brought a secretary with him.

The secretary was fourteen-year-old John Quincy Adams. Dana could speak no word of French, the language of the Russian court, and so John Adams[1] had lent Dana his son, who was fluent in French. Young John Quincy thus became a diplomatic interpreter.

Dana’s mission was to secure aid and support from Tsarina Catherine I for the American Revolution against England. The mission was unsuccessful, but for three years John Quincy became familiar with the workings of Russia’s ruling class. Catherine’s grandson was about the royal court during John Quincy’s tenure in St. Petersburg. In 1801, the grandson would become Tsar Alexander I.

Twenty-six years later, after John Quincy’s father had been President of the United States and Alexander’s father had preceded him as tsar, John Quincy returned to St. Petersburg. In November, 1809, Tsar Alexander I received John Quincy Adams as the first official United States Ambassador to Russia.

The Tsar greeted Adams warmly: “Monsieur, je suis charmé d’avoir le plaisir de vous voir ici.”[2] After this warm welcome, Ambassador Adams and Tsar Alexander spoke at length of trade, European politics, wars and Napoleon, the sometime ally, sometime adversary of both Russia and the United States.

The Tsar became ever more comfortable with his American guest, ultimately confiding the difficulties of managing his empire. Alexander revealed to John Quincy: “Its size is one of its greatest evils,” the Czar mused of his own country. “It is difficult to hold together so great a body as this empire.”

Ambassador Adams included the Tsar’s comment in his diplomatic dispatch to the State Department and President Monroe. It became part of the institutional memory of the United States, a country that only six years before had bought Louisiana from Napoleon.[3]

RUSSIA’S CLAIM TO ALASKA

In July, 1741, Vitus Bering, a Russian naval officer culminated years of Russian eastward exploration with the sighting of Mount Saint Elias (a.k.a. Boundary Peak) on the North America mainland. The coming years would see periodic trips by Russian hunters and trappers.

In 1781 the Northeastern Company was established to organize and administer Russian colonies in North America. Company operations were directed from Kithtak (now Kodiak Island) and later from Novo-Arkhangelsk (now Sitka, Alaska).

For the next 70 years, Russian traders and trappers inhabited coastal Alaska. The Russian colonists regularly had violent confrontations with Native Alaskans. The Russian colonies grew in dependence upon both American and British traders for supplies. Alaska was not a profitable undertaking for Russia.

THE CRIMEAN AND CIVIL WARS

Then came the Crimean War (1854-1856) with Russia facing off against France, England and Turkey. The war did not end well for Russia; the loss was great in both blood and treasure. The monarchy needed to replenish its coffers, and the possible sale of Alaska seemed to hold an answer. Beyond the tsar’s need for cash, the Russians felt unable to defend Alaska should either the British or Americans move to take it.[4]

Even after the Crimean War, England remained a Russian adversary.  England was undesirable as an Alaskan neighbor, so the best scenario would be a sale to the United States.

In 1855, Tsar Alexander II had become emperor of Russia. He was the nephew of Alexander I who had confided to John Quincy Adams the difficulties of managing his distant empire. Given post Crimean War realities and aware of his uncle’s wisdom, a sale of Alaska to the United States appeared to be the best Russian course of action.

Russian Ambassador Eduard de Stoeckl was directed to actively pursue a sale in 1859. Stoeckl’s overtures included discussions with, among others, then New York Senator, William H. Seward. In 1861, the United States Civil War erupted. Discussions of Russia’s sale of Alaska to the United States fell silent.

THE RUSSIAN FLEET AND THE CIVIL WAR

The United States Civil War was not only of interest to the Union and the Confederacy. Both parties were actively involved in seeking either international support or neutrality. The Confederacy had courted both the British and French. The Rebels had a fair chance of receiving aid from either.

In Europe, relations remained tense between the Crimean War foes.  Although, Russia had lost that war, it had taken a devastating toll on all participants. In the short three-year span of the war, Britain had lost 22,000 soldiers. Against this background, the French and English entertained Confederate overtures.

The Russians viewed a strong unified United States as a counterweight to its European foes and a Union victory to be in Russia’s interests. In the summer of 1863, the Russian Baltic Fleet set sail for New York. The Russian Far East Fleet journeyed to San Francisco. President Abraham Lincoln sent the First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, to greet the Russians in New York in September, 1863.

Overt assistance for the Confederacy by England or France disappeared. The Russians had tilted the playing field in favor of the Union. In 1865, the Civil War ended with a Union victory and no active participation by the French, English or Russians.

THE ALASKAN TALKS RESUME AND A BREAKTHROUGH

After the Civil War, Alexander II resumed pursuit of an Alaskan sale. Stoeckl began negotiating with William Seward who became Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln. Over the next two years, issues of reconstruction, Lincoln’s assassination and mid-19th Century communications hampered U.S./Russia negotiations.

Things changed the evening of March 29, 1867, while Secretary Seward was at his Washington, D.C. home, playing whist with his family. The whist game was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, Minister Plenipotentiary and Ambassador of the Russian Tsar.

Stoeckl advised Seward: “I have a dispatch from my government. The Emperor gives his consent to the cession. Tomorrow if you like. I will come to the department and we can enter upon the treaty.”

Seward, with a smile of satisfaction responded: “Why wait until tomorrow? Let us make the treaty tonight.”

Stoeckl demurred: “But your department is closed, you have no clerks and my secretaries are scattered about the town!”

“Never mind that,” responded Seward, “if you can muster your legation together before midnight you will find me awaiting you there at the department, which will be open and ready for business.”

Carriages were dispatched around Washington and by 4 AM, March 30, 1867 the treaty was signed, engrossed and ready for presidential transmittal to the United States Senate for ratification.

RATIFICATION, FUNDING AND TRANSFER

President Andrew Johnson submitted the treaty to the Senate that same Saturday.

Seward had known that Congress was scheduled to adjourn for two months. Due to receipt of the treaty, the Senate set a special session for Monday, April 1, 1867. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings that entire week, then reported the treaty favorably.

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, spoke in favor of the purchase for three hours. On April 9, 1867, just ten days after Stoeckl interrupted Seward’s whist game, the Senate ratified the treaty 37-2.

Though drafting and ratification took only ten days, it was nearly 68 years after Alexander I mentioned problems managing his empire to John Quincy Adams.

There remained appropriation of the $7.2 million for the purchase by the full Congress, which took place on July 27, 1867.

On October 18, 1867, in a formal ceremony, the United States took possession of Alaska. For the nearly 600,000 square miles, the United States paid about 2 cents an acre. Alaska was a better deal than Louisiana. October 18 is celebrated annually as a state holiday in Alaska.

ALASKA TODAY

The natural resources and strategic location of Alaska that came with the purchase cannot be understated. The gold rush that the Russians feared in 1855 came to pass in 1896. Alaska contributes to the American economy through its riches in oil, minerals, precious metals, seafood, timber, and tourism. Alaska is the second largest crude oil producer in the country and the salmon run in Alaska’s Bristol Bay basin is the largest in the world.

America’s Founders recognized the value of a cordial relationship with Russia and began working on it in 1780. The benefits of that effort came to fruition on October 18, 1867 with the peaceful acquisition of Alaska.

While the connotation of the mantra RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!! RUSSIA!!! differs greatly from 1780 to 2020, it has been part of the American lexicon through our entire history.

David Shestokas, J.D., is a former Cook County, Illinois State’s Attorney and author of Constitutional Sound Bites and Creating the Declaration of Independence. Follow him on Twitter, @shestokas, and join his Facebook group, Dave Shestokas on the Constitution

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] The Second President and First Vice-President had been the fledgling country’s envoy to France from 1777 to 1779 and his son, John Quincy had been with him.

[2] “Sir, I am delighted to have the pleasure of seeing you here.”

[3] Napoleon needed money for war in Europe, France’s Louisiana territory was 828,000 square miles, and the $15 million purchase price was about 3 cents/acre.

[4] Alaska would prove to hold a wealth of natural resources, including gold.  Strangely, this was of actual concern to Russia. The 1848 gold discovery in California brought in more than 300,000 people in 7 years. The Russians had no ability to manage a similar event in Alaska. They would be better off to sell the land rather than have it taken.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

On September 5, 1867, the first Texas cattle were shipped from the railhead in Abilene, Kansas, with most of the livestock ending their destination in a slaughterhouse in Chicago, Illinois. These cattle made a long, none too pleasant journey from south Texas to central Kansas.   Their hardships were shared by cowboys and cattlemen who drove their herds hundreds of miles to find a better market for their livestock. For almost two decades, cattle drives from Texas were undertaken by beef producers who found that the northern markets were much more lucrative than those they had been dealing with back home. These drives ended after a combination of economic, legal, and technological changes made the long drives impractical or infeasible.

After the end of the civil war, much of the economy of the old Confederacy was in shambles. In Texas, the rebels returning home often found their livestock scattered and their ranches and farms unkempt and overgrown. Once the Texas ranchers reassembled their herds, they found that the local market for beef was very limited. The ranchers’ potential customers in the region had little money with which to buy beef and there was no way to transport livestock to distant markets except by ships that sailed off the Gulf coast. The major railroad lines did not reach Texas until the 1870s. Many of the cattlemen were “cattle rich but cash poor,” and it did not appear that there was any easy way to remedy their situation.[1]

Several cattlemen, cattle traders, and cattle buyers developed a solution.   Rather than sell locally, or attempt to transport cattle by water at high costs, cattle were to be driven along trails to railheads up north. Among the first of these was Abilene, Kansas, but other “cow towns,” such as Ellsworth and Dodge City, quickly grew from small villages to booming cities. This trek required very special men, horses, and cattle.   The men who drove the cattle were mostly young, adventurous, hardened cowhands who were willing to work for about $30 per month in making a trek of two months or more. Several Texas-bred horses were supplied for each cowhand to ride, for it was common for the exertions of each day to wear out several horses. The cattle themselves differed significantly from their bovine brethren in other parts of the continent.   These were Texas Longhorns, mostly steers, which were adorned with massive horns and a thick hide. The meat of the Longhorns was not considered choice by most connoisseurs, but these cattle could travel long distances, go without water for days, and resist many infectious diseases that would lay low cattle of other breeds.

Most cattle drives followed along the path of a number of trails from Texas through the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) into Kansas.   The most famous of the trails was the Chisholm Trail, named after Jesse Chisholm, a trader of cattle and other goods with outposts along the North Canadian River in northern Texas and along the Little Arkansas in southern Kansas. The drives ended in a variety of Kansas towns, notably Abilene, after some entrepreneurial cattle buyers, such as Joseph McCoy and his brothers, promoted the obscure train stop as a place where Texas cattle could be shipped by rail to market.[2] The cattle drives had emerged as an entrepreneurial solution to desperate circumstances where economic gains were blocked by geographic, technological, and legal obstacles.

The cow towns grew rapidly in size and prosperity, although many faltered after the cattle drives ended. The cattle and cowboys were not always welcomed. Many Kansas farmers and homesteaders believed that the Longhorns brought diseases such as “Texas Fever” that would infect and kill their own cattle. The disease known today as Babesiosis was caused by parasites carried by ticks that attached themselves to Texas steers. The Longhorn cattle had developed an immunity to the disease, but the northern cattle had not. The ticks on the hides of the Texas cattle often traveled to the hides of the livestock in Kansas, with lethal results.[3]   The Kansas farmers demanded and gained a number of state laws prohibiting the entry of Texas cattle. These laws were circumvented or simply weakly enforced until the 1880s. At first glance, these laws might appear to conflict with the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, which authorized Congress, not the states, to regulate commerce among states. Yet, the federal Supreme Court ruled in 1886 in the case of Morgan’s Steamship Company v. Louisiana Board of Health that quarantine laws and general regulation of public health were permissible exercises of their police powers, although they could be preempted by an act of Congress.[4]

The cattle drives faced many hazards on their long treks to the north.   Harsh terrain, inclement weather, hostile Indians, rustlers, and unwelcoming Kansas farmers often made the journey difficult.   Nevertheless, for about twenty years the trail drives continued and were mostly profitable. Even after the railroads reached Fort Worth, Texas, many cattlemen still found it more profitable to make the long journey to Kansas to ship their beef. Cattle prices were higher in Abilene, and the costs of rail shipment from Fort Worth were, at least in the 1870s, too high to justify ending the trips to Kansas.[5] Eventually the drives did end, although there is some dispute among historians about when and why the cattle drives ceased. By the 1880s, barbed wire fencing blocked the cattle trails at some points. The new railheads in Texas offered alternative routes to livestock markets. Finally, Kansas enacted a strict quarantine law to keep out Texas cattle in 1885. Of course, past quarantine laws had been weakly enforced. State officials seemed to take the 1885 law more seriously. Perhaps economic incentives encouraged stricter quarantine enforcement. The cattle herds of the northern plains had been growing gradually over the years. After the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, the United States Army largely pacified hostile tribes in the Rocky Mountain states, with the result that the cattle industry thrived in Wyoming and Montana. With bigger and more carefully bred livestock available to the Kansas cattle buyers, the need to buy Texas cattle diminished. Enforcing the quarantine laws became less costly to the cattle traders and certainly pleased many of the Kansas farmers who voted in state elections. The end came relatively abruptly. In 1885, approximately 350,000 cattle were driven from Texas to Kansas. The following year, in 1886, there were no drives at all.[6] The cattle drives had emerged in the 1860s as an entrepreneurial solution to desperate circumstances where economic gains were blocked by geographic, technological, and legal obstacles. In the 1880s, the marketplace had been transformed. New barriers to the cattle drive had appeared, but by then the cattlemen in Texas had safer and more cost-effective  means to bring their livestock to market.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Specht, Joshua. “Market.” In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America, 119-73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.

[2] Gard, Wayne. “Retracing the Chisholm Trail.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 60, no. 1 (1956): 53-68.

[3] Hutson, Cecil Kirk. “Texas Fever in Kansas, 1866-1930.” Agricultural History 68, no. 1 (1994): 74-104.

[4] 118 U.S. 455

[5] Galenson, David. “The Profitability of the Long Drive.” Agricultural History 51, no. 4 (1977): 737-58.

[6] Galenson, David. “The End of the Chisholm Trail.” The Journal of Economic History 34, no. 2 (1974): 350-64.

 

Guest Essayist: Kyle A. Scott

Notwithstanding the controversy over the causes of the U.S. Civil War, we do know that one of the outcomes was ending slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress passed the proposed Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865 and it was subsequently ratified on December 6, 1865 by three-fourths of the state legislatures. Upon its ratification, the Thirteenth Amendment made slavery unconstitutional.

Unlike amendments before it, this amendment deserves special consideration due to the unconventional proposal and ratification process.

The proposed amendment passed the Senate on April 8, 1864 and the House on January 31, 1865 with President Abraham Lincoln approving the Joint Resolution to submit the proposed amendment to the states on February 1, 1865. But, it was not until April 9, 1865 that the U.S. Civil War officially ended on the steps of the Appomattox Courthouse when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant. This means that all congressional action up to this point took place without the consent of any state in the Confederacy taking part as those states were not represented in congress.

However, once the war ended, the success of the amendment required that some of the former Confederate states ratify the amendment in order to meet the constitutionally mandated minimum proportion of states. Article V of the Constitution requires three-fourths of state legislatures to ratify a proposed amendment before it can become part of the Constitution. There were only twenty-five Union and border states which meant at least two states from the eleven that comprised the Confederacy had to ratify.

The effort to get states to ratify was led by Andrew Johnson who assumed the presidency after Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865. There was a total of thirty-six states which meant at least twenty-seven of the state legislatures had to ratify. It was not guaranteed that all the states that remained in the Union would ratify. For instance, New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky all initially rejected the amendment.

This is where things get complicated. When Johnson assumed the presidency in April, he ordered his generals to summon new conventions in the Southern states that would be forced to revise constitutions and elect new state legislators before being admitted back into the Union. This was essentially reform through military injunction thus casting doubt on the sovereignty of the states and the free will of the people.

Further complicating the issue of ratification was the Thirty-ninth Congress which refused the inclusion of all the Southern states except Tennessee. So, while the Congress did not recognize the former Confederate states as states—except Tennessee—all the states were considered legal for purposes of ratification as determined by Secretary of State William Seward. Thus, we are presented with a constitutional predicament in which an amendment is ratified by states recognized by the executive branch but not by the legislative branch.

No resolution was formerly adopted, nor reconciliation made, that could bring clarity to this constitutional crisis. Reconstruction continued, and the Thirteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution along with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments—collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments.

The ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments is most aptly characterized as a Second Founding. How the Amendments were ratified occurred outside any reasonable interpretation of Article V or republican principles of representation. Imagine the following scenario. Armed guards move into 51% of American voters’ homes and force them to vote for Candidate A in the next presidential election. If the homeowners do not agree, the armed guards stay. If homeowners agree, and vote for Candidate A, the armed guards leave. This is what occurred during Reconstruction in the South as a state’s inclusion in Congress, and the removal of Union troops, was predicated upon that state’s acquiescence to the demands of the Union which included ratifying the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

Because the amendments were passed in an extra-constitutional manner, we cannot say that they were a continuation of what was laid out in Philadelphia several decades before. This creates an ethical dilemma for historians and legal scholars to consider. Do the ends justify the means or should the letter of the law be subservient to the higher good? To state it more simply: Is ending slavery worth violating the Constitution? Or, should have slavery remained legal until an amendment could be ratified in a manner consistent with Article V and generally accepted principles of representation?

These questions are meant to be hard and they will not be resolved here. What I do propose is that in 1865 the United States decided that the pursuit of the higher good justified a violation of accepted procedures and those who accept the validity of the Reconstruction Amendments today must, at least tacitly, endorse the same.

Kyle Scott, PhD, MBA, currently works in higher education administration and has taught American politics, Constitutional Law, and political theory for more than a decade at the university level. He is the author of five books and more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles. His most recent book is The Federalist Papers: A Reader’s Guide. Kyle can be contacted at kyle.a.scott@hotmail.com.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

Only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, ending the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a theater in Washington, D.C. John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate supporter, shot the president who succumbed to his wounds the next day. President Andrew Johnson took Lincoln’s place, and was less supportive of Lincoln’s anti-slavery policies, diluting the abolition of slavery Lincoln envisioned. Johnson was in favor of policies that further disenfranchised free blacks, setting political policies that would weaken the nation’s unity.

Imagine if President Donald Trump were to choose Senator Bernie Sanders as his running mate in November 2020. Would that shock you?

Americans of 1864 must have been shocked to see President Abraham Lincoln, leader of the Republican Party, choose Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as his running mate.

Nothing in the Constitution prohibited it, of course, and once before, America had witnessed a President and Vice from different parties. In 1796 it was accidental; this time it was on purpose.

Andrew Johnson was probably the most politically-qualified VP Lincoln could have chosen. Though totally unschooled, Johnson was the consummate politician. He started political life at age 21 as a Greenville, Tennessee alderman in 1829 and would hold elective office almost continuously for the next thirty-five years, serving as a state legislator, Congressman, two-term Governor of Tennessee and finally Senator from Tennessee.[1] When the Civil War began and Tennessee left the Union, Johnson chose to leave his state rather than break with the Union. Lincoln promptly appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee.

Heading into the 1864 election, the Democratic Party was bitterly split between War Democrats and Peace Democrats. Wars tend to do that. They tend to force people into one camp or the other. To bridge the gap and hopefully unify the party, Democrats found a compromise:  nominate pro-war General George B. McClellan for president and anti-war Representative George H. Pendleton for Vice President. The ticket gathered early support.

Lincoln thought a similar “compromise ticket” was needed. Running once again with Vice President Hannibal Hamlin was out. Hamlin was nice enough, a perfect gentleman who even volunteered for a brief stint in his Maine militia unit during the war, but Hamlin had not played a very prominent role in Lincoln’s administration during the first term. Hamlin had to go. Johnson was in.

To complicate electoral matters further, a group of disenchanted “Radical Republicans” who thought Lincoln too moderate formed the Radical Democracy Party a month before the Republican Convention and nominated their own candidates. They nominated Senator John C. Fremont from California for President and General John Cochrane from New York for Vice President. Two Johns on one ticket, two Georges on another and two men on a third whose first names began with “A.” Coincidence?  I don’t think so.

Choosing, finally, to not play the spoiler, Fremont withdrew his nomination barely two months before the election. Under the slogan “Don’t change horses in the middle of a stream,” Republicans were able to sweep the Lincoln/Johnson ticket to victory. The two men easily defeated “the two Georges” by a wide margin of 212 to 21 electoral votes.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln uttered some of his most memorable lines ever:

the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.” With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

And then disaster hit. A little over a month after he delivered these memorable lines, Lincoln was shot in the head by Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on the night of April 14 while enjoying a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the following day.  Booth’s conspiracy had planned to take out not only Lincoln, but his Vice President, and Secretary of State William Seward as well.  Seward was critically injured, but survived. Johnson also survived when assassin George Atzerodt got drunk and had a change of heart. The following day, two and a half hours after Lincoln drew his last breath, Johnson was installed as the seventeenth President of the United States.

Booth was quickly tracked down by Union troops and killed while attempting to escape. The rest of the conspirators were soon captured and the ringleaders hanged, including Mary Surratt, the first woman ever executed by the U.S. government.

Faced with the unenviable task of Reconstruction after a devastating war, Johnson’s administration started well, but quickly went downhill. The Radical Republicans were out for southern blood and Johnson did not share their thirst.

Although Lincoln is well-known for his wartime violations of the U.S. Constitution, Johnson is best known for sticking to it.

To show Johnson’s affinity for strict constructionism, there is this story: As a U.S. Representative, Johnson had voted against a bill to give federal aid to Ireland in the midst of a famine. In a debate during his subsequent run for Governor of Tennessee, his opponent criticized this vote. Johnson responded that people, not government, had the responsibility of helping their fellow men in need. He then pulled from his pocket a receipt for the $50 he had sent to the hungry Irish. “How much did you give, sir?” His opponent had to confess he had given nothing. The audience went wild. Johnson later credited this exchange with helping him win the election.

Johnson recognized the legitimacy of the Thirteenth Amendment, but he did not believe blacks deserved the right to vote. He vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which would give citizenship and extend civil rights to all regardless of race, but Congress overrode the veto. When the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act was challenged, the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed and Johnson opposed that as well. The Radical Republicans then passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867. Johnson vetoed it and the Republicans overrode his veto. Republicans then threatened reluctant southern states with a continuance of their military governance unless they ratified the Amendment. An unnamed Republican at the time called this “ratification at the point of a bayonet.” Johnson’s reluctance to support the Radical Republican agenda did not endear him to them.

The “straw that broke the camel’s back” came when Johnson tried to remove Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War despite the Tenure of Office Act which ostensibly, and unconstitutionally in Johnson’s view, prevented such action. Johnson fired Stanton. Threatened with impeachment, Johnson replied, “Let them impeach and be damned.” Congress promptly did just that – impeach, that is. After the House impeachment, the Senate trial resulted in acquittal. Johnson retained his office by a single vote, but still gained the notoriety of being the first United States President to be impeached.

The events surrounding President Lincoln’s assignation on April 15, 1865 changed the political landscape following the Civil War making it a significant date to learn about in America’s history.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] After failing to be reelected President, Johnson was even elected Senator from Tennessee once again in 1875.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address that was a model of reconciliation and moderation for restoring the national Union. He ended with the appeal:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Later that month, Lincoln visited with Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman during the siege of Petersburg in Virginia near the Confederate capital of Richmond. As they talked, the president reflected on his plan to treat the South with respect. “Treat them liberally all around,” he said. “We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.”

The Civil War was coming to an end as a heavily outnumbered Confederate General Robert E. Lee withdrew his army from Petersburg and abandoned Richmond to its fate. On April 5, 1865, Lee marched his starving, exhausted men across the swollen Appomattox River to Amelia Court House in central Virginia. Lee was disappointed to discover the boxcars on the railroad did not contain the expected rations of food. The Union cavalry under General Philip Sheridan were closing in and burning supply wagons. Lee ordered his men to continue their march to the west without food. Increasing numbers were deserting the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee realized that he would have to surrender soon.

On April 6, Union forces led by General George Custer cut off Lee’s army at Sayler’s Creek. The two sides skirmished for hours and then engaged each other fiercely. Lee lost a quarter of his army that became casualties and prisoners. He reportedly cried out, “My God! Has the army been dissolved?”

The next day, the Rebels retreated to Farmville where rations awaited but Union forces were close behind. The hungry Confederates barely had time to eat before fleeing again to expected supplies at Appomattox railroad station.

That day, Grant wrote to Lee asking for his surrender to prevent “any further effusion of blood.” Grant signed the letter, “Very respectfully, your obedient servant.”  Lee responded that while he did not think his position was as hopeless as Grant indicated, he asked what terms the Union Army would offer. When one of the generals suggested accepting the surrender, Lee informed him, “I trust it has not come to that! We certainly have too many brave men to think of laying down our arms.”  Nevertheless, Grant’s answer was unconditional surrender.

On April 8, Lee’s army straggled into the town of Appomattox Court House, but Sheridan had already seized his supply. He knew the end had come. He was hopelessly outnumbered six-to-one and had very little chance of resupply or reinforcements. Lee conferred with his generals to discuss surrender. When one of his officers suggested melting away and initiating a guerrilla war, Lee summarily rejected it out of hand. “You and I as Christian men have no right to consider only how this would affect us. We must consider its effect on the country as a whole.”

Lee composed a message to Grant asking for “an interview at such time and place as you may designate, to discuss the terms of the surrender of this army.”  Grant was suffering a migraine while awaiting word from Lee. He was greatly relieved to receive this letter. His headache and all the tension within him immediately dissipated. While puffing on his cigar, he wrote back to Lee and magnanimously offered to meet his defeated foe “where you wish the interview to take place.” The ceremony would take place at the home of Wilmer McLean, who had moved to Appomattox Court House to escape the war after a cannonball blasted into his kitchen during the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Now, the war’s final act would occur in his living room.

Lee cut a fine picture impeccably dressed in his new gray uniform, adorned with a red sash, shiny boots, and his sword in a golden scabbard as he awaited Grant. The Union general was shabbily dressed in a rough uniform with muddy boots and felt self-conscious. He thought that Lee was “a man of much dignity, with an impassible face.” Grant respectfully treated his worthy adversary as an equal, and felt admiration for him if not his cause. They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.

Grant sat down at a small table to compose the terms of surrender and personally stood and handed them to Lee rather than have a subordinate do it. Grant graciously allowed the Confederate officers to keep their side arms, horses, and baggage. Lee asked that all the soldiers be allowed to keep their horses since many were farmers, and Grant readily agreed. Grant also generously agreed to feed Lee’s hungry men. Their business completed, the two generals shook hands, and Lee departed with a bow to the assembled men.

As Lee slowly rode away, Grant stood on the porch and graciously lifted his hat in salute, which Lee solemnly returned. The other Union officers and soldiers followed their general’s example. Grant was so conscious of being respectful that when the Union camp broke out into a triumphal celebration, Grant rebuked his men and ordered them to stop. “We did not want to exult over their downfall,” he later explained. For his part, Lee tearfully rode back into his camp, telling his troops, “I have done the best I could for you.” He continued, “Go home now, and if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well, and I shall always be proud of you.”

On April 12, the Union formally accepted the Confederate surrender in a solemn ceremony. Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Gettysburg, oversaw a parade of Confederate troops stacking their weapons. As the Army of Northern Virginia began the procession, Chamberlain ordered his men to raise their muskets to their shoulders as a salute of honor to their fellow Americans. Confederate Major General John Gordon returned the gesture by saluting with his sword. Chamberlain described his feelings at witnessing the dramatic, respectful ceremony: “How could we help falling on our knees, all of us together, and praying God to pity and forgive us all.”

At the end of the dreadful Civil War, in which 750,000 men died, the Americans on both sides of the war demonstrated remarkable respect for each other. Grant demonstrated great magnanimity toward his vanquished foe, following Lincoln’s vision in the Second Inaugural. That vision tragically did not survive the death of the martyred Lincoln a few days after the events at Appomattox.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

Abraham Lincoln is usually considered one of our nation’s greatest presidents. But, what many people may not know is that Lincoln was not a very popular president during his first term and he nearly was not reelected in 1864. For many months leading into the presidential election of that year, Lincoln resigned himself to a simple fact that he was not going to be reelected. He told a visitor to the White House in the fall of 1864, “I am going to be beaten…and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten.”

Lincoln’s administration had presided over hundreds of thousands of young men killed and wounded in the then three-year-old struggle to give our nation, as Lincoln declared at Gettysburg, its “new birth of freedom” during the Civil War. The year 1864 had been the bloodiest of the war so far and Union armies were being decimated as Union General Ulysses S. Grant was making his final push to destroy the army of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and bring the war to an end. At the same time, General William T. Sherman was moving toward Georgia in the summer of 1864, hoping to destroy the Confederate armies in that region as well.

Lincoln was a tremendously unpopular president in 1864 inside and outside of his own political party. Democrats hated Lincoln and blamed him for the longevity of the war. Radical Republicans did not feel that he went far enough to extend equal rights to African-Americans. The war was unpopular and seemed unwinnable for the Union. Lincoln’s recent Emancipation Proclamation had also turned many Northern voters against Lincoln as they believed that equality for former slaves was something that would occur and they were not ready for it.

Between the Emancipation Proclamation and the casualty numbers of the Union army, Lincoln felt as though his administration would be leaving the White House in 1865. He urged his cabinet members to cooperate with the new president to make the transition of power easier, which would hopefully bring the nation back together quicker. A series of events were taking place in the Western theater of the war where one of Lincoln’s generals was about to present him with two gifts in 1864: the city of Atlanta and the reelection of his administration.

General Sherman met president Lincoln in 1861 at the beginning of the war and he was not overly impressed with him. He felt President Lincoln’s attitude toward the South was naive and could damage the Union’s early response to the war. Lincoln was not particularly impressed with Sherman at their first meeting either. But, those attitudes would change as the war progressed.

Sherman had achieved great success in fighting in the Western theater of the war from Shiloh to Chattanooga and was poised to strike a lethal blow into the heart of the Confederacy by marching his armies through the state of Georgia and capturing its capital city of  Atlanta. The capture of Atlanta would destroy a vital rail center and supply depot, as well as demoralize the Confederacy.

Sherman and his 100,000 troops left Chattanooga in May of 1864 and by July, Sherman and his army had reached the outskirts of Atlanta. On September 1, Confederate forces evacuated the city. The Northern reaction to the taking of Atlanta and victories in Virginia at the same time was jubilation. Instead of feeling the war was lost, the exact opposite opinion was now prevalent. It now seemed that the Lincoln administration would be the first reelected since Andrew Jackson in 1832.

President Lincoln won the 1864 election by receiving over 55 percent of the popular vote and winning the electoral vote 212 to 21 over his Democratic opponent, former general George B. McClellan. He was then able to manage the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, banning slavery in the United States forever. His presidency would be remembered as the reason why our nation is still one nation, under God, and dedicated to “the proposition that all men are created equal.” Washington created our nation, Jefferson and Madison gave it life and meaning with their ideas and  words, and Lincoln saved it. He may have not had the chance to do so without the military success of General Sherman and his armies in 1864.

Val Crofts is as Social Studies teacher from Janesville, Wisconsin. He teaches as Milton High School in Milton, Wisconsin and has been there 16 years. He teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics, U.S. History and U.S. Military History. Val has also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School for seven years, teaching several Social Studies courses for them. Val is also a member of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

 

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter

The Anaconda Plan of the Civil War, crafted by U.S. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, was designed to split and defeat the Confederacy by closing in on the coasts east and south, control the Mississippi River, then attack from all sides. Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant pressed through to take Vicksburg, Mississippi, get the final Confederate strongholds and control the Mississippi River. President Abraham Lincoln believed taking Vicksburg was the key to victory. The Battle at Vicksburg would be the longest military campaign of the Civil War. Vicksburg was surrendered on July 4, 1863.

President Lincoln said of Vicksburg, “See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket. We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg.” Lincoln well summarized the importance of Vicksburg, Mississippi, with both the Union and Confederacy determined to control the city. Along the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was one of the main strongholds remaining for the Confederacy. If the Union could capture this stronghold, it would cut off Confederacy states west of the Mississippi from those east of the Mississippi.

The location was ideal for defending, protected on the north by swamps of the bayou and was located on high bluffs that were along the river, and was given the name, the “Gibraltar of the South.”

General Grant developed a plan. After assuming command of the Union forces near Vicksburg on January 30, 1863, the Union having waged a campaign to take Vicksburg since the spring of 1862, he had been part of an initial failed attempt to take the city in the winter. In the spring of 1863, he tried again. This time, given the location of Vicksburg, he took the bold approach of marching south on the west side of the Mississippi River, then crossing over south of the city. He led troops south 30 miles south of Vicksburg, crossing over at Bruinsburg via Union fleet.

Once landed east of the river, he began to head northeast. On May 2, his troops took Port Gibson, with his troops abandoning supply lines and sustaining themselves from the surrounding countryside. Grant arrived in Vicksburg on May 18, where Confederate General John Pemberton was waiting with his 30,000 troops. Upon arrival, two major assaults on May 19 and 22 by the Union forces failed. Grant regrouped and his troops dug trenches, enclosing Pemberton and his troops.

Pemberton was boxed in with little provisions and diminishing ammunition. Many Confederate soldiers became sick and were hospitalized. In late June, Union troops dug mines underneath the Confederate troops and, on June 25, detonated the explosives. On July 3, Pemberton sent a note to Grant suggesting peace. Grant responded that only unconditional surrender would suffice. Pemberton formally surrendered on July 4. The nearly 30,000 troops were paroled, Grant not wanting to have to address the soldiers. The Union won at Port Hudson five days later.

Lincoln, who had noted how important Vicksburg was to the Union and the war, upon hearing of the surrender, stated, “The father of the waters goes unvexed to the sea.”

With the Siege of Vicksburg, Scott’s Anaconda Plan, designed at the beginning of the Civil War with the goal to blockade the southern ports and to cut the South in two by advancing down the Mississippi River, was complete.

The Siege of Vicksburg was a  major victory for the Union, giving it control of the Mississippi River. With the Battle of Gettysburg victory around the same time, it presented a turning point for the Union in the Civil War. July 4, 1863, the surrender of Vicksburg by Pemberton, is an important date in our nation’s history.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.  

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

President Abraham Lincoln faced an important decision point in the summer of 1862. Lincoln was opposed to slavery and sought a way to end the immoral institution that was at odds with republican principles. However, he had a reverence for the constitutional rule of law and an obligation to follow the Constitution. He discovered a means of ending slavery, saving the Union, and preserving the Constitution.

President Lincoln had reversed previous attempts by his generals to free the slaves because of their dubious constitutionality and because they would drive border states such as Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland into the arms of the Confederacy. He reluctantly signed the First and Second Confiscation Acts but doubted their constitutionality as well and did little to enforce them. He offered compensated emancipation to the border states, but none took him up on his offer.

On July 22, Lincoln met with the members of his Cabinet and shared his idea with them. He presented a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation on two pages of lined paper. It would free the slaves in the Confederate states as a “military necessity” by weakening the enemy under his constitutional presidential war powers.

The cabinet agreed with his reasoning even if some members were lukewarm. Some feared the effects on the upcoming congressional elections and that it would cause European states to recognize the Confederacy to protect their sources of cotton. Secretary of State William H. Seward counseled the president to issue the proclamation from a position of strength after a military victory.

The early victories of the year in the West by Grant at the Battle of Shiloh and the capture of New Orleans were dimmed by a more recent defeat in the eastern theater. Union General George McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign driving toward Richmond was thwarted by his defeat in the Seven Days’ Battles. Nor did Lincoln get the victory he needed the following month when Union armies under General John Pope were routed at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

In September, General Robert E. Lee invaded the North to defeat the Union army on northern soil and win European diplomatic recognition. He swept up into Maryland. Even though two Union troops discovered Lee’s plan of attack wrapped around a couple of cigars on the ground, McClellan did not capitalize on his advantage. The two armies converged at Sharpsburg near Antietam Creek.

At dawn on September 17, Union forces under General Joseph Hooker on the Union right attacked Confederates on the left side of their lines under Stonewall Jackson. The opposing armies clashed at West Woods, Dunker Church, and a cornfield. The attack faltered, and thousands were left dead and wounded.

Even that fighting could not compare to the carnage in the middle of the lines that occurred later in the morning. Union forces attacked several times and were repulsed. The battle shifted to a sunken road with horrific close-in fighting. Thousands more men became casualties at this “Bloody Lane.”

The final major stage of the day’s battle occurred further down the line when Union General Ambrose Burnside finally attacked. The Confederate forces here held a stone bridge across Antietam Creek that Burnside decided to cross rather than have his men ford the creek. The Confederates held a strong defensible position that pushed back several Union assaults. After the bridge was finally taken at great cost, the advancing tide of Union soldiers was definitively stopped by recently-arrived Confederate General A.P. Hill.

The battle resulted in the grim casualty figures of 12,400 for the Union armies and 10,300 for the Confederate armies. The losses were much heavier proportionately for the much smaller Confederate army. General McClellan failed to pursue the bloodied Lee the following day and thereby allowed him to escape and slip back down into the South. While Lincoln was furious with his general, he had the victory he needed to release the Emancipation Proclamation.

On September 22, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It read that as of January 1, 1863, “All persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” If the states ended their rebellion, then the proclamation would have no force there.

Since the proclamation only applied to the states who joined the Confederacy, the border states were exempt, and their slaves were not to be freed by it. Lincoln did this for two important reasons. One, the border states might have declared secession and joined with the Confederacy. Two, Lincoln had no constitutional authority under his presidential war powers to free the slaves in states in the Union.

None of the Confederate states accepted the offer. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as promised. The proclamation freed nearly 3.5 million slaves, though obviously the Union had to win the war to make it a reality. The document was arguably Lincoln’s least eloquent document and was, in the words of one historian, about as exciting as a bill of lading.

Lincoln understood that the document had to be an exacting legal document because of the legal and unofficial challenges it would face. Moreover, he knew that a constitutional amendment was necessary to end slavery everywhere. He knew the proclamation’s significance and called it “the central act of my administration,” and “my greatest and most enduring contribution to the history of the war.”

One eloquent line in the Emancipation Proclamation aptly summed up the republican and moral principles that were the cornerstone of the document and Lincoln’s vision: “And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

On July 2, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Land-Grant Agricultural and Mechanical College Act, widely known today as the Morrill Act. The act was the culmination of work over many years by many legislators, notably the legislation’s author and chief sponsor, Justin Morrill of Vermont, who was one of the long-serving members of Congress during the 19th century. Congress had passed an earlier version of Morrill’s bill in 1857, but the bill was vetoed by President James Buchanan. An earlier bill sponsored by Henry Clay that would have used federal land revenues to support education and internal improvement was also vetoed by President Andrew Jackson. In each veto case, an argument was made that the federal government had no business involving itself in educational matters or other issues that were properly the province of state governments.[1]

The Morrill Act permitted participating states to make use of the sale, rent, and/or royalties derived from property granted to the states by the federal government. If a state did not have sufficient federal land situated within its borders, the state would be granted scrip representing proceeds from federal land in other states or territories. Somewhat similar land grants had been used by the federal government for a variety of purposes, but many of those programs did not attract a great deal of interest or cooperation from state governments. The Morrill Act required participating governments to produce annual reports regarding the use of funds from both the state governors and the recipient colleges and universities.[2]

Morrill pushed for a land grant program that would support education, a cause to which he was devoted for much of his career. Morrill had relatively little formal education himself, but he was dedicated to the effort to provide higher education to people of humble station. He also favored a very particular kind of higher education, one supporting agriculture and the “mechanic arts” (today generally known as engineering).[3] At the time, many colleges and universities in America and Europe largely emphasized the classics and humanities to the exclusion of more applied fields of study. Studies focusing on seemingly more practical and career-related topics were given little attention. The successful 1862 legislation, unlike the 1857 bill, also indicated that the funding would support the teaching of “military tactics.” In light of the on-going civil war, the emphasis on military training broadened the bill’s appeal.[4] The bill gained a co-sponsor in the Senate in the person of Ben Wade of Ohio, who later would serve as president pro tempore of the chamber. Wade is remembered today as the man who would have become acting president if the senate had voted to remove President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial in 1868.

Opponents of the legislation included those who believed that education matters were solely the responsibility of the states. But many who took this position in 1857 were no longer in Congress in the 1860s. In fact, many were southerners who left Congress when their states seceded from the union. Other legislators, particularly from the western states, objected to the fact that land situated in their states sometimes was used to provide revenue to states in the east that lacked substantial amounts of federal land. Some objected to the legislation because they feared that the new funding would support new institutions that would compete with existing colleges and universities. As various iterations of the Morrill bill moved through Congress between 1860 and 1862, various amendments were approved to appease the objections of some critics.   Notably, the bill was amended to exclude mineral lands and to limit the amount of federal land that could be sold within any given state. Final passage was also delayed so that settlers granted federal land under the recently enacted Homestead Act could have their first choice of land.[5]

After enactment, many states used the land grant funds to support existing colleges and universities, both public and private. While the land grant system overwhelmingly has favored public institutions, a few private schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cornell University, and Brown University, received land grant money for some considerable time, and some continue to operate as land-grant institutions to this day.[6] In most states, however, entirely new institutions were created, generally with some reference to agriculture in their titles. These institutions became what are now known as land-grant colleges, even though the total number of schools that receive land-grant support is far greater than most people realize.

The impact of the Morrill Act is hard to overestimate. It was not the first federal grant programs offering aid to state governments, but it was one of the most important and enduring programs. In comparison to categorical aid programs that became popular in the 1960s and later, the program attached few strings with which the recipient governments had to comply. However, in comparison to its predecessors, the land-grant act imposed significant requirements upon its benefactors, particularly regarding reporting obligations and the formal commitment of  resources to particular fields of study.

The act caused a great increase in the number of higher education institutions in the country, and greatly increased the accessibility of college for many Americans of limited income who often lived far removed from population centers or the locations of extant colleges and universities. The Morrill Act was amended in 1890 by new legislation that prohibited grants to states that excluded students from higher education on the basis of race. Recipient states were also required to create universities intended to serve African-Americans. Today these schools are generally called Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).[7]

The land-grant program had a huge impact in agriculture, engineering, and military science. The land-grant institutions conducted agriculture research and trained agricultural students. These institutions became a part of the Department of Agriculture’s extension service, which has disseminated research findings throughout the country.[8] By the early twentieth century, the military tactics classes that were supported by the land-grants had evolved into the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program.[9] The “mechanic arts” emphasis in the land-grant colleges built up the knowledge base and the professional identity of the engineering profession.[10] The economic implications of this support for both basic and applied science have been significant, although their exact magnitude is disputed. Research by Isaac Ehrlich, Adam Cook, and Yong Yin indicates that the returns from the land-grant schools had made the United States into an economic superpower by the early twentieth century, surpassing countries such as the United Kingdom that followed a much different higher education model.[11] In short, the Morrill Act and subsequent legislation regarding the land-grant colleges has had an astounding impact upon educational quality and access, economic growth and opportunity, and leadership in the nation’s military.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Duemer, Lee S. 2007. “The Agricultural Education Origins of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862.” American Educational History Journal 34 (1): 135–46.

[2] Lieberman, Carl. “The Constitutional and Political Bases of Federal Aid to Higher Education, 1787-1862.” International Social Science Review 63, no. 1 (1988): 3-13.

[3] Key, Scott. 1996. “Economics or Education: The Establishment of American Land-Grant Universities.” Journal of Higher Education 67 (March): 196–220.

[4] Benson, Michael T., and Hal Robert Boyd. 2018.  College for the Commonwealth: A Case for Higher Education in American Democracy.  Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

[5] Lieberman, Carl. “The Constitutional and Political Bases of Federal Aid to Higher Education, 1787-1862.” International Social Science Review 63, no. 1 (1988): 3-13.

[6] Carstensen, Victor. 1962. “Century of the Land-Grant Colleges.” Journal of Higher Education 33 (January): 30–37.

[7] Wheatle, Katherine I. E. 2019. “Neither Just nor Equitable.” American Educational History Journal 46 (1/2/2019): 1–20.

[8] Duemer, Lee S. 2007. “The Agricultural Education Origins of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862.” American Educational History Journal 34 (1): 135–46.

[9] Benson, Michael T., and Hal Robert Boyd. 2018.  College for the Commonwealth: A Case for Higher Education in American Democracy.  Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

[10]Nienkamp, Paul. 2010. “Land-Grant Colleges and American Engineers.” American Educational History Journal 37 (1/2): 313–30.

[11] Ehrlich, Isaac, Adam Cook, and Yong Yin. 2018. “What Accounts for the US Ascendancy to Economic Superpower by the Early Twentieth Century? The Morrill Act-Human Capital Hypothesis.” Journal of Human Capital 12 (2): 233–81.

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter

The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged development of farming on land as homesteads for western expansion. Heads of households could receive up to 160 acres to farm for five years, or purchase the land after six months. If homesteaders were unable to farm successfully, the land would go back to the government to be offered again to another homesteader. Pro-slavery groups feared a homestead act would give more power to anti-slavery families moving to new territories of privatized land that could become free states, so they fought passage. 

The Civil War, by May 1862, was just over a year old, having begun with the Battle of Fort Sumter. The Homestead Act of 1862 was a way for the Union to expand westward, and in some ways fulfilled the promise contained in President Abraham Lincoln’s message to Congress on July 4, 1861, when he wrote in part:

On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

According to the National Park Service website, the Act brought to life the “fair chance” to which Lincoln referred and the Act “was one of the most significant and enduring events in the westward expansion of the United States.”

The 1862 Act was not the first effort to expand westward, but prior efforts had been met with resistance from Southern Democrats, who feared European immigrants might inhabit the west. The Act was intended to make it easier for interested persons to move west, without the requirement of “squatters” on federal lands to pay per acre for retaining the property that was part of the Preemption Act of 1841.

The Act had minimal requirements to qualify. Any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the United States, could apply for the grant. The citizen was required to improve the land by building a dwelling and cultivating the land. After five years, they obtained the deed to the 160 acres. An inhabitant had the option of a six-month residency with minor improvements and paying $1.25 per acre, the same price as existed under the Preemption Act.

Many could not afford to effectively build a farm and cultivate the land, which included obtaining the necessary tools as well as crops and livestock. One of the first registered homesteaders was Daniel Freeman, whose claim is the site of the Homestead National Monument of America. Freeman is said to have filed his claim ten minutes after the Act became effective on January 1, 1863.

With the Homestead Act of 1862, the westward expansion truly commenced. Over its history, more than 2 million individuals filed claims, with approximately 780,000 obtaining title to the lands. More than 270 million acres were granted while the law was in effect.

Lincoln’s signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862 was an important day in our nation’s history.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

Abraham Lincoln traveled East in February of 1860. He was asked to deliver an address at the Cooper Institute in New York City on the momentous topic of the era, slavery. Lincoln had been a popular orator and politician in Illinois, but had yet to solidify himself as a national politician. His sense of humor, frontier charm and folksy wit appealed to his political and debate audiences in the West, but if he was going to attract a national following and possibly earn the nomination from the fledgling Republican Party as their presidential candidate, he needed to appeal to voters in different areas of the country.

Before he gave his Cooper Institute speech, Lincoln made his way to the New York studio of photographer, Matthew Brady. He was going to sit for a portrait that was going to introduce him to the American people. Brady’s portrait of Lincoln shows a confident, 51 year old Lincoln staring into the camera with his left hand resting on two books. He pulled his collar up in the portrait to partially obscure his long neck. He looks distinguished, but his hair is a bit disheveled as he stands ready to make arguably the most important speech of his life in a few hours.

A crowd of around 1,500 people crowded into the Cooper Institute on the night of February 27, 1860 to hear this Republican orator from the West deliver a carefully researched and crafted speech to explain to the nation why they should not fear a Republican president and why the views of the Republicans on slavery mirrored those of the Founding Fathers. Lincoln was about to reinvent himself as an orator and to establish himself as a national politician and serious contender for the presidency.

Some eyewitnesses claimed disappointment when Lincoln first stood to address the crowd. His tall (so tall as someone said) appearance with his arms and legs created an awkward appearance and some in the crowd expressed pity for how Lincoln looked that night. But then, he began to speak.

Lincoln began by informing his audience that 21 of 39 Founding Fathers felt that the federal government should be able to control slavery in territories of the United States and that the Constitution verifies this. The Republican Party had pledged to stop slavery from spreading into the Western territories and Lincoln felt that the basis for this decision came from the basis for our legal cornerstone, the Constitution of the United States.

He then denied that the Republicans were a Northern political party intent on inciting slave rebellions. He talked about how John Brown, the abolitionist who attempted to start a slave rebellion in Virginia, was no Republican and he urged the South to understand the Republican Party was an American party and not a sectional one. He was attempting to explain to the South that Republicans were allies and not enemies. He further explained that for the South to threaten to secede if a Republican president was elected, was similar to an “armed robbery” of the Union.

He then addressed fellow Republicans to leave the South alone and to convince the South that they would continue to do so. Southern fears of Republican interference was fueling the flames of rebellion and Lincoln urged it to cease. Lincoln felt that if Republicans were not able to stop slavery where it existed, because the Constitution did not give them power to do so, then they must stop it from spreading into the Western territories. Then, he ended one of his longest public speeches by saying, “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

Lincoln laid out what he perceived to be the fears of the South and had done his best to calm them. He had also given his opinions on what Republicans could do to stop the further escalation of the division between the two regions. The speech was a huge success.

To capitalize on the speech and its success, Matthew Brady began to circulate the photo in several sizes for people to purchase. Harper’s Weekly converted the photo into a full page drawing of Lincoln which accompanied their story of the Cooper Institute speech and Lincoln’s success there. The image became the public’s first encounter with this rising star in the Republican Party.

Lincoln’s Cooper Institute speech was considered one of his greatest successes. If he had failed to engage and impress his New York audience, he may not have received the nomination as president in 1860. Had that not happened, he may have returned to Illinois to live out his days as a lawyer in Springfield and the history of our nation would have been very different. Lincoln credited Brady and the Cooper Institute speech with helping him to secure his nomination as the Republican candidate for president and ultimately putting him in the White House. Those two very important events in New York City in February of 1860 may have ultimately helped to preserve the Union.

Val Crofts is as Social Studies teacher from Janesville, Wisconsin. He teaches as Milton High School in Milton, Wisconsin and has been there 16 years. He teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics, U.S. History and U.S. Military History. Val has also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School for seven years, teaching several Social Studies courses for them. Val is also a member of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter

In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. Shortly after, South Carolina became the first state to secede, doing so on December 20, 1860. Mississippi and Florida followed, with Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas joining them.  On April 12, 1861, the Civil War officially began at the Battle of Fort Sumter.

The South Carolina militia bombarded Fort Sumter, an island fortification near Charleston, South Carolina. The Confederate Army had not yet officially formed. The attack began in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, when Lieutenant Henry S. Farley fired a mortar round over Fort Sumter as a signal to the militia to begin firing on Fort Sumter. The militia, led by General P.G.T. Beauregard, had the upper hand. The Fort, led by Major Robert Anderson, had been designed and fortified to respond to, and defend against, naval attack, but over the ensuing battle proved to be no match for land bombardment.

Fort Sumter had a total of 60 guns but many of them were on top, where Anderson’s troops would be most vulnerable to being hit by incoming fire from the militia. The twenty-one guns on the lower level did not allow the trajectory needed to hit any of the artillery of the attackers.  Anderson and his troops did what they could, engaging in an exchange of fire that lasted for thirty-four hours. Because efforts by President Lincoln to resupply Fort Sumter had not been successful, and despite moving as many supplies to the fort as possible, Anderson and his troops were short on ammunition. They reduced the number of guns being deployed.

The militia began to fire heated shots at the fort, hitting some of the wooden structures within. Fires ensued, but on April 12th, a rain shower put those fires out. On April 13th, the heated shot barrage would resume and do substantial damage to the fort.

Early in the  morning of April 13, 1861, Gustavus V. Fox arrived, leading the supply relief expedition that President Lincoln had ordered.  But his arrival would do little to change the equation. Around 1 PM on April 13, the central flagpole was knocked down. Colonel Louis Wigfall, an aide to Beauregard, without authorization rowed a skiff to the island fort and met with Anderson. He is reported to have said, “You have defended your flag nobly, Sir. You have done all that it is possible to do, and General Beauregard wants to stop this fight. On what terms, Major Anderson, will you evacuate this fort?”

Anderson agreed to a truce, proud of his troops and not having lost any of his men to the bombardment. After Beauregard’s initial contingent disavowed Wigfall’s settlement terms, Beauregard saw the surrender handkerchief and sent a second contingent, which offered similar terms to what Wigfall had. With that, Anderson surrendered, and the South had won its first battle. Over the next almost four years, the Confederate troops would hold Fort Sumter, withstanding several Union army attacks.

The Battle of Fort Sumter caused many Northerners to strongly advocate for the assembly of volunteer troops to recapture the fort and to preserve our Union. The war would go on for four years, with approximately 750,000 casualties.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

America’s bloodiest day was also the most geopolitically significant battle of the Civil War.

On September 17, 1862, twelve hours of battle along the Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, resulted in 23,000 Union and Confederate dead or wounded. Its military outcome was General Robert E. Lee, and his Army of Northern Virginia, retreating back into Virginia. Its political outcome reshaped global politics and doomed the Southern cause.

The importance of Antietam begins with President Abraham Lincoln weighing how to characterize the Civil War to both domestic and international audiences. Lincoln chose to make “disunion” the issue instead of slavery. His priority was retaining the border states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) within the Union. [1]

The first casualties of the Civil War occurred on April 19, 1861 on the streets of Baltimore. The 6th Massachusetts Regiment was attacked by pro-South demonstrators while they were changing trains. Sixteen dead soldiers and citizens validated Lincoln’s choice of making the Civil War about reunification. Eastern Maryland was heavily pro-slave. Had Maryland seceded, Washington, D.C. would have been an island within the Confederacy. This would have spelled disaster for the North.

To affirm the “war between the states” nature of the Civil War, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, issued strict instructions to American envoys to avoid referencing slavery when discussing the Civil War. [2]

Explaining to foreign governments that the conflict was simply a “war between the states” had a downside. England and France were dependent on Southern cotton for their textile mills. “Moral equivalency” of the combatants allowed political judgments to be based on economic concerns. [3]

On April 27, 1861, Lincoln and Seward further complicated matters by announcing a blockade of Southern ports. While this was vital to depriving the South of supplies, it forced European governments to determine whether to comply. There were well established international procedures for handling conflicts between nations and civil wars. Seward ignored these conventions, igniting fierce debate in foreign governments over what to do with America. [4]

England and France opted for neutrality, which officially recognized the blockade, but with no enforcement. Blockade runners gathered in Bermuda, and easily avoided the poorly organized Union naval forces, while conducting commerce with Southern ports. [5]

Matters got worse. On November 8, 1861, a Union naval warship stopped the Trent, a neutral British steamer travelling from Havana to London. Captain Charles Wilkes removed two Confederate Government Commissioners, James Mason and John Slidell, who were on their way for meetings with the British Government. [6]

The “Trent Affair” echoed the British stopping neutral American ships during the Napoleonic Wars. Those acts were the main reason for America initiating the War of 1812 with England.

British Prime Minister, Lord Henry Palmerston, issued an angry ultimatum to Lincoln demanding immediate release of the Commissioners. He also moved 11,000 British troops to Canada to reinforce its border with America. Lincoln backed down, releasing the Commissioners, stating “One war at a time.” [7]

While war with England was forestalled, economic issues were driving a wedge between the Lincoln Administration and Europe.

The 1861 harvest of Southern cotton had shipped just before war broke out. In 1862, the South’s cotton exports were disrupted by the war. Textile owners clamored for British intervention to force a negotiated peace.

In the early summer of 1862, bowing to political and economic pressure, Lord Palmerston drafted legislation to officially recognize the Confederate government and press for peace negotiations. [8]

During the Spring of 1862, Lincoln’s view of the Civil War was shifting. Union forces were attracting escaped slaves wherever they entered Southern territory. Union General’s welcomed the slaves as “contraband,” prizes of war similar to capturing the enemy’s weapons. This gave Lincoln a legal basis for establishing a policy for emancipating slaves in the areas of conflict.

Union victories had solidified the Border States into the North. Therefore, disunion was not as important a justification for military action. In fact, shedding blood solely for reunification seemed to be souring Northern support for the war.

Lincoln and Seward realized emancipating slaves could rekindle Northern support for the war, critical for winning the Congressional elections in November 1862. Emancipation would also place the conflict on firm moral grounds, ending European support for recognition and intervention. England had abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1833. It would not side with a slave nation, if the goal of war became emancipation. Lincoln embraced this geopolitical chess board, “Emancipation would weaken the rebels by drawing off their laborers, would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition.” [9]

On July 22, 1862, Lincoln called a Cabinet meeting to announce his intention to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. It was framed as an imperative of war, “by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.” [10]

Seward raised concerns over the timing of the Proclamation. He felt recent Union defeats outside of the Confederate Capital of Richmond, Virginia might make its issuance look like an act of desperation, “our last shriek, on the retreat.” [11] It was decided to wait for a Northern victory so that the Emancipation could be issued from a position of strength.

Striving for a game-changing victory became the priority for both sides. The summer of 1862 witnessed a series of brilliant Confederate victories. British Prime Minister Palmerston agreed to finally hold a Cabinet meeting to formally decide on recognition and mediation. [12]

General Lee wished to tip the scales further by engineering a Confederate victory on northern soil. [13] Lee wanted a victory like the 1777 Battle of Saratoga that brought French recognition and aid to America. [14]

The race was on. General Stonewall Jackson annihilated General John Pope’s Army in the Second Battle of Manassas (August 28-30, 1862). Lee saw his opportunity, consolidated his forces, and invaded Maryland on September 4, 1862.

After entering Frederick, Maryland, Lee divided his forces to eliminate the large Union garrison in Harpers Ferry, which was astride his supply lines. Lee planned to draw General George McClellan and his “Army of the Potomac” deep into western Maryland. Far from Union logistical support, McClellan’s forces could be destroyed, delivering a devastating blow to the North. [15]

A copy of Special Order No. 191, which outlined Lee’s plans and troop movements, was lost by the Confederates, and found by a Union patrol outside of Frederick. [15] On reading the Order, McClellan, famous for his slow and ponderous actions in the field, sped his pursuit of Lee.

Now there was a deadly race for whether Lee and Jackson could neutralize Harpers Ferry and reunite before McClellan’s army pounced. This turned the siege of Harpers Ferry (September 12-15, 1862), the Battle of South Mountain (September 14, 1862), and Antietam (September 17, 1862) into the Civil War’s most important series of battles.

While Antietam was tactically a draw, heavy losses forced Lee and his army back into Virginia. This was enough for Lincoln to issue his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, five days after the battle, on September 22, 1862. When news of the Confederate retreat reached England, support for recognition collapsed, extinguishing, “the last prospect of European intervention.” [17] News of the Emancipation Proclamation launched “Emancipation Meetings” throughout England. Support for a Union victory rippled through even pacifist Anti-Slavery groups who asserted abolition, “was possible only in a united America.” [18]

There were many more battles to be fought, but Europe’s alignment against the Confederacy sealed its fate. European nations flocked to embrace Lincoln and his Emancipation crusade. One vivid example was Czar Alexander II, who had emancipated Russia’s serfs, becoming a friend of Lincoln. In the fall of 1863, he sent Russian fleets to New York City and San Francisco to support the Union cause. [19]

Unifying European nations against the Confederacy, and ending slavery in the South, makes America’s bloodiest day one of the world’s major events.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

REFERENCES

[1] McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford University Press, New York, 1988) pp. 311-312.

[2] Foreman, Amanda, A World on Fire; Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random House, New York, 2010) p.107.

[3] Op. cit., McPherson, p. 384.

[4] Op. cit., Foreman, page 80.

[5] Op. cit., McPherson, pages 380-381.

[6] ibid., pages 389-391.

[7] ibid.[8] Op. cit., Foreman, page 293.

[9] Op. cit., McPherson, page 510.[10] Carpenter, Francis, How the Emancipation Proclamation was Drafted; Political Recollections; Anthology – America; Great Crises in Our History Told by its Makers; Vol. VIII (Veterans of Foreign Wars, Chicago, 1925) pages 160-161.[11] Op. cit., McPherson, page 505.

[12] Op. cit., Foreman, page 295.[13] Op. cit., McPherson, page 555.

[14] McPherson, James, The Saratoga That Wasn’t: The Impact of Antietam Abroad, in This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pages 65-77.

[15] Sears, Stephen W., Landscape Turned Red (Ticknor & Fields, New York, 1983) pages 66-67.

[16] Ibid., pages 112-113.

[17] Op. cit., Foreman, page 322.

[18] ibid., page 397.

[19] The Russian Navy Visits the United States (Naval Historical Foundation, Annapolis, 1969)

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

On the evening of Oct. 16, 1859, John Brown and his raiders unleashed 36 hours of terror on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).

Brown’s raid marked a cataclysmic moment of change for America and the world. It ranks up there with Sept. 11, the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and the shots fired on Lexington Common and Concord Bridge during the momentous day of April 19, 1775. Each of these days marked a point when there was no turning back. Contributing events may have been prologue, but once these fateful days took place, America was forever changed.

Americans at the time knew that the raid was not the isolated work of a madman. Brown was the well-financed and supported “point of the lance” for the abolition movement.

He was a major figure among the leading abolitionists and intellectuals of the time. This included Gerrit Smith, the second wealthiest man in America and business partner of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Among other ventures, Smith was a patron of Oberlin College, where Brown’s father served as a trustee. Thus was born a 20-year friendship.

Through Smith, Brown moved among America’s elite, conversing with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, journalists, religious leaders and politicians.

Early on, Brown deeply believed that the only way to end slavery was through armed rebellion. His vision was to create a southern portal for the Underground Railway in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The plan was to raise a small force and attack the armory in Harpers Ferry. There Brown would obtain additional weapons and then move into the Blue Ridge to establish his mountain sanctuary for escaping slaves.

Brown anticipated having escaped slaves swell his rebellious ranks and protect his sanctuary. He planned to acquire hundreds of metal tipped pikes as the weapon of choice.

The idea of openly rebelling against slavery was an extreme position in the 1850s. Abolitionist leaders felt slavery would either become economically obsolete or had faith that their editorials would shame the federal government to end the practice.

For years Brown remained the lone radical voice in the elite salons of New York and Boston. He looked destined to remain on the fringes of the anti-slavery movement when a series of events shook the activists’ trust in working within the system and shifted sentiment toward Brown’s solution.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 forced local public officials in free states to help recover escaped slaves. The federally sanctioned intrusion of slavery into the North began tipping the scales in favor of Brown’s agenda.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 destroyed decades of carefully crafted compromises that limited slavery’s westward expansion.  The Act ignited a regional civil war as pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers fought each other prior to a referendum on the state’s status – slave or free. Smith enlisted the help of several of the more active abolitionists to underwrite Brown’s guerilla war against slavery in Kansas in 1856-57. This group, including some of America’s leading intellectuals, went on to become the Secret Six, who pledged to help Brown with his raid.

The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857, and its striking down of Wisconsin’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act in March 1859, set the Secret Six and Brown on their collision course with Harpers Ferry.

Today, Harpers Ferry is a scenic town of 300 people, but in 1859 it was one of the largest industrial complexes south of the Mason Dixon Line. The Federal Armory and Rifle Works were global centers of industrial innovation and invention. The mass production of interchangeable parts, the foundation of the modern industrial era, was perfected along the banks of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.

Brown moved into the Harpers Ferry area on July 3, 1859, establishing his base at the Kennedy Farm a few miles north in Maryland. The broader abolitionist movement remained divided about an armed struggle. During August 19-21, 1859, a unique debate occurred. At a quarry outside Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Frederick Douglass and Brown spent hours debating whether anyone had a moral obligation to take up arms against slavery. Douglass refused to join Brown but remained silent about the raid. Douglass’ aide, Shields Green, was so moved by Brown’s argument, he joined Brown on the raid, was captured, tried, and executed.

The American Civil War began the moment Brown and his men walked across the B&O Railroad Bridge and entered Harpers Ferry late on the evening of October 16, 1859. Brown’s raiders secured the bridges and the armories as planned. Hostages were collected from surrounding plantations, including Col. Lewis W. Washington, great grandnephew of George Washington. A wagon filled with “slave pikes” was brought into town. Brown planned to arm freed slaves with the pikes assuming they had little experience with firearms.

As Brown and his small force waited for additional raiders with wagons to remove the federal weapons, local militia units arrived and blocked their escape. Militia soldiers and armed townspeople methodically killed Brown’s raiders, who were arrayed throughout the industrial complexes.

Eventually, the surviving raiders and their hostages retreated into the Armory’s Fire Engine House for their last stand. Robert E. Lee and a detachment of U.S. Marines from Washington, D.C. arrived on October 18. The Marines stormed the Engine House, killing or capturing Brown and his remaining men, and freeing the hostages. The raid was over.

Brown survived the raid. His trial became a national sensation as he chose to save his cause instead of himself. Brown rejected an insanity plea in favor of placing slavery on trial. His testimony, and subsequent newspaper interviews while awaiting execution on Dec. 2, 1859, created a fundamental emotional and political divide across America that made civil war inevitable.

Fearing that abolitionists were planning additional raids or slave revolts, communities across the South formed their own militias and readied for war. There was no going back to pre-October America.

Edmund Ruffin, one of Virginia’s most vocal pro-slavery and pro-secession leaders, acquired several of Brown’s “slave pikes.” He sent them to the governors of slave-holding states, each labeled “Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren.”  Many of the slave pikes were publicly displayed in southern state capitols, further inflaming regional emotions.

On April 12, 1861, Ruffin lit the fuse on the first cannon fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The real fuse had been lit months earlier by Brown at Harpers Ferry.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

In the 1850s, the United States was deeply divided over the issue of slavery and its expansion into the West. Northerners and southerners had been arguing over the expansion of slavery into the western territories for decades. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had divided the Louisiana Territory at 36’30° with new states north of the line free states and south of the lines slave states. The delicate compromise held until the Mexican War.

The territory acquired in the Mexican War of 1846 triggered the sectional debate again. In 1850, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky engineered the Compromise of 1850 to settle the dispute with the help of Stephen Douglas. But, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act permitted settlers to decide whether the states would be free or slave according to the principle of “popular sovereignty.” Pro and anti-slavery settlers rushed to Kansas and violence and murder erupted in “Bleeding Kansas.” Meanwhile, southerners spoke of secession and observers warned of civil war.

The United States faced this combustible situation when Chief Justice Roger B. Taney sat down in late February 1857 to write the infamous opinion in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford that would go down as a travesty of constitutional interpretation and one of the greatest injustices by the Supreme Court.

Dred Scott was a slave who had been owned by different masters in the slave states of Virginia and Missouri. Dr. John Emerson was an Army surgeon who was one of those owners and brought Scott to the free state of Illinois for three years and then the free Wisconsin Territory. Scott even married another slave while on free soil. Emerson moved back to Missouri and brought his enslaved with him just before he died. Scott sued Emerson’s widow for his freedom because he had lived in Illinois and Wisconsin, where slavery was prohibited.

Southern and Northern state laws and courts had long recognized the “right of transit” for slaveowners to bring their slaves while briefly traveling through free states/territories or remaining for short durations. However, they also recognized that residence in a free state or territory established freedom for slaves who moved there. In fact, Missouri’s long-standing judicial rule was “once free, always free.” Many former slaves who returned to Missouri after living in a free state or territory had successfully sued in Missouri courts to establish their freedom. The Dred Scott case made its way through the Missouri and federal courts, and finally reached the Supreme Court.

The attorneys presented oral arguments to Taney and the other justices in February 1856. The justices met in chambers but simply could not come to a consensus. They asked the lawyers to re-argue the case the following December, which coincidentally delayed the decision until after the contentious presidential election that allowed the Court to maintain the semblance of neutrality. But, Justice Taney sought to remove the issue from the messy arena of democratic politics and settle the sectional dispute over slavery in the Court.

After hearing the case argued for a second time, the justices met in mid-February 1857 to consider the case. They almost agreed to a narrow legal opinion that addressed Dred Scott’s status as a slave in a free state. However, they selected Chief Justice Taney to write the opinion. He used the opportunity to write an expansive opinion that would avert possible civil war.

On the morning of March 6, Taney read the shocking opinion to the Court for nearly two hours. Taney, speaking for seven members of the Court, declared that all African-Americans—slave or free—were not U.S. citizens at the time of the founding and could not become citizens. He asserted that the founders thought that blacks were an inferior class of humans and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and no right to sue in federal court. This was not only a misreading of the history of the American founding but a gross act of injustice toward African Americans. Taney could have stopped there, but he believed this decision could end the sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery. He declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress had no power to regulate slavery in the territories despite Article IV, section 3 giving Congress the “power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.” According to his reasoning, slavery could become legal throughout the nation. Finally, Taney pronounced that Dred Scott, despite his residence in the free state and territory that allowed other slaves to claim their freedom, was still a slave.

The Dred Scott decision was not unanimous; Justices Benjamin Curtis and John McLean wrote dissenting opinions. Curtis’s painstakingly detailed research in U.S. history demonstrated that Taney was wrong on several points. First, Curtis convincingly showed that free African-Americans had been citizens and even voters in several states at the time of the founding. He wrote that slavery was fundamentally “contrary to natural right.” Furthermore, Curtis pointed out that by settled practice and the Constitution, Congress did indeed have power to legislate regarding slavery. He provided evidence that Congress had legislated with respect to slavery more than a dozen times before the 1820 Missouri Compromise.

The Dred Scott decision was supposed to calm sectional tensions in the United States, but it worsened them. Northerners expressed great moral outrage, and southerners doubled down on the Court’s decision that African Americans had no rights and Congress could not regulate slavery’s expansion. Indeed, the Court’s decision greatly exacerbated tensions and contributed directly to events leading to the Civil War. Instead of leaving the issue to the people’s representatives who had successfully negotiated important compromises in Congress to preserve the Union, Taney and other justices arrogantly thought they could settle the issue.

Taney’s understanding of American republican government was that only the white race enjoyed natural rights and consensual self-government. Abraham Lincoln continually attacked the decision in his speeches and debates. Lincoln stood for a Union rooted upon natural rights for all humans. He did not believe that the country could survive indefinitely “half slave, half free.” He argued that the Declaration of Independence “set up a standard maxim for free society” of self-governing individuals. Lincoln also opposed the Dred Scott decision because of its impact on democracy. If the Court’s majority gained the final say on political decisions, Lincoln thought “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

The different views of slavery, its expansion, and the principles of republican self-government were at the core of the Civil War that ensued three years later. During the war, President Lincoln freed the slaves in Confederate states with the Emancipation Proclamation and laid down the moral vision of the American republic in the Gettysburg Address. He wrote: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The bloody Civil War was fought so that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. He is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

In 1834, Dr. Emerson, an Army surgeon, took his slave Dred Scott from Missouri, a slave state, to Illinois, a free state, and then, in 1836, to Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory. The latter was north of the geographic line at latitude 36°30′ established under the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as the division between free territory and that potentially open to slavery. In addition, the law that organized Wisconsin Territory in 1836 made the domain free. Emerson, his wife, and Scott and his family eventually returned to Missouri by 1840. Emerson died in Iowa in 1843. Ownership of Scott and his family ultimately passed to Emerson’s brother-in-law, John Sanford, of New York.

With financial assistance from the family of his former owner, the late Peter Blow, Scott sued for his freedom in Missouri state court, beginning in 1846. He argued that he was free due to having resided in both a free state and a free territory. After some procedural delays, the lower court jury eventually agreed with him in 1850, but the Missouri Supreme Court in 1852 overturned the verdict. The judges rejected Scott’s argument, on the basis that the laws of Illinois and Wisconsin Territory had no extraterritorial effect in Missouri once he returned there.

It has long been speculated that the case was contrived. Records were murky, and it was not clear that Sanford actually owned Scott. Moreover, Sanford’s sister Irene, the late Dr. Emerson’s widow, had remarried an abolitionist Congressman. Finally, the suit was brought in the court of Judge Alexander Hamilton, known to be sympathetic to such “freedom suits.”

Having lost in the state courts, in 1853 Scott tried again, in the United States Circuit Court for Missouri, which at that time was a federal trial court. The basic thrust of the case at that level was procedural sufficiency. Federal courts, as courts of limited and defined jurisdiction under Article III of the Constitution, generally can hear only cases between citizens of different states or if a claim is based on a federal statute or treaty, or on the Constitution. There being no federal law of any sort involved, Scott’s claim rested on diversity of citizenship. Scott claimed that he was a free citizen of Missouri and Sanford a citizen of New York. On the substance, Scott reiterated the position from his state court claim. Sanford sought a dismissal on the basis of lack of subject matter jurisdiction because, being black, Scott could not be a citizen of Missouri.

When Missouri sought admission to statehood in 1820, its constitution excluded free blacks from living in the state. The compromise law passed by Congress prohibited the state constitution from being interpreted to authorize a law that would exclude citizens of any state from enjoying the constitutional privileges and immunities of citizenship the state recognized for its own citizens. That prohibition was toothless, and Sanford’s argument rested on Missouri’s negation of citizenship for all blacks. Thus, Scott’s continued status as a slave was not crucial to resolve the case. Rather, his racial status, free or slave, meant that he was not a citizen of Missouri. Thus, the federal court lacked jurisdiction over the suit and could not hear Scott’s substantive claim. Instead, the appropriate forum to determine Scott’s status was the Missouri state court. As already noted, that was a dry well and could not water the fountain of justice.

In a confusing action, the Circuit Court appeared to reject Sanford’s jurisdictional argument, but the jury nevertheless ruled for Sanford on the merits, based on Missouri law. Scott appealed to the United States Supreme Court by writ of error, a broad corrective tool to review decisions of lower courts. The Court heard argument in Dred Scott v. Sandford (the “d” is a clerical error) at its February, 1856, term. The justices were divided on the preliminary jurisdictional issue. They bound the case over to the December, 1856, term, after the contentious 1856 election. There seemed to be a way out of the ticklish matter. In Strader v. Graham in 1850, the unanimous Supreme Court had held that a slave’s status rested finally on the decision of the relevant state court. The justices also had refused to consider independently the claim that a slave became free simply through residence in a free state. Seven of the justices in Dred Scott believed Strader to be on point, and Justice Samuel Nelson drafted an opinion on that basis. Such a narrow resolution would have steered clear of the hot political issue of extension of slavery into new territories that was roiling the political waters and threatening to tear apart the Union.

It was not to be. Several of the Southern justices were sufficiently alarmed by the public debate and affected by sectional loyalty to prepare concurring opinions to address the lurking issue of Scott’s status. Justice James Wayne of Georgia then persuaded his fellows to take up all issues raised by Scott’s suit. Chief Justice Roger Taney would write the opinion.

Writing for himself and six associate justices, Taney delivered the Court’s opinion on March 6, 1857, just a couple of days after the inauguration of President James Buchanan. In his inaugural address, Buchanan hinted at the coming decision through which the slavery question would “be speedily and finally settled.” Apparently having received advance word of the decision, Buchanan declared that he would support the decision, adding coyly, “whatever this may be.” Some historians have wondered if Buchanan actually appreciated the breadth of the Court’s imminent opinion or misunderstood what was about to happen. Of the seven justices that joined the decision that Scott lacked standing to sue and was still a slave, five were Southerners (Taney of Maryland, Wayne, John Catron of Tennessee, Peter Daniel of Virginia, and John Campbell of Georgia). Two were from the North (Samuel Nelson of New York and Robert Grier of Pennsylvania). Two Northerners (Benjamin Curtis of Massachusetts and John McLean of Ohio) dissented.

Taney’s ruling concluded that Scott was not a citizen of the United States, because he was black, and because he was a slave. Thus, the federal courts lacked jurisdiction, and by virtue of the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision, Scott was still a slave. Taney’s argument rested primarily on a complex analysis of citizenship. When the Constitution was adopted, neither slaves nor free blacks were part of the community of citizens in the several states. Thereafter, some states made citizens of free blacks, as they were entitled to do. But that did not affect the status of such individuals in other states, as state laws could not act extraterritorially. Only United States citizenship or state citizenship conferred directly under the Constitution could be the same in all states. Neither slaves nor free blacks were understood to be part of the community of citizens in the states in 1788 when the Constitution was adopted, the only time that state citizenship could have also conferred national citizenship. Thereafter, only Congress could extend national citizenship to free blacks, but had never done so. States could not now confer U.S. citizenship, because the two were distinct, which reflected basic tenets of dual sovereignty.

Taney rejected the common law principle of birthright citizenship based on jus soli, that citizenship arose from where the person was born. This was not traditionally the only source of citizenship, the other being the jus sanguinis, by which citizenship arose through the parents’ citizenship, unless a person was an alien and became naturalized under federal law. Since blacks were not naturalized aliens, and their parental lineage could not confer citizenship on them under Taney’s reasoning, the rejection of citizenship derived from birth in the United States meant that even free blacks were merely subordinate American nationals owing obligations and allegiance to the United States but not enjoying the inherent political, legal, and civil rights of full citizenship. This was a novel status, but one that became significant several decades later when the United States acquired overseas dominions.

After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was adopted. The very first sentence defines one basis of citizenship. National citizenship and state citizenship are divided, but the division is not identical to Taney’s version. To counter the Dred Scott Case and to affirm the citizenship of the newly-freed slaves, and, by extension, all blacks, national citizenship became rooted in jus soli. If one was born (or naturalized) in the United States and was subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, that is, one owed no loyalty to a foreign government, national citizenship applied. State citizenship was derivative of national citizenship, not independent of it, as Taney had held, and was based on domicile in that state.

The Chief Justice also rejected the idea that blacks were entitled to the same privileges and immunities of citizenship as whites. Although Taney viewed the Constitution’s privileges and immunities clause in Article IV broadly, if blacks were regarded as full state citizens under the Constitution, then Southern states could not enforce their laws that restricted the rights of blacks regarding free speech, assembly, and the keeping and bearing of arms. That, in turn, would threaten the social order and the stability of the slave system.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

Dred Scott lost his appeal for a second reason, his status as a slave. The Court’s original, since-abandoned, plan had been to decide the whole suit on the basis of the Strader precedent that Scott was a slave because the Missouri Supreme Court had so found. That approach still could have been used to deal summarily with this issue in the eventual opinion. But Taney struck a bolder theme. He analyzed the effect of Scott’s residence in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory on his status. This allowed Taney to challenge more broadly the prevailing idea that the federal government could interfere with the movement of slavery throughout the nation.

Taney opined that the federal government’s power to regulate directly the status of slavery in the territories, including its abolition, was derived from Article IV, Section 3, of the Constitution, which authorized Congress to “make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory … belonging to the United States” and to admit new states. However, Taney claimed, this provision applied only to the land that had been ceded to the United States by the several states under the Articles of Confederation. Thus, Congress could abolish slavery in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, reenacted in 1789, because it applied to such ceded land. Any territory acquired by the United States thereafter, such as through the Louisiana Purchase or the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican War, was held by the United States in trust for the whole people of the United States. Thus, white citizens who settled in those territories did not lose the rights they had acquired residing within their previous states. They were not “mere colonists, … to be governed by any laws [the general government] may think proper.” These rights would include that to property and extended to the property in slaves.

Lastly, Taney explained, the Fifth Amendment expressly protected against federal laws that sought to deprive a person of his life, liberty, or property without due process. Due process guaranteed not only a fair trial, but protected generally against arbitrary laws. A law that deprived a person of property, including slaves, simply because he moved into a territory controlled by the federal government, “could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law.” This was a founding example of the doctrine of substantive due process that has been invoked by the courts in more recent cases to strike down laws against abortion and same-sex marriage. Taney’s distinction between the constitutional rights of citizens and colonists and his postulate that the Constitution limited Congress’s power of administering the territories settled by Americans reappeared in modified form a half century later in cases dealing with Congress’s control over overseas territory acquired after the Spanish-American War.

Scott did not become free by residing in free territory, because the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which excluded slavery from Wisconsin Territory, was unconstitutional. That decision was radical because it upset a long constitutional custom of geographically dividing free from (potentially) slave territory, beginning with the Northwest Ordinance, but which had been undermined in the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Nor could Wisconsin’s territorial legislature abolish slavery, in Taney’s analysis, through the newly-minted doctrine of “popular sovereignty.” That legislature was merely an agent of Congress, and had no more power to destroy constitutional rights than did its principal.

“Popular sovereignty” lay at the core of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas- Nebraska Act. That doctrine, championed by Senators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas, allowed slave holders to bring their property into all parts of the politically unorganized territorial area. Under the Northern view, once organized as a territory, the people acting through a convention or through their territorial legislature might authorize or prohibit slavery. Under the Southern view, only states could abolish slavery, and any such prohibition had to await a decision of the people when seeking statehood or thereafter. The Court thus endorsed the Southern perspective, further inflaming sectional tensions because the two federal compromise laws had always been a bitter pill to swallow for many in the North.

Four of the concurring justices wrote opinions that reached the same result via various other doctrinal paths. Two dissented. The main dissent, by Benjamin Curtis—whose brother George Ticknor Curtis was one of Scott’s attorneys—relied on the theory that state citizenship was the source of national citizenship. Therefore, once someone resided in a state, and was not merely a sojourner, he acquired the rights of citizenship in that state. Scott, having resided in a free state, had shed his status as a slave and could not be reduced to that status merely by returning to Missouri. Once free, he was also entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens, which included the right to travel freely to other states. Curtis’s theory, by focusing on states as the source of all citizenship, was even more inconsistent than Taney’s with the eventual language of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embodied a national supremacy approach.

From the beginning, the Dred Scott Case was received poorly by the public. Its controversial, and to us odious, result also tarnished the legacy of Roger Taney. Viewed from our more distant historical perspective, perhaps a more nuanced evaluation is possible. Judged by intellectual standards, Taney’s opinion showed considerable judicial craftsmanship. Taney himself was an accomplished and influential Chief Justice, whose Court addressed legal and constitutional matters significant for the country’s development.

Why then did Taney opt for an approach that destroyed the delicate balances worked out politically in the Congress, and would have nationalized the spread of slavery? After all, the narrower route of Strader lay open to the Court for the same result. Part of it was sympathy for the Southern cause, although Taney by then was not himself a slave owner. Indeed, while in law practice, Taney had vigorously denounced slavery when defending an abolitionist minister accused of inciting slave rebellions. Mostly, it was the perception that the political process was becoming unable to negotiate the hardening positions of both sides on the various facets of the slavery controversy. Those facets included protection of the “peculiar institution” in the existing slave states, expansion of slavery into new territory, and recapture of fugitive slaves from states hostile to such efforts.

The relatively successful compromises of the late 18th and early 19th centuries with their attendant comity among the states were in the distant past. Congressional efforts were increasingly strained and laborious, as experience with the convoluted process that led to the Compromise of 1850 had shown. Southerners’ paranoia about their section’s diminished political power and comparative industrial inadequacy, as well as Northerners’ moral self-righteousness and sense of political ascendancy eroded the mutual good will needed for compromise. Presidential leadership had proved counterproductive to sectional accommodation, as with James Polk and the controversy over potential expansion of slavery into territory from the Mexican War. Or, such executive efforts were ineffective, as with Franklin Pierce’s failed attempt to act while President like the compromise candidate that he had been at the Democratic convention. Worse yet, eventually such leadership was non-existent, as with James Buchanan.

There remained only the judicial solution to prevent the rupture of the political order that was looming. Legal decisions, unlike political ones, are binary and generally produce a basic clarity. One side wins, the other loses. Constitutional cases add to that the veneer of moral superiority. If the Constitution is seen as a collection of moral principles, not just a pragmatic collection of political compromises, the winner in a constitutional dispute has a moral legitimacy that the loser lacks. Hence, Taney decided to cut the Gordian knot and hope that the Court’s decision would be accepted even by those who opposed slavery. Certainly, President Buchanan, having received advance word of the impending decision, announced in his inaugural address that he would accept the Court’s decision and expected all good citizens to do likewise.

Unfortunately, matters turned out differently. At best, the decision had no impact on the country’s lurch toward violence. At worst, the decision hastened secession and war. Abraham Lincoln presented the moderate opposition to the decision. In a challenge to the Court, he defended the President’s independent powers to interpret the Constitution. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln disavowed any intention to overturn the decision and free Dred Scott. He then declared, “At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Scott and his family were freed by manumission in May, 1837, two months after the decision in his case. Scott died a year later.

In the eyes of many, the Court’s institutional legitimacy suffered from its attempt to solve undemocratically such a deep public controversy about a fundamental moral issue. A more recent analogue springs to mind readily. Many years after Dred Scott, partially dissenting in the influential abortion case Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, Justice Antonin Scalia described a portrait of Taney painted in 1859: “There seems to be on his face, and in his deep-set eyes, an expression of profound sadness and disillusionment. Perhaps he always looked that way, even when dwelling upon the happiest of thoughts. But those of us who know how the lustre of his great Chief Justiceship came to be eclipsed by Dred Scott cannot help believing that he had that case—its already apparent consequences for the Court and its soon-to-be-played-out consequences for the Nation—burning on his mind.” Scalia’s linkage of Taney’s ill-fated undemocratic attempt to settle definitively the slavery question by judicial decree to the similar attempt by his own fellow justices to settle the equally morally fraught abortion issue was none- too-subtle. Lest someone miss the point, Scalia concluded: “[B]y foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish.”

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

The cascade of events leading to John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid, and 700,000 dead on countless Civil War battlefields, began with a cynical ploy by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas to help land speculators and political donors.

America’s founding was an intricately crafted series of compromises and rules of engagement to balance regional interests. One of the fundamental points of conflict was slavery.

Slavery was integral to the economic vitality and culture of southern states. As America expanded westward, increasingly complex arrangements maintained the North/South regional political balance.  Western settlers quickly became a third regional interest.

For decades, three titans of the U.S. Senate: Daniel Webster representing Northern interests, John C. Calhoun representing Southern interests, and Henry Clay representing the West debated and compromised to keep America united. Their agreements were tested as the Louisiana Purchase, and then the Mexican War, created vast land masses for settlement, economic development, and political power.

Slavery became the epicenter of regional rivalries. The South wanted to maintain parity in the Senate, balancing adding a new free state with a slave state. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850 maintained the political balance while avoiding confronting slavery. Most Americans, even Southerners, hated the institution. They hoped that slavery, if left alone, would somehow fade away over decades to come.

In the minority were Northern abolitionists, who wanted to end slavery in their lifetime. There were also Southern slavery advocates, who hoped to expand slavery westward and even southward by annexing Caribbean and Central American lands to bolster their power. The moderates held off both factions until the lure of land speculation, government contracts, and quick profits were added into the mix.

It began with the proposed trans-continental railroad to California. Southerners wanted the rail line to take a southern route. James Gadsden, President Franklin Pierce’s Ambassador to Mexico, negotiated the purchase of Mexican lands in what is now the southern border of Arizona and New Mexico on December 30, 1853 to assure sufficient railroad rights-of-way through less mountainous terrain.

The North wanted a northern route that began at St. Louis, Missouri and linked to Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. Most northern business leaders favored the northern route and felt that organization of the Nebraska Territory would facilitate this decision. However, rival business factions within Missouri wanted control of the route and the potential fortunes to be made from land speculation. Pro-slave forces threatened to block any efforts to organize Nebraska because Missouri would then be surrounded on its west, east, and north by free states.

Senator Stephen Douglas was a key architect of the Compromise of 1850 and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories. Douglas already had presidential aspirations, having lost the 1852 Democratic Party nomination to Franklin Pierce. He was preparing for another run in 1856. He wanted to help his Missouri-based political and financial allies, while avoiding a confrontation with Southerners. [1]

On January 4, 1854, Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. It opened the entire territory to popular or “squatter” sovereignty for determining whether the territories would be free or slave. At this time the Nebraska Territory encompassed the entire Louisiana Purchase from the Missouri Compromise line to the Canadian Border. Indiana Representative George Washington Julian, who would serve as the Chairman of the Committee on Organization for the 1856 Republican Convention, commented, “The whole question of slavery was thus re-opened.” [2]

The Congressional debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Act was tumultuous. Ohio Senator, Salmon Chase, published, “The Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States,” in the New York Times on January 24, 1854. He declared the abandonment of the Missouri Compromise a “gross violation of a sacred pledge” and an “atrocious plot” to convert free territory into a “dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.” [3]

Northerners, and many Westerners, felt Southern politicians were dealing in bad faith. The “Nebraska Act” was viewed as a bold Southern power grab that threatened the nation’s future. Protests against the “Nebraska Act” spread throughout the North. Highly charged emotions fractured the Democratic Party, destroyed the Whig Party, and launched the Republican Party. Sixty-seven-years of America’s civic culture was falling apart.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed the Senate in March and the House of Representatives in early May. President Pierce signed the bill into law on May 30, 1854.

New York Senator William H. Seward responded to victorious Southern Senators by stating, “Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of the cause of freedom. We will engage in a competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right.” [4]

Both pro-slavery and anti-slave forces moved into the Kansas territory engaging in brutal guerilla warfare over the next five years. This sporadic civil war became known as “Bleeding Kansas.” It even spilled into the U.S. Senate Chamber. On May 22, 1856, South Carolina pro-slavery Democrat Representative Preston Brooks assaulted Massachusetts anti-slavery Republican Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber, bludgeoning him into unconsciousness. [5]

The regional civil war that erupted among Kansas settlers attracted the attention of John Brown, a key leader within the abolitionist movement.  Wealthy and politically connected abolitionists funded and armed Brown, his many sons, and a growing number of paramilitary units, to enter the Kansas maelstrom.

Kansas became a killing ground, and a proving ground for Brown’s violent approach to ending slavery. The nation had embarked on a path leading to the most cataclysmic event in American history.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Mayer, George H., The Republican Party 1854-1966 Second Edition (Oxford University Press, New York, 1966) page 25.

[2] Julian, George Washington, Political Recollections; Anthology – America; Great Crises in Our History Told by its Makers; Vol. VII (Veterans of Foreign Wars, Chicago, 1925) page 212.

[3] McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford University Press, New York, 1988) page 124.

[4] Ibid., page 145.

[5] Ibid., page 150.

Guest Essayist: James D. Best

On the evening of February 27, 1860, New Yorkers paid an exorbitant twenty-five cents to listen to a commonplace politician from some prairie state. The man had a reputation as a storyteller extraordinaire. Everyone expected to be entertained; few took the speaker seriously as a presidential candidate. Abraham Lincoln had earned a modicum of fame due to his debates with Senator Stephen Douglas two years previously, but he had lost that race and most believed the fledgling Republican Party would never nominate a loser. In fact, many wondered how this roughhewn storyteller wangled an invitation to a lecture series meant to expose serious candidates to the New York elite? Homespun yarns might draw crowds in the bucolic West, but New York City demanded a more elevated style of speechmaking.

The Republican Party was new and had failed in running John C. Frémont, a national hero, for president in 1856. Lincoln’s chances of ascending to the presidency under the Republican banner were slight. Lincoln, of course, had other plans. That afternoon, he had his photograph taken by Mathew Brady, and he intended his evening speech to be historic. It was. Lincoln often said that the Brady’s photograph and his Cooper Union address propelled him to the presidency.

What was so great about his speech at the Cooper Union? It was earth-moving because it was highly unusual. It was a call for his party to stand on principle—God’s principles, the Founders’ principles, and the founding principle of the Republican Party—the abolition of slavery.

Lincoln wanted to debunk the Democrats’ claim that the Founders would have supported the extension of slavery into the territories, so he presented a scholarly review of the voting records of the Constitution’s thirty-nine signers, showing that twenty-one of them had voted for bills restricting slavery in territories, and sixteen had left no record. Only two had made votes that supported the Democrats’ contention.

His speech had started slow, but as it picked up momentum, the energy in the hall lifted until the excited audience waited on the edge of their seats for the next opportunity to clap, yell, and bang out a rhythm with their shoes. Lincoln gave them plenty of opportunities. Below is a highly abridged selection from his speech.

We hear that you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that event, you say you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us!

That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you and then you will be a murderer!’

What the robber demands of me—my money—is my own; and I have a clear right to keep it; but my vote is also my own; and the threat of death to me to extort my money and the threat to destroy the Union to extort my vote can scarcely be distinguished.

What will convince slaveholders that we do not threaten their property? This and this only: cease to call slavery wrong and join them in calling it right. Silence alone will not be tolerated—we must place ourselves avowedly with them. We must suppress all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

All they ask, we can grant, if we think slavery right. All we ask, they can grant if they think it wrong.

Right and wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.

Thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield? Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?”

Let us not grope for some middle ground between right and wrong. Let us not search in vain for a policy of don’t care on a question about which we do care. Nor let us be frightened by threats of destruction to the government.”

Prolonged applause kept Lincoln silent for several minutes before delivering his final sentence.

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it!”

When Lincoln stepped back from the podium, the Cooper Union Great Hall exploded with noise and motion. Everybody stood. The staid New York audience cheered, clapped, and stomped their feet. Many waved handkerchiefs and hats.

Great leaders speak and act on principle. People will not only follow a principled leader; they will labor mightily in a principled cause.

Abraham Lincoln went on to win the Republican nomination, the presidency, the Civil War, and the abolition of slavery.

Click here to read the text of Abraham Lincoln’s Address At Cooper Union.

(To learn more, I recommend Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer.)

James D. Best, author of Tempest at Dawn, a novel about the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Principled Action, Lessons From the Origins of the American Republic, and the Steve Dancy Tales.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

In the 1850s, America’s civic culture was crumbling. Decades of political compromise and avoidance on the issue of slavery had maintained an uneasy peace. The Mexican-American War (1846-47) added over 500,000 square miles to the U.S. and rekindled sectional competition. Ralph Waldo Emerson prophesied, “The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.” [1]

The carefully orchestrated balance between Northern/Free states and Southern/Slave states in the U.S. Senate had only been maintained by tightly controlling the admission of new states to the Union. In 1820, Missouri was ready to be admitted as a “slave” state. Their Senate votes were to be off-set by separating the northern part of Massachusetts into the new “free” state of Maine. A key part of this Missouri Compromise of 1820 was to limit expansion of “slave states” to below a line, parallel 36°30′ north. However, after the Mexican War, Texas, California, and many other potential states, clamored for admission into the Union, reawakening the slumbering sectional strife and the “free” versus “slave” state controversy.

In 1850, a new Compromise was approved. This was a package of five separate bills that maintained the North/South balance in the Senate by allowing California to join the Union as a free state, even though its southern border dipped below the 1820 slave demarcation line. This was balanced by admitting Texas as a slave state. Other provisions balanced ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C. with establishing the Fugitive Slave Act, which required local officials in the North to aid in the capture and return of escaped slaves.

The Compromise of 1850 was the last great moment for the Whig Party. This party rose as a counter to the Jacksonian Democrats in the late 1830s. It thrived by broadly promoting westward expansion without a conflict with Mexico, supporting transportation infrastructure projects, and protecting fledgling American businesses with tariffs. The Whigs also benefited from having stellar leaders in the U.S. Senate, like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and attracting popular war heroes to run as their presidential candidates. The reawakening of sectional competition ended their brief moment of political ascendancy.

