The Pete Quiñones Show - The Road to Civil War Episodes 1-7 w/ George Bagby

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

9 Hours and 20 MinutesSafe for WorkGeorge Bagby is a content creator and publisher of long-forgotten books. This is the first 7 episodes of the series detailing the long lead up to America's Civil War.George's "Buy Me a Coffee"George's Twitter AccountGeorge's Pinned Tweet w/ Links George's YouTube ChannelPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinez show. George Bagby returns to the show. How are you doing today, Mr. Bagby? I'm doing wonderful. I've had a very scholarly time. I've been hitting the books lately, and I've been enjoying it very much. Awesome. Awesome.

All right. So this was a request from a listener. They wanted a, they asked for a detailed, lead up to the war between the states. And there was nobody else that I was going to reach out to other than you. And yeah, can you, why don't you tell us, you have an outline for several episodes. So you want to just like hit, hit an outline of a couple episodes and then jump into what you have prepared for today? Absolutely.

So the idea for the series is the origins of the American Civil War. I haven't come up with a finite number of just how many we mean to have to lead up to this auspicious subject. I've got several episodes sketched out in advance. Today we're going to be talking about the convention debate. about the Constitution and the anti-federalist concerns, which figure largely in the coming sectional conflict. The second episode, I mean to zero in on Hamilton's interpretation of the Constitution in the Washington administration. So we'll go into his reports on the public credit and his key interpretation about the clauses of the Constitution, the necessary and proper

clause and the general welfare clause, and the rise of our first two political parties based on the interpretation of that issue. The third episode, I mean to go into Jefferson and John Taylor, and they're agrarian vision for the United States, which figures very largely in the sectional conflict, being that the north was more industrial, the south was more agrarian and farm-based. And the fourth episode, just as a sample, we're going to go into the Alien and Sedition Acts during the Adams administration and the remarkable response of Jefferson's faction. in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions,

which also figure very strongly in the coming sectional conflict. So I've got a few more episodes sketched out beyond then, but just as a taste of future attractions, that's a brief for us. That sounds great. That sounds great. So today you had, you know, some of the notes that you sent me started with, anti-federalist concerns, but why don't you start wherever you want?

Indeed. I actually just started a series with the Old Glory Club. I'm going to be appearing on the American Spirits Stream, and we're doing a series on the Bank of the United States over there, but we're going to be focused on other issues over here, though the material can overlap in many ways. We just had a conversation a couple nights ago about the convention debates and the problems, especially the financial problems under the Articles of Confederation. So let me give a introduction to the issue. The Articles of Confederation were our first constitution. They ambitiously stated that it would be the perpetual union. It would be the perpetual union for the states. And ironically, most Americans aren't aware of this document at all. It has been

completely forgotten, basically, in the public mind anyway. No one refers to it in our politics anymore. But it set itself this very ambitious goal that it was going to permanently unify the states in a confederacy. The confederacy element is very important. A confederation is a union of sovereign powers. And the Articles of Confederation were a way to unite 13 distinct political organizations, the original 13 states. They were organized a year after our independence. That was when the states finished ratifying the articles.

and under the articles, all the states were entirely equal. It created a single body for the union government, and that was the Continental Congress. Now, the states were free to send as many representatives as they liked to that Congress. But no matter how many people they sent to represent their state's interests, the state only had, one vote. So the panel of delegates from a given state in the Continental Congress would argue among themselves and then democratically determine, you know, whoever had the majority in the committee from that state would cast the vote in the name of that state. The states also had veto powers, which is a sovereign right. I used to tell my students that sovereignty is the right

to say no to something and to resist it. And this was an element of sovereignty that was given to the states as sovereign actors in the Continental Congress. So if one state really disagreed with what was going on with something that the majority of the states wanted to do as legislation, they could use their veto power and make the whole thing null and void. Now, one of the effects of this was because the Articles of Confederation had no tax power, the Continental Congress had no power to tax, they were given a kind of short a power to borrow money and a power to print money. So they did both of those.

They got some alliances abroad, especially with France and Holland, who were the first to recognize our independence during our war for independence. And they printed the continental dollar, which was our first paper currency. The result was, right? runaway inflation, hyperinflation, and the inability of the Continental Congress to pay the debts they owe to abroad and even to pay their own soldiers. So this results in major financial catastrophe. You have the patriot benefactors of our independence. People like Robert Morris, who is a very famous financier of that generation, he is ruined. because the Continental Congress cannot pay its own debts, even after independence. They are still incapable of passing any reasonable measure to pay their bills.

And so Robert Morris ends up in debtor's prison before this whole thing gets rectified. And that is a, that is a travesty. These are the patriots. These are the people that actually won. And in victory, they find themselves ruined. and that's a gross injustice. The veterans are unpaid, and the veterans are increasingly restive, very upset about this. In Newburgh, in New York State, they plot a mutiny.

Horatio Gates, the hero of Saratoga, is plotting this mutiny, and it gets diffused at the last moment through the timely intercession of George Washington, who kind of shows up unexpected in Newburgh and appeals to the soldiers to not march on Congress in Philadelphia to seize the Treasury, as they had planned to do. Shea's Rebellion is also an instance of this where veterans in Western Massachusetts, they riot and they prevent a court from holding session. The court had on its docket a number of foreclosures for a nonpayment of taxes for farms of veterans of the Continental Army. And so these veterans, they organized and they prevented the court from auctioning off or initiating what would end up with the auctioning off of the farms of veterans.

So in response to all of this, in response to the articles of creating a system where needful business could not be accomplished in the Continental Congress, the states had all of the political power that mattered. And the result was that the union was imperiled. And this is the basic theme of our whole series, really. The twin values that Americans hold dear in the period that we're addressing in particular. And those are liberty and union. So we want an accountable representative government. We want one that has reasonable safety. safeguards against centralization, unaccountable power, tyranny, but we also want union.

We have collectively acted in the Declaration of Independence. The Continental Congress speaks with a unanimous voice. In spite of some minority opinions in the body that were still reticent about declaring their independence, the majority had it. And so all of the states voted with their single vote. unanimously in favor of the declaration. Even though this predates the articles, this is how the Continental Congress was operating at the time. And we pool our resources.

We fight for the same cause for independence. We win the Continental Congress successfully prosecutes this war. so we win collectively in union together and then we want to stay in union together for all number of advantages that come with a large state. We become a continental power. We become eventually one of the great powers of the world. We have an incredible economic opportunity here to develop our internal economy that would be stymied by the state's breaking up or forming smaller confederations among themselves, regional powers and such. There was a lot of worry among these people that if union failed, we would reenact the

history of the warring states on the continent of Europe, that we would have all sorts of jealousies and petty grievances against one another, and we would fight it out among one another, and that would be very bad for us collectively. So we want to maintain union to preserve our independence. We see a risk that an independent state, say Virginia or Georgia down on the periphery, they would fall under the control. They would fall into a protectorate status or an alliance with some hostile European power. which probably would have happened.

If Georgia had spun out on their own or if the New England states had organized together, they would have fallen under some foreign control or interest. They would have done that more easily in that smaller unit than they would have done collectively, where we have a common interest to pursue national interest or collective interests in the federal government. So all that said, we see a party form behind the scenes.

So while the articles of Confederation are kind of stumbling along, the Continental Congress really isn't getting any of these needful things done. The federalists organize. George Washington starts writing his friends, people like Alexander Hamilton, people like James Madison. And he starts organizing behind the scenes for the replacement of the Articles of Confederation. Now, that's not what they actually pitch. Alexander Hamilton goes to a meeting of the Continental Congress in Annapolis, in Maryland.

They're meeting at the Maryland State House because they don't have any permanent seat of government. They go around. They move around and meet in different places. at various times. Hamilton is lucky enough to find a quorum of the Continental Congress because frequently there weren't enough representatives from the various states to conduct official business. This is the point at which the Continental Congress had declined, that there may be elected representatives to the Continental Congress, but they wouldn't even bother to come

because nothing of consequence would take place there. All the action was at the state level. That's where all the authority was. And the states had really pressing problems. They had crushing war debts because all the states had financed their own war efforts, independent of one another. And then they collectively finance a consolidated effort with the Continental Congress. But that's only one part of what's going on.

So all the states have these incredible bills from the war. and they're all pursuing various measures to try to rectify those problems. But Hamilton finds a quorum of the Continental Congress in Annapolis, and he proposes a convention to amend the articles. And this receives a mostly positive response. So 12 of the 13 states then send delegates to the proposed convention that meets in Philadelphia. in 1789. At the convention, Hamilton is one of the first there, and he is one of these really dynamic federalist actors.

We call this group the Federalists. These are the men that are contending for a new constitution and a new organization of the American Union. and they say that it will preserve both the liberty that had been won from King George. We're going to have an independent government here, and it's going to guarantee American liberties, the concerns that were widespread among the patriots back in 1776 when independence is declared. But it will also preserve union. So they're talking about a functional union, and they are emphasizing the unity of the American states. But there is a big problem that comes with that.

If they are states, if they are sovereign powers that have won their sovereignty in the War of Independence, how can they collectively act without imperiling the liberties they've won? What powers do they seed to a general government to act in their name? And this is what the Constitution portends to do. The Constitution is not a list of the abstract philosophy of man and his happiness, but the list of things delegated to the federal government in its three branches. the things those branches can and cannot do, and also a list of things the states can and cannot do. And the powers that create this general government, that is all vested in the states themselves.

It's ultimately up to the states whether or not they will join this union. So the Philadelphia Convention is a very fascinating episode. It is not publicized. There are no journalists allowed to participate, take notes, or to publicize the proceedings of the convention. It's a closed meeting. And this was done so that everyone could freely speak their mind and freely propose anything that might solve American problems.

without fear of retribution or public backlash. And with that in mind, Hamilton is one of the first to arrive. And once he has an audience there, the delegates start to arrive, he proposes something very controversial. He proposes a president that is elected for life, that the president has the power to veto state legislation, and that the president appoints the governors of the various states. Now, this is a model, an inspiration from the British Empire itself.

And for this, for this kind of reputation that the federalists have, Hamilton's proposal in this instance, it is not publicized until decades later. when the notes of his speeches finally are published. So no one at the time knows in the reading public what Hamilton had proposed at the convention when it sits. But this comes back much later when Hamilton's goals, Hamilton's ambitions are a more contentious matter after the ratification of the Constitution many years later. But the federalists come to Philadelphia with a plan for a new government, a new union government for the states. What they come up with is the Philadelphia Constitution that we are nominally using today. The real fight isn't at the convention where the federalists have organized beforehand.

And they put Washington as the chair of the convention. So the federalists are running this convention. They don't get unanimous approval even at the convention. There are a lot of dissatisfied delegates that were sent by their states to the convention. They go home. They become anti-federalists. They vote against the Philadelphia Constitution in its ratification debates in the state convention. but the convention has been organized by the federalists.

The federalists are the ones proposing the big ideas there. But that isn't where the Constitution is decided as a political question. The Convention only creates the Constitution. It's up to the states to decide whether or not they will be part of that union. So it goes back to state convention. Now, I mentioned before, only 12 states showed up at the Philadelphia Convention. Rhode Island decided to sit it out entirely. Rhode Island was of a very libertarian mindset.

