The

Truth Is

Out

There

American History

To 1877

“You Cannot Conquer A

Map”

Conquering A Map

❖The defining events:

–1773 (Dec 16) The Boston

Tea Party

–1775 (April 19):Lexington

and Concord

–1776 The Declaration of

Independence

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❖Yorktown (October 19,1781)

❖The end of the war?

❖Peace of Paris (Sept, 1783)

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❖Why

❖Two Distinct

Societies

❖A “conservative”

revolution

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❖But, was it a

revolution?

❖The experience of

migration and

escape

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❖A rebellion?

❖A political event

produced by the

society and culture?

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❖Feared democracy–Understood in classical terms–Plato’s Apology: Socrates in

399BCE–Aristotle (The Politics): If the

majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city

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❖Feared democracy (the Federalist Papers)–Have “ever been spectacles of

turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths”

Conquering A Map❖The origin of the idea of Federalism,

the Senate and the Electoral College.❖The people should rule through

institutions that put brakes on the passions of the mob. The power of the larger states.

❖There had to be some check on direct democracy and the centralization of power.

❖The Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court are not purely democratic institutions. (You cannot vote away my right to free speech.)

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❖Neither was it to be a

“Republic”

❖In the sense that

Machiavelli defined

“public virtue”

Conquering A Map❖ Wanted a “free government” that

would learn from the past (not a utopian project)

❖ Federalist 6: 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?

Conquering A Map❖ Madison summed up the importance of not relying on Utopian

experiments

– 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. … A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

❖ Luther’s warning

❖ Did not think human beings could be perfected (the Puritans and human nature), the crooked timber of humanity (Kant) … human nature was a constant …it could be channeled like a river but never erased … better to create political systems that checked the worst instincts and encouraged the better ones

❖ A contrast with the ideas of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries which came to believe in the social sciences as a way of perfecting human social systems.

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❖The basic sense that

this was the “first” new

nation

❖That it would be

exceptional

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❖John

Winthrop

–The “City

on a Hill”

–Setting an

example

Conquering A Map❖Jonathan

Edwards (1703-1758)–Breaking away

from European thought

–Contested Deism and the Enlightenment

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❖Exceptional

❖Historically, this is true

in three basic ways

❖(1) Geography: on the

edge of a thinly

populated continent

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–Social mobility and

new sources of

wealth (1770: about

150,000 Indians to

the west)

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❖(2) America had no “Old Regime”

❖No “estates”, no resident king, no tradition of hereditary privilege

❖No religious establishment

–80% Congregationalist and Presbyterian Calvinists

Conquering A Map❖Suffrage was broad

(based on property) but included almost all adult males

❖No real feudalism

❖“America enjoyed the fruits of revolution without going through the proces”

Conquering A Map❖ (3) The Declaration expressed an

entirely new political philosophy❖ In 1776, societies were organized

into superior and inferior social classes, and political power was expressed in terms of divine right or sheer power.

❖The political and social context was monarchy and hereditary government.

❖After 1776, there is another discussion. The idea of citizenship.

❖The “experiment”

Conquering A Map❖ All men are created equal.❖ All men have a right to life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness❖ These rights come from the laws of

nature created by “nature’s”God.❖ The reason for government is to

secure these rights❖ Government’s legitimacy comes

from the consent of the governed❖ The governed have the right to

withdraw their consent and replace the government if it becomes a tyranny instead of protecting their rights.

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❖The basic identity

(values):

–Liberty

–Production

–Property

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❖Liberty and Power

–The purpose of government and laws

–To protect natural rights through constitutionalism and the rule of law

–Economic liberty was the pre-condition for all others

Conquering A Map❖Liberty and Power–The government is

subservient to the people

–The most important rights were religious and economic

–The institutions were to be separated but not hostile to religious belief

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❖Madison:

–The trick was to first

enable government to

control the governed,

and in the next place

oblige it to control

itself.

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❖Liberty and Power–Power and liberty (the

axis of politics)

–Power

»not evil, aggressive

»force and compulsion

Conquering A Map❖Liberty and Power

» It corrupts

»Vigilance, moral stamina, public participation

»No standing or professional army)

❖George Washington: Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

❖ Washington’s example

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❖John Adams–The government turns every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself

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❖Liberty and Power–Negative liberty

–Selfish or license (corruption)

–Sense of character (internal)

–Values

–Obligations, Responsibilities

–Accountability

Conquering A Map❖All men are created equal

–Did not mean everyone had equal abilities, circumstances or opportunities

–It meant everyone was equal before the law and was due common respect

–It did not mean an equality of result and outcome (the French Revolution)

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❖This was a new political idea (not sure if we understand this today)

❖The idea that kings, priests, and government officials are enlightened and smart enough to tell others what to do is centuries old.