In 1848, the Whig Party split on slavery with pro-freedom/anti-Mexican War “Conscience Whigs” and pro-slavery “Cotton Whigs” (“lords of the lash” allied with “lords of the loom”). [2] They still stumbled across the 1848 Presidential finish line with Mexican War hero Zachery Taylor. Unfortunately, food poisoning led to Taylor’s death on July 9, 1850 ushering in the Presidency of anti-immigrant Millard Filmore and his “No-nothing” nativist movement. In 1852, the highly divided Whig Party needed 53 roll call votes to nominate another war hero, Winfield Scott, only to lose in a landslide to Pro-slavery Democrat Franklin Pierce. Rep. Alexander Stephens, a “Cotton Whig” pronounced, “the Whig Party is dead.” [3]

The implosion of the Whigs, and the new sectional rivalry, launched new parties, and factions within parties. These reflected the wide range of opinions on slavery from zealous support of slavery everywhere possible to immediate abolition everywhere possible. In the middle were factions that wanted to maintain the Union through various forms of compromise, allowing slavery some places, but not others.

This cauldron of factionalism came to a boil in 1854 with consideration of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was intended to void the carefully crafted Compromises of 1820 and 1850.

Anti-slavery “Free Soil” party activists along with anti-slavery “Conscience Whigs” and “Barn Burner” Democrats held anti-Nebraska meetings and rallies across the north. One of the organizers of these anti-Nebraska protests was Alvan E. Bovay.

Bovay (July 12, 1818 – January 13, 1903) was a successful New York lawyer and an early abolitionist. He and his wife moved to Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1850, where he helped establish Ripon College. [7]

Bovay was an active Whig, but was disappointed in the Party’s disarray over slavery. He felt Party leaders had lost their way. Only a new party, uniting anti-slavery factions across the political spectrum would resolve the divisiveness facing America. In 1852, Bovay visited his friend, Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, to discuss a new party. They agreed a new party deserved a new name – Republican. [8] Launching this new party would have to wait until the Nebraska bill ignited wide-spread calls for strategic political change.

On March 1, 1854, Bovay announced an anti-Nebraska protest meeting in the local Ripon newspaper:

NEBRASKA. A meeting will be held at 6:30 o’clock this Wednesday evening at the Congregational church in the village of Ripon to remonstrate against the Nebraska swindle. [9]

After the meeting, Bovay posted in newspapers:

THE NEBRASKA BILL. A bill expressly intended to extend slavery will be the call to arms of a Great Northern Party, such as the country has not hitherto seen, composed of Whigs, Democrats, and Freesoilers; every man with a heart in him united under the single banner dry of “Repeal!” “Repeal!” [10]

Wisconsin anti-slavery activists became further inflamed when, March 9, 1854, protesters, led by abolitionist Sherman Booth, stormed a Milwaukee, Wisconsin jail to rescue Joshua Glover. Glover was an escaped slave awaiting extradition under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  A federal judge had refused to hear his appeal. [11]

Bovay then organized a second protest meeting:

The Nebraska bill. A bill expressly intended to extend and strengthen the institution of slavery has passed the Senate by a very large majority, many northern Senators voting for it and many more sitting in their seats and not voting at all. It is evidently destined to pass the House and become law, unless its progress is arrested by a general uprising of the north against it.

Therefore, We, the undersigned, believing the community to be nearly quite unanimous in opposition to the nefarious scheme, would call upon the public meeting of citizens of all parties to be held at the school house in Ripon on Monday evening, March 20, at 6:30 o’clock, to resolve, to petition, and to organize against it. [12]

Bovay and sixteen others met at the schoolhouse and decided to organize a Wisconsin state convention to endorse candidates for state and federal office. Bovay worked with anti-slavery Democrat, Edwin Hurlbut, to develop a platform for the “Republican Party.” They organized and managed a state convention in Madison, Wisconsin on July 13, 1854. That convention nominated the first slate of Republican candidates for that fall’s local elections. [13].

The Republican Party spread across America, coalescing diverse factions into a new political movement that would dominate American politics for the next 76 years, winning 14 of the next 19 Presidential elections. It also signaled the end of 36 years of political obfuscation on the issue of slavery in America, ultimately leading to the Civil War.

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

NOTES

[1] McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford University Press, New York, 1988) page 51.

[2] Ibid., page 60.

[3] Ibid., page 118.

[4] Mayer, George H., The Republican Party 1854-1966 Second Edition (Oxford University Press, New York, 1966) page 25.

[5] Julian, George Washington, Political Recollections; Anthology – America; Great Crises in Our History Told by its Makers; Vol. VII (Veterans of Foreign Wars, Chicago, 1925) page 212.

[6] Op. Cit., McPherson, page 124.

[7] https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/crossroads/2016/09/24/messitte-republican-return-ripon/90978702/

[8] Pedrick, Samuel M. , The life of Alvan E. Bovay, founder of the Republican Party in Ripon, Wis., March 20, 1854. (Commonwealth Partners, 1950).

[9] Unity Weekly; Unity Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois; Volume LXI, Number 16, June 18, 1908, pages 245-246.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Legler, Henry E., Leading Events of Wisconsin History. Milwaukee: Sentinel, 1898. Pages 226-229.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Op. Cit., Mayer, page 26.

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter

Sent by President Millard Fillmore, Commodore Matthew C. Perry went on an expedition to Japan in 1853 to persuade, even pressure, Japan to end its policy of isolation and become open to trade and diplomacy with the United States. Japan signed a treaty with the U.S. in 1854, agreeing to trade and an American consulate. The Treaty of Kanagawa was the first by Japan with a Western nation. Among many accomplishments, Commodore Perry devised a naval apprentice system, assisted the Naval Academy, worked to develop naval officers to their fullest potentials, and helped found the New York Naval Lyceum.

Commodore Perry had a long and distinguished career in the United States Navy, with his commanding of ships in both the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War from 1846-1848, but was also instrumental at the end of his career in opening Japan to the West.

Perry was asked to travel to Japan in 1852, when President Fillmore sent Perry on a mission to open the ports of Japan for American trade. Perry embarked on his voyage on November 24, 1852, from Norfolk, Virginia.  After making various stops along the way, including at Cape Town and Hong Kong, on July 8, 1853, Perry and his contingent arrived at Uraga.  Despite demands by the Japanese to proceed to the only port open to foreigners at Nagasaki, Perry refused. Perry warned the Japanese that if forced to fight, the Japanese would suffer immense damage and that the Americans would conquer them.

After some delays caused by the illness of Japanese shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi and debating what was to be done with the demands of Perry, the Japanese decided to accept his offered letter. Perry was allowed to land near Uraga, at Kurihama. Perry presented his letter to the Japanese delegates, and departed for Hong Kong.

Returning approximately six months later, rather than the year he had promised, Perry landed and after negotiations, the Convention of Kanagawa was signed on March 31, 1854. Perry signed on behalf of America. Signed under threat of force, the Convention contained twelve articles, including a provision for it to be ratified within eighteen months. The treaty was written in English, Japanese, Chinese and Dutch, and the text was eventually ratified by Emperor Komei. The treaty was ratified on February 21, 1855.

Perry earned the nickname or title “Father of the Steam Navy” for his advocacy of modernizing the United States Navy and pushing for wider use of the steam engine.

Perry’s efforts to open Japan to the west for trade and diplomatic relationships after many years of isolation was an important achievement, and his ability to land and present his letter on July 14, 1853, is an important date in American history.

Among others, the treaty provided which ports would be open and contained a provision that Japan would supply the United States with any advantages that Japan might negotiate with any foreign nation in the future.

Perry returned to the United States in 1855 and Congress awarded him the sum of $20,000 for his work in Japan.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.  

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Dan Morenoff

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed shortly after James Wilson Marshall discovered gold flakes in the area now known as Sacramento. Border disputes would continue, but the treaty ended the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and added a large swath of western territory broadly expanding the United States. It would make up Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, Texas, and parts that would later make up Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana. The new lands acquired from Mexico stirred sectional passions about the expansion of slavery in the West that helped lead to the Civil War after being temporarily settled by the Compromise of 1850.

Americans almost never think about the Mexican-American War. We don’t often pause to consider its justifications or results. We may know that it served as the training ground of just about everyone who became famous in the Civil War, but details of how, where, or why they fought that prequel might as well be myth. Most of us have no idea how many of our place names have their roots in its participants. Outside of a little-understood line in the Marine Hymn, we almost never hear anything about how we won it. And almost no American knows anything about the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that formally ended it: not its name, not its terms, not who signed it, and not the drama that went into creating a Mexican government willing to enter it.

We have good reason to studiously remember to forget these details.  Guadalupe-Hidalgo was an unjust treaty forced on a weaker neighbor to conclude our least-just war. It was also hugely consequential, and we spectacularly benefited from imposing it on Mexico.

The War Itself

The war’s beginnings lay in the unsettled details of Texas’s War of Independence. Yes, Mexican President Santa Anna had signed the so-called Treaties of Velasco while held prisoner after the Texian victory at San Jacinto in 1836, but Mexico both: (a) refused to ratify them (so never formally recognizing Texas’s independence); and (b) simultaneously argued that the unrecognized republic’s Southern border lay at the Nueces River, about a hundred and fifty (150) miles north of the Rio Grande (as Texas noted the Treaties of Velasco would have determined).

All this came to matter when James K. Polk won the Presidency in 1844.  He had campaigned on a series of promises that, for our purposes, included: (a) annexing Texas; and (b) obtaining California (and parts of five (5) other modern states) from Mexico.[1], [2]  Part one came early and easily, as he negotiated Texas’s ascension to the Union in 1845.  But when the Mexican government refused to meet with his emissary sent to negotiate the purchase of the whole northern part of their country,[3] in pursuit of a fallback plan, President Polk sent an army south to resolve the remaining ambiguity of the Texas-Mexico border. That army (contemporaneously called, with greater honesty than later sources usually admit, the “Army of Occupation”) under the command of Zachary Taylor went to “guard” the northern shore of the Rio Grande.  It took some doing, including the shelling of Matamoros (a major Mexican port city on the uncontested Southern shore of the river), but Taylor eventually managed to provoke a Mexican response. Mexican forces crossed the river to drive back the attacking Americans, in the process prevailing in the Thornton Skirmish and destroying Fort Brown.[4]

President Polk styled these actions a Mexican invasion of America that had killed American soldiers on American soil. On that basis, he sought and received a Congressional declaration of war. Days after receiving it (and in a time before even telegraphs, the distances involved – and coordination with naval forces in the Pacific make that timing revealing), American forces invaded Mexico in numerous arenas across the continent, seizing modern-day Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada; simultaneously, American settlers declared the “independence” of the Republic of California (the “independence” of which lasted no more than the twenty-five (25) days between their ineffective declaration and the arrival of the American military in Sonoma Valley).

But the achieving of Polk’s aims didn’t end the war.  Mexico didn’t accept the legitimacy or irreversibility of any of this. Polk ordered Taylor’s army South, to take Monterrey and press into the Mexican heartland.  Eventually, when that, too, failed to alter Mexican recalcitrance, President Polk sent another army, under the Command of Winfield Scott, to land in the Yucatan and follow essentially the same route Cortez had toward Mexico City. Like the conquistadors of old, that force (including Marines) would head for “the Halls of Montezuma” (the last Aztec king).

All this was controversial immediately.  Abraham Lincoln condemned the entire escapade from the floor of Congress as “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced.” Henry Clay called it an act of “unnecessary and [ ] offensive aggression.”  Fresh out of West Point, Ulysses S. Grant fought in the war, but after his Presidency would reflect that “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico.” And as the war raged, Washington, D.C. became consumed with the question of what all this new territory would do to the delicate balance established by the Missouri Compromise; was the whole war just a scheme to create new slave states? It was still only 1846, with the war’s outcome still unclear, when Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot sought to amend an appropriations bill (meant to authorize the funds to pay for peace) with “the Wilmot Proviso,” a bar on slavery in any formerly Mexican territory.[5]

Victory and Then What?

Wicked or not, the plan worked.  American forces promptly took Mexico City in September of 1847.

As Mexico City fell (with its President fleeing and the Foreign Minister declared acting-President), the collapsing Mexican Government proposed terms of peace (under which Mexico would retain all of modern New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California, and much of Nevada), designed to further pique Washington’s emerging divide by giving the U.S. only territory north of the free/slave divide established by the Missouri Compromise. But the Mexican government’s ability to deliver even those terms (which would have reversed enormous battlefield losses) was highly suspect; Jefferson Davis, who had fought in most of the war’s battles before being appointed a Mississippi Senator, warned Polk that any Mexican emissaries coming to Washington to negotiate based on it would see the talks go longer than their government’s survival and the negotiators labelled traitors and murderers, should they ever try to return home. And he was pretty clearly right: the people of Mexico were not happy about any of this: not with the loss of more than ½ their territory, not with the conquest of their capital, and not with the collapse of the government that was supposed to prevent anything of the sort from happening.

So how do you end a war and go home when there’s no one left to hand back the pieces to?

That was the rub.  The Americans in Mexico City didn’t want to stay. The whole war had been controversial and America having to occupy the entirety of Mexico sat particularly poorly with its opponents. The Wilmot Proviso hadn’t gone away either and Senators were already arguing that it would need to be incorporated into any peace treaty with Mexico (whomever that meant).  And there was no one with the ability to clearly speak for Mexico to negotiate anything anyway.

Eventual Treaty with Mexico’s Acting Government

It would take almost all of the remainder of Polk’s presidency to resolve these problems. Eventually, the acting Mexican government became willing to sign what America had decided the terms of peace required.  Those terms?  America would pay Mexico $15 million.[6]  America would assume and pay another $3.25 million of Mexico’s debts to Americans.[7]  As the GDP of California, alone, is estimated at $3.1 trillion for 2019, the purchase price was a bargain, to say the least. Mexico would renounce all rights to Texas and essentially all the rest of the modern American West.  All of California (down to the port of San Diego, but not Baja), Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado (and almost all of Arizona)[8] would so change hands; the Republic of Texas’s territories were substantially larger than those of the modern State of Texas, so this renunciation also secured American title to parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.

Aftermath

So America became the transcontinental republic Jefferson had dreamed of. Polk got to go home with his mission accomplished.[9]  America secured title to California weeks after settlers discovered what would become the world’s largest known gold deposits (to that date) at Sutter’s Mill, but before word of that discovery had made it to either Mexico City or Washington.

But America acquired something else with vast territories, and unforeseen riches.  It also acquired a renewal of fights over what to do with seemingly limitless, unsettled lands and how to accommodate the evil of slavery within them. Those fights, already underway before Mexico City fell, would scroll out directly into Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War.

Dan Morenoff is Executive Director of The Equal Voting Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] The complete set also included: (a) resolving the border with Canada of America’s Oregon territory; (b) reducing taxes; (c) solving the American banking crises that had lingered for decades; and (d) leaving office without seeking reelection.  Famously, Polk followed through and completed the full set.

[2] The targeted territory included lands now lying in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.

[3] That was John Slidell, for whom the New Orleans suburb is named.

[4] Mexico so killed Major Jacob Brown, arguably the first American casualty of the war (for whom both the fort-at-issue and the town it became – Brownsville, Texas – were named).

[5] It failed in the House at the time, but exposed the raw power plays that success in (or perhaps entry into) the Mexican-American War would bring to the forefront of American politics.

[6] Depending on how one chooses to calculate the current value of that payment, it could be scored as the equivalent in modern dollars of $507.2 million, $4.04 billion, $8.86 billion, or $9.04 billion.  https://www.measuringworth.com/dollarvaluetoday/?amount=15000000&from=1848.

[7] The same approaches suggest this worked out to an assumption, in today’s dollars, of another $109.9 million, $876.1 million, $1.91 billion, or $1.96 billion in Mexican obligations.  https://www.measuringworth.com/dollarvaluetoday/?amount=3250000&from=1848.

[8] Later, the US would separately negotiate the Gadsen Purchase to acquire a mountain pass through which a railroad would one-day run.

[9] He promptly died on reaching his home in Tennessee; some have noted that this means he was not only the sole President to do everything he promised, but also the perfect ex-President.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

On January 24, 1848, James Marshall was overseeing some workers digging a millrace for a sawmill for his employer, John Sutter, along a tributary in the American River in the hills near Yerba Buena (modern San Francisco). While he was inspecting the project, the morning sun reflected off shiny pieces of yellow metal. Curious, he gathered a few pieces to examine them and showed the workers.

The group ran some tests on the metal to determine if it were gold. They hammered the malleable metal into thin sheets and then cooked it in boiling lye that cleaned it. Marshall was sure that he found gold but kept his composure as he rode his horse to share the news with Sutter. They tested it again with nitric acid and then its density. He smiled and told the group (which included a female cook), “Boys, I believe I have found a gold mine.”

Marshall and Sutter began hunting for gold but shockingly did not attempt to hide the discovery. Sam Brannan owned a general store near Sutter’s fort (modern Sacramento) and developed a scheme to get rich by selling provisions to miners. He filled a large jar with gold dust and nuggets and traveled to San Francisco.

Brannan went about the village showing its residents the contents of the jar and enticing them to become miners by yelling, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” They did not need much encouragement. In the words of one person: “A frenzy seized my soul; unbidden my legs performed some entirely new movements of polka steps—I took several….Piles of gold rose up before me at every step; castles of marble, dazzling the eye….In short, I had a very violent attack of the gold fever.” The village emptied as people dropped everything and raced for the river.

Eight days after Marshall’s discovery, representatives of the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. The treaty ended the Mexican-American War and delivered the West including California to the United States in exchange for $15 million. Because of American property rights, the miners need only work the land to lay a claim to the property including its valuable minerals.

The miners used a variety of methods for finding gold. Most were inexperienced and initially used the simple method of panning for gold. Others used a cradle that was similar and could sift through more material. They soon built sluices and ran water over dirt and collected the dense gold at the bottom of grates. Later, enterprising individuals with the means introduced hydraulic mining using pressurized water cannons to blast hills into slurry that ran through sluices. Miners became amateur geologists and searched for ancient streambeds that might hold massive gold deposits.

Gold fever induced a gold rush that gripped Americans as well as thousands of others from around the world. The telegraph, letter writers, and travelers spread the news quickly. The New York Herald announced the discovery of gold to readers with the astonishing news that, “There are cases of over a hundred dollars being obtained in a day from the work of one man” (at a time when workers made perhaps $500 a year).

In his December Annual Message to Congress, President James Polk added his voice to the frenzy when he stated, “The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers.”

Gold seekers known as Argonauts traveled to the American River from all over the world. They came from such distant places as Mexico, Chile, France, Hawaii, China, and Australia. In many cases, they risked everything they had voyaging thousands of miles for the chance to become fabulously wealthy. Ship captains had to find ways to prevent their crews from joining the passengers rushing to the mining camps.

More than 80,000 Americans of diverse backgrounds but with the same goal in mind headed west as part of the gold rush. They traveled overland for months along the Oregon Trail and other well-beaten paths where they hunted buffalo, traded with Native Americans, and risked cholera and starvation. Others of greater means selected travel aboard a Yankee clipper or other ships that sailed 15,000 miles around Cape Horn with its treacherous waters and storms. Others sailed to Panama, where they crossed the isthmus where tropical diseases claimed many, and then booked passage for the Pacific.

Besides the obsession with gold, the one thing that the Argonauts had was that almost all of them planned to get rich and return home. Very few planned to stay and build a permanent settlement. Almost 90 percent of the Argonauts were men.

The reality of the gold camps rarely matched people’s dreams. Many found only modest amounts of gold or had to settle for manual labor.  Any wealth was rapidly consumed by goods sold for astronomically inflated prices. Tensions between Americans and foreigners rose to a fever pitch due to nativism.

San Francisco grew rapidly though it had neither the government nor civil institutions to handle such growth. Saloons and gambling houses were ubiquitous where gold that was easily acquired was easily lost. Crime, ethnic gangs, and vice dominated the streets of the city. Justice was handled by vigilance committees that could order summary executions of frontier justice that was little more than mob rule and with the slightest pretense of due process.

California grew so rapidly due to the gold rush that it skipped the territorial stage and immediately applied for statehood. In September 1849, 48 delegates attended a constitutional convention in Monterey and drafted a state constitution and a bill of rights that banned slavery. The Pathfinder of the West, John Fremont, brought the constitution to Washington, D.C. where Congress considered it. Former Vice President and current U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun led the southern opposition to it because it banned slavery. He argued only Congress could decide the question.

The contentious issue was resolved only by the fragile Compromise of 1850 that included making California a free state and passing the Fugitive Slave Act. The gold rush thereby indirectly contributed to the growing sectionalism of the 1850s that led to the Civil War. The gold rush also helped create the American West and today’s prosperous sunbelt.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. He is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: David F. Forte

The tall, awkwardly boned, young Illinois legislator rose to speak. His thick hair, impervious to the comb, splayed over his head. The crowd at the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield leaned forward. They did not know it, but they were about to hear a prophet.

The title of Lincoln’s address was “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” It could have been subtitled, “Will this nation survive?” From the moment his high-pitched voice began to address the audience, Lincoln’s passionate embrace of the Constitution set his life out on an arc that would carry him a quarter century later to Gettysburg when he asked whether a nation conceived in liberty “can long endure.” He was asking it even now.

Yet 1838 was not such a bad year. True, the nation was struggling through the effects of the Panic of 1837, and it would be a few years before a recovery could take hold. But the wrenching crises of slavery and nullification that nearly severed the Union were in the past—at least many hoped so. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, it was thought, had settled the geographical boundary that separated the slave from the free.   And in 1831, Andrew Jackson had squelched South Carolina’s attempt at nullification. The trio of Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and most especially Henry Clay—Lincoln’s idol—had fashioned peace through compromise. The Annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott, and John Brown were still in the unknowable future.

But Lincoln was not mollified. He saw the nation falling apart right then and there. Vigilantism and brutal violence were everywhere rampant. There was a contagion of lynching. Lincoln reviewed what all knew had been happening. First, five gamblers in Vicksburg were strung up. “Next, negroes suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State; then, white men supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers from neighboring States, going thither on business, were in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers, till dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every roadside, and in numbers almost sufficient to rival the native Spanish moss of the country as a drapery of the forest.” A Negro named McIntosh, accused of murdering a white man, was tied to a tree and burnt to death. Abolitionist editors were slain and their printing presses thrown in the river. This, Lincoln said, was mob law.

The founders, who gave us a blessed government, were now gone– “our now lamented and departed race of ancestors,” he told his listeners. The last had only recently passed. (It was James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” who died in 1836). What can we do without them? Lincoln asked. What then can save us from dissolution, from turning ourselves into a miserable race, nothing more than a vengeful mob?

Lincoln paused, and then declared, “The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor — let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty.”

On that day, January 27, 1838, Lincoln set his course. It was Lincoln’s charter of the rest of his public life. The Constitution. Only reverence for it and for the law can keep us from becoming divided tribes ruled by our passions, he told the crowd in the Young Men’s Lyceum, and other crowds in the coming decades. Reverence for the Constitution saved the Union in the bitter election of 1800. It energized Henry Clay and his political enemy, Andrew Jackson, to keep the states tied together. It steeled Lincoln in his perseverance to see the Civil War through to victory.

It can save us yet.

David F. Forte is Professor of Law at Cleveland State University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, where he was the inaugural holder of the Charles R. Emrick, Jr. – Calfee Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair. He has been a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Warsaw and the University of Trento. In 2016 and 2017, Professor Forte was Garwood Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Politics. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Manchester University, England, the University of Toronto and Columbia University.

During the Reagan administration, Professor Forte served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council. He has authored a number of briefs before the United States Supreme Court and has frequently testified before the United States Congress and consulted with the Department of State on human rights and international affairs issues. His advice was specifically sought on the approval of the Genocide Convention, on world-wide religious persecution, and Islamic extremism. He has appeared and spoken frequently on radio and television, both nationally and internationally. In 2002, the Department of State sponsored a speaking tour for Professor Forte in Amman, Jordan, and he was also a featured speaker to the Meeting of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a meeting that gathers over 500,000 people from all over Europe. He has also been called to testify before numerous state legislatures across the country. He has assisted in drafting a number of pieces of legislation both for Congress and for the Ohio General Assembly dealing with abortion, international trade, and federalism. He has sat as acting judge on the municipal court of Lakewood Ohio and was chairman of Professional Ethics Committee of the Cleveland Bar Association. He has received a number of awards for his public service, including the Cleveland Bar Association’s President’s Award, the Cleveland State University Award for Distinguished Service, the Cleveland State University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence. He served as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family under Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In 2004, Dr. Forte was a Visiting Professor at the University of Trento. Professor Forte was He has given over 300 invited addresses and papers at more than 100 academic institutions.

Professor Forte was a Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation, Visiting Scholar at the Liberty Fund, and Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Religion and the Constitution in at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been President of the Ohio Association of Scholars, was on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Society, and is also adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Institute. He is Vice-Chair of the Ohio State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

He writes and speaks nationally on topics such as constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families, and international affairs. He served as book review editor for the American Journal of Jurisprudence and has edited a volume entitled, Natural Law and Contemporary Public Policy, published by Georgetown University Press. His book, Islamic Law Studies: Classical and Contemporary Applications, has been published by Austin & Winfield. He is Senior Editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (2006), 2d. edition (2014) published by Regnery & Co, a clause by clause analysis of the Constitution of the United States.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

Remember the Alamo! The Battle of San Jacinto and Texan Independence

In December 1832, Sam Houston went to Texas. He had been a soldier, Indian fighter, state and national politician, and member of the Cherokee. Beset by several failures, he sought a better life in Texas. On the way, Houston traveled to the San Antonio settlement with frontiersman and land speculator, Jim Bowie, to San Antonio.

During the 1820s, thousands of Americans had moved to Texas in search of land and opportunity. The Mexican republic had recently won independence and welcomed the settlers to establish prosperous settlements under leaders such as Stephen F. Austin. These settlers were required to become Mexican citizens, convert to Catholicism, and free their slaves. The prosperous colony thrived, but Mexican authorities suspected the settlers maintained their American ideals and loyalties and banned further immigration and cracked down on the importation of slaves in 1830.

In 1833, Houston attended a convention of Texan leaders, who petitioned the Mexican government to grant them self-rule. Austin presented the petition at Mexico City where he was imprisoned indefinitely. Meanwhile, the new Mexican president, Antonio López de Santa Anna, took dictatorial powers and sent General Martin Perfecto de Cos to suppress Texan resistance. When Austin was finally released in August 1835, he asserted, “We must and ought to become part of the United States.”

Texans were prepared to fight for independence, and violence erupted in October 1835. When Mexican forces attempted to disarm Texans at Gonzales, volunteers rushed to the spot with cannons bearing the banner “Come and Take Them” and blasted them into Mexican ranks. Texans described it as their Battle of Lexington, and with it, the war for Texas independence began.

In the wake of the initial fighting, the Texans began to organize their militias to defend their rights with the revolutionary slogan “Liberty or Death!” Houston appealed to the Declaration of Independence and was an early supporter of an independent Texas joining the American Union.

Houston was appointed commander-in-chief of Texan forces. His fledgling army was a ragtag group of volunteers who were ill-disciplined and highly individualistic and democratic. His strategy was to avoid battle until he could raise a larger army to face the Mexican forces, but he could barely control his men. He opposed an attack on San Antonio, but his men launched one anyway. On December 5, Texans assaulted the town and the fortified mission at the Alamo. Texan sharpshooters and infantry closed in on General Cos’s army. Despite the arrival of reinforcements, Cos surrendered on the fourth day, and his army was permitted to march home with their weapons.

Santa Anna brought an army to San Antonio and besieged the Alamo held by 200 Texans under William Travis. The Texans deployed their men and cannons around the fort, and begged Houston for more troops. Travis pledged to fight to the last man. James Fannin launched an abortive relief expedition from Goliad, 100 miles away, but had to turn back for lack of supplies. The men at the Alamo were on their own, except for one recent American who came.

Davey Crockett was a colorful frontiersman and a member of Congress who said, “You can go to hell, I will go to Texas.” Crockett arrived in San Antonio in February and went to the Alamo. He proudly fought for liberty and roused the courage of the defenders.

Before dawn on March 6, the Mexican army assaulted the mission in four columns from different angles. The defenders slaughtered the enemy with cannon blasts but still they advanced. The Mexicans scaled ladders and were picked off by sharpshooters. Soon, the attackers established a foothold on the walls and overwhelmed the defenders. The Mexicans threw open the gates for their comrades, and the Texans and Crockett retreated into the chapel. They made a last stand until the door was knocked down and nearly all inside were killed.

Santa Anna made martyrs and heroes of the men who fought for Texan independence at the fort. “Remember the Alamo!” became a rallying cry that further unified the Texans.  At Gonzales only a few days before, on March 2, the territory’s government had met in convention and declared Texas an independent republic in a statement modeled on the Declaration of Independence. The delegates appealed to the United States for diplomatic recognition and aid in the war.

Later that month, James Fannin’s garrison of about 400 men was trapped by the Mexican army. The Texans courageously repelled several cavalry charges and fought through the night until they ran low on water and ammunition. The following day, they were forced to surrender, and Mexican forces executing the unarmed prisoners by firing four volleys into their ranks. The atrocity led to another rallying cry: “Remember Goliad!”

Houston only had 400 soldiers remaining and refused to give battle. Santa Anna chased the Texan government from Gonzales and terrorized civilians throughout the area with impunity. However, hundreds of Texans enthusiastically flocked to Houston’s camp, and he learned that Santa Anna’s force had only 750 men. Houston moved his army to the confluence of the Buffalo Bayou and San Jacinto River, where he deployed his force in the woods.

On April 20 the two armies squared off and engaged in an artillery duel with the Texans firing their canons, nicknamed the “Twin Sisters.” A group of Texan cavalry sallied out and ignored an order only to scout enemy positions. The cavalry exchanged fire with the Mexicans and narrowly escaped back to their lines. Both sides retired and prepared for battle the following day.

On the morning of April 21, General Cos arrived and doubled the size of Santa Anna’s army, but his men were exhausted from their march and took an afternoon nap. Houston seized the moment and formed up his army. They silently moved across the open ground until they started yelling “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!” The shocked Mexican army roused itself and quickly formed up. The Texans’ “Twin Sisters” canons blasted away, and the infantry drove the Mexicans into the bayou while the cavalry flanked and surrounded them. In a little over 20 minutes, however, 630 were killed and more than 700 captured. Santa Anna was taken prisoner and agreed to Texan independence. The new republic selected Houston as its president and approved annexation by the United States.

Americans were deeply divided over the question of annexation, however, because it meant opening hostilities with Mexico. Moreover, many northerners, such as John Quincy Adams and abolitionists, warned that annexation would strengthen southern “slave power” because Texas would come into the Union as a massive slave state or several smaller ones. Eight years later, in 1844, President John Tyler supported a resolution for annexation after the Senate had defeated an annexation treaty. Both houses of Congress approved the resolution after a heated debate, and Tyler signed the bill in his last few days in office in early March 1845.

Annexation led to war with Mexico in 1846. Throughout the annexation debate and contention over the Mexican War, sectional tensions raised by the westward expansion of slavery tore at the fabric of the Union. The tensions eventually led to the Civil War.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. He is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Daniel A. Cotter

In early August 1831, Nat Turner, an African-American preacher and slave in Virginia, began planning and preparing a revolt against slavery. Beginning on August 21, Nat and others with him killed his master’s family, then mounted horses and continued the same on farms and elsewhere of slave owners and their families. After, the Virginia legislature received petitions urging the menace of slavery be dealt with as a cause of political and economic failure.

Turner was born on October 2, 1800 in Southampton County, Virginia, a slave held by Benjamin Turner. Turner at the time of the slave rebellion was owned by Samuel Turner, Benjamin’s son, who inherited Nat when Benjamin died. Nat was smart, learning to read and write at a very early age, and often read and preached the Bible. Nat claimed to have visions that he thought were from God. Fellow slaves gave him the nickname, “The Prophet.”

One of the visions Turner credited with motivating the rebellion. In August, after postponing the rebellion due to personal illness, he saw an August 7 solar eclipse, the second one in a six month period, as the final sign that the vision was to be implemented. The slave rebellion began on August 21, 1831, and was small at first, consisting of Nat and a few of his trusted fellow slaves. The rebels in the group traveled from home to home in the neighborhood, freeing the slaves they found at each home and killing any white people they found. The small group of rebels grew over the short-lived rebellion.

Governor John Floyd received a note on August 23, 1831, alerting him “that an insurrection of the slaves in that county had taken place, that several families had been massacred and that it would take a considerable military force to put them down.”

The rebellion led by Nat Turner led to the death of almost 60 white people, including men, women and children. In order to suppress the rebellion, whites formed militias and they in turn killed approximately 200 black people, including men, women and children, many of whom had no connection to the rebellion.

The rebellion lasted only a few days, but Nat avoided capture until October 30, when a farmer discovered him hiding. Turner was tried and was convicted and sentenced to death on November 5, 1831. Less than a week later, Nat Turner was hanged at Jerusalem, Virginia, his body flayed as an example to anyone who might be thinking of rebellion.  Turner’s attorney during the trial, Thomas Ruffin Gray, wrote The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va., a pamphlet that some have dismissed as not being accurate. Whatever its accuracy, nothing more detailed exists. One alleged statement of the vision that appears in the pamphlet was:

“I had a vision … I saw white and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened … the thunder rolled in the heavens and flowed in the streams. I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven.”

Nat’s slave rebellion appears to be the only United States one that was effective and sustained. One of the repercussions of the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion was that it led to a series of oppressive legislation that prohibited many slave activities, including education, movement and assembly. Laws also expanded against free blacks. Some states banned the possession of abolitionist publications, and in emancipation debates around the time of the rebellion and subsequently, slavery was defined by some as a positive good.

Nat Turner has been considered a patriot by some and Molefi Kete Asante listed him as on of the “100 Greatest African Americans.”  Others have noted his violence and slaughtering of many. For example, historian Scot French told The New York Times:

“To accept Nat Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a racially reconciled society. The story lives because it’s relevant today to questions of how to organize for change.”

His rebellion made it clear that slaves were not content with their enslavement, and August 21, 1831, is an important date in American History.

Dan Cotter is Attorney and Counselor at Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He is the author of The Chief Justices, (published April 2019, Twelve Tables Press). He is also a past president of The Chicago Bar Association. The article contains his opinions and is not to be attributed to anyone else.  

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: James S. Humphreys

The Indian Removal Act passed the United States House of Representatives by a vote of 102 to 97 and the U.S. Senate by a vote of 28 to 19. It was signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830.  Jackson, a Tennessean, held slaves and belonged to the Democratic Party. He first attracted national attention during the War of 1812, when his forces decimated the Creek Indians and later successfully defended New Orleans against the onslaught of an experienced and well-trained British army. Jackson’s reputation as the hero of New Orleans assisted him in his rise to the presidency. He signed the Indian Removal Act fourteen months after assuming office.

The act, consisting of eight sections, broadly outlined the conditions under which Native Americans would relinquish claim to their tribal land within the United States in exchange for territory west of the Mississippi River. United States officials would provide assistance to Native Americans during removal and would guarantee forever the migrants’ right to their western homeland. The act called for the allocation of $500,000 to cover the expenses incurred by the implementation of the measure. It also declared that earlier treaties negotiated with the Native Americans remained in force, disavowing any coercion of Native Americans on the part of U.S. officials. Removal was to be voluntary, not forced.[1]

The act targeted Native American groups living in the southern region of the United States. Whites referred to these groups as the “Five Civilized Tribes” — Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee — because the tribes had adopted many of the habits and practices of white Americans. Some members of the tribes were not full-blooded Native Americans. John Ross, a prominent Cherokee leader, for example, was only one-eighth Native American. Hoping to earn the respect of whites, the Cherokee developed a phonetic alphabet, printed a newspaper with articles in English and Cherokee, wrote a constitution, held slaves, and founded a capital in northern Georgia called New Echota. Many whites, nevertheless, coveted Cherokee land in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia and the other four “civilized” tribes’ territory in other southern states. The deep-seated racism of whites toward Native Americans; the admission into the United States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, all of which held prime cotton-growing land; and the discovery of gold in Georgia in 1829 whetted whites’ appetite for acquiring Native American territory. That is not to say that removal attracted the overwhelming support of whites. The Indian Removal act barely passed the House of Representatives. Many Whig party politicians, the most prominent of which was Kentuckian, Henry Clay, loathed Jackson and opposed the measure.

Andrew Jackson was not the first president to address the presence of large numbers of Native Americans living within the borders of the United States, but his removal policy stands out as the most aggressive strategy for dealing with them. Jackson viewed the policy as enlightened and benevolent, because, in his mind, the expansion of white civilization posed a lethal threat to Native American culture. The Native Americans, of course, viewed the policy differently, fearing that instead of saving their way of life, removal would destroy it. Cherokee leaders hoped to reach an agreement allowing them to remain on their land with U.S. officials, but Jackson’s unwillingness to yield eventually frustrated them.  Cherokee leaders, therefore, sought redress in the federal courts, where they found judges sympathetic to their plight. John Marshall, Supreme Court Chief Justice, issued two rulings favorable to the Cherokee in the cases of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia. The gist of each decision was that Cherokee lands belonged to the Cherokee, a fact U.S. officials were bound to respect. The court rulings failed to halt the implementation of the removal program, which dispensed with the earlier emphasis on voluntary migration.

The Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw Indians succumbed to pressure from federal officials to migrate to land west of the Mississippi River.  The removal of the three Native American groups took place from 1831 to 1837. The most wrenching removal occurred in 1838 during the administration of Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren. A relatively small group of Cherokee agreed to removal terms outlined in the Treaty of New Echota. Members of the “Treaty Party,” believing removal was inevitable, accepted five million dollars from federal officials to relinquish all claim to Cherokee territory. The treaty’s provisions aroused the ire of Cherokees, who opposed migrating. The resisters beseeched members of the Senate to reject the treaty, but to no avail.  The Senate ratified the treaty by one vote. As white settlers increasingly overran their territory, sometimes resulting in violence against Native Americans, the Cherokees held out bravely before being gathered into camps by U.S. troops prior to removal. The United States Army then oversaw the journey of twenty thousand Cherokees to the Oklahoma territory. The arduous trek, carried out during the winter, claimed the lives of four thousand Native Americans. The episode became known as the “Trail of Tears.” Seething with anger over what they considered betrayal, Cherokee resisters murdered several leaders of the “Treaty Party,” and the reputation of Andrew Jackson, once considered a great president, has declined over time as a result of his role in Native American removal.

James S. Humphreys is a professor of United States history at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky.  He is the author of a biography of the southern historian, Francis Butler Simkins, entitled Francis Butler Simkins: A Life (2008), published by the University Press of Florida.  He is also the editor of Interpreting American History: the New South (2018) and co-editor of the Interpreting American History series, published by the Kent State University Press.   

[1] “Indian Removal Act of 1830,” California History Social Science Project, accessed March 19, 2020, chssp.ucdavis.edu.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

Andrew Jackson started out as a lawyer and grew in politics. By the end of the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, Jackson was a military hero of great influence. Former governor of Tennessee, he defeated John Quincy Adams in 1828, became the seventh president and first Democratic Party president, and helped found the Democratic Party.

Jackson’s biography reads larger than life. He was born in 1767 in a backwoods cabin, its precise location unknown. He was scarred by a British officer’s sword, orphaned at fourteen and raised by uncles. He was admitted to the bar after reading law on his own, one year a Congressman before being elected to the U.S. Senate, a position he then resigned after only eight months. He was appointed as a circuit judge on the Tennessee superior court. He became a wealthy Tennessee landowner, and received a direct appointment as a major general in the Tennessee militia which led, after military success, to direct appointment to the same rank in the U.S. Army. He was an underdog victor and national hero at the Battle of New Orleans, and conducted controversial military actions in the 1817 Seminole War. He experienced disappointment in the 1824 presidential election, but success four years later. He survived the first assassination attempt of a United States President and was the first President to have his Vice-President resign. He appointed Roger Taney (Dred Scott v. Sanford) to the U.S. Supreme Court. President Jackson died in 1845 of lead poisoning from the two duelist bullets he carried for years in his chest, one for forty years. You couldn’t make this biography up if you tried.

President Andrew Jackson is a constitutionalist’s dream. Few U.S. Presidents intersected the document of the U.S. Constitution as often or as forcefully during their terms as did “Old Hickory.” From the Nullification Crisis of 1832, to “killing” the Second National Bank, to his controversial “Trail of Tears” decision, Jackson seemed to attract constitutional crises like a magnet. When the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Worcester v. George, Jackson is purported to have said “Well, John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” It has not been reported whether Thomas Jefferson’s moldering corpse sat up at hearing those words, but I think it likely.

Jackson’s multiple rubs with the Constitution preceded his presidency. As the General in charge of defending New Orleans in late 1814, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, which the Constitution gives only Congress the power to suspend,[1] unilaterally declaring martial law over the town and surrounding area. Habeas corpus, the “great and efficacious writ,”[2] enjoyed a heritage going back at least to Magna Carta in 1215, a fact Jackson found not compelling enough in the light of the civilian unrest he faced. As Matthew Warshauer has noted: “The rub was that martial law saved New Orleans and the victory itself saved the nation’s pride… Jackson walked away from the event with two abiding convictions: one, that victory and the nationalism generated by it protected his actions, even if illegal; and two, that he could do what he wanted if he deemed it in the nation’s best interest.”[3]

It would not be Jackson’s last brush as a military officer with arguably illegal actions. Three years later, during the First Seminole War, he found his incursion into Spanish Florida, conducted without military orders, under review by Congress. Later, when running for President, Jackson had to defend his actions: “it has been my lot often to be placed in situations of a critical kind” that “imposed on me the necessity of [v]iolating, or rather departing from, the constitution of the country; yet at no subsequent period has it produced to me a single pang, believing as I do now, & then did, that without it, security neither to myself or the great cause confided to me, could have been obtained.” (Abraham Lincoln would later offer a not dissimilar defense of his own unconstitutional suspension of Habeas Corpus in 1861).

After the ratification of the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1821, settling affairs with Spain, Jackson resigned from the army and, after a brief stint as the Governor of the Territory of Florida, returned to Tennessee. The next year he reluctantly allowed himself to be elected Senator from Tennessee in a bid (by others) to position him for the Presidency.

In the 1824 election against John Quincy Adams, Senator Jackson won a plurality of the electoral vote but, thanks to the Twelfth Amendment and the political maneuvering of Henry Clay, he was defeated in the subsequent contingent election in favor of “JQA.” Four year later, while weathering Federalist newspapers’ charges that Adams was a “murderer, drunk, cockfighting, slave-trading cannibal” the tide finally turned in Jackson’s favor and he won an Electoral College landslide.

As his inauguration day approached, I wonder how many Americans knew just how exciting would be the next eight years? On March 4, 1829, Jackson took the oath as the seventh President of the United States.

In an attempt to “drain the swamp,” he immediately began investigations into all executive Cabinet offices and departments, an effort that uncovered enormous fraud. Numerous officials were removed from office and indicted on charges of corruption.

Reflecting on the 1824 election, in his first State of the Union Address, Jackson called for abolition of the Electoral College, by constitutional amendment, in favor of a direct election by the people.

In 1831, he fired his entire cabinet.[4]

In July 1832, the issue became the Second National Bank of the United States, up for re-chartering. Jackson believed the bank to be unconstitutional as well as patently unfair in the terms of its charter. He accepted that there was precedent, both for the chartering (McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) as well as rejecting a new charter (Madison, 1815), but, perhaps reflecting his reaction to Worcester v. Georgia earlier that year, he threw down the gauntlet in his veto message:

“The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. . .”[5] . (emphasis added)

Later that same year came Jackson’s most famous constitutional crisis: the Nullification Crisis. Vice President John C. Calhoun’s home state of South Carolina declared that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state, thus “firing a shot across the bow” of Jackson’s view of federalism. The doctrine of nullification had been first proposed by none other than James Madison and Thomas Jefferson thirty-four years earlier and it retains fans today. South Carolina eventually backed down but not before Jackson’s Vice President, J.C. Calhoun resigned to accept appointment to the Senate and fight for his state in that venue, and not before Congress passed the Force Bill which authorized the President to use military force against South Carolina.

In 1834, the House declined to impeach Jackson, knowing the votes were not there in the Senate for removal and settled on censure instead, which Jackson shrugged off.

Yet in 1835, Jackson sided with the Constitution and its First Amendment by refusing to block the mailing of inflammatory abolitionist mailings to the South even while denouncing the abolitionists as “monsters.”

Today, some people  compare our current President to Jackson, including President Donald Trump himself.  Others disagree.  There are indeed striking similarities, as well as great differences. Although coming from polar opposite backgrounds, both are populists who often make pronouncements upon the world of politics without the filter of “political correctness.” Further comparisons are found in the linked articles.

Thanks to the great care taken by the men of 1787, the “American Experiment” has weathered many a controversial president, such as Andrew Jackson – and we will doubtlessly encounter, and hopefully weather many more.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] U.S. Constitution; Article One, Section 9, Clause 2

[2] Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England.

[3] https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/essay/andrew-jackson-and-constitution

[4] Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, who had suggested the firing, resigned as well to avoid the appearance of favoritism.

[5] http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/democracy-in-america/andrew-jacksons-veto-message-against-re-chartering-the-bank-of-the-united-states-1832/

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

In 1817, construction on the Erie Canal began, opening in October of 1825. Initially a 363-mile waterway, 40 feet wide and four feet deep, it connected the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean flowing from the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo, New York. The canal increased transportation of bulk commercial goods at a much lower cost, widely expanded agricultural development, and brought settlers into surrounding states as the free flow of goods to the stretches of Northwest Territory were availed through the Appalachian Mountains.

On Friday, July 13, 1787, “James Madison’s Gang,” otherwise known as the Constitutional Convention, approved a motion stating that until completion of the first census, showing exactly how many residents each state contained, direct taxes to the states would be proportioned according to the number of representatives the state had been assigned in Congress. A short time later, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania and Pierce Butler of South Carolina had a rather heated exchange over the issue of slavery and how to account for slaves in determining the state’s representation.

That same day, ninety-five miles to the northeast in New York City, the Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, creating the Northwest Territory and opening a significant new portion of the country to rapid settlement. The territory would go on to produce 5 new states and, more importantly to our story, produce tons and tons of grain in its fertile Ohio Valley. At the time, the only practical route to bring this produce to world markets was the long, 1,513 miles, voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Cincinnati, Ohio to New Orleans, a voyage that could take weeks and was quite expensive. A cheaper, more efficient method had to be found.

The idea of a canal that would tie the western settlements of the country to the ports on the East Coast had been discussed as early as 1724. Now that those settlements were becoming economically important, talk resumed in earnest.

The first problem encountered was geography. The most logical western route for a canal was from the east end of Lake Erie at Buffalo, to Albany, New York on the Hudson River, but Lake Erie sits 570 feet above sea level. Descending eastward from the lake to the Hudson River would be relatively easy, but canals had to allow traffic in both directions. Ascending 570 feet in elevation on the westbound trip meant one thing: locks and lots of them. Lock technology at the time could only provide a lift of 12 feet. It was soon determined that fifty locks would be required along the 363 mile canal. Given the technology of the time, such a canal would be exorbitantly expensive to build; the cost was barely imaginable. President Jefferson called the idea “little short of madness” and rejected any involvement of the federal government. This left it up to the State of New York and private investors. The project would not get any relief with a change of Presidents. On March 3, 1817, President James Madison vetoed “An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements.” In his veto message, Madison wrote he was “constrained by the insuperable difficulty [he felt] in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States.

“The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation within the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States…

“The power to regulate commerce among the several States” can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses…”

Once again, no help would come from the federal government.

Two different routes were considered: a southern one which would be shorter but present more challenging topography and a northern route which was longer but presented much easier terrain to deal with. The northern route was selected.

Estimates of the workers involved in building the canal vary widely, from 50,000 to 3,000 workers. A thousand men reportedly died building Governor DeWitt Clinton, “Clinton’s Folly” — the majority of them due to canal wall collapses, drowning, careless use of gunpowder and disease. Men dug, by hand, the 4-foot-deep by 40-foot-wide canal, aided occasionally by horses or oxen, explosives, and tree-stump-pulling machines. They were paid 50 cents a day, about $12 a month, and were sometimes provided meals and a place to sleep. The sides of the canal were lined with stone set in clay. The project required the importation of hundreds of skilled German stonemasons.

The gamble paid off. Once the canal opened, tolls charged to barges paid off the construction debt within ten years. From 1825 to 1882, tolls generated $121 million, four times what it cost to operate the canal. When completed in 1825, it was the second longest canal in the world.

The Erie Canal’s early commercial success, combined with the engineering knowledge gained in building it, encouraged the construction of other canals across the United States. None, however, would come close to repeating the success of the Erie. Other projects became enmeshed in politics. They became more and more expensive to build and maintain. Many canals had to be closed in the winter, yet goods still needed to get to market, whatever the cost. Railroads soon began offering competitive rates.

But the Erie Canal left its mark. New York City is today the business and financial capital of America due largely to the success of the Erie Canal.

Today, the Erie Canal is a modest tourist attraction. Cheaper means are available to move cargo. You can still take a leisurely trip via small boat from the Great Lakes to the Hudson and beyond. But so can certain species of fish, mollusks and plants use the canal and its boat traffic to make their way from the Great Lakes to “invade” New York’s inland lakes and streams, the Hudson River and New York harbor.

In 2017, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo established a “Reimagining the Canal task force” to determine the canal’s future. Addressing the environmental damage caused by invasive animal and plant life, the task force recommended permanently closing and draining portions of the canal in Rochester and Rome.

I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania an hour’s drive from the terminus of the canal at Buffalo and I still recall the family visit we took to see it. My young brain didn’t really comprehend the labor and hardship faced by those thousands of workers over those eight years of construction. But now I can marvel at their ingenuity and perseverance in the face of amazing engineering challenges – a testament to the American Spirit.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

On May 24, 1844, Samuel Finley Breese Morse demonstrated his electro-magnetic telegraph in the capitol building in Washington, DC, by transmitting a message sent to a railway station in Baltimore, Maryland, approximately thirty-eight miles away. The message transmitted over the telegraph line was “What has God wrought?” a biblical passage from Numbers 23:23. This demonstration convinced many in both government and industry of the viability and usefulness of the new technology.

Much had happened before that eventful day to bring that demonstration to fruition. Much would happen afterward that would make this demonstration momentous in American history. Morse was not a scientist by training. He had already made his mark, if not his fortune, as an artist who preferred to paint epic, historical scenes but who often resorted to completing commissioned portraits of prominent figures as a way of making money. He became acquainted with advances in electro-magnetic telegraphy in Europe while on a voyage to Europe after the death of his first wife. His discussions with European scientists gave him some background knowledge in the scientific issues that had to be confronted. His own creativity and his dogged willingness to learn from the work of others led him to develop a model telegraphic device that proved to be practical and profitable. Among those who had worked in this field before were William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, who patented an electro-magnetic telegraph in Britain.   Cooke and Wheatstone employed a variety of different circuits and electrical wires to transmit signals to a receiver. When a current was transmitted through different circuits, or different combinations of circuits, signals for different characters were recognized and a needle was turned to point to various letters of the alphabet. However, the Cooke-Wheatstone telegraph message was, in Morse’s words, “evanescent.” It left no permanent record.[1]

Morse developed a telegraph that operated on a single circuit with a single wire situated between the transmitter and receiver. The transmitter employed a lever that would connect and disconnect an electrical current that would start and then stop a magnetic attraction within a mechanism at the receiver. The magnetic attraction would cause the arm of the device to mark a paper tape with dots and dashes, representing the length of time that the circuit was engaged. The innovation achieving the marking of paper may have been the creation of Morse’s assistant, Alfred Vail. What is not in doubt is that Morse created the code that translated combinations of dots and dashes into letters of the alphabet and numerals. The code was essentially a form of binary language that is now in use in computer systems today, except that now the dots and dashes have been replaced by a series of ones and zeroes.[2]

Morse also had to tackle the difficulty of transmitting signals over great distances. The signal strength declined the farther along the line that the message traveled. Morse relied upon the assistance of the famous physicist, Dr. Joseph Henry, later the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Henry showed Morse how a series of relays situated miles apart from each other could renew the signal strength for an indefinite distance. Morse acknowledged the contribution of Henry in private correspondence before perfecting his invention, but downplayed Henry’s role later during challenges to his patent.[3]

Morse demonstrated his invention in many venues, but had not demonstrated its ability to work over a long distance. Morse approached Congress to gain an appropriation of $30,000 to develop the telegraphic device but also to construct a telegraph over a long distance to demonstrate its feasibility. When the appropriation bill was debated in the House of Representatives, some Congressmen ridiculed the proposal.   A tongue-in-cheek amendment to the bill, proposing an appropriation to send messages through “mesmerism,” was discussed and voted on in the chamber. Ultimately, the appropriation narrowly passed the House, and then passed unanimously in the Senate. The funding could not have come at a better time for Morse, who later estimated that just after the vote he had only thirty-seven-and-a half cents to his name. Morse originally attempted to build a long trench stretching from Baltimore to Washington, in which an insulated telegraph wire was placed.   Preliminary tests proved unsuccessful, so Morse quietly arranged to support the wires over a series of poles that would hold the lines above ground. Once completed, Morse was able to send the famous “What hath God wrought?” message from Washington, D.C. to Vail in Baltimore.  The on-looking Congressmen were amazed by the achievement, and were generous in their praise of Morse.[4]

Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, Congress was empowered “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”   The exclusive right to the discoveries of a scientific nature takes the form of what is generally known as a patent. Morse had been denied a patent for his invention in the United States when he first applied in 1837, although he had received a “caveat” from the office that would give priority to his claim in front of other applicants seeking a patent for an identical device. He was able to patent his creation in the United States by 1840, but had been denied a patent in Britain in 1838.[5] That same year he received a French patent, which was one reason the U.S. Supreme Court eventually limited the duration of his American patent to fourteen years from the date of his original French patent, October 30, 1838.[6] The Supreme Court also limited the scope of his patent to the telegraph device that Morse had designed. He was not able to enjoy exclusive rights to “use of electro-magnetism, however developed, for marking or printing intelligible characters, signs, or letters at any distances,”  as Morse’s original patent claim held. If that overly broad had been accepted, Morse could plausibly claim patent rights covering modern day fax transmissions and email messages.[7]

Morse was able to sell territorial licenses to his patent which permitted companies to run telegraph services in certain geographic areas but not nationwide. For a time, the telegraphy business was quite decentralized and competitive, but by the late 1860s, one company, Western Union, had achieved a dominant position in the industry. The new invention had major impacts on industrial development, military operations, and government regulation. The telegraph was used by both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. For the first time, commanders far distant from battlefields could provide specific orders to troops in combat. In some instances, President Abraham Lincoln skipped over the normal chain of command to send instructions directly to officers in the field through the telegraph.[8]

The telegraph proved very useful in industry in conveying almost instant   information about price changes in products and securities, as well as news of events that might affect the supply and demand for products and the factors of production. No industry was more greatly affected by the telegraph than the railroads. The speed of communication over long distances allowed railroad management to coordinate the movement of trains moving over single tracks in opposite directions. Railroads aided the expansion of telegraph lines by granting rights-of-way to telegraph companies to set up poles and wires alongside the railroad tracks.[9]

In much of the world, telegraph services were owned and operated by the government. For the most part, this was not the case in the United States and Canada. Governments were still deeply involved in the growth of the telegraph services, both by subsidizing the infrastructure and by regulating the service. States promoted the industry by granting rights-of-way and imposing penalties for damaging lines. They also regulated the industry by imposing penalties for refusing to receive messages sent from other telegraph companies, for transmitting dispatches out of the order in which they were received, and for disclosing private communications to third parties.[10] As telegraph lines crossed state lines, the federal government gained some jurisdiction.   The Post Office operated some limited telegraph services for a time.   Later the Interstate Commerce Commission regulated interstate services, although railroads, not the telegraph industry, were the primary focus of the ICC. Later, the Federal Communications Commission gained jurisdiction, although by then telephony and radio and broadcast television was the major concern of that regulatory body.[11]

If Morse had never worked on telegraphy he would still be remembered today, at least to art historians, as an exceptionally fine painter. His work on the telegraph and, perhaps more importantly, the Morse code was of monumental importance. Morse’s work on communicating messages across enormous spaces in minimal periods of time has had enormous impact upon the way that America and the whole world have developed over the last century-and-a-half.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Wheeler, Tom. “The First Electronic Network and the End of Time.” In From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future, 87-116. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019.

[2] Wheeler, op cit..

[3] http://siarchives.si.edu/oldsite/siarchives-old/history/jhp/joseph20.htm

[4] Wheeler, op cit.

[5] https://www.sparks.it/download/00993407.pdf

[6] O’Reilly v. Morse, 56 U.S. 15 at page 96

[7] Kappos, David J., and Christopher P. Davis. 2015. “Functional Claiming and the Patent Balance.” Stanford Technology Law Review 18 (2): 365–74.

[8] Wilhelm, Pierre. “The Telegraph: A Strategic Means of Communication During the American Civil War.” Revista De Historia De América, no. 124 (1999): 81-9

[9] Du Boff, Richard B. 1980. “Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844-1860.” Business History Review 53 (4): 459-479.

[10] Nonnenmacher, Tomas. “State Promotion and Regulation of the Telegraph Industry, 1845-1860.” The Journal of Economic History 61, no. 1 (2001): 19-36.

[11] Goldin, H. H. “Governmental Policy and the Domestic Telegraph Industry.” The Journal of Economic History 7, no. 1 (1947): 53-68.

 

Guest Essayist: Joshua Schmid

Realpolitik and Idealism Coupled: A Brief History of the Monroe Doctrine

The Monroe Doctrine remains one of the most influential foreign policy statements in United States history. The principles it espoused were largely consistent with the foreign affairs doctrine of non-interventionism in European affairs that were followed by the first U.S. presidents. Even by the twenty-first century, at times when U.S. geopolitical strategies were drastically different from those of the early nineteenth century, some foreign policy makers still invoked the Monroe Doctrine when prioritizing the spread of democracy and the well-being of the Western Hemisphere over other parts of the world. One of the key reasons for its longevity and success was because it established a foreign policy rooted in a combination of realism and idealism.

In the early days of the American republic, the U.S. remained largely uninvolved in the affairs of Europe and the rest of the world. As George Washington stated in his Farewell Address, “Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation…Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.” The young nation could ill-afford to become involved in the squabbling affairs of the Old World as it needed to focus more on its own internal development.

Despite the best attempts by the U.S. in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to avoid entanglements with Europe, foreign policy issues abounded. Spain, Britain, France, and Russia all sought to lay claim to vast swaths of territory on the North and South American continents. A number of these, especially Spanish colonies in Latin America, began revolutions in the early nineteenth century to claim self-governance. The so-called “Holy Alliance” of Prussia, Austria, and Russia emerged in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars with the established purpose of protecting monarchy around the globe. After the Holy Alliance and France successfully re-instated the Spanish king following a revolution, it then turned to putting down the liberal revolutions occurring in the New World. The U.S. hardly blinked at the Spanish restoration as it had no impact on its affairs. However, the prospect of European armadas barging into the Western Hemisphere to put down movements that followed the spirit of the American Revolution posed a threat to U.S. security.

In response to potential intrusions into South America, U.S. President James Monroe decided to release a stunning declaration to the world. He laid out his policy in his Seventh Annual Message to Congress in December 1823. First, Monroe addressed the continual colonization of the New World by European powers, stating, “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” He then proceeded to discuss the attempts by European nations to interfere in Latin America’s revolutions. “With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected…The political system of [European monarchs] is essentially different…from that of America. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety,” Monroe continued. While Monroe conceded that European powers would be allowed to keep the colonies they held at the time, this announcement had the potential to drastically alter geopolitical affairs in the New World. By framing his doctrine in this manner, Monroe established a policy that simultaneously protected American interests in the Western Hemisphere while also supporting self-government from absolutism.

As bold of a declaration as the Monroe Doctrine was, it would have been largely ineffectual without the support of the British navy in helping to enforce it. The American navy did not have the resources to patrol the entire Western Hemisphere to prevent colonization by European powers. However, Britain—the most liberal of the major European powers of the time—did. It was using its navy to protect free trade around the world and the prospect of additional New World colonies, with their closed markets, would have harmed this economic policy. In fact, Britain’s Foreign Minister George Canning approached U.S. officials earlier in 1823 with a plan to release a joint-declaration to deter intervention in the New World. However, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams convinced Monroe that Britain had imperial motivations for wanting a joint-declaration, and a unilateral proclamation was announced. Even then, British self-interest in a largely de-colonized Western Hemisphere ensured that the U.S. would have a partner in enforcing its new hegemony.

The Monroe Doctrine helped the U.S. remain distant from European affairs and allowed it to chart a path to dominance in the Western Hemisphere. While initially largely symbolic, it would eventually be invoked by presidents ranging from Ulysses Grant to Teddy Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy to justify U.S. military interventions in the Western Hemisphere. According to the Monroe Doctrine, the success of American ideals of liberty and self-government in the Western Hemisphere went hand-in-hand with U.S. security. This coupling was in large part what made the doctrine so successful and why it has lasted as a cornerstone of American foreign policy. By claiming a hegemony in the New World that would support liberal values against absolutism, the U.S. began on its path to becoming the leader of the Free World for two centuries.

Joshua Schmid serves as a Program Analyst at the Bill of Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: David Head

February 22, 1819, was, John Quincy Adams recorded in his diary, “perhaps the most important day of my life.”[1] On that day, the United States finalized a momentous treaty with Spain that acquired Florida for the United States and settled a border with Spain’s North American provinces that reached across the continent to give the United States a piece of Oregon on the Pacific Ocean.

The agreement was known officially as the Treaty of Amity, Settlement, and Limits Between the United States of America and His Catholic Majesty.[2] Today, it’s more commonly called the Transcontinental Treaty, to emphasize its geographic scope, or it’s known as the Adams–Onís Treaty, after its two architects, Secretary of State Adams and Spanish minister plenipotentiary Luis de Onís.[3]

Adams would have preferred the last title. Self-pitying and often depressed, he feared his role would “never be known to the public—and, if ever known, will be soon and easily forgotten.”[4]

Adams and Onís negotiated the final agreement, but the issues between their two nations ranged back to the earliest days of the American republic.

One source of discord was the border. Where, exactly, did it lie?

The Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution promised the United States British territory west to the Mississippi River and south to the 31st parallel (the north–south border between Alabama and the Florida panhandle today).[5]

Spain, though not a formal U.S. ally, fought against Britain in the war as an ally of France. In North America, fighting on the winning side brought Spain the British colonies of East and West Florida. The two Floridas were analogous to the modern state, but somewhat bigger as the panhandle extended West Florida along the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River. On the northern side, Spain claimed the Floridas were even larger as it did not recognize the 31st parallel as the proper boundary.

In 1795, Spain acquiesced to the American definition of its border with Florida in the Treaty of San Lorenzo (also called Pinckney’s Treaty). But new problems erupted eight years later when the United States acquired the Louisiana territory from France.[6]

The Purchase treaty was maddeningly vague on just what “Louisiana” was. Rather than stipulating geographic features like rivers—things that might appear on both a map and in reality—the document defined the land to be transferred only by reference to the Treaty of San Ildefonso in which Spain had ceded Louisiana back to France in 1800.[7]

With Louisiana moved from France to Spain, back to France, and then to the United States, it’s little wonder no one could say what “Louisiana” really was.

For their part, U.S. policymakers insisted they had purchased West Florida from the Mississippi River east to the Perdido River (the modern border between Alabama and Florida) as well as a chunk of Texas from the Mississippi to the Rio Grande.

Spain countered that no, Louisiana was never that big. In the gulf region, Louisiana was only ever a sliver between the Mississippi River in the east and the midpoint between the Mermentau and Calcasieu Rivers in the west (not far from the border between modern Louisiana and Texas). Everything else was Spanish.

Another category of contention revolved around money. The U.S. government felt Spain owed U.S. citizens compensation because of two Spanish violations of American rights.

The first kind of violation happened in the 1790s, and like the land squabbles, it involved Spain’s relationship with France and the geopolitics of European war. Some American ships attempting to trade with Britain had been seized by French privateers and were then taken to Spanish ports to be condemned as prize of war by a friendly admiralty court. Since the United States declared its neutrality in the war, U.S. leaders said Spain had committed spoliations—unlawful destruction of a neutral’s property—and should make restitution to the American merchants.

The second kind of violation occurred in 1802 when Spain, which controlled New Orleans, prevented American merchants from selling their goods in the city, a right won for Americans trading down the Mississippi River by the Treaty of San Lorenzo. American merchants stuck with goods they couldn’t sell demanded that Spain make them whole.

Spain and the United States attempted to reconcile on several occasions in the following years. But no agreement survived Napoleon’s shifting ambitions, the emerging Spanish American push for independence, and the fading of Spain’s position as an imperial power.

France’s 1808 invasion of Spain touched off a crisis for the Spanish empire. Napoleon vanquished the king, installed his brother Joseph on the throne, and inspired a resistance government to form in Spain and independence movements to rise up in the Americas to fight against both French and Spanish rule.

The United States broke off negotiations with Spain as a result. Though Luis de Onís lived in Philadelphia, President James Madison kept him at arm’s length. Madison didn’t want the United States appearing to take sides in the Spanish resistance government’s battle with Napoleon or look like it was playing favorites between Spain and its rebelling colonies.

In 1814, King Fernando VII regained the Spanish crown in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat. Relations between the United States and Spain stayed chilly, however. President Madison didn’t trust Onís, who he suspected of conspiring with Britain during the War of 1812, but more substantially, both nations believed their bargaining power would improve with time. As a consequence, both sides delayed negotiations.

In 1817, a new administration took office, with James Monroe as president and Adams as Secretary of State. The delays continued.[8]

Onís was officially received by Monroe. Talks began but the delays continued. Adams complained about his futile meetings with Onís, who, he said, “beat about the bush” and failed to “make any propositions at all.”[9]

Then, suddenly in 1818, two developments broke open negotiations and quickly produced a treaty.

First, General Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida. Tasked to secure the Georgia–Florida border against Indian attacks and prevent slaves from running away, Jackson exceeded his orders, captured two Spanish forts, and executed two British subjects for assisting Natives. Following tense discussions inside the administration, Monroe decided to back Jackson. Onís, fearing the United States might seize Florida outright, backed down. A treaty sooner rather than later looked good.

Second, Spain found its hopes of European support for retaking its American colonies frustrated. Meeting at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, Fernando’s fellow kings refused to help restore his empire. Spain was on its own in the Americas. A deal with the United States was imperative.

The treaty terms settled both the border and compensation issues. The United States received Florida, its top priority, and access to the Pacific via Oregon, its second concern.

Spain got the Texas border it wanted, and the United States agreed to take responsibility for paying the claims of U.S. citizens up to $5 million. (The contention that the United States bought Florida for $5 million is erroneous.)

Approved by the Senate, the treaty encountered a hiccup when it arrived in Spain. An error was discovered in one treaty’s terms having to do with land grants the king made to various Spanish noblemen, and Spain tried to trade the lands back to the United States in exchange for putting pressure on the new Spanish American republics.

The treaty passed two years in limbo until a rebellion of Spanish army officers, who refused to continue fighting in the Americas, forced Fernando to acquiesce to the wishes of the Spanish legislature on, among other issues, accepting the treaty with the United States.

Approved in Spain, the treaty was again ratified by the Senate on February 22, 1821—exactly two years after Secretary Adams’ most important day.[10]

The full significance of the treaty emerged only later in the nineteenth century. It cleared the way for U.S. expansion south into Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean. In time, Americans pushed against the border in the west, putting more pressure on an independent Mexico.

The pushing turned to war in 1846, and after the United States took the provinces once contemplated as the limits of American growth, a vast expansion of territory lay bare the nation’s ugliest disagreement: what to do about slavery?

Adams knew the true results of his accomplishment would only be realized in the future.

“What the consequences may be of the compact this day signed with Spain is known only to the all-wise and all beneficent Disposer of events,” he recorded in his diary.

But despite the unknown, Adams was cautiously hopeful. “May no disappointment embitter the hope which this event warrants us in cherishing,” he wrote. “May its future influence on the destinies of my country be as extensive and as favorable as our warmest anticipations can paint!”[11]

David Head teaches history at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States in the Early Republic and A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution. For more information visit www.davidheadhistory or follow him on Twitter @davidheadphd.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] John Quincy Adams, February 22, 1819, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1874–77), 4: 274. https://books.google.com/books?id=kLQ4AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PA274#v=onepage&q&f=false

[2] The text of the treaty can be found at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/sp1819.asp;

[3] For overviews of the treaty, its context, and its negotiation, see J. C. A. Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish–American Frontier, 1776–1821 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); James E. Lewis, Jr., The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783–1829 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Philip C. Brooks, Diplomacy in the Borderlands: The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 (1939; reprint, New York: Octagon, 1970).

[4] Adams, February 22, 1819, Memoirs, 4: 275. https://books.google.com/books?id=kLQ4AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PA275#v=onepage&q&f=false

[5] The text of the Treaty of Paris can be found at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/paris.asp.

[6] David Head, Privateers of the Americas: Spanish American Privateering from the United States in the Early Republic (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015), 21–22.

[7] The Louisiana Purchase treaty can be found at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/louis1.asp; the Treat of San Ildefonso can be found at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ildefens.asp.

[8] Head, Privateers, 21–22, 25–29.

[9] Adams, January 10, 1818, Memoirs, 4: 37. https://books.google.com/books?id=kLQ4AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PA37#v=onepage&q&f=false

[10] Head, Privateers, 29–30.

[11] Adams, February 22, 1819, Memoirs, 4: 274. https://books.google.com/books?id=kLQ4AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&pg=PA274#v=onepage&q&f=false

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

During the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s, the British Royal Navy stopped American ships and forcibly impressed their sailors into naval service after attempts by the Jefferson and Madison administrations to use embargoes and trade sanctions to compel British respect for freedom of the seas. In June 1812, Congress declared war to defend American national sovereignty from repeated British violations. Most of the battles were fought at sea and around the Great Lakes.

However, in August 1814, the British fleet arrived in the Chesapeake Bay and landed 4,000 troops who humiliated U.S. forces at Bladensburg, Maryland. The British marched into Washington, D.C. and burned the capital in revenge for the burning of York (Toronto). A few weeks later, British Admiral Alexander Cochrane and his officers decided to invade the nearby port-city of Baltimore because he thought the “town ought to be laid in ashes.”

Francis Scott Key was a prosperous D.C. attorney who had argued before the Supreme Court and had a large family. Like many Easterners, he was opposed to the war whose main proponents were “war hawks” from the West and South. However, Key was appalled by the threats to the capital and then the burning of Washington, and joined the local militia. He was persuaded by some friends to help secure the release of Dr. William Beanes from British captivity. Key gained an audience with President James Madison and soon joined with prisoner of war agent, John Skinner, to seek Beanes’ release.

Meanwhile, Major General Samuel Smith of the Maryland militia prepared Baltimore’s defenses for a British assault. During the morning of September 12, 4,700 redcoats and royal marines disembarked along the Patapsco River for a fifteen-mile march to Baltimore. They were led by General Robert Ross who promised to “sup in Baltimore tonight, or in hell.” A Royal Navy squadron sailed up the river to bombard Fort McHenry in the harbor and then the city itself.

The American militia was 3,000-strong and deployed along a narrow part of the peninsula to block the British advance. A rifleman among the forward skirmishers killed General Ross in the opening round. The British attacked after a brief, but sharp artillery exchange and forced the Americans back several times. The British pressed the attack the next day but suffered increasing numbers of casualties and were forced to withdraw. The Americans had held, and the British infantry attack on Baltimore had ground to a stop and failed.

Meanwhile, at sunrise on Tuesday, September 13, Commander of Fort McHenry, Major George Armistead, and commander of a volunteer artillery company from the city which had joined in the defense of the fort, peered through their spyglasses into Baltimore Harbor. They saw five British bomb-ships maneuvering into position one and a half miles from the star-shaped fort.

Armistead’s soldiers in the 1,000-man garrison were up and preparing the 36 guns to defend the fort. The tension was rife, and their nerves were stretched to the limit. Suddenly, the ship Volcano lobbed 200-pound explosive shells into the fort. The other four bomb ships and the rest of the fleet fired on the fort. Inaccurate but terrifying, screaming rockets were launched from Erebus toward the fort.

Major Armistead ordered his soldiers to return fire, and several cannonballs scored direct hits on British ships. The American fire was unexpectedly severe and forced the British to move out of range of the fort’s guns. The British had moved out of range of the American guns, but their bomb ships could still hit Fort McHenry. Finally, Armistead ordered his men to take cover in a moat.

A few observers of the battle from the British fleet were Key and Skinner. They had rented a packet-ship and went to the enemy fleet to secure the release of their prisoner. They had been stuck with the British fleet aboard the HMS Surprize for several days as it had moved toward the harbor. They were transferred with Beanes back to their small vessel but not allowed to depart until after the battle.

They were as distressed as the men in the fort at being bombarded and suffering casualties but impotent to return fire. A British shell crashed through the roof of the fort’s magazine where 300 barrels of gunpowder were stored, but miraculously, did not explode.

In the early afternoon, the sun disappeared, and heavy rain fell from a nor’easter. The men in the fort lowered the American flag stitched by Mary Pickersgill and raised a storm flag due to the rain. The British fleet moved closer to fire broadsides from several warships. The Americans quickly fired their own guns and caused severe damage to three warships forcing the British back.

However, the British bomb ships continued to fire as darkness settled with the arrival of evening, Admiral Cochrane had thought he would force a surrender in less than two hours leaving Baltimore vulnerable to a coordinated land-sea assault. But Armistead had no intention of surrendering.

The shelling continued through the night. Finally, the first light of dawn approached with Fort McHenry still standing. From his vantage point, Key watched as the fort raised the immense 30 by 42-foot star-spangled banner as the soldiers stood at attention. Meanwhile, Key pulled a letter from his pocket and started to jot down some words and notes for a song that came to mind. “O say can you see by the dawn’s early light . . .” it began, and ended with “O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”

The American forces redeemed themselves at Baltimore and Fort McHenry after the national humiliation in Washington, D.C. Only a few months later, American commissioners including John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Albert Gallatin signed the Treaty of Ghent officially ending the War of 1812. Key’s words became America’s national anthem, marking its great victory in what some have called the Second War for American Independence.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: James C. Clinger

On May 14, 1804, President Thomas Jefferson’s private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and an army captain, William Clark, began an expedition exploring the territory stretching from the Mississippi River, along the Missouri River, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. But the origins of the expedition began long before this, even before Jefferson became president of the United States and well before the Louisiana Purchase took place. Only a few years after the Revolutionary War, shortly after sea captain Robert Gray had discovered the estuary of the Columbia River in present-day Oregon, Jefferson instructed Andre Michaux to “explore the country a[long] the Missouri, & thence Westwardly to the Pacific ocean.” [1] The enterprise was sponsored by the American Philosophical Society and included the support of subscribers such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. The expedition was quickly ended before the entourage reached the Missouri River after it was discovered that Michaux was acting as an agent of the French government. Other expeditions, led by explorers such as Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Thomas Freeman, William Dunbar, and Peter Custis, were also enlisted by Jefferson during his presidency to explore various sections of the American West, but none of these luminaries have gained the popular recognition that the Lewis and Clark Expedition retains today.

Meriwether Lewis, like Jefferson, was born into a family of Virginia planters. Lewis served for a time in the army during the Whiskey Rebellion, but saw no combat. For a period of about six months, Lewis served under the command of William Clark, who was the younger brother of the Revolutionary War commander, George Rogers Clark.     Lewis left the army as a captain to become the private secretary to President Jefferson, whom he advised on the capabilities and political loyalties of high-ranking officers in the military. Lewis availed himself of Jefferson’s personal library, which was considered one of the finest in the world. After his appointment as the commander of the expedition to the west (also known as the “Corps of Discovery”) Lewis received instruction in astronomy, botany, and medicine by some of the leading scientists in the country to prepare him for his mission. Lewis later asked William Clark to join in the command with the rank of captain, although the initial budget for the expedition included pay for only one captain.   Clark was eventually commissioned as a lieutenant, although this was not known to the crew.[2]

President Jefferson first proposed the Lewis and Clark expedition in a secret message to Congress on January 18, 1803, months before the Louisiana Purchase took place. The message stressed the need for the government to develop the fur trade along the Missouri River in what was then Spanish territory. Jefferson wished to provide new lands to compensate private fur traders who would be forced out as the federal government purchased Indian titles to land along the Mississippi River.   Jefferson hoped to induce Native-American tribes to take up agriculture and abandon their reliance upon hunting and fur-trading.[3] Although the primary purpose of the expedition was commercial in nature,  it should be understood that with that commercial development, significant expansion in government authority would necessarily take place. In addition to its implications for commerce and government, the expedition had other purposes and objectives. Jefferson’s specific marching orders to Lewis indicated that “the object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce. . . . Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take [careful] observations of latitude & longitude, at all remarkeable points on the river, & especially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at islands, & other places & objects distinguished by such natural marks & characters of a durable kind, as that they may with certainty be recognised hereafter….The interesting points of the portage between the heads of the Missouri, & of the water offering the best communication with the Pacific ocean, should also be fixed by observation, & the course of that water to the ocean, in the same manner as that of the Missouri.”[4]

Jefferson clearly had interest in the geographic and scientific discoveries that the expedition could make, and was particularly interested in learning if a water route from the Missouri to the Pacific could be found.  Jefferson also hoped to learn something about the life of the Native American tribes the expedition would encounter along the way.[5]

The original plan was for Lewis to lead a party of only a dozen or so men. A larger party was thought to be perceived as a military threat to the Native Americans encountered along the way. Lewis and Clark, however, decided to add some additional members for the expedition, while still keeping the numbers down to a sufficiently small size to convince the Indians of their peaceful intentions. The expedition departed from the northern bank of the Missouri River, just north of St. Charles, Missouri, on May 21, 1804. Traveling in a heavily laden keelboat and two pirogues, the expedition only traveled three-and-a-half miles before stopping to camp for the night. Twenty-eight months later, the expedition returned to St. Louis. A total of forty-five men began the expedition. Others were added for a while on the journey but left before the expedition was completed. Thirty-three returned. One member died along the way of a “bilious colic,” which may have been appendicitis.   The party included William Clark’s African-American slave, York, and a French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, who was pregnant when she joined the expedition.   Sacagawea was a talented interpreter of Indian languages, and also skilled in finding edible plants on the westward journey. Her very presence in the party was beneficial in that Native American tribes did not believe a war party would contain a woman in its midst. This provided convincing evidence that the Corps of Discovery had peaceful intentions. Throughout the entire expedition, the party had only one lethal encounter with Native Americans. A band of Piegan Blackfeet Indians attacked the camp in an attempt to steal horses and weapons.   Two of the Blackfeet were killed in the battle.

The Corps of Discovery made slow progress up the Missouri River and into the Rocky Mountains. The expedition had to proceed on foot and on horseback for much of the way after learning that there was no water route through the mountains to the ocean. The expedition made its way to the Pacific coast by the December of 1805, when it voted to spend the winter at Fort Clatsop. The entire party participated in the decision, including York and Sacagawea,  perhaps marking the first time that an African-American slave and a Native American woman had participated formally in a decision of a federal governmental body.[6]

Lewis and Clark made their return in the spring of 1806. In July, Lewis took part of the company with him while Clark took the remainder to explore different paths within the territory of present-day Montana. The two groups re-joined one another in August in present-day North Dakota. The expedition proceeded back to St. Louis, where the party arrived on September 22. As Lewis scrambled out of his canoe, the first question that he had for a local resident was “When does the post leave?” Lewis was desperate to report to the president.[7]

Lewis had been directed by Jefferson to keep a journal of his discoveries. Clark also kept a journal, which he filled with descriptions of his observations, as well as fine illustrations of flora and fauna above, beneath, and beside his handwritten text on the pages of the journal.    Lewis traveled to Washington, D.C., to report directly to the president.   What was said at that meeting is unknown, but it is clear that Lewis pledged to write and publish a book that would report his findings.   Unfortunately, the book was never written. Jefferson offered Lewis an appointment as the governor of the territory of Louisiana. Jefferson no doubt expected that the position would provide income and security for Lewis as he authored his book. However, the sedentary position did not suit Lewis, who seemed unable to master administrative duties once the expedition was completed. He suffered from serious drinking problems, indebtedness, and acute melancholy. He died from gunshot wounds, probably by his own hand, while staying at an inn on a trip to Washington.[8]

Because of Lewis’s death and failure to complete his narrative about the expedition, much of the scientific, ethnographic, and geographic findings of the enterprise were not fully appreciated. Many of the discoveries of plants and animals that the Corps made were, for a time, lost. Those species were later re-discovered many years later. Sergeant Patrick Gass, a member of the expedition, did compose a book length narrative about the venture, but that volume did not contain much of the kind of discoveries that were of original interest to President Jefferson.    Francis Biddle, later the president of the Second Bank of the United States, conducted an “audit” of the enterprise and then was the primary, but uncredited author of the official history of the expedition, which appeared in two volumes. The second of the two volumes was devoted to the botanical and zoological discoveries of Lewis and Clark, but Biddle was neither an expert scientist nor a first-hand observer of the phenomena that he was to describe. Biddle was one of the great intellectuals of his age, but he was not scientifically trained and he could have benefited greatly from the elaboration that Lewis could have offered him had he lived. For these reasons, the significance of the expedition was not recognized in the first century after the return of the Corps of Discovery as it could have been and, in fact, as it has been in more recent years as more and more scholars have slowly uncovered more evidence of the events that took place.[9] Today, we can see that the Corps of Discovery accomplished much in the way of learning of the terrain, climate, and physical environment of the trans-Mississippi West.   The expedition learned much of the Native Americans who lived in that territory. This knowledge aided in the settlement and development of a massive land area on the North American continent. Obviously, those developments have had diverse implications for all involved, most notably for the Native Americans who lived there. Nevertheless, the Lewis and Clark expedition paved the way for the future transformation of much of what is now the United States.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of  Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University. He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/louisiana-lewis-clark/origins-of-the-expedition/jefferson-s-instructions-to-michaux/

[2] Ambrose, Stephen E.  1996. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.   New York: Simon & Schuster. Pages 133-136.

[3] Guinness, Ralph B. 1933. “Purpose of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 20 (January): 90–100.

[4] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meriwether-lewis-gets-his-marching-orders-96463431/

[5] Ronda, James P.  1991.  ‘A Knowledge of Distant Parts’: The Shaping of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.   Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Autumn): 4-19.

[6] Ambrose, Stephen E.  1996. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.   New York: Simon & Schuster. Pages 313-316.

[7] Ambrose, op cit.  Chapter 32.

[8]Ambrose, op cit.  Chapter 39

[9] Snow, Spencer. 2013. “Maps and Myths: Consuming Lewis and Clark in the Early Republic.” Early American Literature 48 (3): 671–708.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

The 1803 treaty signed in Paris brought a purchase by the United States for 828,000 square miles, doubling the nation’s size. Constitutional questions stirred disputes over how to best divide territory and keep the nation’s peace. Concurrently, the Louisiana Purchase helped sustain America’s growing need for agriculture, free flow of commerce along the Mississippi, and secure westward regions.

On June 12, 1823, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to William Johnson: “On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

Twenty years earlier, Jefferson had been in a bit of a quandary concerning this very topic. As the third President of the United States, he was presented with an enormous opportunity: nearly double the size of the nation by purchasing land offered by France at a bargain-basement price. But search the Constitution from top to bottom, side to side, Article 1 to Amendment 11, he could find no explicit power given the President to make such a purchase. At first blush, Jefferson concluded an amendment to the Constitution was required. In an August 1803 letter to John Dickinson, he wrote: “The General Government has no powers but such as the Constitution gives it.  It has not given it power of holding foreign territory, and still less of incorporating it into the Union. An amendment of the Constitution seems necessary for this.”

An amendment would have to be rushed through Congress. Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans were tantalizingly close to the 2/3 majority needed to pass an amendment in the House (they controlled 67 of 103 seats, or 65%), but they only held 14 of 32 seats in the Senate (43%).  The Federalists, still smarting from the drumming they took at the polls in 1800, were not at all interested in supporting Jefferson (sort of like today’s Democratic Party with President Donald Trump), so crossover votes were unlikely. Even if an amendment could get through Congress, it would take months to be ratified by the states; by then would this “deal of a lifetime” slip through their grasp? Would Napoleon Bonaparte have found another buyer? Otherwise, would Jefferson be required to “squeeze” new meaning out of the Constitution? The President could not pass this deal up, but what was he to do?

The ownership of the land was even in question. Totaling 828,000 square miles (530,000,000 acres) the land had been claimed at times by Britain, France and Spain. Its ownership in 1803 rested upon secret treaties and informal agreements. Everyone at the time could see that many states would eventually emerge from the acquisition (fifteen states to be precise) but to take control of both banks of the Mississippi, a river down which, to use Jefferson’s characterization “three-eighths of our territory must pass to market”[i] simply could not be passed up.

To solve his puzzle, Jefferson did the most practical thing he could think of. He consulted none other than “Father of the Constitution” himself, James Madison.  Fortunately for the President, Madison worked right down the street from the “President’s House.”[ii] Jefferson had wisely brought Madison into the administration as his Secretary of State.

Madison adroitly opined that the power of a nation to “extend its territories” was a power enjoyed by any nation “by treaties.” And the treaty power was, without question, enjoyed by the President of the United States.[iii]

James Monroe and Robert Livingston had previously been dispatched to France to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and Florida. The day after Monroe arrived in France (Livingston was already there) the pair had been summoned to the chambers of Talleyrand himself and offered the entirety of Louisiana. Unbeknownst to them, the day before, Napoleon had declared Louisiana “entirely lost” and ordered it be offered to the Americans. Napoleon needed the cash for yet another war with Britain. After some crafty negotiations, Monroe and Livingston were able to get the price down to $15 Million, still above the limits of their instructions, but “affordable.” The pair quickly signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty on April 30th 1803, and hurried home.

On October 31, 1803, the last day the Senate could do so without nullifying it, the treaty was ratified, making Louisiana part of the United States.

Twenty-five years later, the Supreme Court would finally confirm Jefferson and Madison’s decision by stating: “The Constitution confers absolutely on the government of the Union, the powers of making war, and of making treaties; consequently, that government possesses the power of acquiring territory, either by conquest or by treaty.”[iv]

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[i] April 18, 1802 letter to Robert Livingston.

[ii] The building would not be informally called the “White House” until shortly before the War of 1812 and not officially until action taken by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901.

[iii] Article 2, Section 2.

[iv] American Insurance Co. v. Canter (1828).

Guest Essayist: Jeanne McKinney

At the beginning of the American Revolution, the fractured colonies were up against the British Empire like a David against Goliath. For 150 years, the colonists had already experienced an unusual amount of freedom managing their own affairs. This was not because of Britain granting the freedoms, but their preoccupation with local affairs, foreign conflicts, inefficiency, geography, and neglect.

It wasn’t so much a planned rebellion but a continuing outrage against offenses that grew into a movement to protect and defend what the colonists had toiled hard for and held dear.

The American Revolution began in 1765. Some of the key causes were:

The Founding of the Colonies

French and Indian War

Taxes, Laws, and More Taxes

Protests in Boston

Intolerable Acts

Boston Blockade

Immediate and sometimes violent objections of the Americans to their new taxes both baffled and angered the British. The colonists’ position was that, while Parliament could legislate for the colonies,

taxes could only be levied through their direct representatives of whom they had none in Parliament. (1)

England sent troops to protect against mob violence when Americans refused to import the goods in order to avoid the duties. The Americans’ argument grew boldly stating equality, claiming their colonial assemblies stood on equal footing with Parliament. Their assertion was they alone could legislate for the colonies, while Parliament legislated for Great Britain. (2)(Marines in the Revolution, Charles R. Smith)

British naval and ground forces were placed strategically on a colonial chessboard when arguments and assertions transformed into a growing rebellion and King George’s colonial income stream was faltering. His radar was now switched on.

A never-before-tried precedent to go against a greater enemy for cause the world had never seen before. A collective body of colonists gave birth to the concept of a government by the people. They risked all to obtain inalienable rights and individual freedoms given from God to all men.

Before 1775, the colonists had no central government arsenals stocked with weapons and ammo, no formal armies or navies. Growing unity among the colonies spurred a mobilization of the crudest kind. Whether farmer or shopkeeper, educated or uneducated, they grabbed their rifles to form small groups and state militias. The colonists adapted slogans like “Join or Die,” and “Don’t Tread on Me.”

A fever swept through the patriots, willing to give what little they had for a rapidly evolving mission of independence from Britain.

America’s first Continental Army served under the helm of a tall, unstoppable military leader. Recruitment offered meager rewards and much hardship. General George Washington inspired and led, on his white horse, America’s rag tag patriot troops through defeat after defeat and horrific fighting conditions. With Washington at the front lines, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and other representatives in the Continental Congress had their fight to create an enduring foundation to a budding republic – a new way to live that would require external defense.

The Brits were well-equipped and had years of formal military training. Their success in pillaging and usurping foreign lands made them cocky, brutal, and unforgiving against any attempt to defy their deity, King George. Their many war ships blockaded the harbors of the colonies. The red and white lobsters, with cannons, bullets, and swords, would militarily take from the colonists what they claimed was theirs.

In the late 1700s, the British navy fueled their prowess with the ability to deliver expeditionary ground forces in numbers and navigate waterways into the interior. Washington, Adams, even Benedict Arnold (before he turned) knew they needed amphibious troop movement to expand their defenses and procure much-needed food, ammunition, and warm clothing. Washington’s pivotal victory crossing the Delaware in small boats to win the Battle of Trenton proves this.

The birth of expeditionary power projection.

“On 10 November 1775, the Second Continental Congress authorized the raising of two battalions of [Continental] Marines. From this small beginning we have seen the United States Marine Corps grow into a powerful force for the nation’s security.” (Marine Corps History Division, Brigadier General E. H. Simmons History Center).

Newly commissioned Captains Samuel Nicholas and Robert Mullan supposedly organized the first Marine Corps muster at Tun Tavern, a popular watering hole in Philadelphia.

(The following excerpts are summarized from interviews with Gunnery Sergeant Jon Holmes and Sgt. William Rucker at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS), Miramar, Feb 25, 27, 2020).

According to Rucker, the captains rounded everybody up, got them drunk and said we’ve got an offer – ‘you can come fight and protect your country, protect these ships’. They recruited people to see if it’s something they voluntarily wanted to do. Back then, that’s what distinguished the Marines from other branches.

“You weren’t mandated – [they said] you want to come join this fighting institution- come along with us,” says Rucker. One of the requirements was good moral character and rifle skills. They were supposed to be good shots.

Holmes states, “This isn’t a well-trained army that has been established for years. These are people who are tired of being taken advantage of – they don’t like the taxation without representation. They think they can achieve a better life for them and their families and for the future.”

When the leaders of the colonists formally declared their independence 2 July, 1776, John Adams believed it would be “the most memorable epocha in the history of America.” Essentially, the entire war against Britain was an open act of treason with death warrants if overrun or captured. To top it all off – where was the funding for the fight coming from? For years Britain’s East India Trading Company provided a well-established economy that funded Britain’s large navy.

“Then you have people who have been colonizing a frontier land; a farmer’s basic way of life and what they have is what they have to subsist with. The ammunition for their weapons, outside of their militias, is for hunting weapons,” says Holmes.

“Any ships they had were probably ‘tactically borrowed,’” he adds, “everything they had [to fight with] they had gotten from someone else…and they used it to great effect.”

On September 5, 1776, the Naval Committee published the Continental Marines uniform regulations specifying green coats with white facings (lapels, cuffs, and coat lining), with a leather high collar to protect against cutlass slashes and to keep a man’s head erect. The moniker “Leatherneck,” stemmed from that first uniform. Though the green color is attributed to the traditional color of riflemen, Colonial Marines carried muskets. More likely, green cloth was simply plentiful in Philadelphia, and it served to distinguish Marines from the red of the British or the blue of the Continental Army and Navy. (Wikipedia)

Holmes relates that the Continental Marines were originally tasked with security for the Navy. Other than safeguarding the ship during naval engagements, they were to specifically aim for officers on the enemy side.

“They were trained to remove those key positions of leadership so the enemy would fall apart,” says Holmes.

Today, leadership in the Marine Corps is passed down through the ranks. If one falls out- the next highest rank takes over and that dominoes down the lowest rank in the various units. That way there is always a leader to complete the mission and stay congealed as a force. That wasn’t really something that was taught back then.

Yet, in those early days as it is now in the Marine Corps, “Every man a rifleman.” Which one can surmise was a safeguard to protect something so very precious, vital and new as a free republic. The Marine Corps is the only branch of America’s armed forces that requires proficient rifle qualifications from all personnel.

Marine amphibious doctrine grew during the eight-year fight for American independence.

“The infant American Marine Corps was a threat to be reckoned with.” (Marine Corps History Division)

The first amphibious assault by Colonial forces came against the British during The Raid of Nassau, Bahamas, 3 March, 1776. During this naval operation, the Marines sailed there – raided it once and got the ammunition and other military supplies. Their main purpose was to get 200 barrels of gunpowder, but the Brits managed to get most of it off the island. Marines, not to be dissuaded from their goal, conducted a second raiding party and got more.

They also captured in April a small 6-gun schooner HMS Hawk and a merchant vessel carrying guns and gunpowder. (Military History Now)

Nobody thought the Colonists at the time would be capable of putting up any defense- much less mounting a raid and attacking one of the most superior naval powers at the time. The Raid of Nassau was the Marines’ first major victory where a very small organization went forth to take supplies from a much larger, more superior force.

“I think the biggest reason for that… is because they [the Marines] were underestimated,” says Holmes.

The Battle of Nassau was the first major victory for the Continental Marines. In December 1776, the Continental Marines were tasked to join Washington’s army at Trenton to slow the progress of British troops southward through New Jersey. Washington, unsure what to do with the Marines, added them to a brigade of Philadelphia militia. Though they were unable to arrive in time to meaningfully affect the Battle of Trenton, they were able to fight at the Battle of Princeton. (Wikipedia)

One of the Continental Marines’ final acts was escorting gold bullion from King Louis of France to start the first bank and treasury of the United States.

The Continental Marines served throughout the Revolutionary War and were disbanded in 1783 after the Treaty of Paris. In all, there were 131 Colonial Marine officers and probably no more than 2,000 enlisted Colonial Marines.

The American Revolution finally won, the navy and the army were also largely disbanded. The few ships in the young American Navy were sold or turned into merchant vessels. America no longer had the protection of the British navy and had to defend its own interests abroad. The idea of an American Navy was the subject of much debate between the Federalists who favored a strong navy and the anti-federalists who felt the money required for a navy would be better spent elsewhere. Repeated threats from France and the Barbary states of North Africa gave cause to consider resorting to more forceful measures to procure the security of American shipping interests. (Wikipedia)

The United States Marine Corps we know today was re-established formally on July 11, 1798.

Despite this, Nov. 10, 1775 is still considered to be the “birthday” of the U.S. Marines. Enemies of America have been underestimating Marines ever since the organization was formed. They repeatedly shock the world with ‘running towards bullets,’ showing tenacious aggression and fearless force. Fueled by steel-clad brotherly love, their motto “No man left behind,” is life itself.

These time-tested, elite warriors have established themselves throughout U.S. history as game changers on foreign battlefields.

Marines have participated in all wars of the United States, being in most instances first, or among the first, to fight. In addition, Marines have executed more than 300 landings on foreign shores and served in every major U.S. naval action since 1775. (Jan 2, 2020, Britannica.com).