Rhode Island was known before this time to be the veto vote in every sensible financial measure proposed in the Continental Congress. When it came time to raise revenue to pay the troops or anything, Rhode Island would always veto the legislation. So they didn't want a general government doing anything financially responsible in that instance. They were particularly jealous of the taxing power, we might say. But the result was financial irresponsibility to the point where we're looking at the mutiny of the Continental Army. Well, Rhode Island is also the very first, state to vote on the Constitution. They're the only state to put the Constitution up to a popular

vote, a plebiscite, and it is overwhelmingly voted down in Rhode Island. Two other conventions that are worth noting are the New York Convention, where the Constitution is passed by a single vote in the majority. I think it's 51 to 49. And the Virginia Convention, which is maybe the most artful of the debates held about the Constitution. The leader of the anti-federalists in Virginia was none other than Patrick Henry, who was perhaps the greatest orator of his generation. So the opponents of the Constitution, the anti-federalists so-called, they did not choose that name for themselves.

they like the term federalist. Everyone likes the term because it means a liberty union government, a government that safeguards the prerogatives of the states. And when we use the term federalism in a modern context, like if we were to describe a federal constitution in Brazil or, Mexico, we would be describing a constitution that has two levels of authority. It has a state level authority where the institutions are more responsive to representation, more responsive to local concerns and such. Just because of the ratio of representation, it's always going to be a far more responsive sort of organization at a local level or regional level. So a federal government means that you have two levels of government.

You have a general government that is over the states that conducts foreign policy, a common economic policy, a common defense policy, perhaps a monetary system and the rest. and then you have a local level government, a state level government, if you will, and that these things exist side by side, and they serve one another in some way. So the anti-federalists, they like the term federalism. They want that as a union government. What they say is that the Philadelphia Constitution is not a good plan for this. The Federalists, led by Washington, Hamilton, Madison, John Jay of New York, and other great minds of that generation, these are all brilliant statesmen.

They are contending that the Philadelphia Constitution is a good solution to the questions that beset the American states and their union at this time. So now we turn to the anti-federalists themselves. The anti-federalists are not anything to be sniffed at. My students are always surprised by this when I address the issue that there were people that found themselves a raid against George Washington, that they didn't like the Philadelphia Constitution. What is better for America? than our Constitution. We all venerate the Constitution. And this is, you know, these are just high schoolers. They don't know so much about modern arguments about how the government's working. But I always remind them, no, these were men of the best reputations of their day. They have their bona fides from the War for Independence. These are people like John Hancock of Massachusetts. These are people like Sam Adams and Patrick Henry and George Mason. These are really remarkable men of their generation. And we should certainly take their ideas about the Constitution seriously.

In retrospect, at our point today, the anti-federalist concerns about the Constitution look like visionary prophecy of what the federal government, is going to do to the states. And this was the major concern of the anti-federalists. They said, yes, this will accomplish union, but this will be a national government and not a federation. This will be a consolidation of political power in the national government, and it will strip the powers from the states. It may even do this by force of arms.

So we see a lot of concern among the anti-federalists that the Constitution is going to create a permanent standing army that will eventually be used to collect taxes, which is precisely the way that the war for independence began. So the anti-federalists are thinking back to the circumstances in which Americans declare their independence from the kingdom of Britain. And they say, we do not want to recreate here in America the same form of government that we just want independence from. We don't want to copy the British model. we don't want to imperil our liberties that we had so recently and dearly won. So these are the talking points of the anti-federalists. Incidentally, if you want a brief, the most concise list of anti-federalist concerns, you can do no better than to read the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights is the articles of major of me. concern that you hear from anti-federalist writers that was amended to the Constitution right after its ratification. It was one of the first things Congress does when they assemble in New York City, our first capital city, under Washington's administration. They ratify the Bill of Rights and send it to the states and it's added to the Constitution. So it's an amendment, it's an addition to the Constitution to satisfy the anti-federalist concerns. So it's actually a wonderful example of politicians keeping their promises and a real compromise in American politics. So the Bill of Rights is a brief of the anti-federalist concerns, but we're

going to be talking about other particular concerns of the anti-federalists today. We're going to start with Brutus number five. Brutus was a pseudonym for an anti-federalist writer in the state of New York. And Brutus was, he takes his name from the classics, of course. He's the enemy of tyranny, the assassin of Julius Caesar, the ambitious king. And in Brutus number five, which was published in 1787, December of 1787, he titles his essay

on the necessary and proper and the general welfare clauses and on Congress's power to tax, the states will be destroyed. This is the title of his essay. So opposed to these essays that we're going to sample, from today are, of course, the famous Federalist essays, the so-called Federalist Papers, which were written by John J. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, some of the great leaders

of the Federalist faction. So, Brutus, he says about the clauses, he says, in the first article, 8th section. It is declared that Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposes, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defense 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 defense and promote the general welfare. And in this clause, the power is in express words given to Congress to provide for the common defense 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. It is true. The ninth 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 show. 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, etc. in order to provide for the common defense 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 I submit to the public, whether the construction I've given it is not the most natural and easy. But admitting the contrary opinion to prevail, I shall nevertheless be able to show

the same powers are substantially vested in the general government by several other articles in the Constitution. It invests the legislature with the authority to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises in order to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare, and to pass all laws which may be necessary and proper for carrying this power into effect. He says, what limitation, if any, is to set the exercise of this power by the Constitution? And he predicts that the supremacy of the general government will overrule the states on any contentious point.

Now, in retrospect, we see this is, in fact, how the Constitution has worked. At any point in our history where the states have found themselves in conflict with the general government, particularly after the Civil War, Brutus's prediction is entirely correct. Brutus goes on to say later in his essay, I remark that the power given to the federal legislature directly annihilates all the powers of the state legislatures. There cannot be a greater solacism in politics than to talk a power in 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 control 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. So he predicts, in so many words, that the conflicts which will inevitably arise between the past, powers of the states in the powers of this new central government. Not adequately protected in the sphere of the states, the general government will always prevail. Now I turn to another essay of Brutus, Brutus 11, which was published in January of 1788, again in New York. So in this essay, it's a particular argument as his essays were organized, rather like the Federalist papers concerned particular concerns about the Constitution. He says that the proposed Supreme Court is a great danger to the states.

And this is the bette noah of the anti-federalists. they're very concerned about the new proposed institutions of the general government. He says, I'm not competent to give a perfect explanation of the powers granted to this department, that is the judiciary. I shall attempt to trace some of the leading features of it, from which I presume it will appear. They will operate to a total subversion of the state judiciaries. if not to the legislature of the states. In Article 3rd, Section 2nd, it is said,

the judicial power shall extend in 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, etc. The first article to which the power extends is, all cases and law and equity arising under this Constitution. what latitude of constitution this clause should receive, it is not easy to say, or what latitude of construction under this clause? It's not easy to say.

At first view, one would suppose that it is meant no more than this, that the courts under the general government should exercise not only the powers of courts of law, but also that of courts of equity in the manner in which these powers are usually exercised in the different states. But this cannot be the meaning. because the next clause authorizes the courts to take cognizance of all cases in law and equity arising under the laws of the United States. This last article, I conceive, conveys as much power to the general judicial as any of the state courts possesses. The cases arising under the Constitution must be different from those arising under the laws, or else the two clauses mean exactly the same thing.

A case arising under the Constitution must include such as bring into constitutional. question its meaning and will require an explanation of the nature and extent of the powers of the different departments under it. He goes on to say that the Constitution in setting up the Supreme Court, it is going to overpower all state judiciaries. It is going to overrule them. The anti-federalists are adamant about this. Though they are not organized, this is one of the remarkable things about the anti-federalists as a faction. They were not organized for this fight.

They were not corresponding with one another beforehand, as the federalists did. The anti-federalists had no alternative to the Philadelphia Constitution. They did not have their own convention in which they draft their own articles of union. And so what they have is fears, prognostications about the political future of the country. They don't have a good alternative. Let's see here. Isn't that something that you see with proper right-wingers historically? They can diagnose the problem, but when it comes to initiating the solution, that's where they tend to alter. Yes, I think so. They are a conservative force in that they are opposing a new innovation.

They are conservative in the sense that they are advocating for the political rights they just so recently won in independence. They are disorganized. They don't have a clearly considered alternative and that is one of the key reasons that they fail. Not to say that they were not an elite of their day, not to say that they were not very capable, but they were not coordinated. They're coming from various points of view and they fail to carry public opinion.

Though we do have a couple, we have several examples where they came very close, New York, where it came down to a single vote, the outstanding states that reject the Constitution initially, North Carolina and Rhode Island. North Carolina rejects it in convention. But they do ratify it later on after the union is organized. So Brutus, to summarize this piece, he's saying that the Supreme Court is going to going to strike down state laws and even state constitutions, that the supremacy of the courts in this construction, it will lead to that result. And certainly it did. And it did much earlier

than the other peers manifested. So now I turn to Sentinel. Sentinel was the pseudonym of one Samuel Brian of Pennsylvania, who also wrote a series of essays against the Philadelphia Constitution. And he outlines general concerns here. He says, 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, vis-a-vis the happiness and prosperity the community, it behooves 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 rational

investigation into its principles, it ought to be dispassionately and deliberately examined and in its own intrinsic merit, the criterion of your patronage. If ever free an 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 to better enable the people to make a proper judgment for the science of government is so obtruse that few are able to judge for themselves

without such assistance. The people are too apt to yield an implicit assent to their opinions of those characters whose abilities are held in the highest esteem. Here he's mentioning Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Hamilton, and the rest, the leaders of the federalists. He says, The pure intention may be made instruments of despotism in the hands of the artful and designing. He goes on to say, The wealthy and ambitious, who in every community think that they have the right to lord it over their fellow creatures, have availed themselves very successfully of this favorable disposition,

For the people thus unsettled in their sentiments have been prepared to accede to any extreme of government. All the distresses and difficulties they experience, proceeding from various causes, have been ascribed to the impotency of the present confederation. Now, we've talked about the ways in which the articles were not operating. Nevertheless, the anti-federalists are very interested in saying, well, we need to amend the existing Constitution, we don't need to replace it. And they point to the successes of the articles. They did win their War of Independence under the articles.

They did organize the Northwest Territory under the articles. There were several major accomplishments in our early history done under the articles. But here we see the worry of the anti-federalists that the articles will be used. used by an interested elite to subvert the liberties of Americans. He says, I'm fearful the principles of government inculcated in Mr. Adams's treatise 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. He worries that the government proposed in Philadelphia is going to be a consolidationist regime. It's going to consolidate all political power under one general government. And it's going to render the more responsive authorities of the individual states, null and void. basically make them impotent in political matters.

This is the regular concern of the anti-federalists. They're very worried about the implied powers in the Constitution for the general government. And as we immediately see in Washington's administration, those worries were well-founded. Sentinel continues. he says Congress will have the power to lay and collect taxes. Once again, we see the taxing power is a major concern of the anti-federalists. These are people that are very concerned to keep the power of taxation, the power of getting money, getting government revenue, and spending that revenue.