Conquering A Map❖The idea that someone

stronger, with better weapons has the right to take what is yours predates the discovery of fire.

❖Any increase in state power is usually associated with progress or the “wave of the future”

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❖Historically speaking, those are older (reactionary) ideas.

❖The primacy of liberty as defined by limits on the powers of the state is the only truly new political idea in the last two thousand years.

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❖Representation

–What / whose interests

–Virtual

–Actual

–Active and continuous

consent

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❖Representation

–Government should

have no separate

existence

–Rotten boroughs

–John Wilkes

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❖Constitution

–Written (Magna Carta)

–Precedents (Glorious

Revolution)

–Fixed

–“Mixed”

–Social orders

Conquering A Map❖Constitution–Classical theory: the problem with

political systems being one sided when based on only one order of society; each was a mixture of good and bad; how to prevent the bad

–Royalty / tyranny

–Aristocracy / oligarchy

–Commons / mob rule

–Liberty depends upon balancing these forces

Conquering A Map❖ Constitution

– Where did this idea of mixing social orders come from?

– Cicero’s (106-43BCE) idea of the Res Publica

– Res (real thing); Publica (state of the public) but also meant commonwealth

– The root of the word Republic.

Conquering A Map❖Constitution–The problem was how to limit the

demos (the mob) or the Monarch (tyranny) or the Aristocracy (rule of the minority).

–The answer was to stop thinking about only one type of arrangement.

–Remember, they had grown up in a world that took these social arrangements for granted.

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❖Constitution

–The

problem

–James

Madison

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❖Constitution–What if: separate

power

»Executive (Royalty)

»Legislative (Nobility and Commons)

»Judicial

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❖Constitution

–Checks and balances

–Ambition and many

factions

–Avoid “elective

despotism”

–Calculated inefficiency

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❖Rights

–Life

–Liberty

–Property

–Pursuit of Happiness (?)

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❖Property: the feudal legacy and the King

–The King retained ownership but conditionally granted use to his subjects

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❖Wanted to change this

idea

❖That men had a right to

acquire and enjoy

property separate from

the sovereign state

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❖Property rights did not originate with government

❖Came from the nature of man and it was the function of government to protect this right

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❖Jefferson: was the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone of the free exercise of industry and the fruits acquired by it.

❖Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

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❖Was especially

important to the poor.

❖Allowed them to earn

and safeguard wealth

which was the result of

their labor

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❖Labor and property were

also connected to freedom

❖The freedom to exercise

and profit from one’s

abilities

❖Was the essence of liberty

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❖Something else: meant to initiate an era of wealth creation

❖Scarcity was normal

❖Wanted not only to preserve freedom but to grow national wealth as well

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❖And, property rights were an important brake on the natural tendency of majority rule to tyranny

❖Tyranny and scarcity had been the historical rule

❖Were trying to break that cycle

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❖Rights–Inalienable

–Universal

–Natural

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❖Rights

–Liberty is not the

same as written laws

–Constitution

Guaranteed but did

not grant

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❖Rights–James Madison (again)

–Separation of fundamental

principles and institutions

(and people)

R and I I R

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❖Sovereignty–The basic issue

–Who (holds power)

–Whom (over)

–Unified or diverse

–The colonial condition

–Extreme decentralization

Conquering A Map❖ Is the explanation for another idea:

Federalism

❖The federal government would have to share power

❖Madison (Federalist 45):–The powers delegated by the

proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

Conquering A Map❖The federal powers would

concern war, peace, diplomacy and trade (which included taxation)

❖State powers would be those things that concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.

Conquering A Map❖What they did with the idea of

federalism was invert the old pyramid of power. It delegated as much authority as possible to the people and the places where the people actually lived.

❖ It was a combination of idealism and realism. To avoid as much as possible the concentration of power. Their debt to the Puritans.

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❖The concern with power is also the origin of the electoral college idea. The smaller states and their view of democracy as something to be avoided.

Conquering A Map❖ But they also insisted that the system

of politics they proposed would not work without a sense of virtue.

❖ Virtue:– Madison: In 1788 at the VA. Ratifying

Convention; no social contract would allow the immoral and amoral to successfully govern themselves.

– To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea

Conquering A Map❖Virtue:–Often quoted Edmund Burke:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites

–Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without

Conquering A Map❖Virtue:–And that meant that religion had

to play a meaningful part in society; morality rested on a religious foundation; the relation of church and state

–Washington: reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle

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❖But –

❖What

about

Liberty

and

Slavery ?