1918: The Battle of Belleau Wood.

“Retreat, hell we just got here!” was the war cry of Capt. Lloyd Williams during World War I, 1918. He was advised to withdraw with the French who had had suffered greatly from a massive German assault in their quest to take France and win the war. Marine 5th and 6th regiments (nicknamed ‘devil dogs’) stood their ground – forcing the Germans to withdraw to Belleau Wood and Bouresches. (1) They then launched their assault into oncoming machine gun fire to clear the woods and recapture French soil.

“The Battle of Belleau Wood did not win the war, but it prevented the Allies from losing it,” said Alan Axelrod, author of Miracle at Belleau Wood: The Birth of the Modern U.S. Marine Corps.

“The Marines advanced from shipboard guard or constabulary forces of the 19th century into the multi-purpose force-in-readiness of the 20th and 21st centuries.” (2) (warontherocks.com)

1942: The Battle of Guadalcanal.

“On August 7, 1942, in the Allies’ first major offensive in the Pacific, 6,000 U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal and seized the airfield, surprising the island’s 2,000 Japanese defenders. Both sides then began landing reinforcements by sea, and bitter fighting ensued in the island’s jungles.” (Britannica.com)

The Battle of Guadalcanal set a powerful precedent, noted for the operational interrelationship of a complex series of engagements on the ground, at sea, and in the air. This marked a turning point for the Allies in the Pacific. (history.com)

1945: Battle of Iwo Jima.

Shortly after its attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan gained control over much of Southeast Asia and the central Pacific. World War II Commanding General Henry (Hap) Arnold wanted Iwo Jima to place B-29 fighters in favorable range of Tokyo, so that they could support bombing operations in the region. (1)

“There was no way we would have been able to make it to Japan and accomplish what we needed to do to win the war with the [Japanese-occupied] island chains. It was a constant threat for our aircraft potential threat for naval vessels, because the Japanese were using the islands to resupply and do strikes from.” (1b)

“With the partnership of the Navy, the Marines were able to go from island to island – seize it- go to the next objective – and take that. All along the way they are building supply lines for U.S. operations up to the enemy’s front lines.” (2b) (GySgt. Jon Holmes)

Adm. Chester Nimitz created a U.S. Joint Expeditionary Force of Navy and Marines to carry out Operation Detachment. February 19, 1945, Marines began to land on the beach of Iwo Jima in intervals and the rest is legend. The offensive was one of the deadliest conflicts in U.S. Marine Corps history.

Nearly 70,000 troops under the command of Maj. Gen Harry Schmidt were forced to kill the Japanese virtually to the last man because they refused to surrender. (2)

Marines twice raised the American flag on Suribachi’s summit. The second raising was photographed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Joe Rosenthal (AP), to become one of the most famous combat images of World War II. (3) (Britannica.com)

Nimitz said after the battle was won, “Of the Marines on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.” (USMCU)

1968: Tet Offensive:

During the Tet Offensive 85,000 troops under the direction of the North Vietnamese government carried out attacks against five major South Vietnamese cities, dozens of military installations, and scores of towns and villages throughout South Vietnam. The enemy did this to foment rebellion amongst the South Vietnamese population against U.S. involvement in the war. The size and scope of the communist attacks caught the American and South Vietnamese allies completely by surprise. (Britannica.com)

The Marines, used to jungle and guerilla warfare, were not prepared for the fighting style of house to house, street to street.

“That definitely changed our mindset on how we train and changed America’s mindset on how we train…Gave us our motto, “We fight in any clime and place.” It took a scope back to the Tet Offensive [to see that].” (Sgt. William Rucker)

The offensive was a crushing tactical defeat for the North, but it struck a sharp psychological blow that eroded support for the war among the American public and political establishment.

2004: The Battle of Fallujah 1 and 2.

The First Battle of Fallujah called “Operation Valiant Resolve,” was a U.S. military campaign during the Iraq War. The Iraq city of Fallujah was overrun with extremists and insurgents. Marines were tasked to pacify the city and find those responsible for the March 31 ambush and killing of four American military contractors.

Marine Cpl. Stephen Berge was in an abandoned factory in Fallujah when he felt the tides turning. He didn’t know at the time that this second battle of Fallujah he currently was in, also known as Operation Phantom Fury, would become known as the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. (Marine Corps Times).

The Second Battle of Fallujah is notable for being the first major engagement of the Iraq War fought solely against insurgents rather than the forces of the former Ba’athist Iraqi government, which was deposed in 2003.

When coalition forces (mostly U.S. Marines) fought into the center of the city, the Iraqi government requested that the city’s control be transferred to an Iraqi-run local security force, which then began stockpiling weapons and building complex defenses across the city through mid-2004.

Insurgency, counterinsurgency was a new kind of enemy and fighting. They hid in the shadows, wore no uniform, used civilians as shields, and were in the business of malevolent terror. They were not afraid to die, had no rules of engagement or sense of humanity in warfighting, and used the crudest methods to do the most explosive and lethal harm. Then brag about the innocent people they killed, including children.  https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/history-insurgency-iraqs-enduring-defeat-counterinsurgency-fught-123192/

2010: The Battle for Sangin.

In October 2010, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5) started clearing the Taliban insurgency from the Sangin District in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan.

Prior to that a full third of all British casualties in Afghanistan had occurred in the Sangin District…They were done in with death and injury, gladly turning it over to U.S. Marines.

The Helmand Valley was significant geography. A fertile green zone, the opium drug trade was booming and the Taliban had nestled into a stronghold. The Sangin crossroads fingered out to Kajaki Dam (electricity), Lashkar Gah (Helmand capital), and Kandahar. Dominating Kandahar put the insurgents that much closer to capital city, Kabul, just an RPG or two away from winning the war.

3/7 followed by 3/5 Marines were deployed to clear districts, kill the insurgents that were killing them, stop movement of weapons, ammunition and IED-making materials, open the roads, destroy weapons caches and insurgent hideouts, and hundreds of other tasks. 3/5 lived within feet of the people who wanted them dead. The missions were measured out among platoons, squads, and teams placed on somewhat exposed, but strategically located bases. Daily patrol demanded each Marine taking each step forward in the exact same place as the man ahead, while sweepers tried to unearth the hidden bombs.

Marines earned the respect of the Taliban by showing force and taking the fight to them.

U.S. Marine Corps accomplishments and sacrifices merit an immortal place in America’s history.

Similar observations can be made about the enduring, courageous character of a U.S. Marine in many other legendary battles not mentioned. All of which should be sobering reminders that victorious ends have come about through bloody means.

These points of pride left indelible marks on the Marines fighting in them – more than celebratory and triumphant accolades, but a sense of a harsh, unescapable reality that the environment of freedom can only exist when there are forces to sustain it. Marines need not prove who they are – their results do.

They are not only frightful and lethal when they need to be, but also serve humanitarian missions in natural disasters and disease outbreaks. They adapt to the calls of their country in any clime or place. Marines build vital global relationships with partners and allies who look to them for training. Because of their generous nature, they have helped other nations build their armies and security forces to be able to be ready, like them, for future conflicts. Marines have been one of the most enduring elements of the 20th and 21st centuries, shaping the world by winning its conflicts, securing stability, and building relationships among allies.

“The Army specialty is land warfare, the Air Force is sky space dominance, the Navy has the seas, and the Marine Corps focus on that amphibious ocean to [expeditionary] land aspect. WWII is a great example…if it’s impossible; Marines have found ways to do it.” (GySgt. Jon Holmes)

The Revolutionary War was the beginning of it. Even then they were looking at more than just sailors on ships. America’s various struggles and successes winning independence and sustaining it were and are transformational on the world stage. The Goliath, Britain, underestimated its David, America, slinging her way to freedom to become a shining example to all nations. America’s first Marines helped her do it and have been serving her best interests through generations.

Jeanne McKinney is an award-winning writer whose focus and passion is our United States active-duty military members and military news. Her Patriot Profiles offer an inside look at the amazing active-duty men and women in all Armed Services, including U.S. Marine Corps, Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard. Reporting includes first-hand accounts of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fight against violent terror groups, global defense, tactical training and readiness, humanitarian and disaster relief assistance, next-generation defense technology, family survival at home, U.S. port and border protection and illegal interdiction, women in combat, honoring the Fallen, Wounded Warriors, Military Working Dogs, Crisis Response, and much more. McKinney has won twelve San Diego Press Club “Excellence in Journalism Awards,” including seven First Place honors.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joshua Schmid

The Making of King Cotton: Eli Whitney’s Dogged Inventiveness

When one considers the great inventors of nineteenth-century America, few surpass Eli Whitney in both personal tenacity and the broader impact their works had on industrialization. Born on December 8, 1765 in Massachusetts, Whitney came of age during the American Revolution. As a boy, he enjoyed tinkering in his family’s workshop. One story tells that he stayed home on a Sunday to take apart his father’s watch while the rest of his family went to church. At the age of 12, Whitney created a violin—an incredible feat at such a young age. However, his tinkering was no mere hobby. The American Revolution was taking a toll on the colonial economy as men left their jobs to fight in the war or dedicated their trades to creating military equipment. Whitney heard that farmers around his home needed nails, and he soon created a forge to meet the demand.

After the American Revolution, Whitney studied and worked hard to pass entrance exams and pay to attend Yale. His intelligence and skills caught the eye of officials at the college, one of whom helped Whitney secure a job as a tutor in the South. The young man left his home area for South Carolina after graduation, but the job ended up falling through. Fortunately, Whitney had met Catherine Greene, the widow of Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene, on his way south and accepted a position on her plantation in Savannah, Georgia.

On the Greene plantation, the New Englander witnessed the troubles of Southern agriculture first-hand. The strand of cotton that was best adapted to grow throughout the South—known as green-seed cotton—was high quality but contained many seeds within the fiber. These seeds needed to be removed before the raw cotton could be sent to textile mills. Whitney discovered that no effective machinery existed to remove the seeds, requiring laborers do the work by hand. The young man immediately set about to find a viable solution, recognizing that a machine that could minimize the workload of removing seeds would be hugely profitable. Whitney partnered with Phineas Miller, the manager of the plantation, in developing the machine. The two quickly produced a crude model of what became known as the cotton gin. This machine used combs to pull the seeds out and mesh to collect them while straining the finished fiber out.

In October 1793, Whitney wrote to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to apply for a patent for his invention. Jefferson was very intrigued by the device, replying, “As the state of Virginia, of which I am, carries on household manufactures of cotton to a great extent, as I also do myself, and one of our great embarrassments is the clearing the cotton of the seed, I feel a considerable interest in the success of your invention.” Whitney and Miller received a patent in March 1794 and developed a plan to travel to plantations to use the gin on farmers’ cotton in exchange for a portion of the completed supply. However, the cotton gin was not difficult to replicate, and many began to steal the design for themselves despite the patent. A variety of litigation cases followed as Whitney attempted to uphold his patent rights. However, a loophole in the laws at the time prevented the inventor from winning any of his court battles until 1807, at which point only a single year remained on his patent. He pleaded to Congress for a patent renewal, requesting in a letter to be “admitted to a more liberal participation with his fellow citizens, in the benefits of [the cotton gin],” but was denied on two separate occasions.

The cotton gin inadvertently increased demand for slavery in the South to meet the demands for the production of “King Cotton,” increasing sectional tensions in the country over the issue of human bondage. Whereas many of the founders believed that slavery would die a natural death because it was being restricted to the South where tobacco stripped the land of nutrients, the cotton gin helped breathe new life into the “peculiar institution.” Cotton and slavery spread to the new southern states in the early nineteenth century, and the scourge of human bondage in the country would exist until after the Civil War.

Joshua Schmid serves as a Program Analyst at the Bill of Rights Institute.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: John Steele Gordon

Before independence there was little financial activity in the American colonies. Britain had forbidden the creation of banks and there were no corporations to issue stock and bonds. And while merchants kept their books in pounds, shillings, and pence, the actual money supply was a hodgepodge of foreign coins, warehouse certificates, scrip, and IOU’s.

With independence, that began to change. The Continental Congress issued paper money, called “continentals,” in massive amounts and this fiat money quickly depreciated into near worthlessness. Congress and the various states also issued bonds to help pay the costs of the Revolution. In 1782 the first bank was organized in Philadelphia. By 1790 there were three in operation under the new Constitution that had come into effect the previous year.

And Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, pushed through the new Congress a bill for the federal government to assume the debts of the states and to refund its own debt with bonds that were backed by revenue from the new tariff.

He also established the new Bank of the United States, modeled on the Bank of England to act as a central bank. It was to regulate the money supply, provide discipline for state-chartered banks, act as a depository for government funds, and loan money to the government.

Suddenly there were financial instruments—federal and state bonds as well as stock in new banks and insurance companies to be traded—and brokers began to do so.

A broker is someone who brings buyers and sellers together and takes a commission on the sale price. Only relatively recently has it, unmodified, come to mean someone who handles financial instruments. In the 1790’s New York brokers were often involved in a number of different areas. They might be a partner in a private bank, sell insurance, run a private lottery as well as handle securities trading.

While state and federal bonds were the meat and potatoes of the new securities brokerage, the “hottest” security was the stock of the new Bank of the United States. Capitalized at $10 million, a vast sum for that time and place. Twenty percent of the stock was to be held by the government while the rest was to be offered to the public.

Trading in the stock began on a when-issued basis in 1791. When it was issued in July of that year, it sold out almost immediately and began to rise, setting off the country’s first bull market. Short sales (the sale of borrowed stock in hopes of a decline in price), and puts and calls (the right to sell or buy a security at a certain price before a certain date) began at this time, greatly increasing the speculative possibilities.

Early trading took place in coffee houses and taverns (as well as on the street in good weather), but brokers also began holding auctions in their offices. In early 1792, John Sutton and his partner Benjamin Jay and several others decided to form a central auction at 22 Wall Street. Sellers would deposit the securities they wanted to sell and buyers would attend the auction and the auctioneers would take a commission on the sale price.

But the system soon collapsed as brokers would attend the auctions just to learn what the prices were and then offer the securities at a lower commission.

To fix that problem, on May 17th, 1792, a group of men gathered beneath a buttonwood tree (today, such trees are called sycamores) outside of 68 Wall Street and signed an agreement. (There is some doubt as to whether the agreement was actually signed beneath that tree, but it became a beloved Wall Street icon until it fell in a storm on June 14, 1865.)

The agreement read as follows: “We the Subscribers, Brokers for the Purchase and Sale of the Public Stock, do hereby solemnly promise and pledge ourselves to each other, that we will not buy or sell from this day for any person whatsoever, any kind of Public Stock, at a less rate than one quarter percent Commission on the Specie value and that we will give preference to each other in our Negotiations. In Testimony whereof we have set our hands this 17th day of May at New York, 1792.”

This is often regarded as the origin of the New York Stock Exchange, although the exchange would not be formally organized and given a constitution for another quarter of a century. Basically, the Buttonwood Agreement was a price-fixing arrangement among brokers not to undercut each other on commissions. And fixed commissions remained a feature of the Wall Street financial market until 1975, when the Securities and Exchange Commission abolished them, forcing brokers to compete in terms of price. The result was greatly reduced commissions and, therefore, greatly increased volume, bringing today’s Wall Street into being.

John Steele Gordon was born in New York City in 1944 into a family long associated with the city and its financial community. Both his grandfathers held seats on the New York Stock Exchange. He was educated at Millbrook School and Vanderbilt University, graduating with a B.A. in history in 1966.

After college he worked as a production editor for Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) for six years before leaving to travel, driving a Land-Rover from New York to Tierra del Fuego, a nine-month journey of 39,000 miles. This resulted in his first book, Overlanding. Altogether he has driven through forty-seven countries on five continents.

After returning to New York he served on the staffs of Congressmen Herman Badillo and Robert Garcia. He has been a full-time writer for the last twenty years. His second book, The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street, a history of Wall Street in the 1860’s, was published in 1988. His third book, Hamilton’s Blessing: the Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt, was published in 1997. The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power, 1653-2000, was published by Scribner, a Simon and Schuster imprint, in November, 1999. A two-hour special based on The Great Game aired on CNBC on April 24th, 2000. His latest book, a collection of his columns from American Heritage magazine, entitled The Business of America, was published in July, 2001, by Walker. His history of the laying of the Atlantic Cable, A Thread Across the Ocean, was published in June, 2002. His next book, to be published by HarperCollins, is a history of the American economy.

He specializes in business and financial history. He has had articles published in, among others, Forbes, Forbes ASAP, Worth, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pages, the Washington Post’s Book World and Outlook. He is a contributing editor at American Heritage, where he has written the “Business of America” column since 1989.

In 1991 he traveled to Europe, Africa, North and South America, and Japan with the photographer Bruce Davidson for Schlumberger, Ltd., to create a photo essay called “Schlumberger People,” for the company’s annual report.

In 1992 he was the co-writer, with Timothy C. Forbes and Steve Forbes, of Happily Ever After?, a video produced by Forbes in honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the magazine.

He is a frequent commentator on Marketplace, the daily Public Radio business-news program heard on more than two hundred stations throughout the country. He has appeared on numerous other radio and television shows, including New York: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns, Business Center and Squawk Box on CNBC, and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. He was a guest in 2001 on a live, two-hour edition of Booknotes with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN.

Mr. Gordon lives in North Salem, New York. His email address is jsg@johnsteelegordon.com.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter
U.S. Bill of Rights

In 1789, James Madison spoke on the House Floor introducing amendments to the U.S. Constitution, an attempt to persuade Congress a Bill of Rights would protect liberty and produce unity in the new government. Opposed to a Bill of Rights at first, Madison stated that the rights of mankind were built into the fabric of human nature by God, and government had no powers to alienate an individual’s rights. Having witnessed the states violating them, Madison realized in order to safeguard America’s freedoms, Congress needed to remain mindful of their role never to take a position of power by force over the people they serve.

There was probably no American more interested in what was taking place in Richmond, Virginia that brisk December morning in 1791 than James Madison. Christmas had come and gone and now Congress entered the last week of the year. The second-term U.S. Congressman from Virginia’s 5th Congressional District could only sit patiently in Mrs. House’s boarding establishment in Philadelphia and wait for a dispatch-rider carrying news from his home state. It must have been frustrating.

In the waning days of 1789, the Virginia Senate had outright rejected four of the proposed amendments, an ominous sign. The ratification by ten states was necessary (the admission of Vermont in March, 1791 bumped that up to eleven) and Virginia’s rejection did not bode well for Madison’s “summer project.”

Madison had single-handedly pushed the proposed amendments through a reluctant Congress during the summer of 1789, a Congress understandably focused on building a government from scratch. But push them through he did; a promise had to be kept.

Madison’s successful election to the First Congress under the new Constitution (by a mere 336 votes) had been largely due to a promise the future fourth President made to the Baptists of his native Orange County. “Vote for me and I’ll work to ensure your religious liberty is secured, not just here in Virginia but throughout the United States.” And vote for him they had.

Upon taking his seat in the First U.S. Congress, then meeting in New York,[1] “Jemmy” had encountered the ratification messages of the eleven states which had joined the new union. North Carolina and Rhode island would as well, eventually. Several of these ratification messages contained lengthy lists of proposed amendments which became Madison’s starting point. He whittled down the list, discarding duplicates and those with absolutely no chance for success, and submitted nineteen proposed amendments to Congress. These were “wordsmithed,” combined, some good ones inexplicitly discarded, and the lot reduced further to twelve, which were finally approved and submitted to the states for ratification on September 28, 1789.

Three states: New Jersey, Maryland and North Carolina quickly ratified almost all of the amendments before the end of the year. [2] South Carolina, New Hampshire, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island ratified different combinations of amendments in the first six months of 1790. And then things came grinding to a halt. The remaining four states would take no further action for more than a year.

Massachusetts, Connecticut and Georgia were dragging their feet. The three states did not fully ratify what we know today as the Bill of Rights until its sesquicentennial in 1939! The new state of Vermont ratified all twelve articles in early November, 1791, but Congress would not learn of that for two months. Who would provide the ratification by “three-fourths of the said Legislatures” needed to place the proposed amendments into effect?

Here at the end of 1791, things were finally looking promising. On November 14th President George Washington informed Congress that the Virginia House of Delegates had ratified the first article on October 25th, agreed to by the Senate on November 3rd. But what about the remaining eleven articles? Was that it? Although now ratified by Virginia, this first Article still lacked ratification by 11 states, so Virginia’s action had no real effect.

Unbeknownst to Madison and the rest of Congress, on December 5th, the Virginia House of Delegates had ratified “the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth articles of the amendments proposed by Congress to the Constitution of the United States.” Ten days later, the Virginia Senate concurred. It would be another seven days before Assembly President Henry Lee sent off the official notice of his state’s ratification to Philadelphia and several more days before it arrived.  On December 30th, President Washington informed Congress of Virginia’s action.

But wait. Vermont’s ratification had still not made its way from that northernmost state. Congress pressed on with other urgent matters. Finally, on January 18, 1792, Vermont’s ratification finally arrived.  With it, Congress realized that Virginia’s December ratification had indeed placed ten of the Amendments into operation.

The rest of America symbolically shrugged its shoulders and went about its affairs. In the words of historian Gordon S. Wood, “After ratification, most Americans promptly forgot about the first ten amendments to the Constitution.”[3] It would be nearly 70 years before Americans even began referring to these first ten amendments as a “Bill of Rights.” Today, we seek their protections frequently, and vociferously.  Bravo, Mr. Madison!

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Congress moved from New York to Philadelphia between August and December of 1790.

[2] New Jersey declined to ratify Article Two, until 1992.

[3] Quoted in James Madison and the struggle for the Bill of Rights. by Labunski, Richard E., Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 258.

Guest Essayist: James D. Best
Fifth, Second and First Constitutional Amendments with gavel

On September 25, 1789, the First Congress sent a group of amendments to the states for ratification. Seventeen amendments had been approved by the House, the Senate trimmed the list to twelve, and ten ended up being ratified by the states to become our revered Bill of Rights. With Virginia’s ratification on December 15, 1791, the first ten amendments were incorporated into the supreme law of the land.

Bills of rights were not new at the time of the Founding. The 1215 Magna Carta, the 1689 English Bill of Rights of 1689, and many American states had previously enacted declarations of rights into their state constitutions. Although the original Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights, the base document included a few rights interspersed throughout the text. Writ of habeas corpus could not be suspended—except when the country was under attack; no bill of attainder or ex post facto law could be passed at the national or state level; Americans were guaranteed a jury trial for criminal cases; there could be no religious test for federal office; no state law could impair the obligation of contracts; and the citizens of each state were entitled to the privileges and immunities of the citizens of every other state.

Individual rights were not a significant issue during the Constitutional Convention, but a Bill of Rights certainly became a major issue during ratification. The clamor for a Bill of Rights was an antifederalist political weapon against ratification. For many antifederalists, the real objection was that the Constitution gave too much power to the national government. This argument floundered, while a demand for a bill of rights gained enormous traction, so prominent anti-Federalists made vocal and repeated demands for a Bill of Rights.

Despite the clamor for a Bill of Rights, most Federalists continued to insist that one was not needed because the national government’s powers were restricted, and most state constitutions already possessed declarations of rights. As Hamilton explained in Federalist 84, “Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”

James Madison’s support for a bill of rights became crucial. At first, he objected, then became unsure, and finally became a forceful advocate. He came to believe that a Bill of Rights had become a political necessity. In his speech on June 8, 1789, he said, “It may be thought all paper barriers against the power of the community are too weak to be worthy of attention … yet, as they have a tendency to impress some … it may be one mean to control the majority from those acts to which they might be otherwise inclined.” Madison became a strong advocate for these amendments, but as these words reflect, he remained ambivalent philosophically.

Despite a modern perception that the first ten amendments bestow rights, it’s clear that the Bill of Rights is really a list of government prohibitions. The Founders did not believe in government benevolence and would never have accepted government as the arbiter of rights. Here are some of the restrictive clauses used in the first eight amendments:

Congress shall make no law

shall not be infringed

without the consent

shall not be violated

nor shall be compelled

the accused shall enjoy

nor be deprived

no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined

shall not be required

These phrases make clear that the Bill of Rights is a restraining order issued by the people against the national government. Natural rights are endowed by the Creator and the government is enjoined from interfering with these rights.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” –Declaration of Independence

Because the Founders feared that a Bill of Rights might impede liberty due to sins of omission, the 9th Amendment provided that, “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people.” The 10th Amendment further stated that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

These simple fifty words encapsulated the political philosophy of the Founders. Rights are not bestowed by the government, they are “endowed by their Creator” and reside with the people, and liberty depends on government operating within the restriction of enumerated powers delegated by a sovereign people.

Through the years, this sound philosophy has been diminished. The Supreme Court has succeeded in setting itself up as the arbiter of rights. So much so, many people have come to view government—specifically the Supreme Court—as the grantor and guarantor of rights. As the 9th Amendment states, rights exist that are not included in the first eight amendments, but the proper way to secure these rights from government interference is through laws at the state or national level or through the amendment process.

James D. Best, author of Tempest at Dawn, a novel about the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Principled Action, Lessons From the Origins of the American Republic, and the Steve Dancy Tales.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

Alexander Hamilton was America’s first Chief Operations Officer (COO).

Along with James Madison, Hamilton crafted the best operating system ever devised in human history. The U.S. Constitution provided a framework for sharing power and resolving differences. Madison and Hamilton provided details for operationalizing the Constitution with their Federal Papers essays. These Papers remain integral to interpreting the original intent for court cases to this day.

America was blessed with George Washington, the most indispensable person in our nation’s history. However, Washington needed to augment his phenomenal leadership skills with Hamilton’s management acumen. During the American Revolution, Hamilton translated Washington’s military strategy into clear and concise orders to his commanders. Now as President, Washington needed Hamilton to translate the Founders’ vision, and his policies, into reality.

With Jefferson still conducting diplomacy in Europe, Hamilton became not just the first Treasury Secretary, but effectively functioned as Washington’s “prime minister.” Decisions and documents, down to minute detail, flowed from Hamilton’s pen, creating the Executive Branch.

Hamilton’s love of administrative detail was matched by his devotion to commerce.

He was the only “modern man” among the Founders. Hamilton grew-up outside the American colonies and had a full appreciation of how nations interacted. As an accounting clerk for various trading companies in the West Indies, Hamilton developed a deep understanding for the inner workings of international trade and finance. His was America’s first “capitalist.” The systems and institutions he put in place laid the foundation for America becoming the greatest economic power in the world.

Hamilton’s greatest achievement was managing the onerous debts arising from the Revolutionary War. Each state incurred debt as their individual state militias needed to be paid for back wages. Both national and state level soldiers were paid in bonds or “IOUs.” After the war, many cash-strapped soldiers sold these bonds/“IOUs” to speculators for a fraction of their worth. Countless suppliers of their armed forces sued for nonpayment. The paper currency issued during the war was “not worth a Continental” and legions of war veterans, farmers, merchants, and craftsman (like blacksmiths, barrel makers, and carpenters) demanded payment, declaring Continental scrip were “IOUs.”

The total debt was $79 million: $54 million owed by the national government and $25 million owed by the states. Hamilton saw repayment of this debt as a strategic and moral imperative: “States, like individuals, who observe their engagements are respected and trusted, while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.”

Without a debt repayment strategy, the IOUs and lawsuits would continue to cripple America’s economy with unbridled speculation and uncertainty. Trust in the Federal government’s ability to meet its obligations had to be restored. Something had to be done. Hamilton declared, “In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit.”

Repayment of debts would allow America to enter into international agreements and borrow funds for investing in business ventures and stimulate economic growth. Hamilton observed that the American economy was stagnating from a limited money supply, deflation of land values, and no liquid capital. He also was concerned that if America was seen as financially broke and politically fragmented, foreign governments may lure individual states with separate debt financing arrangements.

The solution was to consolidate all public debt and set aside some of the steady federal revenue to service interest and payoff the principal. These were revolutionary and futuristic concepts in 1790.

It was his conviction that, “an assumption of the debts of particular states by the union and a like provision for them as for those of the union will be a measure of sound policy and substantial justice.”

Hamilton determined that consolidating all the Revolutionary War debt would accomplish several things. [1] It would bring order from chaos with one large debt instead of thousands of smaller ones. [2] It would simplify the management and repayment of the debt. [3] It would establish loyalty among the creditors and bond/IOU holders who would promote the stability and success of the federal government to assure their claims were paid.

Another aspect of Hamilton’s solution was that the U.S. Constitution gave the federal government the exclusive right to collect import duties. The Federal Government assuming state debt would prevent states from trying to return to the Article of Confederation when states levied duties on interstate commerce. Hamilton wanted to unify America and forge a national economy.

The critical element in assuming all debt was to have a unified America attract foreign investment through issuing federal government bonds. Such bonded debt would create investment partners who would forge trade relationships that allowed the U.S. Government to raise the necessary revenue to meet its debt obligations.  Hamilton sought to create a web of economic loyalties and relationships that bound everyone to supporting everyone’s economic wellbeing. In doing so, Hamilton would establish America as a major player in the modern international financial system.

Hamilton’s vision and how to implement it, was at the core of his fifty-one-page “Report on Public Credit” to the Congress.  It was his hope that Congress would pass the necessary legislation to authorize implementation of this integrated plan.  Any editions or subtractions would ruin his delicate balance between the various economic interests. Hamilton worried, “Credit is the entire thing. Every part of it has the nicest sympathy with every other part. Wound one limb and the whole tree shrinks and decays.”

Many in Congress rejected the plan as confusing and overly complex. Some saw it as too much like the way England financed its wars. Others declared it a bailout for speculators. Even Madison refuted it. As the assumption plan related to spending, its first test was in the House of Representatives.

The House debate was a sensation. Packed galleries watched Madison rail against the plan as a “betrayal of the American Revolution.” Hamilton, a member of the Executive Branch, mustered his votes behind the scenes. On April 12, 1790, the House defeated the debt assumption plan: 29 ayes to 31 nays.

The death of debt assumption found resurrection in the future location of the nation’s capital. Hamilton and northerners wanted the capital to remain in New York or return to Philadelphia. Southerners wanted it in the South and located outside an existing urban area. Jefferson saw this as a struggle between his vision of an agrarian nation versus the grime of industry. Madison and Henry Lee had purchased land along the Potomac River in the hopes that Jefferson would prevail. All sides wanted a final decision on the future of the Nation’s Capital, and symbolically the character of the nation. To break the stalemate, the key players, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and several others gathered for dinner on June 20, 1790, at Jefferson’s townhouse in New York City.

After much food, libations, and discussion a deal was struck. The Nation’s Capital would be along the banks of the Potomac between Georgetown in Maryland and Alexandria in Virginia. In exchange for Hamilton convincing northerners to support this location, Jefferson and Madison would support passage of Hamilton’s Debt Assumption plan.

On July 10, 1790 the House passed the Residence Act moving the temporary Capital back to Philadelphia and designating a ten-square mile area along the Potomac as the permanent Capital. The House then passed the Assumption bill on July 26. The Senate approved the plan on August 4, 1790.

Senator Daniel Webster placed Hamilton’s achievement into historical perspective:

“The fabled birth of Minerva from the brain of Jove was hardly more sudden or perfect than the financial system of the United States as it burst forth from the conception of Alexander Hamilton.”

Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

On September 11, 1789, the Senate confirmed President George Washington’s appointment of Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury.  Hamilton wasted no time and worked all weekend to address immediate financial concerns and spent the next few years formulating the financial policies to engage in nation-building for the new republic.

As one of the primary authors of the Federalist and as a key delegate to the New York Ratifying Convention, Hamilton had been instrumental in winning ratification of the new Constitution strengthening the national government. During the 1790s, he would use the constitutional authority of that new government to build a lasting republic.

Hamilton’s visionary financial plan was the foundation of his nation-building in the 1790s. He wanted to establish the credit of the United States and encourage economic growth through a national bank. While he wanted to support a strong manufacturing base, he sought to integrate merchants, artisans, planters, farmers, and shippers from different sections of the country into a unified national economy.  Strong economic growth would allow the young republic to build a strong national security state to survive in a world of contending empires.  He believed that the soundness of the nation’s finances was essential for American prosperity and political stability for the national honor and future greatness.

The first part of the plan was to remedy the teetering financial footing of the new nation. President Washington thought the issue was of central importance to the new nation as he told Congress in his first State of the Union address. He said it was a “measure in which the character and permanent interests of the United States are so obviously and so deeply concerned.” In the fall, Congress had requested that the new treasury secretary submit a Report on Public Credit, which Hamilton did on January 14, 1790.

In the report, Hamilton wrote that the public debt totaled an estimated $79 million. He thought that it was a matter of national honor and natural law that the United States meet its financial obligations and the “punctual performance of contracts.” Practically, the good faith and respectability of the country was at stake.

A solid public credit in Hamilton’s estimation would result in many benefits. It would restore confidence in the United States. The country would enjoy lower interest rates and borrow on easier terms, freeing up capital for productive investment. The public credit would encourage domestic and foreign trade and thereby prosperity for all sectors of the economy. The public credit would “cement more closely the union of the states” and provide “security against foreign attack.”

The plan aroused a significant amount of opposition. The first major controversy was that some states had paid their Revolutionary War debts and others had not. Another source of contention was that many veterans had been paid in Continental securities but had sold the certificates when wartime inflation caused their value to drop. Speculators had bought them for ten or twenty cents on the dollar and would seemingly gain from gambling on the “distresses” of the soldiers.

Hamilton wanted to redeem the certificates of the current holders of the debt as a matter of contracts and justice. He also had a plan for the “assumption” of the state debts by the national government. He thought the costs of the war should be shared equally by all and wanted to empower the national government to collect the revenue to extinguish the debt gradually. He thought that “the proper funding of the present debt, will render it a national blessing” because it would restore the public credit and promote the productive engines of the American economy.

James Madison helped lead the opposition to the plan in the House of Representatives. He was particularly concerned by what he considered to be injustice against the Revolutionary War veterans who were supposedly victims of speculators. He also thought that a “public debt is a public curse.” Madison and other congressmen such as Representative William Maclay and Senator James Jackson used revolutionary ideology to criticize the proposal as encouraging rapacious speculators, vice, corruption, and political centralization that threatened republican self-government.

In late June, Thomas Jefferson hosted a dinner for Hamilton and Madison in which they helped to hammer out the Compromise of 1790 in which Hamilton won his financial plan and southerners won a capital in Washington, D.C. In July, after much debate and controversy, Congress eventually passed his plan for the federal government to assume the Revolutionary War debts of the states as well as the tariffs and excise taxes he wanted gradually to extinguish the debt.

In December, Hamilton submitted another major part of his financial vision for the country with his Report on a National Bank. Congress more easily passed the National Bank to circulate currency and lend money to promote economic growth. Washington was unsure of the constitutionality of the bank and solicited opinions from his cabinet because he took seriously his presidential duty only to sign bills that were constitutional. He sided with Hamilton’s more expansive view of the Necessary and Proper Clause that the bank was related to several other congressional powers in Article I, Section 8.

In a few short years, Hamilton’s triumph was vindicated by a thriving, dynamic economy. Hamilton successfully used the federal government to provide stability and order to the financial system that allowed individuals to thrive in the private free market. In the 1790s, Hamilton and Washington established the finances of the new nation and shaped the American regime of republican liberty and self-government.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Craig Bruce Smith

From the United States capitol of New York City’s Federal Hall, Congress passed one of the earliest acts of the seven-months-old federal government: a pivotal piece of legislation for the defense of the new nation and its people.

Passed on September 29, 1789 and approved by President George Washington, the act legally formalized a national army. In so doing, the some hundred congressmen and senators formally rejected the deep Anglo-American fear of a standing army assuming dictatorial control.

Technically, this moment could be considered the birth of the modern US Army, as it was done under US Constitution of 1787 that we still follow today.[1] However, there were older variants of the army under the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation. So when was the US Army actually born?

Wordily titled, “An Act to recognize and adapt to the constitution of the United States, the establishment of the troops raised under the resolves of the United States in Congress assembled and for other purposes,” the 1789 bill voted into tangible existence the military alluded to in the US Constitution.[2] Only ratified the previous year, the Constitution frequently refers to war (and a navy and militias), but only offers a single mention of an army in Article 2, Section 2, which outlines the powers of the executive branch. Without clearly creating any such organization, the document merely mentions: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”[3]

Though legally created in 1789, the US Army’s true roots begin earlier. The colonies had long embraced a tradition of local militias and maintained the deep fear of standing armies that affected the British Empire since the time of Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War. But in the American Revolution, an army became a necessity to defend the people against British hostility.

On April 19, 1775, fighting between the British army and colonial militias broke out in Massachusetts at Lexington and Concord. It didn’t take long before Massachusetts patriot and future major general Dr. Joseph Warren wrote to the newly convened Second Continental Congress sitting in Philadelphia that British designs to “to ruin and destroy the inhabitants of this colony” had made “the establishment of an army indispensably necessary.” Warren pleaded with Congress “that a powerful Army, on the side of America” was “the only mean left to stem the rapid Progress of a tyrannical Ministry. Without a force, superior to our Enemies, we must reasonably expect to become the Victims of their relentless fury.”[4] Despite clearly linking the fighting in his home colony to the “Cause of America,” there was still debate about committing military support and the actual raising of an army. Was this really America’s war?

As colonial militias became a “New England Army” and the city of Boston was besieged, petitions of peace and questions of independence were considered by Congress, while they also made recommendations to logistically aid the colonial forces in Massachusetts and encouraged other colonies to do the same.[5] The term Continental Army was used as early as June 3, 1775, though no such organization formally existed.[6] Men like Warren and Massachusetts delegate John Adams had been adamant that the New England militias needed Congressional support. Warren wrote, clearly understanding Anglo-American fears of the unchecked authority of a standing army, “we tremble at having an army (although consisting of our countrymen) established here without a civil power to provide for and control them.”[7]

Finally, on June 14, 1775, Congress created the Continental Army out of a growing sense of unity and necessity. Congress also created an oath for soldiers and officers that placed the army under civilian governmental control: “I have, this day, voluntarily enlisted myself, as a soldier, in the American continental army…And I do bind myself to conform, in all instances, to such rules and regulations, as are, or shall be, established for the government of the said Army.”[8]

A five-person committee (George Washington, Philip Schuyler, Silas Deane, Thomas Cushing, and Joseph Hewes) was promptly assembled to create the named rules and regulations. The next day Colonel Washington, famed for his service in the French and Indian War, was “unanimously elected” and commissioned as the Continental Army’s commander-in-chief.[9] Though there were others who desired the post, Washington’s Virginian roots helped bridge a divide between the northern and southern colonies. While simultaneously declaring his reluctance to accept, Washington donned his military uniform and appeared in front of Congress to declare he was ready and willing to serve. Washington affirmed he would submit himself to congressional authority and “enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service and for the support of the glorious cause” of American liberty.[10]

Leaving immediately for Boston, Washington took command in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 3, 1775 shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill. Almost from his first moment in command, Washington constantly promoted civilian supremacy over the army and demanded “a due observance of those articles of war, established for the government of the army.”[11] In surrendering his commission back to Congress at the conclusion of the war in 1783 (along with the near complete demobilization of the army itself), he alleviated fears of a dictator backed by a standing army and firmly established the legacy of civilian supremacy. This is arguably the greatest moment in American history.

A year later on June 3, 1784, Congress resolved under the Articles of Confederation (America’s first constitution) to create the peacetime Regular Army comprised of only 700 men (also known as the First American Regiment) for the purpose of “securing and protecting the northwestern frontiers” after acquiring new lands from Britain after the Peace of Paris.[12] But the military proved ineffective under the Articles, because states had more power than the federal government. Partly in response to the failure of the government and its forces to suppress rural uprisings, such as in western Massachusetts’ Shays’ Rebellion, a new constitutional convention was called.

The 1789 congressional act continued the intent of the army as outlined in 1784 and 1775 as it was designed to “protect the inhabitant of the frontier” and “be governed by the rules and articles of war which have been established by the United States in Congress.”[13]

The act also created the oath of service that spelled out civilian supremacy and marked the military’s loyalty to the Constitution and the government — not to an individual: “…I will support the constitution of the United States…against all enemies…and to observe and obey the orders of the President.”[14] A variation of this oath still guides the Army today.[15]

A force of 700 soldiers unsurprisingly proved ineffective for the growing nation. In 1792, the army was again structurally reformed and enlarged as the Legion of the United States before finally adopting the name the “army of the United States” or US Army in 1796.[16]

So when was the Army as we know it today founded? 1775, 1784, 1789, 1792, or 1796? The answer depends on if you take a literal or spiritual interpretation.

Though legally created in 1789 under the current Constitution, the US Army instead chooses the spirit of liberty drawn from the American Revolution and the creation of the Continental Army. After all, it is these very ideals of liberty that continue to guide its soldiers and officers, and the entire nation.

In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower, former five-star general and Supreme Allied Commander, signed an executive order for the creation of a US Army flag that prominently featured the date “1775” and declared it a “suitable design and appropriate for adoption.”[17] Today, the US Army continues to celebrate June 14, 1775 as its official “birthday” with much fanfare, memorials, military balls, and cake.[18]

Craig Bruce Smith is a historian and the author of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era. For more information, visit www.craigbrucesmith.com or follow him on Twitter @craigbrucesmith. All views are that of the author and do not represent those of the Federal Government, the US Army, or Department of Defense.

[1] For more work on the history of the US Army, also used as references throughout this article: Matthew S. Muehlbauer and David J. Ulbrich. Ways of War: American Military History from the Colonial Era to the Twenty-First Century. (New York: Routledge, 2014); Richard Stewart ED., American Military History. Volume I. (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2009); David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing.  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), Ch. 1; Richard H. Kohn. Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783-1802. (New York: Free Press, 1975); Allen R. Millett and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States. (New York: Free Press, 2012).

[2]“An Act to recognize and adapt to the constitution of the United States, the establishment of the troops raised under the resolves of the United States in Congress assembled and for other purposes,” 29 September 1789. https://history.army.mil/books/RevWar/ss/repdoc.htm

[3] US Constitution, 1787, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=9&page=transcript

[4] Joseph Warren to the Continental Congress, 3 May 1775, Journals of the Continental Congress.

https://memory.loc.gov/cgibin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(jc0026)):

[5] John Adams, Autobiography, June-August 1775, Massachusetts Historical Society. https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=A1_20&rec=sheet&archive=&hi=&numRecs=&query=&queryid=&start=&tag=&num=10&bc=/digitaladams/archive/browse/autobio1.php

[6] “Saturday, June 3, 1775 and “Saturday, June 10, 1775,” Journals of the Continental Congress.

[7] Joseph Warren to the Continental Congress, 16 May 1775, Journals of the Continental Congress.  https://memory.loc.gov/cgi bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(jc00225)):; Adams, Autobiography.

[8] “Wednesday June 14, 1775,” Journals of the Continental Congress, https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(jc00235)):

[9] “Thursday June 15, 1775,” Journals of the Continental Congress, https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(jc00236)):

[10] George Washington, “Address to the Continental Congress,” 16 June 1775, Founders Online. https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%20Author%3A%22Washington%2C%20George%22%20Dates-From%3A1775-06-14&s=1111311111&r=7

[11] General Orders, 4 July 1775, Founders Online. https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%20Author%3A%22Washington%2C%20George%22%20Dates-From%3A1775-06-14&s=1111311111&r=26

[12] “Thursday, June 3, 1784,” Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. 27, p. 530

[13] “An Act to recognize…the establishment of the troops…,”

[14] First Congress, Session I, Ch. 27. Resolutions, 1789 in The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America. (Boston: Little and Brown, 1845,) p. 95-96.

[15] US Army, “Oath of Enlistment,” https://www.army.mil/values/oath.html and “Oath of Commissioned Officers,” https://www.army.mil/values/officers.html

[16] A.J. Birtle. “The Origins of the Legion of the United States,” the Journal of Military History. (Vol. 67, No. 4, October 2003,) pp. 1249-1261; Fourth Congress, Session I, 1796, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/4th-congress/c4.pdf

[17] Dwight Eisenhower, 12 June 1756, Executive Order 10670, National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/10670.html

[18] John R. Maass, “June 14th: The Birthday of the U.S. Army,” US Army Center of Military History, https://history.army.mil/html/faq/birth.html; “Army Birthdays,” https://history.army.mil/faq/branches.htm

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
George Washington, presided over the first Continental Congress; Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War; first President of the United States; painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1796.

Two weeks after the death of George Washington on December 14, 1799, his long-time friend General Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee delivered a funeral oration to Congress that lauded the deceased as, “First in war- first in peace- and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life; pious, just, humane, temperate and sincere; uniform, dignified and commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him, as were the effects of that example lasting.” The Jeffersonian newspaper of Philadelphia, The Aurora, had a rather different opinion than those countrymen. Sounding like his current counterparts in their sentiments about today’s President, the publisher declared on Washington’s retirement from office in 1797, “[T]his day ought to be a jubilee in the United States … for the man who is the source of all the misfortunes of our country, is this day reduced to a level with his fellow citizens.”

Each author likely could point to examples to buttress his case. Washington wore many hats in his public life, and his last service, as President from 1789 to 1797, had its shares of controversies. Washington kept his private life just that to his best abilities, with the result that it soon became mythologized. In public, Washington was reserved (or “dull,” to his detractors), dignified (or “stiff,” to his detractors), and self-disciplined. Yet his usually even-tempered nature occasionally flared, which few were willing to risk. According to Samuel Eliot Morison, during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton bet Gouverneur Morris a dinner that the latter would not approach Washington, slap him on the back, and say, “How are you today, my dear General?” Morris, the convention’s jokester, took the bet, but after the look that Washington gave him upon the event, professed that he would never do so again for a thousand dinners. Washington’s formality had its limits. A Senate committee proposed that the official address to the President should be, “His Highness the President of the United States of America and the Protector of the Rights of the Same.” The Senate rejected this effusive extravagance, and Washington was simply addressed as Mr. President.

On a later occasion, Morris wrote Washington, “No constitution is the same on paper and in life. The exercise of authority depends on personal character. Your cool, steady temper is indispensably necessary to give firm and manly tone to the new government.” Not only is this a correct observation about constitutions in general. A formal charter, the “Constitution” as law, is not all that describes how the political system actually operates, that is, the “constitution” as custom and practice. It is particularly true about Article II of the Constitution of 1787, which establishes the executive branch and delineates most of its powers. While some of those powers are set out precisely, others are ambiguous, such as the “executive power” and “commander-in-chief” clauses.

In several contributions to The Federalist, most thoroughly in No. 70, Hamilton explained how the Constitution created a unitary executive. He stressed the need for energy and for clarity of accountability that comes from such a system. In No. 67, he ridiculed “extravagant” misrepresentations and “counterfeit resemblances” by which opponents had sought to demonize the President as a potentate with royal prerogatives. Still, it has often been acknowledged that the Constitution sets up a potentially strong executive-style government. Justice Robert Jackson in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer in 1952 described the President’s real powers, “The Constitution does not disclose the measure of the actual controls wielded by the modern presidential office. That instrument must be understood as an Eighteenth-Century sketch of a government hoped for, not as a blueprint of the Government that is…. Executive power has the advantage of concentration in a single head in whose choice the whole Nation has a part, making him the focus of public hopes and expectations…. By his prestige as head of state and his influence upon public opinion, he exerts a leverage upon those who are supposed to check and balance his power which often cancels their effectiveness.” Washington was keenly aware of his groundbreaking role and used events during his time in office to define the constitutional boundaries of Article II and to shape the office of the President from this “sketch.”

Washington’s actions in particular controversies helped shape the contours of various ambiguous clauses in Article II of the Constitution. He shored up the consolidation of the executive branch into a “unitary” entity headed by the President and guarded its independence from the Congress. From the start, Washington was hamstrung by the absence of an administrative apparatus. The Confederation had officers and agents, but due to its circumscribed powers and lack of financial independence, it relied heavily on state officials to administer peacetime federal policy. The new Congress established various administrative departments, which quickly produced a controversy over the removal of federal officers. Would the President have this power exclusively, or would he have to receive Senate consent, as a parallel to the appointment power? The Constitution was silent. After much debate over the topic in the bill to establish the Departments of State and War, a closely-divided Congress assigned that power to the President alone. Some opponents of the law objected that the President already had that power as chief executive, and that the statute could be read as giving him that power only as a matter of legislative grace, to be withdrawn as Congress saw fit.

Even if this removal power was the President’s alone by implication from the executive power in Article II, the same analysis might not apply to other officers. Congress had been clear to note that the departments in the statute were closely tied to essential attributes of executive power, that is, foreign relations and control over the military during war. The position of the Treasury Secretary, on the other hand, was constitutionally much more ambiguous, given Congress’s preeminent role in fiscal matters. The Treasury Secretary was a sort of go-between who straddled Congress’s power over the purse and the President’s power to direct the administration of government. The law that created the Treasury Department required the Secretary to report to Congress and to “perform all such services relative to the finances, as he shall be directed to perform.”

This implied that the Secretary was responsible to Congress rather than the President. If followed with other departments, this would move the federal government in direction of a British-style parliamentary system and blur the separation of powers between the branches. Washington resisted that trend, but his victory in the removal question was incomplete. It was not until the Andrew Jackson administration that the matter was settled. Jackson removed two Treasury Secretaries who had refused his order to transfer government funds from the Second Bank of the United States. While the Senate censured him for assuming unconstitutional powers, Jackson’s position ultimately prevailed and the censure was later rescinded. Still, controversy over the removal of cabinet heads without Senatorial consent flared up again after the Civil War with the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 and led to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. It was not until 1926 in Myers v. U.S. that the Supreme Court acknowledged the President’s inherent removal power over executive officers.

A matter of much greater immediate controversy during the Washington administration was the President’s Neutrality Proclamation in 1793. The country was in no position, militarily, to get between the two European powers fighting each other, Great Britain and the French Republic. To stave off pressure from both sides, and from their American partisans, to join their cause, Washington declared the United States to be neutral. Domestic critics charged that this invaded the powers of Congress. Hamilton, ever eager to defend executive power, wrote public “letters” under the appropriately clever pen name “Pacificus.” He set forth a very broad theory of implied powers derived from elastic clauses in Article II, primarily the executive power clause. In light of those powers and the President’s position as head of the executive branch, the President could do whatever he deemed necessary for the well-being of the country and its people, unless the Constitution expressly limited him or gave the claimed power to Congress. In this instance, until Congress declared war, Washington could declare peace.

Hamilton’s position made sense, especially as Congress met only a few weeks each year, while the President could respond to events more quickly. However, Hamilton did not go unchallenged. At the urging of Jefferson, a reluctant James Madison wrote his “Helviticus” letters that presented a much more constrained view of those same constitutional clauses. Hamilton’s asseverations have generally carried the day, although political struggles between Congress and the President over claimed executive excesses have punctuated our constitutional history and continue to serve as flashpoints today. Hamilton’s theory, and Washington’s application thereof, cemented the “unitary executive” conception of the presidency.

While generally silent on foreign affairs, the Constitution does address treaties. The power to make treaties was part of the federative power of the British monarch. Thus, at least from Hamilton’s perspective, the President could conduct foreign affairs and make treaties as the sole representative of the country. However, constitutional limits must be observed. Thus, the Senate has an “advice and consent” role. Originally, this was understood to require the President to consult with the Senate on negotiating treaties before he actually made one.

Washington tried this approach early in his administration. He and Secretary of War Henry Knox appeared before the Senate to discuss pending treaty negotiations with the Creek Indians. Rather than engaging the President and Knox, the Senate referred the matter to a committee. Washington angrily left, declaring, “This defeats every purpose of my coming here.” Twice more he sent messages to get advice on negotiations. Receiving no responses, Washington gave up even those efforts. Since then, Presidents have made treaties without prior formal consultation with the Senate. The Senate’s role now is to approve or reject treaties through its “consent” function. Of course, informal discussions with individual Senators may occur. The Senate’s similar formal advice role for appointments of federal officers likewise has atrophied.

Washington also used constitutional tools to participate effectively in domestic policy. For one, the Constitution obliged the President to deliver to Congress from time to time information on the state of the union and to recommend proposals. Washington used this opportunity for an annual report that he presented in person at the opening of each session of Congress. Presidents have continued this tradition, although, beginning with Jefferson, they no longer appeared personally until Woodrow Wilson revived the practice.

Another such tool was the President’s qualified veto over legislation. A potentially powerful mechanism for executive dominance, early Presidents used it sparingly. The controversy was over the permissible basis of a veto. Could it be used for any reason, such as political disagreement with the legislation’s policy, or only for constitutional qualms? Washington sympathized with the latter position, advocated by Jefferson. On that ground, he first vetoed an apportionment of the House of Representatives in 1791 that he believed violated the Constitution’s prohibition against giving a state more than one representative for every 30,000 inhabitants. Andrew Jackson eventually used the veto for purely political reasons, which has become the modern practice.

One more constitutional evolution that Washington set in motion involved government secrecy and the President’s right to withhold information from Congress and the courts, a doctrine known as “executive privilege.” It appears nowhere in the Constitution, but was recognized under the common law. There are two broad aspects to this doctrine. One is to protect the confidentiality of communications between the President and his executive branch subordinates. The other is to guard state secrets in the interest of national and military security. Again, under Hamilton’s implied powers, the President needs such privilege to carry out the duties of his office and to protect the independence of the executive branch. Two events during Washington’s administration gave an early shape to this doctrine.

In October, 1791, General Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory took 2,000 men, including the entire regular army plus several hundred militia, to build a fort to counter attacks by an alliance of Indian tribes supported by the British. On November 4, St. Clair’s force, down to about 920 from desertion and illness, was surprised by the Indians and suffered 900 casualties in the rout, the great majority of them killed. The Indians also killed the 200 camp followers, including wives and children, in what became the worst defeat of the American army by Indians. To no one’s surprise, the House ordered an inquiry and sought various documents from the War Department relating to the campaign.

Washington consulted his cabinet in what was perhaps the first meeting of the entire body. With the cabinet’s agreement, Washington refused to turn over most of the requested documents on the ground that they must be kept secret for the public good. Thus was the state secrets doctrine incorporated into American constitutional government. A committee in the House eventually exonerated St. Clair and blamed the rout on poor planning and equipping of the force. The defeat of St. Clair was reversed by General Anthony Wayne with a larger force of 2,000 regulars and 700 militia in August, 1794, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. That victory produced a peace treaty, which ended the Indian threat.

The second occurred when the House demanded that the administration disclose to them the instructions Washington had given to American negotiators regarding the unpopular Jay Treaty of 1794 with Great Britain. The President declined on grounds of confidentiality, relying on the Constitution’s placement of the treaty power in the President and Senate. The flaw with Washington’s argument was that the House had to appropriate funds required by the treaty. The House insisted on receiving the documents to carry out its constitutional appropriations function. Washington stood his ground, and the House grudgingly dropped the matter.

Any overview of the Washington administration requires at least a brief mention of the influence of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had long enjoyed Washington’s support, well before he became Secretary of the Treasury. His influence was well-earned. It is not uncommon for historians to refer to the United States of the 1790s as Hamilton’s Republic. Perhaps his signal achievement were his reports on the public credit and on manufactures, which Congress had asked him to prepare. The former, which he submitted on January 14, 1790, recommended that the foreign and domestic debt of the United States be paid off at full value, rather than at the depreciated levels at which the notes were then trading. As well, the United States would assume the states’ outstanding debts. The entirety would be funded at par by newly-issued bonds paying 6% interest. Import duties and excise taxes imposed under Congress’s new taxing power would provide the source to pay the interest and principal. Congress narrowly approved Hamilton’s proposal after he struck a deal with Jefferson that would place the new national capital in the South in 1800. The foreign debt was paid off in 1795 and the domestic debt forty years later.

The plan also established the Bank of the United States, modeled broadly on the Bank of England and the abortive Bank of North America, a venture by Robert Morris and Hamilton under the Articles of Confederation. Among other functions, the Bank would stabilize monetary excesses and protect American credit rating. Congress approved the Bank Bill in February, 1791. Hamilton’s recommendations in his Report on Manufactures, presented at the end of 1791, were not accepted by Congress. They eventually became the foundation for protectionist policies in favor of nascent domestic industries in the nineteenth century.

Washington’s last contribution to American constitutional development was his refusal to serve more than two terms. He had agreed only reluctantly even to that second term. His retirement was not the first time he had left office voluntarily even though he had sufficient standing to retain power. Years earlier, he had surrendered his command of the Army to Congress at the end of the Revolutionary War. The Constitution was silent on presidential term limits. Indeed, Hamilton had argued against them in The Federalist. By leaving the Presidency after eight years, Washington established the two-term custom that was not violated until Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 election. Fear of such “third-termites,” made worse by FDR’s election to a fourth term, soon produced the 22nd Amendment, which formalized the two-term custom.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

"We The Future" Contest Best Middle School Song, Composed by Daniela Staton

A new country needs rules they say

To govern and protect the people

So our founders back in 1787

Created the rules that affect us today

 

The Constitution explains how our government works

Each part with a specific role

Three branches to check and balance each other, with

Legislative, Judicial, Executive

 

Our Constitution is the foundation

That binds us and allows us to be free

We have many different rights

To help us live peacefully.

 

So important is how our Constitution changes

Amendments are the primary way

That reflect how our nation rearranges

So that every person has a say

 

The first ten of these amendments are the Bill of Rights

These allow us to freely speak,

Choose our own religion

And give us the basic foundation so not be weak

,

They give us the right to bear arms to protect ourselves,

The right to peacefully assemble to let our voices be heard

The right against unreasonable searches or seizures

The right to a speedy and public trial

 

Our Constitution is the foundation

That binds us and allows us to be free

We have many different rights

To help us live peacefully.

 

 

 

Guest Essayist: James D. Best
Signing of the Constitution - Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, painting by Howard Chandler Christy, on display in the east grand stairway, House wing, United States Capitol.

James Madison took extensive notes during the Constitutional Convention. Monday, September 17, 1787 would be his last entry because the signing ceremony would be the final act of the convention. Many had doubted that the day would ever arrive.

For four months, delegates had been locked in a hot, closed room full of sweaty overdressed men. Swarms of horseflies frequently added to the discomfort that had heightened disputes. Acrimonious would be a polite description of the proceeding. Despite the hardships and ill-temper, the delegates stayed and stayed until they eventually hammered out a compromise they could accept.

A reverential spirit suffused the assembly that Monday. The chamber remained hushed as the secretary read the engrossed constitution in its entirety. At the conclusion, Franklin gave a short speech before declaring, “I move the constitution signed.”

Washington formally called on the delegates to sign the Constitution. For this momentous occasion, the secretary had set out the Syng inkstand used to sign the Declaration of Independence. Washington walked around the green baize-covered table to sign first. He then called the states from north to south. The delegates remained silent and respectful as they approached the low dais to apply their signatures to a document they hoped would permanently bind the country. Ratification was far from a certainty. As one of the delegates pointed out, the country remained at May 25th while the delegates had evolved through endless debates until they reached a consensus. When revealed to the general populous, the Constitution would come as a surprise.

Two Benjamin Franklin anecdotes have symbolized the ceremony for countless generations. Both are documented. The first appears in Madison’s notes and the second is described in the diary of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.

Despite his illness, Franklin had remained standing after he signed, shaking hands with delegates and whispering an occasional aside.

While the last members were signing, Franklin raised his voice. “Gentlemen, have you observed the half sun painted on the back of the President’s chair? Artists find it difficult to distinguish a rising from a setting sun. In these many months, I have been unable to tell which it was. Now, I’m happy to exclaim that it is a rising, not a setting sun.”

Once the last signature was in place, everyone was anxious to leave the chamber that had dominated their life for so many months. Besides, one of the delegates was hosting a celebratory dinner at the City Tavern.

Because of the momentous day, an enfeebled Franklin had abandoned his rented prisoners who normally carried him to and from the chamber. He insisted on walking out of the State House. Washington took a point position in front of Franklin, who was helped by delegates at each elbow.

As the sentries threw open the doors, the delegates were assaulted by bright sunlight and a deafening roar. Hundreds of people cheered, clapped, and whistled at the sight of General George Washington framed by the great double doors of the State House. The sentries had skipped down the three steps and joined arms to hold back the surge of people. A rambunctious session on Saturday had informed Philadelphians that the convention had concluded its business.

As Franklin followed in Washington footsteps, the people continued to cheer and applaud. A woman leaned in to yell, “Dr. Franklin, what is it to be? A republic or a monarchy?”

His answer came in a firm, loud voice. “A republic—if you can keep it.”

James Madison wrote, “The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence, or veiled in fable, and perhaps the world has lost little it should regret. But the origins of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived.”

Throughout history, new nations have come into being because of conquering armies, internal rebellion, or the edict of a great power. Although the United States of America was conceived in revolt, our governing institutions were born in calm reason. Our Constitution comes from a convention and ratification process where reasoned debate eventually led to a decision by a large segment of the population to put a new government in place.

The Founding of this great nation was unique. Until 1776, with a few brief exceptions, world history was about rulers and empires. The American experiment shook the world. Not only did we break away from the biggest and most powerful empire in history, we took the musings of the brightest thinkers of the Enlightenment and implemented them. Our Founding was simultaneously an armed rebellion against tyranny, and a revolution of ideas—ideas that changed the world.

That is why we still care about America’s founding and the Framers of our Constitution.

James D. Best, author of Tempest at Dawn, a novel about the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Principled Action, Lessons From the Origins of the American Republic, and the Steve Dancy Tales

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

In perhaps its most significant legislative action, the Congress of the Articles of Confederation passed the Northwest Ordinance on July 13, 1787. This landmark law was an act of institutional strength during a period of marked institutional weakness, a reminder of a national will that had been battered by fears of disunion, and a source of constitutional principles that defined parts of the fundamental charter that would replace the Articles a year later.

The domain ceded by the British to the states under the Treaty of Paris of 1783 extended to the Mississippi River, well westward of the main area of settlement and even of the “backcountry” areas such as the Piedmont regions of Virginia and the Carolinas. The Confederation and its component states were land-rich and cash-poor. The answer would appear to be to open up this land for settlement by selling tracts to bona fide purchasers and to encourage immigration from Europeans. But matters were not that easy.

For some years before independence, there had been a gradual stream of westward migration past the Allegheny and Cumberland Mountains. Shocked into action by the ferocity of the Pontiac War that flared even as the war with the French in North America was winding down, the British sought to end this movement.  Accordingly, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763 in October of that year, which prohibited colonial governments from granting land titles to Whites beyond the sources of rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean. Nor could White squatters occupy this land. The objective was to pacify the Indians, secure the existing frontier of White settlement, reduce speculation in vast tracts of land, divert immigration to British Canada, and protect British commerce and importation of British goods by a population concentrated near the coast.

While the policy initially succeeded in damping western settlement, in the longer term it alienated the Americans and helped trigger the move to independence. Ironically, during the Revolutionary War, those who actually had moved to the western settlements often considered themselves aggrieved and politically marginalized by the colonial assemblies, provincial congresses, and early state legislatures that were controlled by the eastern counties. Westerners were more likely to sit out the war, flee to the off-limits lands, or even align with the British.

Over time, the policy increasingly was ignored. Subsequent treaties moved the line of settlement westward. Squatters, land speculators and local governments evaded that revision, too. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison describes the actions of George Washington and his partner William Crawford in obtaining deeds from the colonial government of Pennsylvania to a large tract of land that lay west of the Proclamation line. In a letter to Crawford, Washington expressed his conviction that the proclamation was temporary and bound to end in a few years. “Any person therefore who neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good lands and in some measure marking … them for their own (in order to keep others from settling them) will never regain it…. The scheme [of marking the claim must be] snugly carried out by you under the pretense of hunting other game.” Washington’s secretive “scheme” was standard practice.

Washington was a comparatively minor participant. Speculators included a who’s who of colonial (and British) politicians and upper class merchants. While the British government vetoed some of the more flagrant schemes that involved many millions of acres, the practice continued under the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of 1787. With independence a reality, Americans need no longer be influenced by British imperial policy. The new governments could accede to the popular clamor to open up the western lands.

However, three issues needed to be resolved: the conflicting state claims to western land, by having the states cede the contested areas to the Confederation; the orderly disposition of public lands, by surveying, selling, and granting legal title; and the creation of a path to statehood for this unorganized wilderness. The Articles of Confederation addressed none of these. The first was accomplished by Congress in 1779 and 1780 through resolutions urging the states to turn over such disputed land claims to the Confederation as public land. Most did. Unlike other actions by Congress under the Articles that required assent by the state legislatures, these public lands would be administered directly by the Congress. During the later debate on the Constitution of 1787, James Madison and others used Congress’s control over the western lands as an example of the dangers of unchecked unenumerated powers. This was quite in contrast to their usual complaints about the Confederation’s weakness. To be fair to Madison, he admitted that he supported what Congress had done. Congress solved the second issue on May 20, 1785, when it legislated a system of surveying the new public lands, dividing them into townships, and selling the surveyed land by public auction. The third resulted in the Northwest Ordinance.

The catalyst for this last solution was the Ohio Company, one of the land speculation syndicates. General Rufus Putnam and various New England war veterans organized the company to purchase 1.5 million acres for $1 million in depreciated Continental currency with an actual value of about one-eighth of the face amount. Even with the potential to raise money for the Confederation’s empty coffers, Congress barely met its quorum when eight states met to consider the proposal. As a condition of the deal, the Ohio Company wanted the Northwest Ordinance in order to make their land sales more attractive to investors. Rufus King and Nathan Dane of Massachusetts drafted the Ordinance. All eight states represented approved the law, with all but one of the 18 delegates in favor. Ultimately, the Ohio Company was able to raise only half the amount promised and purchased 750,000 acres. However, the Ordinance applied throughout the unorganized territory north of the Ohio River.

The Ordinance did not spring spontaneously from the effort of King and Dane. Congress in 1780 had declared in its earlier resolution that the lands ceded to the Confederation would be administered directly by the Congress with the goal that they would be “settled and formed into distinct republican states, which shall become members of the Federal Union.” Four years later, Thomas Jefferson presented a proposal to Congress, which, with some amendments, was adopted as the Land Ordinance of 1784. It provided for division of the territory into ten eventual states, the establishment of a territorial government when the population reached 20,000, and statehood when the population reached the same as that of the smallest of the original thirteen.

The Ordinance had three important components. First, of course, the statute provided for the political organization of the territory. The whole territory was divided into three “districts.” A territorial assembly would be established for a portion of the territory as soon as that area had at least 5,000 male inhabitants. Congress would appoint a governor, and a territorial court would be established. All of these officials had to meet various property requirements consisting of freehold estates between 200 and 1,000 acres. Voting, too, required ownership of an estate of at least 50 acres. Once the population reached 60,000, the area could apply to Congress for admission to statehood on equal terms with the original states. Eventually, five states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin emerged from the Northwest Territory. The process of colonization and decolonization established under the Ordinance became the model followed in its general terms through the admission of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.

Another critical feature of the Ordinance was the inclusion of an embryonic bill of rights in the first and second articles. The first protected the free exercise of religion. The second was more expansive and singled out, among others, various natural rights, such as the protection against cruel and unusual punishments, against uncompensated takings, and against retroactive interference with vested contract rights. The enumeration of specific restrictions on government power was consistent with constitutional practice at the state level. It also bolstered the demand of critics of the original Constitution of 1787 that a bill of rights be included in that document.

As a final matter, the Ordinance addressed the controversial question of slavery. Article VI both prohibited slavery itself in the territory and required that a fugitive slave escaping from one of the original states be “conveyed to the person claiming his, or her labor, or service ….” While this compromise was not ideal for Southern slave states, their delegations acquiesced because the Ordinance did not cover the territory most consequential to them, which extended westward from Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. The compromise also established a geographic line for the exclusion of slavery, which approach was not challenged until the debate over the admission of Missouri to statehood in 1819-1820. The eventual Missouri Compromise retained that solution, although a different geographic line was drawn. The fugitive slave provision and its successors were generally enforced until the 1830s, when the issue began to vex American politics and pit various states against each other and the federal government.

Article III of the Ordinance declared, “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” This affirmation reflected republican theory of the time. John Adams would write in 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People.” George Washington made a similar point in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” In that same speech, Washington tied religion and morality to human happiness and to popular and free government. Article III thus embodied a classic conception of the path to human fulfillment (“happiness”) and virtuous citizenship. Training in these necessary virtues must start early. Thus, schools were needed. Unlike for us and our modern sensibilities, there was no scruple that this would be an improper establishment of religion. The earlier Ordinance of 1785 had provided that in each surveyed township a certain area would be set aside to build schools. This article called for the spirit that would animate their physical structure.

The Confederation’s greatest achievement proved to be its last. The Northwest Ordinance had to be renewed when the Constitution of 1787 replaced the Confederation. The new Congress did so, with minor changes, in 1789, and President Washington signed the bill into law on August 7 of that year. On May 26, 1790, the Southwest Ordinance was approved to organize the territory south of the Ohio River. The terms of that statute were similar to its northern counterpart, except in the crucial matter of slavery. The Southwest Ordinance prohibited Congress from making any laws within the territory that would tend to the emancipation of slaves. This signaled Congress’s willingness to permit the “peculiar institution” to be extended into new states, if the settlers wished. Taken together with the Northwest Ordinance, the statutes set the pattern for compromise on the slavery issue that lasted until the 1850s. Intended to organize the “Old Southwest,” the Southwest Ordinance ultimately governed only Tennessee’s passage to statehood. The Northwest Ordinance affected a much larger area and lasted longer, ending with the admission of Wisconsin to the union in 1848.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

After the Revolutionary War, Americans flooded the frontier beyond the Appalachian Mountains in search of land and greater opportunity. The path for settlement was rooted in republican ideals and resulted in one of the greatest successes of the government under the Articles of Confederation.

One of the most important developments in settling the West was the states ceding their western land claims to the nation. For example, in 1781, Virginia ceded its claims to the territory north of the Ohio River to Congress, and other states quickly followed.

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Ordinance of 1784, which was considered and adopted by the Congress. The land ordinance established the principles of making new territories entering into the Union equal to the original thirteen states and guaranteeing the new states a republican form of government.

Jefferson included a clause that would have forever banned slavery in the western territories, but it narrowly lost by a single vote. Reflecting on its failure, Jefferson wrote a few years later: “The voice of a single individual would have prevented this abominable crime; heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail.”

The following year, Congress adopted the Land Ordinance of 1785 which specified how the land in the Northwest Territory would be disposed of and divided as a model of orderly western settlement. The ordinance stated that the land was to be surveyed and then divided into townships and farms to shape civil society and individual land ownership. Land purchases were to be paid to the national government to provide revenue, especially to help retire the national debt. Communities would establish public schools to educate the citizens in knowledge and the virtues of republican citizenship.

In July 1787, while delegates were meeting at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, representatives of several land companies lobbied the Congress in New York for land grants to settle the Northwest Territory. New England minister Manassah Cutler of the Ohio Company and New York speculator William Duer of the Scioto Company paid for large tracts of land of millions of acres.

On July 13, Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance to establish government along republican principles for the territory. The document authorized the territory to be carved into three to five states. It provided a path to statehood and reaffirmed the idea that the new states would enter the Union equally with the other states.

The process for statehood started with Congress appointing a governor and council to govern a territory until the population for the territory reached 5,000. The people could then elect a representative assembly through free and frequent elections. When the population included 60,000 settlers, the territory could adopt a constitution and apply to Congress for statehood.

The Northwest Ordinance was rooted in republican government and natural rights as the foundation for just laws. “For extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, their laws and constitutions are erected; to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments,” it declared.

Another republican measure included in the ordinance was the banning of primogeniture. The document thus prevented an aristocracy of land passed through the generations of first-born sons. Instead, it supported the principle of equality.

The ordinance specifically protected several individual liberties. Religious liberty was once again explicitly protected as an essential right. All citizens were protected from civil penalties for their “mode of worship or religious sentiments.”

The rights of the accused were firmly protected. They included a right to habeas corpus, trial by jury, bail, no cruel and unusual punishments, and due process of law. The governments were bound to protect property rights and the right to contract.

Perhaps most significantly, Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance banned slavery in the territory. While slavery was being abolished outright or gradually in most northern states at the time, the ordinance prevented slavery from spreading in three to five new states in the Northwest. It read, “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” It did, however, provide for a fugitive slave clause for the recovery of escaped slaves.

Contrarily, the Southwest Ordinance of 1790 protected the expansion of slavery. “Provided always that no regulations made or to be made by Congress shall tend to emancipate Slaves.” The roots of the sectional divide over the western expansion of slavery were laid early in the new nation.

The Northwest Ordinance promoted education and religion as the basis of good and virtuous citizenship, which was in turn the foundation of republican self-government as the Ordinance held that “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

The ordinance promised that justice, liberality, and good faith would always be practiced with the Indians in the territory. It also promised not to take their property without consent and not to disturb them. These good intentions were rarely practiced, and several battles would be fought over the ensuing decade for control of the area.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was a seminal founding document. The republican and natural rights principles of the American founding shaped the ordinance and the creation of new states in that territory. That republican vision resulted in the dynamic growth of the continental American union and empire of liberty.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Val Crofts

George Washington deserves to be remembered as possibly the greatest figure in American history. He led the Continental Army to victory over the British in the American Revolution against unbelievable odds. He was the only president in U.S. history to be unanimously elected. Washington served as the first president of the United States for two terms, establishing the office and its precedents and customs for all future presidents to follow. We may not even have had a United States of America without Washington’s contributions. Twice during his life, Washington achieved great accomplishments by doing something very uncharacteristic. He gave up. More specifically, he gave up power.

Washington was honored and humbled to have been commissioned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army by the 2nd Continental Congress in June of 1775. He did not think that he was adequate for the task given to him and even tried to avoid it, but Washington’s unending commitment to duty, honor, and his country prevailed. The humble statesman reluctantly accepted the position as commander-in-chief. General Washington proved himself an inspiring leader and innovative soldier as he commanded his men throughout the remainder of the war.

When military victory was secured at Yorktown in 1781, General Washington believed that he needed to stay in charge of the army until peace was secured. He could not step down until the British army left the United States, the American Revolution was totally resolved and the new nation was firmly standing on its own, ready to take its place in the world. Only then would he feel comfortable resigning the powers given to him by Congress in 1775.

General Washington was given great powers by the 2nd Continental Congress. The civil and military control he received were similar to a military dictator. He could have simply grabbed power and served over the United States as an absolute ruler or an “American King.” There were also some who felt that this should be what Washington should do to maintain stability for the new government and nation. But, like the story of the Roman general, Cincinnatus, Washington gave his power back to the people, where he felt it belonged.

Washington would have been familiar with the classical story of the Roman general, Cincinnatus, who was a former Roman general  given military and political power back when Rome was invaded. After repelling the invasion, Cincinnatus resigned his position and returned to his retirement. Washington longed to do the same thing. Because of the similarities between the two men, Washington is sometimes referred to as the “American Cincinnatus.”

Washington actually “retired” for the first time in 1758 and returned to his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, to be a farmer and gentleman for the rest of his life or so he thought. But, as tension mounted in the American colonies in the 1770s, Washington came out of retirement and attended meetings of the 1st and 2nd Continental Congresses. Because of his military experience and reputation, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775 and served in that capacity until 1783.

In late 1783, Washington felt it was time to retire again. British soldiers had left New York, the Treaty of Paris was signed, and peace appeared to be a reality in the new nation. He was anxious to go home to Mount Vernon again and live out his days in the company of his wife, family and friends. He decided to give his powers and position back to the Congress and the people that had granted them to him in 1775.

He arrived in December of 1783 in Annapolis, Maryland, the then capital of the United States and delivered his remarks to the assembly present at the Maryland State House. He thanked Congress for their trust in him and stated his intent to resign from the service of his nation. Washington thanked the officers who had served with him throughout the war and whom he considered members of his family. Washington recommended Congress take notice of those officers and their service to the young nation. He then prayed that God would watch over the United States and its people. Washington followed by resigning his commission and departing to spend Christmas at Mount Vernon with his family.

Rarely in history do you find someone giving up power. The more power you possess, the tougher it may be to let it go. But, when you are selfless and think of what is best for others, specifically your nation, the decision may come easily. George Washington was this rare, selfless leader who had a tremendous love for this nation which he helped create. He knew that if the nation were to move along, he needed to give his power back to the people. By doing so, he helped to finish the final act of the war and to make the American Revolution a true revolution of power from kings to the people.

The quote by King George III of Great Britain in 1797 poetically and fittingly describes the impact of Washington’s selfless act of resigning his commission. When discussing the legacy of George Washington, the king said that Washington’s actions in giving up his commission made him the “most distinguished of any man living.” Now, we can add that Washington is one of the most distinguished men in history.

Val Crofts is a Social Studies teacher from Janesville, Wisconsin. He teaches as Milton High School in Milton, Wisconsin and has been there 16 years. He teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics, U.S. History and U.S. Military History. Val has also taught for the Wisconsin Virtual School for seven years, teaching several Social Studies courses for them. Val is also a member of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

In an example of unrivaled statesmanship, General George Washington resigned his military commission at the State House in Annapolis, Maryland on December 23, 1783 to return to his Mount Vernon, Virginia home as a private citizen. Washington’s resignation was pivotal for American history because he willingly gave up power. He later participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, and was unanimously elected president of the United States in 1789. He reluctantly accepted the presidency and rejected any form of kingship. In 1797, Washington again surrendered his position, allowing a fellow American to serve as president. The example Washington set for America’s republican form of government was that of a peaceful transfer of power, a requirement the nation would need to serve by leadership and freedom rather than dictatorship.

On December 4, 1783, George Washington said goodbye to his Generals, a poignant moment captured in a piece of iconic artwork, Washington’s Farewell to His Officers in an engraving by Phillebrown, from a painting by Alonzo Chappel. “With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

The General then mounted his horse and turned towards Annapolis, Maryland. There was an appointment with destiny to keep. Washington was soon to become, in the words of King George III, “the greatest character of the age.”

The General and his entourage arrived in Annapolis on December 19, 1783. The normal 4-5 day trip had taken three times as long. They were feted along the 215 miles in every town and village they entered. Banquets, toasts, cannonades and the occasional militia demonstration had become familiar. Yet, this was no time for the General’s two aides to relax. Preparations and protocols had to be completed.

Promptly at noon on December 23, 1783, the highly scripted event began. Only twenty delegates from seven states were attending the Congress, greatly outnumbered by the Maryland Assembly whose larger chamber was borrowed for the event. The low attendance in Congress was not unusual. Three years later, little had changed. In a 1786 letter to Elbridge Gerry, Delegate Rufus King complained: “We are without money or the prospect of it in the Federal Treasury; and the States, many of them, care so little about the Union, that they take no measures to keep a representation in Congress.”

Historian Thomas Fleming explains what happened next:

“Washington took a designated seat in the assembly chamber, and his two aides sat down beside him. The three soldiers wore their blue and buff Continental Army uniforms. The doors of the assembly room were opened and Maryland’s governor and the members of the state’s legislature crowded into the room, along with, in the words of one eyewitness, “the principal ladies and gentlemen of the city.”

Other ladies filled every seat in a small gallery above the chamber. The President of Congress, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, began the proceedings: “Sir, the United States in Congress assembled are prepared to receive your communications.”

“Mr. President,” Washington began,

“The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place (the peace treaty with England) I now have the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress and of presenting myself before them to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country.”

Washington’s voice faltered, but he quickly recovered his composure and proceeded:

“Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence.”

He thanked the country and the army for its support and added that he hoped Congress would acknowledge the “distinguished merits” of “the gentlemen who have been attached to my person during the war” — his aides. At the reference to his aides, Washington became so emotional that he reportedly had to grip the speech with both hands to hold it steady.

He continued:

“I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God and those who have the superintendence of them, to his holy keeping.”

Tears streamed down the General’s ruddy cheeks.

“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”

Washington handed his commission and a copy of his remarks to President Mifflin.

John Trumbull, himself a former aide-de-camp to Washington, who would memorialize this great event in a painting commissioned in 1817 by Congress, and hangs in the United States Capitol Rotunda, entitled General George Washington Resigning His Commission, called Washington’s resignation: “one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world.”

Now unencumbered by his commission, Private Citizen George Washington, accompanied by Col. David Humphreys, literally galloped the 47 remaining miles to his beloved Mount Vernon home, arriving in time for Christmas Eve.

Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text. Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes periodic essays published on several different websites, and appears in period costume as James Madison, explaining to public and private school students “his” (i.e., Madison’s) role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

The surrender of General Charles Cornwallis to General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, was the final battle of the American Revolution. Then, in 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed after an appeal from the British for peace, and the American Revolutionary War was over.

In 1778, a full three years before his victory at Yorktown, General George Washington wrote: “The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.

Washington was not lacking in gratitude; more than once God’s hand of providence had appeared to save his beleaguered army. Whether it was the sudden fog that enveloped the East River in August 1776, allowing his army to safely retreat from the Brooklyn Heights, or the “false spring” nearly two years later that tricked shad into beginning an early run up the Delaware River to Valley Forge, Washington knew whom to thank. But at least one more act of providence lay ahead. On September 5th, 1781, a French fleet appeared providentially to defeat a slightly smaller British fleet, thus preventing the rescue of General Cornwallis and his army from their fortified but surrounded position at Yorktown.

Cornwallis had received conflicting and confusing orders from his commander back in New York, General Sir Henry Clinton, but, like a good soldier, had followed them as he understood them, believing that his exposed position at Yorktown would be remedied, if necessary, by the British Fleet. It was a gamble that unfortunately did not pay off. It did not help the British that their fleet commander, Admiral Thomas Graves, proved indecisive at a critical juncture while the French fleet under Admiral Francois Joseph Paul de Grasse did not let their disadvantaged position exiting the Chesapeake Bay lead to their downfall; the French attacked aggressively and decisively.  Historians have called the Battle of the Virginia Capes the most critical naval engagement in history!  It is said to have converted “the United States” from a possibility into a certainty.

Cornwallis was embarrassed, to say the least, by being left “flying in the wind” by Graves’ defeat. So embarrassed that after the surrender of his force had been negotiated for October 19th, he cited illness and had his second in command Brigadier General Charles O’Hara surrender the sword instead. In a final attempt to humiliate Washington, O’Hara had been instructed by Cornwallis to present his sword to the French General Rochambeau. Rochambeau politely directed the British officer to Washington who, seeing this, directed his own second in command, General Benjamin Lincoln, to accept the surrender, payback for Lincoln’s defeat the previous year at Charlestown. What games these Generals play. The painting, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, by John Trumbull is one of the eight large, iconic paintings located in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

There would be more fighting ahead – minor skirmishes at best — but Cornwallis’ surrender “took the wind from the sails” of the British force in America. Two years would elapse before a peace treaty would finally be signed in Paris on September 3, 1783 formally ending the eight year conflict, and nearly three more months before the last British troops boarded ships to leave New York on November 25th, but it was a wait worth enduring.

Nine days later on December 4, 1783, George Washington said goodbye to his Generals, a poignant moment captured in another piece of iconic artwork, Washington’s Farewell to His Officers in an engraving by Phillebrown, from a painting by Alonzo Chappel. “With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

The General then mounted his horse and turned towards Annapolis, Maryland.

Gary Porter  is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text.  Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes a weekly essay: Constitutional Corner which is published on multiple websites, and hosts a weekly radio show: “We the People, the Constitution Matters” on WFYL AM1140.  Gary has also begun performing reenactments of James Madison and speaking with public and private school students about Madison’s role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and Constitution.  Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

The Declaration of Independence that formalized the revolutionary action of the Second Continental Congress of the thirteen states did not, however, establish a plan of government at the highest level of this American confederacy. The members of that body understood that such a task needed to be done to help their assembly move from a revolutionary body to a constitutional one. A political constitution in its elemental form merely describes a set of widely shared norms about who governs and how the governing authority is to be exercised. A collection of would-be governors becomes constitutional when a sufficiently large portion of the population at least tacitly accepts that assemblage as deserving of political obedience. Such acceptance may occur over time, even as a result of resigned sufferance. Presenting a formal plan of government to the population may consolidate that new constitutional order more quickly and smoothly.

That process was well underway at the state level before July 4, 1776. Almost all colonies had provincial congresses by the end of 1774, which, presently, assumed the functions of the previous colonial assemblies and operated without the royal governors. In 1775, the remaining three colonies, New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, followed suit. Although they foreswore any design for independence, as a practical matter, these bodies exercised powers of government, albeit as revolutionary entities.

In 1776, the colonies moved to formalize their de facto status as self-governing entities by adopting constitutions. New Hampshire did so by way of a rudimentary document in January, followed in March by South Carolina. A Virginia convention drawn from the House of Burgesses drafted a constitution in May and adopted it in June. Rhode Island and Connecticut simply used their royal charters, with suitable amendments to take account of their new republican status. On May 10, still two months before the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress, somewhat late to the game, resolved that the colonies should create regular governments. These steps, completed in 1777 by the rest of the states, other than Massachusetts, established them as formal political sovereignties, although their continued viability was uncertain until the British military was evicted and the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783.

At the level of the confederacy, the Second Continental Congress continued to act as a revolutionary assembly, but took steps to establish a formal foundation for that union beyond resolutions and proclamations. A committee of 13, headed by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the body’s foremost constitutional lawyer, completed an initial draft in July, 1776. That draft was rejected, because many members claimed it gave too much power to Congress at the expense of the states. Although time was of the essence to set up a government to run the war effort successfully, Congress could not agree to a plan until November 15, 1777, when they voted to present the Articles of Confederation to the states for their approval.

Ten states approved in fairly short order by early 1778, two within another year. Maryland held out until March 1, 1781, just a half year before the military situation was decided decisively in favor of the Americans as a result of the Battle of Yorktown. Since the Articles required unanimous consent to go into effect, this meant that the war had been conducted without a formal governmental structure. But necessity makes its own rules, and the Congress acted all along as if the Articles had been approved. Such repeated and consistent action, accepted by all parties established a de facto constitution. While the British might demur, at some point between the approval of the Articles in Congress and Maryland’s formal acceptance, the Congress ceased to be merely a revolutionary body of delegates and became a constitutional body. Maryland’s belated action merely formalized what already existed. The Continental Congress became the Confederation Congress, although it was still referred to colloquially by its former name.

One of the persistent arguments about the Articles questions their political status. Were they a constitution of a recognized separate sovereignty, or merely a treaty among essentially independent entities. There clearly are textual indicia of each. The charter was styled “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union,” a phrase repeated emphatically in the document. On the other hand, Article II assured each state that it retained its “sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not … expressly delegated to the United States.” Moreover, Article III expressly declared that the states were severally entering into “a firm league of friendship with each other, ….”

Article I provided, “The Stile of this confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America.” That suggests a separate political entity beyond its component parts. Yet the document had numerous references to the “united states in congress assembled,” and defined “their” actions. This, in turn, suggests that the states were united merely in an operative capacity, and that an action by Congress merely represented those states’ collective choice. Indeed, the very word “congress” is usually attached to an assemblage of independent political entities, such as the Congress of Vienna.

As an interesting note, such linguistic nods to state independence continue in some fashion under the Constitution of 1787. Federal laws are still enacted by a “Congress.” More significant, each time that the phrase “United States” appears in the Constitution, where the structure makes the singular or plural form decisive, the plural form is used. For example, Article III, section 3 declares, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, ….”

The government established by the Articles had the structure of a classic confederation. Theoretical sovereignty remained in the states, and practical sovereignty nearly did. The Articles were a union of states, not directly of citizens. The state legislatures, as part of the corporate state governments, rather than the people themselves or through conventions, approved the Articles. Approval had to be unanimous, in that each state had to agree. The issue of state representation proved touchy, as it would later in the Philadelphia convention that drafted the Constitution of 1787. While the larger states wanted more power, based on factors such as wealth, population, and trade, this proved to be both too difficult to calculate and unacceptable politically to the smaller states. Due to the need to get something drafted during the war crisis, the solution was to continue with the system of state equality used in the Continental Congress and to leave further refinements for later. States were authorized, however, to send between two and seven delegates that would caucus to determine their state delegation’s vote. This state equality principal was also consistent with the idea of a confederation of separate sovereignties.

The Confederation Congress had no power to act directly on individuals, but only on the states. It was commonly described as a federal head acting on the body of the states. Congress also had no enforcement powers. They could requisition, direct, plead, cajole, and admonish, but nothing more. Much depended on good faith action by state politicians or on the threat of interstate retaliation if a state failed to abide by its obligations. Of course, such retaliation, done vigorously, might be the catalyst for the very evil of disunion that the Articles were designed to prevent.

From a certain perspective, the Congress was an administrative body over the operative political units, the states, at least as far as matters internal to this confederation. This was consistent with the “dominion theory” of the British Empire that Dickinson and others had envisioned for the colonies before the Revolution, where the colonies governed themselves internally and were administered by a British governor-general who represented the interests of the empire. Thus, Congress could not tax directly. Instead, it would direct requisitions apportioned on the basis of the assessed value of occupied land in each state, which the states were obligated to collect. With funds often uncollected and states frequently in arrears, Congress had to resort to borrowing funds from foreign sources and emitting “bills of credit,” that is, paper money unbacked by gold or silver. Those issues, the Continental currency, quickly depreciated. “Not worth a continental” became a phrase synonymous with useless. Neither could Congress regulate commerce directly, although it could oversee disputes among states over commerce and other issues, by providing a forum to resolve them. Article IX provided a complex procedure for the selection of a court to resolve such “disputes and differences … between two or more states concerning … any cause whatever.”

It was easy for critics, then and more recently, to dismiss the Articles as weak and not a true constitution of an independent sovereign. The British foreign secretary Charles James Fox sarcastically advised John Adams, then American minister to London, when the latter sought a commercial treaty with Britain after independence, that ambassadors from the states needed to be present, since the Congress would not be able to enforce its terms. Yet, a union it was in many critical ways, as was recognized in the preamble to its successor: “We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, ….” The indissolubility of this union was attested to by affirmations of its perpetuity. The Articles gave the Congress power over crucial matters of war and peace, foreign relations, control of the military, coinage, and trade and other relations with the Indians. Indeed, the states were specifically prohibited from engaging in war, conducting foreign relations, or maintaining naval or regular peacetime land forces, without consent from Congress. As to congressional consent, exceptions were made if the state was actually invaded by enemies or had received information that “some nation of Indians” was preparing to invade before Congress could address the matter. A state could also fit out vessels of war, if “such state be infested by pirates,” a matter that seems almost comical to us, but was of serious concern to Americans into the early 19th century.

The controversial matter of who controlled the western lands, Congress or the states, was not addressed. Nor did Congress have any power to force states to end their conflicting claims over such lands, except to provide a forum to settle disputes if a state requested that. Instead, Congress in 1779 and 1780 passed resolutions to urge the states to turn over such disputed land claims to Congress, which most eventually did. This very issue of conflicting territorial claims caused Maryland to refuse its assent to the Articles until 1781.

Yet, it was precisely on this issue of control over the unsettled lands where Congress unexpectedly showed it could act decisively. Despite lacking clear authority to do so, the Confederation Congress passed the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the even more important Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Those statutes opened up the western lands for organized settlement, a matter that had been dear to Americans since the British Proclamation of 1763 effectively put the Trans-Allegheny west off-limits to White settlers. Ironically, during the later debate on the Constitution of 1787, James Madison, in Federalist No. 38, theatrically used these acts of strength by Congress to point to the dangers of unchecked unenumerated powers. This was quite in contrast to the usual portrait of the Confederation’s weakness that Madison and others painted. To be fair, Madison conceded that Congress could not have done otherwise.

Significant also were the bonds of interstate unity that the Articles established. Article IV provided, “The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different states in this union, the free inhabitants of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; ….” These rights would include free travel and the ability to engage in trade and commerce. As well, that Article required that fugitives be turned over to the authorities of the states from which they had fled, and that each state give full faith and credit to the decisions of the courts in other states. These same three clauses were brought into Article IV of the Constitution of 1787.

The Articles were doomed by their perceived structural weakness. Numerous attempts to reform them had foundered on the shoals of the required unanimity of the states for amendments. Another factor that likely caused the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 to abandon its quest merely to amend the Articles were their complexity and prolixity, with grants of power followed by exceptions, restrictions, and reservations set out in excruciating detail. The Articles’ weak form of federalism was replaced by the stronger form of the Constitution of 1787, stronger in the sense that the latter represented a more clearly distinct entity of the United States, with its republican legitimacy derived from the same source as the component states, that is, the people.

All of that acknowledged, the victor writes the history. Defenders of the Articles at the time correctly pointed out that this early constitution, drafted under intense pressure at a critical time in the country’s history and intended to deal foremost with the exigencies of war, had been remarkably successful. It was, after all, under this maligned plan that the Congress had formed commercial and military alliances, raised and disciplined a military force, and administered a huge territory, all while defeating a preeminent military and naval power to gain independence.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable David L. Robbins

Most students of U.S. history know about the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” that heralded the beginning of the American Revolution on April 19, 1775. The battles of Lexington and Concord, spurred on when British soldiers tried to confiscate the arms of the American colonists, were the first shots in the Revolutionary War. These battles which caused the British soldiers to retreat to Boston with heavy losses were the result of unrest by the colonialists from the harsh treatment from the British Crown. The battles showed the growing resistance to British rule and tyranny.

These battles followed the attempts of the First Continental Congress in 1774 to avoid war with Great Britain by addressing grievances of the colonists. Following the battles of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress was convened in Philadelphia (1775-1776). Again, the goal was to avoid war, but it also established the Continental Army with George Washington as General of the Army. This Congress also drafted and ratified the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Militias were organized to provide local protection and became citizen soldiers supporting the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. The Militias were the colonial fighters at the battles of Lexington and Concord as there was no Continental Army yet.

By the early summer of 1777 the war for American independence was in full sway and the British believed they could break the resolve of the colonies following recent colonial losses at the Battle of Quebec. The British intended to cut off the New England colonies from the other colonies. Britain’s plan included sending three military columns to converge on Albany, New York, and hand the Continental Army a resounding defeat. British General John Burgoyne’s column of soldiers had been augmented by German troops and Native American fighters. After the Battle of Quebec, the British suffered a defeat at the Battle of Bennington that saw the loss of 1,000 men, and the Native American fighters all but abandoned the British. Burgoyne’s position was difficult. He needed to either retreat to Fort Ticonderoga or advance toward Albany. He decided to move down the Hudson River toward Albany.

With 6,500 fighters, Burgoyne positioned his men near Saratoga, at Freeman Farm, owned by a Loyalist. The Continental Army was led by General Horatio Gates along with Militia, over 12,000 men. The first engagement of the Battle of Saratoga was on September 19, 1777 and lasted for several hours with Burgoyne gaining a small tactical advantage against the much larger forces of General Gates and the Militia. However, Burgoyne suffered significant casualties. For two weeks the British regrouped.

With the tactical advantage, Burgoyne attacked the American forces on October 7 in what is called the Battle of Bemis Heights; this was the second Battle of Saratoga. The Americans captured a portion of the British defenses and Burgoyne was forced to retreat. On October 17, with his troops surrounded and vastly outmanned, Burgoyne surrendered. General Gates accepted his surrender in a respectful manner, allowing most of the British soldiers to return to Great Britain. One American that factored into the success of this battle was Benedict Arnold. He would later become disenchanted with the American military, enter into secret negotiations with the British and narrowly escape capture by the Americans, fleeing to England.