They want to keep that power as close to home as possible. because the further away that power is, the less accountable it becomes. And as you remember, this is precisely the kind of argument that we had in 1776 when independence was declared, that parliament in far away Westminster in England was passing taxes and regulations over the American colonies and that they were unaccountable to the Americans. The Americans had no representation there and also did not want representation there. They had their own legislatures in their own capitals. And this was all charges against King George that he allowed this to happen. He gave the assent of his authority for Parliament to regulate

the American colonies and to tax them. So he says, again, the general welfare clause, granted to Congress for these taxing powers is a particular danger. He actually highlights general welfare and says this is a dangerous, expansive clause. It can be interpreted in any possible way. It's not limited. And this is going to be a point of contention. He says, now, what can be more comprehensive than these words, not content by other sections of the plan to grant all the great executive powers of a confederation and a standing army in time of peace, that great 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 by any imposed on the citizens of these, or may be imposed on the citizens of these states levied by the officers of Congress. He also warns of the judicial power that it will overrule the state governments and state constitutions, even declaring constitutions null. Now we turn to a piece of oratory. June 4th, 1788, the Virginia ratifying convention, where the anti-federalists are led by the great Patrick Henry.

Henry gives the opening speech at the convention, which is a sign of the anti-federalist strength in Virginia. Now, the eyes of all concerned are very focused on Virginia for this. Madison is the Federalist delegate in the Virginia Convention. Of course, an author of the famous Federalist essays in New York. Madison is a small and quiet sort of man, and Henry is this great force of nature. So the anti-federalists really have their best chance to stop this Philadelphia Constitution there in Virginia. In spite of many other states ratifying it, famously Delaware is the very first to ratify the Constitution and Convention.

If Virginia opted out, Virginia is such a vital state in the union. You could not imagine an American union working without Virginia's assent because it would geographically divide the union. and Virginia was of the most populous states up there with Pennsylvania and New York as one of the most populated states. It was in some ways the largest state territorially. It's a very interesting question. So Patrick Henry, he says, the public mind as well as my own is extremely uneasy at the proposed change of government. Give me leave to form one of a number of those who wish to be thoroughly acquainted with the reasons of this perilous and uneasy situation, and why we are brought hither to decide on this great national question. I consider myself as the servant of the people of this commonwealth, as a sentinel over their rights, liberty, and happiness.

I represent their feelings when I say, they are exceedingly uneasy, being brought from that state. of full security which they enjoyed to the present delusive appearance of things. A year ago, the minds of our citizens were at perfect repose. Before the meeting of the late federal convention at Philadelphia, a general peace and a universal tranquility prevailed in this country, but since that period they are exceedingly uneasy and disquieted. When I wished for an appointment to this convention, my mind was extremely agitated for the situation in public affairs. I conceive the Republic to be an extreme danger. If our situation be thus uneasy,

wince has arisen this fearful jeopardy. It arises from this fatal system. It arises from a proposal to change our government, a proposal that goes to the utter annihilation of the most solemn engagements of the states. A proposal of establishing nine states into a confederacy, to the eventual exclusion of four states. Now, in this, he mentions the Constitution's means of establishing the new union. It required only the assent of nine states to form the new federal government.

Four states, up to four states, could remain out, and the federal government would become a functioning authority. So he goes on to say, now I'm looking for the quote, he mentions the preamble of the Constitution as the focus. He says, sir, give me leave to demand. What right had they to say, we the people? He's referring to the preamble, we the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility and so on. He says, what right do they have to say, we the people? My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask, who authorized them to speak in the language of we the people instead of we the states? states are the characteristic and the soul of a confederation.

If the states be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great consolidated national government of the people of the states. I have the highest respect for those gentlemen who formed the convention. And were some of them not there, I would express some testaments. of my esteem for them. America had, on a former occasion, put the utmost confidence in them, a confidence which was well placed. And I am sure, sir, I would give up anything for them. I would cheerfully confide in them as my representatives, but, sir, on this great occasion, I would demand the cause of their conduct, even from the illustrious man who saved us by his valor. he's mentioning George Washington there.

I would have a reason for his conduct that liberty which he has given us by his valor tells me to ask this reason. And I am, were he here, he would give us that reason. But there are other gentlemen here who can give us this information. The people gave them no power to use their name. that they exceeded their power is perfectly clear. It is not mere curiosity that actuates me. I wish I could hear the real actual existing danger, which should lead us to take those steps so dangerous in my conception. So he says, they are claiming democratic mandate that the people of the United States form the union.

Now, we can be technical about this and we can say the only people who actually voted on this Constitution were the plebiscite in Rhode Island. That was the only place where it was put up to a popular vote. Now, this is not to disavow conventions as a means of deciding political questions. But Henry's point is very important. the Constitution does not start out with the authority of the states, that the states form the federal government as their agent. And it should have said that. And Henry himself, he was invited to go to the Philadelphia Convention as a delegate for Virginia. He refused.

He said he smelt a rat in Philadelphia. He sensed that there was an interested party that was organizing the affair, and he suspected their motives even then. And here he is giving us some reasons why. And this becomes very important, as we will see, in the many arguments about federalism in American history, the agent that grants the federal government its authority, is a key element in these debates. And Henry realized it even before the Constitution comes into effect. He says, this phrase, we the people, is going to be used as the democratic authority to overrule the states. That the federal government has a greater mandate of power in that it has this democratic phrase that undergirds its authority.

and it's not the states that are said in the document itself to set it up. That is no mere rhetoric. That becomes a very powerful argument, as we will see. Now, finally, in my survey of anti-federalist literature here, I turn to George Mason. Now, he is a very interesting fellow anti-federalist leader from Virginia. a representative, governor, a founding father.

He's called the father of the Bill of Rights. And this is because Mason makes a very consequential decision in the Virginia Convention. He goes to the convention as one of the key anti-federalist delegates. While he is there, James Madison, the Federalist, brokers with Mason and several other federalists delegates, anti-federalist delegates. He brings them into the Federalist camp. So Mason actually changes his position in the course of the Convention and its debates. This happens because Madison pledges the Bill of Rights as his first order of business to satisfy anti-federalist

concerns. And that is very important, and this is obviously going to develop in other episodes when we address these concerns and how the interpretations develop based on the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is the Jeffersonian concern as opposed to the Hamiltonians and their scheme to develop the powers of the federal government through inference. So at this point, George Mason, when he gives this speech of the very same day Patrick Henry gave his opening remarks, June 4th, 1788. He is an anti-federalist in this. He says, Mr. Chairman, whether the Constitution be good or bad, the present clause clearly discovers that it is a national government and no longer a Confederate. I mean the clause which gives the first hint of the general government laying direct taxes.

Again, the tax power of focus of anti-federalist concern. The assumption of this power of laying direct taxes does of itself entirely change the confederation of the states into one consolidated government. The power being at discretion, unconfined and without any kind of control, must carry everything before it. The very idea of converting what was formerly a confederation to a consolidated government is totally subversive of every principle which has hitherto governed us. The power is calculated to annihilate totally the state governments. Will the people of this great community submit to be individually taxed by two different and distinct powers? Will they

suffer themselves to be doubly harassed. These two concurrent powers cannot exist long together. The one will destroy the other. The general government, being paramount to and in every respect more powerful than the state governments, the latter must give way to the former. Is it to be supposed that one national government will suit so extensive a country? embracing so many climates and containing inhabitants so very different in manners, habits, and customs? Is it ascertained by history that there never was a government over a very extensive country without destroying the liberties of the people? History also, supported by the opinion of the best writers, show us that monarchy may suit a large territory

and despotic government ever so extensive a country. But that popular governments can only exist in small territories. Is there a single example on the face of the earth to support a contrary opinion? Where is there one exception to this general rule? Was there ever an instance of a great national government extending over so extensive a country, abounding in such a variety of climates, etc.? where the people retained their liberty. I solemnly declare that no man is a greater friend to a firm union of the American states than I am.

But, sir, if this great end can be obtained without hazarding the rights of the people, why should we recur to such dangerous principles? So we see with Mason here, he again identifies the main theme of the series. How might we rectify the vast expanse of the American states? How can we organize them in a union government and retain the liberties that had been solved? with our independence. An interesting note here, just to put a cherry on top, if you will, the Treaty of Paris, which resolves our independence after war is won, especially with the climactic battle of Yorktown.

King George did not treat with the Continental Congress. Instead, King George declared the 13 individual American states as independent. He lists them out. He writes them all by name. And he says, I recognize them as independent states, that they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, and do all those other things which independent states may have right do. That's what the Treaty of Paris says.

And the question here is, to what degree do the states surrender certain powers or surrender all of their powers to some other agent? This is what the anti-federalists are very concerned about, and they are saying explicitly. This is not being done, frankly, openly, clearly. It will be done by inference of clauses in the Constitution. Lawyers and future generations are going to read the Constitution, and they're going to use the implied powers of the Constitution to abrogate the prerogatives of the state governments. And they will do that to consolidate power, especially the taxing power.

That will be the reason why the institutions founded under the Philadelphia Constitution start abrogating the prerogatives of the states. And we look over these anti-federalist writings these days. There happens to be an excellent collection of, anti-federalist literature edited by Joseph Sobrin, which I recommend to you all. My copy is packed up in my storage unit because I'm in the middle of the move right now. But it's this beautiful cloth-bound edition with a forward by Sobrin himself. when we review these documents, we see in prognostication the debates that later take place in American history and indeed have not left us even now.

The tension between local authorities and the states and the federal government remain a very important part of our political life and concerns. today. So that is my brief on the anti-federalists. It all comes down to things that, you know, Sam Francis wrote about extensively, mass and scale. Absolutely. And people are still arguing, oh, if we don't keep the union together, the leftist win, China comes in.

It's like, okay. I don't So keep You know Keep doing something that doesn't work Trying to keep Trying to keep 350 million people

Now of what 75, 100 different cultures Multiple races You're trying to hold that together Good luck with that It's really interesting that George Mason touches on that exact question. He says he wants union for the American states.

He says he's always advocated it. I'm genuinely curious to what the anti-federalists would have come up with if they had assembled together in a convention. But contrary to John Jay, and I know in our circles we frequent. talk about federalists too. John Jay is emphasizing the things that Americans have in common. He says we have the same ancestors. We have the same religion. We have the same manners. It's one united people. And the federalists are always playing to those optimistic takes on the collective country. Mason recognizes the things that are going to set us at odds with one another. He says, we have many different climates.

We have different manners in different regions. He does not say that we have a diversity of national origins, which indeed at that time, we didn't. It was overwhelmingly British in origin. We don't have a variety of languages. He doesn't say that we do. we have a small number of German speakers in Pennsylvania somewhere. We are overwhelmingly Protestant at this point in our history. But obviously we have to have some things in common.

Now, in our American reckoning, we look at the Constitution as the thing that we all have in common, the Supreme Law of the Land. But unwisely, we did not codify other things other than this document that can be read in such widely divergent ways. We needed other things, more organic things to unite us. And other empires had things like this. In the Roman Empire, they required everyone to have Latin to be a citizen. and for the very simple reason, you can't participate in citizenship without being able to read the law and interpret it.