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❖1619: first blacks to VA

❖Were not considered slaves; not sure how to define their social status

❖Indentured servants?

❖1621: first records of free blacks

Conquering A Map❖ 1661: Slowly legalized slavery in VA, MD

and the Carolinas

❖ Within 30 yrs a permanent economic institution throughout the South

❖ What happened?

❖ The Stuart Kings (Charles II and James II) created the Royal African Trading Company. Permanent slavery for black Africans had been declared in 1662 by Charles II.

❖ But remember, slavery was not unique to America and it had been sanctioned by British rule for more than 100 years before independence.

Conquering A Map❖But never fully accepted;

always part of the discussion.

❖The population of free blacks in the North and parts of the South doubled and redoubled between 1790 and 1810.

❖1782: VA law that slaves could be freed

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❖Washington freed his slaves and made provision for them in his will; came to acknowledge the practice was wrong

❖But fear and doubt about what to do – Jefferson and Madison

Conquering A Map❖ 1785: Jefferson proposed a bill for

Virginia to gradually abolish slavery

❖ It was voted down

❖ In the Declaration, Jefferson had included a passage attacking the King’s support of the slave trade; it was removed by other southerners

❖ Jefferson wrote: … Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.

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❖Was forbidden in law

and the Constitutions

of:

–1779:NH; 1780 (PA);

1783 (Mass); 1784

(RI); and 1784 (Conn)

Conquering A Map❖Slavery was not permitted in

the Northwest Territories (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota).

❖ Benjamin Rush, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin were abolitionists.

❖The Atlantic slave trade was banned by Federal law n 1808.

Conquering A Map❖The idea that blacks were not

part of the Constitution.

❖1857: the Dred Scott case; the Supreme Court ruled that “any person descended from Africans, whether slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the Constitution”

Conquering A Map❖A myth

popularized by the defenders of slavery and given voice by Chief Justice Taney.

❖Blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”

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❖We the People …

❖In five states (NH, MA, NY, NJ and North Carolina) free blacks became citizens and had the right to participate in the elections for the state conventions that ratified the Constitution.

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❖1787: The

discussion

❖How to structure

and set-up the new

government?

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❖Representation:

❖How to do this? How

to count?

❖The compromise:

James Wilson (PA),

3/5’s of a freeman

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❖1787: The sections and ratification

❖What were the priorities? The Union and the Revolution

❖The sectional compromise

Conquering A Map❖The silence: leave for

time (the Cotton Gin in 1793 and the economics of plantation agriculture), and future generations

❖1790:Congress and the Quaker petitions. The discussion never went away. The Abolitionists.

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❖James Jackson (GA): the sacred compact

❖Everyone sacrificed some of their interests for what remained

❖Slavery was to coexist with Jefferson’s self evident truths

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❖The custom, the habit of slavery is established

❖Jefferson: Notes On The State of Virginia (1781-84)

–What to do with freed slaves; had to remain separate but how?

–A basic doubt and ambivalence about what to do. His slaves had been part of his wife’s estate

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❖We will never know

❖No national plan for

gradual emancipation was

ever put forward

❖A political solution wasn’t

possible; that would come

on the battlefield

Conquering A Map❖The compromise was just that: ground

was ceded to the defenders of slavery, but also to its opponents

❖The slave trade was to be ended after twenty years; avoided the term “slavery” and no recognition beyond a particular state law; the state’s were free to abolish it and the Congress was able to regulate interstate commerce in slaves

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❖So, how to think

about this?

❖From the present:

hypocrisy

❖From the context of

the debates?

Conquering A Map❖One way to think

about it is to consider one of the most famous Americans of his day

❖Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)– Born to an enslaved

black woman on a Maryland plantation and eventually escaped.

Conquering A Map❖1852: Fourth of July oration

❖Reacted to the passage of the fugitive slave law passed in 1850.

❖There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States at this very hour… this fugitive slave law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation.

Conquering A Map❖But unlike some of the

abolitionists he did not believe the Constitution was pro-slavery. In the same speech:–Take the Constitution according to

its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it … On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

Conquering A Map❖ He said that he wanted

to balance the politics of grievance with the politics of gratitude.

❖ He wanted a fair field and no favor…equality before the law and the dismantling of all race based injustices

❖ He thought real patriotism was holding America to its first principles.

❖ The ideals were right, while the implementation in American society was wrong.

Conquering A Map❖ Which is why he said

the Constitution was an anti-slavery charter

❖ The origin of a new discussion

❖ In the larger historical context of slavery (normal) it is important to remember that what is unusual is that this new conversation happened at all.

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❖Postscript:

❖Moscow On

The Hudson

(1984)

❖Robin

Williams

The

Truth Is

Out

There