The final battle of Saratoga was a major defeat for the British and word of British surrender further rallied troops in the Continental Army and the Militias. Although the end of the war and full British surrender was years off, the Battle of Saratoga was a major turning point in the Revolutionary War. It brought the French to fully support the fledging nation with desperately needed military aid along with aid from Spain and other countries. Without such support the new nation might have failed to materialize. This battle and others emphasized the important role the Militia would continue to play in America’s war for independence.

Almost ten years passed after the Battle of Saratoga ended and the American experiment was in its infancy. After an attempt to bring the colonies (now called States) together via the Articles of Confederation, it was determined a more formal federal government was necessary. This brought about the Constitution of the United States. Strong memory of the excesses and tyranny of the British government pushed the framers of the new government to place limits on this new government in the Constitution and some of its first ten amendments. The first ten amendments also guaranteed certain rights to the people and are referred to as the Bill of Rights. These rights include the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, rights to petition the government for grievances, the right to bear arms, rights of privacy and to own private property.

The founders of the United States recognized the need for a formal federal government, but also realized a federal government without limits could again grow to abuse and suppress its citizens. One of the means Great Britain used to control the colonies and prevent rebellion was the seizure of the people’s arms. This was the purpose of the British advance on Concord; to remove the weapons and power stored there. The Second Amendment is an acknowledgement of the role played by the Militias in gaining American independence and ensuring citizens could protect themselves from government overreach the colonies experienced from Great Britain.

David L. Robbins serves as Public Education Commissioner in New Mexico.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams

In an 1825 letter to Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson reflected on the making of the Declaration of Independence and its principles. Jefferson admitted that the Declaration was intended to be “an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, [and] printed essays.”

The “harmonizing sentiments” of the American mind were present during the debate over British tyranny and taxes in the 1760s and 1770s. The American colonists drew on ancient history and philosophy, the English constitutional tradition, Protestant Christianity, and the Enlightenment ideas especially of John Locke in asserting their rights. They claimed the traditional rights of Englishmen and more importantly their inalienable natural rights and the republican ideal of governing themselves by their own consent.

In the wake of the Boston Tea Party and punitive parliamentary Coercive Acts, the Continental Congress met in 1774 as an expression of American unity. The delegates penned a declaration of rights that defended their natural rights and republican ideals. “That they are entitled to life, liberty, & property, and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.”

The natural rights republicanism continued to shape the American thinking and debate about independence. For example, a young Alexander Hamilton wrote in Farmer Refuted,  “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

In July 1775, Jefferson helped to draft the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. He wrote, “The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.”

In 1776, Thomas Paine electrified the colonies with the best-selling pamphlet, Common Sense, which firmly put republican principles and American independence in the center of the debate. Paine wrote that the rule of law rather than the arbitrary will of a monarch was the basis of guarding essential liberties. “LAW IS KING.” The purpose of that new government would be to protect liberty, property, and religious freedom,” he wrote.

The Continental Congress took up the question of independence that spring. On May 10, it adopted a resolution for the representative colonial assemblies and conventions of the people to “adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular and America in general.”

Five days later, Adams added his own even more radical preamble expressing republican principles. “It is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said Crown should be totally suppressed, and all the powers of government exerted under the authority of the people of the colonies, for the preservation of internal peace, virtue, and good order, as well as for the defense of their lives, liberties, and properties.” This bold declaration was essentially a break from British authority and declaration of American sovereignty and liberties. He wrote excitedly to Abigail that this measure was “independence itself.”

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee rose in Congress and offered a resolution for independence. “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” Congress appointed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence while states such as Virginia wrote constitutions and their own declarations of rights.

On June 12, the Virginia Convention published the Virginia Declaration of Rights that asserted the Lockean idea of the rights of nature and maintained that the purpose of government was to protect those liberties. It read: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights… cannot by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

The committee selected Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence because he was well-known for the elegance of his pen. In 1774, Jefferson had written the influential Summary View of the Rights of British North America. In that pamphlet, he described the natural rights basis of consensual republican government. The American colonists were “a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”  The colonists argued for the “rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all.” He concluded with a reflection on rights embedded in human nature: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.”

When Jefferson sat down to compose the Declaration, he probably did not have a copy of Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. However, he knew the ideas of that book well and had a copy of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which had been printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette on June 12. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams edited the document lightly and submitted it to Congress.

On July 1, John Dickinson and Adams engaged in an epic debate over whether America should declare its independence. The next day, Congress voted for independence by passing Lee’s resolution. Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that, “The Second Day of July will be the most memorable Epocha, in the history of America….It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

The Congress then considered and edited the document much to Jefferson’s chagrin.  It adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4 and enunciated the natural rights principles of the American republic.

The Declaration claimed that the natural rights of all human beings were self-evident truths that were axiomatic and did not need to be proven. They were equally “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The equality of human beings meant that they were equal in giving consent to their representatives in a republic to govern. All authority flowed from the sovereign people equally. The purpose of that government was to protect the rights of the people. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The people had the right to overthrow a government that violated the people’s rights with a long train of abuses.

The American constitutional regime would provide the framework—or “picture of silver” for the “apple of gold” (the Declaration) in Abraham’s Lincoln’s immortal phrase—for creating a lasting republic and “more perfect Union” to preserve those natural rights and liberties in 1787.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. He is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
Signing of the Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull, displayed in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

The adoption of the Declaration of Independence of “the thirteen united States of America” on July 4, 1776, formally ended a process that had been set in motion almost as soon as colonies were established in what became British North America. The early settlers, once separated physically from the British Isles by an immense ocean, in due course began to separate themselves politically, as well. Barely a decade after Jamestown was founded, the Virginia Company in 1619 acceded to the demands of the residents to form a local assembly, the House of Burgesses, which, together with a governor and council, would oversee local affairs. This arrangement eventually was recognized by the crown after the colony passed from the insolvent Virginia Company to become part of the royal domain. This structure then became the model of colonial government followed in all other colonies.

As the number and size of the colonies grew, the Crown sought to increase its control and draw them closer to England. However, those efforts were sporadic and of limited success during most of the 17th century, due to the isolation and the economic and political insignificance of the colonies, the power struggles between the King and Parliament, and the constitutional chaos caused in turn by the English Civil War, the Cromwell Protectorate, the Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution. There was, then, a period of benign neglect under which the colonies controlled their own affairs independent of British interference, save the inevitable local tussles between the assemblies and the royal governors jockeying for political position. Still, the increasingly imperial objectives of the British government and expansion of British control over disconnected territories eventually convinced the British of the need for more centralized policy.

This change was reflected in North America by a process of subordinating the earlier charter- or covenant-based colonial governments to more direct royal control, one example being the consolidation in the 1680s of the New England colonies, plus New York and New Jersey into the Dominion of New England. While the Dominion itself was short-lived, and some of the old colonies regained charters after the Glorious Revolution, their new governments were much more tightly under the King’s influence. Governors would be appointed by the King, laws passed by local assemblies had to be reviewed and approved by royal officials such as the Board of Trade, and trade restrictions under the Navigation Acts and related laws were enforced by British customs officials stationed in the colonies. William Penn and the other proprietors retained their possessions and claims, but the King, frequently allying himself with anti-proprietor sentiments among the settlers, forced them to make political concessions that benefited the Crown.

Trade and general imperial policy were dictated by Parliament and administered from London. Still, the colonial assemblies retained significant local control and, particularly in the decades between 1720 and 1760, took charge of colonial finance through taxation and appropriations and appointment of finance officers to administer the expenditure of funds. While direction of Indian policy, local defense, and intercolonial relations belonged to the Crown, in fact even these matters were left largely to local governments. The Crown’s interests were represented in the person of the royal governor. However strong the political position of those governors was in theory, in practice they were quite dependent on the colonial assemblies for financial support. The overall division of political authority between the colonial governments and the British government in London was not unlike the federal structure that the Americans adopted to define the state-nation relationship after independence.

A critical change occurred with the vast expansion of British control over North America and other possessions in the wake of the Seven Years’ War (the French and Indian War) in 1763. Britain was heavily indebted from the war, and its citizens labored under significant taxes. Thus, the government saw the lightly-taxed colonials as the obvious source of revenue to contribute to the cost of stationing a projected 10,000 troops to defend North America from hostilities from Indian tribes and from French or Spanish forces. Parliament’s actions to impose taxes and, after colonial protests, abandon those taxes, only to enact new ones, both emboldened and infuriated the Americans. This friction led to increasingly vigorous protests by various local and provincial entities and to “congresses” of the colonies that drew them into closer union a decade before the formal break. Colonials organized as the Sons of Liberty and similar grass-roots radicals destroyed British property and attacked royal officials, sometimes in brutal fashion. At the same time, British tactics against the Americans became more repressive, in ways economic, political, and, ultimately, military. That cycle began to feed on itself in a chain reaction that, by the early 1770s, was destined to lead to a break.

The progression from the protests of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, to the Declaration of Resolves of the First Continental Congress and subsequent formation of the Continental Association to administer a collective boycott against importation of British goods in 1774, to the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms issued by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, to the Declaration of Independence of 1776, shows a gradual but pronounced evolution of militancy in the Americans’ position. Protestations of loyalty to King and country and disavowal of a goal of independence were still common, but were accompanied by increasingly urgent promises of resistance to “unconstitutional” Parliamentary acts. American political leaders and polemicists advocated a theory of empire in which the local assemblies, along with a general governing body of the united colonies, would control internal affairs and taxation, subject only to the King’s assent. This “dominion theory” significantly reduced the role of Parliament, which would be limited to control of external commerce and foreign affairs. It was analogous to the status of Scotland within the realm, but was based on the constitutional argument that the colonies were in the King’s dominion, having emerged as crown colonies from the embryonic status of their founding as covenant, corporate, or proprietary colonies. Had the British government embraced such a constitutional change, as Edmund Burke and some other members urged Parliament to do, the resulting “British Commonwealth” status likely would have delayed independence until the next century, at least.

In early 1776, sentiment among Americans shifted decisively in the direction of the radicals. Continued military hostilities, the raising of American troops, the final organization of functioning governments at all levels, the realization that the British viewed them as a hostile population reflected in the withdrawal of British protection by the Prohibitory Act of 1775, and Thomas Paine’s short polemic Common Sense opened the eyes of a critical mass of Americans. They were independent already, in everything but name and military reality. Achieving those final steps now became a pressing, yet difficult, task.

The Declaration was the work of a committee composed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. They were appointed on June 11, 1776, in response to a resolution introduced four days earlier by Richard Henry Lee acting on instruction of the state of Virginia. Jefferson prepared the first draft, while Franklin and the others edited that effort to alter or remove some of the more inflammatory and domestically divisive language, especially regarding slavery. They completed their work by June 28, and presented it to Congress. On July 2, Congress debated Lee’s resolution on independence. The result was no foregone conclusion. Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson and Robert Morris, both of whom had long urged caution and conciliation, agreed to stay away so that the Pennsylvania delegation could vote for independence. The Delaware delegation was deadlocked until Cesar Rodney made a late appearance in favor. The South Carolina delegation, representing the tidewater-based political minority that controlled the state, was persuaded to agree. The New York delegates abstained until the end. Two days later, the Declaration itself was adopted. It was proclaimed publicly on July 8 and signed on July 19.

Jefferson claimed that he did not rely on any book or pamphlet to write the Declaration. Yet the bill of particulars in the Declaration that accused King George of numerous perfidies is taken wholesale, and frequently verbatim, from Chapter II of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Constitution proposed by a convention on May 6, 1776, and approved in two phases in June. Moreover, Jefferson’s Declaration clearly exposes its roots in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. It would be astounding if Jefferson, a Virginian deeply involved in the state’s affairs, was unaware of such a momentous event or was oblivious to the influence of Locke on the many debates and publications of his contemporaries.

Three fundamental ideas coalesced in the Declaration: 17th-century social compact and consent of the governed as the ethical basis of the state, a right of revolution if the government violates the powers it holds in trust for the people, and classic natural law/natural rights as the divinely-ordained origin of rights inherent in all humans. The fusion of these different strands of political philosophy showed the progression of ideas that had matured over the preceding decade from the at-times simplistic slogans about the ancient rights of Englishmen rooted in the king’s concessions to the nobles in Magna Charta and from the incendiary proclamations by the Sons of Liberty and other provocateurs.

The structure was that of a legal brief. The King was in the dock as an accused usurper, and he and the jury of mankind were about to hear the charges and the proposed remedy. At the heart of the case against the King were some fundamental propositions, “self-evident truths”: Mankind is created equal; certain rights are “unalienable” and come from God, not some earthly king or parliament; governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” and exist to secure those rights; and, borrowing heavily from Locke, there exists a residual recourse to revolution against a “long train of abuses and usurpations.”

Once the legal basis of the complaint was set, supporting facts were needed. Jefferson’s list is emotional and provocative. As with any legal brief, it is also far from impartial or nuanced. Some of the nearly thirty accusations seem rather quaint and technical for a “tyrant,” such as having required legislative bodies to sit “at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records.” Others do not strike us as harsh under current circumstances as they might have been at the time, such as King George having “endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purposed obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” At least one other, describing the warfare by “the merciless Indian Savages,” sounds politically incorrect to the more sensitive among our modern ears.

The vituperative tone of these accusations is striking and results in a gross caricature of the monarch. But this was a critical part of the Declaration. Having brushed aside through prior proclamations and resolves Parliament’s legitimacy to control their affairs, the Americans needed to do likewise to the King’s authority. King George was young, energetic, and politically involved, with a handsome family, and generally popular with the British people. Many Americans, too, had favored him based on their opinion, right or wrong, that he had been responsible for Parliament repealing various unpopular laws, such as the Stamp Act. As well, as Hamilton remarked later at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, the King was bound up in his person with the Nation, so it was emotionally difficult for many people to sever that common identity between themselves and the monarch. To “dissolve the political bands” finally, it would no longer suffice to blame various lords and ministers for the situation; the King himself must be made the villain.

Before the ultimate and extraordinary remedy of independence could be justified, it must be shown, of course, that more ordinary relief had proved unavailing. Jefferson mentions numerous unsuccessful warnings, explanations, and appeals to the British government and “our British brethren.” Those having proved ineffective, only one path remained forward: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America … declare, That these United Colonies are … Independent States.”

The Declaration was a manifesto for change, not a plan of government. That second development, moving from a revolutionary to a constitutional system, would have to await the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and, eventually, the Constitution of 1787. True, since the early days of the Republic, various advocates of causes such as the abolition of slavery have held up the Declaration’s principles of liberty and equality as infusing the “spirit” of the Constitution. But this has always been more a projection by those advocates of their own fervent wishes than a measure of what most Americans in 1776 actually believed.

Being “created equal” was a political idea in that there would be no hereditary monarchy or aristocracy in a republic based on consent. It was also a religious idea, in that all were equal before God. It did not mean, however, that people were equal “in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions,” as James Madison would mockingly write in The Federalist No. 10. He and Jefferson, along with most others, were convinced that, if people were left to their own devices, the natural inequality among mankind would sort things out socially, politically, and economically. Even less did such formal equality call for affirmative action by government to cure inequality of condition. It was, after all, as Madison explained in that same essay, “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property” that were the “improper and wicked project[s]” against which the councils of government must be secured.

In the specific context of slavery, the Declaration trod carefully. Jefferson’s criticism of the British negation of colonial anti-slave trade laws in his original draft of the Declaration was quickly excised by cooler heads who did not want to stir that pot, especially since almost all of the states permitted slavery. Jefferson’s later lamentation regarding slavery that “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just” was a distinct minority view. Many Americans had escaped grinding poverty in Europe, had served years of indentured servitude, or lived under dangerous and hardscrabble frontier conditions. As a result, as the historian Forrest McDonald observed, few of them trembled with Jefferson. It remained for later generations and the crucible of the Civil War and Reconstruction to realize the promise of equality that the Declaration held for the opponents of slavery.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Jeff Truitt

For thousands of years, nations have looked to the sea as a “global commons” that provides a source of sustenance, a means to efficiently trade goods in mutually advantageous economic transactions, and as a highway for the transport of armies. Since our nation’s own earliest origins, the advantages of efficient commerce over the seas have contributed to our rise as an ascendant economic power, our internal freedom, and our ability to project power and stability around the globe.

In 1775, the thirteen American Colonies were under attack by hostile forces from across the Atlantic Ocean. The Navy celebrates October 13, 1775 as the birth of the United States Navy because that is the date on which the Continental Congress officially authorized the funding of two ships to interdict British forces. However, a month earlier, General George Washington, acting unilaterally, deployed three schooners off the coast of Massachusetts and thereby provisioned the colonies with their first naval forces. Over the course of the Revolutionary War, more than 50 Continental vessels harassed the British, seized munitions, supplied the Continental Army, and engaged in international commerce with European allies like France.

The greatest naval successes of the Revolutionary War were secured by privateers, most famously John Paul Jones whose remains are kept in the crypt beneath the Chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy. A privateer was a private Sailor who was granted authority by a sovereign power by a “Letter of Marque” to intercept civilian merchant ships belonging to an enemy power.  These “prize” ships were hauled into a court which had the authority to award a share of the spoils to the privateer and the ship’s owners. Some 1,700 privateers captured more than 2,200 enemy ships during the Revolutionary War, compared to perhaps 200 ships captured by the Continental Navy.

The game changing event of the American Revolution was the defeat of the English forces at Yorktown in 1781. This forced surrender occurred because the French fleet defeated the English fleet at Chesapeake and were thereby poised to annihilate the English columns with their powerful cannon. Command of the littoral waters enabled land-based forces to prevail, a pattern repeated often throughout history.

Quality Navy ships are expensive and by 1785, the Continental Navy had been completely disbanded. After a decade without a Navy, State-sponsored pirate regimes in North Africa prevented U.S. merchant vessels from engaging in free commerce in the Mediterranean. The Naval Act of 1794 created a standing Navy, featuring the commissioning of six technologically sophisticated vessels that could engage or outrun any ship it encountered. One of them was the USS Constitution, still docked in Boston today.

After restoring freedom of navigation to the Mediterranean, the U.S. Navy prevented the invasion of New York state by the British in the War of 1812. Soon after, the U.S. Navy helped stamp out piracy on the high seas in South America, Africa and the Pacific. Between 1819 and the start of the Civil War, the U.S. Navy operated an Africa squadron which suppressed the slave trade, capturing more than 36 slave ships during this time. The U.S. Navy played a critical role in choking off supplies to the South during the Civil War, again highlighting the power of international trade to shape world events.

Interestingly, although European powers outlawed privateering in the 1856 Declaration of Paris following the Crimean War, the United States declined to join this convention because we feared that our underdog Navy might need such assistance. In the 1880s, we invested in modern steel battleships and by 1900 had built the world’s fifth largest Navy.  Privateering was outlawed for good at the Hague Conference of 1907.

Hopefully most Americans are still aware of the critical role that the U.S. Navy played in defending twice against the German threat in as many generations, as well as its defeat of Imperial Japan in 1945.

Since World War II, the United States Navy has provided a safety umbrella on the oceans around the world for international shipping.  Whether it is the trade of wheat, oil, pork, steel, timber, or finished goods, global commerce is enabled by the protection afforded by the United States Navy. While U.S. taxes support a strong Navy, safety at sea is a collective benefit enjoyed by everyone.

It is critical that we continue to support navigational rights around the world. The right of innocent passage hearkens back hundreds of years and contributed to the economic development of millions of souls.

Today, China has built a fleet that rivals the size of the United States forces. However, China does not vocally advocate for international freedom of the seas. To the contrary, it has claimed as its private domain most of the South China Sea, an area roughly the size of the Gulf of Mexico. This zone is bordered by a number of other coastal states with superior claims, according to an international tribunal that considered the matter in exhaustive detail.

In order to guarantee international freedom and economic prosperity, it is important that the United States continue to invest in a strong Navy and to support international allies who are committed to freedom of navigation on the high seas.

Jeff Truitt serves as a Captain in the U.S. Navy Reserve. He frequently leads small group seminars at the U.S. Naval War College in operational maritime law, and previously served on active duty as a submarine officer in the Cold War.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: David B. Kopel

During the first six decades of the eighteenth century, the American colonies were mostly allowed to govern themselves. In exchange, they loyally fought for Great Britain in imperial wars against the French and Spanish. But in 1763, after the British and Americans won the French and Indian War, King George III began working to eliminate American self-government. The succeeding years saw a series of political crises provoked by the king and parliament. What turned the political dispute into a war was arms confiscation at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775.

In 1774, the British government had realized that because armed Americans were so numerous, they could not be frightened into compliance with British demands. So in the latter months of 1774, the King and his Royal Governors in America instituted a gun control program. All firearms and ammunition imports to the American colonies were forbidden. At the governors’ command, British soldiers began raiding American armories, which stored firearms for militiamen who could not afford their own, and also held large quantities of gunpowder. Because the raids were accomplished peacefully in surprise pre-dawn maneuvers, they caused outrage, but nothing more. Both sides knew that if the British attempted to seize arms by force, the Americans would fight.

Ever since 1768, Boston had been occupied by a British army. In April 1775, a spy informed British General Gage that the Americans had secreted a large quantity of gunpowder in Concord, Massachusetts. Gage ordered his army to seize the American powder. This time, the Americans found out in advance.

On the night of April 18, 1775, British warships conveyed Redcoats across Boston Harbor, so they could march to Concord. Meanwhile, Paul Revere and William Dawes rode from town to town, shouting the warning “The British are coming.” The alarm was spread far and wide by the ringing of church bells and firing of guns.

To get to Concord, the British would have to march through Lexington; while the men of Lexington prepared to meet the British, the women of Lexington assembled ammunition cartridges late into the night.

The American Revolution began at dawn on April 19, 1775, when 700 Redcoats commanded by Major John Pitcairn confronted 200 Lexington militia on the town green. The militiamen, consisting of almost all able-bodied men sixteen to sixty, supplied their own firearms, although a few poor men had to borrow a gun.

“Disperse you Rebels—Damn you, throw down your Arms and disperse!” ordered Major Pitcairn. American folklore remembers the perhaps apocryphal words of militia commander Captain John Parker: “Don’t fire unless fired upon! But if they want to have a war, let it begin here!” The American policy was to put the onus of firing first on the British. Yet someone pulled a trigger, and although the gun did not go off, the sight of the powder flash in the firing pan instantly prompted the Redcoats to mass fire. The Americans were quickly routed.

With a “huzzah” of victory, the Redcoats marched on to Concord. By one account, the first man in Concord to assemble after the sounding of the alarm was the Reverend William Emerson, gun in hand.

At Concord’s North Bridge, the town militia met with some of the British army, and after a battle of two or three minutes, drove off the Redcoats. As the Reverend’s grandson, poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, later recounted in the “Concord Hymn”:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Notwithstanding the setback at the bridge, the Redcoats had sufficient force to search the town for arms and ammunition. But the main powder stores at Concord had been hauled to safety before the British arrived.

Having failed to get the gunpowder, the British began to withdraw back to Boston. On the way, things got much worse for them as armed Americans swarmed in from nearby towns. Soon they outnumbered the British two-to-one.

Some armed American women fought in the battle. So did men of color, including David Lamson, leading a group of elderly men who, like him, were too old to be in the militia, but intended to fight anyway.

Although some Americans cohered in militia units, many just fought on their own, taking sniper positions wherever the opportunity presented itself.

Rather than fight in open fields, like European soldiers, the Americans hid behind natural barriers, fired from ambush positions, and harried the Redcoats all the way back to Boston.

One British officer complained that the Americans acted like “rascals” and fought as “concealed villains” with “the cowardly disposition . . . to murder us all.” Another officer reported: “These fellows were generally good marksmen, and many of them used long guns made for Duck-Shooting.”

The British expedition was nearly wiped out. It saved from annihilation by reinforcements from Boston—and by the fact that the Americans started running out of ammunition and gunpowder.

British Lieutenant-General Hugh Percy, who had led the rescue of the beleaguered expeditionary force, recounted:

“Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about, having been employed as Rangers [against] the Indians & Canadians, & this country being much [covered with] wood, and hilly, is very advantageous for their method of fighting. Nor are several of their men void of a spirit of enthusiasm, as we experienced yesterday, for many of them concealed themselves in houses, & advanced within [ten yards] to fire at me & other officers, tho’ they were morally certain of being put to death themselves in an instant.”

At day’s end, there were 50 Americans killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing. Among the British 65 were killed, 180 wounded, and 27 missing. On a per-shot basis, the Americans inflicted higher casualties than the British regulars.

That night, the Americans began laying siege to Boston where General Gage’s standing army was located. Soon, the British would begin confiscating guns in Boston. Reinforced by volunteers from other colonies, and commanded by General George Washington, the American forces would maintain the siege of Boston until the British gave up and sailed away on March 17, 1776.

Further reading: David B. Kopel, How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution, 38 Charleston Law Review 283 (2012).

David B. Kopel is adjunct professor of constitutional law at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Craig Bruce Smith

In a wooded clearing overlooking an imposing rock formation, roughly sixty-five miles outside modern day Pittsburgh, the face of North America would be irreparably altered. On May 28, 1754 this spot witnessed the first shot of the French and Indian War (or the Seven Years’ War around the world). The shot was fired under the order, or possibly even by the hand, of a twenty-two-year-old Virginian militia officer named George Washington. At the break of dawn and under the cover of the forest, British, French, and Native forces engaged in this brief (but globally impactful) battle that escalated the long-simmering tension over the contested lands of the Ohio Valley into a world war felt on five continents.

For generations there had been a tenuous stalemate in the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi River between the French, British, and various Native American nations. Thinly settled by European colonists, there was a lack of clear authority or the means to impose it. It was a situation that allowed the Natives to pit the two colonial powers against each other. But as these European empires attempted to expand, this balance was shattered. All accused the others of encroaching upon their lands and sovereignty.

By 1753, the French began building a series of fortifications in the Ohio Valley. That same year, Virginia Lt. Governor Robert Dinwiddie tasked surveyor-turned-newly-appointed-militia-major George Washington (who spoke no French, contrary to the expectations of the eighteenth-century British gentleman) with carrying a message to the French commander, Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to withdraw from the contested lands. No retreat followed.

The prize of the region was the coveted strategic position at the intersection of the Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny Rivers. The British had previously established a small outpost, named Fort Prince George (or Trent’s Fort after Pennsylvania trader William Trent), to control trade and stake their own claim. On April 17, 1754, a sizeable French force under Captain Claude-Pierre Pécaudy, sieur de Contrecœur, drove the tiny overmatched garrison at Trent’s Fort under Ensign Edward Ward to surrender without a shot being fired. In its place rose Fort Duquesne (today’s Pittsburgh): a symbol of French authority that challenged not only the British but also the Mingo people (part of the Ohio Iroquois) and their leader Tanacharison (also known as Tanaghrisson or “Half-King”).

The fall of Trent’s Fort sparked alarm in the Virginia capital of Williamsburg and before news even reached London the now Lieutenant Colonel Washington and his force of 159 militiamen were marching to the frontier to combat the French threat. From the standpoint of the British and their new Native allies, it could be asserted that French incursions had initiated hostilities, but what followed would escalate the conflict into a war.[i]

After Washington and his troops reached the Great Meadows (located in present-day Farmington, PA), Silver Heels, a Native scout and warrior, reported a band of some fifty French soldiers “hidden” in a nearby encampment in a small glen surrounded by the dense wilderness. Their intentions were clearly set on ambushing Washington and his men, at least according to Tanacharison. The Mingo chief may have let personal matters influence his assessment of the situation, as he was convinced the French meant to murder him and his family. He alleged that this patrol was there “to take and kill all the English they should meet.”[ii] Washington decided to act.

Under the cover of darkness and a torrent of rain, a mixed band of forty militiamen and twelve Natives crept single file though the woods and surrounded the unsuspecting French patrol. As night turned to morning, Washington stood atop a rocky hill, looked down upon his adversaries, gave the command to fire, and personally loosed the first shot (as a signal or with aim is unclear).[iii] A volley immediately followed his discharge. Washington claimed the startled French, commanded by Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, had “discovered” them and the initial shots were to stop their mad dash to arm themselves. The French version differed, but regardless multiple volleys flashed on both sides. The battle (probably better described as a skirmish) only lasted about fifteen minutes and ended as quickly as it began, with the French “routed” by British bullets and at least some of the retreating men meeting “their destiny by the Indian tomahawks” wielded by Tanacharison and his warriors. Just over twenty Frenchmen survived.[iv]

Their wounded commander, Jumonville, claimed he was on a diplomatic mission. much like Washington had been in 1753. If it were true, under the rules of war and honor, the French ambassador should not have been attacked, as his “character being always sacred.”[v] But this was after the fact and there was a clear communication problem between the two leaders: Jumonville spoke French and Washington only understood English. Tanacharison, having dealt with each colonial power, was fluent in both. Before Washington could make sense of what was happening, Tanacharison buried his tomahawk into Jumonville’s head, killing him on the spot. Removing his embedded hatchet, the Mingo leader turned to French officer Michel Pepin dit La Force and taunted him “now I will let you see that the Six Nations [of Iroquois] can kill as well as the French.”[vi] As the chief raised his blood-drenched blade, the terrified La Force hid behind an undoubtedly shocked Washington who intervened, saved the man’s life, and stopped any further slaughter.

Why had Tanacharison acted this way? Perhaps it was to escalate the conflict to a full-fledged war. Or perhaps it was to defend himself, his family, and his people from what he perceived as French aggression Despite Tanacharison vehement assertions that the French “intentions were evil,” the affair ensured that Washington “never” again dealt with these Native allies or their leader.[vii]

Though the Virginian officer had not ordered the deathblow, his sense of honor, the possibility of truth of the diplomatic mission, and the lack of quarter given to the wounded Jumonville likely troubled him deeply and he feared its implications. Washington’s account of the incident to Dinwiddie glossed over it, saying, “amongst those that were killed was Monsieur De Jumonville the Commander.”[viii] In turn, Washington who was in command omitted Tanacharison’s execution, perhaps because it would reflect a lack of control or authority on the part of the novice Virginian officer.

Still, the full magnitude of this event would not be felt until a few months later in early July, when the again-promoted Col. Washington’s Virginia regiment (joined by those of Captain James Mackay’s South Carolina Independent Company) were besieged inside the wooden palisades of Fort Necessity on the nearby Great Meadows by a vastly superior French force. At the head of the 600 attackers was Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers, Jumonville’s older brother, who was tasked with seeking reprisals for the Battle of Jumonville Glen. Washington and Mackay were forced to surrender. Again plagued by his lack of French, Washington signed the Articles of Capitulation improperly translated by Jacob Van Braam, his former fencing master who possessed a limited grasp of French himself. He thought it said “death” or “killing of,” which was technically accurate, but it actually declared that he had assassinated Jumonville, who was on a diplomatic mission.[ix] This was considered a violation of one of the technically inviolable rules of war. But the grievous language would only be revealed after the French published the document—shaming Washington and Britain before the world.

The young Virginian attempted to defend his honor by refusing to accept this version of events and continued to insist, to both himself and the world, that Jumonville was not a diplomat, but “only a simple petty French officer; an ambassador has no need of spies.” Considering the standards of gentility of the time, Jumonville’s dress, bearing, and actions, in Washington’s estimation, precluded his being an emissary—he didn’t look the part. Rather, he argued, the French diplomatic mission was simply “A plausible pretense to discover our camp, and to obtain the knowledge of our forces and our situation!”[x]

But regardless of Washington’s justifications, his signature allowed the French to cast him as an “assassin,” and while the British disregarded the charge, it gave King Louis XV a pretext for a war. Despite initially drawing harsh British criticism, Washington’ reputation would survive and thrive as a “noble” hero based on his relationship with Dinwiddie and the influential aristocratic Fairfax family. Though he never altered his story, Washington would consider the lesson throughout his life, especially during the American Revolution, where he dealt with British Major John André (part of Benedict Arnold’s treason) as a spy, despite his looking the part of a gentleman.[xi]

While the Battle of Jumonville Glen may not be considered the start of the war from the British perspective, it resulted in an expanded colonial conflict engulfing the world in violence, which then began the rift between Britain and their colonists that set the stage for the American Revolution.

Craig Bruce Smith is a historian and the author of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era. For more information visit www.craigbrucesmith.com or follow him on Twitter @craigbrucesmith. All views are that of the author and do not represent those of the Federal Government, the US Army, or Department of Defense.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[i] For an excellent overview of the French and Indian War and its early battles see the following referenced throughout this article: Fred Anderson. The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War. (New York: Viking, 2005); David Preston. Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). For a brief overview of the incident at Jumonville Glen, also referenced throughout: Joseph F. Stoltz III, “Jumonville Glen Skirmish,” Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/jumonville-glen-skirmish/

[ii] George Washington, “Expedition to the Ohio,” 1754, Founders Online. https://founders.archives.gov/?q=jumonville&s=1111311111&sa=&r=1&sr=,

[iii] “An Ohio Iroquois Warrior’s Account of the Jumonville Affair, 1754,” in Preston, Braddock’s Defeat, Appendix E and p. 25-28.

[iv] Washington, “Expedition to the Ohio,”1754; “An Ohio Iroquois Warrior’s Account of the Jumonville Affair, 1754”; Stoltz, “Jumonville Glen Skirmish.”

[v] Washington, “Expedition to the Ohio,”1754.

[vi] “An Ohio Iroquois Warrior’s Account of the Jumonville Affair, 1754.”

[vii] Washington, “Expedition to the Ohio,” 1754, Founders Online.

[viii] George Washington to Robert Dinwiddie, 29 May 1754, Founders Online.

https://founders.archives.gov/?q=jumonville&s=1111311111&sa=&r=2&sr=

[ix] “Articles of Capitulation,” [3 July 1754], Founders Online. https://founders.archives.gov/?q=jumonville&s=1111311111&sa=&r=10&sr=; Paul K. Longmore. The Invention of George Washington. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999), p. 22-24.

[x] Washington, “Expedition to the Ohio,” 1754, Founders Online; Craig Bruce Smith, American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), p. 38-40.

[xi] Smith, American Honor, p. 38-40, 160.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

“In the name of God, amen. We whose names are under written … [h]aving undertaken for the Glory of God, and advancement of the christian [sic] faith, and the honour of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid: And by virtue hereof, do enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony ….”

Thus pledged 41 men on board the ship Mayflower that day, November 11, 1620, having survived a rough 64-day sea voyage, and facing an even more grueling winter and a “great sickness” like what had ravaged the Jamestown colony in Virginia. These Pilgrim Fathers had sailed to the New World with their families from exile in Leyden, Holland, with a stop in England to secure consent from the Virginia Company to settle on the latter’s territory. They were delayed by various exigencies from leaving England until the fall of 1620. The patent from the Company permitted the Pilgrims to establish a “plantation” near the mouth of today’s Hudson River, at the northern boundary of the Company’s own grant.

For whatever reason, either a major storm, as the Pilgrims claimed, or intent to avoid the reach of English creditors’ claims on indentured servants, as some historians allege, the ship ended up at Cape Cod on November 9. Bad weather and the precarious state of the passengers made further travel chancy, and the Pilgrim leaders decided to find a nearby place for settlement. Cape Cod was deemed unsuitable for human habitation. Instead, the Pilgrims disembarked on December 16 at Plymouth, so named earlier by Captain John Smith of the Virginia Company during one of his explorations. Since they were now a couple of hundred miles outside the Virginia Company’s territory, their patent was worthless. It became necessary to establish a new binding basis for government of their society.

The result was the Mayflower Compact, infused with a remarkable confluence of religious and political theory. The Pilgrims, like the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay in 1630, were dissenters from the Church of England. The former opted to separate themselves from what they perceived as the corruption of the Church of England, whereas the less radical nonconformists, the Puritans, sought to reform that church from within. Both groups, however, found the political and religious climate under the Stuart monarchs to be unfriendly to dissenters.

As common historical understanding has it, both groups sought to escape to the New World to practice their religion freely. However, that meant their religion. They set out to establish their vision of the City of God in an earthly commonwealth. As the Compact stated, their move was “undertaken for the Glory of God, and advancement of the christian faith.” Neither group set out to establish a classically liberal secular society tolerant of diverse faiths or even a commonwealth akin to the Dutch Republic, with an established church, yet accepting of religious dissent. The corrosive effect of such dissent would have been particularly dangerous to the survival of the small Pilgrim community clinging precariously to their isolated new home in Plymouth. Indeed, once the colony became established and became focused on commerce and trade, more devout members disturbed by this turn to the material left to form new communities of believers.

The religious orientation of the Mayflower Compact grew out of the Pilgrims’ Calvinist faith. In contrast to the Roman Catholic Church and its successor establishment in the Church of England, Calvinists rejected centralized authority with its dogmas and traditions as having erected impious barriers and distractions to a personal relationship with God. Instead, the congregation of like-minded believers gathered in community. It was a community founded on consent of the participants and given meaning by their shared religious belief. Those who rejected significant aspects of that belief would leave (or be shunned).

In Europe, those religious communities operated within–and chafed under–hostile existing political orders, most of which still were organized on principles other than consent of the participants. Once transplanted across the Atlantic Ocean, the Pilgrims were free of such restraints and could organize their religious life together with their political commonwealth within the Calvinist congregational framework. Their brethren, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, established their colony on the same type of religious foundation, as did a number of later communities that spread from the original settlements. The successor to the Puritans and Pilgrims was the Congregational Church, organized along those communitarian lines based on consent. That church became the de facto established church of Massachusetts Bay Colony and the state of Massachusetts under a system of state tax support, a practice that survived until 1833.

On the political side, the Mayflower Compact was one of three types of constitutions among the colonies in British North America. The others were the joint stock company or corporation model of the Virginia Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the proprietary grant model, the dominant 17th-century form used for the remaining colonies, such as the grant to Lord Calvert for Maryland and William Penn for Pennsylvania. Of the three, the Mayflower Compact most profoundly and explicitly rested on the consent of the governed. It provided the model for other early American “constitutions” in New England, such as the 1636 compact among Roger Williams and his followers in founding Providence, Rhode Island, the compacts among settlers that similarly established Newport and Portsmouth in Rhode Island and the New Haven Colony in 1639, and, most significantly, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The Orders, in 1639, united the Connecticut River Valley towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield and provided a formal frame of government. Like the Mayflower Compact, the Orders rested on the consent of the people to join in community, but in their structure they closely resembled the Massachusetts Bay Company agreement.

The political analogue to the congregational organization of the Calvinist denominations was the “social compact” theory, an ethical basis for the state that also rested on the consent of the governed. Classical Greek theory had held that the polis represented a progression of human association beyond family and clan and evolved as the consummate means conducive to human flourishing. In its medieval scholastic version epitomized by the writings of Thomas Aquinas, the state was ordained by God to provide for the welfare and happiness of its people within an ordered universe governed by God’s law. By contrast, the social compact theory rested on the will of the individuals that came together to found the commonwealth. It was a rejection of the static universal political (and religious) order that had governed Western Christendom and in which one’s status and privileges depended on one’s place in that order. After the Reformation, Protestant sects had many, sometimes conflicting, assumptions about the nature and the specifics of the relationship between the believer and God. In similar manner, social compact theory was not a unified doctrine, but varied widely in its details of the relationship between the individual and the state, depending on the particular proponent.

The two social compact theorists with the greatest influence on Americans of the Revolutionary Era were Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, with the latter’s postulates the more evident among American essayists and political leaders. Locke’s reflections on religion and politics were greatly influenced by the Puritanism of his upbringing. Although the governments established under the various state constitutions, as well as those created through the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of 1787, more closely resembled the corporate structures of the colonial joint stock company arrangements, they were formed through the direct or indirect consent of the governed. The Constitution of 1787, for example, very conspicuously required that no state would become a member of the broader “united” community without its consent. In turn, such consent had to be obtained through the most “explicit and authentic act” of the state’s people practicable under the circumstances, that is, through a state convention.

To whatever concrete extent the Mayflower Compact’s foundation on consent may have found its way into the organizing of American governments during the latter part of the 18th century, it is the Declaration of Independence that most clearly incorporates the compact’s essence. The influence of Locke and his expositors on Thomas Jefferson’s text has been analyzed long and frequently. But it is worth noting some of the language itself. The Declaration asserted that Americans were no longer connected in any bond (that is, any obligation) to the people of Britain, just as the Pilgrims, having sailed to a wilderness not under the control of the Virginia Company, believed that they were not bound by the obligations of the patent they had received. The Americans would establish a government based on the “consent of the governed,” “laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” just as the signatories of the Mayflower Compact had pledged.

So it came about that a brief pledge, signed by 41 men aboard a cramped vessel in 1620, “with no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns to repair unto to seek for succour,” with “a mighty ocean which they had passed…and now separate[d] them from all the civil parts of the world” behind them, and with “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men” in front of them, deeply affected the creation of the revolutionary political commonwealth founded in the New World a century and a half later.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Gary Porter

 

— The yearning for self-government springs eternal –

In the first Federalist essay, Alexander Hamilton famously observes: It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. Reflection and choice or accident and force, which will it be? Fortunate indeed are those who get to choose.

**

The Virginia colony was off to a rocky start.

As April 26, 1607 dawned, the colonists spied the coastline of Virginia. Three weeks later they came ashore 40 miles upriver at Jamestown.

After surviving a harrowing five-month voyage from England, the intrepid Virginia colonists anxiously opened the sealed envelope that would identify the seven members who were to govern them. As they read off the names, one stood out: John Smith? Whoops! John Smith was being held on board their ship, securely in chains. There had been this little “incident” mid-voyage, you see.

The exceptionally slow voyage (a normal crossing took three months) allowed disease to spring up in the cramped quarters and factions to form among the colonists. This did not escape notice of the expedition’s leader: Captain Christopher Newport. When the expedition docked at the Canary Islands to take on supplies, Smith, a swashbuckling adventurer and soldier whose life story reads like a Hollywood script, was suddenly clapped in chains by Newport, charged with trying to “usurp the government, murder the council, and make himself king (of Virginia).” He would eventually be released to assume his place on the council, but suspicions persisted.

The plan of the Virginia Company was to govern the new colony through a 13-man council in England and a similar though smaller council in Jamestown. What the planners of the expedition did not count on, were the austere and hazardous conditions the adventurers would encounter: Within six months, 80% of the colonists were dead from illness, the seven-man council had been reduced to four, and President of the Council, Edward Wingfield, had been impeached for maladministration. He was the one now in chains, perhaps the same ones that had restrained John Smith. Captain John Ratcliffe replaced Wingfield as President of the Council, but Smith would soon assume de facto command of the colony.

Unwilling to simply let the colony die, Smith enacted harsh measures, akin to martial law, to ensure that “gentlemen” and commoners alike contributed equally to the raising and hunting of food. Despite his efforts, the winter of 1609-10 became known as the “Starving Time.”

In an attempt to breathe new life into the colony, by then hanging on by a thread, a new charter was granted in May 1609. The new charter included a provision that the colony would now extend from “sea to sea,” a gesture which provided no help to the beleaguered settlers. The charter established a new corporation and a new governing council in London that became the permanent administrative body of the corporation. A new governing council was created at Jamestown as well. A “Governour” was given extensive powers including the right to enforce martial law, if necessary.

By 1612, things were beginning to turn around. Numerous replenishments of supplies and manpower accompanied by a tenuous peace with the local natives had turned the settlement into a profitable and growing venture. A new, third charter was granted that year, extending Virginia’s jurisdiction eastward from the shoreline to include islands such as Bermuda. New settlers were each granted 100 acres of land.

On Friday, July 30, 1619, the newly appointed Governor, Sir George Yeardley set in motion the concept of self-government in the colony. Under instructions from the Virginia Company, he called forth the first representative legislative assembly in America, establishing “the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World,” Virginia’s House of Burgesses (today, the Virginia Assembly). The group convened in the colony’s largest building, the Jamestown Church “to establish one equal and uniform government over all Virginia” which would provide “just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting.” The Governor, six men forming a Council of State, and, initially, twenty burgesses, two from each of ten settlements — “freely elected by the inhabitants thereof” — prepared to get underway.

An eleventh settlement, that of Captain John Martin, was not immediately allowed seats. A clause in Martin’s land patent exempted his plantation from the authority of the colony.[1] There would thus be little point in including him as a Burgess; any laws he participated in creating would not apply to his own settlement. A secretary, (former member of Parliament John Pory) and a Clerk (John Twine) were quickly appointed to their positions. Prayer was offered by Reverend Richard Buck: that “it would please God to guide and sanctifie all our proceedings to his owne glory and the good of this Plantation.”

An oath was then administered to all present The Oath of Supremacy, first established in 1534, required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the English monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath were dealt with harshly. In April 1534, advisor to King Henry Sir Thomas More had refused to take the oath. He was imprisoned, tried for treason, and despite his close relationship with the King, beheaded the following year. Oaths, at least back then, were serious stuff.

The ten settlements represented that day in 1619 included “James Citty, Charles Citty, Henricus, Kiccowtan, Smythe’s Hundred, Martin’s Hundred (a different Martin than John Martin), Argall’s Guiffe, Flowerdieu Hundred, Captain Lawne’s Plantation and Captaine Warde’s Plantation.”

The lead representative of Warde’s Plantation, none other than Captain Warde himself, was immediately challenged by another Burgess as having settled in the colony without proper authority from the Company in England. But due to the great efforts Warde had made towards the colony’s success, particularly in bringing in “a good quantity of fishe,” he and his lieutenant were allowed to take their seats.

Once again, the Burgesses turned their attention to the issue of Captain John Martin’s two representatives. After a review of Martin’s patent it was decided that the two Burgesses-in-waiting should leave until such time as Captain Martin himself appeared to discuss the matter. But the assembly was not quite done with Martin. The Burgesses were next presented with a complaint that an Ensign Harrison, under Martin’s employ, had forcibly taken corn from Indians who had refused to sell to him, leaving the Indians with some “copper beades and other trucking stuffe.” The Indians had complained to Chief Opchanacanough, who had complained to Governor Yeardley. False dealing with the Indians was a serious offense; the shaky, on again, off again peace with the various Indian tribes was fragile, easily broken. It was ordered that Captain Martin appear before the Burgesses forthwith. The order to appear began: “To our very loving friend, Captain John Martin, Esquire, Master of the ordinance.” Martin’s last title in the salutation might explain the gentle tone taken.

Next, the “greate Charter, or commission of privileges, order and laws,” sent from England in four books, was presented. It was decided that two committees would be commissioned to review the first two of the books to see if they contained anything “not perfectly squaring with the state of this Colony or any lawe which did presse or binde too harde, that we might by waye of humble petition, seeke to have it redressed.” The two committees gave their reports the following day.

The Burgesses composed six petitions to send to the Council in England. The first four dealt with administrative matters; the fifth asked the Council’s permission to build “a university and colledge” in the colony. This “colledge” would eventually be named Henricus College, which today lays claim to being the oldest college in North America. It’s primary purpose? To educate the natives. The sixth petition asked permission to rename Kiccowtan settlement.[2]

The next day, Sunday, August 1, one of the Burgesses, a Mr. Shelley, died unexpectedly.

On Monday, August 2nd, the infamous Captain Martin appeared before the Burgesses. He was asked whether he would disavow the stipulation in his patent that his settlement would be exempt from the established laws. He would not. Whereupon the assembly voted that his settlement’s representatives not be admitted. As to the charge that his employees had unfairly dealt with the natives, Martin acknowledged the charges as true and said he would put up a security bond to ensure it would never happen again.

The issues with Captain Martin thus settled, the Burgesses set about to make some laws (why not?)

Laws against idleness, gaming, drunkenness and “excesse in apparel” were enacted. Settlers caught gaming at “dice and Cardes,” the winners at least, would forfeit their winnings; all the players would be fined “ten shillings a man.”

Not forgetting one of the main reasons for the settlement: the “propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God,”[3] each settlement was to obtain “by just means” a number of the native children who would be educated by the settlers “in true religion and civile course of life.”

Each settler was required to plant six mulberry trees each year for seven years.

On Tuesday the 3rd of June, more laws.

On Wednesday the 4th of June, with many of his assembly coming down with malaria, Governor Yeardley decided that was enough for this session of the Burgesses and adjourned this first experiment in self-government. Many challenges lay ahead. While the 1619 House of Burgesses proved a turning point in the governing structure of Virginia; but it did not end the economic difficulties brought on by crop failures, war with the Indians, disputes among factions and bad investments.

For instance, after several years of strained coexistence, Chief Opchanacanough and his Powhatan Confederacy decided to eliminate the colony once and for all. On the morning of March 22, 1622, he and his men attacked the outlying plantations and communities up and down the James River in what became known as the Indian Massacre of 1622. More than 300 settlers were killed, about a third of the colony’s population. The fledgling developments at Henricus and Wolstenholme Towne, were essentially wiped out. Jamestown was spared only by the timely warning of a friendly Indian.  Of the 6,000 people known to have come to the settlement between 1608 and 1624, only 3,400 would survive.

In 1624, King James I finally dissolved the Virginia Company’s charter and established Virginia as a royal colony. In 1776, when the Fifth Virginia Convention declared its independence from Great Britain and became the independent Commonwealth of Virginia, the House of Burgesses was renamed the House of Delegates, which continues to serve as the lower house of Virginia’s General Assembly to this day.

Gary Porter  is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative (CLI), a project to promote a better understanding of the U.S. Constitution by the American people.   CLI provides seminars on the Constitution, including one for young people utilizing “Our Constitution Rocks” as the text.  Gary presents talks on various Constitutional topics, writes a weekly essay: Constitutional Corner which is published on multiple websites, and hosts a weekly radio show: “We the People, the Constitution Matters” on WFYL AM1140.  Gary has also begun performing reenactments of James Madison and speaking with public and private school students about Madison’s role in the creation of the Bill of Rights and Constitution.  Gary can be reached at gary@constitutionleadership.org, on Facebook or Twitter (@constitutionled).

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

[1] Martin had been a member of the original Ruling Council; how he had received such a unique patent has not been explained.

[2] It would eventually be renamed Elizabeth City, site of the present day Hampton, Virginia.

[3] Found in the First charter of 1606

Guest Essayist: Tony Williams
In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses met in the Jamestown Church, the first elected legislative body in America.

In the early seventeenth century, gentlemen adventurers and common tradesmen voyaged to Jamestown and established the first permanent English settlement in North America. They were free and independent Englishmen who risked their lives and fortunes to brave the dangers of the New World for personal profit and the glory of England.

The settlement was part of the grand national political, economic, and religious European struggle for imperial preeminence. Unlike their Spanish counterparts who received official financial backing, the enterprising individuals created an entrepreneurial joint-stock company.

In 1606, John Smith and other wealthy adventurers and merchants organized the Virginia Company and received a royal charter to colonize the territory. They were promised the rights of Englishmen “as if they had been abiding and born within our realm of England.” The crown charged them with the religious purpose of spreading the Protestant faith to the Native Americans. While primarily interested in getting wealthy from gold and silver and the discovery of the fabled Northwest Passage to Asia, the company received rights to the commodities it found.

Almost 150 adventurers and sailors crossed the Atlantic in a harrowing voyage that took some five months. They sailed on the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. They suffered a variety of contrary winds and storms that impeded their progress and caused tensions to escalate aboard the ships. The contentious John Smith ran afoul of the leaders of the armada and was clapped in chains and nearly hanged in the Caribbean.

The ships finally sighted Virginia and over the next few days went ashore where they erected a cross, encountered several groups of Indians who alternatively attacked and traded with them, and explored the James River. On May 14, 1607, they disembarked at Jamestown because they thought it bountiful and defensible against expected Spanish attacks. The instructions from the company were opened and the appointed leaders of the colony—including John Smith—were sworn into their offices.

While they had several peaceful trading encounters with the local Indians, the settlers suffered a large, deadly attack a few weeks later and decided to build a fort. That was only the beginning of the colony’s troubles. That summer, most of the company was sickened by drinking brackish water from the tidal James. They suffered a variety of maladies including salt poisoning, typhoid fever and dysentery. The settlers were mostly too sick to work or plant food. However, the gentlemen leaders of the colony believed that the colonists were being lazy. Moreover, disputes among the councilors resulted in the imprisonment of President Edward Maria Wingfield. The colony was in chaos.

The remedy was worse than the problems the colony faced. The leaders imposed draconian laws on the settlers, and Smith forced men to work or suffer punishment. The settlers did not enjoy the rights of Englishmen they were promised. They also had very little incentive to work because they did not own land or the fruits of the labor as they toiled for the company and consumed food from the common storehouse. They also completely depended on the goodwill of the Indians for food through trade or coercion at gunpoint.

The situation over the next few years did not improve because the colony was still governed poorly and based upon the wrong incentive structure. They depended upon regular resupply from England but sent scant precious metals or valuable raw materials back to England.

In 1609, the company dispatched a fleet of ships with 500 settlers and supplies led by the flagship, Sea Venture. A massive hurricane dispersed the fleet and sank the Sea Venture near Bermuda with the admiral of the fleet, the new president of the colony, its instructions, and most of the supplies destined for Jamestown. The shipwrecked survivors were stranded there for nearly a year.

Meanwhile, in Jamestown, the rest of the fleet had arrived with hundreds of tempest-tossed settlers but few supplies. In addition, people tired of John Smith, and he barely survived an assassination attempt and departed the colony. With the dearth of food and the leadership vacuum, the winter of 1609-1610 became known as the “Starving Time.” Desperate colonists ate rats, dogs, and snakes, and resorted to trying to eat leather goods and even each other. The colony was hanging by a thread.

In May 1610, Gates and the Bermuda castaways finally arrived in Jamestown but quickly decided to return to England before all starved to death. As they were sailing down the James, they encountered another supply fleet bringing the new governor, Lord De La Warr, who ordered the colonists to return to Jamestown. The governor attempted to rebuild the colony through the same methods that had failed the colony to date: martial law, harsh discipline, forced work, and communal ownership.

The colony barely survived over the next few years even with the arrival of tons of supplies and additional settlers to make up for the horrific death toll. Even the planting of tobacco did not fundamentally alter the structure of the colony or facilitate lasting success as commonly assumed.

Only in 1616 and 1617 did the colony find the path to permanent success and prosperity in Jamestown. The introduction of private property gave colonists the right incentive to grow crops including food and tobacco to sustain themselves. Moreover, the company finally guaranteed the traditional rights of Englishmen rooted in the common law including liberties and trial by jury. Most importantly, in 1619, the House of Burgesses—the first representative legislature in America—was created for just laws and good government.

Jamestown began to thrive over the next few years as opportunity beckoned despite the still frighteningly high death rate from disease. Approximately 4,000 settlers migrated to Virginia for greater opportunity. Women finally arrived in large numbers to support families and a lasting colony. The first Africans arrived in 1619 and had a largely obscure status until slavery was codified over the next several decades.

The settlement of Virginia had entrepreneurial origins that developed only in fits and starts and after almost a decade of failure. The introduction of private property, freedom, self-government, and a capitalist ethos laid the foundations of a successful colony and shaped the colonists’ thinking. Those ideals rested uneasily with the development of slavery, and this contradiction of slavery and freedom would continue for more than two centuries. However, the founding ideals of America were established along the James in Virginia.

Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90-Day Study on American History.

Guest Essayist: Wilfred M. McClay

We Americans need to know our history. And we need to know it far better than we have in the past. We are not a people bound together primarily by blood and soil. Instead we are people with our origins in many bloods and many soils, linked by shared principles embodied in shared institutions, and embedded in a shared history, with its shared triumphs and shared sufferings. There is a growing danger that we have been failing to pass along that flame to our posterity, with untold consequences. We have neglected an essential element in the formation of good citizens when we fail to provide the young with an accurate, responsible, and inspiring account of their own country – an account that will inform and deepen their sense of identification with the land they inhabit and equip them for the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.

“Citizenship” here encompasses something larger than the civics-class meaning. It means a vivid and enduring sense of one’s full membership in one of the greatest enterprises in human history: the astonishing, perilous, and immensely consequential story of one’s own country. That’s what the study of American history should provide.

We need this knowledge for the deepest of all reasons. For the human animal, meaning is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Without it, we perish. Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity. Without memory, and without the stories by which our memories are carried forward, we cannot say who, or what, we are. A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous and easily tyrannized, even if it is technologically advanced. The incessant waves of daily events will occupy all our attention and defeat all our efforts to connect past, present, and future, thereby diverting us from an understanding of the human things that unfold in time, including the paths of our own lives. The stakes were beautifully expressed in the words of the great Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer: “When a day passes it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren’t told or books weren’t written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story.”

Singer was right. As individuals, as communities, as countries: we are nothing more than flotsam and jetsam without the stories in which we find our lives’ meaning. These are stories of which we are already a part, whether we know it or not. They are the basis of our common life, the webs of meaning in which our shared identities are suspended. Just as we need meaning, so we need a sense of belonging. Without them we cannot flourish. The pathologies that we see creeping steadily into our national life—rise in suicides, youth depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and astonishingly an overall decline in life expectancy—how can these not be related to a catastrophic loss of meaning, a sense of disconnected from others, and from the great story to which, by all rights, every American belongs?

I wrote the book Land of Hope to try to begin to redress this problem, to be a fresh invitation to the American story. It does not pretend to be a complete and definitive telling of that story. Such an undertaking would be impossible in any event, because the story is ongoing and far from being concluded. But what it does try to do is present the skeleton of the story, its indispensable underlying structure, in a form particularly appropriate for the education of American citizens living under a republican form of government. There are other ways of telling the story, and my own choice of emphasis should not be taken to imply that the other aspects of our history are not worth studying. On the contrary, they contain immense riches that historians have only begun to explore. But one cannot do everything all at once. One must begin at the beginning, with the most fundamental structures, before one can proceed to other topics. The skeleton is not the whole of the body – but there cannot be a functional body without it.

Permit, in concluding to say a word about my choice of title, Land of Hope, which forms one of the guiding and recurrent themes of the book. As the book argues from the very outset, the western hemisphere was largely inhabited by people who had come from elsewhere, unwilling to settle for the conditions into which they were born and drawn by the prospect of a new beginning, the lure of freedom, and the space to pursue their ambitions in ways their respective Old Worlds did not permit. Hope has both theological and secular meanings, spiritual ones as well as material ones. Both these sets of meanings exist in abundance in America. In fact, nothing about America better defines its distinctive character than the ubiquity of hope, a sense that the way things are initially given to us cannot be the final word about them, that we can never settle for that. Even those who are exceptions to this rule, those who were brought to America in chains, have turned out to be some of its greatest poets of hope.

Of course, hope and opportunity are not synonymous with success. Being a land of hope will also sometimes mean being a land of dashed hopes, of disappointment. That is unavoidable. A nation that professes high ideals makes itself vulnerable to searing criticism when it falls short of them – sometimes far short indeed, as America often has. We should not be surprised by that, however; nor should we be surprised to discover that many of our heroes turn out to be deeply flawed human beings. All human beings are flawed, as are all human enterprises.

What we should remember, though, is that the history of the United States includes the activity of searching self-criticism as part of its foundational makeup. There is immense hope implicit in that process, if we go about it in the right way. That means approaching the work of criticism with constructive intentions and a certain generosity that flows from the mature awareness that none of us is perfect and that we should therefore judge others as we would ourselves wish to be judged, blending justice and mercy. One of the worst sins of the present – not just ours but any present – is its tendency to condescend toward the past, which is much easier to do when one doesn’t trouble to know the full context of that past or try to grasp the nature of its challenges as they presented themselves at the time. My small book is an effort to counteract that condescension and remind us of how remarkable were the achievements of those who came before us, how much we are indebted to them.

But there is another value to the study of American history. Many Americans, including perhaps a majority of young people, believe that the present is so different from the past that the past no longer has anything to teach us. This could not be more wrong. As I say in the book’s epigraph, borrowing from the words of John Dos Passos:

In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking. That is why, in times like ours, when old institutions are caving in and being replaced by new institutions not necessarily in accord with most men’s preconceived hopes, political thought has to look backwards as well as forwards.

With the grounding provided by a sense of history, we need never feel imprisoned by the “idiot delusion of the exceptional Now,” or feel alone and adrift in a world without precedents, without ancestors, without guidelines. But we cannot have that grounding unless it is passed along to us by others. We must redouble our efforts to make that past our own, and then be about the business of passing it on.

This year’s Constituting America study is going to be particularly valuable in this regard, since it revolves around the study of particular moments in the American past when something highly consequential was decided. Dates, you say? What could be more boring? Ah, but we sometimes forget, to our detriment, that nothing in history is predetermined, and no outcome is pre-assured. History can turn on a dime, in a single moment, on a single date, and that’s why dates matter.

History is all about contingency, about the way that our positive outcomes depend not only on our big ideas but on our actions, our character, our courage, our determination—and on our good fortune, on forces beyond our control that somehow have seemed to work together for our good. Some people call this “good fortune” Providence. The American Founders certainly did. See if you don’t agree that they were on to something, when you hear the stories to come. They will make you think twice when you hear about “the blessings of Liberty” which our Constitution was designed to secure.

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the Director of the Center for the History of Liberty. In the 2019-20 academic year he is serving as the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. He served from 2002 to 2013 on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently serving on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which is planning for the 250th anniversary of the United States, to be observed in 2026. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, among others. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America won the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History, Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America, Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America, and most recently Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. He was educated at St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1987.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Wyatt Hensley is a 15 year old boy from Joplin, Missouri, who won Best Middle Song in the We The Future contest of 2019. He is a 9th Grader at Joplin High School in Joplin, Missouri. He is involved Student Council, in his Church, theater, and in Boy Scouts. He earned his Eagle Scout in January of 2020.

Dr. Robert Brescia currently serves as a Board Director (Past Chairman) at Basin PBS television, the American Red Cross of the Permian Basin (Past Chairman), the Southwest Heritage Credit Union, and the Salvation Army of Odessa. His experience includes top leadership roles in education, corporate business, non-profit, and defense sectors. He is a sought-after speaker and writer, and a monthly columnist for the American Society for Public Administration’s “PA Times”. Dr. Brescia has also written numerous articles and delivered presentations on leadership. In 2015, the Texas Civil Rights Project recognized him as one of their “Heroes and Leaders”.

Prior to his current responsibilities, Bob served as Executive Director of the John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute in Odessa. At JBS, he created the Crisis Leadership & Learning Center, a world-class, innovative computer-assisted leadership case study simulation center. Prior to those responsibilities, Dr. Brescia served as Chief Executive Officer of the Community Care College System, a multi-campus, privately-owned, for-profit career college in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was also President and Chief Executive Officer of Saint Joseph Academy, a private, independent 7-12 grade college preparatory institution in Brownsville, Texas. During his business career, Brescia served world-class, Fortune 500 organizations in highly visible operational leadership roles, primarily within the automotive sector. As Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of Transplace, Inc., Frisco, Texas, he was responsible for the operations of an industry-leading, high-technology, software-as-a-service provider. Dr. Brescia also served Volkswagen Group of America as its Chief Logistics Officer.  Before VW, he spent five years as Vice President for Logistics at Michelin North America, the $7 billion U.S. subsidiary of Group Michelin, a global manufacturer and distributor of tires, inner tubes, wheels, and maps & guides. Recruited to the world’s leading tire manufacturer as a logistics expert to craft and execute supply chain redesign and outsourcing of Michelin’s physical distribution network, he led a broad-ranging, global award-winning network optimization initiative. Bob also previously served as a strategist and planner of logistics, distribution, and supply chain solutions supporting automobile manufacturers’ programs including Ford & Jaguar, GM, Chrysler, and VW, as well as many Tier 1 suppliers such as Delphi, Dana, Lear, Visteon, and Textron. In 2004, Bob was voted by his peers as one of the Top Five logisticians in North America.

Brescia has twenty-seven years of public service as an Airborne Ranger Cavalry soldier, NCO, and commissioned officer in the United States Army. He has exercised leadership in global logistics under the most arduous of conditions including deploying a cavalry troop unit from Germany to the Desert Storm Theater of operations during the Persian Gulf War.  Bob is a graduate of the Army War College and the Command & General Staff College, as well as many other military schools.  His qualifications and awards include the U.S. Army Ranger Tab, Airborne qualification, the Department of the Army Staff Identification Badge, two citations of the Legion of Merit, four awards of the Meritorious Service Medal, the Southwest Asia Service Medal, the Kuwaiti Liberation Medal, and the Silver Rose.

He received a Bachelor of Arts Degree (summa cum laude) in Government from Norwich University, Vermont in 1977 where he graduated first in his class.  He holds two Master’s Degrees from Boston University: A Master of Arts in International Relations (MAIR) and a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems (MSCIS).  Bob was selected and participated in the George and Carol Olmsted Foundation Scholarship program in 1984, attending the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne) and the University of Strasbourg, France.  While in France, Brescia’s academic curriculum included French and European history, political science, international relations, and European Community law.  He earned a Diplôme d’ Etudes Approfondies from the University of Strasbourg and a Diplôme de L’Institut, European Institute of Advanced Studies, Strasbourg.  Dr. Brescia graduated with distinction from the Executive Leadership Doctoral Program with the George Washington University. Such a distinction has only been given to four other graduates of the program in its twenty-five year history.

As part of his Olmsted Scholarship duties, he worked for President Reagan’s White House team for his visits to France during the period 1984-86. He later served on President Bill Clinton’s Presidential Inauguration Commission in Washington D.C. Dr. Brescia is fluent in French and has an extraordinary knowledge of the French and European culture.  During his two years in Europe as an Olmsted Scholar, he delivered many speeches and presentations on behalf of the Departments of State and Defense, most notably in conjunction with the 40th commemoration of the WWII Normandy beachings, often working with the White House Staff, CIA, and Secret Service.  Bob’s latest book, Destination Greatness – Creating a New Americanism, is now available on Amazon and is receiving 5-star reviews. He has also authored The Americanism of John Ben Shepperd and Disruptive Power in American Discourse. Bob is a contributing author of the best-seller RFID for Dummies, a well-known guide on Radio Frequency Identification technology. His personal hobbies include reading, restoring jukeboxes, and creating LED light displays for the holiday season. Dr. Brescia is gratefully married to Marianne, the love of his life. They met and married in the Pentagon. He is the person that he is now because she loved him.

Nathan Copeland is a 14-year-old from San Antonio, Texas. He attends STEM Academy at Legacy of Educational Excellence (LEE) High School, where he enjoys entering STEM-related competitions, leading to him going to State Science Fair, placing 2nd overall in SA SMART City Challenge, and winning CivTech SA. He is also interested in the technological sector, as he enjoys creating websites, and is in Cyberpatriots and has presented coding in the Texas Capitol. In his community, he volunteers in places such as Miracle League, Camp CAMP, and his church, which has led to him earning the Presidential Service Award 4 years in a row. Nathan is constantly striving for new discoveries, from inventing new ideas on previous works to competing in various challenges. In his free time, he’s involved in Junior Varsity tennis, playing his violin in the LEE orchestra, and Academic UIL. Nathan aspires to become a businessman or lawyer after college to positively influence his community.

Click Here for Nathan’s winning STEM project – The Revolutionary Constitution Website!

Tova Love Kaplan, 16, currently serves as the National Youth Director for Constituting America and is a three-time winner of the nonprofit’s “We the Future” contest. Her work with Constituting America has lead to incredible experiences at the Department of Education, White House, the United States Capitol, and Fortune 500 companies. Tova is heavily involved in academics, extracurriculars, and social justice causes as her school’s Student Council Student Concerns Chairperson,  News Editor for the school newspaper, Vice President of her school’s Best Buddies International chapter, a co-founder of Bake Sale for Justice’s first student chapter, and a member of the National Junior Honors Society. Tova is a passionate public speaker interviewed frequently by media. She has been spotlighted in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, CBS2 Chicago, Chicago Magazine, Splash Magazines Worldwide, FOX4’s Good Day Dallas, and recently served as the first ever teen co-host on Windy City Live Tova has been recognized for her contributions to the City of Chicago through the Jewish United Fund’s 18 Under 18 Award and Chicago Parent Magazine’s Kids Who Do Good Award. Tova is a professional actor who has had featured roles at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Mercury Theater Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Paramount Theatre. Her commercial work includes videos and commercials for Second City Networks, Onion Productions, and the Wisconsin Dells tourism board.

Click Here for Tova’s Winning STEM project – a Constituting America “app”!

Watch Tova discuss her winning work, as well as her experiences with Constituting America, here!

Thank you to Mr. and Mrs. William Kohnke for your very generous contribution in loving memory of Bob and Norma Freuer to sponsor our Best High School Song Winner.

Click here to read Mr. and Mrs. Kohnke’s remembrance of Bob and Norma Freuer.

 

Constituting America thanks Mrs. Cindy Brinker Simmons for her generous contribution in honor of the memory of Mr. John Herklotz. Mr. Herklotz was a generous supporter of Constituting America. He not only helped fund our Constitution Education Programs, but also gave Constituting America many opportunities to promote our programs to his wide network through featuring our organization in his “In A Booth At Chasens” Playbill and other opportunities. Constituting America is a proud partner of Mr. Herklotz’s initiative America’s Mock Election. Click Here to view Mr. Herklotz’s website to learn more about this great American Patriot.
March 3, 1937 – January 20, 2020
Constituting America thanks our board member Mrs. Janice Gauntt for her generous contribution in Mr. Hubbard’s memory.  Mr. Hubbard was one of the earliest supporters of Constituting America, making our 2010 Road Trip Across America possible with a generous gift. Mr. Hubbard’s granddaughter is our Best Artwork Judge, Victoria Bauman and our Artwork Award is named after Victoria’s son,  Mr. Hubbard’s great-grandson, Conrad Ainslie Bauman, who passed away on September 23, 2015 after a courageous battle with an extremely rare form of Leukemia.
Click Here to view Mr. Hubbard’s Obituary.
Constituting America thanks the following family and friends of Mr. Ervin Monroe Dulaney for their generous contributions in his memory:
  • Suzanne and Noel Schnitz
  • Janice Gauntt
  • Melissa Guthrie
  • Col. and Mrs. Ambrose Szalwinski
  • Mr. and Mrs. Richard “Pete” Burgess, Business Aviation Consultants
Ervin Monroe Dulaney
1926 – 2019
Click Here to view Mr. Dulaney’s Obituary.

Constituting America thanks Janice Gauntt for her generous contribution in honor of Ms. Barbara Awbrey Hardage, to sponsor our Best Song Winner.

Click here for Barbara’s obituary.

Constituting America’s Conrad Ainslie Bauman Elementary School Artwork Award is named after Conrad Ainslie Bauman, age 19 months, who was born on February 22, 2014 and passed away on Wednesday, September 23, 2015 in the loving arms of his parents, Paul and Victoria Bauman after a fervent fight with an extremely rare form of leukemia. Conrad is finally at peace in heaven.  A sweet, precious baby, Conrad was known by his family and friends to be full of joy and smiles. He was friendly to all – a real people person – always waving and blowing kisses to those he knew and those he wanted to befriend. His infectious smile, soft touch and sparkling blue eyes melted hearts. He loved reading with his mother, animals both real and stuffed, airplanes flying in the sky, anything with a loud motor, walks with his parents, rides on golf carts, playing with his cousins and grandparents, and being surrounded by people. Conrad also loved art and artwork. Conrad taught those who knew him to find joy in simple things, to be courageous and to live passionately as everyday is a gift.  Conrad’s mother, Victoria Bauman, has served on Constituting America’s Advisory Board since its inception in 2010, and Victoria has assisted on numerous Winner Mentor Trips over the years. Victoria’s grandparents, and Conrad’s great grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Hubbard, have generously supported Constituting America since its founding in 2010.   Click here to read Conrad’s full obituary.

 

Thank you to Julie Bicking for your generous gift in honor of your father, Mr. Kenneth Gene Festerman

From Julie, “Kenneth Gene Festerman died April 3, 2000. He was 69. My father was my rock and inspiration. He served in the Field Artillery during the Korean War.
Malaria became his ticket home. He was proud of our country and proud of his service. To know there are those that keep the Constitution alive and well would fill him with hope.”

Thank you to Dorothy Quimby for your generous gift in honor of Mr. James Quimby, your beloved husband.

Click here for James Quimby’s obituary.

Marilyn Brink was one of Constituting America’s first staff. She checked our P.O. Box and made deposits for us from 2010 to early 2019. Marilyn very generously donated most of her Constituting America duties, charging a very minimal fee.

We will never forget Marilyn’s sense of humor and strong work ethic and are grateful for all she helped us achieve over the years.

Thank you Janice Gauntt, for your generous donation in memory of Marilyn to sponsor our Best PSA Winner.

Marilyn Ann Brink
July 31-1950 – January 31, 2019

Click here for Marilyn’s obituary

 

Elyas Masrour is a 17-year-old from Long Island, New York. He attends Ward Melville High School where he participates in various clubs like FIRST Robotics, Environmental Club, DECA Business Competition, and the Muslim Students’ Association. Elyas is a creator at heart. Whether it’s designing a robot, organizing an event, or making a short film, he’s in his element while making something new. In his community, Elyas has become an advocate for Science by making multiple documentaries on different local environmental issues. He’s also won an award for a documentary showcasing cultural diversity through the lens of food. In his free time, Elyas enjoys playing soccer and watching movies.

 

 

Dakare C. Chatman is 16 years old and is a native of Charleston, South Carolina.  Dakare got his start in theatre. Some of his many roles include Ollie in Yes Virginia, Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, Prince Chufa Chulalongkorn in The King and I, Ralphie in A Christmas Story, and Seaweed J. Stubbs in Hairspray. In 2017, he moved into film, Dakare has a commercial which played on the ION TV Station, and 5 billboards thanks to Constituting America. Dakare is on the youth advisory board of Constituting America as well. Dakare was featured in HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones and Netflix’s Outerbanks. Dakare has been public speaking, singing, and acting since the age of 5. Dakare hopes to be a politician during his lifetime, similar to Ronald Reagan, Dakare’s goal is “Actor first, politician later”. Dakare’s life quote is Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

 

 

Watch Dakare discuss his winning work, as well as his experiences with Constituting America, here!

My name is Chibuzor Ernest Onyeahialam and I am a born citizen of the United States with parents that are originally from Nigeria. I go to school at the University of Houston and I am studying computer information systems. I have plans of gaining a career in the computer industry. I have an extreme love for dogs and I love to go to the gym. My thought process behind the PSA was to make a video that would be attention grabbing to people young and old. It took me 2 weeks to get the video to my liking and I am extremely excited that my hard work paid off.

 

 

My name is Daniela Staton. I am a 6th grade honors student and I live in Delray Beach, Florida. I am passionate about singing, songwriting, piano, and playing volleyball and tennis. As libero on my volleyball team, we won first place at the 2020 South Florida Season Opener. At school, my favorite subject is math. Also, I really enjoy art as a way to express my thoughts and feelings; I feel free and focused when I’m creating art. In my free time, I love being with my family, traveling to different places, experiencing different cultures, enjoying adventurous activities such as skiing, hiking, mountain biking, snorkeling, and swimming with dolphins in the wild. I speak some Spanish and Greek and I am learning French at school. I am very thankful for this opportunity and very excited to be a part of Constituting America!

 

 

 

 

 

ALEXANDRA GUSINSKI CV

Alexandra Gusinski, a 12-year-old, residing in Greenwich, Connecticut – is a first-generation American born in Los Angeles, on December 25, 2007. She is of Israeli-Russian descent and is the granddaughter of Russian-Israeli media tycoon, Vladimir Gusinsky.

As a nature and marine life enthusiast, at age ten she received her Junior PADI Open Water Scuba Diver certification – she spends hours exploring the sea, only to later spend hours reading and researching the flora and fauna that she just saw. By age 11, she has already been shark-feeding, cave diving, and night diving.

Academically accomplished, at age 11, she joined the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY). She has broad interests ranging from performing and studio arts to social activism and global studies. During her summer breaks, she enjoys taking enrichment courses and travels to explore new places and learn about different cultures.

Alexandra has the 1st Dan black belt in Tae Kwon Do Korean martial art and enjoys self-defense combat training and sparring sessions, she competed in the 14th U.S. Masters Taekwondo Open Championships 2019 in Massachusetts and won first place in sparring and board breaking.

Alexandra is an advanced Jazz, Ballet and Hip-Hop dancer at the Greenwich Dance Studio and performed with her dance group at The Performing Art Center in Purchase, New York.

She enjoys horseback riding – she rides on the weekends near her house and participates in equestrian riding competitions in her hometown. During the winter season, she likes to ski and ice skate.

In 4th grade, as a consequence of her cultural trip to explore France with her mother, her interest in knowing more about the world’s social issues grew. Walking down the streets of Paris, Alexandra witnessed first-hand the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. Upon her return home, she engaged in independent research so that she could talk about this issue in her school and present ideas of how kids could help. Her school’s newsletter praised Alexandra for her social activism.

The summer after graduating from 5th grade, she visited the United Nations headquarters in NY, and soon after joined the ‘Model UN and Advanced Geography’ three- week intensive summer camp by John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY). She is a passionate debater who cares about human rights and animal rights.

Alexandra attended Whitby Montessori Private International Baccalaureate School from age two, for ten years, and transferred in 6th grade to KING Private school. Walking in school corridors, Alexandra carries her sketchbook with her everywhere she goes. While in 6th grade, she is the youngest person to attend the 8th grade Math Honors program in her school. She is the head of the newspaper club and enjoys exploring the visual arts, writing, filming, directing, and video editing.

At age 12, Alexandra won the Constituting America National Award for her Public Service Announcement on the First Amendment that she animated, written, and produced by herself.

Alexandra was chosen to be a member of the Youth Advisory Board of Constituting America, a group founded by Janine Turner and co-chaired with Cathy Gillespie, dedicated to teaching students and adults across America about the nonpartisan relevancy of the U.S. Constitution and the principles of self-governance inherent in our founding documents.

Watch Alexandra’s Winning PSA Below

My name is Larissa Nicolas and I am currently attending Charles R. Drew University of Science and Medicine. My ultimate educational goal is to attend medical school and also obtain my masters in Public Health. I want to become a physician and work in underserved communities to advocate for patients that may not have the tools to advocate for themselves. I hope to use my bilingual skills to furthermore bridge the gap between Spanish speaking patients and medical staff.

Click Here to take quiz!

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

If one looks at a map of the United States, a map that differentiates land into who owns that land—privately owned, owned by state or local governments, or owned by the federal government, one might notice something incredibly interesting:

The further west one goes, the more land retained in ownership by the federal government.  In fact, from the Rocky Mountains westward (essentially, any states that became states after the United States signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848), it is clear that, as a percentage of land, the United States government exercises enormous dominion:

And let us keep in mind that since this map is not to scale, Alaska’s size is under-represented—as seen here:

So, taking the first map and this one together, and understanding that Alaska is 60% federally-owned, it is clear that the federal government owns an enormous amount of land in the United States—much of it brought into the nation in the middle of the 19th Century.

But was the federal government ever intended to maintain permanent ownership of this land?  Certainly, as the Constitution originally envisioned, the federal government was only supposed to own very discrete parcels of land, and retain ownership of that land for very specific purposes – as described in Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2.

The 5th Amendment also talks about the “taking” of private property (as differentiated from the out-and-out purchase of that land from other nations, or the gaining of territories via treaty), but is informative as to the why of land acquisition.  Private property is to be “taken” for “public use” (and necessitating the both “due process” be accorded to the property owner, and “just compensation” be paid once the first two conditions are satisfied).

But the language about “public use” is informative – the federal government is only supposed to acquire lands for public uses (though that definition has shifted over time).

The central question is then raised: was it intended for the federal government to maintain permanent ownership or control over these lands, and did the federal government promise these western states that it would divest itself of these lands over time?

It is a question that has never been adequately answered—and no state has undertaken the necessary litigation to settle the underlying question.

What is clear is this: when states entered the Union (converting their status from federally-owned territories to become sovereign states), that happened via “Enabling Acts” negotiated by the territorial governments and then passed as legislation by Congress.  In every state that entered the union after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, each enabling act contained some variation of language in which the state set-aside any claim to the title of “unappropriated public lands” within that state—and that the federal government would dispose of those lands.

Take the 1864 Nevada Enabling Act, for example.  In Section 3, the state “disclaims” all right and title to these lands.  But then, in Section 10, the agreement is as follows:

“That five percentum of the proceeds of the sales of all public lands lying within said state, which shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said state into the Union, after deducting all the expenses incident to the same, shall be paid to the said state…”

The “Shall” clause of that sentence makes it clear that the federal government undertook an obligation to dispose of those lands “subsequent to the admission” of Nevada into the Union (with Nevada gaining 5% of the proceeds from those sales).

Incidentally, the reason for this trade-off was a product of good public policy: these states wanted to be settled in the easiest and least chaotic manner possible.  An essential element of that was ensuring that unappropriated public lands had “clear title”—a situation discussed at length in Peruvian economist and political scientist Hernando DeSoto’s seminal work, “The Mystery of Capital.”

In that work, DeSoto makes it clear that in order to have a stable and prosperous society, strong property rights are a fundamental necessity.  A key aspect of that is the assurance title is clear—thus allowing property to be bought and sold with ease.

“Shall,” as the word was used in these enabling acts, had a very specific meaning especially at the time these enabling acts were written and passed.  It was both a “command” on the part of the legislature, and it created a “duty” on the part of the federal government to engage in the activity evinced by the “shall” language.

And for a very long time, the federal government was in the business of fulfilling these obligations by disposing of these lands.

This changed with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA).  FLPMA flipped this obligation on its head—and instead of the “duty to dispose,” the federal government now had an “obligation to retain” these public lands in perpetuity.

This has had enormous consequences for the United States… and the specific states which contain these enormous amounts of public lands, both from a fiscal perspective and from a general public policy perspective. This FLPMA represented a fundamental departure from the agreements upon which these states entered the Union.

Andrew Langer has served as President of the Institute for Liberty since 2008. IFL works on a variety of issues—promoting and protecting small business, fighting cronyism, tilting against the regulatory state.  At the core of both is the desire to promote freedom and individual rights.  Andrew has been involved in free-market and limited-government causes for nearly 20 years, has testified before Congress nearly two dozen times, and has spoken to audiences across the United States.

A nationally-recognized expert on the impact of regulation on business, Andrew is regularly called on to offer innovative solutions to the problem of burdensome regulatory state.  Prior to coming to IFL, he was the principal regulatory affairs lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small business association.  He is also a nationally-recognized expert on the Constitution, especially issues surrounding private property rights, free speech, abuse of power, and the concentration of power in the federal executive branch.

In the Fall of 2019, Andrew joined the faculty of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, the nation’s second-oldest college (his alma mater).  He teaches on the regulatory state in the university’s Public Policy Program.

In addition to being IFL’s President, he also hosts a weekly show on WBAL NewsRadio 1090, Maryland’s largest news/talk station, appears regularly on television and other radio programs, and has guest-hosted on both nationally-syndicated terrestrial radio programs like “The Laura Ingraham Show” and shows on satellite radio.

In 2011, he was named one of Maryland’s “Influencers” by Campaigns and Elections magazine.  He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Troy University and his degree from William & Mary is in International Relations. He may be reached via: www.IChooseLiberty.org, @Andrew_Langer & @IChooseLiberty on Twitter; https://www.facebook.com/LangerForLiberty; or https://www.facebook.com/AndrewLangerShow.

Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

On September 19, 1796 George Washington published his Farewell Address. Best remembered now for its warning against American embroilment in European wars, the Address centers on what Washington considered a far more important and urgent question: the need to maintain the American union.

That union, he wrote, provides “a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence.” Americans’ tranquility at home, peace abroad, safety, prosperity, and liberty all require the continued union of the American states. “This is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed.” In a world of powerful, militarized and centralized modern states, several in command of vast empires, “no alliances, however strict, between the parts” of America “can be an adequate substitute.” Internally, factionalism, the “party spirit”—“itself a frightful despotism,” likely fanned by “the insidious wiles of foreign influence”—can eventually lead to a regime of tyranny, the last resort of a republican people desperate for protection from both domestic and international threats. Therefore, “The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.”

As both the leading general in the Revolutionary War against just such an empire and the first president under the United States Constitution, Washington had experienced what eighteenth-century writers termed the “inconveniences” of disunion for the past twenty years. From his difficulties in recruiting and paying the Continental Army to the machinations of French ambassador Edmond Genêt on behalf of the Jacobin regime, Washington had seen how selfish interests and mutual distrust could threaten his country’s still-fragile, controversial experiment in popular self-government.

In this, he had allied with his Treasury Secretary and former Army officer Alexander Hamilton, not only on the battlefield and in his administration, but in the crucial years 1787-91 when the United States Constitution was framed, debated, and ratified. Themes Washington succinctly invoked in the Farewell Address had already been elaborated by Hamilton in The Federalist.

Hamilton begins by alerting his readers to dangers Americans face from “dissensions between the states.” Among sovereign states, God’s command to ‘Love thy neighbor’ does not predominate. Quite the opposite: Hamilton considers it “a sort of axiom in politics that vicinity, or nearness of situation, constitutes nations’ natural enemies.” This is so because human nature isn’t divine. One must never “forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious”; their unlovely passions direct themselves against those who are nearest to hand. Thus “the causes of hostility among nations are innumerable.” They include both “the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion” and “the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety.” Trade wars often lead to shooting wars.

Nor do national passions limit themselves to public ambitions and grievances. Many national rivalries “take their origin entirely in private passions,” in the “attachments, enmities, interests, hopes and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members”: love affairs, criminal activity, vanity, religious bigotry, even indebtedness.

More often, however, the causes of war are less petty. Sovereign states fight over territory; given America’s “vast tract of unsettled territory” in the west, this could easily become a source of conflict—as indeed it did, by the 1850s. With existing jealousies and fears of larger states by smaller states under the existing Articles, border disputes “would be likely to embroil the States with each other, if it should be their unpropitious destiny to become disunited.” The public debt of the Union, like the private debt of Shays, “would be a further cause of collision between the separate States or confederacies,” as “foreign powers would urge for the satisfaction of their just demands, and the peace of the States would be hazarded to the double contingency of external invasion in internal contention.” Finally, “incompatible alliances between the different States, or confederacies, and different foreign nation,” would cause us to “be gradually entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths of European politics and wars”—Washington’s famous future argument—as “Divide and conquer must be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us.”

Hamilton especially needs to argue against the argument made by Montesquieu and other writers that commercial republics won’t fight each other. Applied to the United States, this would mean that the American states don’t need a more perfect union to sustain peace amongst themselves because they are all commercial republic. Here, Hamilton engages in some adroit rhetorical sleight-of-hand, although for a good purpose. He first argues by counter-example.  Republics often make war, no less than monarchies. “Are not popular assemblies frequently subject to the impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy, avarice, and of other irregular and violent propensities?” No doubt they are. And “has commerce hitherto done any thing more than change the objects of war? Is not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory?” Surely not, and assuredly so, respectively. He then observes that “Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. Yet were they as often engaged in wars, offensive and defensive, as the neighboring monarchies at the same times.” And in modern times, the “haughty republic” of Venice often made war on its neighboring states, and the commercial republics of Holland and Britain fought a series of wars against each other.

These arguments are easy to disprove. The two commercial republics of antiquity, Athens and Carthage, didn’t war against each other, except when Athens became a subordinate ally of a Syracusan tyrant. As for Holland and Britain, the Dutch Republic was a republic in name only—a federation, to be sure, but one ruled by kings and trading oligarchs; even Britain, during the time of the wars with the Dutch, was at best a mixed-regime republic, with monarchs not Parliament conducting its foreign policy. Why these sophistries? What justifies them?

What Hamilton knew, as did his political ally James Madison, was that many of the Southern states were not democratic republics at all. Both men had heard Gouverneur Morris chide the representatives of those states at the Constitutional Convention. You are slaveholding, plantation oligarchs, not real republicans, Morris said, and even Madison, himself a slaveholding, plantation oligarch, understood this, while hoping for gradual abolition of slavery and consequent political reform in Virginia and throughout the South. If not all the American states are commercial republics, the republic peace theory does not apply. This is the unspoken truth behind Hamilton’s verbal legerdemain.

Having established (directly or indirectly) the several causes of disunion, were the American Union to divide, Hamilton turns to the consequences, the effects those causes would bring down upon us. Whereas in Europe the disciplined armies and fortified borders of its many sovereign states have “been productive of the signal advantage of rendering sudden conquests impracticable,” in “this country the scene would be altogether reversed,” as wars would consist, first, of the “populous States” overrunning their “less populous neighbors,” followed by guerrilla warfare which will make such conquests “difficult to be retained.” Hamilton is thinking of the many instances of exactly such warfare, on both sides, during the recently concluded Revolutionary War. Even the Civil War, decades later, saw the conquest of the South by the more populous North, only to be followed by simmering hit-and-run resistance, including terrorism, by irregular forces led by Nathan Bedford Forrest, to take only the most prominent example.

Such chronic insecurity will lead to standing armies, and then to the undermining of republicanism throughout America. Armies, after all, require executive direction; American constitutions “would acquire a progressive direction towards monarchy,” “at the expense of the legislative authority.” Not only republicanism but commerce would thereby attenuate, as “the industrious habit of the people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuits of gain and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with the condition of a nation of soldiers,” as such circumstances would require Americans to become. To those who would cite Great Britain as a counterexample, as a nation that has fought many wars without succumbing to military rule (except for the brief reign of Oliver Cromwell, in the previous century), Hamilton reminds them that they are thinking of the British Isles–islands, moreover, protected by the most formidable navy on earth. America, too, has long coastlines, but is largely a continental power, and will become more so as it expands westward.

In sum, history teaches that small-scale republics, clustered together, spell calamity for the peoples so divided. “It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of evolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.” The “transient and fleeting brilliancy” of the Age of Pericles and of Renaissance Italy cannot compensate for “the vices of government” that “pervert[ed] the direction and tarnish[ed] the luster of those bright talents and exalted endowments” displayed there. Further, “From the disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics the advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty,” arguments enabling such advocates to condemn “all free government as inconsistent with the order of society.”

Confident that he has drawn his readers’ attention to the dangers, causes, and consequences of disunion, Hamilton defends the Framers’ solution: a republican regime and federal state with strong but limited powers. Respecting republicanism, “the science of politics… like most other sciences, has received great improvement” in modern times. Division of powers, checks and balances, judges holding office during good behavior, and perhaps above all “the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election” are “wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times.” Respecting the modern state, it has replaced small, weak political communities with large and powerful ones, but more: With the invention of federalism, it has enabled Americans to combine the self-defense only possible in a large place that organizes numerous soldiers and sailors in a manner permitting coherent military operations, with sufficient revenues to keep them well-armed. Crucially, as Montesquieu argues in his magisterial work, The Spirit of the Laws, a “confederate republic” will enable Americans to extend “the sphere of popular government” at to “reconcile[e] the advantages of monarchy”—effective command of well-trained and organized troops—“with those of republicanism”—economic, political, and religious liberty. Such a state, and such a regime, will not only defend itself against foreign enemies but also against “popular insurrection” within, as a beleaguered governor of one state will be entitled to call in assistance from other states, all under the eye (and, more to the point, the authority) of the federal government.

Within that federal government itself, the states will retain representatives. The Senate, elected by the state legislators, will leave the states in possession of “certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power,” although not in possession of sovereign power tout court. Hamilton cites the example of the ancient Lycian confederacy, which successfully combined self-defense, representation of each of its constituent city-states, and enumerated and forceful authority within those city-states by the federal government.

Throughout this study, essayists have shown how the American federal republic has empowered its own constituent states to retain substantial self-government without sacrificing the general powers needed for national defense against enemies foreign and domestic, retaining the freedom of interstate commerce, communication, and travel that affords the American people one of the highest living standards in the world. In the past century, the centralization and bureaucratization of both the federal and state governments have weakened citizen self-government, but the words of the original Constitution as amended in the years immediately succeeding the Civil War, and the intentions of the Framers and those citizens who have remained loyal to their intentions, guided by their principles of equal, natural (and therefore unalienable rights remain as a standard for those who continue to hold certain truths to be self-evident.

Will Morrisey is William and Patricia LaMothe Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College, and is a Constituting America Fellow; his books include Self-Government, The American Theme: Presidents of the Founding and Civil War and The Dilemma of Progressivism: How Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson Reshaped the American Regime of Self-Government.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayists: James C. Clinger and Michael W. Hail

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Constitutions can be thought of as institutional arrangements that shape the way that individual preferences will be expressed and collective decisions made within a government. The provisions of a constitution also reflect preferences, but the provisions of a constitution may have long-run impacts upon the way that individual preferences are translated into legally binding collective decisions well into the future. Some of these decisions will have implications that are unforeseen and unintended, even if the specific provisions of a constitution were intended by its framers to have different results. In particular, the constitutional framework of a state or nation shapes the path dependent development of that political community. Once the highest law of a polity has been designed, political, legal, and economic decisions are made with that framework in mind. Decisions involving sunk costs are made premised on a particular legal order. Once those decisions are made, it may be difficult to reverse them. The political and economic trajectory of a polity may be set in place, and the momentum built up over history may be hard to swerve in a different direction. Such can be seen in Kentucky’s experience with its state constitutions.

Constitutions can also be understood as covenants.[1] The role of political theory is particularly useful in understanding constitutions and the jurisprudence interpreting them. While classical understandings of Plato and Aristotle were central to the American Founders’ constitutionalism, they were even more influenced by modern political theory from Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. “The treatment of covenant …in [Thomas Hobbes] Leviathan is thoroughly Puritan, and in general should be regarded as a secularized version of the English Puritans’ theory of a commonwealth.”[2] Ultimately, the way the founders understand a constitution is the most important foundation for constitutional interpretation and this is often referred to as original intent. The meaning of provisions in any constitution will require time for judicial processes and political governance to fully articulate, and under the English common law legal system, the original understanding of those who found constitutions is central to the subsequent constitutional interpretation.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky has crafted four different constitutions.[3] Each can be seen to reflect the ideas and interests of its proponents. Each was a response to particular events and circumstances.   Each has been interpreted over time, not only by the courts but by agencies authorized to implement state law.

The first constitution was drafted in 1792 as a condition of Kentucky’s admission to the United States.[4] There were “four successive enabling acts passed by the legislatures of Virginia, that Kentucky was allowed to enter the Federal Union as an Independent State, on an equality with those which had established themselves as a nation.”[5] Kentucky had similar influences as the other states and scholars have generally concluded the resulting constitutions follow the model of the federal constitution of 1787.[6] The federal constitution was an example of American exceptionalism. “The Constitutional Convention was a signal event in the history of federalism for it was there that the American style of federalism originated.”[7] The Compact With Virginia, as the fourth enabling act has come to be known as, provided the constitutional and legal road map to statehood for Kentucky. Nine pre-constitutional conventions were held as part of the process leading to the Compact With Virginia. The tenth was the actual founding constitutional convention.

Although many Kentuckians were from Virginia, and some of the easternmost counties in Kentucky were formerly counties within Virginia, much of the first constitutional structure was drawn from the 1790 state constitution of Pennsylvania. George Nicholas, often considered the primary architect of the document at the state constitutional convention, deliberately drew from the Pennsylvania charter, which was considered among the more radical of its day. The politics of admission to the union was influential in looking to Pennsylvania also, as Kentucky was competing with Vermont in the Federalist-controlled Congress for admission as the next state after the original thirteen. The political balance of power in Congress was a cloud over the admission process that affected these considerations. Kentucky endured numerous pre-constitutional conventions and the Compact With Virginia ultimately governed Kentucky’s transition to statehood. Kentucky retained the constitutional offices, state and local administrative structures, local government forms of Virginia despite some influence from Pennsylvania. The Bill of Rights that the constitution included at the end of the document reappeared in virtually unchanged form in each of the following three Kentucky constitutions, although those provisions have been moved near the beginning of the document. Isaac Shelby was a central leader in the Kentucky constitutional conventions and the admission to statehood process.  Shelby was elected as the first Governor of Kentucky and remains to this day the only Governor elected unanimously. Isaac Shelby would return to election as Kentucky Governor a second time as Kentucky and the nation prepared for the War of 1812.