They required a standard of religion. Everyone had to be a Greco-Roman polytheist. And this is the start of various persecutions against Christians and others. the human sacrificing druids of Gaul were prescribed. The human sacrificing Carthaginians in North Africa were banned. They were not allowed to practice through religion. And the Romans felt strongly about that. They had an official religion.

And this was supposed to unite them under a common government. And that was an empire. It was made of various nations. But the Romans had a more official policy on that than we ever did. And our optimistic liberalism that people of any number of backgrounds, languages, religions, and laws could all live under the same government somehow is obviously untenable. We talk about this frequently in other contexts. there has to be more in common. Citizens must have some things in common, as Aristotle wisely observed in his politics. And yet Mason says we have these different regions, we have different economies in the different regions, we have different manners in different regions because different parts of the British colonial effort, they concentrated in certain regions in the Americas. And he identifies, that as a problem for the union. And yet he still wants a union. And yet he also comes over to the

federalists when they finally call a vote at the convention. So he turns more optimistic as the convention goes on about the Constitution. He gets his Bill of Rights, a liberal construction, obviously, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, so on. But he still recognizes those differences, and I think that's really fascinating. There is a lot to be mined out of the anti-federalist literature as far as political observation, wisdom about the American situation goes. And they foresee the political problems in our future at this early stage. Awesome.

Thank you, Professor. I would encourage you now, please. tell people where they can find you and shill anything you wish. Do the shillings. Absolutely. I am running a small publishing house. It is called Tall Men Books. You can find it at www.

Tallmanbooks.com. And today, incidentally, my catalog has almost doubled in size on the website. I have a lot of books that I've been working on that, I've been piling up for my website admin to add to the site. And so I've got like 20 books that I added onto the site today, including a new series, well, a couple new series, histories of the Mississippi Valley, which are called River Books, and also a new series on Outlaws and Lawmen of the Old West, a new offering of, A biography of Billy the Kid by Pat Garrett, the man who killed Billy the Kid and his friend.

That is newly posted on the website. You can find it there right now. Awesome. I'll make sure to link to it. And I look forward to part two. Thank you very much, Mr. It's going to be fine. Yes, it is.

Thank you so much. Take care about it. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. George Bagby is back. and we are going to pick up where we left off the lead up to the American War Between the States. How are you doing tonight, Mr. Bagby? I'm doing well. I've been taking care of my sick children all day, but that's just part of being a dad.

So I'm good. It's been a relaxing day. Oh, I would figure you'd be worn out by now. Well, it helps when they aren't throwing up all day. It's just an occasional thing. The rest of the time, they'll stay quiet. So, all right. I've been able to do a lot of reading.

Oh, yeah. That's, I've been on the run all day. So I've had a chance to do a lot of listening today. That's always good, too. Yeah. All right. Where are we going to pick up today? So we're going to talk about the Washington administration today. Last time we were talking about the anti-federalist debate and their objections to the Constitution, their worries about what certain clauses in the Constitution would mean for the proposed federal government. And today we're picking up with how some of those concerns were realized only a very short time after ratification and the start of why.

Washington's administration. So we start with the administration of Hamilton in the Treasury Department. So George Washington, when he is made the first president, he is unanimously elected. So the federalist construction, the electoral college, it meant that they did not expect there to be political parties at the federal level. They expected that political parties would remain a major element in state and local matters, but they believed that the indirect nature of the Senate and the indirect nature of the electoral college, where the electors were going to be chosen by the state legislatures and there were not even any popular votes taken at that point. There was no popular referendum on presidential candidates. That this would keep political parties out of federal

matters and that it would be a more enlightened kind of process. They were very optimistic in many respects, thinking that we wouldn't have political parties, factions, as Madison memorably called them at the federal level. And that was one of their major oversights in how things ended up actually working. But Washington is busy in his first year in the executive role, setting up the executive departments. So he sets up several initial ones. He's got an attorney general, which is Edmund Randolph of Virginia, who started out as an anti-federalist and then came around by the time of the Virginia Convention. So he was actually pitching himself as a supporter of the Constitution once the Virginia Convention comes into session. But he does, he is early,

critical of the Philadelphia Constitution. We have Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State. At this point, state is extremely small. Thomas Jefferson only has a couple of clerks working under him. Jefferson, incidentally, was not in the country when the constitutional debate was going on. He was in correspondence with his friend Madison, but he did not take part in the the debate. Thomas Jefferson ends up kind of inheriting the concerns of the anti-federalists vis-a-vis the Constitution, even though he did not take part in that ratification controversy. We have the establishment of the Treasury Department. So Washington calls on Congress to create these departments for him. These departments were not.

instituted by the Constitution itself. Congress has the power to create executive departments, and Washington asked for their creation. And so they get voted into existence and funded that way. So we've got an attorney general, the chief prosecutor. We've got state, which is foreign service. We've got Treasury. And we also have the Department of War with General Henry Knox of War for Independence fame heading the War Department. Those are the original cabinet offices. And then we see in Washington's inaugural address his major concern about the finances. He's inheriting a financial mess and a mandate to do something about it. we recall that the Articles of Confederation did not give Congress, the Continental Congress, any taxing power.

They only financed their bills and then managed to refinance their bills a couple of times. The Dutch in particular were optimistic about American prospects and willing to refinance our debts and get a bigger cut sometime in the future. because they were betting that we would work it out some way. But on the domestic level, the Continental Congress bonds had been speculated on the people, the original holders of these bonds, be they veterans or people who had been patronized by the Continental Congress, you know, they were. people supplying food to the Continental Army or other supplies got paid with bonds, with promissory notes.

And as the years ground on and the Continental Congress had no means and no likely means to ever fulfill those promissory notes and actually pay off their bonds, pay off all the people that they owed money to, the bonds started trading to speculators. So the speculators would come along. And these were people with connections and obviously with capital to invest in cities, places like Philadelphia and New York. There are a lot of speculators that are buying the bonds out of the countryside, especially in areas where the Continental Army had been campaigning. and these bonds were all over the place.

They buy them for less than par. So they're buying the bonds for like $20 per $100. That's somewhere in the average of how these bonds are bought. So the bond holders and take an 80% loss to get some money out of this note. And then the speculators hold onto these notes. expecting that someday there's going to be an administration with the means to pay its bills. So Washington has another major concern besides foreign debt, besides these domestic bonds issued by the Continental Congress, there is question about whether or not the new federal government will

repudiate those debts. But Washington reassures everyone, no, we are good for those debts. It's the same government. This is continuity. We want people to have confidence in our future. We're not going to repudiate our old debts. That's immoral. And Washington is also interested in the crushing military debts of the states. The states individually have war debts.

So Washington then uses the taxing power, the revenue that's bidding being raised, Congress passes a revenue tariff and excise taxes on luxuries. Hamilton is put in charge of managing the revenue and proposing a way to retire the debts. And Hamilton presents in 1791 a plan called the first report on the public credit. In the first report on the public credit, Hamilton proposes his scheme to consolidate the debts. He says the federal government should assume the war debts of the states and use the revenue from the general tariff on all imports plus the excise revenue and start gradually paying that off. He proposes what's called a sinking fund. So a certain amount of the revenue is going to go into a fund, and that fund will be

dedicated to paying off the debts. This is a controversial proposal. So Hamilton proposes in his first report on public credit to establish the national debt. And this is to retire the debts of the Continental Congress to establish or reestablish our credit abroad because we are a faithful debtor and we're paying our bills, and also to pay off all those who had invested in our independence, be they veterans or contractors, anyone that had invested in these debts during the war, but also to relieve the states. So this would obligate the states to the Treasury and by extension the United States government because they are all

suffering under this crushing load of these debts that they cannot pay. They're all raising taxes. Some of the states are issuing fiat currency and it's getting inflated away. And they don't have the means to satisfy these things. One South Carolina representative, he said that South Carolina has no more means to pay these debts than a boy has to kill a giant. So it was seemingly a hopeless situation for them. But the federal government has big new resources and with a combined creditworthiness of all the states together is going to get much better rates for all of these things and such. They're going to refinance it as the national debt.

Now, in his first report on the public credit, Hamilton is met with a lot of opposition. It's actually voted down by Congress. And so Hamilton is very dismayed. He believes that this is the doom of the national credit and that the states are going to be unrelieved. The trouble is that some states were able to retire their debts. some states had access to the western frontier uh Georgia North Carolina Virginia they all had Western territories and claims so Georgia had West Georgia and parts of Alabama and they

claimed an awful lot more than that they were able to settle their war debts by land sales out west. So Georgia had very few. They did have a lot of Indian problems. However, the Creek Confederacy and such, they were very long set with those problems. And so very federalist in their sympathies, not an anti-federalist stronghold at all. Places like North Carolina, they had Tennessee. Virginia had Kentucky. They were unburdened by their war debts. by land sales. And so they all object to the Hamilton, to the public credit plan of Hamilton, and they say, well, what do we get out of this? We have a federal government in a distant city. They're in New York City at the time, our first capital. We believe that this new consolidated debt

is going to mean a more consolidated government. We don't think that we're going to be heard in this government. We are very skeptical of their motives and such. So what happens is Thomas Jefferson arrives in New York City about the time that Hamilton's plan fails in Congress. Thomas Jefferson finds Hamilton outside of the executive residence. in New York. And Hamilton is is at his wits end. He's tried everything that he can to try to get this plan through. And Jefferson invites Hamilton to dinner. And what comes out of this,

this is a secret meeting. We can only speculate what happened at this meeting. But obviously, a compromise was worked out. Jefferson and Madison, Madison is in Congress as a representative from Virginia. Jefferson and Madison bring together a coalition for compromise on the public credit. They agree to vote for Hamilton's plan on the condition that the capital is moved south. So this is where the scheme to establish the District of Columbia comes from. Believe it or not, the District of Columbia was considered west as well as south. That it wasn't a coastal city.

Obviously, it's on a big estuary, the Potomac. But it wasn't considered a coastal city. It was considered an inland western city, which tells you a lot about the concentration of the population on the coastline at that time. And it happens to be very close to Mount Vernon. So there are lots of people down south of the Mason-Dixon line that are very happy about this. They believe this is going to guarantee that the new government is going to be more accountable to their section with its particular interests, and that it's technically located in the south below the Mason-Dixon line.

Maryland is very pleased by this. Virginia is very pleased by this. This leads to a lot of real estate speculation in both states. And Hamilton gets his first credit plan through. So Washington creates the national debt along with these financial means to pay it off. And that is one of the major objects of the anti-federalists who, are making their voices heard in this compromise measure. They don't want to remain in debt. They want the government to be good for its bills and everything. But Hamilton is not done.

In December of 71, only 11 months after the compromise, Hamilton proposes in his second report on the public credit, something much more ambitious. He wants a national bank. He says that the bank, the power to incorporate a bank, a private business institution full of private shareholders and investors and granted special privileges and that the bank will be the repository of all treasury revenues. So it's going to have one huge exclusive customer in the United States. state's government. It's going to give this bank a huge pool of credit to loan out. And this is conducive to Hamilton's dream of big business schemes. So Hamilton proposes this to Congress. He also has a report, a very famous report on American manufacturers. which Hamilton wants to support with policy.