The 1792 constitution provided for a fairly broad elective franchise, a secret ballot, and provision for a referenda for constitutional conventions but provided for  no amendment process. The legislature was granted the power to regulate the slave trade. The bicameral legislature was made up of eleven members in the senate and no fewer than forty and no more than one hundred members of a house of representatives. An electoral college would select both the governor and the members of the senate.

The second constitution was drafted in large part in response to a controversy over gubernatorial succession. The document responded to demands for more restriction on government powers, including limits on the authority of the legislature to regulate slavery. The electoral college was eliminated, providing for direct election of all constitutional offices.   The secret ballot was eliminated and viva voce voting put in its place. The constitution specified that the senate would have at least twenty-four members, with no fewer than fifty-eight in the house, nor more than one hundred. 

The third constitutional convention met in 1849 and the resulting document was ratified by public vote in 1850. The issue of slavery hung heavily over the constitutional deliberations. The influence of Jacksonian democracy could be seen in the document, with more offices up for election, with a long ballot being the result. The document specified that the senate would have thirty-eight members with one hundred in the house. For the first time, public education was covered at length, with the document establishing a Common School Fund to help finance schools. Slavery and education were the only policy issues to receive extensive attention.

The fourth and current constitution was ratified after a convention in 1891. The document was drafted in a time of progressive reform in much of the country. In Kentucky, there was a great deal of resentment felt toward corporations and specifically, railroads. It was widely believed that the legislature had been badly corrupted by corporate interests. As a result, the new constitution put many restrictions on local and special legislation that was believed to favor special interests. The preamble was changed to identify Kentucky as a “commonwealth” and to assert that all power is “inherent in the people.” The bill of rights was moved to the beginning of the document. The secret ballot which been absent in the last two constitutions was returned. For the first time, the constitution provided for an amendment process so the constitution could be changed in a piecemeal basis. The document was filled with policy-specific details including special provisions regarding corporations, local government, debt, and taxes. The constitution limited the governor and other constitutional officers to one four-year term, a restriction that was not removed until the 1990s. The General Assembly was to meet only every other year, although the legislature was authorized to meet in annual sessions by constitutional amendment in 2001. Judges were to be elected in non-partisan races.

Kentucky’s fourth and, thus far, last constitution placed substantial curbs on state and local governments much like other states, particularly southern state constitutions, have done. However, while Kentucky has long been a socially conservative state, the constitution–and its interpretation–have not pushed the Commonwealth as far to the right as some other southern states have gone, particularly on fiscal and regulatory matters. What is notable is that the basic political trajectory of the Commonwealth’s policies and politics can be understood in light of  the Kentucky courts’ decisions which have added to and sometimes subtracted from the actual constitutional text.

Section 14 of the Constitution guaranteed that “All courts shall be open, and every person for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial or delay.” The court structure was completely revamped in the 1970s, but the “open courts” provisions have remained untouched. This has prevented efforts to institute tort reform or other limitations upon liability that are common in other states. Legislation that would have had medical malpractice claims pass through a medical review process before heading to court were struck down as unconstitutional.[8]

The constitution explicitly listed permissible tax sources for both state and local government. An income tax for local governments was not authorized, but license taxes were. In the early twentieth century, the city of Louisville imposed occupational license taxes in which the liability of each taxpayer was defined as a percentage of their earned income. This levy was quickly challenged as an unconstitutional tax. The state’s highest court ruled in the City of Louisville v. Sebree case that the occupational license tax—which was a flat income tax under another name—was a permissible tax under the constitution.[9]

Section 246 of the Constitution also limited the compensation given to state officials, with the highest sum permitted set at $12,000. Though unamended since 1949, the  constitution was construed in 1962 to permit the Commonwealth to pay officers and employees an amount equal in buying power to that of the standard set in 1949.[10] This application of the “rubber dollar doctrine” has probably permitted the state to recruit and retain employees who would not be willing to work for the constitutionally specified salary. Nevertheless, it is not clear that this practice is what the framers intended.

One of the most important constitutional rulings which has expanded the scope and size of government in the Commonwealth dealt with public education. Kentucky, like most states, has long had a substantial share of the financing of public education provided by local tax sources, primarily the property tax. Since tax bases are limited, and tax levies legally limited by the state, public schools had difficulty raising money and some school districts were much more limited in their revenues than others. General language in Section 183 of the Constitution stipulating that “The General Assembly shall, by appropriate legislation, provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the State” was used by the state supreme court to invalidate the existing financing system.[11]    Since that decision, Kentucky has risen from one of the lowest spending states on public education to one that is in the middle ranks of the states.[12]

Kentucky has periodically had discussion of constitutional reform but despite commissions and studies, Kentucky continues to operate under the fourth Constitution of 1891.[13] Amending the Kentucky Constitution requires passage in both the House and Senate by three-fifths majority in each chamber and amendments can originate in either chamber. An amendment approved by the session of the General Assembly is placed on the general election ballot for consideration by the Kentucky electorate and a simple majority is required for ratification of an amendment. There can be no more than four amendments considered by the voters in a general election. The Governor has no authority in the amendment process, other than the duty to make a proclamation regarding the amended constitution if approved by the voters in the general election.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of  Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University.  He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Michael W. Hail is Professor of Government and Director of the Statesmanship at Morehead State University in Kentucky, and serves as Government Program Coordinator and Director of the Intelligence Center for Academic Excellence (ICCAE). He is co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Hail focuses his research on federalism and intergovernmental management. His research interests include economic development policy, state and local government, American political thought, and Western political philosophy. Dr. Hail teaches courses on Public Administration, Federalism and Constitutional Law, Public Management, State and Local Government, Economic Development, Western Political Philosophy, Intelligence Studies, and American Political Thought. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Elazar, Daniel.  Covenant and Constitutionalism: The Covenant Tradition in Politics.  New York: Routledge, 2018.

[2] Schneider, Herbert W., ed.  Thomas Hobbes Leviathan – Parts One and Two. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1958, p.x.

[3] Clinger, James C., and Michael W. Hail. Kentucky Government, Politics, and Public Policy. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2013.

[4] Ireland, Robert M.  “The Kentucky Constitution.”  Clinger, James C., and Michael W. Hail.  Kentucky Government, Politics, and Public Policy. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2013.

[5] Thorpe, Francis Newton. The Federal and State Constitutions: Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America. Washington Government Printing Office, 1909.

[6] Taulbee, Ashley.  The Kentucky Constitutional Conventions and the Federalism of the Founding Fathers.  Master Thesis.  Morehead State University, 2017.  Taulbee states, “There are several aspects of influence and interconnectedness between national constitutionalism and state constitutionalism reflected in the Kentucky case. The political theory influences, as well as the structure of the institutions in the U.S. Constitution of 1787, and certainly the political thought expressed at the convention in Philadelphia, all are major influences on how state constitutional conventions are modeled. Core constitutional provisions such as separation of powers, checks and balances, and bicameral legislative bodies are among the constitutional features of the U.S. constitution that are consistently incorporated in state constitutions. The politics in Congress as well as in the territory itself play a significant role in framing the terms under which statehood and state constitutional conventions can operate.”(pp.3-4)

[7] Smith, Troy.  “Constitutional Convention of 1787.”  Federalism In America.  Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006, p.116.

[8] Commonwealth v. Claycomb, 2017-SC-000614.

[9] City of Louisville v. Sebree, 214 S.W.2d 248

[10]Matthews v. Allen,  360 S.W.2d 135 (1962

[11] Rose v. Council for Better Education, 790 S.W.2d 186

[12] Digest of Education Statistics,  Department of Education, National Center for Educations Statistics.  https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2017menu_tables.asp

[13] Clinger, James C., and Michael W. Hail. Kentucky Government, Politics, and Public Policy. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2013.

A house divided cannot stand.”

That famous declaration of Abraham Lincoln’s looms large today. It seems like every day we receive further evidence of just how divided we are. Americans increasingly can’t agree on what our nation is, who it includes, how it should be governed, or what common values we honor and respect.

In fact, according to a recent Battleground Poll, conducted by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service, a full 70% of Americans believe we are nearing the edge of civil war.

America has lost its way. How can we be “one nation, under God, indivisible” again?

In divided times like these, it’s more important than ever to teach Americans about the documents and principles that hold our nation together—the U.S. Constitution and the civic institutions and practices it enshrines—before they go forgotten and are lost.

That’s been Constituting America’s mission since Actress Janine Turner (Northern Exposure, Friday Night Lights, Cliffhanger) founded it in 2010. It’s been the best—and only—organization educating young Americans, through multi-media and cultural outreach, about the importance of the U.S. Constitution and the rights it protects.

You and I know that it is only through our nation’s founding principles—individual liberty, the rule of law, property rights, and limited government—that the United States can again flourish. Our hope lies in restoring reverence for these principles among young Americans.

I want to share with you today the optimism I feel for the future of our nation—not just because of all we’ve accomplished in 2019, but because of all you and I can do together in 2020 and beyond.

As you may know, 2020 marks Constituting America’s 10th birthday! And as we turn ten, our plans are bigger than ever—especially when it comes to reaching young American citizens in schools! Constituting America has had unprecedented demand from public schools this past year for our programs. In fact, we’ve almost doubled 2018’s total!

Last year we made 90 school presentations introducing students to the importance of the U.S. Constitution. This year, we’re already at 158 presentations, with more scheduled before year’s end! These include presentations by

  • Janine Turner, our founder and co-president, who connects dynamically via Skype to classrooms around the country, offering students a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students to become inspired about the U.S. Constitution by an Emmy and three-time Golden Globe nominated actress.
  • Terry Cherry, the Immediate Past President of the National Council of the Social Studies and a retired social studies teacher, speaking directly to the importance of our nation’s founding institutions.
  • Re-enactors from the American Historical Theatre whose gripping portrayals bring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, Betsy Ross, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin into public schools. This past year we reached over 1,600 students in three different schools in Northern Virginia with these talented actors, bringing history vividly to life for students.

Constituting America’s efforts directly address the root problem dividing our country: a lack of civil discourse. People acting as if shaming, silencing, slandering, or screaming in the streets are the best ways to address disagreement.

We teach students a better, American way: to solve disagreements and pursue change by using RAPPS—their first amendment rights to religion, assembly, petition, press, and speech. It’s through principled commitment to such free assembly and expression that citizens can peacefully partake in a republic—NOT through the tyranny of mob passion.

This effort took a major step forward last January when Constituting America launched our Civil Civic Conversation program, holding 13 pilot Conversations involving 331 students in Houston, Dallas, and Ohio. Students adopted opposing views on a controversial issue, then worked together to create a legislative solution. Educators involved in the program called the discussions “simply amazing,” especially in how students “implemented them into our classroom practices.”

We can’t wait to build on the smashing success of this pilot program in 2020, to introduce these crucial habits of democratic citizenship and civility to thousands of students around the country.  Our plans include adding more speakers to our school speaking team including veterans, active duty police officers and more retired teachers!

In 2020, Constituting America will also tackle the divisive revisionist histories that seek to poison Americans’ attitudes concerning our founding. With our upcoming 90 Day Study, entitled: 

In the Course of Human Events: A 90 Day Study of Important Dates In American History That Shaped the United States And Changed The World

We will publish an essay a day for 90 Days by a noted Constitutional Scholar or historian on an important date relevant to the founding of our country. Our 90 Day Studies are shared widely on social media, and we have one of the strongest social media followings of any Constitution Education organization.

Rest assured that we will also continue to promote our “We The Future” Contest Winners’ creative efforts. We hope to build on 2019’s tremendous numbers culminating in: 145 million impressions of our winners’ songs, over 12 million views of their PSA’s, and over 40 film festival acceptances!

This is just the outer edge of Constituting America’s work. But the point I want to emphasize is simply this: Even as the divisions in our nation widen, Constituting America is growing to bridge the gap and restore America to its roots.

Can we count on your continued support to bring our urgently needed programming to the young men and women who will be the civic leaders of tomorrow?

Your tax-deductible gift of to Constituting America will help us educate young Americans in the founding documents and principles of our nation . . . and train them to be the informed and responsible citizens who mend our wounds of division in the years to come.

Thank you so much for your tireless support of our most cherished American values. In times of turmoil like these, it is wonderful to be able to count you as a friend. You are an important member of our team, educating students about the U.S. Constitution and our country’s founding principles.

With our best wishes for a wonderful Christmas, and a Happy New Year,

 

Cathy Gillespie
Co-President
Constituting America

P.S. – What’s tearing our nation apart is not simply partisanship but rather the inability to have a civil civic conversation. Your tax-deductible gift to Constituting America can introduce a new generation of young Americans to the lost art of Civil Civic Conversations, based on Constitutional knowledge and our country’s founding principles.

Please give your most generous gift today and help us make our year-end goal that will allow us to grow our Constitution Education programs in 2020 and take Constituting America to the next level for our 10 year anniversary!

Guest Essayists: James C. Clinger and J. Drew Seib

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

State legislatures normally have had only very few, basic constitutional procedural requirements regarding the passage of legislation. Most state constitutions stipulate that laws can be enacted only after bicameral passage of identical measures, followed by presentment to the chief executive. There may also be requirements that bills receive “readings” on three or more legislative days before passage. Practically speaking, most legislative procedure is determined by internal rules of each chamber. These rules refer to bill referral to committees, methods of bringing bills to the chamber floor, procedures for disciplining members, etc.

Many of the early state constitutions did not provide a means by which the governor could block legislation through a veto. This reflected an anti-executive power bias that carried over from the opposition to the king in colonial times. Gradually, however, the powers of governors increased, and among the most important powers of the governor was the power to veto. In the 1990s, North Carolina’s governor was the last to gain the veto power. The veto power varies dramatically among the states, particularly regarding which measures are subject to veto and the ease with which the legislatures can override the veto. Many states now permit an item veto for appropriation bills, but not for other legislation. Proposed constitutional amendments approved as joint resolutions by the legislature cannot be vetoed by the governor, but instead in most states today go to the electorate for approval. In several states vetoes can be overridden by margins much smaller than the two-thirds requirement necessary for overriding presidential vetoes. In some states, only a simple majority of those elected to serve in each chamber is needed to override the governor’s veto.[1]

In the early 20th century, many states began to adopt direct democracy mechanisms, such as the initiative, that permitted citizens and interest groups to propose new statutory laws or new constitutional amendments without going through the legislature. This has led to the adoption of new laws that would have not gained legislative approval and new institutional changes that dramatically changed legislative careers.[2]

One of the notable changes associated with the initiative process is the adoption of legislative term limits placed within state constitutions. The limits prevent elected officials, often legislators, from serving beyond a specified number of terms in office. Gubernatorial term limits have been more common for years, but only more recently have term limits on state legislators become common. These limits have generally been opposed by state legislators whose careers would be altered by the constraints. Opponents of term limits have also said that the restrictions reduce the professionalism of their elected office and shift the balance of power from legislators to the governor and legislative staff.[3]

For much of American history, state legislatures could be characterized as “amateur” public institutions. Legislators were not well-paid, had few resources for legislative research, constituency service, or administrative agency oversight. They worked as part-time volunteers who did not expect to remain in office for an extended period of time. During the 1960s and 70s in particular, most but not all state legislatures increased legislative salaries (or legislator per diem payments), adopted longer legislative sessions, increased legislative staffing, and created legislative research bureaus to help with bill drafting and analysis of proposed bills or policy problems. This seems to have led to more member stability and longer legislative tenure. It may have also motivated activists in the term limits movement, who distrusted professional, career politicians. Scholarly research on this topic has found that professionalization of state legislatures has led to more African-Americans and fewer women entering the chambers.[4] It may have also increased the size of the Democratic Party share of the legislature, at least outside the South,[5] though the effects of professionalization appear to vary by party.[6] The imposition of term limits does not have appeared to have ended political careerism, since many term limited state legislators pursue other offices, including congressional seats.[7] Legislative professionalism as well as one party dominance has also been found to particularistic, such as local legislation and special bills, which are apparently aimed at boosting chances for re-election.[8]

Finally, it should be noted that the role of state legislatures has changed because of actions of the federal government. Under the national supremacy clause, discussed above, federal law prevails when it is in conflict with state law. This practice, known as preemption, has been used throughout much of American history.[9] More recently, however, state laws have been invalidated through preemption not only when laws enacted by Congress conflict with laws enacted by state legislatures but also when federal agency interpretations of how or whether to enforce laws may conflict with laws enacted by state legislatures.[10] Intergovernmental grant programs may also lead to a “work around” the state legislatures. For example, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provided that state chief executives, not legislatures, would  approve the creation of state health insurance exchanges.[11]

While very influential in national politics early on in U.S. history, the addition of particularly the 17th Amendment, but also the 16th, 19th and 26th Amendments have weakened the role of state legislatures in national politics. What is more, federal preemption by not only laws enacted but also federal agency interpretation of laws has weakened the role of state legislatures in national politics.

Since their inception, the state legislatures have served as the proverbial “lab of democracy” both across states and for the federal government. The variation in design, rules, and procedures has served as an opportunity to study institutional arrangements and their effects.  Many of the features in the U.S. Congress were taken from practices in state legislature and states often adopt successful reforms from other states.[12]  Their variation in designs is an opportunity to learn and strengthen political institutions in the United States.

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of  Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University.  He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Dr. J. Drew Seib joined the faculty at Murray State University in the Fall of 2012. He teaches courses in American politics and research methods. Dr. Seib is the advisor for the Murray State Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society. Dr. Seib received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Southern Illinois University with an emphasis in American political behavior. His dissertation, Frantic Voters: How Context Affects Information Searches, was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant. Dr. Seib received his B.A. from Westminster College in Fulton, MO, triple majoring in political science, Spanish, and international studies, and minoring in European studies.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Veto_overrides_in_state_legislatures

[2] See Gerber, Elisabeth R., Lupia, Arthur, McCubbins, Mathew D., and Kiewiet, D. Roderick. Stealing the Initiative: How State Government Responds to Direct Democracy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 2001.

[3] Carey, John M., Richard G. Niemi, and Lynda W. Powell.  1998. “The Effects of Term Limits on State Legislatures.”  Legislative Studies Quarterly, 23(2): 271-300.

[4] Squire, Peverill.  “Legislative Professionalization and Membership Diversity in State Legislatures.” Legislative Studies Quarterly.  Vol. 17, No. 1. (1992): 69-79 .

[5] Meinke, Scott R., and Edward B. Hasecke. “Term Limits, Professionalization, and Partisan Control in U.S. State Legislatures.” The Journal of Politics 65, no. 3 (2003): 898-908.

[6] Sanbonmatsu, Kira.  2002. “Political Parties and the Recruitment of Women to State Legislatures.”  The Journal of Politics, 64(3):791-809.

[7] Carey, John M., Niemi, Richard G., and Powell, Lynda.  Term Limits in the State Legislatures.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (2000).

[8] Gamm, Gerald, and Kousser, Thad. “Broad Bills or Particularistic Policy? Historical Patterns in American State Legislatures.” The American Political Science Review 104, no. 1 (2010): 151-70.

[9] For an early example, see Gibbons v. Ogden).  22 U.S. 1. (1824).

[10] See, for example, Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387 (2012)

[11] Fahey, Bridget A.. “Consent Procedures and American Federalism.” Harvard Law Review Vol. 128,(2014): 1564-1629.

[12] see Berry, Frances Stokes, and William D. Berry. 1990. “State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis.” American Political Science Review 84(2): 395–415.

 

Guest Essayists: James C. Clinger and J. Drew Seib

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The legislatures in American state governments developed alongside and even prior to the more famous and well-studied Congress of the federal government. Their origins can be found in the colonial assemblies that existed before the American Revolution. Those institutions developed structures, procedures, and qualifications for office-holding that influenced the development of the national legislature. This essay will briefly describe the development of the state legislatures and their relationship to the federal government.

Legislatures in the American colonies developed very quickly, largely at the request of local interests, not at the behest of the British government. These assemblies varied greatly from one another, although most, but not all, were bicameral, with different qualifications for office-holding and for voting for different chambers.[1] These assemblies were not modeled after the British parliament, which in its modern form did not exist. In fact, the first legislatures in the American colonies were created long before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which established the principle of parliamentary supremacy over the monarch.

During the American Revolution, royal governors often dismissed or at least attempted to suspend the colonial assemblies. Most of the newly declared states established legislatures that have come to be known as provincial congresses, which lasted until the end of hostilities. At that time, formally recognized state legislatures were created, and were allowed great authority under the Articles of Confederation. Once the new federal constitution was drafted, the state legislatures exercised new roles within the newly created union as well as within their respective states. Under the new constitution, the electorate choosing the members of the United States House of Representatives were to have the same qualifications “requisite for the Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”[2] At that time, states frequently had more stringent voter qualifications to vote for the upper chamber of the legislature (i.e., the senate) than they had for the more numerous, lower chamber (e.g., the house of representatives, although many states use a variety of names for their lower chambers). By setting higher voter qualifications (usually regarding age, sex, property ownership, “freemen” status) for their own legislatures, the state could affect the electorate choosing its delegation to the United States House of Representatives.

Originally, the state legislatures directly selected the United States senators from each state, although that practice was ended by the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which established direct election of U.S. senators.[3] In the early years of the constitutional republic, the state legislatures regularly sent instructions to their senate delegations, describing how they should vote on issues in Congress. Earlier, under the Articles of Confederation, the state legislatures not only chose their state’s delegates to congress but also had the authority to recall them from office if the legislatures were displeased with their performance.[4]

The federal constitution also assigned a role for the state legislatures in determining the “Times, Places, and Manner” of federal house members and senators, subject to the proviso that “the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.”[5] Years later, the discretion of state legislatures was constrained further by the ratification of the 15th, 19th, and 26th amendments (creating a right to vote for people of all races, for women, and for eighteen year olds), and by the passage of the Voting Rights Act and other pieces of legislation.

The Constitution also provided a role for state legislatures in amending the federal charter, by either proposing a convention for proposing amendments (by a vote of two-thirds of the states) and by ratifying constitutional amendment proposals (by a vote of three-fourths of the states).[6] All successful constitutional amendment proposals have been proposed, not by a convention called by the state legislatures, but by two-thirds votes of each chamber in Congress. All but one successful amendment—the exception being the 21st, which repealed prohibition–were ratified by the state legislatures. The repeal of prohibition was ratified by special conventions in the states.

The Constitution also stipulated that certain powers were forbidden for the states. Although state legislatures were not explicitly mentioned, legislatures would have been the body enacting such prohibited laws (e.g., regarding titles of nobility, currency, interstate taxation).[7]  The constitution also stipulates that federal laws, including the constitution, laws, and treaties, constitute the “supreme Law of the Land,” and state officers, including members of the state legislatures, must be bound by oath or affirmation to uphold the constitution.[8] The national supremacy clause was included in the constitution only after the defeat of a proposal by James Madison to authorize Congress to negate any state law that it opposed.[9]

The early state legislatures varied in structure but had some common structural elements.   Most, but not all (i.e., Georgia and Pennsylvania had only one legislative chamber and today Nebraska is the only unicameral legislature in the U.S.), were bicameral. A small number chose their senators through an electoral college, as was sometimes done for governors and as is still done for the federal president. That practice was not common and was ended completely well before the civil war. Most state legislatures developed standing committees early in their histories, often well before the federal Congress had established that practice. State legislators generally controlled the internal rules of their chambers and selected their own leadership. Once political parties were well-established, the organization of each chamber (leadership selection, committee assignment, and committee chair selection) became largely a matter for the party organizations to decide. Today, even Nebraska’s non-partisan legislature organizes along partisan lines.[10] Most legislatures met in annual sessions and most legislators served terms of office of one year, although some members of the upper chamber served two or three years.   Later in the nineteenth century, biennial sessions became standard practice, but in the late 20th century annual sessions became the norm again.[11] The size of each chamber differed widely among the states. Originally, South Carolina’s lower chamber had 199 members, while its upper chamber had only 13. Delaware, on the other hand, had only 21 in its lower chamber and nine in its upper.[12] Most legislators represented single member districts. The number of legislators was and still is significant because as the size of the legislative chamber increases, the average size of each district or constituency diminishes. Usually the demographic diversity of the constituency diminishes as the size of the district goes down. This changes the task of representation of constituency interests dramatically.[13] The number of seats in the lower chamber compared to the number in the upper chamber affects the difficulty that an ambitious, career-minded legislator may have to move from the lower to upper chamber.[14]

James C. Clinger is a professor in the Department of  Political Science and Sociology at Murray State University.  He is the co-author of Institutional Constraint and Policy Choice: An Exploration of Local Governance and co-editor of Kentucky Government, Politics, and Policy. Dr. Clinger is the chair of the Murray-Calloway County Transit Authority Board, a past president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and a former firefighter for the Falmouth Volunteer Fire Department.

Dr. J. Drew Seib joined the faculty at Murray State University in the Fall of 2012. He teaches courses in American politics and research methods. In addition to his teaching duties, Dr. Seib is the advisor for the Murray State Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society, and Racers for Bernie. His research focuses on how voters make decisions. He is especially interested in how voters acquire information during campaigns under a variety of contexts and conditions. Dr. Seib also privately consults on web-based surveys. Dr. Seib received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Southern Illinois University with an emphasis in American political behavior. His dissertation, Frantic Voters: How Context Affects Information Searches, was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant. Dr. Seib received his B.A. from Westminster College in Fulton, MO, triple majoring in political science, Spanish, and international studies, and minoring in European studies.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Squire, Peverill.  The Evolution of American Legislatures: Colonies, Territories, and States, 1619-2009.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.

[2] United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 1.

[3] United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 3, Clause 1, and United States Constitution, 17th Amendment, Section 1.

[4] United States Articles of Confederation, Article 5.

[5] United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1.

[6] United States Constitution, Article 5.

[7] United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 10.

[8] United States Constitution, Article 6, Sections 2-3.

[9] Hobson, Charles F. “The Negative on State Laws: James Madison, the Constitution, and the Crisis of Republican Government.” The William and Mary Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1979): 215-35.

[10] Wright, Gerald C. and Brian F. Shaffner. 2002. “The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures.”  American Political Science Review 96(2): 367-379.

[11] Squire, Peverill. “American State Legislatures in Historical Perspective.” PS: Political Science & Politics 52, no. 3 (2019): 417–21.

[12] Squire, Peverill.  The Evolution of American Legislatures: Colonies, Territories, and States, 1619-2009.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012, 84.

[13] Denzau, Arthur T., and Michael C. Munger. “Legislators and Interest Groups: How Unorganized Interests Get Represented.” The American Political Science Review 80, no. 1 (1986): 89-106.

[14] Squire, Peverill. “Member Career Opportunities and the Internal Organization of Legislatures.” Journal of Politics, Vol. 50, No. 3 (1988): 716-44.

Click Here to make your gift now and join the list!

Why 39?

39 is the number of delegates who signed the U.S. Constitution at the Constitutional Convention!

Your generous gifts fund our Constitution Education Programs: The George Washington – We Are All Americans – School Speaking Program; “We The Future” Contest; our yearly 90 Day Online Studies of Founding Documents; Winner Mentor Trip and Winner Promotion: Impacting the Culture with the Constitution! Click here to read about the impact your gifts achieve!

Please click here to donate now and join this list of Giving Tuesday Heroes, and help us achieve our goal of 39 Unique Contributions Today!

Constituting America’s “39” Giving Tuesday Heroes

John Bednarek

Laurie Behn

Michael and Niki Bennett

Jane Grace Bonvillain

Joe Burwell

Linda Bartlett

Ray Bromley

Deanna Carter

Cindy Clark

Sue Gibes Damsen

Geyer Dybesland

Edna Carr Eckel

John Emerich

David Fenstermaker

Lori Strong Forrest

Cathy Gillespie

Jean Gillespie

Joanne Gillespie Gibbs

Maura Gillespie

Tracy Gillespie

John Griffin

Don Hay

Richard Hayden

Amanda Hughes

Patrick Humphries

Kay Coles James

Bill Kohnke

Jenna Kraynak

Steve Larsen

George Mayo

Jay McConville

Atara MacNamara

Eric Meyers

Jim Morris

Wesley Ownby

Dawn Peltzer

Ed & Lisa Perez

Shanda Perkins

John and Jamie Radtke

David Rae

Heather Reams

Stephen Reddick

Sharyn Taets

Jeanette Wigness

Plus two anonymous gifts!

In the Course of Human Events:
A 90 Day Study of Important Dates in American History That
Shaped the United States and Changed the World

Introduction

May 14, 1607 – Jamestown, Virginia Founded
The Virginia Company, a group of London entrepreneurs, many of whom were artisans, craftsmen, and laborers, landed on Jamestown Island, the Chesapeake region of North America, to establish the first permanent English settlementDespite harsh first years and starvation, the settlers instituted private ownership of land which increased productivity.

July 30, 1619 – Virginia House of Burgesses Convenes
The first legislative General Assembly of Virginia, which became the Virginia House of Burgesses, was a new form of government that could be checked as an elected representative assembly. The assembly was elected by the settlers of the American colonies and first convened in the town church at Jamestown, Virginia on July 30, 1619. At first, however, the assembly was a charter issued by the Virginia Company of London under British control, allowing the colonies to have some self-government, but the Crown increasingly placed limits on the colonies ability to govern themselves.

November 11, 1620 – Mayflower Compact Signed
Forty-one of the 101 English passengers who traveled to the New World aboard the Mayflower ship wrote and signed the compact which later influenced the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.  The compact was written by those fleeing religious persecution by King James, to establish religious freedom, and self-governance in the New World.

May 28, 1754 – Battle of Jumonville Glen Starts French and Indian War
In 1753, competition for the Ohio River Valley intensified aggression between British and French troops. Virginia Regiment Lieutenant Colonel George Washington responded by attempting to push back the French from the Ohio River Valley. By May 27, 1754, Washington learned of French soldiers planning to close in on the Virginians. The next day on May 28, Washington with Mingo chief Tanacharison led troops to raid against the French, but ultimately had to surrender. The attack of Jumonville Glen led to tensions escalating further, resulting in the start of the French and Indian War.

April 19, 1775 – Battles of Lexington and Concord, American Revolution Begins
British troops were on their way to Concord, Massachusetts, to seize firearms and supplies from the American colonists. Paul Revere rushed to alert everyone so that militiamen, or Minutemen, could quickly mobilize. When the British arrived on the town green in Lexington, Massachusetts, either a British soldier or an American Patriot fired, known as “the shot heard ‘round the world” and the Revolutionary War for America’s fight for freedom began.

October 13, 1775 – United States Navy Founded
In efforts to hold off British control of the seas, the Continental Navy that eventually became the United States Navy, was established by the Second Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia soon after the Revolutionary War began. Over 240 years ago, starting with only two armed vessels, the U.S. Navy grew into the largest, most advanced fighting force in the world.

  • October 13, 1775: Birth of the United States Navy by Jeff Truitt, Captain in the United States Navy Reserve; Small Group Seminars Leader on Operational Maritime Law, U.S. Naval War College; Served on active duty as a submarine officer in the Cold War

July 4, 1776 – Declaration of Independence Finalized
In Philadelphia, once the Continental Congress voted on declaring freedom from  British political connections July 2, 1776, they drafted a document, headed by the Committee of Five: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, to present to the public. On July 4, approved version of the Declaration of Independence and sent it to the printers, initially signed by John Hancock, and later signed by other members in August. Soon after, July 4 became the day chosen to celebrate America’s independence.

October 17, 1777 – British Surrender at Saratoga, Triggers French Alliance
The plan was to divide the colonies, starting with New York. The battles at Saratoga ending in the British force surrendering showed a significant turn in the American Revolution resulting in the French government formally recognizing the colonists as an ally in the war.

July 9, 1778 – Articles of Confederation Approved
The Articles of Confederation were enacted as the first U.S. founding document and constitution, the first document that saw the colonies working together—a  forerunner of the Union established more formally in subsequent years. The Articles of Confederation were enacted by Congress March 1, 1781.

October 19, 1781 – British Surrender at Yorktown, Effectively Ending the Revolutionary War
The surrender of General Charles Cornwallis to General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, was the final battle of the American Revolution. Then, in 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed after an appeal from the British for peace, and the American Revolutionary War was over.

December 23, 1783 – George Washington Resigns Military Commission
In an example of unrivaled statesmanship, General George Washington resigned his military commission at the State House in Annapolis, Maryland on December 23, 1783 to return to his Mount Vernon, Virginia home as a private citizen. Washington’s resignation was pivotal for American history because he willingly gave up power. He later participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, and was unanimously elected president of the United States in 1789. He reluctantly accepted the presidency and rejected any form of kingship. In 1797, Washington again surrendered his position, allowing a fellow American to serve as president. The example Washington set for America’s republican form of government was that of a peaceful transfer of power, a requirement the nation would need to serve by leadership and freedom rather than dictatorship.

July 13, 1787 – Northwest Ordinance Provided Process for Forming New States
The Northwest Ordinance under the Articles of Confederation helped expansion of the United States and the process of outlawing slavery among other needs, but didn’t go far enough to strengthen the growing country. While a good start toward providing a free and republican foundation for governance of the Northwest and other new states, the Constitutional Convention near the same time was at work on a U.S. Constitution that would provide a stronger national government to better preserve national interests and individual liberty for Americans.

September 17, 1787 – Approval of the U.S. Constitution, Sent to the States for Ratification
After the major Declaration of Independence document solidified the American experiment of freedom, and then formation of the Articles of Confederation to get it all started, came the newly free nation’s U.S. Constitution. Affirming existence of the United States government as one designed to serve its citizens, the U.S. Constitution set up a new type of government with the legislative branch mentioned first in Article I as a reminder that supremacy lies with the people through their elected representatives.

April 30, 1789 – George Washington Inaugurated as First President of the United States of America
How would the United States create a leadership position such as the presidency without repeating and it turning into what the colonists fought to escape? They would need the type of role that set a precedent America could trust for their current time and future to maintain what they started. It meant not having a king so the people could live in freedom because of the way their new government worked, not ruled by it like their past tyrannical experiences. When George Washington took his oath of office, he mentioned with humility that it was his shared responsibility with Congress to preserve “the sacred fire of liberty” and a republican form of government.

September 29, 1789 – United States Army Established
On the final day of Congress’ first session, they passed “An act to recognize and adapt to the Constitution of the United States, the establishment of the troops raised under the resolve of the United States in Congress assembled.” The act legalized the existing U.S. Army created under the Articles of Confederation. George Washington reminded Congress that the issue of need for military forces under the Continental Congress needed to be set through action under the new Constitution.

August 4, 1790 – Alexander Hamilton’s Debt Plan Passes Congress, Resolved State War Debts and Laid Foundation for American Capitalism
Foreign and domestic finances were out of sorts for the United States after the Revolutionary War. Debt was high by that time and taxes even higher. Alexander Hamilton wanted the national debt managed better. His plan was to help the new American government be more open to capitalism so that the government, along with the growing nation, could be strong and upheld rather than weak and ineffective due to hostility toward capital. Hamilton’s idea for a Bank of the United States would help propel his plan toward financial stability, though James Madison and Thomas Jefferson feared it would create government power without boundaries.

December 15, 1791 – Bill of Rights Ratified
In 1789, James Madison spoke on the House floor introducing amendments to the U.S. Constitution, an attempt to persuade Congress a Bill of Rights would protect liberty and produce unity in the new government. Opposed to a Bill of Rights at first, stating that the rights of mankind were built into the fabric of human nature by God, and government had no powers to alienate an individual’s rights, and having witnessed the states violating, Madison realized in order to safeguard America’s freedoms, Congress needed to remain mindful of their role never to take a position of power by force over the people they serve.

May 17, 1792 – Buttonwood Agreement Establishes New York Stock Exchange
Named for the regular meeting place outside of the street address 68 Wall underneath a buttonwood tree, the Buttonwood Agreement created rules for buying and selling company bonds and shares. The stockbrokers and merchants who were signers of the agreement set a constitution in 1817 for a new, New York Stock & Exchange Board, eventually renamed the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Moving here and there and with ups and downs of a growing nation, trading was done in such places as coffeehouses or by selling shares in the streets, the NYSE grew throughout the 1800s eventually to find its current home on Wall Street in New York City in 1903.

March 14, 1794 – Eli Whitney Receives Patent for Cotton Gin
While similar separators existed for centuries, Eli Whitney’s machine was the first to separate seeds from cotton with shorter fibers. He learned that Southern planters were in need of a way to make cotton a profitable crop. One of Whitney’s cotton gins could clean up to fifty pounds of cotton in one day, making cotton profitable to cultivate for the first time. Yields of cotton produced steadily rose, along with demand and other inventions of the Industrial Revolution, throughout the 1800s with use of the cotton gin.

July 11, 1798 – United States Marine Corps Established
Originally established November 10, 1775 in Philadelphia to aid naval forces during the Revolutionary War, the Marine Corps was ended at the close of the war once American independence was achieved. Conflict increased once again, resulting in President John Adams signing a bill to formally establish the United States Marine Corps July 11, 1798 that would serve as a permanent military force under the Secretary of the Navy. Since the 19th century, the Marines have participated in all wars of the United States and usually the first soldiers to fight.

April 30, 1803 – Louisiana Purchase Treaty Signed
The 1803 treaty signed in Paris brought a purchase by United States for 828,000 square miles, doubling the nation’s size. Constitutional questions stirred disputes over how to best divide territory and keep the nation’s peace. Concurrently, the Louisiana Purchase helped sustain America’s growing need for agriculture, free flow of commerce along the Mississippi, and secure westward expansion by escaping the taking of the territory from Spain by Napoleon Bonaparte.

May 14, 1804 – Lewis and Clark Begin Exploration of Missouri River
Soon after the Louisiana Purchase, Meriwether Lewis, private secretary to President Thomas Jefferson, and William Clark, an army captain, were commissioned by President Jefferson to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean via the Missouri River. Starting with 45 men as the “Corps of Discovery” later joined by French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, and his Native American wife Sacagawea who accompanied the travels as an interpreter. By fall of 1806, the expedition returned, having explored largely unexplored westward territories that would later make up states such as North Dakota, Montana, and Oregon.

September 13-14, 1814 – Siege of Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key Writes America’s National Anthem, the Star Spangled Banner
Soon after setting fire to the Capitol and White House, early on September 13, 1814, the British planned to attack again, this time Baltimore. Key, a young lawyer residing in Georgetown, went with Col. John Skinner in an attempt to get a beloved physician, Dr. William Beanes, released from a British ship. Unsuccessful, the three men were held under guard on board a sloop until the battle ended. Watching from the boat as British fired on Fort McHenry, Gen. Armistead’s huge flag was still flying after the firing stopped. Key was inspired to write a poem first entitled “Defence of Fort McHenry.” Later set to music and retitled “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it was adopted March 3, 1931 as America’s national anthem.

February 22, 1819 – Adams-Onis Treaty Cedes Florida to the United States
In the 1819 agreement, formally ratified in 1821, between Spanish minister to the United States, Do Luis de Onis, and United States. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, a purchase treaty was signed for Spain to cede the remaining portion of Florida to the U.S. The treaty set a boundary line between Spanish territory and the U.S., resolving land disputes between the U.S. and Spain, and was key to settling the U.S-Mexico border. The terms agreed to Texas being on the Spanish side of the boundary, determined the southern boundary, most of the western boundary, and Spain agreed to release its claim to northwest territory.

December 2, 1823 – Monroe Doctrine Issued
A warning was issued in 1823 by President James Monroe for European powers to cease attempts for further colonization or otherwise in order to protect the Western Hemisphere. As a matter of U.S. foreign policy, later known as the Monroe Doctrine, such attempts would be viewed as hostile acts toward the United States. The concern was autocratic colonial regimes might be restored by continental Europe and threaten the independence of the United States, thus the Monroe Doctrine created a clean break.

October 26, 1825 – Erie Canal Completed
In 1817, construction on the Erie Canal began, opening October in 1825. Initially a 363-mile waterway, 40 feet wide, four feet deep, it connected the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean flowing from the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo, New York. The canal increased transportation of bulk commercial goods at a much lower cost, widely expanded agricultural development, and brought settlers into surrounding states as the free flow of goods to the stretches of Northwest Territory were availed through the Appalachian Mountains.

March 4, 1829 – Andrew Jackson Inaugurated President, Democrat Party Formalized
Andrew Jackson started out as a lawyer and grew in politics. By the end of the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, Jackson was a military hero of great influence. Former governor of Tennessee, he defeated John Quincy Adams in 1828, became the seventh president and first Democratic Party president, and helped found the Democratic Party.

May 28, 1830 – President Andrew Jackson Signs Indian Removal Act, Leads to Trail of Tears
Signed into law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, the Indian Removal Act was intended to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi for Indian lands inside existing state borders. Some tribes agreed while others opposed. Thousands of Indians died during the travels to the new territory, leaving what became known as the “Trail of Tears.”

August 21, 1831 – Nat Turner Slave Rebellion Begins
In early August 1831, Nat Turner, a preacher and slave in Virginia, began planning a revolt against slavery. By August 21, Nat and others with him, first killing his master’s family, mounted horses and continued the same on farms and elsewhere of slave owners and their families. After, the Virginia legislature received petitions urging the menace of slavery be dealt with as a cause of political and economic failure.

April 21, 1836 – Battle of San Jacinto, Mexico Surrenders, Texas Freed
The Texas Revolution began at the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March 1836. The Battle of San Jacinto was very short but events leading up to it were long in the making. After declaring independence, news arrived that the Alamo in San Antonio was under siege. Then Texas General Sam Houston’s troops surprised the Mexican General Santa Anna and his forces, taking Santa Anna prisoner. General Santa Anna surrendered to Sam Houston, and Texas won independence from Mexico, effectively ending the Texas Revolution.

January 27, 1838 – Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address
Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech on January 27, 1838 before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on the perpetuation of our political institutions, or  America’s survival. At the time of his remarks, the country had already weathered the Missouri crisis of 1820 and the tariff controversy of 1833. Still to come would be the Texas annexation, the War with Mexico, the Compromise of 1950, and Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Dred Scott. Yet in what might seem in retrospect to be a peaceful trough between two waves that threatened the Union, Lincoln saw something just as ominous: with the death of the last of the Founders, the Constitution itself was in danger of being relegated to irrelevancy.  Lincoln’s speech focused on the necessity of having a Constitution being capable of veneration as the only way to maintain the Union through whatever vicissitudes might await it. In this, he was both physician and prophet.

May 24, 1844 – Morse Sends First Telegraph Message
In 1844, a telegraph line was set up from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore as an experiment to show how the new electro-magnet messaging system worked. In front of Congress inside the U.S. Capitol, inventor Samuel F.B. Morse sent an electro-magnet signal message using dots and dashes, recorded on a paper tape by tapping, to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore. The words of the message Morse sent were “What hath God wrought?” taken from Numbers 23:23 in the Bible, were received and replied to quickly from Vail with the same words. The successful experiment using Morse Code forever changed communications for the nation.

January 24, 1848 – Gold Discovered in California, Gold Rush and Western Expansion
Gold nuggets were found in the Sacramento Valley in January 1848 and by the end of the year, President James Polk confirmed the findings, starting the California Gold Rush. Bringing thousands of miners known as “forty-niners” by the end of 1849, to areas near San Francisco in search of gold, western expansion of the United States boomed.

February 2, 1848 – Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Ends Mexican-American War, Annexes West
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed shortly after James Wilson Marshall discovered gold flakes in the area now known as Sacramento. Border disputes would continue, but the treaty ended the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and added a large swath of western territory broadly expanding the United States. It would make up Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, Texas, and parts that would later make up Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana. The new lands acquired from Mexico stirred sectional passions about the expansion of slavery in the West that helped lead to the Civil War after being temporarily settled by the Compromise of 1850.

July 14, 1853 – Commodore Matthew Perry Lands in Japan
Sent by President Millard Fillmore, Commodore Matthew Perry went on an expedition to Japan in 1853 to persuade, even pressure, Japan to end its policy of isolation and become open to trade and diplomacy with the United States. Japan signed a treaty with the U.S. in 1854, agreeing to trade and an American consulate. The Treaty of Kanagawa was the first by Japan with a Western nation. Among many accomplishments, Commodore Perry devised a naval apprentice system, assisted the Naval Academy, worked to develop naval officers to their fullest potentials, and helped found the New York Naval Lyceum.

March 20, 1854 – Republican Party Founded
Originally called the “Whig Party” formed in 1834, a meeting by the Whigs was held later in Ripon, Wisconsin to establish a new party in further opposition to the expansion of slavery that the original Whig Party was unable to manage on a national level. Expressly to address an increasing crisis of slavery, the group met and formed what became the Republican Party for the future of the country that wanted individual freedom at its core.

  • March 20, 1854: The Republican Party is Founded by Scot Faulkner, Served as Chief Administrative Officer, U.S. House of Representatives and as a Member of the Reagan White House Staff; Financial Adviser; President, Friends of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

May 30, 1854 – Kansas-Nebraska Act Signed, Disrupts Years of Sectional Compromise
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 overturned the Missouri Compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska Act proposed by Stephen A. Douglas, provided that popular sovereignty, a popular vote, would decide whether new states would be free or slave rather than the Missouri Compromise based on the 36°30′ north parallel. Conflicts about slavery grew steadily, leading to the description “Bleeding Kansas” over the volatility. Violence about wanting slavery to remain got so bad, a debate in Congress resulted in South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks severely beat with his cane, abolitionist and Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, almost killing him.

March 6, 1857 – Dred Scott Decision
The Dred Scott Decision is named for the landmark United States Supreme Court case, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) (correct spelling is Sanford) first fought in the Missouri Supreme Court in 1852. The nation already deeply divided over the issue of slavery, when Dred Scott sued for his freedom after being moved to states where slavery was prohibited, was denied. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney especially refuted that Dred Scott should be free, but Abraham Lincoln repeatedly argued against Justice Taney’s points, noting how the Declaration of Independence set up a free society of self-governing individuals, and the nation was working to eliminate slavery from all of the states so the people could be their own rulers. The misinformed decision was evident, and civil war was not far off.

October 16-18, 1859 – John Brown Raid, Catalyst for Civil War
Violence continued to erupt in the region. In 1858, abolitionist John Brown led raids in Kansas to free slaves, killing pro-slavery southerners, then returned home in 1859 to plan a raid at the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia on October 16, to fight more pro-slavery people. Brown was captured October 18, tried, then hung in December for treason against Virginia. “Bleeding Kansas” and these other acts were part of what only served to fuel an impending civil war. They furthered an inability to rid the nation of the menace of slavery which opposed core moors of the American experiment, the sanctity of personal freedom and the family.

February 27, 1860 – Abraham Lincoln Delivers Cooper Union Address, Sits for Portrait Believed to Solidify First Republican Presidency
On February 27, 1860, a regional politician named Abraham Lincoln gave the Cooper Union address in New York City. On the same day, Lincoln sat for a portrait by photographer, Mathew Brady. Lincoln claimed those two events made him the first Republican president which led to the end of slavery in the United States.

April 12, 1861 – Battle of Fort Sumter, Civil War Begins
President Abraham Lincoln sent supplies to garrisons for the troops, but on April 12, 1861, Confederates turned the supply convoy back to the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in the seceded state of South Carolina. Shots were fired on Fort Sumter, starting the Civil War. More states would secede, not wishing to participate in the fight in the war fought across the country, and returned to the Union after the northern armies won the war.

May 20, 1862 – President Abraham Lincoln Signs the Homestead Act
The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged development of farming on land as homesteads for western expansion. Heads of households could receive up to 160 acres to farm for five years, or purchase the land after six months. If homesteaders were unable to farm successfully, the land would go back to the government to be offered again to another homesteader. Pro-slavery groups feared a homestead act would give more power to anti-slavery families moving to new territories of privatized land that could become free states, so they fought passage. 

July 2, 1862 – President Abraham Lincoln Signs the Morrill Act Establishing Land-Grant Colleges
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation sponsored by Congressman Justin Morrill intended to increase higher education across America. Per congressional delegation, 30,000 acres would be provided and the land sold by the states to fund public colleges specifically to train on agriculture and machinery. The act entitled “An Act Donating Public Lands to the Several States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts,” was also known as the Land-Grant College Act. The Second Morrill Act passed to expand  grants for black institutions for the segregated South. Future acts would offer higher education grants in more fields of study.

September 17, 1862 – Battle of Antietam Prompts Emancipation Proclamation and Ends Potential European Intervention in Civil War
A battle fought in a single day as part of an effort to preserve the Union, the Battle of Antietam also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, in Northern Virginia, provided a huge breakthrough giving President Abraham Lincoln enough of a victory needed to sign the Emancipation Proclamation several days after the battle ended. Made effective in 1863, the Proclamation led to the total abolition of slavery and applied to Southern states rebelling against freedom for slaves, an even greater part of the war by end of the Battle of Antietam. It also prevented involvement in the Civil War by Europeans many of whom opposed slavery.

July 4, 1863 – Vicksburg Surrenders, Completes Anaconda Plan to Encircle the South
The Anaconda Plan of the Civil War, crafted by U.S. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, was designed to split and defeat the Confederacy by closing in on the coasts east and south, control the Mississippi River, then attack from all sides. Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant pressed through to take Vicksburg, Mississippi, get the final Confederate strongholds and control the Mississippi River. President Abraham Lincoln believed taking Vicksburg was the key to victory. The Battle at Vicksburg would be the longest military campaign of the Civil War. Vicksburg was surrendered on July 4, 1863.

July 22, 1864 – Fall of Atlanta, Assurance of President Abraham Lincoln’s Re-election
In the Battle of Atlanta with the first surprise attack on July 22, 1864, General William T. Sherman was determined to take Atlanta, Georgia. Important to the Confederacy, Atlanta was a railroad hub, political, manufacturing and economic area; Savannah was a major sea port. By the battle’s end, Atlanta Mayor James Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to General Sherman who captured the city on September 2, 1864 after a long campaign for the area from May to September. The Battle of Atlanta boosted support for President Abraham Lincoln who was reelected on November 8, 1864.

April 9, 1865 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee Surrenders at Appomattox, Ends Civil War, Begins Healing of the Nation
At Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the Civil War lasting from 1861-1865 to a close. President Abraham Lincoln spoke of “malice toward none and charity for all” to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” Victory by the North would bring the end to slavery to begin living out the nation’s declaration that all men are created equal, and should be free. Satisfied with the terms of surrender between Grant and Lee that would help strengthen unity, the nation could begin reconciliation and healing.

April 15, 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln Assassinated, Changes Postwar Politics
Only five days after the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, ending the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a theater in Washington, D.C. John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate supporter, shot the president succumbed to his wounds the next day. President Andrew Johnson took Lincoln’s place, and was less supportive of Lincoln’s anti-slavery policies, diluting the abolition of slavery Lincoln envisioned. Johnson was in favor of policies that further disenfranchised free blacks, setting political policies that would weaken the nation’s unity.

December 6, 1865 – Thirteenth Amendment Ratified, Abolishing Slavery
Shortly before the Civil War’s end, the Thirteenth Amendment, to abolish slavery, was passed in Congress January 31, 1865 then finally ratified December 6, 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment states “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” President Abraham Lincoln so wanted to ensure slavery’s end that he strongly advised the constitutional amendment, one that would also help further sound an alarm concerning division the institution of slavery brought on the nation.

September 5, 1867 – First Texas Cattle Shipped From Abilene
The Chisholm Trail, named after trader and freight hauler, Jesse Chisholm, runs from Texas to Kansas. Cattle drivers would use the trails started by Chisholm, no longer used once railroads were built in Texas. Cattle, introduced to the United States by early explorers from Spain and England or indirectly by way of Mexico, became more in demand after the Civil War, and where railheads were available. In 1867, cattle dealer Joseph McCoy began looking for a way to get Texas cattle to market. When the first herd of cattle arrived in Abilene in August, the first shipment of cattle left for Kansas September 1867 via rail.

October 18, 1867 – Signing of the Alaska Treaty, The Alaska Purchase
Explorers found the region of Alaska rich in natural resources, with particular interest to fur traders. Russian settlement grew, but in 1859, Russia offered to sell Alaska to the United States hoping the U.S. could quell effects of Russia’s greatest Pacific rival, Great Britain. After the Alaska Treaty of purchase was approved by the Senate and signed by President Andrew Johnson, the sale of Alaska by Russia to the U.S. was finalized October 18, 1867. The purchase ended Russia’s presence in North America ensuring the United States’ access to the Pacific north rim. Alaska is known as “The Last Frontier” of the United States.

  • October 18, 1867: Signing of the Alaska Treaty, The Alaska Purchase by David J. Shestokas,  Attorney and Former Illinois State Prosecutor; Author of Constitutional Sound Bites, Creating the Declaration of Independence and Cápsulas Informativas Constitucionales, the only Spanish language book explaining America’s Founding Documents.

May 10, 1869 – Golden Spike Completes Transcontinental Railroad, Unites America
Finally connecting east and west of the United States, a ceremonial golden railroad spike was driven in Promontory Summit, Utah where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met, signifying the finished project. Completion of the transcontinental railroad connecting the coasts relieved westward travelers of long, dangerous wagon journeys. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 for public land would help get the transcontinental line completed. Laying about 2,000 miles of track, the project brought major expansion for the United States, and helped to civilize America’s Western frontier.

March 1, 1872 – Yellowstone Becomes First National Park, Begins Park System
In March 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone Act of 1872, also known as the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, to protect public lands as designated national parklands. Doubt arose regarding advisement of designating land for parks when much of the current goal was to expand economic development in as much of American territory as possible for timber, minerals and other natural resources for expansion. The designation of parklands averted private development. Upon establishing Yellowstone as the first national park, the idea of preserving such lands for enjoyment spread across the country.

February 14, 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell Files Patent for Telephone
Alexander Graham Bell was the son of Visible Speech developer, Melville Bell. After teaching at a school for the deaf in Massachusetts, Alexander realized Morse’s telegraph was a good start and designed one that worked like a telegraph and record player together, allowing speech between two parties. With continued efforts, Bell filed his patent for the development of a working telephone that transferred vibrations magnetically to a distant instrument that received a replicated sound. Filed February 14 and awarded March 7, 1876 as a patent on Improvement on Telegraphy, controversy surrounds timing of Bell’s submission.

June 25-26, 1876 – Battle of Little Bighorn
In 1868, treaties between the Indian tribes and the United States were formed in attempts to prevent conflicts and force Indians to give up lands and move to reservations in the west, but the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie meant to protect Indian access to the Black Hills, was broken by miners seeking gold. Fought near the Little Big Horn River in Montana, June of 1876, the Battle of Little Bighorn represented cultural differences between Indian tribes of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and the agricultural and industrial culture of the United States. Known as the Sioux Wars, the battles were fought over control of Western territory. The Indians won the Battle of Little Bighorn, killing General George Custer and all of his troops, but disputes over territory continued.

March 2, 1877 – President Rutherford B. Hayes Electoral Compromise, Southern Reconstruction Ends
Once elected president, Hayes set clear lines in southern policy to eliminate political acts of violence against blacks, and ensure the Civil War amendments protecting their freedoms would be effective. However, the Compromise of 1877 would gain election for Hayes without interference by Democrats if Hayes agreed to pull federal troops from the South. The result would be Democrat control over the South, ending Reconstruction. In a time when the Democratic Party controlled Congress and Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes wanted Reconstruction to solidify more fairness and freedom for blacks in the South, including integrity in elections, his efforts seemed productive, but hampered by the compromise.

August 12, 1877 – Thomas Edison Invents Phonograph
Thomas Alva Edison completed work on his first phonograph model in August 1877. While working to improve the telegraph transmitter, he noticed the telegraph machine tape made sounds when running at high speeds. He reasoned putting a needle on the diaphragm of a telephone receiver might make small holes in the tape by piercing it slightly and record sound. He tried applying a hard point to a tinfoil cylinder that, when spun, played back a sample message, “Mary had a little lamb.” He filed for the patent December 24, 1877 and received it February 19, 1878. The industry of recorded sound would develop from Edison’s phonograph.

November 4, 1879 – Thomas Edison Files Patent for Electric Light Bulb
Thomas Alva Edison is credited with 1, 093 patented inventions. Among the most famous are the phonograph, moving picture camera, and incandescent light bulb. With a team of scientists and technicians, Edison tried thousands of theories in attempts to design a long-lasting electric light for a better solution to candles, gas and lighting oils. After working to improve upon prior designs others had tried for many years, he finally found that by using a carbon filament, it worked for a long-burning light. He made further improvements, then filed for a patent November 4, 1789. His patent for the incandescent light bulb was received January 27, 1880.

December 29, 1890 – Wounded Knee Massacre, Also Known as the Battle of Wounded Knee
After the Battle of Little Bighorn, conflict remained. Concern spread about the Ghost Dance movement of the Sioux Indians who believed gods were angered because they did not keep with their traditions, but that a Ghost Dance would protect their customs. As the movement grew, Chief Sitting Bull was arrested by U.S. troops and killed. By December 29, 1890 near Wounded Knee Creek, Chief Big Foot heard about Sitting Bull and moved his people to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. By December 29, 1890, Big Foot among approximately 300 Sioux and 25 soldiers died. The massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last of the Indian Wars.

February 15, 1898 – Battleship Maine Blows Up, Leads to Spanish-American War, America Enters the World Stage
Tensions were mounting between the United States and Spain, sending the battleship Maine to Cuba to protect America’s interests. The U.S.S. Maine was one of the first American battleships, and exploded while in Cuba’s Havana harbor February 15, 1898. Of the 354 crew members, over 260 perished. It is assumed the ship experienced a fire on its own, but an investigation revealed the explosion was caused by a mine though explorers were unsure of the mine’s origin. Subsequently, war was declared against Spain the following April with victory for the U.S. in the Spanish-American War setting America’s future role in foreign policy.

December 17, 1903 – Wright Brothers Make First Powered Aircraft Flight
Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneers, began testing a glider near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1900. They tested over the next few years to be sure the wing, frame, and steering systems worked. The manned flight on December 17, 1903 was accomplished in a self-propelled, gasoline-powered aircraft with a propeller. After many trials, the two pilots received a patent for their “flying machine” or “Wright Flyer” on May 22, 1906. After the first flight in 1906 that focused on aerodynamics, proving successful their use of design methods including three-axis control, the Wright brothers made a public flight in 1908.

April 8, 1913 – Seventeenth Amendment Ratified, Direct Election of Senators
In 1788, as the United States Constitution was adopted, senators would be elected by state legislatures to protect the states from the federal government increasing its own power. Problems related to the election of senators later resulted in lengthy senate vacancies. A popular vote movement began as a solution, but it failed to consider importance of separation of powers as designed by the Framers to protect liberty and maintain stability in government. The popular vote was an attempt to hamper the more deliberative body that is the United States Senate, and succumb to the more passionate, immediate will of the people, so on April 8, 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted.

August 15, 1914 – Panama Canal Opens
In June 1902, the U.S. Senate passed the Spooner bill to authorize construction of a canal through Panama. In 1903, the United States aided a revolution to help Panama gain independence from Columbia, establishing the Republic of Panama. Before the first world war, all ocean travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans had to route dangerous passages around southern South America. Completed August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal offered a waterway through the isthmus of Panama connecting the oceans, creating fifty miles of sea-level passage. The canal was recognized as one of the seven wonders of the modern world by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

March 3, 1917 – Germany Admits to Authoring the Zimmermann Telegram,  America Enters World War I
The United States found out through British intelligence that a telegram sent by German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann was an attempt to start an alliance with Mexico and Japan in case the United States joined World War I. It was an effort to try and regain southwestern states Mexico lost in the Mexican War of 1846-1848. At first, some thought the message was to pressure the United States into the war. However, by March 3, 1917, Zimmermann confirmed his telegram’s purpose, and America was then set against Germany for certain ensuring entry of the United States into World War I.

August 18, 1920 – Nineteenth Amendment Ratified, Women Gain Right to Vote
Meeting in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a national leader for women’s suffrage, along with Lucretia Mott, was joined by Susan B. Anthony known as the mother of women’s suffrage, and whom the amendment is named after as the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment.” These ladies worked to engage the public and lobby Congress for women to vote. First introduced in Congress in 1878, the constitutional amendment was ratified August 18, 1920, and signed by Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby on August 26, 1920. Decades in the making, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution finally passed, guaranteeing women the right to vote, also known as women’s suffrage.

September 3, 1928 – Philo Farnsworth Transmits First Electronic Television Broadcast
An admirer of inventors Bell, Edison, and Einstein’s theories, scientist and inventor Philo T. Farnsworth designed the first electric television based on an idea he sketched in a high school chemistry class. He studied and learned some success was gained with transmitting and projecting images. While plowing fields, Farnsworth realized television could become a system of horizontal lines, breaking up images, but forming an electronic picture of solid images. Despite attempts by competitors to impede Farnsworth’s original inventions, in 1928, Farnsworth presented his idea for a television to reporters in Hollywood, launching him into more successful efforts that would revolutionize moving pictures.

October 29, 1929 – Black Tuesday, Stock Market Crash
From 1927, investors saw the economy booming and many bought stocks on credit believing quick sales of those stocks would yield easy returns. By 1929, the American economy was growing rapidly, business investments with it, appearing unlimited. People sold their stocks quickly and values fell fast. This downturn was the major crash that brought on what was called Black Monday on October 28, 1929, then into October 29, Black Tuesday, with a complete fallout. The stock market continued to plunge and could not recover. The crash was blamed on too rapid growth causing a bubble of overvalued stocks. The economy slowed but the stock market did not show it. The more people sold their stocks to regain losses, the more the market declined bringing a loss of confidence in investing.

March 4, 1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt Inaugurated, Begins “Hundred Days” Government Expansion
While the stock market crash of 1928 was credited with spurring the Great Depression, it did so in part. President Herbert Hoover made efforts to repair banking problems and restore stability with government intervention worsened by the New Deal programs implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Unfortunately, hopes for the New Deal’s Hundred Days of government control proved to shrink opportunities for the market to recover on its own. Instead of supporting market protections to stabilize, as America’s Founders envisioned, New Deal programs including court-packing prolonged the Depression, stifling options for investments or lasting consumer confidence for developing industry.

December 7, 1941 – Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor, America Enters World War II
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States naval base in Oahu, Hawaii, with a surprise attack. The planes fired upon the base for almost two hours. Over 2,400 Americans died, another 1,000 plus injured, service members and civilians. The U.S. Pacific fleet was destroyed. Japan wanted imperial expansion, continually in conflict with the United States and over Chinese markets and Asian policy. On December 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Congress to declare war on Japan, describing the attack on Pearl Harbor as “a date which will live in infamy.” The attack marked the United States entrance into World War II.

August 6, 1945 – America Drops Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Nuclear Age Begins
During World War II (1939-1945), the United States dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, leaving an enormous mushroom cloud and massive destruction on August 6, 1945. President Harry Truman advised using the bomb to quickly end the war. The United States was working to develop an atomic weapon begun by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with the Manhattan Project, and had warning that Nazi Germany was working on nuclear options. The bombing wiped out most of Hiroshima. Similar was done over Nagasaki soon after. It is believed around 70,000 died initially and total deaths were at least 200,000 including later casualties from radiation and related illnesses. On August 14, Japan surrendered.

June 24, 1948 – Beginning of Berlin Airlift, Cold War Begins
After the bombings on Japan, the Cold War stage was set, ignited by deteriorating relations between the United States and the communist Soviet Union. When Germany was defeated by the end of World War II in 1945, it was divided into occupations by the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. On June 24, 1948, Soviet and communist leader Josef Stalin attempted to control East German land by cutting off routes to drive allied nations out of Berlin, the capital of Germany. The blockade was pushback against America and Britain for impeding Russian involvement in Germany’s economic plans. The United States airlifted food and other supplies by plane to people in West Berlin, as President Harry Truman wanted to avoid another world war. The Soviet blockade and attempt to isolate and starve the people of Berlin failed, but the Cold War persisted.

December 2, 1948 – Whittaker Chambers Exposes Alger Hiss as a Spy With Pumpkin Papers
Subpoenaed in August 1948 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Congress, Whittaker Chambers, on December 2, 1948, revealed two rolls of undeveloped microfilm hidden in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm, thus the name “Pumpkin Papers.” The microfilm contained evidence that Chambers would present against Alger Hiss, Communist Party member, who was later convicted in 1950 for perjury about being a spy for the Soviets. The evidence showed that Hiss passed papers with information to Chambers for delivery to the Soviets. Chambers had been involved with the Communist Party, but left it, realizing the truth about Josef Stalin and his Soviet regime of communist tyranny.

June 25, 1950 – North Korean Forces Invade South Korea, Korean War Begins
By the end of World War II, Korea, formerly controlled by Japan, was divided into North Korea that ended up supported by the Soviet government under communism and South Korea supported by the United States under a capitalist government. The United States made efforts to contain communism after World War II, but unrest over the spread of communism by the Soviet Union remained, including in Asia. Attempts to unify North and South Korea were failing and on June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. The United States entered the Korean War with resolve to prevent communism from infecting peace gained at home and abroad.

June 19, 1953 – Rosenbergs (Spies) Executed
Julius Rosenberg of New York became an engineer stationed at the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratory in New Jersey during World War II. Reports showed the Soviet Secret Police asked him to steal classified American plans for a guided missile system. His wife Ethel had her brother, David Greenglass, who was stationed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, steal information on American nuclear bomb plans for a Soviet spy. Accused of leading a spy ring to sell classified government secrets regarding the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, devoted to the Communist Party, were tried and found guilty of espionage. Appeals failed. They were executed for their crimes on June 19, 1953.

June 19, 1865 – Juneteenth, Commemoration of the End of Slavery in the United States
After President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers in Galveston, Texas, with Major General Gordon Granger leading, announced that the Civil War had ended, the slaves were free and slavery had been abolished in America. The observance and celebration of Juneteenth, named for the date of June 19, 1865, is the oldest national commemoration marking the end of slavery of black people in the United States.

  • Juneteenth – A Poem by Noah Griffin, America 250 Commissioner; Founder and Artistic Director, Cole Porter Society

May 17, 1954 – Brown v. Board of Education
Five cases about segregated schools were eventually consolidated into the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in attempts to stop segregation of black and white students not only in schools, but segregation in general. On May 17, 1954, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling that segregation was not “separate but equal,” and was unconstitutional. The case brought attention to needed growth of desegregation in the following years, and influenced the Civil Rights Movement resulting in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned segregation in all public facilities, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawing voting restrictions based on race.

June 29, 1956 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower Signs Federal-Aid Highway Act to Establish Interstate System
When Dwight Eisenhower was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, he was part of a convoy traveling across the United States on the nation’s old roads. During World War II, Eisenhower learned of the Reichsautobahn system in Germany. These events inspired him to design a highway system in the United States for the interest of American citizens and national defense. As president of the United States, a top priority for Eisenhower was to have Congress authorize the Federal Aid Highway Act signed into law June 29, 1956. Known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, it makes up about 47,000 miles of highway in every state and Puerto Rico.

July 30, 1956 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower Signs Law Establishing “In God We Trust” on Currency
While speaking on June 14, 1954, Flag Day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower talked about the importance of reaffirming religious faith in America’s heritage and future, that doing so would “constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war.” In 1864 during the Civil War, the phrase “In God We Trust” first appeared on U.S. coins. On July 30, 1956, “In God We Trust” became the nation’s motto as President Eisenhower signed into law a bill declaring it along with having the motto printed in capital letters on every United States denomination of paper currency.

October 4, 1957 – USSR Launches Sputnik, Shocks U.S. Into Space Age
The Soviet Union launched a new satellite on October 4, 1957 that turned out to be the first successful technological, scientific development of its kind. A small satellite, called Sputnik, with shape and size likened to that of a beach ball weighed less than 200 pounds and took about an hour and a half to orbit the earth. The new satellite also brought with it notice of new political and military developments. Following the Sputnik launch, concerns increased regarding Soviet ability to launch ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The Sputnik satellite was a surprise to the world, marked the beginning of the space age, and the space race, especially between the United States and the Soviet Union.

October 28, 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis Ends, Affects U.S. Policy for Decades
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a confrontation during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. It resulted in Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev making an agreement with Cuban premier Fidel Castro to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. Before Khrushchev’s October 28, 1962 statement saying the Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed, on October 22, to avert nuclear war, President John F. Kennedy directed a “quarantine” to prevent a nuclear offensive against Western nations to ensure Cuba would not be used as a launch site for a Soviet attack admonishing “Our goal is not the victory of might but the vindication of right – not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this Hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.”

May 7, 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson Speech Launches Great Society Government Expansion
After years of war and loss of President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to carry out some of the plans President Kennedy envisioned, and help restore the nation. In a speech at Ohio University May 7, 1964, the Great Society idea first presented by President Johnson started as social reform for education, poverty, civil rights, and others. Some commended it, but others resented the amount of government intrusion in Americans’ lives including encroachment on personal liberty and parental rights, roles of charities and churches to be taken over by government control. Many viewed the results as having cost more than delivered, only creating enormous bureaucracies rather than lasting, effective solutions. 

July 2, 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson Signs Civil Rights Act of 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2, a  law banning segregation in public places and discrimination based on race, color, national origin, or religion or sex. The South opposed earlier attempts at civil rights legislation, but advances were finally made. Not long before his assassination in 1963, President Kennedy proposed stronger legislation and said the nation “will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.” After lengthy Democrat filibuster in the Senate, the bill was finally passed 73-27 and sent to the desk of President Johnson.

August 7, 1964 – Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Vietnam War
Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964 authorizing President Lyndon B. Johnson to take any measures necessary to promote international peace and security in southeast Asia. This act led to the first major military escalation by the United States in the ongoing war: Operation Rolling Thunder in February 1965. This was an important move, as it led to a sharp rise in U.S. casualties, anti-war protests, rise of the New Left including identity politics, and other social reforms.

August 6, 1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson Signs Voting Rights Act of 1965
President Lyndon B. Johnson went further on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by urging Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which guaranteed African Americans the right to vote. The bill made illegal any restrictions on the local, state or federal levels that denied blacks their right to vote. It was designed to ensure the Fifteenth Amendment on voting rights could not be hindered. Though voting by blacks was still challenged or ignored especially in Southern states, signed by President Johnson on August 6, 1965, their voter turnout increased and blacks were able to speak up about voting illegal restrictions and become more involved in American civic opportunities.

July 20, 1969 – U.S. Lands on Moon, Wins Space Race
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Astronaut Neil Armstrong spoke those words after being the first man to step onto the moon’s surface July 20, 1969. From Cape Kennedy (formerly Cape Canaveral) July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 mission commander with Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, lunar module pilot, and Michael Collins, command module pilot, left on the Apollo 11 mission lunar module Eagle to complete the first moon landing and return to earth, a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Following World War II, the space race became a competition for technology to show superiority and the greatest military strength. The winner would impact sustaining of the free world.

August 9, 1974 – Richard M. Nixon Resigns as President, Ending Watergate Scandal
What became known as the Watergate scandal involved a break-in, to track phone conversations, of the Democrat National Committee in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. Initial arrests in 1972 led to further indictments in the Nixon administration. Avoiding impeachment, on August 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon announced he would resign as president of the United States and formally left office on August 9. In efforts to heal and keep the nation focused, the new president, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned President Nixon. While others committed similar acts attempting to gain election in political campaigns prior to Watergate, the American people would spurn such behavior as unacceptable by either party.

April 30, 1975 – Fall of Saigon – America Losing Cold War Until Ronald Reagan Elected President
The Vietnam War ended when the capital of non-communist South Vietnam, Saigon, fell to the Communists. This occurred shortly after Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam, over the objections of the Ford Administration. The triumph of the Communist regime in Vietnam was one of the most important victories for its main ally, the Soviet Union, in the Cold War with the United States.

November 4, 1979 – Iranian Hostage Crisis Begins
Iranians entered the United States Embassy in Tehran, a province of Iran, November 4, 1979 capturing 66 people, the total released January 20, 1981. They were held 444 days. The Iranian hostage crisis started under already strained relations when President Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment, sparking further protests and ultimately the taking of hostages in Iran. Iranians saw the Shah as a brutal dictator and America as approving of his actions by helping him. The hostage crisis formed a solid view by America, influencing United States foreign policy to this day, that the Islamic Republic is a defiant regime that mocks international law and universal moral principles.

  • November 4, 1979: The Iranian Hostage Crisis Begins by Scot Faulkner, Served as Chief Administrative Officer, U.S. House of Representatives and as a Member of the Reagan White House Staff; Financial Adviser; President, Friends of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

November 4, 1980 – President Ronald Reagan Elected, Modern Conservatism Ascends to Preserve Individual Freedom
With losses from the New Deal policies, Cold War, Iranian hostage crisis and other issues weakening national stability, America’s confidence wore thin. The November 1980 presidential election would bring knowledge Ronald Reagan gained into America’s need for economic strength, national security and leadership on the world’s stage. Reagan’s Hollywood and military career not only helped him be known as “The Great Communicator,” but, more importantly, set in motion Reagan’s ability to address the corrosive effects of Socialist and Communist activism. Upon election of Reagan as president, conservatism grew and the United States began to recover.

November 9, 1989 – Berlin Wall Torn Down, End of Cold War, America Wins
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan noted threats due to enormous power of the modern state, how history teaches dangers of government overreach, how political control taking precedence over free economic growth using secret police and mindless bureaucracy stifle individual excellence and freedom. He observed it in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s forced socialism. President Reagan, though some U.S. successes were in place, envisioned bolder strategies for “peace through strength” vital to win the Cold War that would last from the end of World War II in 1945 to 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. On November 9, 1989, President Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall challenging Gorbachev “Mr. Gorbachev–tear down this wall!” Margaret Thatcher said of the result that “Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.”

August 2, 1990 – Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm) Begins
August 2, 1990 began Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait followed by the United States response in the form of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm), a major force deployed under the direction of President George H.W. Bush to stop President Saddam Hussein’s brutal aggression against freedom of the people of Kuwait. On January 15, 1991, Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm and was America’s largest post-Vietnam War military deployment which not only changed the way Americans perceived the United States in the world at the end of the Cold War, but also set the stage for the future war on terror and the international stage today.

September 11, 2001 – Islamic Terrorists Attack New York City and Washington, D.C.
On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations hijacked four airplanes to attack the United States. They flew two planes into the World Trade Center in New York. Another hit the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and the fourth was taken back by American heroes and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed with many more, including first responders, suffering from related illnesses after. President George W. Bush stated “Any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” When the Taliban refused to cooperate, Operation Enduring Freedom launched on October 7, 2001 in Afghanistan, plus other counterterrorism measures, to defeat Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and all associated terrorists in the global war against terrorism.

March 23, 2010 – President Barack H. Obama Signs Affordable Care Act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Barack H. Obama on March 23, 2010 had humanitarian intentions to expand healthcare insurance coverage and Medicaid eligibility, lessen growth of Medicare payments, and increase other taxes. The new law mandated, or forced, purchase of individual healthcare controlled by the government. However, problems the law created included cancelling competitive health care insurance that worked for many, replacing them with taxpayer funded health plans at higher costs with limited care and coverage that did not fit especially for the cost. Surrounding arguments included constitutionality of forcing Americans to buy insurance, calling it an unconstitutional tax and socialized medicine.

Conclusion

 

Guest Essayist: Brad Bergford

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Utah has a fascinating history from the days before it was a United States territory to today. The first Europeans arrived in the area in 1765. In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain and claimed Utah for itself. In 1832, Antoine Robidoux built the first trading post in Utah, and in 1841, John Bartleson led the first wagon train across Utah to California. During the 1800s, Utah bore the indicia of western expansion. Many regard the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869 as not only one of the most important historical events in Utah, but also one of the most momentous in U.S. history.

Utah stands unique in its history and traditions, and it cannot be understood apart from the influence of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the “LDS church”) and its adherents, the Mormons. Utah’s path to statehood began principally because of precipitous settlement by Mormons, who moved west after failed settlement attempts in New York, Illinois, and, most notably, in Jackson County, Missouri, where they had intended to establish an everlasting temple. In 1847, Brigham Young, by then the leader of the main branch of the LDS church, entered the Salt Lake Valley with 148 comrades and founded Salt Lake City. At the time, the area was part of Mexico, but early in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded 525,000 square miles, including present-day Utah, to the United States.

In 1849, Brigham Young took a delegation to Washington, D.C. to propose a massive new state called “Deseret” that would have included all of present-day Utah, virtually all of present-day Nevada, and parts of Colorado, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Wyoming, and Idaho. Congress established Utah territory, which was much larger than present-day Utah but smaller than “Deseret” as part of the Compromise of 1850, which also allowed the territories of Utah and New Mexico to each decide whether to permit slavery. Utah approved slave ownership only by white people but not by Mexicans. Many residents purchased “Indian” slaves with the encouragement of the LDS church, and some settlers brought African slaves with them to Salt Lake City. In that same year, President Fillmore named Brigham Young the territorial governor. Over the next two decades, settlers—primarily Mormons—traveled to Utah by wagon train. Some reports are that settlers encountered hostility from native peoples. Other reports are that native peoples assisted settlers. In any case, Utah’s new settlers wished to enjoy the benefits of statehood, including federal government protection.

American sentiment outside of Utah was decidedly against the practice of polygamy, which the LDS church regarded as a central aspect of religious life. Several times the United States Congress passed laws aimed at abolishing the practice, which some compared to slavery. Republican opposition to LDS control and practices in Utah—chiefly slavery and polygamy—delayed Utah’s statehood by 46 years. In 1879, the Supreme Court unanimously held in Reynolds v. United States (98 US 145), that Congress could outlaw polygamy and that the Constitution does not protect that practice. Over the next decade, many men were convicted under federal anti-polygamy laws. In 1890, and apparently in direct response to another loss at the Supreme Court, this one involving a constitutional challenge to the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which responded to the practice of polygamy by allowing the disincorporation of the LDS Church and the federal seizure of LDS property, the LDS president issued what Mormons call the Manifesto. It indicated that for the good of the LDS church, Mormons must abandon the practice of polygamy. In 1896, Utah was granted statehood.

Utah makes the forty-fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, admitting it to the Union January 4, 1896. Utah became known as “The Beehive State” and currently uses the Utah State Constitution adopted in 1896.

Utah offers much in the way of outdoor adventure and cultural attraction. It offers five national parks: Zion (1919), Arches (1971), Bryce (1928), Capital Reef (1971) and Canyonlands (1974), and it boasts other outdoor attractions, including Moab, the Colorado River, and Lake Powell. Important cultural attractions include skiing and visiting the Mormon Tabernacle (not to be confused with the Mormon Temple, which bars non-LDS visitors). In the early 20th century, auto racing in the Bonneville Salt Flats became popular, and car manufacturers have frequently used the site for commercials. Park City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympic Games and hosts the annual Sundance Film Festival. Brigham Young University is widely renowned for its academic excellence in many areas. The Utah Jazz is the state’s only major professional sports team and many Utahans are rabid Jazz fans.

The Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development lists aerospace and defense, life sciences, financial services, energy, outdoor products and recreation, and software as key industries. Today, a third of the world’s Mormons live in Utah, but demographics in Utah are changing. The population of Salt Lake City is now only 48% Mormon, although Utah’s total population is still about 61% Mormon. Some of the trend is due to population influx because of Utah’s hot economy (4th fastest growing economy in the U.S.), and some is attributed to Mormons intentionally spreading their influence by moving away from Utah. The state legislature features overwhelming Republican representation, although almost all of Salt Lake City’s elected representatives are Democrats. It appears that Utah will continue to provide a unique picture of cultural development to go along with its stunning landscape.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Brad Bergford earned his BA in Political Science and Pre-Law at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He earned his juris doctorate from the University of Denver, where he was active in several student bar associations, including the Student Trial Lawyers Association, the Federalist Society, and Christian Legal Society, which he served as President. After law school, Brad clerked for the Honorable Philip McNulty where he authored court opinions in a number of cases on subjects ranging from family law to constitutional law. Brad is Chief Executive Officer of Colorado Family Action/CFA Foundation, and he has his own civil litigation practice, which focuses on constitutional issues. Brad is an Alliance Defending Freedom Blackstone Fellow and Allied Attorney, and he serves as President of National Lawyers Association’s Colorado chapter.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Michael Warren

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Executive Branch

The executive power of the United States is vested in the president who is elected pursuant to the electoral college.41 The electors of each state are chosen by a method of selection determined by the state legislature. Each elector has two votes, one each for president and vice president (who run as a slate).42 The president and vice president each serve four-year terms, and are limited to two full terms.43 The vice president also serves as the president of the Senate, and has no vote unless there is a tie.44 No other federal executive offices are addressed in the U.S. Constitution. To be president, a person must be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and have been a resident in the United States for at least 14 years.45 The president is, among other things, the commander in chief of the armed forces.46 He or she has the power to grant reprieves and pardons (except for cases of impeachment), make treaties (subject to a two-thirds approval of the Senate), and appoint federal judges (subject to the advice and consent of the Senate).47 He or she has the duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed.48

The executive power of the State of Michigan is vested in the governor.49 The governor and lieutenant governor serve four-year terms, with a maximum of two terms.50 The governor is elected in the general election of alternate even-numbered years.51 Candidates for lieutenant governor are nominated by party conventions.52 “In the general election one vote shall be cast jointly for the candidates of governor and lieutenant governor nominated by the same party.”53 The governor supervises each “principal department … unless otherwise provided by” the Constitution.54 The governor is also to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”55 Furthermore, the Michigan Constitution has a negative advice and consent clause – any gubernatorial appointments take effect unless a majority of the state Senate votes to disapprove the appointment.56 The governor has the authority to remove or suspend “any elective or appointive state officer, except legislative or judicial,” for “gross negligence of duty or for corrupt conduct in office, or for any other misfeasance or malfeasance therein …  .”57 Like the president, the governor is the commander in chief of the armed forces.58 He or she also has the authority to grant “reprieves, commutations and pardons for all offenses, except in cases of impeachment,” but that power is subject to the procedures and regulations provided by law.59 The governor has the duty to submit to the Legislature a balanced budget and appropriation bills.60 Like the vice president, the lieutenant governor is president of the Senate, without a vote except in cases of a tie.61 To be governor or lieutenant governor, a person must be 30 years old and have been a voter in the state for the four years “next preceding his election.”62 The attorney general and secretary of state are likewise elected for four-year terms at the same time as the governor, with a maximum of two terms.63 Like the lieutenant governor, the attorney general and secretary of state are nominated at state party conventions.64

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Michigan Constitution addresses in detail the administrative state over which the governor presides. For example, there are no more than “20 principal departments. They shall be grouped as far as practicable according to major purposes.”65 In addition, unless legislatively vetoed, the governor has plenary authority to reorganize the executive branch via executive order.66

The Michigan Constitution also establishes a statewide elected state board of education;67 elected statewide boards for the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, and Michigan State University;68 an appointed civil rights commission;69 an appointed state transportation commission;70 a Michigan nongame fish and wildlife trust fund;71 a Michigan game and fish protection fund;72 a Michigan conservation and recreation legacy fund;73 a Michigan veterans trust fund;74 and a Michigan natural resources trust fund.75

Judicial Branch

The judicial power of the United States is vested in “one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”76 All federal judges have life terms, subject to being in “good Behavior.”77 The jurisdiction of the federal courts includes all cases arising under the U.S. Constitution, federal law, treaties, foreign relations, admiralty and maritime, and controversies between the states.78

In Michigan the “judicial power of the state is vested exclusively in one court of justice which shall be divided into one supreme court, one court of appeals, one trial court of general jurisdiction known as the circuit court, one probate court, and courts of limited jurisdiction that the legislature may establish by two-thirds vote of the members elected to and serving in each house.”79 The Supreme Court has seven members, serving eight-year terms with staggered elections.80 The Supreme Court is nonpartisan, and “Nominations for justices of the supreme court shall be in a manner prescribed by law.”81 However, an incumbent may be placed on the ballot simply by filing an affidavit of candidacy.82 The Supreme Court chooses its own chief justice, and he or she “shall perform duties required by the court.”83 The Supreme Court must appoint “an administrator of the courts and other assistants of the supreme court as may be necessary to aid in the administration of the courts of this state.”84 The Supreme Court possesses “general superintending control over all courts … and appellate jurisdiction as provided by rules of the supreme court,”85 and rulemaking authority over the “practice and procedure in all courts of this state.”86 Although the Supreme Court “shall not have the power to remove a judge,”87 it may do so pursuant to judicial tenure proceedings.88 “Decisions of the supreme court, including all decisions on prerogative writs, shall be in writing and shall contain a concise statement of the facts and reasons for each decision and reasons for each denial of leave to appeal. “When a judge dissents in whole or in part he shall give in writing the reasons for his dissent.”89 The Constitution also establishes a court of appeals, with the number of judges determined by law.90 Court of Appeals judges serve six-year terms, elected in staggered terms.91 They are elected in nonpartisan elections “from districts drawn on county lines and as nearly as possible of equal population, as provided by law.”92 The jurisdiction of the court of appeals is determined by law.93 Circuit courts are established along county lines, with a minimum of one judge per circuit, as provided by law.94 Circuit courts must conduct sessions at least four times a year, and the number of judges for each circuit is also established by law.95 Circuit court judges are nominated and elected in staggered (by circuit) non-partisan elections for six-year terms, and must live in the circuit to which they are elected.96 Circuit courts have “original jurisdiction in all matters not prohibited by law; appellate jurisdiction from all inferior courts and tribunals except as otherwise provided by law; power to issue, hear and determine prerogative and remedial writs; supervisory and general control over inferior courts and tribunals within their respective jurisdictions in accordance with the rules of the supreme court; and jurisdiction of other cases and matters as provided by the rules of the supreme court.”97 Probate judges are also established and follow the same elective and qualification procedures as circuit court judges.98 To serve as a judge, an individual must have been admitted to practice law for at least five years, and cannot be elected or appointed after reaching 70 years old.99 Judges are also ineligible to be “nominated for or elected to an elective office other than a judicial office during the period of his service and for one year thereafter.”100

Additional Provisions

The Michigan Constitution takes great care to address taxes and fiscal matters,101 local government,102 elections103 and many other matters. These matters are left to the states in the U.S. Constitution.104 Both constitutions have extensive protection of individual rights105 – a topic that could consume hundreds of pages of commentary and review.

The differences between our two constitutions are quite intense – revealing the origins and philosophies undergirding each. Understanding their differences gives us a deeper appreciation for the value they provide and any potential imperfections. Simply put, the U.S. and Michigan constitutions have a profound impact on our daily lives, significantly differ in scope and detail, and are well worth learning if we intend to preserve our liberties and freedoms.

Hon. Michael Warren has served on the Oakland County Circuit Court since 2002, and teaches constitutional law at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. He is a former member of the state board of education, co-creator of Patriot Week (www.PatriotWeek.org), and author of America’s Survival Guide: How to Stop America’s Impending Suicide by Reclaiming Our First Principles and History. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Footnotes

41     Article II, Section 1.

42     Article II, Sections 1 and Amendment XII.

43     Article II, Section 1 and Amendment XXII.

44     Article I, Section 3.

45     Article II, Section 1.

46     Article II, Section 2.

47     Id.

48     Article II, Section 3.

49     Article 5, Section 1.

50     Article 5, Section 21.

51     Article 5, Section 21.

52     Article 5, Section 21.

53     Article 5, Section 21.

54     Article 5, Section 8.

55     Article 5 Section 8.

56     Article 5, Section 6.

57     Article 5, Section 8.

58     Article 5, Section 12.

59     Article 5, Section 14.

60     Article V, Section 18.

61     Article V, Section 25.

62     Article V, Section 22.

63     Article V, Section 21.

64     Article V, Section 21.

65     Article 5, Section 2.

66     Article 5, Section 2.

67     Article VIII, Section 3.

68     Article VIII, Section 5.

69     Article V, Section 29.

70     Article V, Section 28.

71     Article IX, Section 42.

72     Article IX, Section 41.

73     Article IX, Section 40.

74     Article IX, Sections 37-39.

75     Article IX, Section 35.

76     Article III, Section 1.

77     Article III, Section 1.

78     Article III, Section 2.

79     Article VI, Section 1.

80     Article VI, Section 2.

81     Article VI, Section 2.

82     Article VI, Section 2.

83     Article VI, Section 3.

84     Article VI, Section 3.

85     Article VI, Section 4.

86     Article VI, Section 5.

87     Article VI, Section 4.

88     Article VI, Section 30.

89     Article VI, Section 6.

90     Article VI, Section 8.

91     Article VI, Section 9.

92     Article VI, Section 8.

93     Article VI, Section 10.

94     Article VI, Section 11.

95     Article VI, Section 11.

96     Article VI, Section 12.

97     Article VI, Section 13.

98     Article VI, Section 15.

99     Article VI, Section 19.

100   Article VI, Section 20.

101   See, e.g., Article VII, Section 21; Article IX.

102   See, e.g., Article VII.

103   See, e.g., Article II.

104   Amendments IX-X.

105   See, e.g., United States Constitution, Amendments I-IX; Mich Const 1963, Article I.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Michael Warren

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

When one is tasked to write about “the constitution,” my guess is not many ponder a threshold question: “Which constitution?” With the anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution occurring on September 17 (dubbed “Constitution Day” – and also an anchor date for Patriot Week), one might naturally think the U.S. Constitution must be the topic. Not necessarily so. Because each state also has a constitution, each person lives under two constitutions. Few people understand the U.S. Constitution well, and only a minute number understand their state constitution. As a former debater, I appreciate that one should understand both sides of an issue to become deeply informed. Likewise, to best understand our constitutions, the best course may be to compare and contrast them. Accordingly, this article will review the basic contours of the constitutions of the State of Michigan and the United States to discern their commonalities and yawning differences. By necessity of space and time, this article will only address a few high-level topics such as age, origins, amendment process and the branches of government, and will not delve into the wonderful commentary that this comparison might yield.

Age

The U.S. Constitution was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1789. The current Michigan Constitution was drafted in 1961 and adopted in 1963.

Predecessors

The U.S. Constitution was preceded by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which was drafted by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 and effective in 1781. The current Michigan Constitution was preceded by the Michigan Constitution of 1835, the Michigan Constitution of 1850, and the Michigan Constitution of 1908.

Drafting Process

The U.S. Constitution was drafted pursuant to a constitutional convention held in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. Each state appointed its own delegates. Although there were 55 delegates, each state’s delegation counted as only one vote. The majority of each state’s delegation would determine the vote of the state (i.e., if a delegation of three members split 2-1 in favor of a measure, that state’s single vote would be cast in favor of the measure). George Washington presided over the federal convention.

The current Michigan Constitution was also drafted pursuant to a constitutional convention held in Lansing from October 1961 to August 1962. The Michigan delegates were elected in a primary election held in July 1961. A delegate was chosen from each of the then-existing 110 state House of Representative districts and 34 state Senate districts. Each delegate voted at the Michigan convention on the principle of one man, one vote. Former American Motors Company president and future governor George Romney was the chairman of the Michigan convention.

Length

The U.S. Constitution is 4,543 words. The Michigan Constitution dwarfs the United States document with at least 31,000 words.

Ratification

The U.S. Constitution required nine of the 13 original states to ratify the document before it became effective. Each state held a ratification convention to debate the merits, and each had a separate process for selecting the delegates to the convention. Although no state rejected the Constitution, this was not a forgone conclusion and a vigorous debate ensued in several states, most especially in Massachusetts, New York and Virginia. Those supporting ratification were dubbed the “Federalists,” and those opposed, the “Anti-Federalists.” Both sides wrote voluminously in the papers and pamphlets of the day. The Federalist Papers (written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) were a series of brilliant newspaper articles advocating ratification. New Hampshire sealed the deal when it ratified the U.S. Constitution on June 21, 1788. The United States Constitution went into effect in March 1789. Rhode Island delayed its ratification until May 1790.

Adoption of the Michigan Constitution was even a closer call. After a robust campaign, the Michigan Constitution was submitted to a vote of the people of Michigan on April Fool’s Day (April 1) 1963, and adopted by the very slim margin of 810,860 to 803,436. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, at the time of the election, the proposed draft constitution was accompanied at the ballot box with an address to the people that provided commentary about the purpose behind particular provisions of the proposed constitution. In addition, the constitutional convention produced a widely distributed 109-page booklet, “What the Proposed New State Constitution Means to You: A Report to the People of Michigan by Their Elected Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1961-62” for consideration by the voters.

Amendments

To amend the U.S. Constitution, two-thirds of both houses of Congress must submit a proposal to the states, and three-quarters of the states must approve the same.1 Approximately 12,000 amendments have been proposed in Congress, and only 33 have gone to the states for consideration.2 The U.S. Constitution has been amended 27 times. Such amendments include the Bill of Rights,3 the prohibition of slavery,4 establishing equal protection and due process for all people,5 voting rights for African-Americans and women,6 authorizing an income tax,7 altering United States Senate elections,8 and presidential elections and succession procedures.9

To amend the Michigan Constitution, citizens can propose an amendment via a ballot initiative when at least 10 percent of the total votes cast for all candidates for governor at the last preceding election sign a petition.10 The Legislature can also propose an amendment if two-thirds of both houses vote to do so.11 In either case, an amendment is approved by a majority vote of the people in a statewide election.12 There have been 31 proposed amendments via ballot initiatives, and 43 via legislative resolutions.13 Of those, 32 amendments have been approved and 42 rejected.14 Approved amendments include establishing the Judicial Tenure Commission,15 the creation of the State Officers Compensation Commission,16 addressing the filling of judicial vacancies,17 prohibiting public funds to aid nonpublic schools and students,18 and authorizing lotteries.19 Rejected amendments included attempts to lower the voting age to 18 (twice),20 permitting a graduated income tax,21 and permitting election of members of the Legislature to another state office during their term of office.22

Convention

A new U.S. constitutional convention can be called “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States,” and a new constitution may be adopted when three-quarters of the states approve the new constitution (either by constitutional conventions or by the state legislatures, as determined by Congress).23 No successful movement to call for a convention has yet occurred, although a movement dubbed the Convention of the States has obtained applications from 12 states (both houses), with partial success in 10 others (one house), calling for a convention that would “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials.”24

The question of whether Michigan should hold a new constitutional convention is placed on the ballot every 16 years (beginning in 1978).25 If a majority of voters concur, a constitutional convention will be held subject to certain parameters set forth in the current Constitution.26 This process has yet to yield a call for a new convention since the enactment of the 1963 Constitution.

Separation of Powers

Each constitution provides for three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial.27 Article III, Section 2 of the Michigan Constitution specifically provides, “The powers of government are divided into three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. No person exercising powers of one branch shall exercise powers properly belonging to another branch except as expressly provided in this constitution.” The U.S. Constitution has no such express provision. However, Article 1, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any member of Congress from being appointed to “any civil Office created under the Authority of the United States … .”

Legislative Branch

Each constitution provides for a House of Representatives and a Senate.28 Under each, members of the House of Representatives are elected for two-year terms.29 United States senators serve six-year terms and one-third of the Senate is elected during each election cycle (i.e., every two years).30 Michigan senators serve four-year terms and all are elected at once during the same year as the election for the governor.31 Michigan legislators can serve a lifetime maximum of three terms (six years total) in the House of Representatives and two terms (eight years total) in the Senate.32 No term limits exist in the U.S. Constitution.