So Hamilton is a really extraordinary visionary leader. Hamilton proposes in his report on the manufacturers, he says, we all know that Americans are overwhelmingly agricultural in occupation. However, there is a very promising future in industrial combination. in business, in merchant transactions, in maritime trade. We want to take advantage of the latest knowledge about those things, especially in finance. And we want to get ahead of that so that we become a center of manufacturing and credit. Hamilton, incidentally, is the head of the largest bank in America at that time, the Bank of New York.

And the first capital of the United States is on Wall Street in New York. Federal Hall is right down there in Lower Manhattan, and that's the location of our first capital building, Washington's first capital. Washington's first capital. They've agreed to this compromise to move it southwards. They're going to move it to Philadelphia first. But even Philadelphia, the official capital for 10 years before the move to the District of Columbia. Philadelphia is the home of America's first stock market and also a banking center next to New York. So the seat of political power is in these financial centers where people speculate and trade on shares of organizations and all the rest.

And Hamilton envisions a future for the United States that involves a huge liquid supply of currency, that everyone's going to have money in their pockets, that increasing numbers of people, people are going to work for wages. They're going to use those wages to establish credit to finance what they need in the bustling cities. They are going to finance homes and finance investments. They're going to keep money on deposit. And this is going to create a larger pool of credit over time. And then the United States is going to be like the great banking powers of Europe. It's going to be like the city of London. It's going to be like Amsterdam. It's going to be like Paris. And we will become one of the great creditor nations of the world. We're going to be loaning out money for all sorts of huge enterprises and speculate on the projects going on all over the world. This is Hamilton's

vision. It's far from the experience of Americans in his own day where well over 95% of Americans at that time are engaged in agriculture primarily. Even people like John Adams, who has this huge career in politics and is a professional lawyer, John Adams is still running a farm on the side. and most people can't imagine a life in this period without engagement in agriculture. And that makes them more wary of Hamilton's plans than not. Hamilton really is a visionary of the world that we live in now, a world where practically everyone works for wages, everyone spends money for their daily needs out of their pocket. everyone is reliant on credit to do normal things in life. Homeowners typically have a mortgage.

Business owners typically have big lines of credit and business loans and things like that. Hamilton really is the man that foresees that level of banking influence in the lives of regular people in America. It was not the experience of his own time. Nobody lived like that then. But Hamilton sees these huge financial titans moving around, these big concentrations of capital and influence throwing their weight around the world. This is his imperial vision, if you will. And this is why Hamilton gets so many great accolades. I've got a couple of books in front of me here right.

now. I've got John Steele Gordon's Empire of Wealth, the History of American Economic Power. I've got Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, his biography of Hamilton. The modern writers on the subject praise Hamilton for his vision. They see all of this as part and parcel with progress itself. They see this. They see this. as the inevitable development of the enlightened world that we're going to have high finance and we're all going to be relying on credit for everything. This was far more controversial in Hamilton's Day. And it wasn't that the opposition, the Republicans, as they were called then, that's Jefferson's

party, to be clear, has nothing to do with the modern republic. party actually has more to do with the roots of the modern day Democratic Party. That all sounds very confusing. Don't worry about it. It's just how it ends up working out. The modern Democratic Party is like the schizophrenic child of Jefferson's Republican Party. But Alexander Hamilton is proposing the Bank of the United States. It's not that the advocates of.

the American states as opposed to the federal government are necessarily against banking institutions as such. They are against Hamilton's construction of the Constitution. Now, some of them are, frankly, against banking institutions. Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton's great rival in this measure, he said, I have ever been the enemy of banks. My zeal against. those institutions was so warm and open at the establishment of the Bank of the United States that I was derided as a maniac by the tribe of bank mongers who were seeking to filch the public their barren gains. Now, recall that one phrase there, the bankers barren gains. We see there the roots of Jefferson's philosophical opposition to banks because banks make money off of

loaning at interest. This is something that Jefferson, as well as a great many others, including Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, recognize as an unnatural kind of wealth getting. We'll have much more to say on that later, but suffice it to say that it is not a natural means of expanding capital. A natural means would be by bringing out the fruits of the earth and selling them, by breeding cattle or chickens or something. It's a natural process that God made that increases an investment. Thomas Jefferson is using that specific phrase as a reference to the philosophical and even theological belief in usury as an unnatural action of wealth getting because banks make money by charging a duty, an interest on the money that they loan out. and this is the source of a bank's income. And for that, they were prescribed through much of Christian history and still are in other circumstances

because of that view of interest as a means of wealth getting. So all that to say, Alexander Hamilton, he proposes the Bank of the United States with the justification that the necessary and proper clause in the Constitution, that the anti-federalists were so concerned about and that it was vague. And they said all sorts of outrageous things could be done in the name of the necessary and proper clause. And Hamilton also uses the general welfare clause to justify the established. of the Bank of the United States. He says that the Bank of the United States will make business more convenient

because of a larger pool of credit to loan out to business organizations of all sorts, and that it will also make the movement of the Treasury revenues and bills that much more easy because the Treasury will be the client of this Bank of the United States. Now, in spite of its name, it was proposed as a private institution. So this is a legal construction, a legal person created by the legislature for particular purposes. So there's a charter for the corporation like a constitution. It's made by a legislature and it will have shareholders. The United States government would only be one of the state's. many shareholders and a minority shareholder at that. So although it's called the Bank of the United States, it is actually a private institution, rather like the Federal Reserve. And a great many writers do compare Hamilton's National Bank to the Modern Federal Reserve. There are very important differences, but nevertheless, the comparisons are made. So Hamilton says the necessary and

proper clause may be interpreted as what is convenient for the Treasury. It's not necessary. It's convenient. Now, on those grounds, Thomas Jefferson, in his capacity as Secretary of State, Washington asks his cabinet secretaries for their opinions on Hamilton's proposed bank. because you remember Washington does have a mandate to fix the financial situation. The national debt is definitely helping here, but there are other ideas circulating as well. So Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Randolph, by the way, they both issue opinions about the Bank of the United States. Jefferson's is the most important.

after listing a bill of particulars against the proposed national bank, Jefferson says, I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people. Now, that is the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. And you recall the amendments of the Constitution were the compromise made for the anti-federalists to bring them over to support the Philadelphia Constitution. Hamilton was against these articles, these amendments. Hamilton had a very interesting reason for it. It's not that he has a secret plan to consolidate all power and that he's power mad and Machiavellian or something.

Not necessarily. We can interpret him in a more generous way than that, in spite of his proposal at the beginning of the convention in Philadelphia to have a president for life and basically abolish the states as political powers. he did propose that it's beyond me how anyone could have reasonably expected to get that over the states. The states almost rejected the Constitution as it was. And even with the Promise Bill of Rights, they almost rejected it. So I don't know how Hamilton thought he could get away with that. Perhaps he didn't know the minds of his countrymen. But the Tenth Amendment is the catch-all amendment.

And Jefferson quotes it here. He says, all powers not delegated are reserved to the states. And Jefferson says, the power of incorporation is not in the Constitution. In fact, that very power was debated in Philadelphia and rejected by the framers of the Constitution. He goes on to say, the incorporation of a bank and the powers assumed by, this bill have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. He then lists, goes through Hamilton's points about the establishment of the bank. He says, it's not a specifically enumerated power.

And then he lists out the specifically enumerated powers. he says it is not needed to borrow money. It is not needed to regulate commerce. It is not needed to lay taxes. None of these things are necessary. A bank is not necessary to do any of these things that the Constitution specifies as powers of the federal government. He says, if we are to interpret the Constitution as giving the federal government, the power to do anything it pleases, then it's a power that is not limited at all.

He says, to consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the union, would render all the proceeding and subsequent enumerations of power, completely useless. So he's saying, why specify in the Constitution things that the government can do, things the government cannot do, if the government is meant to do whatever it finds to be convenient, as Hamilton proposes? He says, it would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States. and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also the power to do whatever evil they please. He says, it is known that the very power now proposed as a means

was rejected as an ins by the convention which formed the Constitution. The proposition was made to them to authorize Congress to open canals and amendatory one to empower them to incorporate, rate, but the whole was rejected. And so he cites intention, that the intentions of the writers of the Constitution are well known. All of these men are still alive. Many of them are in Congress or in the administration. Everyone knows what they had debated privately in Philadelphia. This is not publicly known, but they knew what they talked about there. And Jefferson mentions it there, though he was not himself there. He knows about it through his correspondence, through James Madison,

primarily. And so he says, it was specifically not the intention of the framers, the writers of the document, to imply such a power. He says, a bank, therefore, is not necessary. and consequently not authorized by this phrase. It has been urged that a bank will give great facility or convenience in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true, yet the Constitution allows only the means which are necessary, not those which are merely convenient for affecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, It will go to everyone, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other to someone of so long a list of enumerated powers.

It would swallow up all the delegated powers and reduce the whole to one power as before observed. Therefore, it was that the Constitution restrained them to the necessary, means. So we see in Thomas Jefferson's opposition to the bank, the anti-federalist concerns repeated on a specific policy measure that the necessary and proper clause and the general welfare clause are dangers to the powers reserved to the states and to the people. This is a risk. to liberty in the anti-federalist construction. This is a government that defines its own powers. This is a government that judges itself and no one else is in a position to judge it. And this is a unchecked power, an unchecked centralizing power. The effect will be

to concentrate wealth, which is actually precisely what Hamilton had in mind. Herbert Agar, who is a latter-day agrarian writer, he was a friend of the Nashville agrarians, and also people like Hilar Belloc over in England, very strangely, though he is an American historian, The latter part of his life is marked with some controversy. He leaves the United States. He becomes a British subject just before, I guess it's like somewhere after World War I. He goes over there. And then he becomes a huge booster for World War II later on.

But let's not hold any of his latter controversies against him and take him as he did, as he was early in his career. He won the Pulitzer and was a major American historian. and certainly a more reactionary sort. He wrote a book called Land of the Free, which is kind of a view of early American history from an agrarian perspective, definitely a very Jeffersonian perspective. And he says of Hamilton,

Hamilton worshipped bigness, power, and success. Like most men addicted to such worship, Hamilton despised the common people. He never stooped, therefore, to making frail apologies for exploitation. Hamilton recommends exploitation. Agar says he described it to its most unholy forms and said it was exactly what a great nation needed. It was the quickest way to power, and therefore it was good. Now, now we turn back to Hamilton's report on manufacturers.

Hamilton believed that the finances of the federal government should be organized to encourage American business. And so he proposes protective tariffs to protect American manufacturers from foreign competition. This is certainly in Jefferson's day when the vast majority of, of Americans are farmers. This is a special interest. There are very few manufacturers going on in America, certainly very, very few for export. Most of them are just for the domestic market. Hamilton proposes identifying certain businesses in which the United States could be competitive broad and raising a duty on imports of the items that compete with those businesses. This is very different from a revenue tariff. The regular general tariff was applied to all imports,

and that was for federal revenue purposes. The protective tariff is raising a special revenue for a special purpose to protect a certain industry. Now, we've talked an awful lot about this, It's up. It should, we should qualify ourselves on this. We're living in Hamilton's world now. And so our concerns are necessarily different. It does not mean that we are all necessarily free traders because we don't like Hamilton or because we like Jefferson Best. We don't live in their world. So their concerns are very different than ours. And Hamilton's construction has been our model since Washington. Let's also be very frank about that as well. That's the way our Constitution is read. Jefferson loses his argument. Okay. Washington chooses Hamilton over Jefferson.