To be a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the representative must be at least 25 years old, a citizen of the United States for at least seven years, and an inhabitant of the state in which he is elected.33 The U.S. Constitution does not provide a set number of representatives, only that there must be at least 30,000 citizens represented by each representative.34 The total number of U.S. representatives is determined by Congress, based proportionally on population – subject to the caveat that each state must have at least one representative.35 United States senators must be at least 30 years old, a citizen for nine years, and a resident of the state he or she represents. United States senators are elected on a statewide basis, with each state having two senators.36

In Michigan, “Each senator and representative must be a citizen of the United States, at least 21 years of age, and an elector of the district he represents.”37 Michigan Senate and House districts are both determined by population.38 In addition, in Michigan “No person who has been convicted of subversion or who has within the preceding 20 years been convicted of a felony involving a breach of public trust shall be eligible for either house of the legislature.”39 The U.S. Constitution has no such bar. The legislative process is hemmed in by title, object and other legislative requirements and prohibitions.40

Hon. Michael Warren has served on the Oakland County Circuit Court since 2002, and teaches constitutional law at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. He is a former member of the state board of education, co-creator of Patriot Week (www.PatriotWeek.org), and author of America’s Survival Guide: How to Stop America’s Impending Suicide by Reclaiming Our First Principles and History.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Footnotes

1       Article V.

2       Drew Desilver, “Proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution seldom go anywhere,” Pew Research Center (April 12, 2018).

3       Amendments I-X.

4       Amendment XIII.

5       Amendment XIV.

6       Amendments XV and XIX.

7       Amendment XVI.

8       Amendment XVII.

9       Amendments XII, XX, XXII, XXV.

10     Article XII, Section 2.

11     Article XII, Section 1.

12     Article XII, Section 1-2.

13     State of Michigan, Bureau of Elections, Initiatives and Referendums Under the Constitution of the State of Michigan of 1963.

14     Id.

15     Article 6, Section 30.

16     Article 4, Section 12.

17     Article VI, Sections 20, 22-24.

18     Article VIII, Section 2.

19     Article IV, Section 41.

20     Senate Joint Resolution “A,” P.A. 1966, p. 678; House Joint Resolution “A,” P.A. 1970, p. 690.

21     Senate Joint Resolution “G,” P.A. 1967, p. 672.

22     Senate Joint Resolution “Q,” P.A. 1968, p. 708.

23     Article V.

24     Convention of the States, https://conventionofstates.com#whyCallCos.

25     Article XII, Section 3.

26     Article XII, Section 3.

27     United States Constitution, Articles I-III; Mich Const 1963, Articles IV-VI.

28     United States Constitution, Article I, Sections 1-3; Mich Const 1963, Article IV, Sections 1-3.

29     United States Constitution, Article I, Section 2; Mich Const 1963, Article IV, Section 3.

30     Article I, Section 3.

31     Article IV, Section 2.

32     Article VI, Section 54.

33     Article I, Section 2.

34     Id.

35     Id.

36     Article I, Section 3.

37     Article IV, Section 7.

38     Article IV, Sections 2-3.

39     Article VI, Section 7.

40     Article IV, Sections 24-26.

Guest Essayist: Brad Bergford

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Native American peoples lived in the area of present-day Montana for an unknown period of time before the arrival of the first Europeans in the 18th century. Most of present-day Montana was included in the Louisiana Purchase, which President Jefferson completed in 1803. The next year, President Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Soon after, Catholic missionaries entered Montana. Beaver trappers followed shortly thereafter. Through the first twenty years of the 19th Century, the Salish people learned about Christianity because of their contact with the Iroquois people and with Jesuit priests. In the 1830s, the Salish people began sending emissaries to Jesuits in St. Louis, Missouri to request that a “blackrobe” (Jesuit priest) be sent to them in present-day Montana.  The blackrobes were finally able to send a priest to minister to the Salish people in 1841.

Between 1848 and 1864, parts of present-day Montana were included in several U.S. territories, including the Oregon, Washington, Dakota, and the Idaho Territories. Montana was the site of the battle between the Sioux people and the U.S. Army, which we often refer to as “Custer’s Last Stand,” and it carries a lively history typical of the Old West.

Like many western states, the discovery of gold had a lot to do with Montana’s early days and its admission to the Union as a state.  Congress designated Montana a territory after gold was discovered in 1862 by a fur trapper who, it is rumored, attempted to keep his discovery a secret to preserve the area for fur trapping. Two decades later, railroads made their way across Montana, and, if it wasn’t already, the state fully entered the throes of western expansion. Nicknamed the “Treasure State,” Montana became the 41st state in 1889. The state motto, “Oro y Plata,” translates “Gold and Silver.”

Montana’s Constitution was re-written in 1972 and contains a Declaration of Rights which reads much like the federal Bill of Rights.  It contains protections for religion, speech, and the press, as well as prohibitions on ex post facto laws and on unreasonable searches and seizures, to name a few. The freedom of religion provision, for instance, closely follows the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses: “The state shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

In 1916, Montana suffragist, Jeanette Rankin, became the first female member of U.S. Congress. During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal brought new projects and agencies to Montana and ushered in Montana’s first reliance on federal spending—a reliance that continues to this day.  In its early days, natural resources were the state’s primary economic boon.

Montana, known to many as the “Big Sky” state, is the fourth-largest U.S. state by area and boasts many scenic areas. Flathead Lake is the largest freshwater lake between the Pacific Ocean and the Mississippi River. The Rocky Mountains run right through the state, although the average elevation of Montana is only 3,400 feet. Nearly 500 bison live in National Bison Range, which was established for their preservation. Montana’s seven Indian reservations host eleven tribal nations. Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park is the first National Park in the United States.

Recently, agriculture and tourism have risen to prominence in Montana’s economy. In June 2019, a Montana court case brought new attention to the state when the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to a religious liberty case called Espinoza v. Montana.  There, the state of Montana is being sued for refusing, based on its Blaine Amendment, to allow religious schools to participate in a scholarship program. (Blaine Amendments prohibit the expenditure of public funds directly to educational institutions with religious affiliations.) The case is highly anticipated in light of Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, which ruled on narrow grounds that religious groups cannot be barred from participation in widely available public programs simply because they are religious. Espinoza v. Montana will test whether Blaine Amendments will survive and, if so, in what form.

Montana has a rich heritage that began long before it became a state. From Native American cultures to the gold rush to its mountainous beauty and expansive plains, it has been a land filled with excitement and wonder. Today’s Montana carries the echoes of the past in its vibrant western roots, and it offers anticipation of a dynamic future as new industries establish leading roles for the future.

Brad Bergford earned his BA in Political Science and Pre-Law at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He earned his juris doctorate from the University of Denver, where he was active in several student bar associations, including the Student Trial Lawyers Association, the Federalist Society, and Christian Legal Society, which he served as President. After law school, Brad clerked for the Honorable Philip McNulty where he authored court opinions in a number of cases on subjects ranging from family law to constitutional law. Brad is Chief Executive Officer of Colorado Family Action/CFA Foundation, and he has his own civil litigation practice, which focuses on constitutional issues. Brad is an Alliance Defending Freedom Blackstone Fellow and Allied Attorney, and he serves as President of National Lawyers Association’s Colorado chapter.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Greg Davidson

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

State capitol buildings in the United States embody the constitutional commitments found within the text of each state constitution, buildings that some have called the very temples of democracy.  Each state capitol building in the United States presents the basic, fundamental attentiveness of the state government to the people it serves.  Some of the capitols are small, domed buildings with expansive wings, while others are tall, executive-style towers reaching upward toward the heavens.  Some are cloistered in urban areas.  Most are set in rural settings.  Some harken back to classical Rome, while others celebrate the preeminence of modern man.  One thing they all have in common: each embodies the values of their respective constitutions while continuously serving as the seats of governance for the states and their citizens.

In general, the shape and design of state capitol buildings can be understood in three common categories: the statehouse, the domed capitol, and the executive tower.  The statehouse form generally has a flat or slightly pitched roof with some type of spire or lantern capping off the building.  Some statehouses are built with flat fronts and square windows in a federal style while others incorporated columns and wide porticos.  Many early American capitols have slightly pitched or flat roofs and small areas for assembly and the conduct of business.  The first capitol was a flat, adobe structure in Santa Fe, while later colonial capitol buildings in the northeast generally had pitched roofs to allow snow and precipitation to roll off.

The domed capitol emerged during the post-war period of the nineteenth century and reflected a classical or neo-classical philosophical adherence to design.  The domes in some cases were supported by massive Greco-Roman columns with colonnades raising the whole structure sometimes hundreds of feet into the sky.  The whole design, of course, was capped with some emblem or symbol taken from state mythology, something like Nebraska’s sower, Oregon’s Pioneer Man, or Texas’ Goddess of Liberty.  Finally, the tower form of state capitols was introduced in the twentieth century.  The tower portrays a slender and sometimes sterile devotion to the bureaucratic state, a place where workers are stacked one on top of another in the name of efficiency and equality, a not-so-subtle nod to the Soviet influence of mid-century American labor movements.

Why are statehouses and capitols important to the modern American state?  The style and form of the building also embodies the basic values and faithfulness of the political culture that gave it birth.  State capitols built in the nineteenth century possess a dedication to Greco-Roman architecture and philosophy, a neo-classical look back to the ideals of a republic.  Capitols built in the twentieth century reveal a focus on the achievement of the modern man through art deco murals, frescos and friezes that celebrate humanity, ingenuity, and conquest over nature and the land.

Regardless of the style or form, each capitol building or statehouse reflects the shapes and contours of the constitution that gave it life.  When most capitols were built to house the entirety of a state government, and as a state grew in population, its state capitol grew along with it.  Some older and smaller capitols were replaced by newer, more modern buildings.  Many were replaced after fire ravaged the original structures.  Prior to the expansion of the welfare state, state capitols usually housed all of the basic fundamentals of government: legislative, executive and judicial branches.  This basic separation of powers was displayed in the spatial organization of the building; the legislature occupied the most prominent part of most state capitols, taking two wings to house the bicameral bodies that balance representative powers, while the executive and courts were housed in other places around the building.

In most capitol buildings, the legislative chambers occupy the largest space and reach the heights of two to three floors.  These grandiose chambers reflect the priority and resolve to representative government contained in most state constitutional documents.  Most legislative chambers were built prior to Reynolds v. Sims in 1964, a United States Supreme Court decision that dismissed the differences between the two chambers and essentially made no difference between state senators and state representatives except for the size of the population each represented.  The house of representatives is generally the larger of the two chambers to accommodate the larger number of state representatives.  The senate chamber is generally smaller and houses a more elite body, considered the upper chamber.  Gallery space is almost always provided for citizens to observe the debate and interactions of the legislative bodies.

The governor and the executive agencies were generally provided smaller spaces on the ground floors to provide direct services to the people.  Placing state agencies that provided direct services to the people such as the treasury or comptroller or the attorney general on the first floor gave citizens the most direct access to the offices they needed to visit to conduct state business.  Finally, the judiciary was fit in where space allowed.  In some state capitols the courts were placed on the upper floors out of the main pathways of power while in other capitols the courts were either in the basement or moved out of the capitol altogether, yet again portraying the basic founding principles of their state constitutions.

There are, of course, many outliers to this general description.  The unicameral legislature in Nebraska is a departure from the bicameral model of most states, and so the Nebraska capitol reflects that difference in the size and shape of its legislative chamber.  And growth throughout the life of each state capitol has dictated changes, modifications and expansions to the basic shape of each capitol.  The oldest state capitol building, in Massachusetts, has grown and expanded as the needs of the state grew and expanded.  Some states have retained the old capitol building as a museum, and built modern chambers and offices.  Some states have resisted the urge to expand at all and still live within the walls of their original building.  Others have built auxiliary chambers or even vast underground complexes to keep from obscuring the grand view of these wonderful monuments to American government.

Finally, while the basic shape and form of state capitols reveals the basic shape of the government, many of the buildings embody the shared values and experiences of the people who gave their government birth.  The Idaho capitol was built to be heated by streaming geothermal springs while the rotunda of the capitol in Honolulu resembles the shape of a volcano.  The Oklahoma capitol sits among oil well derricks that fueled the state’s growth while the Missouri capitol sits on the banks of the mighty Missouri River.  Many capitol buildings, especially domed capitols, represent the basic religious commitments of the people who formed the government.  The domed capitol is loosely patterned after the beautifully domed St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.  The cruciform shape with a transept bisecting the nave is more than a tip of the cap to Christianity, it is a solid affirmation that the separation of church and state is much more complicated than it is portrayed in modern thought.  Each state capitol building links the identity of the people and their values with the powers they have placed in the hands of their state governments.

Greg Davidson is the Executive Clerk to the Governor and director of the Constituent Communication Division of the Office of the Governor in Texas.  Over the past 30 years, Greg has worked for Texas Governors Clements, Bush, Perry, and Abbott.  Greg holds a Master of Arts in government and a BBA in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin.  He also holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and currently serves as the Stated Clerk for the South Texas Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America.  Greg was elected to serve as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College and has been involved in presidential, gubernatorial, congressional, state, and local campaigns since 1976.  He resides in Austin, Texas with his wife Donna Garcia Davidson who is an attorney in private practice concentrating in the area of campaign finance and election law.  They have one daughter, a senior at Regents School of Austin, who intends to go to college, study engineering or law, and play competitive golf. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Greg Davidson

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

American state capital cities are an organic part of the American landscape.  Capital cities sprung up along the natural waterways and pathways of American travel and commerce.  Some grew next to the mighty rivers and others at the junction of major trade routes.  Some are in the foothills while others are on the plains, some on the coastal bays and others far inland.  Some emerged from the bareness of the great plains while others emerged from the small neighborhoods, burgs and towns that dotted the landscape.  Some are located in major urban centers while others snuggle into smaller, rural communities.  The fifty American state capital cities provide a unique study in the diversity and richness of the American experience.

The oldest American capital cities grew on opposite sides of the continent.  Santa Fe was founded in 1610 as the first colonial American capital city followed by Boston in 1630.  Santa Fe was designated as capital of the new Spanish colony of Santa Fe de Nuevo México and was situated in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Thirty years later the British Massachusetts Bay Colony established its capital on what was then known as Trimountaine, or Three Mountains, later to be renamed Boston after Lincolnshire, England previous home of some of the prominent colonists.

The newest state capital cities are also the largest in size.  The Alaskan capital of Juneau dates back to 1881 and covers a total area of over 4,800 square miles, almost half of which is water.  Oklahoma City grew out of the land rush of 1889 and now covers just over 600 square miles.  Phoenix is a not too far distant third in size covering 516 square miles, but Phoenix ranks first in population with over 2 million people.  The smallest state capital cities tend to be older and back east.  The smallest state capital in population is Montpelier with around 8,000 people and the smallest capital city by geographic size is Hartford with just over 17 square miles.

Some capital cities grew at the junction of major trade routes.  Nashville was planted as a port on the shores of the Cumberland River, a major tributary of the Ohio River, and it later became a railway hub linking together southern and northern commerce.  Kansas City was founded as a port on the Missouri River at the confluence with the Kansas River and then grew into a major launching point for westward expansion as the trailhead of the Santa Fe, Oregon and California Trails.

Many state capitals have moved from several cities before arriving at their present location.  Chillicothe was the first capital city of Ohio before it was moved Zanesville in an attempt to establish more development in the eastern part of the state along Zane’s Trace.  But political powers pulled the capital back to Chillicothe for two years before finally landing in Columbus.  The capital of Texas has moved several times.  During the Texas War for Independence, the revolutionary government established capitals at Washington-on-the-Brazos, Harrisburg, Galveston, Velasco, and Columbia before General Sam Houston finally moved it to Houston.  As an independent nation, President Mirabeau B. Lamar envisioned a Texas growing west and moved the capital to a more central location in the small town of Waterloo, later to become Austin.  Houston was elected President and feared the new location was too remote and too difficult to defend from Mexican and native American threats, so he moved the capital first back to Houston and then to Washington-on-the-Brazos.  In an incident known as the Texas Archive War, President Houston sent troops to seize the General Land Office records in Austin and take them to the city of Houston.  A band of Austin citizens engaged the troops on the outskirts of town, preventing the records from being removed and taken to Houston and Austin was thereby firmly established as the capital of Texas.

While many state capital cities grew up organically from the geology and geography of the land, some were planned from the beginning.  Upon his arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, pioneer and president of the Mormon Church, Brigham Young, envisioned a master-planned city built around a new Salt Lake Temple.  Every inch of the city was measured from Temple Square as the meridian of reference for street addresses forming a grid of the streets that were sufficiently wide enough so a wagon team could turn around without “resorting to profanity.”  The capital of Indiana was also a planned community, springing out from Monument Circle in a grid crisscrossed by diagonals reminiscent of the national capital.

Finally, it is important to note that many state capital cities predate the ratification of the national constitution and the subsequent construction of the national capital of Washington, D.C.  While Frenchman Pierre Charles L’Enfant looked to the great cities of the world for his design, especially his hometown of Paris, his design for the tidelands and the marshy swamps of the Potomac worked in the basic constitutional commitments to a federal form of government.  His design provided the national government with a shape and design while incorporating specific centers, streets and areas devoted to the particular states.  So, even the shape and design of the District of Columbia anticipates a truly federal form of government for the United States, one in which the balance of power resides in both spheres of American government, state and national.  The designations of special spaces in the District of Columbia and even the street names and places anticipate a truly diverse political state, one where the balance of power between state and nation is shared, in stark contrast to the modern notion of centralized governmental control emanating only from within the Beltway.

Regardless of size, shape, design or location, state capital cities bear one common trait: they form the context in which their individual state capitol buildings sit.  At times small and cloistered, at times big and wide open, the community of the capital city forms the foundation on which each state capitol is built.

Greg Davidson is the Executive Clerk to the Governor and director of the Constituent Communication Division of the Office of the Governor in Texas.  Over the past 30 years, Greg has worked for Texas Governors Clements, Bush, Perry, and Abbott.  Greg holds a Master of Arts in government and a BBA in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin.  He also holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and currently serves as the Stated Clerk for the South Texas Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America.  Greg was elected to serve as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College and has been involved in presidential, gubernatorial, congressional, state, and local campaigns since 1976.  He resides in Austin, Texas with his wife Donna Garcia Davidson who is an attorney in private practice concentrating in the area of campaign finance and election law.  They have one daughter, a senior at Regents School of Austin, who intends to go to college, study engineering or law, and play competitive golf. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Mary Salamon

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

State government is designed almost exactly like the Federal government. In every state except Nebraska, state governments govern with a two-chamber legislature. The smaller, upper chamber, is called the State Senate and the larger, lower chamber, is called the House of Representatives, Assembly or House of Delegates.

There are three branches of government in every state: legislative, executive, and judicial. The balance of powers spread among three branches ensures a just and fair system. Most states have a governor, lieutenant governor, senators and representatives, most of whom serve in what is called a State Legislature. Other names used are General Assembly, General Court, or Legislative Assembly.

The Nebraska legislature only has only one chamber called unicameral because it consists of only one house. Although generally referred to as the “Legislature” or the “Unicameral,” the senate is the legislative body that was retained following the 1937 reorganization. Consequently, members of the Nebraska legislature are only referred to as “senators.”

At the state level, representatives are elected according to districts and population determines how many representatives are elected. In general, each district receives two state representatives and one state senator. For example, Washington State has 49 senators, one for every district, and 98 representatives, two for every district. Term length for the Washington State senate is four years, and two years for representatives. In Washington State, like the Vice President of the United States, the Lieutenant Governor serves as President of the Senate, only casting a vote in case of a tie.

Largely populated states have legislatures that function similar to Congress regarding legislative sessions. Some states have full-time legislatures, others part-time affecting length of months spent in session. State legislators vote on hundreds of bills a year while they are in session and decide tax laws, state spending, and other public policies to represent the people in each of their specific districts.

Each State House of Representatives elects a Speaker of the House at the beginning of their respective legislative sessions. According to Ballotpedia.org,

The speaker is the principal leader of the lower legislative chamber. Though specific duties of the position vary in state legislatures across the country, the speaker may assume any or all of the following duties:

  • Presides over the chamber to ensure that members abide by the rules and procedures
  • Acts as a leader of the majority party
  • Serves the constituency of their district
  • Administers oaths of office
  • Communicates with state executives and Senate leadership
  • Rules on procedural questions
  • Appoints committee chairs and/or members
  • Signs legislation and official documents

Depending on the state, the speaker of the House may vote on all questions before the chamber or may only cast tie-breaking votes. In some states, the speaker may vote on all questions, but is only required to vote in the event of a tie.

State legislators are voted into office by the people of their respective states, and for the people of those states. They are elected to represent the needs and concerns of the people who gave them their votes. Understanding what  constituents need is a complex task, so communication with constituents is a vital key to doing the best job possible while legislators serve in office.

Mary Salamon is the author of Government and Its People: How the Church Can Participate in Government. She resides in the Pacific Northwest and was the publisher of Marysville Tulalip Life Magazine. She served as the Washington State Leader for the Governors Prayer Team and is the mother of three sons and five beautiful grandchildren. She is available for speaking engagements at local civic events, churches and conferences.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

References:

Nebraska State Legislature: https://nebraskalegislature.gov/about/ou_facts.php

Ballotpedia, House Speaker: https://ballotpedia.org/State_Speaker_of_the_House

Ballotpedia, Washington State: https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_State_Legislature

 

Guest Essayist: Jeffrey Hollingsworth

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The Maine Event: The Crisis and Its Outcome

The young United States was expanding, and by 1819 had grown to 21 states from the original 13 with more territories lining up to get in thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. But this raised serious political problems. The thorny slavery issue darkened much of American political discourse and policy in the early post-independence years. A precarious balance of power in Congress between slave-holding and free states prevailed until December 1819, when pro-slavery Alabama was admitted to the Union as the 22nd state.

Missouri, carved from the Louisiana Purchase, came knocking next seeking statehood but its application ignited an enormous constitutional crisis which quickly involved Maine. In November 1818, the Missouri territorial legislature passed legislation requesting statehood and transmitted it to the U.S. Congress in December. What should have been a no-brainer for admission became bogged down in controversy over the precarious balance between slave and free states. Missouri intended to permit slavery, which prompted free-state legislators to attach “killer” amendments to the Missouri statehood bill that stalled it. Chaos and uproar ensued in Washington.

Along came Maine, where separation sentiment was growing. Many previous efforts to permit Maine to break away died in the Massachusetts General Court (legislature). But the times were catching up. Seeking to eliminate its Revolutionary War debt to the U.S. government, Massachusetts found easy money by selling off vast swaths of public land in Maine and by granting generous acreages to war veterans. Thousands of pioneer families left the crowded Bay State and trekked to the Maine wilderness seeking elbow room and new opportunities. In less than 30 years, the population more than tripled, from 91,000 in 1791 to 300,000 by 1820.

As Maine grew, so did discontent with its political and economic dependence on Massachusetts. Prosperous coastal merchants, eager to govern themselves, were the first to complain. But with continued population growth outside the old coastal towns, frustration spread to fishermen and inland farmers and woodsmen, who had little in common with the governing gentry. By 1800, they were spearheading the quest for statehood, citing a long list of economic and political grievances. The War of 1812 was the final nail in the coffin, even for the merchant class.

At last, in the summer of 1819, Mainers voted so overwhelmingly–nearly ¾ of the electorate– for statehood that Massachusetts could no longer turn a blind eye. The legislature reluctantly adopted a statehood bill for Maine in late 1819, but with one proviso: if statehood was not approved by Congress and signed by the President by March 4, 1820, Maine would remain tethered to Massachusetts.

The Maine statehood bill came up in Congress in December of 1819, mere weeks after Missouri’s bid. Maine’s application offered the possibility of a compromise. To maintain the free-state/slave-state balance, Congressional leaders pushed the two requests for statehood as a package — one new slave and one new free state. Maine suddenly found itself in the midst of a firestorm of controversy.

Abolitionists all over the Union erupted. They were firmly opposed to the admission of any new slave states. Pro-slavery interests were equally as upset. Many Mainers, most of them ardent abolitionists, were torn. To prevent the spread of slavery, they found themselves calling for the defeat of the very bill that would have granted them long-sought statehood. The most distinguished Maine native in the country was Rufus King. Born and raised in Scarborough, scion of a wealthy family, he had a noteworthy political career. A Signer of the U.S. Constitution, he was twice the Federalist Party candidate for President and was a U.S. Senator from New York at the time of the Maine-Missouri imbroglio. With a heavy heart, he opposed the Maine statehood measure because, as he correctly foresaw, the “compromise” didn’t settle the slavery issue, but merely postponed a final day of reckoning. Meanwhile, his half-brother, William King, principal author of Maine’s constitution, was elected Maine’s first Governor.

At the last minute, the bill for Maine statehood passed Congress; on March 3, 1820, and signed into law, taking effect on March 15. Maine became our 23rd state. Missouri joined the Union as a slave state in 1821. The so-called Missouri Compromise had severely tested several key articles and amendments in the U.S. Constitution during tense, angry debates. In a long letter on April 22, 1820, to his friend and political associate John Holmes, who became one of Maine’s first two U.S. Senators, the aging Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“… this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.”

Like the venerable Rufus King, Jefferson perceived that the Missouri Compromise represented “a reprieve only, not a final sentence.”  That “final sentence” would come through all-out war 40 years later.

Maine’s Constitution

The Maine Constitution is the fourth-oldest operating state constitution in the country. The 210 delegates to the statehood convention in October 1819 unanimously adopted the proposed state constitution, which is modeled closely on the U.S. Constitution. Notable contents:

  • Article I contains 24 sections, the longest of which (Section 3) painstakingly spells out provisions regarding religious liberty.
  • Thomas Jefferson authored Sections 1 and 2 of Article VIII addressing education.
  • Article I, Section 6-A is one of the earliest official codifications in the U.S. of non-discrimination against all persons without exception.
  • Article I, Section 16 is among the most explicit defenses of the right to keep and bear arms ever written: “Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms and this right shall never be questioned.”
  • Article II, Section 1 specifically grants Native Americans “residing on tribal reservations and otherwise qualified” the right to vote in all elections.

In 2015, controversy erupted when a Maliseet Tribe delegate to the Maine Legislature sought to overturn a 19th Century ban on printing the text of Article X, Section 5, which defines the state’s obligations to Native American tribes via carryover provisions from Massachusetts.

The Constitution of Maine is updated as necessary by the Revisor of Statutes upon ratification of amendments by the voters of the state. The Constitution of Maine is subject to recodification every 10 years by its own terms (Article X, Section 6). The last recodification was in 2013.

Additional Maine History

  • Printed flat maps show Maine as extremely high north. In truth, seven U.S. states extend farther north in whole or part than Maine. True globes confirm that Maine is much more easterly than northerly. Portland is the closest key seaport to Europe by a factor of hundreds of miles, as is Bangor International Airport (a former B-52 bomber base) for air traffic. The easternmost point in the U.S. is, oddly enough, West Quoddy Head in Lubec, Maine.
  • The legendary political axiom “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” stems from the fact that Maine once held its general elections in September rather than November, on the sensible reasoning that snow could be flying by then. In September 1840, Maine elected a Whig Party governor. That November, Whig candidate William Henry Harrison was elected President. That launched the saying of Maine as a political bellwether, which held true roughly 70% of the time up through the late 1920s. Maine amended its constitution in 1957 to conform to the rest of the country and held elections in November effective in 1960.
  • The baseball term signifying the batting order–“At bat, on deck, and in the hole”—originated in Belfast, Maine, in 1872. It was confirmed personally by Paul Dickson, author of the authoritative, widely cited Dickson Baseball Dictionary, based on his original research in Belfast in 1987. A 1938 Sporting News feature published recollections of an aged member of the Belfast Pastimes, who played a traveling Boston pro team on August 7, 1872, in Belfast. Team scorekeepers back then would shout the batting order each inning. Boston’s man simply bellowed the names. But the Belfast man announced “Smith at bat, Jones on deck (or ‘on the deck’), and Doe in the hold,” reflecting Belfast’s maritime roots, the hold being the below-deck storage area on a commercial vessel. The Bostonians took a fancy to the designation and popularized it. Over time, “hold” slurred into “hole.”

The original score sheet from that game is on display at the Belfast Historical Society Museum.

  • Why is Maine often referred to as “Down East?” It’s a nautical term. In warm weather, prevailing winds in New England and Maritime Canada come out of the southwest, meaning ships headed there sailed downwind. Conversely, when en route to Boston, New York, or other lower locales, sailors dealt with upwinds. To this day, many Mainers speak of going “up to Boston.” The area known as Down East is most commonly the territory east of the Penobscot River and sometimes includes Canada’s Maritime provinces.
  • In mid-coast Maine, the town of Searsport, never home to more than 2,500 residents, once boasted 17 shipyards and in the 1870s was home to fully one-tenth of all American merchant sea captains.
  • The first international telephone call took place July 1, 1881, between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, USA. For generations, Calais and St. Stephen have enjoyed close relations. One example stems from the War of 1812, when the British military supplied St. Stephen with a large supply of gunpowder for protection against the Yankee enemy in Calais. Instead, St. Stephen’s leaders donated much of it to Calais so it could enjoy a proper boom-and-bang Independence Day celebration.

Jeffrey Hollingsworth grew up in Belfast, Maine, and is a University of Maine alumnus. He is a past president of the Maine State Society of Washington, D.C., and principal founder of its charitable foundation. He is the author of Magnificent Mainers (Covered Bridge Press), a compendium of mini-biographies of 100 famous Maine natives. His articles have appeared in Honolulu and Down East magazines and in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Portland Press Herald, and other periodicals.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Vanesa Carrillo is a senior at Bel Air High School in El Paso, TX. She is also a part-time Community College student at El Paso Community College where she has earned over 30 college credit hours. Vanesa is the President of her Spanish Honor Society chapter and President/Co-Founder of her school’s first all-girls business empowerment club called JWIB. She has successfully completed a Congressional Internship with former Congressman Beto O’Rourke and is currently a Marketing Intern for the Nonprofit organization called Latinitas, where she manages all social media and outreach sites. Vanesa is also part of The College Board Youth Advisory Board, The Federal Reserves Dallas Bank Board of Directors and The El Paso Jr. Leadership Greater Chamber Organization. Vanesa has also taken time to conduct research with a doctorate professor in a 6-week summer camp at UT Arlington. Aside from school, Vanesa enjoys to write, sing as well as Volunteer for The Chamizal National Memorial Park. Vanesa plans on majoring in Marketing with a minor in Psychology at The University of Texas at El Paso.

Guest Essayist: Jeffrey Hollingsworth

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Barely 30 years after the contentious adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the experiment in self-government and democratic republicanism that enraptured de Tocqueville and other noted admirers of the new United States of America was at grave risk of collapse. Maine’s aspirations for statehood were at the heart of the hullabaloo. It was in a wrestling match with Missouri for admission to the Union. In fact, Members of Congress representing the District of Maine, as it was known—then belonging to Massachusetts—voted against legislation that would have admitted their home as a state even after longstanding agitation in Maine for statehood.

So why, when at long last statehood was within reach, did these officials and many of those they represented object to legislation that would unlock the door to statehood? Their reasons are at the heart of why we are “one nation, indivisible” and how small, remote Maine helped preserve the U. S. of A. at a grave hour in its early history.

Earliest Maine: How the Story Began

The first Mainers have been traced to approximately 3,000BC. They’re known as the “Red Paint People” due to their liberal use of red ochre in pottery and burial rituals. Native American tribes still extant in Maine are the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac and Maliseet.

Why Maine is called “Maine” (the only one-syllable state)  still isn’t clear. Some scholars say it was named after the French Province of Maine. Others suggest it’s from a maritime term for “the main” or mainland, to distinguish it from islands. Some sources claim Vikings visited Maine as early as 1000AD, but the first recorded European was Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. Others later included Capt. John Smith (yes, the John Smith) for England and Samuel de Champlain for France.

Champlain fostered an attempted permanent settlement in June 1604 on St. Croix Island off Robbinston, Maine, opposite Bayside, New Brunswick. The colony failed within a year, most settlers felled by “mal de la terre” (scurvy). It was home to the first known Christmas celebration in the New World. The island, though in U.S. waters, is an International Historic Site, the only one in North America, jointly administered by the U.S. and Canadian governments.

Instead of Jamestown, Virginia, the Popham Colony in present-day Phippsburg, Maine, could’ve been the first permanent English settlement in the U.S.A. Sir George Popham and Sir Raleigh Gilbert led 120 English settlers to landfall at the mouth of the Kennebec River in August 1607. Other English settlers had reached today’s Jamestown in mid-May 1607. The Popham colonists started off strongly. They built the first commercial ship ever constructed in the New World, the pinnace Virginia of Sagadahock. This milestone was commemorated by a 1957 U.S. stamp officially recognizing the origin of shipbuilding in the U.S.  Shipbuilding has been a mainstay (no pun intended) of Maine’s economy over the succeeding four-plus centuries.

But the Popham Colony was doomed. After experiencing winter, half the surviving cold, hungry settlers grew disillusioned and fled back to England. Gilbert later received news of his father’s passing and needed to address vital family matters. He left for England, never to return. Lacking leadership, the remaining colonists abandoned the settlement almost a year to the day after landing. Jamestown’s settlers hung on, though barely. Today, archeological excavations at both sites keep unlocking secrets about our country’s first English settlers.

Maine Grows

From Popham through the next 175 years, Maine ownership shifted from one royal grantee to another. The major promoter of Maine settlement was Sir Ferdinando Gorges, an English aristocrat later dubbed “The Father of English Colonization in North America,” though he never set foot in the New World. With Captain John Mason (a principal colonizer of New Hampshire), Gorges secured a patent from King James I in 1622 for vast territory in Maine. During  the next 50 years, disputes and squabbles over Gorges family holdings and competing land claims finally led Gorges’s grandson to sell all the property to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1677.

Maine grew slowly but steadily, yet not without incident. Devastating hostilities with Native Americans erupted periodically, and colonial conflicts took their toll. France considered all the land up to the Kennebec River, which bisects Maine, to belong to New France. Its farthest outpost was the present-day town of Castine, which see-sawed between French and British control for decades. In 1674, during a war between France and The Netherlands, Dutch naval forces captured Castine and environs, part of a grandiose venture to establish Nova Hollandia (“New Holland”). Maine suffered further privations during the French & Indian War (1754-63). Then came America’s War for Independence.

Mainers were distinguished soldiers, sailors and commanders in the Revolutionary War, and Maine was the scene of several battles. The most notorious was the infamous bombardment and burning of Falmouth—now Portland—on Oct. 18, 1775. The British Navy launched a far-flung campaign to punish seaports aiding the rebel forces, and Portland fell into the dragnet. The fierceness and merciless intensity of the assault was widely reported throughout all 13 colonies and helped inflame passions against Britain. It prompted the Second Continental Congress to pass legislation authorizing what John Adams wrote led to “the true origin of the American Navy.” Earlier, in the first naval battle of the Revolution, patriots in remote Machias swarmed and captured the British sloop HMS Margaretta in June 1775. The dead and wounded on both sides were carried to Burnham Tavern, where the plot to seize Margaretta was hatched. The tavern, a National Historic Site, still stands.

The worst American naval defeat until Pearl Harbor occurred near the mouth of the Penobscot River as vessels augmented by ground forces sought to oust the British from eastern Maine (“New Ireland,” as Britain had declared it). A 44-ship armada, reinforced by some 1,000 marines and a 100-man artillery contingent commanded by Lt. Col. Paul Revere, left Boston for Maine in late July 1779. The colonials were no match for the Royal Navy. Most American ships not blown out of the water either were scuttled or captured, then hauled upriver to Bangor and burned. The surviving colonials fled overland with few supplies or weaponry. The “Penobscot Expedition” is among the darkest episodes in U.S. military history.

Many Maine communities were occupied by British forces. It underscored the indifference and incapacity of Massachusetts toward defending the region. Maine took years to recover, and louder rumblings for statehood began. The crippling Embargo Act of 1807 made matters worse, since Maine’s economy relied heavily on seagoing commerce. Then, the War of 1812 put many Maine communities under British boot-heels yet again. Its easternmost city, Eastport, wouldn’t even be liberated until 1818, three years after the war ended. Two major (and other lesser) engagements occurred in Maine: the 1814 Battle of Hampden (near present-day Bangor), a humiliating U.S. defeat; and the electrifying clash between HMS Boxer and USS Enterprise on Sept. 5, 1813, just off Pemaquid Point near the mouth of the Kennebec River. The thunderous, furious, 30-minute slugfest, witnessed by scores of residents on shore and heard by many more, resulted in the capture of Boxer. It was a widely reported and celebrated boost for U.S. morale, memorialized by Portland native Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “My Lost Youth.” The remains of both ships’ slain commanders were ferried to Portland, then reverently buried side by side with full military honors.

The war convinced most Mainers that their area was a mere stepchild of Massachusetts and the state government was nonchalant about defending it. The earlier crippling attacks by the French and native tribes hadn’t been forgotten, either. Besides, travelling to distant Boston, the state capital, on official business was an arduous, time-consuming, risky and expensive venture. The push for statehood acquired new life.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Jeffrey Hollingsworth grew up in Belfast, Maine, and is a University of Maine alumnus. He is a past president of the Maine State Society of Washington, D.C., and principal founder of its charitable foundation. He is the author of Magnificent Mainers (Covered Bridge Press), a compendium of mini-biographies of 100 famous Maine natives. His articles have appeared in Honolulu and Down East magazines and in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Portland Press Herald, and other periodicals.

Guest Essayist: Brad Bergford

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The State of Oregon has a fascinating history from the early competing claims to the land by Spain and Great Britain to the “54° 40′ or Fight” slogan of the Democrat Party during the 1844 presidential campaign, whereby Democrats pledged to gain the territory one way or the other, to the naming of its largest city by a 2-3 coin toss. Lewis and Clark famously made their way to the Oregon coast in 1805 while searching for a northwest passage. In 1818, the U.S. and Great Britain agreed to jointly occupy the region, which included portions of present-day Idaho, California, Montana, British Columbia, and all of Washington state. In 1840, the U.S. gained the territory through the Oregon Treaty, and settlers began to arrive via the Oregon Trail. The state’s establishment as the 33rd state in 1859 realized many, but not all, of the founding principles of the United States. For example, European settlers forced many native peoples to relocate via a 1,500 mile march to Oklahoma.

From the beginning, Oregon placed a high value on social discourse, which may have helped it to (mostly) claw out of the deeply-entrenched racism that was a hallmark of its early history. In 1844, Oregon Country, as it was called until 1859, ordered all blacks to vacate under threat of beatings to include “not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes” every six months until the violator left.[1] In November of 1857, the year of the Oregon Constitutional Convention, voters approved Article XVII—a clause that prohibited blacks from immigrating to the state of Oregon.[2] And, when Oregon became a state, it specifically forbade black people to live in Oregon. In 1866, Oregon narrowly ratified the 14th Amendment but upon taking control of the legislature in 1868, Democrats promptly rescinded Oregon’s ratification of that Amendment. The move was symbolic at that point, but it provides a window to the state’s post-Reconstruction foundation.

Even amid its racism, as seen in section 31 of the Oregon state constitution’s Bill of Rights, freedom of religion was enshrined in Oregon’s constitution, and this may have been the state’s saving grace in more ways than one. The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, sections in Oregon’s State Bill of Rights protect the freedom of religion in various ways, and the seventh indirectly encourages the use of the religious beliefs of court witnesses to ensure honest testimony and, thereby, protect society. Notably, the second section provides that “[a]ll men shall be secure in the Natural right, to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences.” The Oregon Bill of Rights officially prohibited slavery, but it also contained three exclusion laws, which voters approved by wide margins and which operated to keep non-whites out of Oregon until those laws were repealed in the early 1900s.[3]  Oregon was the only “free” state admitted to the Union with exclusion laws in its constitution.

During the 20th century, Oregon was mostly a “red” state.  In fact, Republican presidential candidates carried Oregon in all but a few instances until 1984 when Oregon turned “blue” and has been so ever since. Today, Oregon is addressing many of the same issues with which other states grapple. The so-called “climate change” controversy has led to particularly coarse rancor between Oregon Democrats and Republicans, and it has provided the fodder for the vigorous debate of a cap-and-trade measure that failed in July 2019. The failed proposal was in the works for at least a decade and was premised on the controversial notions that 1) the earth is warming, 2) mankind is responsible, and 3) mankind can fix it. The cap-and-trade proposal would have placed new taxes in some instances and increased taxes in other instances on key industries that proponents believe contribute to anthropogenic global warming. The increased expenses would have caused job losses and increased consumer prices, among other effects, which would have adversely affected families across the state. On the other hand, proponents believe that the increased prices would lead to a reduction in global warming. Drug use and homelessness plague Oregon’s larger cities, and those who advocate for legalized drug use, which many believe leads to homelessness, are pitted against those who seek a safe and orderly society. That Oregon has no sales tax draws purchasers from neighboring states, and Oregon voters have capped property taxes which attracts people to live there.

The state motto is Alis Volat Propriis (She flies with her own wings). Indeed, Oregon has much going for her, not the least of which is a willingness to do things her own way. Oregon is a beautiful state complete with beaches, mountains, agriculture, industry, and recreational opportunities. Oregon’s largest industry is manufacturing, and primary among that industry are forest products, high technology, food processing, and metals.[4] Technology-related industries are expanding rapidly. Some notable historical figures have called Oregon “home” including suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway; explorer and navigator, Robert Gray; Nez Perce leader, Chief Joseph; writer, Raymond Carver; and famed chemist, Linus Pauling.

Brad Bergford earned his BA in Political Science and Pre-Law at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He earned his juris doctorate from the University of Denver, where he was active in several student bar associations, including the Student Trial Lawyers Association, the Federalist Society, and Christian Legal Society, which he served as President. After law school, Brad clerked for the Honorable Philip McNulty where he authored court opinions in a number of cases on subjects ranging from family law to constitutional law. Brad is Chief Executive Officer of Colorado Family Action/CFA Foundation, and he has his own civil litigation practice, which focuses on constitutional issues. Brad is an Alliance Defending Freedom Blackstone Fellow and Allied Attorney, and he serves as President of National Lawyers Association’s Colorado chapter.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Brown, J. Henry (1892). Brown’s Political History of Oregon: Provisional Government. Portland: Wiley B. Allen. LCCN rc01000356. OCLC 422191413. Pages 132–135.

[2] https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/exclusion_laws/#.XVsaeXdFzuh

[3] https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/exclusion_laws/#.XV3DUFB7nOQ

[4] http://www.theus50.com/oregon/information.php

Guest Essayist: Nicholas Jacobs

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Intergovernmental Competition: Are we in a “Race to the Bottom”?

Grants are just one way of transferring money and there are alternative financial arrangements that better meet the standards of joint-influence and joint-benefit, such as GRS. Rarely is it the case that the specific goals outlined by narrow grant programs perfectly meet the needs or desires of a state community. And, the costs of administering a grant seldom justify the federal government’s insistence that states participate. It is often overlooked that states could simply fund the government program themselves, without federal oversight or administrative duplication, if enough political will existed within the state community for that service.

Nevertheless, we should first recognize that the federal government might have certain advantages when it comes to taxing and spending, which helps to justify the need for any intergovernmental cooperation at all. The states do not exist independent of one another, and an important principle outlined in the last essay was that the taxing and spending decisions reached by one state government necessarily affect the fiscal capabilities of all the other states.

In the best case scenario, this has huge advantages for a diverse national community. People get to choose what their states look like, and they can exercise an important check on state governments that tax and spend the peoples’ money unjustly: they can leave!

States, therefore, compete with one another for residents, for business, and ultimately, for tax dollars. And those competitive pressures incentivize state and local governing officials to provide the best government for the lowest cost.

Yet, sometimes that competition has negative effects — what political economists might label a “negative externality.” When the savings created by one state’s actions impose costs on other political communities, competition produces inefficiencies. This is best illustrated by state variation in how much is spent on environmental regulation and clean-up. States that are literally “up-river” can exact exorbitant costs on other states through their inaction. Likewise, in trying to attract business to their state, one state might dismantle regulations placed on corporations; neighboring states might follow suit in order to keep business from leaving. State-level variation and competition might, in other words, work against certain national goals, creating a “race to the bottom” where states undercut one another to create advantages in the short-term, but impose long-term costs on the national political community.

Such is the rationale for the single largest intergovernmental program in the United States: Medicaid. The provisioning of Medicaid reflects a national goal (healthcare for the poor) and is structured so as to reduce the degree of competition between states in administering benefits. Almost a third of all state spending goes towards Medicaid payments, and that number is increasing; 20 percent of funding is raised solely by the states, up from just 9-percent in 1990. The federal government dictates minimum eligibility requirements, but each state is left free to fund the program to desired levels and set additional requirements on recipients and providers of Medicaid services. The 2010 Affordable Care Act — “Obamacare” — would have required states to enroll citizens who made up to 133% of the federal poverty line, but the Supreme Court struck down mandatory expansion, which reinforced the joint-nature of the program.[1] As of early 2019, only 36 states have expanded Medicaid as a result. Moreover, under the Trump administration, a number of states have experimented with requiring work requirements for eligible participants. The federal courts have struck down three states’ efforts, but it is an open legal battle over just how flexible Medicaid will remain, as it consumes a larger portion of state budgets.[2]

Fiscal Independence: Should we Blame the States?

No doubt some readers, in thinking through the examples about the “race to the bottom” might view such competition as a healthy impulse: it has the high potential to limit environmental regulation and corporate taxation, for instance. One man’s race to the bottom is another man’s dream of limited government.

However, American political history suggests that, in the long run, rather than maintaining a de-regulated system of limited government, excessive competition between the states has provided the federal government an enduring rationale to step in and impose requirements on a national level, with little involvement from the states or cities. Hamilton warned of this possibility in 1789, writing that while “the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union,” this would only be the case “unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better administration of the latter [federal government].”[3]

The logic of concurrent taxation and the promise of intergovernmental competition should make us reconsider one of the dominant strategies promoted by proponents of limited government in the 20th century: tax restrictions within state constitutions.

As discussed in the previous essay, citizens of the various states have long turned to their own state constitutions to regulate the public coffers, often saving future generations from unmanageable levels of government debt. In 1978, voters in California continued this tradition and passed Proposition 13 — a citizen-led ballot initiative that placed hard restrictions on the ability to increase property tax rates and reassess the value of commercial and residential real estate.

On the one hand, such restrictions have forced government officials to scrimp, save, and justify every expense, particularly at the local level, and often to the benefit of the taxpayer. In this regard, the “tax revolt” unearthed by Proposition 13 worked. In 1976, Californians had the sixth-highest “tax burden” in the country, at 12.2-percent — a measure of how much annual income each resident pays in state and local tax. In 2019, they rank 11th, with an individual’s burden down to 9.47-percent of annual income.[4]

On the other hand, it is not so clear that constitutional prohibitions — in California or in other states — always produce a system of public finance that allows Hamilton’s paradoxical logic to function properly. In restricting a state government’s taxing powers, it loses the ability to check the federal government, thereby reducing the amount of fiscal competition (and cooperation), the framers of the Constitution favored. Competition among the states, in other words, must be balanced out by competition between the states and the federal government. While it is also fair to critique the redistributive effects of the constitutional prohibitions — Proposition 13 overwhelmingly favors long-term residents over new arrivals, decreases the financial incentive for selling a home, and inflates property values — it is this intergovernmental consequence that is most problematic. Local governments, dependent on property tax, responded not by curtailing services that citizens still desired, but by requesting assistance from the state. State governments grew in power, but then faced financial hardship of their own as they competed with localities over a diminished tax base. The state government then turned to the federal government. Overall spending, when considering intergovernmental transfers, has climbed, as have debt levels. And, since those restrictions are protected by high constitutional thresholds, they limit the ability of residents to take back authority from the general government.

In closing, I emphasize that if we are to understand what state and local governments do– and what they are capable of doing — we need to follow their money. Budgeters and politicians can devise any number of complicated schemes for regulating the public purse, but, as Hamilton, again, forewarns, the entire constitutional system is “left to the prudence and firmness of the people; who, as they will hold the scales in their own hands, it is to be hoped will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the general and the State governments.”[5]

Public finance is ultimately a decision about what type of government people want. And such confusion and discord in state and local finances is the clearest indication that few Americans actually know what type of government they want. They want low taxes and lots of services. The types of trade-offs — between revenues that can go to the public purse, and services provided by multiple governments — are seldom discussed, and increasingly, fail to meet the standards of constitutional federalism as a result.

Nicholas Jacobs is a Faculty Research Associate in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where he also serves as the assistant project director of the Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution. He has published numerous scholarly articles on intergovernmental politics, American political history, and the American presidency.  

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012)

[2] Nicholas F. Jacobs and Connor M. Ewing. 2018. “The Promises and Pathologies of Presidential Federalism.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 48 (3): 552-569.

[3] Federalist 17

[4] Tax Foundation. State and Local Tax Burdens. URL: https://taxfoundation.org/state-and-local-tax-burdens-historic-data/

[5] Federalist 31

Guest Essayist: Nicholas Jacobs

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Although written more than 230 years ago, the United States Constitution contains a highly sophisticated — some might even say, modern — theory of public finance.[1] Other regimes had tried federated or confederated government (including the United States from 1781 to 1789 under the Articles of Confederation). But, the type of federalism outlined by the Constitution was an unprecedented experiment, because it gave the general government and each of its smaller, constituent governments independent taxing authority — a system known as concurrent taxation.

Hamilton’s Argument

In establishing an arrangement for concurrent taxation, the Constitution increases the likelihood that budgetary decisions reflect the needs and wishes of the country’s diverse political community, and decreases the likelihood that government spending is wasteful, obscure, and overly burdensome on specific groups of taxpayers. In short, by creating more government, Americans should pay fewer taxes.

This logic is explored — as much of the Constitution is — in The Federalist Papers. Essays number 10 and 51 might get all the fanfare, but at least a dozen individual essays, primarily written by Alexander Hamilton, deal exclusively with the logic of taxing authority. And, while Hamilton’s persuasive and innovative theories of concurrent taxation might not make for an exciting Broadway musical, these essays are among the most enduring and consequential arguments for designing government here in the U.S., and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

First, the Constitution is an arrangement that gives each government independent authority for raising revenue. Arguably, this is the single most consequential revision to the Articles of Confederation, which had made the national government dependent on state governments for all its revenues. It is the proximate cause of nearly all objections levied by the Anti-Federalists, because, independent taxing authority is an unambiguous method for creating a more powerful federal government.

As Hamilton describes, the new federal government needed financial independence from the state governments because “a complete power…to procure a regular and adequate supply of revenue, as far as the resources of the community will permit, may be regarded as an indispensable ingredient in every constitution.”[2] During the American Revolution, and in its immediate aftermath, the general government struggled to finance its most basic obligations, including the maintenance of an Army during war. In giving the federal government taxing powers, the framers gave the federal government independence.

However, the Constitution not only establishes independent taxing authority, it also underspecifies the various sources of tax revenue each government can levy.[3] The 1787 Constitution prohibits taxation on just one type of revenue: taxes on exports. And, it reserves only one type of tax to the general government: taxes on imports, or tariffs. It is silent on every other conceivable form of taxation. That silence, though, is not an omission, but a deliberate design principle. First, it ensures that all governments within the constitutional order have access to funding sources in the event of some unforeseen exigency. Drawing on the experience of Great Britain’s Parliament, Hamilton was especially concerned with how the new federal government would raise money during times of war or insurrection. Limiting the federal government to just one type of revenue, say, tariffs, would handicap needed revenues, and potentially cause adverse economic effects domestically and abroad.

The under-specification in revenue sourcing also has important implications for the states. For one, they maintain the same guarantees for exigent expenses as does the federal government. They possess access to resources in order to respond to citizen demands, and they are not constitutionally prohibited to raise monies from new sources as needed. Not only that, but, as Hamilton makes clear, the new Constitution provides plenty of opportunity for the states and federal government to cooperate in the collection and distribution of revenues. As he writes in Federalist 36, if the general government begins to tax a revenue source already occupied by the states, “the United States [federal government] will either wholly abstain from the projects preoccupied for local purposes, or will make use of the State officers and State regulations for collecting the additional imposition. This will best answer the views of revenue, because it will save expense in the collection and will best avoid any occasion of disgust to the State governments and to the people.”

Therefore, concurrent taxation encourages intergovernmental cooperation. It is a cooperation defined first and foremost by efficient tax collection — the reduction of government expense by the sharing of administrative processes — as well as transparency. In the above passage, the guardians of the public revenues are the state legislatures, who have an interest in maintaining their own fiscal authority and independence, and, most importantly, the people themselves, who have little desire to give away their hard-earned dollars to a wasteful government. Governmental cooperation — land grants, targeted appropriations, administrative assistance — had to be “substantially mutual and reciprocal.”[4] If states and the federal government wanted it, and if both benefited from the intergovernmental scheme, nothing in the Constitution prohibits such arrangements. In fact, the Constitution seems to demand it if it is in the people’s best interest.

Moreover, as John Kincaid notes, such under-specification of tax authority gives special power to the House of Representatives as a “regulator” of federalism. While most constitutional analyses emphasize the Senate and the Electoral College as the safeguards of American federalism, Hamilton’s analysis reminds us that it is ultimately the people who get to decide what type of federalism they want. All revenue bills must, after all, first be introduced in the House of Representatives, which is, as Madison writes, the “most complete and effective weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.” And since revenues are the lifeblood of any government, the institution with the greatest influence on that relationship occupies a prominent place not only at the national level, but within the states and localities as well.

Intergovernmental Concurrency: Was Hamilton Right?

Just because Hamilton ordained fiscal-federalism to be so, does not mean that the United States developed according to plan. In certain important respects, the current system of intergovernmental finance (including the independent revenue authority of the states and localities) fails to meet Hamilton’s lofty predictions for how the new Constitution would operate.

Since most of the federal government’s cooperation with states and localities takes place through the use of grants (as described in the last essay), it makes sense to consider whether this fiscal instrument fulfils the constitutional spirit outlined in The Federalist. To be sure, the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly ruled that grants are constitutional,[5] but asking whether the system of grants-in-aid maintains financial concurrency is not a legal question. Do grants satisfy the institutional principle of mutual and reciprocal cooperation?

There are more than 200 individual federal grants to the states and localities, administered across 30 different federal agencies. There are some, to be sure, that meet the rigorous standard of mutuality — equal benefit for state and national goals — and reciprocity — equal influence by the states and federal government. But changes to the American political system and the expansion of federal spending authority has limited the extent to which the grant system meets these standards.

First, it would be a mistake to neglect the significant amount of mutual and reciprocal cooperation that did take place throughout the 19th century and early 20th century. These demonstrate that such type of cooperation can, and has, existed in the U.S. For instance, the national government in 1862 passed the Morrill Land Grant Act, which provided states tracts of federal land to fund state colleges with a specific focus on agricultural and mechanical sciences. States were not compelled to participate, but could choose to if it advanced the community’s interest. Given the extraordinary broad discretion granted to state legislators for selecting the location, choosing the courses of study, and the establishing the governing body of the college, every state participated.

Few grant programs today operate in this way. For one, most states are compelled into participation because failure to participate in one negates participation in another. Rather than forfeiting a small sum of money tied to one particular program, a state risks losing all federal funding for a large area of government services. Additionally, as discussed in the previous essay, grant funding is also used to impose mandates on states and localities, which means that federal grants only fund a portion of the true cost of any one federal program. States must make up the revenue elsewhere either by raising taxes, or cutting state governing expenses.

Grant programs vary in the amount of discretion given to states and cities for setting program goals, eligibility criteria, and benefits paid. Yet, even among the most flexible grant programs — often called “block grants” — goals are set by federal departments and agencies with minimal state involvement. The 1978 revision to the Community Development Block Grant, for instance, mandates that states spend 30-percent of all granted funds in rural areas, regardless of the states’ demonstrated need or preference. But even when goals are left undefined, grants might have perverse political effects that conflict with state-level goals (or even national ones). For example, the 1968 Safe Streets Act and its successor, the 1996 Local Law Enforcement Block Grant, was a testament to intergovernmental cooperation. In providing millions of dollars to localities to modernize police forces, states and cities eagerly pursued these grants to help fund police services. Yet, as scholars have recently identified, these programs created demand for government services — namely, prisons and policing — when little demand existed before. Moreover, following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, localities used these grants to purchase military-grade weapons from the federal government — lest they lose available money — with little knowledge from the policed community.[6] If a hallmark of liberal democracy is that government policy reflects the will of the governed community, police militarization and mass incarceration raise important questions about how decisions to finance the expansion of local, state, and federal governments were reached and sustained. It is a question about taxes and spending.

Hamilton likely under-estimated the political potency that federal grant programs have. When states refuse to participate and risk losing federal funds, citizens accuse government officials of leaving money on the table — and not without cause. Federal transfers to the states are funded, after all, by citizen tax dollars. In recognition of this fact, for almost fifteen-years, the states and federal government experimented with general revenue sharing (GRS) agreements, which took the place of narrower grant programs. States were provided an incentive to spend money, thereby reducing some of the negative pressures from turning down funds for grant programs. State and local officials celebrated GRS for its consistency and flexibility; officials could use the funds without restriction. Congress, with the support of the Reagan administration, abolished GRS in 1986, and re-converted many of the programs to categorical grants more susceptible to political control. In the end, GRS demonstrated that budgets are political tools, and politicians are not likely to give up the control that comes with taxing and spending authority.[7]

Nicholas Jacobs is a Faculty Research Associate in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where he also serves as the assistant project director of the Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution. He has published numerous scholarly articles on intergovernmental politics, American political history, and the American presidency.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Vincent Ostrom has made this connection most explicit in a rich and detailed exploration of The Federalist: Vincent Ostrom. 1987. The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment, Second Edition. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

[2] Federalist 30.

[3] This is the primary subject of Federalist 35.

[4] John Kincaid. 2017. “The Eclipse of Dual Federalism by One-Way Cooperative Federalism.” Arizona State Law Journal 49: 1062.

[5] While the Supreme Court dismissed Massachusetts’s claims against the 1921 Shephard-Towner Act, which provided $1-million in grant assistance to states for prenatal and newborn care, Justice Sutherland’s unanimously supported obiter dicta demonstrated that the court did not view voluntary grants as unconstitutional infringements on state sovereignty: Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923).

[6] Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall. 2018. Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

[7] Timothy J. Conlan. 1998. From New Federalism to Devolution: Twenty-Five Years of Intergovernmental Reform. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Guest Essayist: Nicholas Jacobs

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Intergovernmental Finance

Every nickel spent by a state or local government ultimately comes from the pockets of some private entity, but often public monies are exchanged between governments. Intergovernmental transfer payments account for 23 percent of all money spent by state and local governments.

Most intergovernmental transfer payments point “downwards” in the federal system, moving from larger governments to ones of smaller size. The federal government delivered $621-billion to the various states in 2016, and state governments sent $524-billion to various localities in that same year.[1] Overtime, intergovernmental payments have grown as a share of state and local government revenues — a trend we will evaluate in the next essay — and the federal government has even come to make direct payments to localities in some specific instances.

Most forms of intergovernmental revenue take the form of grants — direct payments to a state or local government agency, with a specific purpose outlined by the grantee. The federal government, for example, sends billions of dollars it collects to the states for the purpose of constructing and maintaining highways. Likewise, state governments send some tax revenue it collects to localities for funding public health programs. The federal government even sends money to the states that the states then divide up and send to the localities.

Intergovernmental payments can be rigidly formulaic — a set number of dollars for a set number of persons — that treat governments of similar size equally. Payments can also be re-distributive, taking tax dollars from one political community and giving it to another. Most local school systems, for instance, fund their expenses through property taxes raised in the local community they serve. Increasingly, however, state governments re-distribute some of those monies, taking local revenues from towns, counties, and cities with higher property values, and sending it to communities with lower property values, and, consequently, lower revenues.

Beyond its redistributive effects, larger governments tend to send revenues to governments of smaller size out of recognition that money can be spent more effectively at the local level than a state-wide or national level. In fact, grants and other types of intergovernmental spending account for over 17% of all federal monies that the Congress appropriates each year.[2] As such, much of what the federal government does is, in fact, done by governments of smaller size. But in exchanging monies, intergovernmental transfers are one way in which larger governments set new restrictions on smaller governments, sometimes with little relevance to the funding purpose. For example, in 1984, Congress passed a law requiring states to raise the minimum drinking age as a condition for receiving its share of federal highway funds. More recently, the federal government imposed requirements on local public schools to develop and administer specific tests for all enrolled students: The 2001 law, No Child Left Behind. As a result, if local governments fail to follow federal guidelines, they risk losing all federal grant payments for education, which account for just 10% of all local education expenditures.

Public Finance in a Federal System

The revenue decisions reached by representatives within each government set hard constraints on the other powers and actions of governing officials, but taxing decisions also affect how people behave, even when there is no specific government program.

For example, many cities have recently imposed a tax on plastic bags, like the type often used at convenience stores and supermarkets. The stated goal is not so much to raise money (although most of the time these taxes fund specific environmental programs) as to discourage the use of plastic bags. States also experiment with other types of “excise” taxes — fees placed on specific goods — to discourage tobacco, liquor, and even soda consumption; these often have the more politically-palatable name, “sin tax.” However, in a federal system where one government’s rates differ from a nearby government’s, such taxes might simply distort behaviors, rather than end them. New York State, for example, has the highest excise tax on cigarettes: $4.35 on every pack sold in its borders. Half a day’s drive away in Virginia, the state levies just 30-cents per pack. It is not a coincidence that an estimated 56% of all cigarettes smoked in New York are currently smuggled in from out-of-state.[3]

As previously mentioned, when governments of smaller scale levy certain types of taxes, the economic incidence paid by taxpayers might better reflect the actual economic circumstance of that community. This is not always the case. The United States is a very large country, and when the national government levies taxes, particularly on income, it treats each citizen in the country equally, regardless of where they live. A person making $40,000 in Alabama pays the same marginal tax-rate as a Californian who makes the same amount, but who pays more in state and local taxes, and spends a proportionately higher amount of that $40,000 on rent, food, and transportation, due to variation in cost-of-living. Consequently, citizens in some states pay more to the federal government than they get back in government goods and services — an issue known as a state’s relative balance of payments. Residents of New Jersey have the worst balance of payments — receiving just 74-cents back from the federal government for every dollar they send — while residents of New Mexico get back $2.21 for every dollar they pay in taxes.[4]

As a closing note: one of the most consequential political developments in American history has been the legal restrictions citizens have placed on state and local governments for amassing public debt. It was routine in the 1800s for cities, in particular, to go bankrupt. At the turn of the 20th century, state governments limited the ability of municipalities to run annual deficits, but, with time, states began to spend more than they took in. Through ballot initiatives and legislative action, citizens enacted state-constitutional amendments that required balanced budgets for their governments. As such, the U.S. federal government is the only government that can formally spend more money than it raises.

These restrictions further complicate the way states and localities fund themselves, especially during hard times. For instance, property and sales taxes are highly “elastic,” which means that when the overall economy slows down, revenues can quickly fall. Debt restrictions and high elasticity create a peculiar circumstance, and often increase state and local demand for intergovernmental transfers. Following the 2007-2008 recession, which depressed home prices (decreasing local property tax revenues) and slowed consumer spending (decreasing state sales tax revenues), the federal government had to increase its own debt levels in order to finance state and local government services. Of the $787 billion Congress authorized as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or “stimulus,” more than a third was sent directly to state and local governments.[5]

States and cities can also sidestep legal prohibitions and gather additional funds by issuing bonds for “capital improvements” or by dipping into reserved funds, such as a state employee pension fund. State and local governments, collectively, hold about $3-trillion in public debt. Many pension funds have remained unbalanced for decades and the solvency of these accounts is one of the largest financing hurdles state and local governments will have to overcome as the American population grows older, and the “Baby Boomer” generation retires.

All of these developments notwithstanding, the constitutional foundation for America’s system of public finance is largely unchanged. The complex arrangement of varying tax sources, rates, and redistribution is the hallmark of a federal system that empowers multiple governments to act simultaneously within the same political jurisdiction. In the next essay, we will look more closely at the argument for why federalism — and independent budgetary authority — creates a more robust system of public finance, even if it appears to be more complicated and unwieldly. This is not to say that the modern system is perfect, and so we will also evaluate several leading proposals to fix the country’s federated financial system.

Nicholas Jacobs is a Faculty Research Associate in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where he also serves as the assistant project director of the Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution. He has published numerous scholarly articles on intergovernmental politics, American political history, and the American presidency.  

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Data on intergovernmental transfers, including the data graphed in Figure 2, was retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/. All dollar amounts are pegged to their corresponding calendar year, and are not seasonally adjusted.  Last accessed, April 11, 2017.

[2] Congressional Budget Office. 2013. “Federal Grants to State and Local Governments.” Government Printing Office, 5 March. Retrieved on March 14, 2018 (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/43967).

[3] Scott Drenkard. 2017. “Cigarette Taxes and Cigarette Smuggling by State, 2015.” Tax Foundation. URL: https://taxfoundation.org/cigarette-tax-cigarette-smuggling-2015/

[4] Rockefeller Institute of Government. 2017. Giving or Getting? New York’s Balance of Payments with the Federal Government. State University of New York. URL: https://rockinst.org/issue-area/giving-getting-new-yorks-balance-payments-federal-government-2/

[5] Timothy Conlan and Paul Posner. 2016. “American Federalism in an Era of Partisan Polarization: The Intergovernmental Paradox of Obama’s ‘New Nationalism.'” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 46 (3): 281-307.

Guest Essayist: Nicholas Jacobs

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

If, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” in the United States, taxes are a little more certain than death. Americans, after all, pay taxes to not just one national government, but to at least two additional ones as well: their state and locality. Paradoxically though, the framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that by establishing a system of multiple governments with independent taxing authority, the total tax burden placed on citizens would be less than it would be if one gargantuan government existed.[1]

For anyone that has ever filed your own taxes, you know that it is highly technical and subject to precise calculations, lengthy procedure, and numerous exemptions. Yet, at its most basic level, the methods by which governments acquire money are political determinations — reflective of each community’s unique history, size, political culture, and available resources.[2] The variation across different levels of government and between governments of similar scale reflects the political diversity American federalism nourishes. Understanding that variation in all of its complexity is the first step towards evaluating how federalism, despite creating many governments, can actually reduce the total tax burden placed on the American taxpayer.

Financing Local Governments

Local governments receive about 17.6 percent of every dollar that Americans pay to government each year, totaling just over $1-trillion.[3] Historically, the revenue decisions reached at the local level had the largest influence on Americans’ day-to-day lives. Municipal corporations were the leading provider of government services, establishing school systems, transportation networks, and welfare assistance before the states and national government. Much of this system remains and over time, additional types of local government emerged, each with their own taxing and spending authority; unincorporated county-governments, consolidated government units, and independent school districts — like towns and cities — all collect revenues to operate.

Remarkably, taxes account for just two-thirds of all revenues local governments raise. Localities amass considerable sums by charging fees on the use of hospitals, sewers, harbors, and airports. Some even rake in a small amount through the sale of school lunches. These “user fees” are like taxes, but they are non-compulsory and are only paid by those who use the service (sometimes provided by a private entity). Like usage fees, most local governments also raise revenue from utilities, such as a city’s water supply or transit system. Many Americans might also live in local, special-purpose districts, which are established for specific functions, and which have separate budgetary powers.

When considering taxes — compulsory, generalizable, and unavoidable legal obligations to pay the government money — local governments have a more limited “base” on which to rely. By far, the largest source of tax revenue for local governments, nationwide, is the property tax, which accounts for nearly half of all money local governments raise. But some local governments also take in money by taxing personal income and through localized sales taxes, especially on food and alcohol sold in restaurants.

Local governments derive such a significantly high percentage of their revenues from property taxes largely because of historical circumstance (they were the easiest to assess and collect), but also because they are pegged to the relative cost of living in any one, localized political jurisdiction. For instance, the rate set by the city of Boston might make sense for a densely populated, urban community where people make high incomes, property values are high, and citizens expect expensive government services. That same rate, however, might bankrupt the small family farmer in Western, Massachusetts, who owns considerably more land, and expects much less from government.

Financing State Government

State governments rely on all the same techniques as do local governments, including property taxes on possessions such as automobiles, and usage fees on services, such as parks and highways (tolls). However, there is much more variation between the states in how government finances itself.

Most states (46/50) have a general sales tax – a percentage added to each commercial transaction in the state, which retailors and merchants deliver to the state government. Sales taxes account for nearly half of all tax revenue raised by states. However, that percentage varies drastically. Some states, such as New Hampshire and Montana, do not have a general sales tax (although both states charges sales tax on specific goods such as food and lodging).  Other states, such as Tennessee and Arkansas, impose sales taxes that approach 10% on all goods purchased within the state.

Most states (43/50) also levy a state-wide income tax, which accounts for about 37% of all tax revenue at the state-level. Like the sales tax, these rates vary, and often move in relation to the state sales tax. For instance, Maine levies a 7.15% tax on the highest levels of income, which is one of the highest rates in the country; however, it charges just 5.5% on goods and services, one of the lower sales tax rates in the U.S.

This variation is important, and represents a healthy federal system. Decisions over what type of revenue source to tap generally reflect a state’s particular economy and the livelihoods within them. Taxpayers generally want to limit the amount of burden placed on themselves, so most governments try to “export” their state’s tax base. Property taxes paid on vacation homes, gasoline taxes paid by visiting motorists, and purchases made by tourists are all examples of how state governments get money from non-residents. In Nevada, nearly 80 percent of state taxes come from sales taxes, where in Illinois, state governments rely on a broader base of economic activities, including a 7% tax on corporate income, which brings in the state $3.3-billion each year.

The difference between taxing property, sales, and income is also reflective of underlying political beliefs. Most states that rely more on income tax revenues use a “progressive” rate, so that individuals who earn higher annual incomes pay more tax. In contrast, most budgeters consider sales tax to be a “regressive” measure. Although not pegged to income, individuals with lower incomes, on average, pay a higher proportion of their annual income in sales taxes than do individuals with higher incomes. Importantly, the determination to impose one type of tax over another is not a technical or objective calculation: it is the result of competing ideas about fairness, and varied expectations for government spending, which federalism encourages.

Nicholas Jacobs is a Faculty Research Associate in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where he also serves as the assistant project director of the Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution. He has published numerous scholarly articles on intergovernmental politics, American political history, and the American presidency.  

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Vincent Ostrom. 1987. The Political Theory of a Compound Republic: Designing the American Experiment, Second Edition. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

[2] Otto A. Davis,, M.A.H. Dempster, and Aaron Wildavsky, “A Theory of the Budgetary Process,” The American Political Science Review 60 (1966): 529-547.

[3] All figures, referenced in the following two sections on state and local finance, including the data graphed in Figure 1 are drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 State & Local Government Finance Historical Dataset, which is publicly available at https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2016/econ/local/public-use-datasets.html

 

Guest Essayist: Tom Morain

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Early in its history the U.S. Congress set up an orderly way for western lands to become states with status equal to the Original Thirteen. Senators and representatives in Congress remembered how unhappy the American colonists were under Great Britain’s rule, so unhappy in fact that they fought the American Revolution to become free of Great Britain.  One of the most important acts that Congress passed was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that set up a system of government for the territory north of the Ohio River that became the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. It was a model for other U.S. territories to follow when they wanted to become states.

When the American Revolution ended, the United States owned the land east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes to Spanish lands that bordered the Gulf of Mexico. Because this area was beyond the borders of the original 13 states, it became the responsibility of the federal government. The Trans-Appalachian was small but rapidly growing. It needed a way to deal with Native American populations and a defense against British threats to the north and Spanish ones from the south. Congress knew that the settlers would eventually need much more local government.

In 1803, the United States more than doubled its original size with the purchase from France of all the lands drained by the western tributaries of the Mississippi River, the Louisiana Purchase. Settlement in the region would wait until Native American titles to an area were removed and the land was surveyed in preparation for sale to private owners. Nevertheless, before pioneers crossing onto the western prairies ever decided to move west, they knew 1) they would one day have the full rights of citizens living in the East, and 2) what the steps necessary to attain full statehood were. Congress established a formula for promoting self-governance in the western land in stages. Until the population of an area reached 5,000 voters, the region was a district. (At this time, only free white males were voters.) A district was governed by a governor and three judges appointed by the President. When the population reached 5,000 the settlers could elect their own legislature. The area was called a territory. The governor, however, was still appointed, not elected by the voters. The territory could also elect a representative to Congress who could speak on issues in Congress but had no vote. When the population reached 60,000 the territory could apply for full statehood.

Iowa’s path to statehood followed the steps laid out in the Northwest Ordinance. In 1834 the land that would become Iowa was attached to the Michigan Territory. In 1836 as Michigan prepared for its own admission as a state, Iowa was transferred to the Wisconsin Territory.  With more and more settlers crossing the Mississippi River, a separate Iowa Territory was formed on July 4, 1838. Its boundaries stretched far north of the current border into Minnesota and the Dakotas. Because the population had already reached 22,859, the settlers had the right to elect their own legislature.  President Martin Van Buren, a Democrat, appointed Robert Lucas as Iowa’s first territorial governor. Burlington became the first capital. In 1840 William Henry Harrison, a member of the Whig Party, became president. He appointed another Whig, John Chambers, Iowa’s second territorial governor. The territorial capital was moved to Iowa City.

While both Lucas and Chambers urged Iowans to push for full statehood, many settlers were in no hurry. As long as Iowa was a territory, the federal government paid the costs of much of the government. If Iowa became a state, the settlers’ taxes would pick up the tab, and early settlers did not want to see their tax bills increase.  Iowans in the Whig party were happy to have a Whig president appoint the governor. They feared that the Democrats would win an election for governor if Iowa became a state. In 1844 the nation elected James K. Polk president. Because Polk was a Democrat, Iowa soon got a new territorial governor, James Clarke, a Democrat. By this time the population had increased to over 75,000. There was growing interest in the statehood question. With more people to share the cost of government, fears of rising tax bills were not such an issue.

During these years the issue of slavery was deeply dividing the United States. Slavery was forbidden in the Iowa territory, but Iowans could not escape the national debate. A plan in the United States Senate had been worked out in the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that would keep the Senate balanced between sectional interests on slavery. With the exception of Missouri itself, all western lands north of the southern border of Missouri, would prohibit slavery. Those south of the line could permit it. To maintain an equal number of senators from the free states in the North and the slave states in the South, every time a new slave state was added, a new free state had to be admitted, and vice versa for the addition of free states. That meant that when Iowa entered the Union as a free state, it would need to find a slave state partner. When Florida became a state in 1845, the pressure was on Iowa. If Iowa waited too long, some other Northern state might partner with Florida, and there might not be another slave state available for some time.

Slavery shaped the debate over Iowa statehood in a second and more direct way. In the constitutional convention that drew up the required structure of the new state, delegates proposed borders for Iowa that made it larger than it is today. The northern border stretched up to include Minneapolis/St. Paul in Minnesota. However, when the proposed constitution reached Congress, representatives of northern states amended it with borders making Iowa much smaller. Iowa was the first free state west of the Mississippi, and free state Congressmen were looking ahead. A smaller Iowa would leave more land for additional “free” states in the Louisiana Purchase. They wanted a western border for Iowa about 60 miles east of the Missouri River and only slightly north of the current Minnesota border. Iowans rejected the change and voted against statehood in the required referendum. The issue went back to Congress who proposed the borders we know today as a compromise, the shape we know today, from the Mississippi on the east to the Missouri River in the west. Iowa voters and Congress approved the new boundaries. On December 28, 1846, President James K. Polk signed a bill  making Iowa the 29th state.

Almost 60 years after the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Iowa completed all the requirements for statehood. Iowa citizens could now vote for president. They could elect senators and representatives to Congress. They had a state legislature. They could elect their own governor and judges. As with all new states added after the Original Thirteen, American settlers knew that they were not leaving their citizenship behind when they moved into the western territories.

Sources:

  • Sage, Leland. A History of Iowa. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State Press, 1974.
  • Wall, Joseph. Iowa: A Bicentennial History. New York, New York: Norton, 1978.
  • Schwieder, Dorothy. Iowa: The Middle Land. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State Press, 1996.

Dr. Tom Morain is Director of Government Relations at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa.  He taught Iowa history at Iowa State University and Graceland and served as administrator of the State Historical Society of Iowa.  He has authored three books and numerous articles on Iowa history and has been awarded the highest honors for contribution to public education by both Humanities Iowa and the State Historical Society.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable David L. Robbins

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

New Mexico became the 47th state to join the union on January 6, 1912.  This was shortly before Arizona was admitted on February 14, 1912.  The New Mexico Constitution became effective on the day Congress admitted New Mexico to the union.  The original document was ratified by the New Mexico Constitutional Convention on November 21, 1910.  The voters of the State ratified the constitution on November 5, 1911.

The ratified constitution and eventual boundaries varied widely from what was originally proposed in the mid 1800’s.  The New Mexico territory was formed following the end of the Mexican American War in 1848 through the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  The territory initially consisted of parts of west Texas (which claimed the territory east of the Rio Grande river), most of present-day Arizona, and part of southern Colorado.

In the 1850’s the country was in a deep debate on slavery.  Although slavery was not common in the territory, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was used as an argument that New Mexico could be a slave state, but the argument wasn’t persuasive.  The lack of statehood for the area prior to the Civil War and disagreement on its boundaries delayed its admission for decades.  The original territory excluded the south western part of present-day New Mexico (the Boot Heel) and southern Arizona.  This nearly 30,000 square miles of land was purchased from Mexico in 1854 which permitted the construction of a rail line across the southern-western part of the country.

The Constitution for the State has 24 Articles and has been amended more than 170 times in 107 years.  Conversely, the U.S. Constitution has seven Articles and has been amended only 27 times in 230 years, including the first ten amendments included as the Bill of Rights.  Many amendments to the State Constitution are minor, and several have been related to voting changes.  In most states, these minor changes are usually handled by State statutes, but are enshrined in the New Mexico Constitution.

New Mexico has a long and colorful past spanning several millennia and a rich and diverse culture.  The Constitution incorporates much of that historical culture.  Native Americans have been present in New Mexico for over eight thousand years.  After Spain conquered Mexico, it included all the area of present-day New Mexico.  During Spanish control, hundreds of land-grants were issued to individuals.  Many of these land grants still exist today.  The heirs to those land-grants share in that rich history but have often had to fight for their legal right to those land-grants.

Due to the strong Spanish history and historical Spanish legal system, New Mexico’s constitution declares the State as a bi-lingual State.  This was intended to protect educational access of Spanish speakers and those of Spanish descent.

Despite the acknowledgement of the strong Spanish history, approval by the Constitutional Convention in 1910 wasn’t assured by Congress, as provisions restricted the ability to be amended.  These restrictions included;

  • the requirement of a two-thirds vote of the legislature to propose amendments,
  • in addition to a bare majority, all amendments would be ratified by at least 40% of those voting in the election, with a 40%+ vote in at least half of the State’s counties, and
  • a limitation on the total number of amendments submitted to the people in a given election cycle.

Congress did not approve of these anti-populist provisions.  As a prerequisite to admission as a state, Congress required that the people of the State ratify an amendment that would:

  • provide for a simple majority vote in the legislature,
  • ratify by a simple majority vote of the people, and
  • do away with the limitation on the total number of amendments.

The prerequisites were proposed by Henry De La Warr Flood from Virginia and came to be known as the “Flood amendment.”

Article XII of the Constitution addresses education and requires that the State provide public education “sufficient” for all children.  While “sufficient” isn’t defined, poor educational outcomes for minority and at-risk students prompted a challenge in 2014 via several lawsuits.  Two of the largest suits were combined and officially became known as the Martinez-Yazzie lawsuit.  In December 2018 Judge Sarah Singleton sided with the plaintiffs ruling the State had failed to meet its constitutional requirement for at-risk students and gave the State until April 2019 to resolve the deficiencies.  Many of the at-risk students are English language learners, primarily of Spanish heritage.

Funding for education is addressed in Section 2 of the Constitution that established the Land Grant Permanent Fund for education.  This was intended to provide a sustainable source of income to fund the public schools in the State.  New Mexico is a geographically large State, fifth largest in the country, with over 126,000 square miles and is sparsely populated (a bit over 2 million).  Along with a small economic base, the Land Grant Permanent Fund is insufficient to totally support the educational mandates of the Constitution, so the State Legislature also appropriates funds directly to supplement other funding sources.

Partly in response to the Martinez-Yazzie lawsuit, the 2019 NM Legislature increased public school funding by over $700 million, a 13% increase over last year.  Despite this increase, many continue to feel the State is failing to meet this constitutional mandate.  Currently the State contributes approximately 47 percent of a $7 billion State budget to elementary and secondary.  This puts New Mexico around 35th in the country on spending per student, but the State is near the bottom in educational outcomes.

In 2003, the State Constitution was amended with the goal of improving educational outcomes in a State that has ranked at or near the bottom of the 50 States.  This created a Public Education Department (PED) with a Secretary appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the New Mexico Senate.  The amendment also renamed the State Board of Education to Public Education Commission (PEC), and the elected Board members became Commissioners.  Prior to this amendment, the PED was directed by a Superintendent, appointed and accountable to the State Board of Education.  According to the Constitution and statute, the PEC is advisory to the PED on education matters and the sole authorizer and overseer of State authorized Charter Schools.

The New Mexico Constitution has many unique features including how public education is addressed.  Time will tell if the education amendment and recent judicial interpretations of the Constitution will enable the State to move up in national rankings.

David L. Robbins has over 13 years’ experience in state government, and more than 30 years in the private sector.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and an MBA in Finance, both from UNM.  His experience has included management, wholesale and retail sales, insurance, banking, utilities, education, consulting, public service, and construction.

David has been an adjunct professor of finance at the Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico.  He was elected to the Albuquerque Public Schools’ Board of Education in 2009 and served from 2009-2013, including Chairman of the Finance and Audit Committees and the Capital and Technology Outlay Committee.

Until December 31, David was the Director of Administrative Services and CFO for the NM Department of Workforce Solutions.  He previously held the same positions at the NM Taxation and Revenue Department, where he oversaw the annual distribution of approximately $7 billion in state revenues and taxes to New Mexico cities, counties, and various state funds. 

In 2017, Governor Susana Martinez appointed David to vacancy on the Public Education Commission, District 2, created in the passing of Millie Pogna. He ran unopposed for election this past November and started serving a four year term, running through 2022.

David and his wife of over 43 years, Jan, are the proud parents of three grown children, including one with disabilities. They have five grandchildren (two granddaughters and three grandsons); all live in the Albuquerque area.  David and his wife are active members of their church, where he serves as a Deacon and teaches a senior men’s Bible study class.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Wilfred M. McClay

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The area of North America that we now call Oklahoma had a lengthy prehistory.  Its aboriginal inhabitants, known collectively as the First People, probably came to the Western Hemisphere from Asia some twenty to forty thousand years ago, crossing over into the unsettled continent over a land bridge between Russia and Alaska. They went on to establish themselves on the land thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, settling in villages along the Arkansas, Canadian, Washita, and Red rivers, and engaging in farming, hunting, and trade. After Columbus’s voyages the region drew the interest of Europeans, particularly wandering Spanish explorers who were driven by the hope of discovering fabulous gold wealth comparable to what had been found by the Spanish soldier Hernán Cortés in his conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico. These adventurers merely passed through quickly, though, and did not stay and settle. Neither did the French, who were primarily interested in the riches to be derived from fur trading with the native inhabitants, and had little interest in establishing permanent settlements.

Matters changed dramatically with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, when Oklahoma became a possession of the newly independent and rapidly growing United States, under the leadership of its third President, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and other leaders hoped the Purchase could provide room for an “Indian colonization zone” to solve the endemic problem of conflicts between the Native populations and the pressures exerted by expansion-minded European settlers. The concept of such a zone gradually gained favor, and a region thought of as “the Indian country” was specified in 1825 as all the land lying west of the Mississippi. Eventually, the Indian country or Indian Territory would encompass the present states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and part of Iowa.

In the meantime, the process of removing the Native population from the eastern woodland areas began, and accelerated with the passage in 1830 of the Indian Removal Act. A European traveler, the great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville witnessed the effects of the removal firsthand, as he happened by chance upon a westward-bound group of Choctaws crossing the Mississippi River at Memphis in December 1831. “One cannot imagine the frightful evils that accompany these forced migrations,” he remarked, and he went on to describe in compelling detail the frigid winter scene, the ground hardened with snow and enormous pieces of ice drifting down the river, as the Indian families gathered in silent and sorrowful resignation on the east bank of the river, proceeding without tears or complaints to cross over into what they knew to be an erasure of their past. It was, Tocqueville said, a “solemn spectacle that will never leave my memory.” Most of these migrants in that “Trail of Tears,” those who survived, would end up living in Oklahoma.

Eventually even this designated Indian “zone” could not withstand the pressures of land-hungry expansionists. Area after area was opened to non-Native settlement, the territory moved inexorably toward statehood. There was considerable sentiment favoring the creation of a separate “Indian” state of Sequoyah, but in the end that effort would fail, and a single state would be formed in 1907, combining Native and non-Native elements.

Even so, as the forty-sixth state in the Union, Oklahoma possesses a name that is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning “red people,” and that name fittingly signifies the uniquely enduring importance of the Native population to the state’s identity. In no other state of the Union is the Native presence more important, more indelible, more enduring—and arguably, more honored in the state’s politics and culture. Yet the achievement of that relatively harmonious state of affairs was bitter and difficult, particularly for the Native population, which had to accept betrayals and abrogation of agreements at every step of the way.

Once a state, though, Oklahoma quickly took its place as an important center of the burgeoning petroleum industry, with the city of Tulsa being labeled “The Oil Capital of the World,” and the oil industry serving as a primary driver of the entire state’s booming economy. From the moment that Oklahoma had become part of the United States in 1803, growth had become its byword. It had gone in just a few years from being a raw and forbidding frontier to being a leading force in the growth of the world’s economy, a force now moving into higher and higher gear.

For better or worse, and despite the state’s deep commitment to agriculture as a component of its economy, the state’s general economic fortunes have generally turned upon the rising and falling fortunes of the oil industry. That is its strength, and its weakness. Its well-being in the future, particular that phases out or dramatically deemphasizes the use of fossil fuels, will hinge on its ability to develop a more diversified economy.

One factor that many observers believe holds Oklahoma back in the quest for self-improvement is its massive and antiquated state constitution. At the time of its adoption in 1907, it was the lengthiest state constitution ever written, over 250,000 words long. Strongly influenced in its drafting by the leadership of fiery populist William “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, the document went into obsessive detail, spelling out regulations, safeguards, rights, obligations, and precise instructions in ways that were more appropriate to statutory law than the freer generalities of constitutional law.

Such specificity is a sure path to obsolescence. A great many of the Oklahoma constitution’s provisions are the product of a bygone era, the Progressivism of a hundred years ago encased in constitutional amber, relevant to the past but no longer relevant to the present day. Such a hidebound constitution stands in ironic contrast to the wide-open and pioneering spirit of the state whose political life it seeks to organize. Accordingly, some of the state’s most far-sighted individuals have argued for the necessity of adopting a new state constitution. But that is easier said than done, and the chances are very good that the current constitution will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the Director of the Center for the History of Liberty. In the 2019-20 academic year he is serving as the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. He served from 2002 to 2013 on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently serving on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which is planning for the 250th anniversary of the United States, to be observed in 2026. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, among others. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America won the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History, Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America, Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America, and most recently Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. He was educated at St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1987.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

For Additional Reading:

W. David Baird and Danney Goble, Oklahoma: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.

David R. Morgan, et al., Oklahoma Politics and Policies: Governing the Sooner State. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma Historical Society, accessible online at https://www.okhistory.org/publications/encyclopediaonline.php.

Guest Essayist: Jeremy Ward

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Long before Alabama was recognized as the 22nd state of the United States of America, it was home to generations of Native Americans belonging to numerous and varied tribes such as the Alabama (or Alibamu), Cherokee, and Choctaw. Europeans entered what is modern day Alabama in the early part of the 16th century, with the first documented visit by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1539.

By the mid-17th century, England had laid claim to modern day Alabama and included its territory in the Province of Carolina. As early as 1687, English traders from the province frequently traveled to the Alabama River valley to trade with Native Americans. However, the French also claimed the territory as their own and the two countries engaged in fierce competition for Indian trade for several decades until the French and Indian War broke out in 1754.

After suffering defeat, the French ceded its territories east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain. Modern day Alabama’s border would continue to shift – and change hands between England, Spain, and finally America – until 1817 when the eastern portion of the United States’ Mississippi Territory would be divided to create the Alabama Territory. Finally, on December 14, 1819, Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state to the Union.

Just as Alabama’s boundary lines changed numerous times over the years, so too did its capital. The first was the territorial capital in St. Stephens in 1817, near present-day Jackson, Alabama. Then in 1819, Huntsville served as the temporary capital while a convention assembled to prepare a State Constitution. The first “permanent” capital was established in 1820 near the convergence of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers but a flood resulted in damage to the statehouse. The capital was soon moved to Tuscaloosa in 1826 to a new three-story building designed by the same architect, William Nichols, who designed the old capitols in North Carolina and Mississippi.  The capital made one final move in 1846 to its current location of Montgomery, but a disastrous fire shortly after required its rebuilding.

Alabama’s early Constitutions were considered a reflection of Jacksonian popular democracy.  The post-Reconstruction era produced the 1901 Constitution, which with hundreds of amendments, is the longest state constitution in America.  Reform of the constitution, including repeal of impediments to participation by African Americans has been adopted through amendments and on an article-by-article basis.

The State of Alabama, which will celebrate its Bicentennial this year, has a rich and vibrant history. Over the past two centuries, its cities and towns have been the scenery of some of our Nation’s most important and compelling stories; from the unshakable courage displayed at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge to the scientific and engineering feats performed in Huntsville that helped put men on the moon. Alabama’s people have been history-makers as well. This state has given our nation and the world the Tuskegee Airmen, Helen Keller, Hank Williams, Jesse Owens, Harper Lee, Willie Mays and more names too numerous to list.

Jeremy Ward is the development officer for the American Village Citizenship Trust, a pioneering and innovative American history and civics education center located in central Alabama. Utilizing costumed historical interpreters, the American Village invites students and general public visitors to “step into the scenes” of America’s journey for freedom and independence, and to examine how the lessons that can be learned from our Nation’s revolutionary beginnings are still vitally relevant today in our roles as private citizens. For the past 15 years, Ward has held philanthropic leadership positions in the nonprofit (Boy Scouts of America) and higher education sectors (from traditional liberal arts to major urban research institutions). He can be reached at jward@americanvillage.org.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Early on in the film, Lawrence of Arabia, Colonel Lawrence (played by Peter O’Toole) offers a quote from Themistocles to a British General.  “I cannot fiddle,” Lawrence says, “but I can make a great state from a little city.”

Themistocles’ quote is illustrative of an important point:  sometimes the simplest acts can have tremendous impact in the long term for a society.  Clearing title, the action of ensuring that someone owns a particular parcel of land “free and clear” is one of these actions.  From the standpoint of real estate law, the importance is obvious:  you cannot buy or sell or invest in a parcel of land unless the thread of ownership is crystal clear.

But clearing title goes far beyond that—and is an essential element of a free and prosperous society.

Throughout his works on property, especially the seminal book “The Mystery of Capital,” Peruvian economist and political scientist Hernando DeSoto talks at length about the role that strong property rights play in creating prosperous and stable societies.  In it, he compares and contrasts the various property rights regimes in a host of nation, and lays out the case for how the protection of private property (or lack thereof) plays into that nation’s well-being.

DeSoto is emphatic that ensuring the clarity of title is one of the most-important, if not the most, single element that separates a rich and stable nation from a poor and unstable one.  Without that clear title, people are hesitant to buy or sell a piece of property.  Worse, without that clear title, people cannot use that piece of property to invest in their own future.  They cannot better themselves, and without that prospect they lose hope.  And it is that loss of hope, combined with economic stagnation, that leads to the collapse of a society.[1]

From its founding, the United States has looked at such property rights as a bedrock principle of the Republic.  But beyond the Constitution’s protections in the Bill of Rights, the nation could not have become who we are without recognizing the importance of clear title.

In fact, the very mechanisms by which U.S. Territories became states provide us with example after example of how clearing title was an essential element of the settling of the American West.  If one surveys the “Enabling Acts”—especially the Enabling Acts of states which became a part of the Union after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, one will find a variation on the phrase in each that, the title to all “unappropriated public lands” shall be turned over to the federal government, and that the federal government will become responsible for “disposing” of these lands.[2]

The Territorial Governments (that later became state governments) entered into this agreement because that was this tacit understanding that in order to facilitate smooth settlement (and thus encourage that settlement), ensuring that a parcel of land had a clear title was key.

And it worked.  The federal government was able to effectively encourage mass settlement in western states… and those who were able to secure property (either for free or for a very low amount) could not only build on those lands, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t have someone claiming that land somewhere down the road, but they could use that property as collateral for investment as well – an essential aspect of agriculture, for instance, even in modern times.

The lesson also has ramifications in the context of international law.  Many conservatives and conservative organizations (rightly) show skepticism at international legal regimes, like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.  Understandably, they don’t like the idea of an international body picking and choosing who or how someone gains access to valuable minerals and other resources under the sea bed in international waters.

But what they fail to understand is that unlike much of what the U.N. does, UNCLOS is a pro-property rights regime that builds on how we understand property and finance to ensure the same kind of smoothness that led to the settling of the American West.  It essentially grants that title (in reality, a permitted leasehold interest) to an applicant, who can then turn around and secure the money necessary to extract the resources.

Two companies present themselves before a lending institution attempting to secure financing for an under-the-sea-bed extraction project.  One has the “title” from UNCLOS.  The other is just asserting that the project is in international waters, and is therefore open to anyone.

Who will the bank give the loan to?

The one who has the legal right to engage in the project, of course.  The one who has clear title.

As the World looks to finding ways to promote economic prosperity and political stability—the work of Hernando DeSoto makes it clear.  Look towards property rights, including ensuring clear title to property.  This, as Themistocles would say it, is how you do make a great state from a small city.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty.  This fall he begins teaching at the College of William & Mary in Virginia

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

[1] In another DeSoto work, “The Other Path,” he discusses at length the role that titled property rights, including the issue of determining clear title, played in Peru’s struggles with the Marxist terror organization, The Shining Path.

[2] In fact, there is some question as to whether or not this language in these enabling acts serves to contractually obligate the federal government into disposing of these lands, not retaining them in perpetuity.  With the federal government owning and controlling so much land, to the detriment of state and local governance, some believe that the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1979 violates the conditions by which these states became states.

Guest Essayist: Benjamin DiBiase

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Florida is the southernmost state in the contiguous United States, situated at the bottom of the Atlantic seaboard. It is a peninsula, bordered by the Atlantic to the east, Gulf to the west, Caribbean Sea to the south and the U.S. states of Georgia and Alabama form its northern border. Archaeologists believe the peninsula was first occupied by a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers around 14,000 years ago. These indigenous groups slowly adapted to a changing climate and grew crops, established large chiefdoms, and eventually numbered over 350,000 people by the end of the 15th century.[1]

Florida was first sighted by Europeans in 1513, when Juan Ponce de Leon traveled north from Puerto Rico in search of natural resources, slaves, and potentially a new landmass for the Spanish colonial dominion. Although probably not the first European to set eyes on Florida, his expedition was the first officially sanctioned and recorded by the Spanish. He landed somewhere on Florida’s eastern Atlantic coast, but did not attempt to settle the region. In fact, much of the 16th century saw hundreds of potential settlers attempt colonization on the Florida peninsula, only to be driven away by hostile indigenous groups, decimated by exposure and starvation, or simply left to seek resources elsewhere in the Caribbean. In 1564, a group of French Protestant Huguenots built a small community in what is now Jacksonville on Florida’s northeast coast, only to be driven away by the Spanish led by Pedro Menéndez de Áviles in 1565. In driving away the French, Menéndez established what is now the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in North America, St. Augustine. The colonial settlement of St. Augustine remained a small military outpost for the next few centuries. By the end of the 18th century, a second settlement was established in west Florida’s Gulf Coast, known as Pensacola. Governance of both colonial outposts was administered from Cuba.[2]

In 1763, as part of the Treaty of Paris ending the French and Indian War, Florida was transferred to the British in exchange for Havana. The British ruled Florida for another twenty years, remaining loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution. As a result of that conflict, and Spain’s assistance in capturing Pensacola from the British, the newly formed American government handed Florida back to Spain. Now broken into two separate colonies, East and West Florida, the Spanish struggled to form a productive colony and attract settlers. However, the Spanish government promulgated the Constitution of Cádiz in St. Augustine in 1812, which was Florida’s first written constitution, and governed the cities administration for almost another decade.[3] Several attempts to overthrow the government, the War of 1812 and increasing pressure from American colonists to the north, eventually forced Spain to relinquish control of Florida to the Americans. The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 was officially ratified in 1821, and Florida became a U.S. Territory.[4]

The U.S. Territorial Period was marked by the establishment of a southern-style plantation economy, and years of federal military efforts to remove the Seminole Indians to reservations in the Oklahoma Territory, known as the Seminole Wars. By 1838, representatives from every county met in St. Joseph, a small town outside of Tallahassee and drafted a state constitution. They relied on the Alabama Constitution of 1819 as a model, and were guided by the several hot button issues central to the lives of Floridians at the time; statehood, banks and slavery.[5]  It was voted on later that year, and sent to the U.S. Congress. It was not until March 1845 that Congress officially voted in favor of admitting Florida into the Union as the 27th state.

By January of 1861, however, another delegation of statewide representatives met in Tallahassee and voted in favor of secession, rewriting the state Constitution, and joining the Confederate States of America a month later. Florida remained in the Confederacy until the end of the war in 1865, finally admitting defeat and beginning a years-long federal occupation of the state as Reconstruction began. Ravaged by years of war, the legislature passed a proposed constitution, but it was never adopted.[6] In 1868, Floridians voted on, and accepted a new state Constitution, and Governor Harrison Reid addressed the State Legislature in his inaugural address in June 1868.[7] By 1877, efforts to enfranchise emancipated slaves and integrate them into Florida society had largely failed. Despite tremendous strides made by African Americans to run and be elected to state offices, the efforts of former Confederates and white southerners derailed any major gains, establishing strict segregation laws and utilizing violence to intimidate minority populations.[8]

In 1885, Florida drafted a new state Constitution, codifying what would be generally referred to as “black codes” or “Jim Crow” policies to hinder black opportunity in the state. Nearly a century late, however, as Florida figured prominently in the Modern Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the state wrote a new Constitution in 1968, reversing many of the discriminatory laws that existed in the 1885 document. It was the changing demographics of the state, coupled with the national movements toward equality and transparency that finally pushed Florida’s lawmakers to substantially revise the 1885 constitution more than eight decades after it went into effect. Unique to the 1968 constitutional rewrite was the provision to automatically introduce amendments and augment the Constitution every 20 years. The Constitutional Revision Committee (CRC) is appointed by the Governor, state officials and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and takes input from the public concerning changes to the language of the document, which would then be voted on by the public in the next election cycle. It was this 1965 creation of the CRC that enabled the 1968 constitution to be created.[9]

Ben DiBiase, MA, is a native Floridian. He holds a Master’s degree in History from the University of Central Florida. Ben currently works as the Head Archivist and Educational Director for the Florida Historical Society. He is the editor of French Florida (2014) and is a regular contributor to the Florida Frontiers radio and podcast program that airs around the state on NPR stations.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

[1] Jerald T. Milanich, Florida’s Indians from Ancient Times to the Present (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1998) 3.

[2] James C. Clark, A Concise History of Florida (Charleston: The History Press, 2014) 15-22.

[3] M.C. Mirow, Florida’s First Constitution: The Constitution of Cádiz Introduction, Translation, and Text (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2012) 3-5.

[4] Ibid., 25 – 31.

[5] Stephanie D. Moussalli, “Florida’s First Constitution: The Statehood, Banking and Slavery Controversies,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 74 no.4 (1996) 423.

[6] Mary E. Adkins, Making Modern Florida: How the Spirit of Reform Shaped a New State Constitution (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2016) 5.

[7] Journal of the Senate for the First Session, Fifteenth Legislature of the State of Florida, (Tallahassee: Office of the Tallahassee Sentinel, 1868) 5.

[8] Adkins, Making Modern Florida, 6-7.

[9] Ibid., 56-57.

Guest Essayist: Danny de Gracia

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Born of ancient volcanoes in Earth’s prehistory and baptized by fire into the modern era by the bombs of the Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the history of the Fiftieth State is nothing short of legendary.

First discovered and populated by seafaring Polynesian peoples perhaps around the 12th century or even earlier, Hawaii would be thrust into global destiny by European contact when British Captain James Cook discovered and sailed past the island of Oahu on January 18, 1778. As a midpoint in the Pacific, the Hawaiian Islands would soon become a key strategic shipping hub that attracted merchants, missionaries, and militaries alike from around the world.

The relevance of Hawaii would endure long beyond the Age of Sail, as the United States by the end of the 19th century had overtaken all the European powers as an industrial powerhouse. Protection of American shipping routes, defense of the West Coast, and access to Asia necessitated a forward naval presence in Hawaii, and in 1887, the U.S. military began leasing Pearl Harbor.

American influence had already been growing in Hawaii since the end of the Civil War due to the need for sugar cane amidst economic devastation in the South, and the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 cemented the Islands as a leading driver of the growing U.S. economy when it created a free trade agreement for agricultural products from the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Having already seen European military rivals make power plays for control of Hawaii, American business interests maneuvered for decisive U.S. control of the islands. In 1893, Hawaii’s monarchy dissolved and Queen Liliuokalani was pressured by local militias to abdicate her throne. Ultimately, it would be the Spanish-American War which put the U.S. in conflict on distant shores as far away as the Philippines and Guam, that would give the U.S. justification to annex Hawaii.

On July 4, 1898, just four months after the sinking of the Battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, the U.S. Congress adopted Senate Joint Resolution 55 – nicknamed the “Newlands Resolution” after its introducer, Democratic Rep. Francis G. Newlands of Nevada – which set the framework for annexation of Hawaii. On August 12, 1898, a small ceremony on the steps of Hawaii’s Iolani Palace marked the formal annexation of Hawaii and its transfer of sovereignty to the United States.

Pearl Harbor and the Road to Statehood

At the dawn of the 20th century, political shifts in Asia, not Washington D.C., would set the stage for Hawaii’s most significant moment in American and world history. Japan, having dashed the Russian Navy’s hopes for a Pacific warm water port in the spectacular 1905 Battle of the Tsushima Strait, saw herself as an emerging world military power, even on-par with the great European nations.

As a participant in the First World War, Japan’s seizure of Germany’s Pacific territories led the Imperial government to believe it had an important seat at the table as part of the victorious Allies at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Much to the Japanese dismay, the U.S. and European powers treated members of the Imperial delegation as bit players in the Treaty of Versailles. The tense peace that followed was only underlined further by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 which limited the construction of battleships and prevented the construction of any new Pacific Ocean military bases – making Hawaii, as an existing U.S. naval and army forward base, perhaps the most strategically relevant island in the entire world.

As Japan, the U.S., and the Europeans all sought to expand in a world that the machines of the Industrial Revolution made even smaller, a perfect storm of interests, politics, and geography was brewing that would one day rain bombs over Hawaii.

This confluence of international politics and geography could lead only to Japanese fighter planes over Oahu on the fateful morning of December 7, 1941. Colliding over the azure blue waters and exotic green jungles of Hawaii were more than just Japanese and American forces, but two competing destinies of fascism or freedom.

The attack on Pearl Harbor would not only steel the U.S. resolve to defeat the Axis Powers, but the terrible east wind rain of Imperial Japanese bombs had a more dynamic effect in that they aroused many Hawaiians to see themselves as a vital part of the American experience. Fighting not only for the safety of their islands but also for the freedom of their way of life, when America triumphed in World War II, Hawaiians felt a special place as part of the victory that liberated the world.

Hawaii’s Statehood and Constitution: A Model for the Future

The immediate post-WWII era saw intense enthusiasm among many locals to petition for Hawaii statehood, bringing together religious, cultural, academic, labor, political, and business leaders in calls to make Hawaii part of the Union. America had become the world’s first superpower, and Hawaii had been the pivot point for the dawn of an American century.

In 1950, Hawaii’s Constitutional Convention was a key step towards statehood for the Territory of Hawaii, as many delegates felt that it showed for the first time in history that Hawaii was ready for statehood.

Though Democrats in Congress had staunchly resisted Republican-leaning Hawaii from entering the Union, unresolved postwar tensions with the Soviet Union and the Cold War could not afford a lingering question mark in the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii, which had been so essential to winning WWII, would be crucial for containment of the Soviet Union and access to Asia in a nuclear world.

On March 18, 1959, Congress passed the Hawaii Admission Act, which at last provided for Hawaii’s ascension to full statehood.  Section 3 of the Act would proudly declare, “The constitution of the State of Hawaii shall always be republican in form and shall not be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.”

On June 27, 1959, Hawaii voted for statehood, a leap of faith which helped mollify the political and cultural divisions of the past, as locals finally had the chance to determine Hawaii’s place in the world for themselves. No longer under the supervision of a monarch or held at bayonet point, the people of Hawaii were given the chance to choose for themselves the future.

They voted “yes.”

In a landslide victory for statehood, 132,773 voters, or 94.3 percent of the vote, cast their ballots to become the Fiftieth State.

As the most recent state to enter the Union, Hawaii’s constitution represents the most modern, elegant, and in many instances, poetic social compacts among the States. Hawaii is especially unique in that every decade, voters are given the option to vote for a recurring Constitutional Convention question, which continues to place the future of Hawaii in the hands of Hawaiians.

The most recent revision to the Hawaii Constitution’s Preamble reminds the world, “We reserve the right to control our destiny, to nurture the integrity of our people and culture, and to preserve the quality of life that we desire. We reaffirm our belief in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and with an understanding and compassionate heart toward all peoples of the earth, do hereby ordain and establish this constitution for the State of Hawaii.”

In the annals of history, the story of mankind is one of mistakes and injustices, but also triumphs and great honors. History has not always been right or kind, but history in America is our story, which we have the freedom to change. In the volcanic soil of Hawaii, scarred by war and upheaval, and watered by the blood and tears of so many, a tree of liberty has grown in the Pacific whose fruits give us hope for the future of our planet.

In 1993, Congress and President Bill Clinton issued the Apology Resolution which acknowledged the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii. While some Native Hawaiians continue to feel grieved over the loss of their sovereignty, the 1993 Apology Resolution was a helpful part of Hawaii’s healing and progress. Today, the majority of Hawaiians and Hawaii residents continue to proudly and patriotically support the State of Hawaii and their place as American citizens.

Though today’s Hawaii struggles with many economic, political, and cultural issues, the sons and daughters of Hawaii represent the blossoming of a great generation of Americans who will continue to further the relevance of our United States of America for centuries to come. As someone whose family was among the very first Filipino plantation immigrants to come to Hawaii, my experience is particularly special, because my family has had the joy of becoming citizens of Hawaii and citizens of these United States.

May God forever bless the State of Hawaii, and all those who live in it.

Dr. Danny de Gracia, Th.D., D.Min., is a political scientist, theologist, and former committee clerk to the Hawaii State House of Representatives. He is an internationally acclaimed author and novelist who has been featured worldwide in the Washington Times, New York Times, USA Today, BBC News, Honolulu Civil Beat, and more. His first novel, “American Kiss: A Collection of Short Stories” is available online on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other retail outlets.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Mary Salamon

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The individual states in the United States didn’t form all at once. With each state, there was a process to their creation, and yet they share similar beginnings. The first beginnings of each state start with the Native American tribes, explorers, missionaries and then settlers. This process laid a foundation for new territories that would eventually separate into individual states.

Washington State’s famous explorers are George Vancouver, Robert Gray and the American explorers Lewis and Clark. George Vancouver came to the Pacific Northwest with two ships, the Discovery and the Chatham. Vancouver named everything in sight, which included islands, mountains and waters. Puget Sound is named after Peter Puget, a lieutenant accompanying him on the expedition. To this day, we still have the names Whidbey Island, Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, and Hood Canal are all key geographical features in the state of Washington named by Vancouver.

Robert Gray was the first American explorer to circumnavigate the globe. The Columbia River is named after his ship the Columbia and Grays Harbor County is named for Grays Harbor the bay in the southwest corner of the county that Robert Gray discovered.

The Lewis and Clark expedition open the United States to several new finds. According to Historylink.org, “In May 1803, the United States purchased Louisiana from France.  The doubling of U.S. territory caused President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) to send Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) on a westward expedition to explore the nation’s new piece of real estate.  The Corps of Discovery was a party of 33 people, including Sacagawea, a Shohone [sic] Indian, and York, an African slave.  The Corps, under the leadership of Captain Lewis and Captain William Clark (1770-1838), traveled by foot, horse, and watercraft across North America and back again beginning in Wood River, Illinois, in May 1804, and returning to St. Louis, Missouri, in August 1806.  The period the Corps spent along the Columbia and Snake rivers and at the mouth of the Columbia — from October 1805 to May 1806 — was principally within what is now the State of Washington.”

https://www.historylink.org/File/5556

Lewis and Clark Expedition is credited with discovering 178 plants species. Two Plants, Lewisia rediviva (also known as bitterroot) and Clarkia pulchella (elkhorn clarkia) – were named after the explorers.

In the Pacific Northwest, there were Native American tribes all over the region. There were the Chinook, Makah, Lummi, along with Nooksack, Nez Perce, Salish, and the Tlingit. On the other side of the mountain in Washington were Yakima, and Spokane tribes. The Cayuse and Okanogan tribes were further south in the region. Every story is different, but in general, the beginning relationships between the Indians and the Settlers were friendly and cordial at first, then disputes over trade and land erupted, and then war ensued.

One particular event that is well known in Washington History is the “Whitman Massacre.” In 1836 the Whitmans established a Protestant mission next to the Walla Walla river, but at the time it was on the Cayuse Tribe’s land. In a similar fashion with Squanto and the Pilgrims, the Cayuse Indians showed the missionaries how to plant and cultivate crops and fed them food till the missionaries were able to harvest their own. Of course, the goal of Marcus Whitman was to covert many Indians to Christianity, and the Cayuse Indians were hoping for a prosperous relationship of trade and goods. Tensions rose higher and higher as more settlers came into their land taking portions without compensation.

It finally came to a murderous head when more than 4,000 settlers arrived in the region in 1847. They brought an epidemic of measles. The epidemic brought death to almost half of the Cayuse Indians living near Whitman’s Mission. The anger peaked because only a few of the white settlers died. The Cayuse Indians attacked the Mission killing Whitman’s and eight other people. It was a brutal attack that lead to five of the Indians being hung, but also bringing more division and the creation of the Oregon Territory.

In 1848 Oregon Territory was created. This included the future states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and a portion of Montana. Only a few years later, the people north of the Columbia river wanted to branch off and become a separate territory. According to Historylink.org, “On February 8, 1853, a federal bill was introduced to separate “Columbia Territory” from Oregon. Representative Richard H. Stanton of Kentucky, believing that the first president should be honored with the name of a state or territory, and noting that the federal capital already recognized the name “Columbia,” amended the bill to read “Washington Territory.” On March 2, 1853, President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) signed the act. He dispatched Isaac Stevens (1818-1862) to govern the new territory, which until 1863 included Idaho.

President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) selected the anniversary of George Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1889, to sign the act creating the state of Washington, but his proclamation of admission was not issued until November 11, 1889. The Great Event was celebrated with cannon fire, public and private meetings, parades, and endless oratory.”

https://www.historylink.org/File/5661

According to Ballotpedia, “The Washington State Constitution describes the fundamental structure and function of the state’s government. It consists of a preamble and 32 articles. This constitution is the second in Washington’s history. The first one was ratified in 1878, and the current version on October 1, 1889.[3]

The territory of Washington voted to apply for statehood in 1876. They sent Orange Jacobs, the territory’s delegate, to Congress to enable an act that would allow statehood after a constitution was ratified. The first constitutional convention met in Walla Walla, Washington to draft the constitution in 1878. When it was presented to voters in November, it was overwhelmingly approved.

This did not allow Washington statehood as Congress failed to act on the proposed constitution. The 1876 constitution was then used during the drafting of Washington State’s 1889 Constitution. A second constitutional convention met in Olympia, Washington from July 4 to August 22, 1889. This time, 75 delegates helped draft the constitution which was ratified on October 1, 1889. President Harrison issued a proclamation admitting Washington to the Union on November 11, 1889.”

https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_State_Constitution

Mary Salamon is the author of Government and Its People- How the Church can Participate in Government. She resides in the Pacific Northwest and was the publisher of Marysville Tulalip Life Magazine. She served as the Washington State Leader for the Governors Prayer Team and is the mother of three sons and five beautiful grandchildren. She is available for speaking engagements at local civic events, churches and conferences.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Patrick M. Garry

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

South Dakota was admitted to the Unites States November 2, 1889 as the fortieth state. In the same year of 1889, the South Dakota State Constitution in use today was adopted.

On March 2, 1861, President Buchanan signed the bill that created the Dakota Territory. Within this territory were included the present states of North and South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. After creating the Dakota Territory, the federal government paid relatively little attention to it, given the preoccupation with the war. But as soon as there was sufficient population in the territory, the settlers in the Dakota Territory began taking steps to achieve statehood. Starting in 1868, efforts intensified toward the admission of Dakota, either as a single state or two different states.

Even though the Dakota Territory was being settled during the Civil War, South Dakota did not become a state until 1889.  This long delay in the pursuit of statehood stemmed from political conflicts at the national level.  During the 1880s, for instance, the Democratic Congress opposed statehood for South Dakota, which was seen as a strongly Republican-leaning state. The Democratic Congress resisted admitting a state that was certain to send two more Republicans to the United States Senate. Consequently, the congressional debate on the issue of South Dakota statehood rested largely on a partisan basis.

However, the obstacles to statehood for South Dakota largely disappeared when Benjamin Harrison won the presidential election of 1888, beating Grover Cleveland. President Harrison had been a strong supporter of statehood for South Dakota during his time as senator from Indiana. At the same time, the Republican Party won control of Congress, and the national Republican Party platform of 1888 had stated that South Dakota should be immediately admitted as a new state.

The statehood bill was passed in February of 1889 and authorized the state constitutional convention of 1889, which was to be the first constitutional convention in South Dakota legally recognized by Congress.  The resulting constitution was approved by the people at an election held in October. And on November 2, 1889, President Harrison issued his proclamation admitting South Dakota as a state.

Although the 1889 convention produced the Constitution in effect today, it was not the first constitutional convention convened by statehood advocates.  The first constitutional convention for South Dakota took place in 1883, even though that convention was not authorized by Congress.

The 1883 constitution reflected the political concerns of the times.  South Dakotans sought statehood at a time when railroads and corporate conglomerates played powerful roles on both the state and national scene.  Although the railroads greatly contributed to South Dakota’s development and population, they also threatened to corrupt state legal and political processes.

At the 1883 convention, there were concerns that corporations should pay the same rate of taxes as private individuals, should not be allowed to consolidate, and should receive no aid that is not given private parties. The Convention also required the legislature to regulate railroad rates and prohibit unjust rate discrimination. The convention delegates feared that railroads or other large corporations could exercise excessive influence over the legislature.

A second constitutional convention convened on September 8, 1885.  This convention has been called the most important ever held in South Dakota, insofar as the constitution produced by that convention, with a few minor changes, became the constitution authorized by Congress and ratified by the voters in 1889.

The South Dakota statehood bill passed by Congress in February of 1889 necessitated a third constitutional convention so as to make the 1885 constitution conform to federal law.  By the time the 1889 convention occurred, the Farmers’ Alliance of Dakota Territory was playing a major political role. With declining prices for farm crops and higher production costs, many farmers had fallen deep in debt. For political relief, they turned to the Alliance, which played an influential role in securing the Initiative and Referendum provisions in the Constitution.

Perhaps the most unique feature of the South Dakota Constitution was its provisions on the Initiative and Referendum. South Dakota was the first state in the Union to adopt the Initiative and Referendum, which was later adopted by dozens of other states.

Whereas the Initiative allows the public to bypass the legislature and directly pass new laws in a general election, the Referendum allows the public to repeal a law previously enacted by the legislature. Initiative and Referendum was one of the hallmark causes of the Populist movement of the late nineteenth century.

The Populist movement promoted the Initiative and Referendum as an essential means of achieving economic reforms aimed at controlling the political power of railroads and eastern banks. South Dakota was the first state in the nation to have an active Populist Party, which in 1892 made the Initiative and Referendum a central part of its platform.

The campaign to bring Initiative and Referendum to the Dakota Territory was fueled by the economic events of the time, with Dakota farmers attributing declining commodity prices to the manipulations of railroads and eastern banks, and believing that rural interests would be better able to control those outside entities through the Initiative and Referendum process.

Patrick Garry is professor of law at the University of South Dakota and is the author of Limited Government and the Bill of Rights and The False Promise of Big Government: How Washington Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor.

Click Here for the next essay. 

Click Here for the previous essay. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayists: Kimberly Porter and Donna Pearson

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The Constitution of North Dakota provided the final step on the road to statehood; however, it was not the only step on the pathway. The process required the acquisition of the Great Plains from France in 1804, as well as the subordination of Native Americans who had called the region home for centuries.

Assorted fur traders, trappers, missionaries and explorers, including Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, traveled the lands seeking to discover its riches: furs, minerals, a passageway to the Pacific Ocean, etc. Large numbers of European-Americans did not settle the region until the 1860s with greater numbers arriving in the 1879s and 1880s.

Beyond the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, the first major move towards statehood and the need for a constitution in North Dakota came with one of President James Buchanan’s last acts as president of the United States. On March 2, 1861, just two days before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office, Buchanan signed a bill creating Dakota Territory. This territory would later be divided into the states of North and South Dakota, as well as portions of Wyoming and Montana. At the same time, the Nebraska Territory was modified to appear much like the state it would become.

Individuals did not flock to the lands which would become North Dakota. Not only did the Civil War rage elsewhere, but so did Indian uprisings, particularly one in Minnesota and Dakota Territory later referred to as the Great Dakota Uprising. Railroads had not yet crossed the region as they did in areas more centrally located, i.e., Kansas and Nebraska. Even the offer of free lands via the Homestead Act (1862) did not populate the land necessary to apply for statehood.

By 1870, the future state had a European-American population of approximately 2400, but within the next ten years, the European-American population grew to 37,000. For those who dreamed for statehood, the number of settlers rose dramatically in the decade of the 1880s. Taken shortly after statehood was achieved, the census of 1890 recorded a population of 190,000. Forever after known as the Great Dakota Boom, the explosion in population can be ascribed to an increasing influx of population from Europe, the presence of two railways across the entirety of the state, the end of incursions with Native Americans, and the claims made on more southern regions for free homestead land. The lands that became South Dakota had experienced many of these pressures a generation beforehand and commenced the pathway to statehood earlier. (See entry on South Dakota for details of that state’s path to membership in the federal union.)

Residents of the future South Dakota did not seek to join with their northern twin. There was a distinct feeling in the southern half that the northern portion was controlled by the railroads, was more strongly attached to Canada than the United States, and that its inhabitants were somewhat less desirable than those immigrants in the south. Hence, Dakota Territory did its utmost to attract homesteaders and businessmen to the northern half by positively publicizing the region throughout the United States and western Europe. Free pamphlets and even a 500-page book were dispatched upon request.

Also encouraging the movement towards statehood and a Constitution was the sense that young men in the state were overlooked in the political processes. Most governmental positions were appointed from Washington, D.C., leaving unknown westerners out of the bidding.

At this time, the Democratic Party held the movement to statehood in check. Knowing that any new state in the northern reaches of the nation would most likely vote for the Republican Party, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, did nothing to encourage the addition of northern states to the Union. The partisan debate concluded with the election of Republican Benjamin Harrison to the White House in 1888. Just before leaving office, Cleveland signed the Omnibus Bill, allowing North and South Dakota, Washington, and Montana the privilege of calling Constitutional Conventions as a precursor to statehood.

O July 4, 1889, 75 delegates descended on Bismarck, the territorial capital. Elected in units of three from twenty-five districts representing the extant population of North Dakota, the conventioneers heavily claimed the eastern third of the state home. This would prove a continuing force upon the state of North Dakota to the current day.

No member of the constitutional convention had been born in North Dakota, all were European-American, male, and under forty-five years of age. They were comparatively well-educated, with considerable representation from the legal and publishing professions. Also present in significant numbers were farmers, many of whom felt an allegiance to the Farmers’ Alliance and leaned towards the Republican party.

Forces upon the convention were plentiful. The federal government set the stage, initially denying the Dakotas the right of convening a Constitutional session, but also by requiring the future state to adhere to the Constitution of the United States, to be republican in form, and to provide land grants to support education. Railroads, often simply referred to as “corporations”, held sway as well. The Northern Pacific Railway as well as grain dealers, implement manufacturers, and banks could control the territory from a distance by acquiring political appointments. They were fully aware that controlling a state from within would be somewhat more difficult. A relatively weak government would be in their interests.

Farmers, a considerable portion of the convention delegates, could also claim relative power in Bismarck. Due to economic woes of the 1870s and 1880s, many had joined the Farmers’ Alliance, hoping to gain power in the marketplace as well as in the halls of government. The farmers presented the largest organized force at the convention. Control of the terminal market for wheat, the railroads and sources of credit were vital if their dreams were to become reality.

The farmers, businessmen, newspaper owners, attorneys and other assorted delegates gathered exemplar states’ constitutions for discussion and edification. All were from eastern locales, making a pattern for the over-creation of institutions. Only Major John Wesley Powell’s argument for the state to maintain possession of the waters usable for irrigation made the cut.

Advice for the construction of the state’s constitution did not only come from Powell of United States Geological Survey, it also came from the Northern Pacific Railway. Henry Villard, chairman of the Northern Pacific’s board of directors, asked Harvard Law Professor James Bradley Thayer to prepare a draft constitution for North Dakota. Submitted by a delegate from Bismarck, the document brought with it considerable debate.

Thayer’s draft shaped, but did not control, the Constitution that came out of the convention. Lively debate ensued on woman suffrage, jury reform, a unicameral legislature, the prohibition of railroad passes for public officials and union. None of the above were adopted. However, what did come from the discussions was a relatively moderate document with reformist ideas. Based in considerable distrust of corporations, the conventioneers determined to limit the power of the governor and the legislature by placing the power for decision-making in those realms into the hands of independent boards, as well as putting considerable legislation into the actual constitution. Citizens themselves carried considerable responsibility. Covering the vital issues took time and ink. The constitution of North Dakota is six times longer than the federal constitution.

As an example of legislating, the state constitution of North Dakota includes fourteen institutions and their geographical placement. Grand Forks, for example, is the mandated site for the state university, while Bismarck is delegated the capital, and Valley City and Mayville normal (teaching) schools. Not only were the vast number of institutions placed in the eastern portion of North Dakota, as befits the homes of the conventioneers, but their mention in the constitution ensures closing or moving any state institution to be exceptionally problematic.

An issue of considerable importance at the time of statehood was whether the manufacturing, sales and consumption of alcohol should be prohibited. After contentious debate, it was determined that the future-state’s citizens would have the opportunity to vote on the constitution, and whether to ban alcohol from the state. After 45 days, the assembly adjourned on August 17, 1889.

On October 1, voters ratified the constitution, 27,441 to 8,107.  Opposition to the constitution came primarily from those areas of North Dakota that felt cheated by the distribution of governmental institutions. The ban on alcohol was close.  Prohibition came to North Dakota by a vote of 18,552 to 17,393.  North Dakota was the first state to enter the Union as a “dry” state.

On November 2, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison had before him the constitutions of North and South Dakota. In a rare moment of levity for the president, he declared that neither state should have the pride of being the first or the last of the Dakotas to become a part of the Union. Accordingly, he stirred them a bit and signed his name, twice. The luck of the alphabet has given North Dakota the rank of 39th state and South Dakota 40th.

The constitution created in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, is essentially the one that the residents of North Dakota are called upon to abide to this very day. The Constitution lays forth the powers of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches, as well as the checks upon those branches. The legislature is permitted to meet only 60 days each biennium, unless an emergency calls them together. This check is to limit the development of a professional class of politicians in the state, and to ensure that the officials elected to the legislature maintain a connection with their electors.

The governor is specifically prohibited from influencing the vote of any member of the legislature via promises to sign or veto legislation, or to provide or deny an appointive office. The numerous independent boards of control, as well as a listing of 35 subjects on which the legislature is expressly forbidden to interest itself, keeps the state’s electoral structure somewhat weak.

The weaknesses of North Dakota’s constitution are deliberate as they reflect a population fearful of outside control, excessive debt, and professional politicians.

Kimberly K. Porter is a professor of history at the University of North Dakota. She focuses her efforts on United States history, particularly the 1877-1945 era, with an eye to agricultural and rural issues, including the history of North Dakota. Dr. Porter is engaged in writing a monograph exploring radio in pre-1945 rural America.  

Dr. Donna K. Pearson is Associate Dean of Student Services and Assessment, a professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of North Dakota (www.und.edu) and teaches Social Studies Methods in the Department of Teaching, Leadership and Professional Practices. Her research interests include inter- and cross-cultural competencies, international/comparative education, civic and international professional development. Additionally, she co-authored Interculturalization and Teacher Education: From Theory to Practice published by Routledge of Taylor and Francis.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Amanda Hughes

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

For many Americans, when the term “amendment” is mentioned, our United States Constitution often comes to mind. Among the document’s twenty-seven, most are aware of the First Amendment, especially the part about free speech. Another popular amendment is the Second Amendment: the right to bear arms. These Amendments to our United States Constitution have even gained nicknames such as “1A” and “2A.”

Unfortunately, beyond the popular terms of our national Constitution, too little understanding exists about it, including reasons for limiting changes to the document. This is true as well for our state constitutions, though amended more often. Unless a major news story runs where a constitutional topic goes viral, little more is studied to gain a complete context especially for the true meaning and history behind the Framers’ intentions.

No doubt, words have consequences. Our Founders knew changes to the United States Constitution would be necessary, and carefully thought through how these changes should be accomplished.

For example, they understood the wording in the Declaration of Independence “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” foreshadowed and necessitated an eventual end to slavery.

The process the founders set up to change the Constitution is grounded in the knowledge that passions of the moment can often lead to self-destructive acts. The founders were students of history, and understood that well-intentioned appearances, as if modern or forward looking, may invite a repeat of proven failures. An obvious example of this type of repetition is found in the popular sentiment of some of today’s younger generation to “try” socialism in America, an idea only deemed positive for those who do not study socialism’s history.

There is much confusion and misunderstanding about our U.S. Constitution. Some advocate getting rid of it or overhauling it to the point of unrecognition.

Discernment From History

How much should our national, United States Constitution get amended? How often should state constitutions be amended? The answer lies in world history.

America’s Founders were so well read, so thoroughly studied in world history that they understood what worked in governments and what did not, what caused governments to rise or fall. They saw patterns, consistencies resulting from choices regardless of where attempted in the world. Each would have a positive or negative end based on natural, immutable truths. For example, they learned that power must be divided among the people. They learned why power in the hands of a few created tyrannies, but allowing for many governments would divide power broadly and let the people be their own government. This also let the people protect themselves from the government they elected.

The 27 amendments in nearly 232 years since the signing of our United States Constitution reveals few revisions. It sets up a foundation for a national government to preserve the workings of each individual state, with their own governing bodies, while uniting the states as one nation.1

Our states, for the most part, used their early adopted constitutions to set up a basic form of government. Later state constitutions received more ability to make amendments due to amendment processes added.

The State Constitutions Project conducted with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Economics Department of the University of Maryland through the office of Professor John Wallace cites there have been nearly 150 state constitutions, amended roughly 12,000 times, with both constitutions and amendments containing about 15,000 pages.2

Any time amendments to our national Constitution or state constitutions are suggested, serious consideration must be given. Learned history rewards its students with discernment. So what will the altering of words of our national and state constitutions truly mean and what consequences will come as a result of changes made?

States grapple over whether to amend their constitutions regardless of method. Legislatures recognize that making changes might conflict with designing appropriate laws regarding public safety or health.3 The more amendments are made, the more difficult it is constitutionally to respond with what lawmaking citizens really want. Difficulties arise in having to work around expanding changes that should be made through the legislative process with voter participation. Continual changes to a state constitution turns a framework for governing into muddied, burdensome, unnavigable waters without clear boundaries from which to design or maintain representative government.

How the amendments affect state and local governing over time, and especially impact the ability of citizens to remain involved in their own government, must carry the weight of steady caution for the states. The more changes, the more difficult it can be, more convoluted, quickly turning accountability and control by the governed into control of the governed.

When the early American governing foundation was formed, voters agreed to abide by it, doing what provides stability among the systems formed and approved by both those in leadership and those who would be governed by it. The system was formed where those in leadership would have to abide through positions of serving, by their own very laws. At least, it is supposed to be that way if we maintain it. Within these foundations the people protect their own freedom, including their own government by adopting societal, bedrock standards that work and holding to them.

Worth Preserving

Without knowing whether Americans born after our Founders would hold onto what was started for the very lives of those who would come behind them, “ourselves and our posterity,” our founders risked their own lives and fortunes to produce the United States Constitution. Believing it so crucial to accomplish, they placed in its Preamble to “secure the Blessings of Liberty” so that the words of the entire document would do so for every American. They knew some changes might be needed, but argued over, and crafted with great caution, a document that could withstand errant people. It is so good a national constitution that it is the oldest, still operating constitution in existence in the world.

Risking everything while depending on a growing nation to hold onto religion and morality, the Constitution Framers worked hard to design a document that would stand the test of time for Americans to keep their republic because it would take a moral people to maintain a country based on free will of the individual. Any other adopts a tyranny, meaning control over each individual’s choices so that people become as property, disposable, viewed with little to no value. This is what America’s Founders wanted to avoid, aiming not to repeat what they escaped. With that warning in mind, they based the Constitution upon lasting institutions, first principles which are never outdated.

Our national Constitution is not a document to be worshiped since it was crafted by fallible people. It is, however, an integral part of America’s history potent today because of the governing stability it provides. It deserves preserving as a solid foundation to protect Americans today from falling into the public policy traps it was written to prevent. America takes this for granted at her own peril.

Our nation works because of the type of Constitution we have adopted as a country and because of the type of government it sets up for our states and especially for each, individual American. These are worth preserving and only altering with the utmost care and discretion.

Amanda Hughes serves as Outreach Director, and 90 Day Study Director, for Constituting America. She is author of Who Wants to Be Free?, and a story contributor for the anthologies Loving Moments, and Moments with Billy Graham.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

1Jennie Drage Bowser. “Constitutions: Amend With Care” State Legislatures Magazine, Sept. 2015.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/constitution-amend-with-care.aspx

2John Joseph Wallis, NBER/University of Maryland State Constitution Project. www.stateconstitutions.umd.edu

3Garner, James Wilford. “Amendment of State Constitutions.” The American Political Science Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 1907, pp. 213–247. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1944385.

Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Having felt the pinch of rule within an empire by a would-be absolute monarch wielding the powers of a modern state, Americans needed to solve two problems at once. United, they could depict themselves as a rattlesnake telling the world, “Don’t tread on me.” Disunited, severed into thirteen pieces, as depicted in an equally famous illustration of the period, they would die, prey to one or more of the surrounding empires. Americans needed a modern state to defend themselves against other modern states. Divided, they would be conquered, even as the American Indian nations and tribes had been, and would continue to be conquered, whenever they attempted to resist ‘modernity.’

At the same time, they had won their independence in resistance to tyranny, in resistance to an overbearing modern state that denied them their rights not only as Englishmen but as human beings. The natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness require self-government, civil society. Civil or genuinely political life, the association of citizens who share rule with one another, requires small associations—families, towns, city-states. How can civil society exist in a large, centralized, modern state, the very thing needed for self-defense in a world dominated by such states—a ‘Eurocentric’ world in which men armed with the instruments of modern science, very much including the new, Machiavellian science of politics, of statism, was already extending its tentacles onto every continent? Europeans ruled not only with gunpowder-propelled projectiles but with a new form of ruling organization, one sufficient to divide, conquer, and perhaps most crucially rule even a vast empire like China, or a subcontinent of such staggering diversity as India.

Statism and self-government at the same time: that sounds very much like a circle never to be squared. They found their answer in another institutional device: federalism.

Writing only a few decades before the American founding, the political philosopher Montesquieu had written, “If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; it is destroyed by an internal vice”—typically, corruption. What is needed is a “constitution that has all the internal advantages of republican government and the external force of a monarchy,” namely, “the federal republic.” Each element of this republic should itself be commercial-republican—peaceful and moderate, not a warrior-state like that of Alexander the Great. Each element should have liberty, which “in no way consists in doing what one wants” but rather in “having the power to do what one should want to do and in no way being constrained to do what one should not want to do.” What one should want to do is to observe “the law of nature, which makes everything tend toward the preservation of species,” the “law of natural enlightenment, which wants us to do to others what we would want to have done to us,” and “the law that forms political societies,” which aims at the perpetuation of those societies. Certain moral virtues inhere in liberty itself. Republicanism consists of citizens who rule one another reciprocally, doing to one another as they would have done to themselves; federation enables republics to follow the political law of self-perpetuation.

If one were to draw a diagram representing a modern state, it might look like a wagon wheel: a solid border or rim; a central government or hub; strong but limited lines of control or spokes extending from the center to the border, reinforcing the border but emanating from the rim. But if civil society consisting of local associations and institutions exists in the spaces between the spokes, how can this state be republican, an association of self-governing citizens, and not mere subjects?  A return to feudalism would solidify the spaces, widen the spokes at the expense of weakening the hub.  Federalism retains the integrity of both the central state and the constituent, smaller states. In the United States Constitution, the central government gains certain enumerated powers, including the power to raise revenues from within the territories of the states without the consent of the state legislatures and governors and the power to regulate interstate commerce. The states retain powers not enumerated, albeit limited by their republican regimes, guaranteed by Article IV, section IV. State governments were assured a voice in the councils of the central government by their power of electing two representatives each to the United States Senate. The peoples of those states had their voice in the House of Representatives, elected by popular vote within voting districts located within the boundaries of each state. Additionally, of course, the people of each state also elected their representatives to the legislatures which chose the U. S. Senators, making the entire system republican either directly or indirectly. Neither the state governments nor the central governments exercise sovereignty over the people; James Monroe titled his book, The People the Sovereigns.

To return to the image of the wheel, in a federal-republican state we see the powers of the central government as strong filaments running through the spokes, which are the constituent states of the federation. If one shifts the image from a wheel to the more dynamic example of a power grid, the powers of the sovereign people are energies that run through intertwined, mutually strengthening wires. One wire depicts the government of your state; the other depicts the government of your country as a whole—the central government. Both derive their energy from the same source, the people, united through the political union of their states, each itself a political union encompassing smaller ‘unions’ from families to civil associations to counties.

The sovereign people in a republican regime will rule and be ruled, therefore more likely to do as they would be done by. Their way of life will be genuinely political, civic, fostering habits of mind and heart that incline toward civility because each citizen knows he needs the others and wants to do harm to none of them. At the same time, such a people will have the strength to defend themselves against other states and empires, far more centralized and far more ambitious for conquest.

For more than a century, the constitutional republicanism established by the Founders increasingly has given way to administrative government at the national, state, county, and even the local levels. As a result, Americans have needed to deliberate together less. The decline of civility in what remains of American political conversation may well originate in the decline of genuine civic life, genuine self-government, as part of the American way of life.

Will Morrisey is William and Patricia LaMothe Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College, and is a Constituting America Fellow; his books include Self-Government, The American Theme: Presidents of the Founding and Civil War and The Dilemma of Progressivism: How Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson Reshaped the American Regime of Self-Government.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Will Morrisey

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Why have ‘states’ in the Union, anyway? True, the colonies predated the United States, the colonies became states, and ratification of the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution proceeded on a state-by-state basis. But many municipalities preceded the states; some existed before the British wrestled control of them from the French. And, as Gary Porter explained in a recent essay here, courts in most states regard all or many of the municipalities to be creatures of the state for legal purposes, even if historians beg to differ. Why not treat states the same way? Whatever practical barriers to this there may be, what is wrong with it in principle? After all, many countries around the world have commercial-republican regimes while nonetheless treating the provinces as, well, provincial. Why shouldn’t we do the same?

If the distinctive human characteristic is the ability to speak and to reason, then what is good for such a being must not only allow but encourage it to exercise that ability, just as it must be good for a horse to have room to run. To live in societies ruled by tyrants terrorizing their subjects with brute force must be bad for human beings, somehow beneath their real nature—hence the adjective ‘brute.’ By nature, human beings belong in civil societies, societies in which they may speak and reason together, deliberate with one another on what they should do, how they should act. Old-fashioned mothers would tell unruly children to ‘be civil,’ to ‘keep a civil tongue in your head.’ A civil tongue is one indirectly but closely attached to a reasoning brain, a brain more fully developed in accordance with its nature than the brain of a madman or a dolt, to say nothing of a barking pit bull or a chorusing frog.

Civil society begins in the home. Parents command children, ‘for their own good.’ But father and mother themselves properly form a civil relationship, ruling one another by mutual consent, by shared responsibilities, authority, and obligations. Outside the home, what we call civil society works the same way, as fellow citizens form businesses, churches, clubs, and schools. Families and civil associations alike govern themselves deliberately, reasonably—insofar as they are genuinely civil, institutions fitted for mature human beings. Children learn to do the same thing, choosing up sides for games, ‘ganging up’ (for better or for worse), imitating the adults (also for better or for worse).

You learn to be civil in small groups. The earliest political societies were small, outgrowths of extended families or clans which united with one another for convenience and protection. The polis or city-state rules itself, perhaps as a democracy, more often as an oligarchy, sometimes as a monarchy. Whatever its regime, the city-state occupies a small territory and consists of a small population; in ancient Greece, they seldom consisted of more than 30,000 souls. Given this small size, political life mattered. There was nowhere to hide from whomever ruled; whether it was the one, the few, or the many, whether he or they were good or bad, the ruler(s) could and did reach out and in many respects determine your way of life. No adult could be indifferent to politics because everyone felt the effects of political rule.

City-states faced a serious, ultimately fatal threat. If children and adults like to ‘gang up,’ what is to prevent the most ambitious, if perhaps the less reasonable, among them from gathering together not merely to tyrannize the city-state but to conquer other city-states? If, say, a tyrant gains control of Macedonia, masters the nearby city-states, and sets sail for Greece, what is to prevent him from conquering it? In the event, nothing, as Alexander the Great proved not only in Greece but throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. As did many others: The Old Testament is full of Egyptians, Ethiopians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, the New Testament full of Romans. A small people could retain its self-government among the empires only if God chose to protect it. It couldn’t go it alone.

What is more, small places foster political passions as much as they foster rational deliberation. If I care intensely about who rules me, because whoever that is he will make me feel his rule, I may gang up with others to make sure that we are the hammers, not the nails. In The Federalist, Publius remarks that small republics were as often as short in their lives as they were violent in their deaths. When not ruined by foreign conquerors, they succumbed to suicide-by-faction. Although human beings may be rational by nature, they often fail to live up to their nature. “Why has government been instituted at all?” Publius asks. “Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”

The problem only intensified in the modern world, the world of Machiavelli. As an official of the Italian city-state of Florence, Machiavelli became impatient with smallness, with puny states which squabbled with one another, incapable of extending their power beyond their own small territories. He conceived not so much of another empire but of lo stato, a governing body extending over the whole of the Italian nation. Lo stato might be governed by one or many, be a principality or a republic, but whichever regime it had, it would be able to extract substantial numbers of soldiers and revenues from all parts of Italy.  Even the larger nations of Europe—the French, the Turks—did not have lo stato; they were feudal societies, in which monarchs reigned but found themselves constrained by ‘the few,’ by titled aristocrats, by churches or mosques—by elites of various descriptions, all bent on aggrandizing themselves at the expense of the central government. Machiavelli recommended what we would now call a strategy of ‘state-building’—of bring ‘the few’ to heel, extending the administrative apparatus of the central government into the provinces and subordinating those provinces to it. Once a few rulers took the advice he preserved in his books (he died powerless), once the Tudors in England and the Bourbons in France began to put an end to feudalism, all European nations needed their own states, if they were to avoid conquest. On that continent, the Hohenzollern-Bismarck-Prussian forging of the many small German states into one nation-state proved the most salient fact of the nineteenth century, and the most ominous fact of the first half of the twentieth century. Without states of their own, European nations would have fallen under German rule, as Germans aimed at reconstituted a new and much more malevolent form of the Holy Roman Empire, no more holy or Roman than the original, but very much more an empire.

Will Morrisey is William and Patricia LaMothe Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College, and is a Constituting America Fellow; his books include Self-Government, The American Theme: Presidents of the Founding and Civil War and The Dilemma of Progressivism: How Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson Reshaped the American Regime of Self-Government.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Jennie Jones

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Few factors are more fundamental to our early state constitutions, declarations of rights, and bills of rights than the Christian theory and practice of the right, or duty, of resisting injustice and tyranny.  The right of resistance is rooted in the Biblical principle summarized by the Apostle Peter: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).  Civil government is one of the kinds of governments ordained by God (others being self-government, family government, church government, and employment-based government), and the “powers that be” are ordained by God, so every soul is to be subject to them, not to resist them (Romans 13:1,2).

But it does not follow from this that the ruled are obligated to obey absolutely everything that the rulers of civil government (or any kind of government) command.  Being ordained by God does not authorize government officials to usurp the place or authority of God.  Being ordained by God does not exempt the ruler from the standards by which all men’s words and actions are judged: the standards decreed by God in His law.  Furthermore, the ruler, like everyone else, is sinful: in the very core of his being, he longs to replace God with himself and God’s standards of good and evil with his own (Genesis 3:5).  Neither the providence of God nor the judgment of his Christian peers enables any man, or any ruler of civil government to act without sin in all that he does.  These highly unflattering truths are hard sayings, but they are essential to good government.

Moreover, the ruler of civil government is not to use the power of the sword to be a terror to good works but to evil deeds: he is the minister of God to the ruled for good, not for evil (Romans 13:3-7).  The ruler is God’s minister, or servant, not his own.  The rulers and the ruled are under the authority of God and His law.  God’s law is the authoritative standard that defines good and evil, the ethical laws of “nature,” and love.  Hence the Apostle Paul summarizes God’s law as the standard by which men can know that they are following the law of love and working no ill to their neighbors (Romans 13:8-10).  The ruler who enacts evil laws that violate God’s standards of law exceeds his authority, rebels against God, and violates the terms of his ministry under God.  To the extent that he violates God’s legal standards he is unworthy of honor, for Christians are not bound to honor or obey that which is evil (or he who commands that which is evil) but rather that which is good.[1]

A ruler who systematically violates God’s law—God’s standards and definitions of justice (and injustice)—is rebelling against God.  He is systematically scrapping God’s standards of good and evil and replacing them with his own.  He is a tyrant.

A tyrant is to be resisted by his subjects, and if he persists in his tyranny, may be removed from office.  Medieval, Reformation, and later Christian theorists differed about who should undertake this process of resistance and (if necessary) revolution.[2]  Most held that the “lesser civil magistrates,” lower-ranking civil government officials—who are also among the “powers that be” who are ordained by God—are to lead the people in this process of resistance (the constitutional theory).  Some maintained that the people, private individuals or the majority of citizens, are to do what is Biblically permissible to resist or overthrow the tyrant (the private right theory).  Such was a long tradition of Christian resistance theory dating back to the medieval period.  It was:

  • fundamental to the action of the barons led by Archbishop Steven Langton, who gave England the Magna Carta in 1215;
  • revived in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation;
  • practiced in the Dutch war for independence from the Spanish tyrant Philip II;
  • exemplified in the Petition of Right (1628);
  • taught and practiced in the English Civil Wars (1642-1651);
  • maintained (after a fashion) against the king in the Glorious Revolution (1688);
  • asserted in the English Bill of Rights (1689);
  • continued in the English colonies in America;
  • and preached in sermons before congregations and public officials during the movement to resist British tyranny.[3]

The right to petition rulers for a redress of grievances was a basic part of this tradition of Christian resistance theory.  The colonies followed this theory in resisting the king-in-Parliament and in their War for Independence.  This theory continued to be widespread in early America before and long after the framing and ratifying of the Constitution of the United States (and, of course, of our national Bill of Rights).  At least six states—New Hampshire, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts—stated this right explicitly in their fundamental laws, and thereby implied the people’s right to use all legitimate means of resistance endorsed by that tradition.  The Maryland Declaration of Rights (1776) phrased it pointedly:

IV. That all persons invested with the legislative or executive powers of government are the trustees of the public, and, as such, accountable for their conduct; wherefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought, to reform the old or establish a new government. The doctrine of non-resistance, against arbitrary power and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

Where not stated explicitly, this doctrine was implicit in all the states’ constitutions and declarations—which owed their existence to exercising precisely such a conviction.

The right and duty of the states to resist the central government was originally intended to apply to future civil government officials. The Framers gave the states the means of protecting their people and the only legitimate means of changing the Constitution—the amendment process and convention of the states stated in Article V. That right and that means still apply. State and local officials have a duty to resist injustice and tyranny imposed upon their people by our central government. American citizens need to remind not only candidates for federal office, but also candidates for state office, of this fundamental constitutional reality, right, and duty. That is the only way (humanly speaking) we will reclaim and preserve our freedom.

Jennie Jones, Assistant Professor, American Government and History, Weatherford College

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Romans 13:1-7 is frequently misinterpreted.  Including verses 8-10 of Romans 13 makes it easier to avoid misinterpreting the first seven verses, but a reading of the Rev. James M. Willson’s The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government; An Exposition of Romans 13:1-7 (Powder Springs, Georgia: American Vision Press, [1853] 2009) should eliminate all controversy over this crucial passage, for it destroys the misinterpretations that were fashionable in the early nineteenth century and which are too fashionable now.

[2] Revolution to depose the tyrant, not revolution to overthrow the religious and social or economic order, is the intention here, for to overthrow a religious, social or economic order based upon Biblical standards of justice would be sinful and unjust.

[3] See Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume Two: The Age of Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Julian H. Franklin, trans. and ed., Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza and Mornay (New York: Pegasus, 1968); Junius Brutus, A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants; or, of the Lawful Power of the Prince Over the People and of the People Over the Prince: Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (St. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Still Waters Revival Books, 1989); and Richard L. Greaves, Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation; Studies in the Thought of John Knox (Grand Rapids: Christian University Press, 1980).

Guest Essayist: Andrew Langer

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Sovereignty is the very essence of what makes a “nation” a “nation”—a free and independent state in which the people of that nation exercise total control over the governance of that nation.  Clear and enforceable borders are an essential element of that sovereignty.  Without them, the nation itself cannot be defined, and the sovereignty of that nation falls as a matter of course.

These truisms have been bedrock concepts of both political science and international law for centuries, essentially tracing their roots to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.  A nation’s sovereignty is, in fact, enshrined in the central body of international law, the United Nations Charter, which says that, “nothing should authorise intervention in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”

But without enforceable borders, what determines the “domestic jurisdiction” for a state? And just how can a state govern itself if its borders are not secure?

Europe, and the EU member nations have been grappling with these issues—especially with the waves of refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.  Once a refugee arrives in Southern Europe, that refugee essentially has unfettered access to other EU member nations, which has created huge problems in public policy—from managing essential services to crime to dealing with Europe’s well-known social welfare state.

This was an important factor in Great Britain’s decision to leave the European Union—the pressure being placed on the United Kingdom to further open their borders—as the British people were facing a huge threat from immigrants sneaking through the Chunnel from refugee camps formed right outside it.

It is not as though the world hasn’t been well-aware of these problems for years. In fact, in the late 1990’s, celebrated free-market economist Milton Friedman remarked in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that, “It’s just obvious… you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”

This is not to say that a nation should have closed borders—far from it.  One of the things that makes America the most exceptional nation on the planet is that anyone can migrate here (legally) and become an American.

But when you have a combination of a labyrinthine immigration system and you essentially fail to punish illegal migration, you create massive disincentives towards doing the right thing.  And you exacerbate those disincentives when you are promising all-manner of giveaways to those who are considering the arduous journey of migration.

However, the impact to the public treasury is only one aspect of this.  An essential aspect of sovereignty is the ability of a nation to control the time, manner, place, and method of migration.  This allows a country to figure out the best way to absorb new populations, to create policies to assimilate those who migrate into a nation’s legal and political culture, and to ensure that the overall security of that country isn’t compromised.

Otherwise, what ensues is the undermining of the very things that make that nation what it is.

Founding father (and law professor to Thomas Jefferson) George Wythe believed fervently, for instance, in the importance of an educated populace.  Without that education, without that understanding of who we are as an American people, the republic would collapse.

So, now assume that you have a situation in which illegal migration is incentivized.  You have a little in the way of punishment for those who migrate illegally, it is an inordinately expensive proposition to remove the millions who are illegally present.  You have made it easy for those ineligible to participate in the public decision-making of this nation to participate.  You are apportioning representation within the political process in a manner which includes those who have no legal voice, so that the voice of the citizenry is diminished. All the while, those who are within a nation illegally may not have any knowledge, understanding, appreciation for or allegiance to the principles upon which that nation was created.

As Margaret Thatcher quipped, “When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you will always have the consent of Paul.”  And when you have an influx of illegal immigrants into a country and give them, through both action and inaction, a voice in the political process, it is a shortcut to the destruction of that country.

Without borders, sovereignty ceases to exist.  Without that sovereignty, there is no nation.

Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty and host of the Andrew Langer Show on WBAL NewsRadio 1090.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Signing of the Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull, displayed in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

Click Here to Hear Actress Janine Turner read the Declaration of Independence!

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

From the National Archives website: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html


IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Read more

Guest Essayist: Michael C. Maibach

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The Roots of Our Debt & Dysfunction Today

President Franklin Roosevelt:  “Fortunately for the stability of our Nation, is was already apparent that the vastness of the territory presented geographical and climatic differences which gave to the States wide differences in the nature of their industry, their agriculture and their commerce… Thus, it was clear to the framers of our Constitution that the greatest possible liberty of self-government must be given to each State, and that any national administration attempting to make all laws for the whole Nation, such as was wholly practical in Great Britain, would inevitably result at some future time in a dissolution of the Union itself.  The preservation of this “Home Rule” by the States is not a cry of jealous Commonwealths seeking aggrandizement at the expense of sister States.  It is a fundamental necessity if we are to remain a united country.”

After winning a war against the world’s greatest power, our Founders wrote what is today the world’s oldest, and many consider, its best Constitution.  Yet 70% of Americans now say we are on the “wrong track” because Washington has become highly dysfunctional.  The list of federal failures is now painfully familiar:  Wall Street bailouts, failed “Stimulus”, “Fast and Furious”, “Cash for Clunkers”, corruption in the IRS, FBI and Justice Department, perhaps 20 million illegal immigrants, crisis at the border, the impending collapse of Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, Congressional gridlock… and $22 trillion in debt!  To Americans, these are clear signals of systemic failure in the federal government.  We owe it to our Nation to examine how we fell off the wise course our Founders charted for us in 1789, and what we might do to improve self-governance.

A clue to our failure is found in our Nation’s name:  The United States of America.  We are a nation of 50 states – not one central government as found in France or Egypt.  The more we’ve centralized taxation, regulation and power in Washington, the more we have witnessed systemic failure.  This is because most problems are best addressed by local and state government – as Jefferson told us.  The ideas of federalism and subsidiarity need to become fashionable again.

Federalism and the decentralization of factions (interest groups) were at the heart of the Founders’ plan (Federalist #10 and #51/Madison).  Governmental duties were best divided between federal (national) and state governments.  The Founders also believed government should be limited, supporting “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without managing its every aspect.  They assumed self-reliant citizens of strong character and durable families would do much of society’s heavy lifting through businesses and voluntary civic organizations serving others.

During the ratification debates of 1787-88, James Madison wrote in Federalist #45 of American federalism: “The powers delegated… to the federal (national) government are few and defined. Those which remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects such as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce… The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

The government in Washington was to look outward at other nations and markets and keep harmony among the states.  The 50 states were to look inward towards internal improvements and citizen services.  Here are the major issues our President and Congress face as their Outward Agenda today:

  • National Security:               Russia – North Korea – China – Cyber Attacks… Iran & the Middle East.
  • International Trade:           China –  Steel & Aluminum Tariffs – BREXIT – EU Trade…
  • North America:                   Trade – A new NAFTA – Border Security & Illegal Immigration.
  • US Immigration:                 DACA & 20+ Million Illegal Immigrants – Failing Federal Policy.
  • Mexico:                                 Illegal Gun & Drug Running + Sex Trafficking + Cartel Violence.
  • Latin America:                     Marxist Regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua & Cuba. MS-13 Gangs.
  • EU:                                         US-EU Trade – Euro Crisis – EU Internal Strife – Future of NATO.
  • North Korea:                        Missile Tests & Nuclear Weapons.
  • Russia:                                   Possible New Cold War.
  • Israel:                                     Failed Palestinian Peace Talks – New US Embassy in Jerusalem.
  • Africa/Libya/Sudan:             Failed States – Civil Wars.
  • Syria:                                      A Seven-Year Civil War – Islamic State – ISIS.
  • Terrorism:                             Across many continents…
  • Egypt & Turkey:                    Uncertain Allies.
  • Iran:                                        US-Iran Tensions – Threat of a New Nuclear Power.
  • Iraq:                                        Another Failed State?
  • Pakistan:                                Strained Relationship with India & the US.
  • Afghanistan:                          Eighteen Years of War, No End in Sight.
  • India:                                      The Promise of Our Improved Relationship.

The Founders (and we) might ask how our current leaders in Washington can effectively and prudently deal with this formidable array of external challenges? But now let’s look at Washington’s Inward Agenda today:

  • Social Security:                       Funding begins to fail in 2030.
  • Medicare:                                Begins to fail in 2024.
  • Dodd-Frank:                            Financial services regulations: 20,000 pages.
  • Affordable Care Act:              US health care scheme now failing.  20,000 pages, 18% of GDP.
  • Justice & FBI:                           Major charges of corruption.
  • IRS:                                            Administers US tax code of 76,000 pages.  2012-4 NGO scandal.
  • Farm Bill:                                  Huge farm subsidies. Food stamps for 30+ million Americans.
  • Education:                                US Ed Dept. requires all K-12 schools to complete 30+ reports annually.
  • College Loans:                         US Gov’t makes all college loans.  Student debt: $1.5T > credit card debt.
  • Housing:                                   US Housing & Urban Development Dept. = $40b annual budget.
  • Minimum Wage:                     Also dealt with at the state level, closer to regional economic realities.
  • Unemployment Insurance:   Partially managed at the state level.
  • Transportation:                       Highways, bridges, ports, rail, urban transit… all in need of major repairs.

Our Founders would be astonished at the domestic focus of our $4T federal budget today:

  • OUTWARD: 42% of Federal Budget                  INWARD:  58% of Federal Budget
  • 20%   –  Defense                                                        22%   –  Social Security
  • 15%    –  Federal Agencies                                        23%   –  Medicare + Medicaid
  • 7%      –  Interest on a $22T National Debt           13%   –  Grants to the States

The argument here is a “managerial argument” for a return to federalism.  Washington has “too much on its plate” to do any of its work well.  Moreover, Congress does not have the time or staff to effectively oversee this colossus of a government.  Indeed, Congress has only passed one annual federal budget (“regular order”) in 20 years!  The Founders would not see the wisdom in a federal Department of Housing, or of Education that deals with K-12.  Housing and K-12 schools are best left to the states…

Much of the work now done by Washington can be better managed by our 50 states and/or local governments, or not done at all.  Outsourcing of other federal work would allow the injection of competitive bidding, merit pay, and innovation in technology and service delivery.  Today virtually no one can fire a federal employee – even if they fail to show up for work!  Federal jobs have become life-time sinecures, while average tax-paying Americans have less job security than in the past.

Absent a major move away from the federal income tax system such as a national sales tax, a financing formula to return to American federalism might roughly break this way:  The IRS would leave a certain percentage of the federal income taxes it collects within the states where collected.  The percentage would be decided by the kinds of federal services that would be largely transferred to the states.  Those states that have a healthy business climate would see their share of IRS funds grow – rewarding their positive policies for growth and job creation.  Federal funds left in each state would be allocated by the 50 state legislatures, which would move much of this funding to counties and cities for such things as K-12 education, housing, food stamps, intra-state transportation infrastructure, and other “inward looking” human services.  Healthcare engagement would remain for now in federal hands, so deep is it imbedded in our lives via Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPS, the VA, et al. While initial transfers back to the states would be modest, e.g. most all HUD services and programs, mindsets among citizens, the news media and elected officials would gradually shift to more robust “distributed government” – to coin a term we used as the mainframe computer world gave way to the PC and then mobile hand-held devices.  Ironically, while the power of information technology has become more and more decentralized and empowering, Washington DC has centralized more and more of our government.  We want to reverse this trend and reflect what is happening in the Age of Information.

There is also a “societal or political argument” for a return to American federalism.  Before Roe vs. Wade in 1973, states had 50 different abortion laws.  And in turn, before that 1973 decision, the entire career of a Supreme Court nominee was reviewed by the US Senate as to their suitability for this lifetime judicial office.  Since Roe in 1973 our Nation’s politics have become sharply and continuously divided on the question of “life”.  Given this, the central question asked about all new Supreme Court nominees is their view on abortion.  Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg has suggested that our Republic might be better off if this issue had been left to the states, in keeping with 150+ years of American jurisprudence.

Health care is another highly acrimonious “nationalized, politicized issue” at the center of Washington rancor since the Affordable Care Act was enacted.  An alternative to a single federal health care law such as “Medicare for all” would be to allow each state to fashion their own solutions.  If Massachusetts chose to have a single payer system, so be it.  If Utah chooses a free-market health care system, that should be their right.  We’ll then see by way of “the laboratories of state government” what works for people and providers, and what fails.  Real world experiences are always superior to theories and “one size fits all” approaches.  Surely New York will have different health care solutions than Wyoming.  And other public services like K-12 education can best be left to the states and local governments – and parents.

A Renewal of American Federalism can and will return many of these “inward looking” issues to where they belong in the American regime.  Washington can then more effectively deal with Iran, ISIS, North Korea, China, NAFTA, the current crisis at the border… and other enormous “outward looking” challenges.  The Congress would then have more time to oversee federal agencies and pass a real budget.  To enhance oversight even more, perhaps the Congress can enact a two-year federal budget during its first year and dedicate the second year of each Congress to oversight.  Indeed, a new joint Congressional Oversight Committee might be formed which by its rules has but one mission – looking for ways to reduce or phase out parts of the federal government that are no longer useful.  Every American company that is competitive constantly looks at ways to re-direct people and resources.  Congress never seems to focus on what the federal government can do less of…

When federalism fails in a large republic, the success of the government itself comes into question.  The Founders knew the enemies of our republic were factions demanding more and more from government and their fellow citizens.  These include farmers, seniors, all sorts of industries, homeowners, doctors, patients… students.  Once factions are nationalized, their combined negative effects on the economic and political health of a Nation can be harsh and in the case of health care, financially catastrophic.  National elections become bidding wars for the support of various interest groups.  Our $22T national debt is stark evidence of this, as our leaders print money rather than make difficult choices.

In Federalist #10, Madison wrote: “Among the numerous advantages of a well-constructed Union [federalism], none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence [damaging effects] of faction…”  To return to the Founders’ plan, we must renew American Federalism and rethink what Washington is responsible for in an era of debt, flat demographic growth, and intense global competition.  Civic success begins with virtuous citizens rising above the factions of which they may be a part to support what is best for our Nation.  It is time to return to American Federalism.

Michael C. Maibach resides in Alexandria, Virginia.  He is a Board member of the James Wilson Institute, the Washington, Jefferson, Madison Institute, and the Caesar Rodney Institute of Delaware.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: KrisAnne Hall

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

“The greatest power on earth.” –James Madison

The three branches of our federal government possess a co-equal authority to apply checks and balances to protect the specific delegation of powers in order maintain separation of powers.  However, to propose that the only check upon the abuse of power by the federal government is within the federal government is  absurd.  The drafters of our Constitution, and more relevantly those who ratified the Constitution wrote extensively about their concerns of a possibility of an expanding and consuming federal government over time.  They knew from their own history that a government cannot be trusted to check itself and a government whose only check and balance is itself is kingdom regardless of the name.  This is the power of the Constitutional Republic; that there exists a powerful check upon federal power outside the federal government.

In 1789, then Representative James Madison gave an address to the House of Representatives where he explained that the people need not fear a possible overreaching, ever expanding power originating in the federal government as long as we hold fast to the limits of the Constitution.  His chief point in this declaration was that there exists a great check of federal power, one that exists outside the federal government that will be the greatest guardian of the people’s liberties.  Madison says:

“…the state legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a federal government admit the state legislatures to be sure guardians of the people’s liberty.”

Because the States were created as independent Sovereign governments; because the States created the Constitution; because the States are the delegators of the federal power, Madison is explaining that the State legislators will not only be compelled to watch the operation of the federal government very closely but they will also possess the authority to make sure that the federal government does not abuse its power or steal power from the States.  Madison says, this relationship of higher power and lower power will create a duty within the State legislators to protect the rights of the people by ensuring that their creation never operates outside its limited and defined delegation of powers.

Madison repeats this principle of the external check of federal power in his Virginia Resolution of 1789 and Virginia Assembly Report of 1800:

“…in the case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted…the States…have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose…” Virginia Resolution of 1789

“…that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution [The States], to judge whether the compact [The Constitution] has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority as well as by another–by the judiciary as well as by the executive, or the legislature.” Virginia Assembly Report of 1800

What ought to add to the State’s obligation to keep its creation, the federal government, under control, exists in the fact that the Declaration of Independence identifies the sole purpose of the creation of the States is to “secure the Rights” of the people.  A federal government unlimited in its power, or limited only by its own will or whim is a totalitarian government, putting the rights of the people at risk.  When the States are not keeping their creation within its limited and defined bounds, they are failing to secure the rights of the people.  Thomas Jefferson articulates this danger in 1812:

“when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another…If the States look with apathy on this silent descent of their government into the gulf which is to swallow all, we have only to weep over the human character formed uncontrollable but by a rod of iron…”

KrisAnne Hall began her career as a biochemist, Russian linguist for the US Army, and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Florida College of Law.  KrisAnne was a prosecutor for the State of Florida and practiced First Amendment Law for a prominent national non-profit Law firm. KrisAnne is now the founder of LibertyFirstUniversity.com and travels the country teaching the foundational principles of Liberty and our Constitutional Republic. KrisAnne is the author of 6 books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights; she also has a nationally syndicated radio show.  KrisAnne has been featured on C-SPAN TV and C-SPAN Book TV. KrisAnne can be found at www.KrisAnneHall.com

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: KrisAnne Hall

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

History and experience tell us that creating a government is not as much of a  challenge as maintaining a limited and defined one.  The drafters of our Constitution took that mission to heart when they created our Constitutional Republic; they not only created a limited and defined government but gave the people the best means by which to check and balance that federal power.

James Madison, Father of the Constitution and fourth president of these united States addressed the Congress in 1792 and explained,

“I sir have always conceived—I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived—it is still more fully known and more material to observe, that those who ratified the Constitution conceived—that this not an indefinite government…but a limited government tied down to the specific powers.”

When Americans speak of “checks and balances” they generally think of the internal checks of the Congress upon the Judiciary, or perhaps the Judiciary upon the Executive.  However, the form of government created by those who ratified the Constitution contains a much more powerful external check, one that James Madison called “the greatest power on earth.”  Understanding that most powerful check and balance requires an understanding of three foundational facts: 1. The creation of the States, 2. The creation of the Constitution, and 3.  The creation of the central government.

1. The creation of the States

The founding States of our Union were not the product of a few elite rich men sitting in a pub divining ways to consolidate power unto themselves.  Our States were created when the Continental Congress debated, voted, and ratified into law the Lee Resolution on July 2, 1776.  The Lee Resolution contained a three step process to declaring, establishing, and maintaining our independence from Great Britain.  The first paragraph to the Lee Resolution would become, in part, the last paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.  The first step to becoming independent is simply to declare that independence:

“Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

By RIGHT our governments are no longer colonies, but by declaration of that Right are recognized to be “free and independent States.” Simply put, we are not property of the king, but we know that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.  Since we are not owned by the king, we need not ask his permission to be free, we must simply declare it.  Through the Declaration of Independence we not only make this fact known to the world, but we give clear definition to what we mean when we created, “free and independent States.”

“…and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

Our States are defined as “free and independent,” each to be synonymous political entities with the likes of Great Britain, France, or Germany, each State  bearing the same political authority as the “State of Great Britain.” In fact we created free and individual sovereign countries who, in their sovereignty, possess “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”  Although our States are politically the same as any other country in the world, our States have to recognize that their power is “derived from the consent of the government,” not from the King, and the sole purpose of that power is to “secure the Rights of the people,” not the power of those in government.  (See Declaration of Independence)

2. Creation of the Constitution

The Constitution is a legal document whose intent was to create and form a legally binding contract between the States.  The Constitution is a specific kind of contract called a “compact” which can be defined as a contract between sovereign governments.  As the content of the Constitution was debated and ratified, the drafters and those who ratified the Constitution made it clear their intent was to form a compact to create this new Union of States.  Richard Henry, in proposing Religious Liberty as a part of the Bill of Rights, made this statement:

“…but when we are making a constitution, it is to be hoped, for ages and millions yet unborn, why not establish the free exercise of religion, as a part of the national compact.” Federal Farmer IV

It is important to note, that although the Constitution’s preamble begins “We The People,” in legal terms the Constitutional Compact is not an agreement between the people, but between the States.  This legal fact can be proven by one simple detail; the Constitution was not ratified by popular vote of the people, but by the vote of the Representatives of the States.  Legally speaking the States are the “parties” to this compact and are therefore the creators of the federal government through the Constitution.

3. Creation of the Federal Government

The federal government is the product created by the ratification of the Constitution by the parties, the States.  When the States created the federal government, they created a specifically limited and defined federal authority.  James Madison explains to the Constitutional delegates in Federalist #45:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.”

Madison describes those powers as being primarily related to foreign affairs “as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.”  He continues by describing the undelegated power as being reserved to the States and “numerous and indefinite;” extending to “all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”  In this explanation, Madison is reassuring the States that in the creation of the federal government, the powers delegated to the federal government will be much fewer and more specifically limited than the powers that will remain owned by the States.  Through this we learn a very important distinction in play during the creation of the federal government: federal power is delegated and State power is reserved.  Since federal power is delegated, to fully understand the nature of the federal government created through the Constitution, we must identify WHO is delegating power to the federal government.  Looking at the sources give us the answers we need:

  1. “…that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” Declaration of Independence

 

  1. “The Power not delegated to the United States…are Reserved to the States respectively…” Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution

 

  1. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government…will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce…” Federalist #45

We know from James Madison and from the Tenth Amendment that the power the federal government possesses is delegated.  We know from the Declaration of Independence that the powers that are delegated to the federal government were FIRST possessed by the States.  We know from the Constitution that the States ratified the Constitution and are the creators of the federal government, therefore we must know that the States are the delegators of the powers to the federal government.  Finally, knowing these truths, we must now admit a very fundamental and essential truth about the creation of the federal government:

When power is delegated, by definition, it is a temporary trust of authority and responsibility given by a higher power to a lower power.  Since we have established through our foundational documents that the States have delegated a portion of their power to the federal government we must admit that the States are the higher power and the federal government is the lower power.  This is the essential truth in understanding the external check on federal power created by the formation of our Constitutional Republic.

KrisAnne Hall began her career as a biochemist, Russian linguist for the US Army, and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Florida College of Law.  KrisAnne was a prosecutor for the State of Florida and practiced First Amendment Law for a prominent national non-profit Law firm. KrisAnne is now the founder of LibertyFirstUniversity.com and travels the country teaching the foundational principles of Liberty and our Constitutional Republic. KrisAnne is the author of 6 books on the Constitution and Bill of Rights; she also has a nationally syndicated radio show.  KrisAnne has been featured on C-SPAN TV and C-SPAN Book TV. KrisAnne can be found at www.KrisAnneHall.com

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable John Merrill

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

         The Alabama Secretary of State’s Office

Alabama has a long history that dates back to the 1800s. As the 22nd state to join the Union on December 14, 1819, Alabama had established a Secretary of State’s Office the year before officially becoming a state. Henry Hitchcock served as Secretary of State for the Alabama Territory from 1818 to 1819 and then became the state’s first Attorney General from 1819 to 1823. The Secretary of State served a two-year term from the time Alabama became a state in 1819 until the Constitution of 1901 set the term at four years. Up until 1868, the Secretary of State was elected by the legislature, but since that time has been selected by popular vote. Over the course of nearly 200 years, Alabama has had 53 Secretaries of State, with John H. Merrill serving as the 53rd. Since taking office in 2015 and gaining re-election in 2018, Secretary Merrill and his staff have worked tirelessly to ensure that the office is doing all that it can to assist the people of Alabama.

State law gives the Alabama Secretary of State more than 1,000 different duties, and virtually all of them involve processing and filing documents that are public records. Many of the documents must have the Great Seal of Alabama affixed in order to make them official. The Secretary of State is the sole custodian of the Great Seal of Alabama, and use of the Great Seal is controlled by state law. Only a few staff members within the Secretary of State’s Office have permission to affix the seal to documents. Custody of the Great Seal was officially transferred from the Governor to the Secretary of State in 1852. Approximately 500,000 Executive, Legislative, Elections, and Business documents are stored in the Secretary of State’s Office, but the office also offers a number of other services through its various divisions. In order to keep up with the public demand for access to these records, the office uses extensive computer and information technology. The Alabama Secretary of State’s Office was one of the first in the nation to successfully store and retrieve the records on an optical disk, but today, many of the corporate and Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) records are available to businesses via the Internet.

Many of the executive records have both the signatures of the Secretary of State and the Governor because the Secretary of State serves as the Governor’s personal notary public. When the Secretary of State is witnessing the Governor’s signature, the Great Seal of Alabama is used as the “notary” seal. The executive records are composed of writs of arrest, contracts, deeds, and leases, as well as listings of abandoned vehicles found in the state, information on municipal incorporations, and the names of all the notaries publicly registered in Alabama.

In 2015, to help the state’s fiscal issues, Secretary Merrill asked the Legislature to remove the Secretary of State’s Office primary General Fund Appropriation for Administrative Services from the state budget. The office currently operates with revenues generated by the services provided by the office. The Secretary of State is the custodian of the original legislative bills that become law and is responsible for assigning an act number to each. The office ensures that the acts and minutes from the Legislative Sessions are distributed through bound volumes called the Acts of Alabama, the House Journal, and the Senate Journal. The Secretary of State also distributes the state law books called the Code of Alabama, 1975 to government agencies.

The Secretary of State is Alabama’s “Chief Election Official,” and the office is given many different election duties under state law. Election records include vote totals, certified ballots, and records showing how much money candidates and political committees raised and spent during an election. Copies of certificates of election, commissions, and oaths of office are also on file for many elected officials. The Secretary of State’s Office has developed a new system that allows Alabamians to register to vote electronically by visiting sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes or by downloading the Vote for Alabama app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. With the implementation of the electronic ballot project, Alabama became one of the first states to employ an entirely secure, electronic voting system for the state’s military and civilian voters who are outside the territorial limits of the United States. Furthermore, due to the promotion of voter registration and free photo voter ID through various initiatives, such as the mobile units that travel across Alabama’s 67 counties, the unveiling of the new mobile app, and using the likeness of well-known Alabamians on promotional posters and commercials, the state’s voter registration numbers are at a historic 3.4 million, as of June 2019.

Business records are divided into three categories: Lands & Trademarks, Business Entities, and Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). The Lands and Trademarks section has the original state land records dating back to the days when Alabama first achieved statehood. All of the trademarks registered in the state are also found here. Business Entity staff members reserve names of businesses, index domestic filings, and file foreign filings for businesses that register to do business in Alabama. The state has about 500,000 business entity filings, and staff members usually get about 150-650 requests each day for information in those files. Since the summer of 2016, all business corporations filings have been filed on the same day they are received by the Business Services Division and no later than the next business day for nearly three consecutive years. Secretary Merrill’s instruction to deposit funds in one day caused all new domestic entities filing for the first time to be issued within one day of their Business Entity Number, which is available on the website. This process is a tremendous help to a new business, where banks, lenders, and others can verify the existence of a new domestic entity. Upon being informed that the state law provision on the payment of an “expedite” fee related to certain business filings was being processed in three business days, the expedition of the filings to be accomplished in less than 24 hours was immediately ordered, as the state law requires. Secretary Merrill also instructs the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) sub-division of the Business Services Division to accomplish its recordation and filing activities in the time period required by state law, which is to be fulfilled in two days. After a period of adjustment, the UCC sub-division is consistently accomplishing its public duties the same day but no later than the next business day, as well.

The Authentications Division is responsible for providing authentication services for Alabama public documents that will be used in foreign countries. These documents include birth certificates, marriage certificates, statements of marital status, articles of incorporation, corporate bylaws, certificates of merger, powers of attorney, diplomas, school transcripts, deeds, and ABI background checks. Depending on the country of usage, an Apostille or Certification is affixed to the document(s). The Secretary of State’s website now offers an online listing of all the countries that are and are not part of the Hague Convention, along with each country’s required type of authentication. The division is also responsible for authenticating paperwork for international adoptions, and the Secretary of State’s Office hosts an International Adoption Day Celebration program each year to honor and congratulate the families who’ve adopted children on the international level.

The Alabama Athlete Agents Commission was established by the Alabama Legislature in 1988 through the Alabama Athlete Agents Regulatory Act. In 1994, the administrative functions for the commission were transferred to the Secretary of State’s Office. Any individual who operates as an athlete agent in Alabama is required by the Revised Uniform Athlete Agents Act to be licensed by the commission.

For more information on these and other services provided by the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office, visit www.sos.alabama.gov or call 334-242-7200.

John Harold Merrill is the son of Mary Merrill and the late Judge Horace Merrill of Heflin, Ala., in Cleburne County. He was born on November 12, 1963, in Wedowee, Ala., in Randolph County. He grew up in Heflin and is an Eagle Scout from Heflin Troop 206. He is a graduate of Cleburne County High School and The University of Alabama, where he served as President of the Student Government Association in 1986-1987.

While attending The University, John served as a Congressional Intern for Congressman Bill Nichols in 1983 and Sen. Howell Heflin in 1984. After college, John worked as a governmental affairs intern at the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama in 1987-88; National Advertising Account Executive and Manager for Randall (now Randall-Reilly) Publishing Company from 1988-90; Assistant Director for the Tuscaloosa County Industrial Development Authority from 1990-93 where he assisted in the recruitment of Mercedes-Benz; Director of Business Development for the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama in 1993-94; Director of Community Relations and Community Education for the Tuscaloosa County Board of Education from 1994-2010; and served as Business Development Officer for 1st Federal Bank in Tuscaloosa from 2011-2015.

On Nov. 2, 2010, John was elected to represent the people of District 62 in the State House of Representatives with 87 percent of the vote, which was the highest percentage garnered by a candidate in any contested House race that year. He served as the Secretary/Treasurer of the House Republican Caucus and was a member of the powerful Rules Committee, Economic Development and Tourism, and Constitution, Campaigns, and Elections Committees.

In 2011, he was presented the “Axe Award” by the Alabama Association of Volunteer Fire Departments and became the only freshman ever to be recognized as their Legislator of the Year. John was a member of the inaugural class of NCSL Early Learning Fellows in 2011, one of 30 Legislators selected nationwide and the only one from Alabama. In 2012, he was named the Alabama House Legislator of the Year by the Children’s Trust Fund, he was recognized by the Alabama Republican Party as a Rising Republican Star, and he was presented with the Tuscaloosa All-Star Award for Excellence in Caring for Veterans. In 2013, he was selected as the Soil and Water Conservation District Area III Outstanding Elected Official, Outstanding Legislator by the Alabama Association of Rescue Squads, and he was named as the Child Advocate of the Year at the Early Intervention and Preschool Conference. In 2014, John was awarded the Silver Beaver by the Black Warrior Council of the Boy Scouts of America for outstanding volunteer service in Scouting. John was identified by the Sunlight Foundation as the Most Effective Republican Member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 2011-14, and he was named Legislator of the Year by the Tuscaloosa County Young Republicans in 2014. In 2015, he was selected as one of 48 leaders from around the nation to attend and graduate from the Council of State Government’s prestigious Henry Toll Fellowship Leadership Program.

On Nov. 4, 2014, John was elected as Alabama’s Secretary of State with 65 percent of the vote, winning in 53 of Alabama’s 67 counties. He was inaugurated as Alabama’s 53rd Secretary of State on Jan. 19, 2015.

John is very active in his community and has served in many leadership capacities. He is a Deacon at Calvary Baptist Church, where he has served as a Sunday School teacher and a member of the Sanctuary Choir. He was on Emmaus Walk No. 68 and has assisted with several Emmaus Walks and Chrysalis Flights. He is a member of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the Republican Association of Secretaries of State. He is the Co-Chair of the NASS Voter Participation Committee and serves as the NASS Representative to the Steering Committee of the National Voter Registration Day. He is also a member of the United States Election Assistance Commission Standards Board. He is or has been a member of numerous community organizations, including the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame Selection Committee, Children First Board of Directors, Friends of the Alabama Archives Board of Directors, Alabama YMCA Youth in Government Board of Directors, State Republican Executive Committee, National Rifle Association, Leadership Tuscaloosa, Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama, United Way of West Alabama, YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers / Big Sisters, Boy Scouts of America, March of Dimes, Hillcrest High School Athletic Boosters Club, West Alabama Literacy Council and the Alabama Constables Association.

He has also served as Southeastern Regional Vice President for the National School Public Relations Association and has served as President or Chairman of many other groups, including the Alabama Children’s Trust Fund, Alabama School Communicators Association, Alabama Community Education Association, American Red Cross, Leadership Tuscaloosa Alumni Association, United Cerebral Palsy of West Alabama, Youth for Christ, Druid Civitan Club and the Tuscaloosa City School’s Vocational Advisory Council. He is a past Chairman of the Tuscaloosa County Republican Executive Committee.

John has traveled internationally and represented our state and nation in Canada, China, Germany, Russia and Taiwan.

John has been married to the former Cindy Benford of Phil Campbell for 33 years. She is a career educator and the former principal at Westwood Elementary School in Coker. The couple has two children, Brooks, 28, who lives in New York and works with the Chick-fil-A corporation, and Allie Grace, 25, who is an International Flight Attendant with American Airlines.

Special thanks to the staff members of the Alabama Secretary of State’s office for their assistance in the research and drafting of this essay.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

 

Guest Essayist: Sean Beienburg

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Not all states can say that their first public act was defying the president of the United States. Arizona, the last state admitted to the Union from the contiguous United States, can.

Like many westerners then and now, Arizonans were anxious about and skeptical of concentrations of power, especially power wielded from afar, and, in writing their constitution, they sought to see it widely dispersed. (In this, Arizona’s Founders were not unlike the American Founders, increasingly distressed at their local government affairs being directed from the metropole, in violation of what they understood their English liberties to guarantee.)[1] This meant not only that the state government would be carefully limited and easily checked by the people, but also that its constitution would ensure private actors could not wield undue influence in the state. In short, the Arizona Constitution was against both Big Government and Big Business—and it used controversial populist innovations to achieve these goals.

Worries about western populism run amok—even by the progressive Senator Albert Beveridge, an Indiana Republican who chaired the committee on territories– meant Congress planned to admit Arizona and New Mexico jointly in 1906, but only if both territories agreed. New Mexico approved of the joint admission in a referendum, but Arizona rejected it overwhelmingly. Congress agreed to separate the two but, unusually, to require the territories to have their proposed constitutions approved by both Congress and the president before admission could take place, thus ensuring a check on the radicals of the West.

In October 1910, residents from across the Arizona territory convened in Phoenix to draft a new constitution, and the charter they drafted mixed both old values and new ideas.

The early parts of the Declaration of Rights include standard statements of political philosophy once common in state constitutions, alongside explicit gratitude to and acknowledgement of divine providence. The brief preamble observes that “we, the people of the state of Arizona, grateful to almighty God for our liberties, do ordain this constitution.” (The state’s motto, Ditat Deus, meaning God Enriches, echoes this preamble).

As sections 1 and 2 of the Declaration of Rights explain, writing a constitution allows the “frequent recurrence to fundamental principles [that] is essential to the security of individual rights and the perpetuity of free government” (section 1). It also allows for the clear recognition that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” who establish them to “protect and maintain individual rights” (section 2). The substance of the individual rights that followed, largely taken from other state constitutions (and substantively if not stylistically familiar to a reader of the federal Bill of Rights and Article I, Section 10), similarly followed well-worn paths.

But while the types of rights included in the Arizona Constitution’s equivalent to the Bill of Rights are fairly standard, its latter parts, both its protections of labor and especially its structural provisions, are far more unconventional.

The Arizona constitution bristles with a skepticism of big business and a related strong commitment to the dignity of labor, incorporating and expanding on provisions being added to contemporary constitutions and legislative codes of other states like Oregon and Wisconsin.

This is perhaps most obvious in two full articles aiming to check the power of business. The first is the Corporation Commission, effectively a fourth branch of government whose obligations and powers are spelled out with great attention in Article XV. Its basic purpose: carefully regulating corporations that operated as utilities (such as railroads), which lent themselves to monopolies rather than normal market competition.

The second is Article 18, explicitly titled Labor, which offers a variety of worker protections that now seem commonplace. Often repealing old doctrines from common law, Article 18 provides, among other guarantees, for employer liability for on-the-job injury, worker’s compensation provisions, and the elimination of the fellow-servant rule (in which an employee, not the employer, was liable for worksite injuries inflicted on another worker due to the actions of the coworker).

But beyond these policy provisions–often updates to common law, which even many constitutionally conservative politicians found little to object to—worries about the concentration of economic power led to institutional innovations which did unsettle defenders of American constitutionalism.[2] Because of concerns that special interests could all too easily capture the complicated separation of powers of the Madisonian system and thwart the will of the people, Progressive Era reformers sought to change not just what the policies were but the very structure of government itself.

Arizona’s founders imbibed these intellectual waters, and thus the charter they created is a populist constitution, with a focus on direct, rather than mediated, democracy.

The initiative and referendum processes are the most obvious example of this. The equivalent of the U.S. Constitution’s vesting clause (Article I, Section 1), in which legislative power is vested in Congress, in Arizona explicitly reserves the right of the people to override the legislature by referendums or initiatives.[3] (In fact, for emphasis, this reservation appears in the first paragraph.) The initiative and referendum was championed by convention president and first governor George Hunt, who himself had picked up the idea from Bucky O’Neill, an Arizona soldier killed with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the charge up San Juan Hill.[4]

A second, related instance of constitutional populism is the simple initiative process by which amendments are made to Arizona’s Constitution. While perhaps an extreme example, Arizona’s theory of direct constitutional democracy both illustrates and attempts to take advantage of constitutional federalism.

The U.S. Constitution, which establishes a strong but substantively limited federal government and imposes a floor of basic rights on all the states, is difficult to amend, requiring a supermajoritarian, cross-regional consensus to do so—thus ensuring a narrow majority cannot impose its wishes on the diverse citizens of the country more broadly.

But Arizona’s state constitution, by way of contrast, is extremely easy to amend, requiring the gathering of signatures and a bare majority vote at the following general election. This ensures that the state government can thus directly respond to the local preferences of the people in exercising the police powers for the common good, but that even when being a “laboratory of democracy” the state government remains checked within the core constraints of the U.S. Constitution.[5]

A third instance of the constitution’s populism is its distrust of appointed politicians. Unlike in many states which model the U.S. government, in which one elects the chief executive, who in turn brings an attorney general and other executive branch officials, almost every Arizona position is separately elected and after a direct popular primary.

Part of the concern for concentrated power was the fear of judges run amok (and especially when in cahoots with business, as they were often charged with being). The early 1910s were a tough time for judicial independence, with Progressive Era critiques of the separation of powers leading to consideration of a wide range of attacks on judicial review.  Some wanted supermajority judicial votes to declare legislation unconstitutional, others, to allow Congress to overturn judicial decisions.[6] Future Supreme Court justices Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis proposed eliminating part of the 14th Amendment altogether in order to stop judges from, in their mind, imposing their policy views on states that wanted to build more protective regulatory regimes.[7]

This debate was largely what the 1912 election would be about: Theodore Roosevelt wanted to be able to recall individual judicial decisions, part of why William Howard Taft and Roosevelt’s two closest political allies Elihu Root—who had been Roosevelt’s chosen successor—and Henry Cabot Lodge all turned on TR in the election, fearing their old friend had turned against American constitutionalism itself.[8]

This was the climate in which Arizona sought statehood, and it reflected the wild western populism common to the time, which led even progressives like Albert Beveridge to fear statehood and arrange, uncommonly, for a presidential signature to be required for admission.

Thus, the single clearest and best-known example of the militant populism that so worried these Republicans is in the constitution’s judicial recall provision. Article VIII of the Constitution established protocols for recalling officials– “all elective officials”, making Arizona the second state to have a recall provision (after the progressive laboratory of Oregon).

But because Arizona judges, like in many states, gained their seats by election, the expansive language meant that judges themselves would be vulnerable to recall—a far more radical curb on judicial power than any of the other alternatives raised in the Progressive Era.

For President Taft, a former and future judge, this was unacceptable. Arizona’s provision would intimidate judges from making unpopular decisions when the law required them to do so. As such, he vetoed the state’s admission- thus ensuring Arizona, not New Mexico, would be the 48th state.

By a 9 to 1 vote Arizona voters added a clause to their recall section insisting that it was for all elective officials “except members of the judiciary.” A mollified Taft thus approved statehood.[9] What one historian has termed “the longest sustained admission fight in American territorial history” seemed over.[10] But there was one more skirmish to be fought.

As Oklahoma’s recent move of its state capitol from Guthrie to Oklahoma City in violation of its own statehood enabling act had proved the year before,[11] there was nothing that could be done to ensure compliance—what could Taft do if Arizona resisted? Cite breach of contract and take statehood away from a now sovereign entity? Invade it as in revolt? As a result, then-Governor Hunt and the legislature moved to restore judicial recall immediately, with the first senate bill a constitutional amendment restoring it, openly provoking the president and members of Congress.

And that proposed amendment was approved at the next election by an almost 50 to 1 ratio—with Taft, the sitting president running in fourth in Arizona, losing not only to Wilson and Roosevelt but even the Socialist candidate Eugene Debs.[12] You could say then that the Arizona  Constitution, like Arizona more broadly, was born angry- we warned them.

Sean Beienburg is an assistant professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University and the project director of the Living Repository of the Arizona Constitution. He is also the author of the recent book Prohibition, the Constitution, and States’ Rights (2019), published by the University of Chicago Press.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] For the clearest encapsulation of the importance of federalism to revolutionary thought, see the underappreciated predecessor to the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp; on the subsequent development of the American understanding of federalism more broadly see Sean Beienburg, Prohibition, the Constitution, and States’ Rights (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 18-24.

[2] See for example, Elihu Root, “How to Preserve the Local Government of the States: A Brief Study of National Tendencies.” Speech to the Pennsylvania Society in New York, Wednesday, December 12, 1906, printed as How to Preserve the Local Government of the States (New York: Brentano’s, 1907); Beienburg, Prohibition, the Constitution, and States’ Rights, 44-50.

[3] Article IV, Section 1, Part 1.

[4] John D. Leshy, The Arizona State Constitution, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 15.

[5] New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann 285 U.S. 311 (1932) (J. Brandeis, dissenting)

[6] Kenneth P. Miller, Direct Democracy and the Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); William G. Ross, A Muted Fury: Populists, Progressives, and Labor Unions Confront the Courts, 1890-1937 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Stephen Engel, American Politicians Confront the Court: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

[7] Sean Beienburg, “Progressivism and States’ Rights: Constitutional Dialogue between the States and Federal Courts on Minimum Wages and Liberty of Contract.” American Political Thought 8 (2019): 34.

[8] William Schambra, The Saviors of the Constitution,” National Affairs 10 (Winter 2012), reprinted as “The Election of 1912 and the Origins of Constitutional Conservatism,” Toward an American Conservatism: Constitutional Conservatism During the Progressive Era, eds. Joseph Postell and Jonathan O’Neill (New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2013), 95-121

[9] Leshy, The Arizona State Constitution, 22.

[10] Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, (2000) [1970]), 423.

[11] See Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559 (1911), upholding the move on grounds enabling act conditions ceased to be binding once a state was admitted to the union, insofar as it became an equally free state.

[12] Leshy, The Arizona State Constitution, 22-23.

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Ken Paxton

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

State Attorneys General (AG) serve as the chief lawyers for their respective states and work to defend state sovereignty in a variety of contexts. They represent the interests of their states in court proceedings by defending state laws against legal challenges and, in many cases, enforcing state laws in both civil and criminal actions.  They frequently are called upon to provide legal advice to state officials and to issue legal opinions on a range of issues.  They also may oversee critical government programs, such as (in Texas) the state’s child support function.

While similar to their federal counterpart—the U.S. Attorney General—these state officers perform functions that vary greatly from the federal context, specifically in three ways.

First, the state AG is a constitutional officer of a sovereign state.  The U.S. Constitution recognizes the independent states’ sovereignty[1] and limits the duties of the federal government while reserving the remaining power to the states.[2]  Unlike the U.S. Attorney General, the majority of state AGs are constitutional officers: the AG is an elected executive officer in 43 states with the remaining states appointing the position.[3]

Texas is unique because it was a sovereign nation before joining the union. Between 1836 and 1846, the President of the Republic of Texas appointed the AG to serve a two-year term. Texas joined the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845, and, in 1850, the Texas Constitution was amended to provide for the election of the AG.

Second, state AGs swear an oath to uphold and defend the laws of their state in addition to the U.S. Constitution.[4]  By contrast, the U.S. Attorney General is only charged with upholding and defending the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

This role for the state AG is appropriate:  it supports the sovereignty of the state and the Constitution’s federalism, which allows states to hold the federal government accountable. The states, and their officers, were meant to be safeguards of a limited federal Constitution, not the front-line champions of federal power.[5]

Texas requires[6] the AG to protect the state’s interest broadly to defend state sovereignty. [7]   Between 2010 and 2016, the Texas AG sued the federal government 48 times for exceeding its authority on issues ranging from environmental protection regulations to the Affordable Care Act.[8] These lawsuits are important to preserve state rights and stand as a bulwark against unconstitutional federal encroachment.