But in the report on manufacturers, Hamilton says, in addition to stimulating manufacturers for domestic consumption and also eventually for export, the protective tariff will raise special revenues. We want to use those revenues. to develop our own infrastructure, to make ourselves more competitive in the future, in industry. So he proposes using the revenue from the protective tariffs to build canals, to clear rivers for

navigation, to invest in ports, and other measures to improve internal communications, roads, and such. This will make American business more competitive. in the long run because we will have better internal trade networks. It'll be cheaper to move things to market and also to sell them abroad. Hamilton, in his report on manufacturers, also says something else. And this is a very interesting vision into Hamilton's mind. He says, in general, women and children are rendered more useful by manufacturing establishments than they would otherwise be. Just living their lives, women homemaking and such. They are wasted beings in Hamilton's economy. He says, of the number of persons employed in cotton

manufacturers of Great Britain, four sevenths are women and children. We were reminded, Hamilton's model for his financial schemes, for his political vision for America. He is always looking to the success of Great Britain. And here he's looking at a successful modern industrial power. And he's saying they're employing huge numbers of children. So we should be encouraged to follow their lead. He says, the children of whom the greatest proportion are of tender age.

So he's not proposing hiring teenagers for this. He's proposing hiring very young people for this, mere children. And he says, this is going to be great because they're going to have money in their pockets. They're going to buy consumer goods. They're going to open bank accounts. They're going to expand our national pool of credit. And this is, as I said, he's more of a visionary of the modern world than a man of his times. And that's one of the reasons why he gets so much tribute from people of our own day, especially the capitalists of our own time.

They see in this the germs of the systems that they themselves enjoy. Hamilton is also an elitist, not that this is necessarily a mark against him. Hamilton wants not a government that is representative of the masses of Americans. He actually proposes a government of what he called, the rich and well-born and able, as opposed to what he calls the mass of people. And this corresponds to his own more monarchical proposal for the American government at the Philadelphia Convention. We remember he imagined an executive appointed for life. He imagined the executive appointing state governors for life and a much more centralized system,

basically abolishing the states, giving the president the power to veto state legislation. This is a far more aristocratic vision for American politics. And as I said, I don't see how anyone could have speculated on having a chance in Hamilton's day. The states certainly would not have surrendered their powers up so frankly as that. So we see the opposition coalescing against Hamilton. They are suspicious of the center of political power. They are also suspicious of centralized economic power. Now, this is Hamilton's goal from the start.

We look at his first report on public. credit. He wants to consolidate all of the debt and a national debt. So there used to be a financial market, financial concerns in Boston, in Savannah, Georgia, in New Bern, North Carolina, the old capital of North Carolina, in Richmond, Virginia. They all had their own financial markets. They all had their own crushing war debts. They all had their own bunch of speculators. When Hamilton proposes the consolidation of all of those debts combined, rolled into the debts of the Continental Congress, you recall the speculators were an issue there. The anti-federalist country element floated a unworkable plan to find the original investor.

in those bonds, the original bondholders, and pay the full amount of the bond to them. But that was unworkable for a number of reasons. There was no master list of who had ever received those bonds. Also, speculators had bought the bonds. Did they actually buy the right to be paid those bonds? Or was that not included in whole? holding a bond. You know, it's it's a piece of movable property. Don't you have a right to it if you sell if you've sold it or if you bought it from somebody? So Hamilton dismisses that and that was

unworkable. But but we see with the anti-federalists, they're very concerned with the concerns of the countryside over the city investors and speculators. The, the Republican element, the Jeffersonian Republican element had succeeded. after independence in moving the state capitals, in many instances, away from the coastal cities. In many instances, the capital moves far inland, and the idea there is the same idea reflected in the movement of the national capital to Washington, D.C. The movement of the capitals inland from New Bern, North Carolina, to Raleigh, North Carolina. from Savannah, Georgia to Millageville, Georgia, the second capital of the state of Georgia,

from Charleston, South Carolina to Columbia, South Carolina, from New York City, New York, to Albany, New York, and so on. This happened in many places, not all, obviously, Massachusetts, it's a good example to the contrary. But the idea was the same in each one. they wanted to get their political class away from the merchants that predominated in the cities, the speculators, the special interests. Well, when Hamilton consolidates the national debt, and he very reasonably, I think, he reasonably says, we pay to the bondholders, not the original,

people issued the bonds. If they don't have those bonds anymore, they sold them to a speculator or someone else, it's the person that holds the bond now that gets paid, not the original bond holder. We don't have any list of all these people. How could we possibly verify who owned the bonds originally? This is a completely reasonable argument. When Hamilton makes the proposal, he makes it in New York City, which is the federal capital of the time. And you know what happens in New York City? The speculators rush out as fast as they can to buy as many of those bonds as possible below part. And it's a massive, very quick centralization of capital.

with the federal government paying out its debts. Now, this is just logistics and human behavior. This is not necessarily any proof of any conspiracy. There are some like Charles Beard, who I've learned a lot from and I really respect. Charles Beard said that the federalist faction, that organizes the Philadelphia Constitution, they were a particular moneyed interest that wanted to centralize American finance. Now, in the case of Hamilton,

that is clearly true. That describes what Hamilton wanted and he was not at all shy about saying that. Beard, nevertheless, has his critics. And my favorite, another great historian that I've learned a lot from, Forrest McDonald, the great Alabama scholar. Forrest McDonald wrote a book in response to Beard's economic interpretation of the Constitution. That's Beard's great scholarship on his thesis about the federalists.

Forrest McDonald wrote a book in criticism of this, and what he did was he traced down all of the prominent federalists and tried to classify their economic status. And in that, he is very thorough and proves his thesis that the federalists contained all manner of different interests. They were not particularly the moneyed interest or the financial titans of their time, though many of them do find themselves in that camp for the simple reason that the federalists have come up with a way to retire the bills of the articles, the Continental Congress. And that's a responsible thing to do. And so men of financial responsibility and integrity are naturally drawn to that.

So it's not proof of any conspiracy. And that's McDonald's view of it. I fall in between, if I may be allowed to say so. The federalists do succeed in, concentrating wealth. And then we have our, we have our measurement, our slogan that we say, the purpose of a system is what it does. And I believe that the high federalists had this in mind. This is what they wanted to do. They wanted to consolidate more political power under the Philadelphia Constitution. Hamilton does not wait to do so. He tries it right away. And the financial

consolidation. Also, this element in the report on manufacturers, that the federal government will use taxes and also spend revenues to help special interests of business, which at this time in American history, is concentrated solely in the north. And it remains concentrated in the North until well after the Civil War. That is an important thing to note and to keep in mind as we progress. The economic interests that Hamilton seeks to develop and Hamilton seeks to patronize, to sponsor with tax and spending policies, the internal improvements and the protective tariffs, And also the big pool of credit in the Bank of the United States. Those are all particular sectional interests. Now, Hamilton goes to great lengths to say, oh, everyone is going to benefit from

this. Don't be selfish and blinkered lost in your own regional constraints about economics. This is a big game. And we need to make a big splash on the world scene and such. We want foreign investors coming in here and buying our government bonds and so on. We're going to have such a great credit. We're going to be able to use that credit to develop our own industries and resources. So he has this national vision. What is good for New York is good for the whole country. Why can't they see that?

And Jefferson and Hamilton's opposition, the Republicans, as they're called, they are jealous for their own state's resources. They're jealous for their own state's influence. And finally, they are jealous of their own limited claims of sovereignty. That this is a federation and not a consolidated central national government. There are two levels of government in this organization. The states and the federal body they created for special purposes. And they are very jealous of Hamilton's plans to develop that central body for enriching itself,

for focusing on certain regions, to patronize certain regions, to give benefits to special interests. Now, Hamilton, in his rebrand, to Jefferson, among other things, he says, this is what governments do everywhere. And the objection of Jefferson is, is, it's, what is it, obtuse. He's being obtuse in that he wants to limit federal power to, to sponsor the charter of a corporation like this. He's, he's provincial in his vision. He has no vision for empire and greatness. These are the things that Hamilton most treasures. Jefferson's response is that this power was specifically not delegated to the

federal government. And the federal government, it shouldn't be like Frankenstein's monster that wakes up and dominates Frankenstein's life, the federal government should remain the servants of its creator, which is the states. It's been specifically limited by the states in their conventions with their authority. The states made the federal government, and so the states must strictly limit its powers.

And that's the gist of Hamilton's expansive vision. Hamilton is using the clauses that we had mentioned. The anti-federalists had identified as troublesome as vague. Hamilton is interpreting them as a means to greater power. This is my amusing title for this lecture. Hamilton's power tools. These clauses interpreted in an expansive way as permissive for the federal government and its agents to interpret powers for themselves, to decide what they believe is convenient.

This is an opportunity to expand the scope of the federal government so they can do all kinds of clever things with their newly found powers in this flexible instrument. Thomas Jefferson says, if the Constitution does not strictly define and limit the federal government, which is the servant of its creator, then what good is the document? Why was it written? Why were we so specific with all of these enumerated powers? It's useless. And that, in a nutshell, that's Hamilton's argument, and that's Jefferson's argument. And we see this is kind of ironic in that Jefferson and Hamilton had just brokered an agreement about the consolidation of the state debts.

They had just found compromise with one another. They were working with each other. But on this point, they were intractable. Jefferson regretted his deal with Hamilton on the consolidation of the debt, called it the worst mistake of his life that he made a deal with Hamilton. And Hamilton and Jefferson were fierce enemies of one another from the Bank of the United States forward. And of course the result is that George Washington faithfully accepts his protege's plan. His surrogate son, Alexander Hamilton, wins over the president with his argument for these expansive powers. And we've had them ever since, which is one reason why, although I find Jefferson's argument entirely convincing, it's Hamilton's constitution from the start.

And my sympathies are certainly with Jefferson and the Jeffersonians in history. they play a major role. And they are active up until 1865. When there's tribute, rhetorical tribute, made to that tradition in subsequent generations. But notably, the Jefferson Memorial is kind of tucked away off the National Mall. And that's for a reason. The Democratic Party, which I mentioned was kind of the spawn of Jefferson's Republicans through curious means. The Democratic Party would still pay tribute to Thomas Jefferson, but he's not the architect of the union that we live in.