Third, the role of state AGs is broader than the U.S. Attorney General because, as state officers, they must advise, protect, and enforce the laws of each of their states. Many state AGs serve as the chief legal advisor and chief law enforcement officer for their state.

In Texas, the AG issues legal opinions on a variety of topics and defends state agencies in litigation. The AG litigates antitrust and environmental violations and prosecutes human traffickers and child abusers. Texas has been a national leader in bringing cases defending states’ rights and continues to be at the forefront of litigation to restrain the federal government to its enumerated powers.

In summary, state AGs have complex roles, which differ from the U.S. Attorney General, primarily because of the powers rightly reserved to the states under the Constitution and the innumerable ways in which each state wields that responsibility.

Ken Paxton is the 51st Attorney General of Texas. Attorney General Paxton is focused on protecting Texans and upholding Texas laws and the Constitution.

Fighting federal overreach, he filed 22 lawsuits against the Obama administration during a two-year stretch, of which six cases were heard in the U.S. Supreme Court. Most recently, a U.S. District Court agreed with his 20-state coalition lawsuit holding Obamacare unconstitutional. Attorney General Paxton obtained an injunction or other winning ruling in over 75 percent of the cases he has brought against the federal government.  

Attorney General Paxton has won major cases for Texas on immigration, school rights, voter ID, sanctuary cities, redistricting, EPA rules and religious freedom. He created a human trafficking unit in his office that helped shut down Backpage.com, the largest online sex-trafficking marketplace in the United States. Attorney General Paxton’s office has also obtained a record number of successful election fraud convictions.

Prior to becoming attorney general in January 2015, he served as a state Senator and a member of the Texas House of Representatives. A graduate of Baylor University, Attorney General Paxton earned his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.

 A special thanks to Lesley French, Assistant Attorney General, for assistance in researching and drafting the essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] See, e.g., U.S. CONST. amend. X; id. art. I, § 10, cl. 1 (“No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or

Confederation . . . .”); id. art. I, § 10, cl. 2 (“No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports . . . .”). A few constitutional provisions are exceptional. See id. art. I, § 4, cl. 1 (instructing states to prescribe the time, place, and manner of elections for senators and representatives); id. art. II, § 1, cl. 2 (empowering states to decide the manner in which presidential electors are selected).

[2] THE FEDERALIST NO. 46 (James Madison).

[3] Maine’s state legislature appoints the attorney general and the Tennessee Supreme Court appoints the attorney general.

[4] See, e.g., CAL. CONST. art. 20, § 3 (“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that

I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.”); N.Y. CONST. art. 13, § 1 (“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of [attorney general], according to the best of my ability . . . .”); TEX. CONST. art. 16, § 1(a) (“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm), that I will faithfully execute the duties of the office of [attorney general] of the State of Texas, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this State, so help me God.”); VA. CONST. art. II, § 7 (“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the

duties incumbent upon me as [attorney general], according to the best of my ability (so help me God).”); 15 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. § 205/1 (West 1990) (“I do solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be), that I will support the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of attorney general, according to the best of my ability.”).

[5] THE FEDERALIST NO. 46 (James Madison) (discussing the ability of states to check claims of federal authority).

[6] Tex. Const.  art. IV, § 22.

[7] Id. Those powers generally include but are not limited to:  (1) bringing suit on behalf of the state or a governmental entity, i.e. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 125.070; (2) seeking injunctive relief; (3) recovering civil penalties; (4) defending agencies and state officials, i.e., Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 101.103, 104.004; Tex. Gov’t Code § 74.141 (defend state district court judges) (5) investigatory i.e. Tex. Bus. & Comm. Code § 15.10 (may issue civil investigatory in monopoly/anti-trust cases); (5) enforcement of specific statutes i.e. Tex. Bus. & Comm. Code § 17.47 (may enforce the DTPA), Tex. Hum. Res. Code §§ 36.051-.053 (investigate, seek penalty and injunction for Medicaid Fraud); (6) seeking mandamus against certain entities, i.e. Tex. Election Code § 123.065; Tex. Gov’t Code § 552.321 (compel gov’t entity to make information public), (7) assist in prosecutions, i.e. Tex. Gov’t Code § 41.102; and (8) approving bonds issued by state and local governmental entities as well as various utility districts and institutions of higher education, Tex. Gov’t Code Ch. 1202; Staples v. State, 245 S.W. 639 (Tex.  1922); Agey v. Am. Liberty Pipeline Co., 172 S.W.2d 972 (1943) (“The Attorney General is the chief law officer of the State, and it is incumbent upon him to institute in the proper courts proceedings to enforce or protect any right of the public that is violated.  He has the right to investigate the facts and exercise his judgment and discretion regarding the filing of a suit.” (internal citations omitted)).

[8] Neena Satija et. al., Texas v. the Feds – A Look at the Lawsuits, Texas Tribune (Jan.17, 2017); available at: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/01/17/texas-federal-government-lawsuits/

Guest Essayist: J. Eric Wise

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

How to Keep the Founders’ Intentions for “We the People” Who Are in Charge of Their Own Governing

The first mention of the United States in an official document is found in the Declaration of Independence. The thirteen colonies that declared their separation from England became thirteen “free and independent States.”

As a practical matter, these states were always united, if perhaps at first only in war against the British. By 1781, these united states had entered into The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, commonly called the Articles. The Articles provided that “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

But the powers delegated to the United States in Congress were not insubstantial. Under the Articles, the power over foreign policy and the laying of imposts and duties, and responsibility for determining war and peace, resided in the national government. In time, however, the inability of the Articles to deal with a failing economy and serious governance problems led to the calling of a constitutional convention.

The Articles provided that the compact could be altered only with the consent of Congress and confirmation “by the legislatures of every State.” The impracticality of this rule led to the proposal that the new Constitution be effective, with respect to ratifying states only, when ratified by conventions held in just nine states. The new Constitution thus was never approved by the unanimous mechanism described in the Articles. The rights of states embodied in the provisions requiring unanimity were cast aside for the sake of “The public interest, the necessity of the case, imposed upon them the task of overleaping their constitutional [under the Articles] limits.”  Federalist 38. 

The Constitution established a new relationship among the states. No longer were the states held together in perpetual union as a compact of states; rather  “We the People of the United States” formed a government directly as a compact of a people. A confederation of independent states no more, the government was to be –

“partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national.” Federalist 39.

Almost immediately following ratification of the Constitution, the nation adopted the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution provided that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” As the powers delegated to the United States were listed in the enumerated powers of Article I and related largely to defense, interstate and international commerce, coinage, bankruptcy, and citizenship, the Constitution left to the states “police powers” to look after the health, safety and welfare of the people of the United States.

The dispersal of these very important police powers concerned more than the simple preservation of the status quo in place under the Articles of Confederation. The dispersal of police power had an important philosophic idea underlying it, based on the nature of human society. A republic, in which the people govern themselves, requires a body of people closely familiar with one another. With a smaller territory, the people of a republic could be familiar with and attached to the customs and habits of the people, and make sound policies and laws suited to their way of life and economic livelihood.

Indeed, opponents of the Constitution had cited “Montesquieu on the necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government.” Federalist 9. A large territory, Montesquieu had supposed, encouraged a monarchy, as monarchies were more adept at communications over distance and operate on principles that do not require thorough familiarity with the governed (rather they require familiarity with a small body of subordinate princes). The Constitution resolved these issues by creating a federal republic, where local rule prevailed in areas touching the daily lives of the people.

The power of the states to make different policies and laws suited to their way of life and industry had what one might call a beneficial “knock-on effect.” James Madison observed that the federal republic would take in a large number of different interests – obviously in no small part on account of the independent police powers of the states to shape the citizenry – which would have the effect at the national level of cancelling out narrow selfish interests. He wrote:

“Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” Federalist 10.

In the Twenty-First Century, this model has been partly abandoned. Not only has American society adopted practices that homogenize its culture, such as national television, newspapers, radio, and a largely uniform way of higher education – universities are homogenized by, among other things, the competition for national rankings prepared by U.S. News and World Report – the national government has also increasingly absorbed the traditional police powers of the states through expansive readings of the commerce clause and of “substantive due process,” circumscribing the role states play in shaping the character of their citizens through policies and laws.

In today’s climate of identity politics, the resulting uniformity of laws and culture may not seem like a threat. But consider perhaps that a uniform national culture – identity politics itself – may already exist and that a common national motive for a majority to invade the rights of a minority may be gathering. In this light, it may be time for states to once again jealously protect their rights and to exercise with renewed vitality their police powers to shape diverse interests for the common benefit of the United States.

Eric Wise is an attorney practicing in New York.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Greg Davidson
State flags on each state within its border inside of a map of the United States

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

To many, the position of state governor is a faint echo of the president of the United States.  The president is in charge of a vast empire stretching coast to coast with global implications while governors are seen as mere presiders, not much more than little men running little fiefdoms perpetuating their own schemes for self-interest and self-aggrandizement.

That view, of course, is blatantly false.  The position of governor in the American political system far predates the concept of a president, though the role of the American president is a noble position of service as first exemplified by George Washington who refused a crown to rule as king and instead chose to serve through a presidency.  Governors in the American colonies maintained relations with overseas powers and oversaw the vast expansion of the American state.  Governors oversaw massive political changes as state constitutional systems were created.  Governors laid the foundation for the modern American state through their vision, leadership, and administration.

And if the concept of governor is broadened even more to recognize them as presiding officers in the vast array of North American political systems, it is clear that these governors have led the way for centuries.  Governors governed by Spanish, French or Mexican rule, that are now part of the United States, reach back to the 1500s before most of the northeastern states were even organized as colonies.  This is not to mention the presiding governors of ancient tribes and native peoples in Hawaii, Alaska and all across the American continent.  By this, it is also clear that the American constitutional role of the president established by the Constitution of 1789 is a latecomer to the game of governing in America.

Given this rich and varied background, present day state governors are as diverse as their history.  At present, 27 of the 50 governors are Republican and 23 are Democrat or Independent.  Thirty states have elected women as governors at sometime in their history, while 20 states including progressive states such as California, Colorado, New York and Wisconsin have never elected a woman governor.

Current governors self-identify their religious beliefs along a wide line of religious beliefs: 18 as Roman Catholic, five as Presbyterian, four as Christian, four as Baptist, three as Jewish, two as Congregationalist, two as Evangelical, and one each as Buddhist, Quaker, Lutheran, Protestant, Methodist, Mormon, and Episcopalian.  Five do not list any religious affiliation – a diverse lot.

States have been governed by a wide number of ethnic-minorities as well.  Ten have been governed by Mexican Americans, five by African Americans, two by Indian Americans, two by Salvadoran Americans, and one each by a Spanish American, Native Hawaiian, Chinese American, Filipino American, Japanese American, Okinawan American, and Native American governor from the Cherokee Nation.

The average age of American governors at their first inauguration is just over 56 years.  Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama was the oldest serving governor upon her inauguration at 72 and Ron DeSantis of Florida is currently the youngest at 40.  By contrast, the American president has been exclusively male and white with one exception, generally educated in the northeast, and mostly Protestant.

Current American governors have come to their offices by many different pathways immediately prior to their election.  Eleven were lieutenant governors, eight were United States Congressmen, five were state attorney generals, four were state senators, three were state representatives, three were state treasurers, two were secretaries of state, one was a county official, one was a United States ambassador, and four were assorted executive branch officials at the state level.  Seven governors currently serving had no experience as elected officials prior to their election.

And finally, the position of state governor has served as a launch pad for future presidents of the United States more than the U.S. House or Senate or any federal executive branch office.  Governors are elected president more than any other elected official.  Nine governors were elected directly from the statehouse to the White House while only six U.S. Senators and only three U.S. Representatives were elected directly from their respective offices.  Seventeen presidents were previously elected as either state governors or territorial governors.  And a total of five presidents were elected with no prior elective office experience.

Bottom line is the position of governor in the American political system is unique and powerful.  Whereas the national political system creates uniformity and demands conformity, American states present diversity both in the breadth of the institutional constructs creating the office of governor, and through a variety of political, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.  Further, innovation, economic development, educational expansion, and the extension of constitutional guarantees are at the helm of the role in which governors serve by leading the way in our American states.

Greg Davidson is the Executive Clerk to the Governor and director of the Constituent Communication Division of the Office of the Governor in Texas.  Over the past 30 years, Greg has worked for Texas Governors Clements, Bush, Perry, and Abbott.  Greg holds a Master of Arts in government and a BBA in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin.  He also holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and currently serves as the Stated Clerk for the South Texas Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America.  Greg was elected to serve as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College and has been involved in presidential, gubernatorial, congressional, state, and local campaigns since 1976.  He resides in Austin, Texas with his wife Donna Garcia Davidson who is an attorney in private practice concentrating in the area of campaign finance and election law.  They have one daughter, a senior at Regents School of Austin, who intends to go to college, study engineering or law, and play competitive golf.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath
Principle of Due Process of Law

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Unfortunately, the Court cast aside Justice Frankfurter’s warning that judges should stay out of the apportionment controversy and let the democratic process resolve it. Where wise men feared to tread, the justices foolishly rushed in. In 1962, in Baker v. Carr, they decided that such issues were “justiciable,” after all. Two years later, in Reynolds v. Sims, they decided that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment supplied the solution. All legislative districts, whether congressional, state legislative, or local, had to be equal in population to be constitutional. The history of the Equal Protection Clause contains no evidence that the Congress or the states intended it to address this issue. Indeed, section two of that amendment addresses a very specific instance of representation, that is, a state’s representation would be reduced in the House of Representatives by the proportion that it denied its adult male citizens the right to vote on racial grounds. The framers of the amendment were fully aware of political representation, yet did not consider the Equal Protection Clause itself applicable broadly to representation or voting.

The Court cast the operative principle as “one man, one vote.” The cases most assuredly had nothing to do with voting. No one was denied the right to vote. Nor did one person’s vote count differently than that of the next person in line. What it came down to was that, in districts with unequal population, a voter in a larger district allegedly had his vote diluted in the legislature in comparison to a voter in a smaller district, because the former’s representative represented more residents than the latter’s. The Court ignored the fact that there was no logical connection between who could or could not vote and any particular system of representation.

Other difficulties with the Court’s opinion were that districts with equal numbers of residents might not have equal numbers of voters. In Evenwell v. Abbott, in 2016, the Court ruled that population equality is based on residents, not voters. Of course, this will result in vote dilution for those who vote in districts with many voters, compared to those who vote in equally-sized districts with many non-voters, such as children, prisoners, and aliens, legal or otherwise. Moreover, populations change over ten years, so any attempt to adhere slavishly to population equality is doomed to immediate failure, as districts change in relative size.

Why, then, did the Court decide to tilt at these constitutional windmills? The catalyst was the decades-long failure of certain mainly Southern states to reapportion their districts in violation of their own state constitutional requirements. This produced often significant discrepancies in population between small rural districts and populous urban areas, a trend exacerbated by the 20th century’s technology-driven trend of urbanization. The Court viewed recourse to state constitutional conventions as too cumbersome. Since the delegates to those conventions were likely to be elected from those same malapportioned districts, they, like the legislatures, could not be counted on to challenge the existing system in a meaningful manner. Congressional interference with state districting would tread on thin constitutional ice and, in any case, was unlikely in light of the malapportionment of many congressional districts. The justices are drawn from a legal elite that shares many common outlooks, whatever their personal partisan affiliation. The common wisdom for that elite was that the existing systems exaggerated the influence of rural, socially and politically “unenlightened” residents and politicians, and constrained the economically, racially, and socially more progressive urban dwellers.

If the goal was to make the political environment reflect imagined urban progressivism, the results definitely have been inconclusive. The reapportionment cases, with their emphasis on population equality over everything, did break down the power of rural and small-town politicians and interests. In the South, they helped loosen the stranglehold of the Democratic Party that had produced the “Solid South” for over a century. But political power did not flow from the rural Democrats to the urban Democrats, as much as it did from the rural Democrats to the suburban Republicans. In non-Southern states, power similarly tended to flow to the expanding suburban areas, many of which did not share the mindset of the urban elites.

More significant in the long run was the “law of unintended consequences” manifesting itself in the guise of naked partisan gerrymandering. Going back to the country’s founding, most states apportioned one of their legislative chambers primarily on the basis of population and the other at least partially on other factors, such as county lines or city boundaries, much as the old Massachusetts and Virginia constitutions had done. In many states, the latter had been used for the lower, more numerous house. In contrast, more recent apportionment plans, as in California and Colorado, had followed the “federal model” and used population for the more numerous house and allowed political boundaries as a significant factor to apportion the less numerous upper legislative chamber.

The Court rejected both systems in Reynolds. As to the “federal model,” the Court argued that the Constitution was a compromise among sovereign states. However, the states’ political sovereignty did not extend to deciding how to govern themselves internally, because the cities and counties were not themselves sovereign actors, but mere creatures of the states. The same day as Reynolds, in Lucas v. 44th General Assembly of Colorado, the Court used the same reasoning to strike down a recent reapportionment of the Colorado legislature, approved by a significant majority of voters in every legislative district in the state. The Court’s objection was that the political majority might elect the governor and the lower house of the legislature, but it would take two-thirds of the population in the most populous districts to elect a majority of the upper house. The purpose of the Colorado system was to give some political influence to the residents in the large areas of Colorado not within fifty miles of the intersection of I-25 and I-70 and the city of Denver. The Court was unmoved by the fact that Colorado’s urban and suburban residents had themselves voted in favor of the plan, and that the voters had also overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that incorporated the system the Court eventually imposed. If even one voter’s vote was diluted, the Court declared, a constitutional violation had occurred.

In subsequent decisions, the Court softened its numerical rigidity somewhat. For congressional districts, under Karcher v. Dagett (1983), any deviation from absolute equality will be strictly scrutinized. For internal state legislative districts and for local districts, however, the Court decided in Mahan v. Howell (1973) that only “substantial equality” is needed, with deviations up to 20% from an ideal equality among districts being acceptable.

But the damage is done. By severely curtailing the ability of states to consider factors other than population, the Court removed the constraints on the one apportionment tool that coexists comfortably with population equality, the partisan gerrymander. When apportionment had to occur within set political boundaries, partisan considerations were blunted. Moreover, population movements and new political issues could change the partisan composition of a district. Politicians more likely had to moderate ideological predispositions and be less rigidly partisan. When preexisting district lines are meaningless and the quest for numbers is paramount, districts are drawn to maximize partisan advantage. Using computerized data and statistical formulae, apportionment experts create “safe” districts to maximize the majority party’s advantage well beyond their share of voter registration. For example, in California, Democrats have 46 congressional seats, Republicans 7, even though the Republican share of the vote in California is around 38%. Based on percentages, the Republicans should have had an additional 13 seats. These safe seats are won during primaries by the most militant candidate appealing to the party’s ideologically committed base. The winners then become difficult to dislodge and serve many terms, thereby putting them in legislative leadership roles.

Many observers have mourned the increased partisanship and hardening of ideological lines facilitated at least in part by the representational paradigm of population equality. At the state level, longevity of service is restrained by term limits, but ideological militancy is not. A final chapter may be emerging in the Supreme Court’s apportionment experiment. So far, the Court has avoided tackling partisan gerrymandering. However, the justices served notice in Davis v. Bandemer (1986) that such gerrymandering might violate the Constitution if it resulted in systematic and continuous exclusion of a party from political power. The justices could not agree on a specific standard to determine whether such an injury had occurred. In Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004), a plurality led by Justice Antonin Scalia found such cases to be non-justiciable, precisely because courts had not been able to discover any constitutional standard to apply in political gerrymandering claims. The intensely and inherently political nature of partisan gerrymandering and the many nuanced shapes it can take makes this a very difficult area for judicial resolution. However, the recent case of Gill v. Whitford (2018) and current litigation involving partisan gerrymandering in Maryland suggest that the judiciary’s struggle to extricate itself from the political issues that infuse partisan gerrymandering continues.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

While Congress determines each state’s allotted number of representatives, each state draws the lines of its congressional districts. A few states early in their history experimented with at-large elections to maximize their clout in the House, but Congress quickly passed a law to require election from single-member districts. That method reflects the American constitutional tradition, dating back to colonial times, of tying representation to local political units and geographical areas, with their inhabitants voting for one of their own. Although the Constitution does not explicitly require members of the House to live in the districts that they represent (hence, the possibility of at-large elections), residence in the district is a practical requirement. Jon Ossoff, a Democratic candidate in a 2017 special election for a congressional seat in Georgia was found not to reside in that district, a fact that was publicized by his opponent. Despite massive out-of-state financial support, Ossoff lost, and his failure to live in the district likely contributed to that loss.

States also apportion their state legislative districts and determine how local electoral districts are apportioned. State constitutions typically provide for regular reapportionment and fix who–legislatures, courts, commissions–is to conduct that reapportionment. Local districts, such as county commissioners, school boards, and junior college districts, are included in this process, even if they perform multiple functions, as long as one of those functions is legislative and the body is elected by districts. The Supreme Court has recognized one exclusion, in Ball v. James (1981), for certain special governmental units that have only limited legislative powers, such as water districts. For those, voting and representation can be apportioned on the basis of amount of water rights or use, rather than population. The distinction between special and general governmental bodies is none-too-obvious, however.

In the 1960s, another wave of discontent arose over voting and representation, originating in litigation over racial discrimination. For many years, the Supreme Court had stayed out of the “political thicket” of legislative apportionment about which Justice Felix Frankfurter had warned in Colegrove v. Green in 1946. Constitutional challenges to legislative apportionment were dismissed as “non-justiciable political questions,” meaning that they were not suitable for resolution by courts. The reason was republicanism. Voting and representation are quintessential expressions of self-government, determined by consent of the governed through direct participation in voting or through representative bodies, such as constitutional conventions or, at least, legislatures. Unelected judicial mandarins accountable only to their conscience imposing a system of government on society fundamentally undercuts the modern consensual basis of the legitimacy of the state.

Another problem was that republicanism requires neither some particular system of voting, nor a specific scheme of representation. Hence, voting qualifications are addressed in clear constitutional provisions. Changes to voting qualifications, at least at the level of the U.S. Constitution, with a few controversial exceptions, have been produced through explicit and formal amendments. Matters of representation, as well, are addressed in express manner in a few rather terse and specific provisions.

Beyond those basics, the Constitution has left such political issues to the political process, particularly in the several states. Especially regarding representation, the Constitution only requires that the states have republican forms of government. We know what a republican form is not, namely, hereditary monarchy or aristocracy. But we do not know what it is. Must representation be based on districts? If so, must these be single-member? Must representatives be elected by a majority, or does a plurality suffice? At the state or local level, must it be based on residents, adult residents, citizens, registered voters, actual voters, or something else? Must all districts be drawn on the basis of population equality only? May the system give recognition or accommodation to political subdivisions; cohesive racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural communities; organized societal subgroups, such as labor unions, business or professional associations, or military veterans; or wealthier areas that contribute more to the maintenance of the political community through their taxes? Most of these variants have occurred in the constitutions of the several states or in current or former republican systems around the world.

Finally, judges approach such issues through the language, methodology, and epistemology of the law. Lawsuits produce winners and losers and deal in absolutes. In constitutional litigation, there is the additional complication that the Constitution confers a certain moral legitimacy on the winner and concurrent illegitimacy on the loser. These institutional factors tend to produce arguments and results that lurch towards conceptual absolutes and hard attitudes rather than compromise, flexibility, and nuance. Representation often requires the balancing of numerous competing interests, particularly in a political system that, through its Madisonian roots, is consciously designed to pit temporary and changing coalitions of diverse self-interested factions against each other.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Joerg Knipprath

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

In a republic, two distinct principles are essential to political influence, voting and representation. Although there is no logical connection between any particular systems of voting and representation, there is a practical overlap. It is not astonishing, therefore, that allocation of voting and representation not only have been addressed in all republican constitutions, ancient and modern, but that conflicts over these issues have flared up in American history. “No taxation without representation” was one potent Revolutionary War-era slogan–and continues to be an (avoidable) obsession with some residents of the District of Columbia and with its municipal government. That slogan arose out of fundamental differences between English and American conceptions of voting and representation that had evolved from the experiences of living under distinctive physical and social conditions.

Voting qualifications and representation have been major controversies in several periods of American history. The Philadelphia Convention in 1787 was deadlocked several weeks over the representational structure of the proposed Congress and nearly broke up over the matter before Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut presented the current compromise system. The constitutional upheaval of the second quarter of the 19th century during the “Age of Jackson” that produced numerous state conventions was triggered by popular restiveness over the outdated systems of voting and representation. One particularly tragic-comic event during that time was the Dorr War, a “civil war” in Rhode Island in 1841/2. It was precipitated by an attempt to reform the voting qualifications and legislative apportionment in place since the old colony’s royal charter had been made, with a few qualifications, the new state’s constitution at independence. Once more, in the 1960s, voting and representation became major constitutional issues. This time the matter was addressed through litigation in courts, rather less democratic than constitutional conventions and less dramatic than civil wars, no matter how small.

As early as 1639, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut fixed voting for the General Court in all free adult male inhabitants of the towns, if they had taken the Oath of Fidelity. The Orders also fixed representation in that body based roughly on the population of the constituent towns. Other colonial charters followed suit. After independence, the state constitutions addressed these issues, sometimes in considerable detail. For example, the Virginia Constitution of 1776 simply provided in a fraction of one sentence that voters must be free adult males with sufficient common interest with, and attachment to, their community, presumably based on residency and property ownership. The system of representation, on the other hand, took up two complete sections, with representation in the House of Delegates primarily on the basis of counties and cities, and in the Senate, on the basis of larger districts composed of various counties.

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 similarly allowed voting for its two legislative chambers by adult male inhabitants with sufficient estates who lived in their respective electoral units. The forty senators would be elected from districts that were apportioned based on the proportion of taxes that they paid. The number of districts, their lines, and the number of senators from each would be determined periodically by the legislature. The state’s House of Representatives would be apportioned on the basis of incorporated towns, with some adjustment for population size among the towns. It was the Massachusetts system of senatorial apportionment by the legislature that made a lasting contribution to the political lexicon. In 1812, the legislature redrew the Senate districts to favor the Jeffersonian Republicans. One district, in Essex County, had a particularly convoluted shape, which an editorial in the Boston Gazette compared to a salamander and dubbed a “Gerry-mander.” The governor, Elbridge Gerry, had signed the legislation despite personal misgivings about its hyper-partisanship. Partisan apportionment remains a common tactic today, and districts not infrequently have similarly odd shapes. One refreshingly honest practitioner, former California Democratic Congressman Philip Burton, in 1981 called one such creation his “contribution to modern art.” While the pronunciation has changed slightly, to a soft “g,” the “gerrymander” has endured.

The U.S. Constitution provides for apportionment of representation among the states. In the Senate, representation is based on the political equality of all states in their corporate capacity, in recognition of their residual sovereignty. In the House of Representatives, it is based on a combination of population and political identity, in that more populous states receive more representatives, but each state has at least one, regardless of population. The Constitution initially provided for one representative for each 30,000 residents, which number itself had been controversial. The convention had settled on one member for each 40,000, but George Washington thought that too high. It was the only time that Washington, the presiding officer of the convention, spoke on a substantive issue before the convention. His proposal was quickly adopted. Beyond that, some speakers at the Philadelphia convention and the state ratifying conventions spoke broadly about the desirability of population equality in drawing districts, and the need to avoid the “rotten boroughs” of England, that is, districts that no longer had many residents, yet still elected members of Parliament. State constitutions also endorsed equality in representation. As, the Virginia and Massachusetts constitutions showed, however, their concept of equality was far more nuanced than the numerical rigidity that the Supreme Court later discovered in the Constitution.

While population growth and admission of new states initially resulted simply in increasing the number of representatives, in 1929 Congress capped the size of the House at 435 voting members, to prevent their number from becoming too unwieldy to conduct business efficiently and to deal with a lack of physical space in the chamber. As a consequence, after every decennial census, unequal population increases in the various states now cause some states to gain representatives, and others to lose them. This can also produce significant population disparities among districts in different states, depending on the formula Congress uses. Under the current formula, the largest district, in Montana, has nearly twice the population of the smallest district, in neighboring Wyoming.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow. Read more from Professor Knipprath at: http://www.tokenconservative.com/.

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: J. Eric Wise

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

According to Aristotle, “the first society to be formed is the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony from the family…” The town of my childhood, Detroit, was a colony founded by the French in 1701. One of my forebears by the name of Parent was among the first of 40 families to settle there in 1707. My grandmother, Blanche Parent Wise, was also the first – and last – Republican woman to sit on the Detroit city council from 1952 to 1960. Greenwich, Connecticut, where I live today, began as a colony founded in 1640 by a group of Englishmen that included daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and author of the famous “city on a hill” sermon.

While the Town of Greenwich, population 61,000, is old, its modern charter arrived in 1975. The charter is filled with provisions for budgets, elections, flood control, health, home rule, ordinances, parks and recreation, zoning, parking, public works, sewers, a board of estimation and taxes, a town council, selectmen (think mayors and deputy mayors), and a town clerk. 

As this litany of charter provisions shows, a town or city touches almost every aspect of the daily life of its people. Whether you are driving on a road, visiting a park, waving to a policeman directing traffic, taking in the bustle of your local commercial district, or simply parking your car, you are working with your city government and your city government is working for you.

A city government is always busy making a great many households into one community, into its own little “city on a hill” as John Winthrop would have said. A city government not only must do all these things – imagine a world without police or firemen, or in the case of Greenwich, public beaches! – it must also pay for them.

Thus the first article of the charter of the Town of Greenwich provides for the Board of Estimate and Taxation (or BET), which is responsible for the “proper administration for the financial affairs of the town.” The BET consists of 12 members elected at large, who serve without pay for a term of two years. The Town of Greenwich may not borrow without the approval of the BET.

The AAA rated Town of Greenwich has a highly successful financial record. The Town of Greenwich 2019-2020 Budget reflects operating costs of $389,620,369 (about $6,400 per capita), authorized general debt of $39,981,000 and authorized sewer debt of $7,250,000 (altogether about $800 per capita). The debt represents general obligations of the Town of Greenwich backed by its “full faith and credit.” This means the Town of Greenwich has made a commitment to use its future taxing power to pay for bonds issued to meet current expenditures.

In the Town of Greenwich, executive power is held by the First Selectman. All administrative functions – police, fire, highways, sewers and other public works, building inspection, parks, recreation, law, human resources, parking services, fleet management, information technology and purchasing for such purposes, fall under the direct supervision and control of the First Selectman. A Board of Selectmen consisting of the First Selectman and two other Selectmen appoints the various heads of department on the recommendation of the First Selectman.

But there are important duties of a First Selectman that are not found in the charter. Fred Camillo, a Republican candidate for First Selectman in the Town of Greenwich, when asked about the responsibilities of a First Selectman, said “The First Selectman is the voice and face of the town, and is the person who sees to it that the public welfare is protected, its finances secure, with its future road map charted.”

Camillo, who currently represents the 151st District of Connecticut in the Capitol in Hartford, added, “The First Selectman also has to keep an eye on Hartford, and have a solid working relationship with the governor and a good rapport with the various state departments and agencies as well as legislature.”

In addition to an executive, the Town of Greenwich has a deliberative body called the Representative Town Meeting, or RTM for short. Like a city council, the RTM exercises the ordinance making powers on behalf of the people of Greenwich. A highly democratic body, the RTM consists of over 200 members, and meets regularly to conduct town business.

In addition to the First Selectman and the Board of Estimate and Taxation, the Town of Greenwich elects two Selectmen, five members of the Board of Tax Review, a Tax Collector, seven Constables.

Not to be forgotten are the volunteers. According to Camillo, “Volunteers are extremely important. They reduce the tax burden and foster a spirit of pride, which is very helpful.  Greenwich is unique in that people take their civic duty seriously. In fact, the civic involvement is second to none. I travel all over the state, and I have never seen the level of civic involvement that I have seen in Greenwich. As long as I can remember, it has always been there.”

This apparatus of leaders, departments, appointees, employees, and volunteers works to deliver the essential services needed for living well. It requires the hard work and dedication of a great body of people, many of whom perform their jobs for no compensation, out of a sense that a town is a kind of family.

When city government does not work, when a town ceases to be a family, the results can be catastrophic. In 2013, Detroit, once one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the United States, filed for bankruptcy. More than ten times the size of the Town of Greenwich, Detroit had saddled itself with more than 400 times the debt. Years of overtaxing and underservicing had driven the population down to less than half of its peak. Detroit had gone from being a “city on a hill” to a city in a very deep hole. Just how deep? A suspension of representative government occurred in Detroit; an unelected Emergency Manager took over power to operate the city as the city marched into a Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Eric Wise is an attorney practicing in New York.

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Clay Williams

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Mississippi followed a long, winding path to reach statehood. Following thousands of years of various Native Americans inhabiting the landscape, European powers burst upon the scene in the 1500s. Between then and the late 1700s, Spain, France and England had all claimed at least portions of the area we now know of as Mississippi. When the fledgling United States acquired the area in the late eighteenth century, it took nearly twenty years before Mississippi became this nation’s twentieth state.

Congress established the Mississippi Territory on April 7, 1798. Spain had claimed a large portion of the area but had given up much of its rights by 1795. Initially, this region consisted of a strip of land between the Mississippi and Chattahoochee Rivers but by 1812, it encompassed all of the present-day states of Mississippi and Alabama. The territorial government consisted of a governor, three judges and a secretary who served as a ruling council. Once the population level reached a certain number, the territory could apply for the second territorial stage which included an elected assembly and a delegate to Congress. Eventually, a territory could apply for statehood.

The new government faced a variety of difficult issues: conflicting land claims, tense relations with Native Americans, and the continuing interference of the Spanish. Severe political factionalism also dominated territorial politics which hampered the Mississippi Territory’s governors as they attempted to deal with these problems. It was not until near the end of the territorial period when the area’s residents became focused on the drive for statehood and the political rivalry began to subside.

The residents of the Mississippi Territory were primarily former British or Spanish citizens or natives of other parts of the United States who had migrated to the region in pursuit of land and opportunity. Following the conclusion of the Creek War in 1814, the most important event in the development of the region, a flood of immigration into the region occurred. By the time of Mississippi’s statehood in 1817, the area’s population had swelled to over 200,000

While the Territory remained overwhelmingly rural, it included several noteworthy towns such as Washington, Port Gibson, Mobile, and Huntsville. Natchez was by far the most important town in the Territory. Laid out by the Spanish in the late 1700s, the city became the cultural and economic center of the Territory as well as the seat of political power throughout the period.

Whether they lived in a city or in the countryside, most Mississippi Territory citizens’ lives revolved around agriculture. Cotton became by far the most profitable and important crop. Just as importantly, the profitability of cotton production gave rise to the widespread growth of slavery in the Mississippi Territory. Slaves had first been brought into the region during the colonial era, but it was during the territorial period that their population grew in significant numbers. The institution exerted great influence on the Territory’s economy and laid the foundation for a pattern of economic and social development that would dominate much of Mississippi’s history for the next fifty years.

Arguments over whether the Mississippi Territory would enter the union as one state or two had begun almost immediately after its organization in 1798. Aware of the economic and political dominance of their portion of the Territory, many western residents, specifically those in the along the Mississippi River near Natchez favored admission as a single state so that they might maintain their influence. Many eastern residents in the Mobile region, however, initially felt that their interests were neglected due to the great distance between themselves and the territorial capital as well as other inherent differences in economy and lifestyle. After the Creek War, however, the situation reversed. The population of the eastern section of the Territory grew rapidly as settlers migrated onto former Creek lands. Realizing the potential to exert more influence on any new state of which they were to be a part, many eastern section residents now began to favor admission of the Territory as one state. Sensing the future diminishment of their influence, those in the western section now advocated division.

In the end, Congress divided the territory in large part to allow four new seats in the Senate instead of just two. President James Madison signed the enabling act that granted admission of the western section of the Territory as the state of Mississippi on March 1, 1817; the eastern section was organized as the Alabama Territory at the same time. The line of division, which still serves as the boundary between Mississippi and Alabama today, was designed to be a compromise between the wishes of western and eastern residents of the Territory although many residents of both areas remained unhappy.

In July of 1817, forty-eight delegates from Mississippi’s fourteen counties met to draft the new state’s constitution. The constitution established Mississippi’s government and recognized Natchez as the state’s capital. This charter document kept power in the hands of the few as only white men of property could vote or hold office. Many statewide elected officials were elected by the legislature and the amendment process was difficult.  In keeping with its agricultural roots, slavery was expressly protected. President James Monroe on December 10, 1817, signed the resolution that admitted Mississippi as the nation’s twentieth state. Territorial governor David Holmes won election as the state’s first governor. Electors also chose George Poindexter as its only congressman and Walter Leake and Thomas H. Williams as its first senators.

Mississippi has since written three more constitutions over the past two hundred years. The next constitution written in 1832 mirrored the Jacksonian age by expanding those who can participate in government to all white men. After the Civil War, the 1868 constitution extended voting rights to all men, regardless of race. The state’s current constitution, written in 1890, reversed these democratic gains by requiring poll taxes and literacy tests to qualify to vote. These measures decimated the number of registered African American voters; measures that were not overturned til the modern Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Clay Williams serves as Sites Administrator for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History where he oversees operations for six museum sites (Eudora Welty House and Garden, the Manship House Museum, the Old Capitol Museum, Winterville Mounds, Historic Jefferson College, and the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians.)  He has been published several times in such venues as the Journal of Mississippi History, The Mississippi Encyclopedia, and Mississippi History Now. His first book, Battle for the Southern Frontier, the Creek War and the War of 1812, co-authored with Mike Bunn, was published in July 2008 from The History Press.  He is currently under contract to co-write a volume with the Heritage of Mississippi Series on Frontier Mississippi (1800-1840).

 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Peter Roff

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

During the Second Continental Congress’ debate over whether to sever ties with Great Britain, Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have said that revolutions “come into the world half improvised, half compromised.”

It may be that he never said it yet if he had he might have just as easily been talking about just how the United States of America came to locate its permanent seat of government on a plot of land, ten miles square on the banks of the Potomac River.

Officially it all came about as the result of the Residence Act of 1790 – officially “An Act for Establishing the Temporary and Permanent Seat of the Government of the United States,” signed into law by President George Washington on July 16, 1790 at a time when the federal government, such as it was, operated out of New York City.

The act transferred the capital, temporarily, back to Philadelphia, the city where independence from Great Britain had famously been declared and in which the new Constitution had been written, in secret, by many of the nation’s greatest minds. Those men, by and large, now occupied positions of prominence, either in the new federal government or in their states and almost all had opinions about where the permanent capital should be located.

The machinations behind the scenes that resulted in the Residence Act are perhaps the first great compromise of the new Republic. The northern states did not want the capital in the South. The southern states did not want it in the North. And no state wanted it located within the confines of any other, thinking it would give that state an unfair advantage in the affairs of the new nation.

The logjam was broken by an agreement brokered by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the capital in the South, and New York’s Alexander Hamilton, who wanted the federal government to assume the remaining debt incurred by the states during the War for Independence. The compromise, they reached, presumably blessed by President Washington, placed the permanent capital just a few miles upriver from his Mt. Vernon estate.

In the original configuration, the land which made up the capital was ceded to the federal government by Virginia and Maryland and formed a diamond, ten miles square. In 1846 the area given by Virginia was returned. This includes the independent city of Alexandria, which existed before the district was assembled, as well as the area now called Arlington County.

What makes the District of Columbia truly unique, though, is not that it was formed from land belonging to other states. The Constitution provides for that possibility so long as the legislature or legislatures of the state or states affected consents. Maine, for example, comes from territory once a part of Massachusetts and was admitted as an independent state when a free state was needed to balance the admission of one where slavery would be legal. No, what makes Washington D.C., different from the other states and territories is that the founders intended it would always be run by the federal government.

In Federalist 43, Madison writes:

“The indispensable necessity of complete authority at the seat of government, carries its own evidence with it. It is a power exercised by every legislature of the Union, I might say of the world, by virtue of its general supremacy. Without it, not only the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings interrupted with impunity; but a dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy.”

“This consideration has the more weight,” he goes on to say

“as the gradual accumulation of public improvements at the stationary residence of the government would be both too great a public pledge to be left in the hands of a single State, and would create so many obstacles to a removal of the government, as still further to abridge its necessary independence.”

As they saw it, the independence of the capital city from the governments of the other states was an additional safeguard of our liberties and of the new system of government created by the U.S. Constitution based on checks and balances of power not just between the three branches of the federal government but between the federal government and the states.

That system held well into the 20th century. The protests of what has become known as the civil rights era gave impetus to the viewpoint the structure of governance within the District of Columbia was antiquated and discriminatory. In 1961 the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving the District three votes in the Electoral College for the election of the president and vice president. In 1973, Congress enacted the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, giving the city an independently elected mayor (to replace the city’s chief executive officer who, under different titles had been an appointee of the President of the United States) and a 13-member city council.

Home rule, however, is not complete. The actions of the mayor and the city council are still subject to congressional review and can be overturned by an act of Congress. Additionally the District lacks representation in the United States Senate (it does elect to “shadow senators” whose purpose is to lobby for statehood) its residents to elect a delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives who, at different times, has been both a voting and non-voting member of the body.

There are some who believe the District should be granted statehood. They’ve adopted and, in a nod to the chief slogan of the War for Independence managed to get onto the city’s vehicle plates the unofficial motto, “No Taxation without Representation.” There are others who believe the original constitutional construct of having the capital city run by the federal government to, for various reasons, be a good one that should be returned to as originally envisioned. It is not an issue that will be settled easily or, one must believe, soon.

Peter Roff is a Washington, D.C.–based journalist and commentator who serves on the Constituting America advisory board.

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Marc Clauson

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Home Rule or Dillon Rule? What is the meaning, purpose and impact for American citizens to choose “Home Rule” or “Dillon Rule” authority to govern their cities? How does each work for local as compared to state government?

John Dillon, a Federal judge in the nineteenth century, wrote a famous treatise, Municipal Corporations (1872), in which the legal doctrine of the power of municipal governments was expressed.  The rule that emerged from his book and court cases was that local governments were “creatures of the state” and only had power to do what was expressly authorized by the state legislature or in the state constitution or what was implied in those laws or what was necessary to carry out those powers granted.  The opposite rule, the “Cooley Doctrine,” is derived from the work of the judge Thomas Cooley, and expressed the idea of the inherent right of self-government for local entities. The idea of Home Rule for cities arose out of the Cooley Doctrine.

Neither of these legal theories is inherently better than the other, though some might think (with some support) that the Dillon Rule prevents cities from straying too far from legitimate authority.  The key is what a legislature or state constitution allows a city to do.  If under the Dillon Rule the city is granted expansive authority, then the rule does not effectively limit governmental power.  The Cooley Doctrine already tends to allow a greater range of independent authority to a city, which may amount to an inappropriate scope of power.  If the American political experiment was predicated on limited government, as was the case of the United States Constitution, then local governments should also fall under the umbrella of that political theory.  There is no inherent reason why they should be treated differently than state and national governments.

The implications of the Dillon Rule are that a check on inappropriate power of a city can exist if a legislature exercises its political will.  On the other hand, the Cooley Doctrine might allow a larger scope of power than would be beneficial to citizens, unless the particular city government form adopted (strong mayor, weak mayor, council, strong charter, etc.) can provide a check.  In the end, what one wants to see is a city/local government that possesses powers that are similar in nature to those possessed by the national government under the Constitution, adjusting of course for the differing functions.  My point has to do with the scope and nature of powers.  If a particular power is allowed (under whichever rule), it still should not be an unlimited power.  Moreover, not all powers are legitimate for any given local government or for any such government.  Under current law of local government, it is incumbent on the state legislatures to create institutional arrangements that do limit power, or that appropriate state constitutional limits be in place.

Marc A. Clauson is Professor of History, Law and Political Economy and Professor in Honors at Cedarville University. Marc holds a PhD from the University of the Orange Free State, SA, Intellectual History and Polity); JD (West Virginia University College of Law, Jurisprudence); MA, ThM (Liberty University, New Testament Studies and Church History); MA (Marshall University, Political Science); BS (Marshall University, Physics); and PhD work (West Virginia University, Economic Theory).

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Every year elections are held in the United States.

Federal and state elections every other year (except a few states who are truly “off-year” outside of the two-year cycle).  Local elections, county and municipal, are held somewhere every year.

There are approximately 88,000 local governments, districts, and commissions containing over 500,000 elected officials.

Many local offices are nonpartisan, meaning not party affiliated.  School Boards and small cities and towns assume local functions are not truly partisan.  Is there a Republican or Democrat way of collecting trash or plowing snow?

Local government is designed to be more intimately related to the people it serves. Ironically, few Americans understand its functions, and fewer know their local officials.

This is unfortunate, as local government is, in many ways, far more important than national and statewide offices.  Local laws and their enforcement can affect property values, quality of education, quality of water, and determine life or death when managing first responders.

This dichotomy of importance and ignorance creates numerous challenges and opportunities.

On the one hand there is less interest in running for these offices.  In smaller towns and cities, of importance and as many as 79 percent of local elections are uncontested.  There is also less interest in voting for these offices.  Stand alone local races, held in off-years, may experience voter turnouts of less than 20 percent.  Local elections held during regular cycles, usually county and school boards, may garner 30-40 percent less votes than for the high-profile state and federal offices.

On the other hand, smaller voter turnout means a dedicated group of activists can elect a candidate as change agent.  It also means a low threshold for a first-time candidate entering a local race.

21st Century campaigns have become extremely expensive.

In 2014, the average winning campaign for the U.S. Senate campaign spent $10.6 million.  In 2018, incumbent U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) spent $33.5 million in her losing re-election campaign.  In 2018, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) spent $25 million to lose his re-election, while Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) spent $68 million to defeat him.

Campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives can also be very expensive. Congressman Alex Mooney (R-WV) spent $1.8 million for winning his 2018 re-election.

These campaign finance numbers do not include the millions spent by “independent” organizations to promote or oppose candidates through direct mail and professionally produced radio and television advertisements.

Compare this with county-level campaigns where $5,000-$20,000 may be all that is required for victory.  Winning small town and School Board campaigns may only require a just few hundred dollars.

“Down-Ballot” offices are ideal for average citizens to run for office for the most idealistic of reasons – to help their community.  Many who run for these positions do not desire political careers.  They are motivated by seeing something that needs to be done and answer the call to do it.

Another aspect of local “down-ballot” campaigns is that they usually transcend partisanship.  This is certainly the case for officially nonpartisan offices.  Even partisan local campaigns will see bipartisan cooperation when community values, honesty in government, and civic reform is at stake.  There are countless examples of activists who may be deeply divided on national issues joining forces to “drain the swamp” of county courthouse insiders.

Successful “Down-Ballot” campaigns may include a few yard signs, but rarely include major advertising.  Social media, especially Facebook pages and groups, have been the winning edge for many of these first timers.  Some create their own Facebook and YouTube videos to introduce themselves or highlight issues.

The intimacy of local campaigns also allows for neighbors to help neighbors.  “Meet and Greets” in private homes and door-to-door face-to-face interactions are the purest form of grassroots campaigning.  Money is not as important.  One local candidate, who was revered for her charity work, won by a landslide despite being outspent 21-1.

This lack of interest in running and voting has, by design or chance, levelled the field for average citizens to make a difference.  Either as a candidate or as a supporter/voter of that candidate, “down-ballot” offices provide a way for caring members of the local community to get involved and contribute to the greater good.

What could be more American than that?

Scot Faulkner advises corporations and governments on how to save billions of dollars by achieving dramatic and sustainable cost reductions while improving operational and service excellence. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. He started his Congressional career as an intern for Rep. Don Young (R-AK), then served on the legislative staffs of Rep. Arlan Stangeland (R-MN) and Rep. John Ashbrook (R-OH). Faulkner later served on the White House Staff and as an Executive Branch Appointee.

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Tim Griffin

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The twenty-fifth state to be admitted, Arkansas formally joined the United States on June 15, 1836, and was the ninth state to secede from the Union. Its current constitution, adopted in 1874, is the fifth used in the state’s history.

Arkansas’s march to admission to the Union had its roots in two of the most powerful movements of the nineteenth century: the sectional crisis and the rise of Jacksonian Democracy. By 1835, a special census revealed that Arkansas, at over 52,000 residents, met the minimum population requirements (40,000) for admission to the Union.[1] Two variables complicated this process. First, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 established the principle of slave and free states coming into the Union in pairs, in order to maintain the balance of power in the Senate. Secondly, statehood advocates sought to have Arkansas admitted in advance of the 1836 presidential election, to give the Democrats a further advantage at the polls. It was understood that Michigan, a free state, would be paired with Arkansas, but the Whig Party in Congress sought to delay what would be the admission of two Democratic-leaning states.[2] Also at home, many Arkansans were wary of the idea of statehood, particularly those who had questions about the still largely frontier territory’s financial strength.[3] But the proclamation by the editor of the Arkansas Advocate that statehood would give Arkansans “The rights and rank to which we are entitled,”[4] carried the day, and President Andrew Jackson signed the statehood bill into law on June 15, 1836.

In the state’s early years, it struggled economically because of its still predominately violent frontier image and the failure of an ill-conceived state-supported banking system that left debilitating debts and even more suspicion of government involvement in the economy.[5] Economically, Arkansas was divided into small subsistence farms in its mountainous north and upper west and large slave-based plantation agriculture to its south and east. Politically, the state’s governmental life was controlled by the Democratic Party, which was in turn controlled by a group known as “The Family,” that coalesced around the Conway, Rector, and Sevier families.[6] The Civil War and Reconstruction would lead to huge upheavals, as wartime destruction and the rise of a Republican Party led by northerners who had remained south after the war led to struggles over matters such as civil rights, education, and economic modernization. After this period, Arkansas would still remain predominately agrarian for almost another century, heavily dependent on a one-crop cotton based economy. Other products such as timber, rice, oil, and natural gas were developed in the postwar years, but were most often sent out of state for processing until World War II. After the war, Arkansas embarked on a broad program of economic diversification led by Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, and expanded by home-grown entrepreneurs such as Don Tyson, Sam Walton, and Charles Morgan.

As mentioned earlier, Arkansas is governed under its 1874 constitution, which is its fifth since statehood, and commonly known as the “Thou Shalt Not” document.[7] It reflected the general suspicion of government power that had been prevalent in the state since entering the Union. Most of these revisions placed into the document were highly restrictive and negative in nature.[8] County governments became more powerful as administrative units of the state, with jurisdiction over roads and bridges, local judiciary, and taxation and spending. The state’s powers to tax and borrow were severely limited, the terms of elected officials were reduced from four years to two years (changed to four years by a constitutional amendment in 1984), the number of elected county officials was increased from two to ten, and the legislative sessions were biennial, limited to sixty days. The governor’s power was greatly reduced, and executive power was divided between seven constitutional officers. Vetoes could be overridden by a simple majority, and much authority transferred from state to county government. Some modernization of government has taken place in the postwar era, most notably two reorganization bills in 1971 and 2019 that consolidated and reorganized state agencies, boards, and commissions into a smaller number of executive departments. Term limits for constitutional officers and the legislature were first enacted in 1992,[9] and some of the document’s more stringent provisions, such as a strict limit on interest rates and state borrowing authority, have been modified in recent years.

After the end of Republican Reconstruction, Arkansas joined its sister Southern states into the Democratic “Solid South,” and the state was one of the last to transition into a two-party system in the modern era. Arkansas’s reputation took a beating after the Central High desegregation crisis of 1957, and gradually, reformers from both parties exerted more influence on state policy by the 1970s and 1980s. The Republican Party in Arkansas began to slowly gain ground beginning in the 1980s, but was slowed by the election of former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s election to the Presidency in 1992. By 2014, the Republican Party had arrived in full force with the first full Republican sweep in the state since 1872, and the dawning of a new era.

Tim Griffin grew up in Magnolia, a fifth-generation Arkansan and the youngest son of a minister and teacher. He was elected lieutenant governor of Arkansas on November 4, 2014, and was re-elected for his second four-year term on November 6, 2018. He is focused on growing jobs through aggressively pursuing economic development, more parental choice in education and boldly reforming state government. For 2019, he is serving as Chairman of the Republican Lieutenant Governors Association (RLGA).

From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District. For the 113th Congress, he was a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority.  In the 112th Congress, he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the House Committee on Ethics and the House Committee on the Judiciary. He also served as an Assistant Whip for the Majority.  In Congress, he advocated for bold tax reform and entitlement reform to grow jobs and reduce the national debt.

During the Bush Administration, in 2006-2007, Griffin served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and previously as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush at the White House.

Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, for over 22 years and currently holds the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was recently selected for promotion to colonel. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in Mosul, Iraq, for which he was awarded the Combat Action Badge.  He is currently serving as a senior legislative advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. In July 2018, Lieutenant Governor Griffin, in his capacity as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve, received his master’s degree in strategic studies as a Distinguished Graduate from the United States Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

Tim is active in the community.  He currently serves on the board of Our House shelter for the working homeless and previously served on the boards of the Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas.

He graduated from Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway and Tulane Law School in New Orleans and attended graduate school at Oxford University in England. His wife Elizabeth is from Camden, and they currently live in Little Rock with their three children, Mary Katherine, John, and Charlotte Anne. They are members of Immanuel Baptist Church of Little Rock.

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

[1] Jeannie M. Whayne, Thomas A. DeBlack, George Sabo III, and Morris S. Arnold, Arkansas: A Narrative History (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2013), 128.

[2] Ibid., 129.

[3] Ken Bridges, “Marking the 180th anniversary of Arkansas statehood.” Log Cabin Democrat, June 11, 2016. https://www.thecabin.net/opinion/2016-06-11/marking-180th-anniversary-arkansas-statehood (Accessed May 30, 2019)

[4] Whayne, et.al., Arkansas: A Narrative History, 131.

[5] S. Charles Bolton, Arkansas 1800-1860: Remote and Restless (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 50.

[6] Thomas A. DeBlack, “The Family [Political Dynasty].” Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, December 21, 2015.  https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/the-family-political-dynasty-2666/ (accessed May 30, 2019)

[7] Michael B. Dougan, Arkansas Odyssey: The Saga of Arkansas from Prehistoric Times to Present (Little Rock: Rose Publishing Company, 1994), 268.

[8] Kay C. Goss, “Arkansas Constitutions.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, December 3, 2018. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/arkansas-constitutions-2246/ (Accessed May 30, 2019)

[9] Whayne, et.al., Arkansas: A Narrative History, 463.

 

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

America’s 3,034 counties are the backbone of local government and form the core of our civic culture.

Counties are embedded in each state’s constitution and given explicit governing roles and responsibilities.  They arose during the Middle Ages as the domain of a Count or vassal serving a monarch, thus the name.  When the Normans conquered England, they supplanted the local Saxon shires, governed by chieftains, with “contés”, governed by agents of the Crown.

The core activities of counties have seen little change since Counts were given responsibility for maintaining law and order, providing for local roads, and arbitrating disputes, in their domain.

In his timeless masterpiece on American culture, “Democracy in America”, Alexis Clerel, Viscount de Tocqueville, described the functions of county government and the selection of local officials:

The town-meeting chooses at the same time a number of other municipal magistrates, who are entrusted with important administrative functions. The assessors rate the township; the collectors receive the rate. A constable is appointed to keep the peace, to watch the streets, and to forward the execution of the laws; the town-clerk records all the town votes, orders, grants, births, deaths, and marriages; the treasurer keeps the funds; the overseer of the poor performs the difficult task of superintending the action of the poor-laws; committee-men are appointed to attend to the schools and to public instruction; and the road-surveyors, who take care of the greater and lesser thoroughfares of the township, complete the list of the principal functionaries.

The United States currently has approximately 88,000 local governments, districts, and commissions comprised of approximately 500,000 elected officials. This is 20 times as many officials as exist at the federal and state levels. Local governments collectively spend over $1 trillion annually.

As de Tocqueville outlined in 1835, today counties provide the basic services we require in our daily lives:

  • Police, fire and public safety services
  • Sewage, water treatment and waste management
  • Schools, libraries, and other education resources
  • Roads, paths, and bridges
  • Public transportation
  • Planning, permitting, and enforcement
  • Public health services, including mental health, and services to the disabled
  • Tax collection and disbursement

The provision of these services requires close cooperation with “sister” jurisdictions, which may include the state, municipalities and townships embedded within the county, and adjoining counties. Sometimes regional commissions or authorities are established to formalize this cooperation.

County Commissioners or Supervisors act as a “board of directors” to establish policies and oversee these services.  In most cases, there are only 3-9 who are elected and serve in this capacity in each county. These are part-time positions, except in the most populated counties.

The Clerk is a fulltime elected official who is the keeper of all public records, from land ownership to births, deaths, and weddings.  Clerks, and their full staff, administer the settling of estates, or probate, when deaths occur.  Most importantly, Clerks manage voter registration, candidate filings and reports, creating the ballot, holding the election, and counting and reporting the vote.

The elected Sheriff is more than the chief law enforcement official.  Just like in “Robin Hood,” the Sheriff is the tax collector and manages the county’s finances.

Depending on the population of a county there are an array of other public officials, either elected or appointed, who handle assessing property for tax purposes, certifying the health and viability of water systems and food service establishments, coordinating emergency response, and providing parks and recreation.

Public Schools are governed by a separate and independently elected School Board of 5-9 members.  While schools are funded from the property taxes assessed by the Assessor, and collected by the Sheriff, the Board administers and disburses the funds themselves.

The detailed work of counties is conducted through boards and commissions. These include land-use regulation, building permits, water & sewer, and economic development.  Those serving on these boards are part-time volunteers appointed to the County Commission.

This is where local communities face a fundamental challenge.

Most Americans have poor awareness and understanding of local government.  The decisions and activities of the diverse array of elected and appointed officials go unreported, or under-reported.  Holding local power accountable is one of the greatest problems in America today.

In his groundbreaking book, “Bowling Alone”, Robert Putnam described the deterioration of communities in 21st Century America.  This is borne out in how few people volunteer to serve on local boards and commissions, how few attend local public meetings, and how few take actions when incompetence or corruption arise.

Corruption and incompetence are more prevalent than ever.  Land use can make or break fortunes, and help or harm a community, especially in the wrong hands. Unfortunately, conflicts of interest are predictable around land speculation.  Misuse of public funds, especially directing contracts to friends and family, or for unrecorded payments, is always possible.

Prior to the digital age, local newspapers were the bulwark against corruption and malfeasance.  Unfortunately, many of these newspapers are vanishing.  Recently, Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of the New York Times, told the World Congress of News Media that “The greatest crisis in American journalism is the death of local news”.  He predicted most local newspapers “are going to die in the next five years”.

Digital media remains more interested in national issues and popular culture.  The journalistic capacity for demanding accountability, or reporting basic information on county government, is vanishing.

It is up to local citizens to demand accountability. This means demanding transparency, including all public documents being public and all public meetings being public.

Few local officials, especially on appointed boards, support full accountability.  Countless citizen lawsuits have forced public notices to be on websites instead of posted on index cards on courthouse bulletin boards.  This is vital in “bedroom communities” where most citizens commute out of the county for work.

The citizen-led victories for accountability and transparency are based upon state laws that mandate public access. These laws are called “sunshine” laws and “freedom of information acts.”  It is important for those concerned about their communities to learn these laws and fully understand the importance of “adequate public notice” for public hearings and decisions.

America will remain a beacon of hope for freedom loving people everywhere only if Americans take their citizen responsibility seriously and actively participate in their local government.

Scot Faulkner advises corporations and governments on how to save billions of dollars by achieving dramatic and sustainable cost reductions while improving operational and service excellence. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. He started his Congressional career as an intern for Rep. Don Young (R-AK), then served on the legislative staffs of Rep. Arlan Stangeland (R-MN) and Rep. John Ashbrook (R-OH). Faulkner later served on the White House Staff and as an Executive Branch Appointee.

Click Here for the previous essay. 

Click Here for the next essay. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: The Honorable Randall T. Shepard

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Formation of today’s traditional Midwest took root in the years after the Treaty of Paris ended the conflict known to Europeans as the Seven Years War, known in America as the French and Indiana War.  Signed in 1763, this resolution gave the British nominal control over the land from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.

During the Revolution, Indiana was the site of a battle for Fort Sackville, at Vincennes.  As American forces took the fort, they turned toward an effort driving out the British out of places like Illinois and Michigan, the ultimate objective being  Detroit.

After the war, the much-maligned Continental Congress took important steps in organizing these areas.  They adopted the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, with the idea that Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan would eventually be divided into five states of the union.

From the time Ohio became a state in 1803, Indiana’s leaders were hard at work on achieving this end.  They soon scheduled a special census and petitioned for statehood in 1811, an initiative derailed largely by the turmoil of the War of 1812.  With a new census in hand, they petitioned again in 1815 and succeeded in becoming the nineteenth state in 1816.

By the time of statehood the capital had moved from Vincennes to Corydon, both of them towns in the southernmost part of the state.  It was a moment when almost all of the state’s population lived within a short horse ride of the Ohio River, then the nation’s superhighway for both commerce and migration.

The state’s leaders recognized that much future growth would occur in the north.  They settled on relocating the capital to the center of the state, and in 1820 they hired Alexander Ralston to lay out a plan for a new urban place.  Ralston had  assisted Pierre L’Enfant in designing a city plan for Washington in 1791. Hiring him was a sign of pioneer ambition to build a spirited society.

Over the succeeding decades, Indiana focused on three societal objectives.  The first was a shared aspiration to build the bones necessary for a vigorous economy.  The second was a determination to create an educational system that would provide young people with the foundation needed to thrive in that economy.  The third was the struggle against slavery.

Much of published history on infrastructure focuses on the extraordinary Internal Improvements Act of 1836, which led to extensive construction of canals, but the real action was in building roads.  Appropriations for road construction began as early as 1821, some of it financed by sale of federal land given the state for development purposes.  To accelerate the progress, the legislature decreed that every able-bodied man aged twenty-one to fifty must work on building roads and highways “or pay an equivalent therefor” in cash.  This command was structured like a progressive tax.  Persons who owned no real estate owed three days labor each year, people who owned less than eighty acres owed four days, and so on up to a maximum of ten days.

As for education, the constitution of 1816 contained a clause wholly unknown to the Constitution of the United States.  Indiana’s organic document declared that it was the duty of the legislature to create a system of education extending from township schools to a state university, open to all and tuition-free.

The legislature created township schools and took advantage of congressional land donations to finance them.  It created a manual labor obligation for building schools, just as it had for roads, and authorized local tax levies for education.  Institutions called county seminaries, conceived as secondary schools, covered half the counties by the time of the Civil War.  Following a territorial decision to create Vincennes University in 1806, the new state created Indiana University, which opened in 1825.  County libraries were authorized in the 1820’s, as was a state library.

Indiana had been declared a place free from slavery from its earliest days.  The Northwest Ordinance provided that Indiana should be free even as a territory.  The constitution of 1816 seemed to make this plain enough:  “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in this state, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes….”   Notwithstanding the directness of these declarations, the executive and legislative branches periodically blew hot and cold on issues such as immigration and repatriation.  By contrast, the Indiana Supreme Court was almost always a place where antislavery forces prevailed.

Perhaps the most famous case in the court’s history involved an army general who asserted ownership of a young girl named Polly Strong by virtue of his having purchased Polly’s mother, legally, while Indiana was still part of Virginia.  The Supreme Court ruled for Polly Strong, saying: “The framers of our constitution intended a total and entire prohibition of slavery in this State; and we can conceive of no form of words in which that intention could have been more clearly expressed.”  The court took the same position a year later as respects involuntary servitude.  As straightforward as this seems to the modern mind, it did not always or everywhere go down easy.  Illinois courts did not put the last vestiges of slavery to the torch for another twenty-five years.

This attitude about slavery revealed itself in the state’s participation in the Civil War.  Indiana contributed more troops to the Union armies than any state but New York, and when part of a southern-sympathetic legislature refused to appropriate funds to the support the troops, Governor Oliver Morton undertook to borrow and spend millions in support of the cause by executive decree.

The anti-slavery rulings arising from the Indiana Constitution were an important part of the state’s constitutional history, but they hardly stood alone.

In 1854, for example, the state supreme court held that trial courts could appoint counsel for indigent criminal defendants, at state expense.  “It is not to be thought of, in a civilized community, for a moment, that any citizen put in jeopardy of life or liberty, should be debarred of counsel because he was too poor to employ such aid.  No Court could be respected, or respect itself, to sit and hear such a trial.”  This position was all the more remarkable inasmuch as the right to counsel in a federal criminal trial was not established until 1938.  And the U.S. Supreme Court decision compelling all states to provide indigent counsel, Gideon v. Wainwright, was not decided until 1963.

Indiana’s constitution was also held to require exclusion of illegally seized evidence in a criminal case.  The Indiana Supreme Court took this position in 1922, at a time when exclusion was widely unpopular in the national legal community.

Similar robust approaches have long been evident in other fields.  For example, in 1893, the Indiana court held that the constitution authorized admission of women to the bar, notwithstanding that it did not say so (which is what most other state high courts required before acting).  The court said:  “If nature has endowed woman with wisdom, if our colleges have given her an education, if her energy and diligence have lead her to a knowledge of the law, and if her ambition directs her to adopt the profession, shall it be said that forgotten fiction must bar the door against her?”

In the present moment, few would mistake Indiana for a “blue state” chock full of political progressives, but its history and its present illustrate long-standing commitment to fairness, equal treatment, and opportunity.

Randall T. Shepard of Evansville was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court by Governor Robert D. Orr in 1985 at the age of 38. He became Chief Justice of Indiana in March 1987 and retired from the Court in March 2012, at which point he was the longest-serving Chief Justice in Indiana history and the senior Chief Justice in the country’s state supreme courts.

A seventh generation Hoosier, Shepard graduated from Princeton University cum laude and from the Yale Law School. He earned a Master of Laws degree in the judicial process from the University of Virginia.

Shepard was Judge of the Vanderburgh Superior Court from 1980 until his appointment. He earlier served as executive assistant to Mayor Russell Lloyd of Evansville and as special assistant to the Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Chief Justice Shepard has served as chair of the ABA Appellate Judges Conference and of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar and as President of the National Conference of Chief Justices. Chief Justice John Roberts recently appointed him to the U.S. Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. He is a trustee emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a former chair of Indiana Landmarks, Inc.

He teaches periodically at the law schools of Indiana, NYU, and Yale.

He is married and has one daughter.

Since leaving the Court, Shepard has served as a Senior Judge in the Indiana Court of Appeals and as Executive in Residence at I.U.’s Public Policy Institute. He now chairs the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education and has become a director of Old National Bancorp.

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: David Kopel

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

The 1876 Colorado Constitution contains the strongest declaration of state’s rights of any American constitution: “The people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, as a free, sovereign and independent state.” (Colo. Const., art. II, § 2). The powerful affirmation of the people’s right to govern themselves arose from the conditions of early Colorado and has shaped Colorado ever since.

In modern times, Coloradoan’s right of self-governance has been vigorously exercised, such as by the 1992 citizen initiative adding the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) to the Colorado Constitution. The strictest tax and expenditure limit in the nation, TABOR requires voter approval for all increases in taxes, and all government spending increases greater than inflation plus population growth.

Back in 1972, big business and big government teamed up to procure the 1976 Winter Olympics for Colorado. But Coloradoans were leery of anything that would promote the state’s already rapid growth. And they did not want their money being used to fund the already-rich International Olympic Committee. So Coloradoans passed a constitutional amendment by voter initiative, forbidding all taxpayer funding for the 1976 Olympics. As a result, the 1976 Winter Olympics were instead held in Innsbruck, Austria, which already had the necessary facilities, having hosted the 1964 Winter Olympics.

In the twenty-first century, the voters of Colorado adopted constitutional amendments for the regulated sale of medical marijuana (2000) and adult use marijuana (2012). In essence, the voters ordered state government officials to conspire to violate the federal Controlled Substances Act by setting up government-supervised systems for the distribution of marijuana. Given total quantities involved in this “conspiracy” (tons of marijuana, and many millions of dollars), the Colorado government officials have, arguably, been committing federal felonies that qualify them as drug “kingpins,” subject to very severe mandatory sentences.

Yet consistent with the “sole and exclusive right” of Coloradans to govern themselves, state executive branch officials and the Colorado General Assembly have obeyed the Colorado Constitution, and created a carefully controlled, highly taxed, government-supervised system for the production and retail sale of marijuana. “Sole and exclusive” indeed.

As a practical matter, Coloradoans in the State’s founding era had no choice but to be their own “sole and exclusive” governors. While there had been mountain men and a few trading posts in Colorado since the early 19th century, substantial American settlement of Colorado did not begin until the discovery of gold in 1858. By 1859, a rush of settlers had created the towns of Denver and Colorado City (today, Colorado Springs), as well as mining camps in the nearby mountains.

Formally, the land that would become the State of Colorado was part of four territories: Kansas (whose population center was in eastern Kansas), Utah (Salt Lake City), New Mexico (Santa Fe), and Nebraska (Omaha). The Colorado settlements were in the far west of the Kansas Territory, near or in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

But the territorial government of Kansas had little influence in Colorado. It was busy with conflict in eastern Kansas between pro‑slavery and anti‑slavery forces. There was a Kansas judge for Colorado, but he never went to Colorado. None of the territorial governments could do much to assist remote Colorado. The settlers were on their own.

The first Colorado governments were created by the people themselves, as “miner’s districts” in the mining regions, as “claims clubs” in farming areas, and as “town companies.” These voluntary associations recorded and certified property ownership, provided courts for settling disputes, and organized vigilance committees for law enforcement. Some towns elected their own legislatures. They created “people’s courts” for criminal prosecutions. The decisions of the miner’s districts were later ratified in the first session of the territorial legislature. They were also approved by the Colorado Territorial Supreme Court. By accepting and integrating the decisions of the ad hoc miners’ courts and other early bodies, the developing territorial courts provided continuity of law.

Early Colorado never devolved into the anarchy that had characterized California in its own early gold rush years. Because about thirty percent of Colorado’s miners had experience in California, they understood the importance of creating effective local self-government immediately. Thus, the miners’ districts were quickly established. Experienced code writers traveled from town to town, helping to create local law.

Defying the nominal authority of the Kansas territorial government, the settlers in September and October 1859 created their own ad hoc government for what they called the “Territory of Jefferson.” Provisional Governor Robert Steele addressed the opening of the Jefferson legislature on November 7, 1859. He explained that the people had been denied protection of life and property; being sovereign, they had taken measures for their security.

As of 1860, Denver had five competing court systems. Meanwhile, “the mountain counties stood by their Miner’s courts, and as much of the Provisional Government as suited them.” W.B. Vickers, “Territorial Organization,” in Legislative, Historical and Biographical Compendium of Colorado (Denver, C.F. Coleman’s Publ’g House 1887), p. 145. Other Coloradans created judicial districts for what they called “Idaho Territory.”

In short, there were multiple governments in Colorado with alleged jurisdiction, and in fact the people of Colorado entirely governed themselves:

“Side by side sat the Idaho “central judicial” officers, the provisional government of Jefferson, the Kansas county officials, the Denver people’s government, scores of miners’ courts, and local governments and vigilante committees. Never had frontier democracy blossomed so vigorously. With popular sovereignty in the saddle, the northern part of Bent’s old empire was already a far cry from the tradition‑bound and caste‑conscious territory of New Mexico. A new kind of democratic, middle‑class, commercial‑minded frontier had arrived on the borders of the Spanish Southwest.”

Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest 1846–1912: A Territorial History (rev. ed. 2000), pp. 187–88.

As Territorial Secretary Frank Hall later wrote, they were “a free and radically independent people.” 1 Frank Hall, History of the State of Colorado (vol. 1, 1889), p. 369.

The survival of the Colorado Territory was in constant peril. In 1861, as the Civil War began, a Confederate invasion launched from Texas and swept far into New Mexico. The Texans were turned back by Colorado volunteer militia at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, near Santa Fe, in February 1862, a battle known as “the Gettysburg of the West.”

Not long after, and for years to come, Indian wars threatened to wipe out the Colorado settlers.

Three trails led to the Colorado settlements: in the southeast, a branch of the Santa Fe Trail; in the center, the Smoky Hill Trail, from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Denver; and in the north, the South Platte Trail, which traversed Nebraska and then dropped down to Denver. Goods were transported in wagons drawn by oxen or mules.

The white settlers, clustered along the Front Range and in mining towns, could not survive a cutoff of their trade routes with the States. The territory was not self‑sufficient in food, and imports were essential for survival. Not long after the Civil War began, the Smoky Hill Trail and the Santa Fe Trail became too dangerous to use. Federal troops there were sent east, leaving travelers vulnerable to Confederate guerillas and to Indians in the river valleys. The South Platte Trail was the only lifeline connecting Colorado to the States.

The Colorado War began in April 1864, led by the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers—the tribe’s leading military society. In alliance with the Arapahoe, Sioux, Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache, they shut down the South Platte Trail and all other trails. Food prices soared, mail and telegraph communication were cut off, and starvation threatened. When the Governors of Kansas and Colorado asked for federal troops, they were told by the federal commander of the Trans‑Mississippi Theater, General Samuel R. Curtis, “We have none to spare, you must protect yourselves.” Hall, p. 328. For the remainder of the decade, Colorado’s survival was precarious.

In 1861 and 1864, Coloradoans had voted against seeking statehood. Since the federal government bore the cost of administering the territory, Coloradoans would not have to tax themselves to pay for government. Although the thrifty attitude has endured to the present, by the early 1870s the territorial governors appointed from Washington, D.C., had become so corrupt at to be unbearable to the people of Colorado. So they began to seek statehood.

Congress passed the Colorado Enabling Act on March 3, 1875, the final day of the congressional session. President Grant immediately signed it, having called for Colorado’s admission in his December 1873 written message to Congress.

The Colorado Constitutional Convention convened on December 20, 1875. The Convention finished its work by unanimously adopting a proposed constitution on March 14, 1876.

On most issues, including the Bill of Rights, partisan divisions were not important. On issues where there was controversy—such as votes for women or whether to acknowledge the deity in the preamble—the divisions did not break down along party lines.

The fundamental problem for the Convention to solve was not a partisan one. Rather, it was the inherent tension in what the delegates wanted. They knew they did not want a “do nothing” government. To the contrary, their constitution ordered the creation of state institutions for higher education, for care for the insane, and for the blind, deaf, and mute. The delegates required the establishment of “a thorough and uniform system of free public schools,” and that such schools not be racially segregated. The Framers created a commissioner of mines, and ordered the general assembly to enact laws prohibiting child labor in mines, and to enact laws for safe working conditions in the state’s most important industry. The Convention wrote the first American constitution to mention forests, instructing the general assembly to “enact laws in order to prevent the destruction of, and to keep in good preservation, the forests upon the lands of the state.” This was an early manifestation of the Colorado ethos of conservation.

The new constitution further provided that the general assembly “shall” enact “liberal homestead and exemption laws,” “shall” pass arbitration laws, and “shall” enact laws against “spurious, poisonous or drugged spirituous liquors.”

Yet while the Convention had a list of things it mandated the legislature to do, at the same time, the Convention profoundly distrusted the legislature. In the words of one scholar, “The delegates created a legislature and then, as though they regretted their work, they took most discretionary authority from it.” Donald Wayne Hensel, A History of the Colorado Constitution in the Nineteenth Century (Aug. 9, 1957) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado), p. 133.

The 1876 Convention was meeting in “the post-Civil War era, when popular distrust of legislatures was at its height.” G. Alan Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions (1998), p. 199. The Colorado Constitution went especially far to hem in the government, with the longest state constitution up to that point in American history. As amended, the Colorado Constitution remains the one of the longest, reflective to Coloradans’ inclination to instruct their government exactly what it should do and cannot do.

Article V, creating the Colorado House of Representatives and Senate, is much longer than Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which creates the Congress. Article V contains many procedural restrictions on the process of enacting legislation. In addition, legislative sessions were limited to forty days, with no legislative sessions in even-numbered years. A variety of constitutional provisions outlaw taxing, spending, or borrowing on behalf of corporations or other private interests. Later, the first constraints on the legislature would be bolstered by amendments, adopted by the people.

The people of the Colorado Territory adopted the Colorado Constitution on July 1, 1876: 15,443 in favor and 4,052 opposed.

Colorado’s Fourth of July celebrations in 1876 may have been the most exuberant in the nation. A large parade in Denver was led by the Colorado militia, with officers on white horses and the troops on black ones. Each of the thirty-eight states was honored with its own float. On August 1, 1876, President Ulysses Grant issued the proclamation making Colorado the thirty-eighth state.

David B. Kopel is adjunct professor of constitutional law at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. This essay is adapted from his article The Right to Arms in Nineteenth Century Colorado, 95 Denver University Law Review 329 (2018).

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Louis Fisher

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Consider some recent examples of the Court admitting errors on constitutional issues.  In United States v. Curtiss-Wright (1936), the Court upheld a statute that delegated to President Franklin D. Roosevelt authority to prohibit the sale of arms in the Chaco region in South America whenever he found “it may contribute to the reestablishment of peace” between belligerents.  The Court then added extraneous language (judicial dicta), claiming that the President possesses “plenary and exclusive” power over foreign affairs and serves as the “sole organ” in external affairs.  Anyone reading the text of the Constitution would understand that the Framers did not place all power over external affairs in the President.  Clearly that power is allocated to both Congress and the President.

For the phrase “sole organ,” the Court relied on a speech given by John Marshall in 1800 when he served in the House of Representatives.  The year marked an election contest between President John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  Supporters of Jefferson in the House wanted to either impeach or censure Adams for turning over to England an individual charged with murder.  During his defense of Adams, Marshall used this language: “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.”

The phrase “sole organ” requires close examination.  “Sole” means exclusive but what did he mean by “organ”?  Simply the President’s duty to communicate to other nations U.S. policy after it had been decided jointly by the elected branches?  Anyone reading the entire speech would understand that Marshall was not investing the President with plenary and exclusive power over external affairs.  Instead, he merely defended Adams for carrying out a provision in the Jay Treaty that allowed each country to deliver up to each other “all persons” charged with murder or forgery.  The person that Adams turned over to the British, Thomas Nash, was charged with murder.  Adams was not making foreign policy singlehandedly.  He was carrying out a treaty.  By the time Marshall completed his defense of Adams, Jeffersonians considered his argument so tightly reasoned that they dropped plans for impeachment or a censure vote.  It is evident that the Supreme Court in Curtiss-Wright merely relied on a sentence by Marshall and failed to read his entire speech to put that sentence in proper context.

Scholars immediately faulted the Supreme Court for the erroneous use of Marshall’s sole-organ speech.  However, from one decade to the next, executive agencies and federal courts relied on the sole-organ doctrine to promote independent presidential power in external affairs.  As noted by Harold Koh in his book, The National Security Constitution (1990), “lavish description of the president’s power is so often quoted that it has come to be known as the ‘Curtiss-Wright so I’m right’ cite—a statement of deference to the president so sweeping as to be worthy of frequent citation in any government foreign-affairs brief.”

Litigation in the George W. Bush administration led to second thoughts about the sole-organ dicta.  In signing legislation in 2002, President Bush objected that several provisions “impermissibly interfere with the constitutional functions of the presidency in foreign affairs, referring to the President’s authority to “speak for the Nation in international affairs.”  Implicitly, if not explicitly, he relied on Curtiss-Wright dicta.  Litigation remained in the federal courts for a number of years, with the D.C. Circuit at one point holding that the case was a political question unfit for the courts, a position the Supreme Court rejected in 2012.

Turning to the merits, the D.C. Circuit on July 23, 2013 upheld independent presidential power in foreign affairs by relying five times on the sole-organ dicta.  It acknowledged that the language was dicta, but emphasized it was Supreme Court dicta.  It demonstrated no understanding that the sole-organ doctrine was erroneous.  The opinion by the D.C. Circuit prompted me to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on July 1, 2014, explaining that the purpose of Marshall’s speech in 1800 was to defend President Adams for carrying out a treaty provision and that nothing in the speech promoted independent presidential authority in external affairs.  I urged the Court to correct the error in Curtiss-Wright.  When the Court is in session, the National Law Journal each week selects a brief that merits attention.  On November 3, 2014, it selected mine, featuring this heading: “Can the Supreme Court Correct Erroneous Dicta?”

On June 8, 2015, in Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the Supreme Court rejected the sole-organ doctrine that had magnified presidential power in external affairs for 79 years.  In doing so, it proceeded to create a substitute model that promotes independent presidential power in external affairs.  It did that by first attributing to the President the quality “of unity at all times.”  Anyone who studies the presidency recognizes that administrations regularly display inconsistency, conflict, disorder, and confusion.  Memoirs written by top officials after their retirement highlight the infighting and disagreements prevalent within an administration.

To the quality of unity the Court added four other characteristics of the President: decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch, borrowing those words from Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist No. 70.  Why would the Court assume that unity plus those four qualities are inherently positive in nature and consistent with constitutional government?  The five qualities could easily describe a monarchy or dictatorship.  Moreover, anyone familiar with the record of Presidents, particularly after World War II, would understand the costly record of Truman in Korea, Johnson in Vietnam, Reagan in Iran-Contra, Bush II in Iraq, and Obama’s decision to order military force against Libya, leaving behind a country broken legally, economically, and politically, providing a breeding-ground for terrorism.  For further details on the sole-organ doctrine, see my article “The Staying Power of Erroneous Dicta: From Curtiss-Wright to Zivotofsky,” 31 Constitutional Commentary 149 (Summer 2016).

For another recent action by the Supreme Court to correct an earlier decision, one can review the Japanese-American cases of Hirabayashi (1943) and Korematsu (1944).  On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, leading to various actions against Japanese Americans.  A month later, Congress passed legislation to ratify the executive order.  In the first case, the Court upheld a curfew placed on Japanese Americans on the west coast.  In the second case, the Court supported the relocation of Japanese Americans (two-thirds of them U.S. citizens) to detention camps.  With no evidence of disloyalty or subversive activity, the United States imprisoned Japanese Americans solely on account of race.  General John L. DeWitt, who established the curfew, believed that all Japanese Americans, by race alone, are disloyal.  He believed that individuals of Japanese descent belong to “an enemy race” whose “racial strains are undiluted.”

Aided by scholars, Hirabayashi and Korematsu returned to court in the 1980s after newly discovered documents revealed the extent to which executive officials had deceived federal courts and the general public.  A report prepared by the War Department contained erroneous claims about alleged espionage efforts by Japanese Americans.  With abundant evidence of executive branch efforts to deceive the judiciary, Hirabayashi and Korematsu filed a writ of coram nobis, charging the government with committing fraud against the court.  Through those actions, in the lower courts, their convictions were reversed.

Also in the 1980s, Congress created a commission to gather facts and determine the wrong done by Roosevelt’s order.  Released in December 1982, the commission’s report stated that the order “was not justified by military necessity” and that the principal factors shaping those decisions were “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”  To the commission, the decision in Korematsu “lies overruled in the court of history.”  In 1988, Congress passed legislation to acknowledge “the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation, and internment” of Japanese Americans.  At that point the Supreme Court had sufficient evidence that its decisions in 1943 and 1944 were defective and needed to be repudiated.  It chose not to do that.

Not until June 26, 2018, did the Supreme Court admit error in Korematsu.  Writing for the Court in Trump v. Hawaii, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Korematsu “was gravely wrong the day it was decided.”  If that is so, why did the Court take 74 years to make that admission?  Given the Court’s acknowledgment that Korematsu was defective, what about Hirabayashi?  Is that still good law?  Why didn’t the Court repudiate both decisions?

Conclusions

In an article published in 1962 in the NYU Law Review, Chief Justice Earl Warren discussed the Court’s role in safeguarding individual rights.  As to the Japanese-American cases in 1943 and 1944, he offered this explanation: “To put it another way, the fact that the Court rules in a case like Hirabayashi that a given program is constitutional, does not necessarily answer the question whether, in a broader sense, it actually is.”  Clearly that is a repudiation of judicial finality.  Expecting courts to regularly protect constitutional liberties is ill-advised.  Warren believed that the American political system requires the judiciary to play a restricted role: “In our democracy it is still the Legislature and the elected Executive who have the primary responsibility for fashioning and executing policy consistent with the Constitution.

Louis Fisher is Scholar in Residence at the Constitution Project. During his four decades with the Library of Congress, from 1970 to 2010, he served as Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers with the Congressional Research Service and Specialist in Constitutional Law with the Law Library of Congress. His 27 books include: Reconsidering Judicial Finality: Why the Supreme Court is Not the Last Word on the Constitution (University Press of Kansas, 2019)

Click Here for the previous essay.

Click Here for the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Louis Fisher

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Although there is a general belief that courts are reliable guardians of individual rights, the pattern of litigation does not support that position.  Congress and state legislatures have often been more reliable protectors of minority rights and civil liberties than the Supreme Court.  The doctrine of judicial finality has been thrust aside in many broad areas, including the rights of blacks, women, and religious minorities.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Court concluded that Congress had no authority to prohibit a citizen from owning slaves north of the dividing line in the western territories.  In his inaugural address in 1861, President Lincoln addressed the issue of judicial finality, stating that “the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”  In legislation enacted in 1862, Congress asserted its independent constitutional authority by prohibiting slavery in the territories.  What the Supreme Court said in Dred Scott Congress could not do, it did.

In 1875, Congress passed legislation to provide blacks equal access to public accommodations, including theaters, restaurants, inns, and public transportation.  In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Supreme Court declared the statute unconstitutional.  Not until 1964 did Congress again pass legislation providing for equal access to public accommodations.  What could have been accomplished in 1875 had to wait nearly a century because of judicial obstruction.

As with blacks, women learned that their constitutional interests were better protected by legislative bodies, at both the state and national level.  A good example is the experience of Myra Bradwell.  After studying law, she applied for admission to the Illinois bar in 1869.  A panel of four male judges denied her application solely on the ground that she was a woman.  They did suggest that action by the state legislature was an option.  In 1872, it passed legislation stating that no person “shall be precluded or debarred from any occupation, profession or employment (except military) on account of sex.”

Bradwell then took the issue to the Supreme Court, hoping to establish a national right of women to practice law.  A unanimous Court in Bradwell v. State (1883) held against her.  A concurrence by Justice Joseph P. Bradley insisted that the civil law, “as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman.”  He insisted that man “is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender.”  The “natural and proper timidity and delicacy” of women made them “unfit” for many occupations, including law.  Reaching to a higher level, he argued that a “divine ordinance” commanded that a woman’s primary mission in life is centered in the home.  While some women do not marry, he nonetheless decided that a general rule imposed upon women the “paramount destiny and mission” to fulfill the roles of wife and mother.”  To Bradley: “This is the law of the Creator.”

Not until 1971 did the Supreme Court issue an opinion striking down sex discrimination. A unanimous Court in Reed v. Reed declared invalid an Idaho law that preferred men over women in administering estates.  A study by John Johnson and Charles Knapp, published in the NYU Law Review in 1971, denounced the failure of courts to defend the constitutional rights of women.  They concluded that “by and large the performance of American judges in the area of sex discrimination can be succinctly described as ranging from poor to abominable.”

Consider the recent case of Lilly Ledbetter.  In 2007, the Supreme Court split 5-4 in deciding that her claim against Goodyear Tire for pay discrimination had been filed too late.  She had worked there from 1979 to 1998, aware only toward the end of her service that she was paid less than men doing the same work.  The Court held that she had to file within 180 days.  A dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recalled that the Civil Rights Act of 1991 overturned in whole or in part nine decisions of the Supreme Court.  She remarked: “Once again, the ball is in Congress’ court.”  In one of the first bills signed by President Barack Obama, Congress passed legislation in early 2009 stating that discriminatory actions by an employer carry forward in each paycheck, allowing women to file a complaint in a timely manner for relief.

Consider other judicial reversals.  In 1916, Congress passed legislation to regulate child labor in interstate commerce.  Two years later, in Hammer v. Dagenhart, a 5-4 Supreme Court struck down the statute as unconstitutional.  Congress did not accept judicial finality.  It passed legislation to regulate child labor, relying this time on the taxing power.  In Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. (1922), an 8-1 decision struck down that legislative effort.  Congress passed a constitutional amendment in 1924 to provide authority under the commerce power to regulate child labor, but by 1937 only 28 of the necessary 36 states had ratified it.

Instead of accepting judicial finality, Congress passed legislation in 1938 to regulate child labor through the commerce power.  In 1941, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the statute.  As to its decision in 1918, the Court remarked that it “was novel when made and unsupported by any provision in the Constitution.”  A remarkable statement.  Not a shred of constitutional support.  The Court in 1941 repudiated not only the doctrine of judicial finality but the assumption of judicial infallibility.  The motive and purpose of a regulation of interstate commerce are matters, said the Court, “for the legislative judgment upon the exercise of which the Constitution places no restriction and over which the courts are given no control.”

In City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), Justice Anthony Kennedy stated that when the Supreme Court “has interpreted the Constitution, it has acted within the province of the Judicial Branch, which embraces the duty to say what the law is.  Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, at 177.”  Reference to Marbury lacks any substance.  Nothing in that decision gave the Supreme Court the final word on legal and constitutional matters.  Kennedy made no mention of Goldman v. Weinberger (1986), in which the Court upheld the military’s authority to prohibit Captain Goldman from wearing his yarmulke indoors while on duty.  The following year, Congress passed legislation to permit members of the military to wear religious apparel unless it interferes with military duties.  Congress acted pursuant to its express Article I power to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”  The decision in Goldman was little more than an advisory ruling, deferring to whatever Congress later decided to enact.

Louis Fisher is Scholar in Residence at the Constitution Project. During his four decades with the Library of Congress, from 1970 to 2010, he served as Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers with the Congressional Research Service and Specialist in Constitutional Law with the Law Library of Congress. His 27 books include: Reconsidering Judicial Finality: Why the Supreme Court is Not the Last Word on the Constitution (University Press of Kansas, 2019)

Click Here to see the previous essay.

Click Here to see the next essay.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

 

Guest Essayist: Louis Fisher

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

According to the doctrine of judicial finality, the Supreme Court has the last word in interpreting the Constitution unless it changes its mind or the Constitution is amended.  This doctrine, widely accepted, has no basis in the historical record.  In part, that is because the Court, as with the other political branches, makes mistakes.  Chief Justice William Rehnquist expressed the reason quite crisply in Herrera v. Brown (1993): “It is an unalterable fact that our judicial system, like the human beings who administer it, is fallible.”  As this article will explain, when the Court errs it can take six or more decades to recognize a judicial error and announce a correction.

Claims of Judicial Finality

Scholars at times attribute to Chief Justice John Marshall a position he did not promote.  According to Joel Richard Paul in his book Without Precedent: John Marshall and His Times (2018), Marshall “elevated the dignity of the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of the Constitution’s meaning.”  In another study published that same year, The Most Dangerous Branch, David Kaplan states that Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison “established that it was the Court that had the last word on what the Constitution meant” and it “has been accepted wisdom since.”

In Marbury, Marshall stated it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”  Nothing in that phrase makes any claim of judicial finality.  It merely states that courts decide cases.  One can also say that it is emphatically the province and duty of the elected branches to say what the law is.  Nothing in Marshall’s judicial service supports the belief that he regarded the Supreme Court as supreme on constitutional issues.  His behavior during the impeachment hearings of Judge John Pickering and Justice Samuel Chase demonstrates that he understood the value of sharing that responsibility with Congress and the President.  Marshall wrote to Chase on January 23, 1805, suggesting that members of Congress did not have to impeach judges whenever they disagreed with their legal opinions.  Congress could simply reverse objectionable rulings through the regular legislative process.  The Court could say “what the law is” but so could Congress.

Consider what he wrote to Chase: “I think the modern doctrine of impeachment should yield to an appellate jurisdiction in the legislature.  A reversal of those legal opinions deemed unsound by the legislature would certainly better comport with the mildness of our character than [would] a removal of the Judge who has rendered them unknowing of his fault.”  Those are not the words of someone devoted to judicial superiority or finality.

During Marshall’s lifetime, he was well aware that constitutional decisions by the Supreme Court could be reversed by the other branches.  In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Court upheld the authority of Congress to create a national bank.  That decision did not prevent Congress or the President from reaching a different position at a later date.  That is what happened on July 10, 1832, when President Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill to incorporate the bank.  He acknowledged that those who supported the bank maintained that “its constitutionality in all its features ought to be considered as settled by precedent and by the decision of the Supreme Court.”  He rejected that position.  Congress did not override his veto.  Aware of Jackson’s action, Marshall had full appreciation of the degree to which the elected branches could reverse constitutional decisions by the Supreme Court.  He passed away on July 6, 1835.

Louis Fisher is Scholar in Residence at the Constitution Project. During his four decades with the Library of Congress, from 1970 to 2010, he served as Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers with the Congressional Research Service and Specialist in Constitutional Law with the Law Library of Congress. His 27 books include: Reconsidering Judicial Finality: Why the Supreme Court is Not the Last Word on the Constitution (University Press of Kansas, 2019)

Click Here for the next essay.

 Click Here for the previous essay. 

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

America is built on local government.  The future of our nation depends on local communities remaining at the core of representative democracy.

In 1831, the Frenchman, Alexis Clerel, the Vicount de Tocqueville, along with his colleague Gustave de Beaumont, was sent by the French government to study America.  While their mission was officially to review prisons, their nine-month journey produced one of the great classics on America’s civic culture.

“Democracy in America” was published in two volumes (1835 and 1840).  It remains a foundational document describing American exceptionalism.

At its core is de Tocqueville’s description of local government:

The village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that wherever a number of men are collected it seems to constitute itself. The town, or tithing, as the smallest division of a community, must necessarily exist in all nations….

….local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations. Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.

America has always been a nation of communities.  Its pattern of settlement, through Royal Charters, gave wide latitude for establishing local governance.  Being over 5,500 miles from London, made detailed oversight of colonies impossible.  By necessity, and by desire, colonists embraced local authority over distant rule from a capitol or nation.  When distant rulers attempted to increase their control, colonists ignited a Revolution.

As de Tocqueville explains:

The revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and dignified taste for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.

The first form of government was the Articles of Confederation, which created a very weak national government.  External threats and internal dysfunction led to the U.S. Constitution, with extensive safeguards for local sovereignty.

America established a federal government, which means power is shared between national and state government, and the majority of governmental actions take place at the local level.  This is institutionalized in the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Today, America is governed by 87,576 local units.  This includes 3,034 counties, 19,429 municipalities (cities, towns, villages), 16,504 townships, 13,506 school districts, and 35,052 special districts (such as water & sewer, fire, and conservation).

These independent, and interdependent, local governments reflect the diversity that is unique to America.  In America, the preferred government is one closest to those its serves.

de Tocqueville links local government to being fundamental to a free people:

In the township, as well as everywhere else, the people are the only source of power; but in no stage of government does the body of citizens exercise a more immediate influence. In America ‘the people’ is a master whose exigencies demand obedience to the utmost limits of possibility.

Municipal independence is therefore a natural consequence of the principle of the sovereignty of the people in the United States: all the American republics recognize it more or less;

de Tocqueville uses the townships of New England as his primary example of the effectiveness of local government and their role in establishing America’s unique democracy:

The native of New England is attached to his township because it is independent and free: his co-operation in its affairs ensures his attachment to its interest; the well-being it affords him secures his affection; and its welfare is the aim of his ambition and of his future exertions: he takes a part in every occurrence in the place; he practices the art of government in the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those forms which can alone ensure the steady progress of liberty; he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order, comprehends the union or the balance of powers, and collects clear practical notions on the nat