And as we see later on, Thomas Jefferson himself is not such a stickler for the union. the strict construction of the Constitution when he himself becomes president. And we will talk about that anon. So that's my syllabus for Hamilton's power tools. I mean, this is just one of those conversations and all of the implications. If you know how to read history, you see them in every era of this country right up until now. it's this is this is not stopped this is yes it's always been a divide and unfortunately with Jefferson's failure at this the argument goes down to the state level so you you see

various states that contend with Jefferson's argument they try outlawing the Bank of the United States, for instance. And then it goes up to the Supreme Court. And who's in the Supreme Court? Chief Justice John Marshall, who does more for Hamilton's interpretation of the Constitution than Hamilton ever did in his own career. So it took a Virginian in the Supreme Court, a Hamiltonian Virginian, John Marshall, to make that, make Hamilton's interpretation, the law. of the land, which happens later and we'll talk about that later. Um, but the Jeffersonians, they, they are very like conservatives. They say, but the Constitution says the government can't do that. And the advocates of power,

they say, yeah, watch us. We're going to do it anyway. It's like it's like, it's like, It's like during COVID, right? I know what the Bill of Rights says. It says that the government can't prevent peaceable assemblies. It says that the government can't interfere with religious worship. It says that the government can't interfere with speech. Well, watch them. It's like the conservative who says, but the Fourth Amendment, right?

The NSA can't listen to everything that I say without my, consent. They can't collect all my information when I'm online. The CIA shouldn't be able to spy on me in my own home. And we have all this information burgundying that they're doing all of these things. Well, what about the Constitution? Well, haven't you heard of the general welfare clause? Haven't you heard that necessary means convenient? This has been the case. since 1791. It's only reached these outlying departments more recently. And this is something that Hamilton says in his argument. And this is very well worth reading. Hamilton's response to Jefferson's argument on the bank. He says, this is the way governments do things. The government's a sovereign power

and sovereign powers judge the limits of their own power. And we are, are going to have some pipsqueak little American state telling us that we don't have that power. Are we really going to let some little state like Delaware boss us around? That was the problem with the articles. Rhode Island was always vetoing all these things that were necessary and proper. So we aren't going to let them do it. Mr. President, don't let them do that to us. Let us do these grand financial empires. And George Washington said, sounds good. As a fateful choice with unknown implications at the time. And by the way, the federal government, it stayed really small for a long time. So we can still look at this and say, as I'm inclined to do,

it was a long run of a actually very small federal government. I mean, small by our standards, it was minuscule at the turn of the century. We can scarcely imagine how small it was. And that was well after the Civil War at that point. When the first progressives come in, you know, when you get McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and things start looking a little more familiar, they're dealing with such a small administration. We couldn't even imagine just how incredibly libertarian that period of time was as far as people's encounters with federal agents or inspectors. It was a vanishingly small thing.

We had a very small standing army even. We had very limited influence. We had practically no force projection around the world until the Spanish-American War. I mean, I can look at that record, even with the civil war, as the huge goal of our discussion, and we're going to be talking about everything that went down with that, basically put the Jeffersonian argument to bed with the result. It was still a really small government for a really long time. and that's something that I value that is certainly a heritage of ours. Americans historically have not had big bureaucracies bossing them around and absorbing all of their resources. Well, when you have people that are like each other and, you know, co-ethnices, co-religionists,

and then, you know, you introduce people who will not. assimilate and we'll use the um the kind of the kind of relaxed atmosphere that a um a mono ethnic monoculture uh provides to cheat them and to do everything they can to rule them then uh you know what was set up in Philadelphia can be, can easily be, easily be used to justify what they want to do. That's right. And that's why Hamilton, Hamilton's a star these days. I've never seen that musical and I've made a pact with myself that I never will. they say it saved Hamilton on the $10 bill

that he was all set to be replaced or something and then the musical came out and everyone was like no we love Hamilton now they didn't know their own heroes until that that musical came out Hamilton is the author of every government expansion in American history anything that's done for the general welfare, you have Hamilton ultimately to thank for it.

He is the man who opened the doors to expansive government power in the American Constitution. And he's a visionary. He imagines the world that we live in now, where people work for wages, where nobody owns anything, where there is a huge concentration of power and wealth in the coastal elites. It's Hamilton's world. And he had incredible vision. He set the foundations that ended up with the result that he wanted. And Herbert Agar,

writing back in the 1920s. He said, in his opinion, Alexander Hamilton would be the only man of his generation that would look at Depression-era-America without shielding his eyes for pity. He said that all the other men of Hamilton's generation, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, they would have all been so ashamed

of the state of regular people in America. Because Agar says they actually liked regular people more than Hamilton did and cared about their faiths. You know, Thomas Jefferson famously, he envisioned an America where most people would be farmers, and so most people would be free. Most people would have property. So most people would vote because they had a stake in their communities. That was Thomas Jefferson.

vision. Maybe unrealistic that most people could wield that kind of responsibility and remain independent. But that was what Agar said about Hamilton. That Hamilton was a man that foresaw, you know, the world of Depression era America and would have found it a good thing. Not the depression as such, but the concentration of economic power, the helplessness of the laboring people, they all have to be employed, they don't have any means of their own. That was Hamilton's vision. That was what he wrote about. That was the kind of world that he wanted to create. A world of big cities where most people are employees, where everyone is relying on credit, that is Hamilton's vision. an America full of powerful corporations, all of them legal entities with charters from the state,

many of them now with licensed to do business all over the world. Hamilton wanted that. He wanted concentration of credit, financial power. He wanted corporate combinations, these immortal legal institutions that can move money across the country in the blink of an eye. He wants to lower these these boundaries for the movement of money, the rapid movement of money and capital. He wants these big business combinations creating employment, building up big cities. He wants that to be the predominant way of American life. And that's the world that he saw the genesis of. He planted the germ that that sprouted

into that economy in American history so that later on we find Calvin Coolidge say the business of America is business. And yet even in Calvin Coolidge's day, most Americans were still farmers. Most Americans remained farmers until just before World War II. Or it may have switched right when it got started or something. It was really very late where most Americans still were engaged in agriculture. It was the 1940s. It was very recently. I mean, this stuff has changed so fast in such a short period of time.

Well, until the next time, thank you. Do plugs real quick and for people who didn't listen to episode one. And we will get out of here. Absolutely. So I run a small press. You can find me at www. Tallmenbooks.com. That's M.E.N. Tallmanbooks.com.

The website was just updated, and I've got a lot of new offerings there. And many more on the way. Thank you, Mr. Baggie. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Keep going. I republish history books. I've got a 50-volume series that's gradually coming out a survey of American history called The Chronicles of America. I've got a high school

history textbook by David Muzzy called an American history. I also have biographies of outlaws and lawmen in the Old West and also biographies of American Indians that are coming out soon. Look forward to it. Thank you. And so the next time. Take care. Thanks a lot. I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking. on a show. George Bagby is back for part three. How are you doing tonight, George? I'm doing well.

I've had some productive days lately, working really hard on a bunch of projects. Very nice to be with you tonight. Good to be with you. Good to hear that you're doing a lot of work there. We appreciate it. And the feedback on the first two episodes has been excellent. So I'm excited for

this one, especially since it's about an individual that I have actually read a lot on. So take it away. Well, that's good to know. I'm looking forward to interacting with you on him. I prepared material on John Randolph or John Taylor of Caroline. I'll mention John Randolph in passing as we progress here. John Taylor of Caroline is a major American Jeffersonian thinker. And we've talked in our previous two episodes about the Federalist Party and their vision for America, especially in the person of Hamilton.

We've also talked about Jefferson's construction of the Constitution and how Hamilton's victory does an awful lot to build American economic institutions and ultimately the way that the federal government comes to operate. But the Jeffersonian vision is extremely important in understanding the sectional conflict that develops in our early history. At the time of Washington's administration, the vast majority of Americans are involved in agriculture. Even the artisans, the shipbuilders, merchants, merchants, lawyers, and other professionals, they are still operating farms and gardens on the side.

They're still tending animals. That is just a mainstay of American existence at the time. and our cities remain very small. We have a very small urban population that's very closely adjacent to the agricultural countryside. And so Hamilton's vision for the Republic really is far-fetched for the people of his day. His vision of an industrial financialized America, it only speaks to a relatively small minority of the population, and they're more in the northeast than they are anywhere else at this stage. Jefferson's appeal is much more broad because of his agrarian focus and his

more laissez-faire kinds of policies. Jefferson certainly favors the state-level organization, and the idea that the states could actually be very significantly different from one another in the predominant way of life, that it would correspond more with the regions of the country. John Taylor, his great achievement is in his consistent pushing back on the centralized model that Hamilton is proposing. in Washington's administration. Another figure that comes in and develops constitutional law in a really big way is the Hamiltonian disciple, Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court. Though Marshall was a Virginian, Marshall was also a high federalist, a file.

follower of Hamilton's ideas and actually does more to promulgate Hamilton's vision of this broad construction of the Constitution, this very broad reading of the necessary and proper clause and the general welfare clause. He does more to advance that reading than Hamilton could have possibly done with his mere opinions as cabinet minister. So the agrarian, Well, I mentioned Marshall. John Taylor actually systematically pushes back on Marshall's interpretation. Of course, he is not a Supreme Court justice. He's a statesman, an elected official frequently from Virginia,

but he doesn't have the role of pushing it back in constitutional law, writing opinions on Supreme Court cases, but he does write a lot of literature, very learned and well-argued literature, pushing back on this, and is a very philosophical kind of voice in the Jeffersonian School. So John Randolph comes to speak in a very philosophical way, ultimately, of the Southern Agrarian position, which, is extremely important for us to understand as we're approaching the sectional conflict between the north and the south. So just to introduce the issue, I wanted to jump back into classical history

because these are very long gestating ideas when it comes to government. and we find this kind of argument brewing in the Roman Republic, for example. The Roman Republic was founded by Lucius Junius Brutus and his comrades who overthrew the Tarquin and established a representative government. Now, the old Roman idea of citizenship was that Roman citizens had property, Roman citizens paid taxes, Roman citizens bore arms and knew how to use them. There was a kind of militia organization in Roman society from the early Republican times. times. And this was the basis of the very successful Roman army up until the time of the Punic Wars against Carthage. Roman citizens with their own arms made up the Roman army. And there was a prohibition on army service for those who did not own land. You actually

had to have a stake in your society in order to be eligible. to fight for it. And as Rome has great success, they conquer Carthage in the Punic Wars. They have a tremendous boon of land and booty and slaves

from their conquest. The population becomes more urbanized, and this creates the problems of empire that eventually result in the consolidation of imperial power in Rome. And that

And that's its own story. But you have in the example of the Roman Republic this honorable aristocracy, the famous Roman virtues like magnanimity and discipline and such. These are where the great strengths of the Roman state originally came from. And naturally, it was a place where American patriots looked. for inspiration in their own story. They were classically educated. They were looking back on the history of Greece and Rome and seeing examples that they wanted to imitate

examples of success. So Brutus, and this isn't Caesar's assassin in this case, though the founding father is also related to him, Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Republican movement that overthrows the king, Tarkwin the Proud, he is an inspiration for them. And the participatory republic with the responsible property-owning citizens, they saw as a model for America. In our successful independence move against King George, we establish an agrarian republic, and it's overwhelmingly agrarian at its start. Yet we also have figures like Hamilton, who are dreaming of a more centralized and economically focused empire. So these tensions, they do seem unlikely, given the overwhelming predominance of agriculture in the 1780s,

but they create this great battle of schools of philosophy, visions of what America could be. The classical philosophers from ancient Greece give John Taylor his main talking points. Aristotle and Plato are both the original sources for our ideas of economics. They both wrote about it. Both of them recommended strictures on merchants and those that dealt chiefly with money, which is very interesting. They recognize a tension between the producers of commodities, which are plants and animals, also things like material you dig out of the earth in a

They recognized the tension between those that produce commodities and those that dealt with money and only commodities for trade. They distinguish between natural wealth getting, which is related to natural processes, like the reproduction of cattle, the tilling of the tilling of the tilling of the, the earth and the raising of crops out of the earth, and the unnatural means of getting wealth, which means that you buy the corn at a certain price in one place, you sell it for a higher price in another place. Or even more unnatural, you lend out money and make money on the interest. they both recognized these crafts and both Plato and Aristotle they

criticize it as an unnatural kind of process. This is an unnatural wealth getting. In book one of Aristotle's politics, he actually uses the Greek word oikonomia to describe the operations of the basic unit of society, the household, which he tells us, this is the basic unit because of the essential human relationships that you find there.

The man and wife is their relations to their children, also their relations to their slaves and animals. These are political societies in miniature, but also because the household generates wealth naturally. In Aristotle's conception, the household is a small business, or more properly, a farm.

It's generating natural commodities. He says that the wealth that the household creates has a natural use value. And the focus of the basic unit, the household for Aristotle, is for the enjoyment of living. So the small farmer, he is growing the food he likes to eat. He's tending animals according to his own preference and such. It's not primarily about making money, it's primarily about living. Now, that sounds kind of idealistic, but that is more or less what lives of farmers were

like, especially away from trade routes, in America at the time of the founding. They're all interested in having cash crops and refining the goods that they bring out of the earth, taking them to market and trading. and such. But their primary concern is actually bringing these natural goods out of the earth or out of the animals and refining them and enjoying them in an isolated farm, you know, far from the rivers or roads. This is the natural course of how people live. So it actually corresponds very well with what Aristotle is describing. And Aristotle contrasts, that with the merchant who is interested in moving the goods and his object is money.

That's what his goal is, is to accumulate this artifice that represents value, exchange value, and not the commodities themselves. So in the oeconomia or the household economy that Aristotle uses this word to describe, it's about money as a means, or money as a means to an end, not money as an end. And he distinguishes between the two motivations there. So here is Aristotle from the politics. Natural riches and the natural art of wealth getting are a different thing. In their true form, they are part of the management of a household, whereas retail trade is the art of producing wealth by exchange.

For then man would go on without limit, and so the desire would be unsatisfied and fruitless. So the merchant, who is after money as an end in itself, is never satisfied with what he is produced, whereas the farmer who brings wheat out of the ground turns it into flour and makes bread with it for his family, this has a great satisfaction involved. It's not about stockpiling bread without end. It is the satisfaction of living and enjoying the commodity that has been produced. Now, obviously, that's not the whole of what's going on in early America.

People are producing crops to sell them, but the point of their activity is actually a lifestyle. The small farmer is living a lifestyle that supports a family. and he does make money off of it, but that is not the point. Right. The independence of the homestead is highly valuable to them. Economic independence, like political independence, is a self-satisfying kind of activity. So Aristotle, he distinguishes between oeconomia, as I've described, And Kapaliki, which is what he calls the retail trade,

Aristotle goes on to say, the state arises, and by state, he does not mean a modern bureaucratic government, translate this as the community, the polis, if you will. the translators usually turn the Greek word polis into state. And this is probably an example of that. But he says the community arises out of the needs of mankind. No one is self-sufficing that the individual cannot, he cannot provide for himself. The Aristotle ultimately says this is, a biological limitation.

Man cannot divide himself and reproduce by himself. He must form a family. And then a family cannot survive on its own. It needs neighbors. It needs people to trade with, needs people to cooperate with people to help defend itself. And so they organize into a community. And they have specializations. You know, there's one that makes bread and one that makes bread and one that

makes shoes and one that builds houses and so on. He says, all of us have many wants, and they exchange with one another, and one gives and another receives, until the idea that the exchange will be for their good. So this is the origin of community life. The merchant's duty is to be in the market and to give money in exchange for goods. So he sees this, as the effect of large communities. They develop a merchant class. Aristotle doesn't say they should be proscribed, forbidden. He sees this as a natural element in human history, like Plato does as well.

But Aristotle, like Plato, they're both suspicious of the artificial, unnatural characteristics and goals of such a class, to the point that Plato in his laws, which is one of his later works, and a bit more involved than the famous dialogues, he proposes political strictures on the merchant class to keep them out of lawmaking to various degrees. Here is Plato in the laws. By filling the markets of the city with foreign merchandise and retail trading and breaking in men's souls, knavish and tricky ways, it renders the city faithless and loveless. It's very interesting Plato is focused on the spiritual character. what a predominance in merchant activities

and what Aristotle calls the retail trade, what that does to a man's soul. He says, it does this not to itself only, but to the rest of the world as well. So Plato is very suspicious of this tendency, this kind of professional obsession. Similarly, we see among the agrarian statesmen, such as Jefferson, this clear preference for the farmer as a political class, and a great suspicion of schemes, imperial ambitions, as we see with Hamilton, to patronize the merchant class.

to link them up in constructive ways with the political class, to make them dependent on one another, the financiers giving greater powers to federal bureaus, lines of credit and such, and that this kind of relationship is very dangerous. Yes, it does increase political power. Yes, it may increase the means by which we might do great and powerful and wealth-getting kinds of things. But Jefferson and his agrarian school best exemplified by John Taylor and also the likes of John Randolph of Roanoke,

they are very averse to this. They're very critical of this. and they have a solid ancient tradition to draw on, which is why I say that John Taylor of Caroline, it ultimately has a major contribution in philosophy, though we'll find he offers an awful lot for us to consider. Jefferson famously said on this point, which is certainly a classical allusion

to the politics. He said, the cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country

and wedded to its liberty and interests. Jefferson, like the other agrarian writers, is like Plato, like Erichael, like Aristotle, very dismissive of the value of large cities and urban populations, consumer populations, populations very dependent on finance. And of course, I know I'm describing my own lifestyle because the independence of the small business, the cultivator of the earth, their political and economic independence is increasingly scarce in our lives. It's not available to us. We do not have any ready opportunities to go and be self-sufficient farmers or deal primarily in producing commodities

in natural ways, as opposed to these artificial ways. That is the predominant way of life in our world now, certainly in the Western world. Jefferson says of cities, just generally, he says, I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man. The useful arts can thrive elsewhere and less perfection in the others with more health, virtue, and freedom. That would be my choice. So he says, yes, we may not have such excellent production of luxuries, as you might find in European cities.

That seems a small price to pay for the independence, the economic and political independence, and the virtues cultivated by the agrarian life predominating. This is a very long-lived tradition in the South. particularly, where the agricultural lifestyle predominated until modern times. Even in the early 20th century, it was still the main means of living through large areas of the south where we don't see the growth of the great southern cities, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte. We don't see the growth of these areas until very recently, the latter half of the 20th century.

Jefferson goes on to say, when we get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. So that frames the talking points of this school of thought and gives us a more philosophical insight given Plato and Aristotle and their explanation of these issues so that we can dive deeper into John Taylor of Caroline and better understand just what he was getting at. So Taylor, he was, he saw service in the War for Independence. He ends up a colonel of the Virginia militia. He is from the Tidewater of Virginia. He's from Caroline County, which is just east of Fredericksburg, Virginia. So it's up on what's called the Northern Neck adjacent to Westmoreland County.

and the seat of the Lee family, who were his neighbors. He is very interested in this question of real versus artificial wealth, and this is a major theme of his writings. He wrote a compelling volume. It's more of a practical volume meant for farmers called The Errator. This is a series of essays. I think there are 16 chapters in this volume. And it was the most popular thing he ever wrote because on his practical side, he was a farmer his entire life in spite of his public prominence, in spite of his output in philosophy and law, in spite of his service in Congress and then the state legislature in Virginia.

He was, at the end, always a farmer. In Eriter, half of the book concerns agricultural reforms to restore barren land in Virginia that had been overfarmed. The other half of the book concerns the philosophy, the political economy of farmers predominating in a community. and why, in his view, the production of real wealth out of commodities is politically vital, that it forms a certain kind of society, one that is more rooted, one that is more disciplined, one that is more aware of natural limits, and with more of a, cheerful dismissal of the ambitions of these abstract economic powers, business combinations, banks and such, because they're actually independent of them in a serious way.

And he believed that this was the root of American political institutions, the fact that most Americans were farmers, the vast majority, in fact. So he was a great critic of Hamilton's protective tariff system. Back at the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and such, he was a anti-federalist. So he's a unique individual in that he had great prominence in national politics after the ratification of the Constitution, in spite of his outspoken anti-federalism. He was, in fact, elected to Congress in the first Congress as an anti-federalist critic of the Constitution. So even though he lost that fight in Virginia, very narrowly lost it, he went and served as a statesman. He was so respected in Virginia.

He was a great critic of Hamilton's protective tariffs. So he is a great proponent of a free trade model for the economy. He said that the tariffs amount to a wealth transfer from one portion of the economy to the other. Because farmers are in need of manufactured goods, they pay a higher price for them with these protective tariffs, and this moves their capital, their wealth, from the agricultural sector to the cities, which he sees as the special sites of government patronage.

Through that protective tariff system, Hamilton proposed. This becomes a really big issue later in our history. It is of minimal practical importance in the fact that it wasn't much happening. It was happening to a degree. There were certain protective tariffs in Washington's administration, but it gets expanded over time. It gets increased, and this is a very serious issue by the time of the Andrew Jackson administration. Taylor says the bounties, and this is the This is the particular word Hamilton uses in his report on manufacturers in the Washington administration. Bounties are these protective tariffs, the revenue from which are to be used for internal improvements, for the building of roads, the improvement of waterways, the building of canals, the building of port cities or port facilities.

Taylor says the bounties are partly, but never completely reimbursed to agriculture. So he notes that agriculture will benefit from the internal improvements to some degree, but on balance it benefits industry more because it was meant to benefit industry. that's the purpose of protective terrorists is to benefit manufacturers to reduce their competition. Taylor, like Jefferson, makes many overtures to the political virtue of the agrarian element. He says, the yoke fellow of the earth must thrive or starve together. if the nation pursues a system of lessening the food of the earth, the earth in justice or revenge will starve the nation.

So rather like Jefferson famously saying the farmers are the chosen people of God, Jefferson famously said that in his notes on the state of Virginia. Taylor likewise points to the health of the commodity-producing element of the nation as the essential element of any nation. That this is the place where people are connected to the rhythms of nature. This is the place where they acquire natural virtues, a sense of limits, a sense of tragedy, an awareness of death, an awareness of God ultimately. This is something later on, the Vanderbilt Agrarians at Nashville, Donald Davidson, Alan Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and others,

they write about this enduring theme in Southern literature and in our political history, that the connection to natural forces that the farmer is immersed in in his lifestyle makes for a religious and artistic people, makes for a people who are very much aware that they are not ultimately in control, that there are limits to man's actions. Whereas, of course, the city dweller in an overwhelmingly artificial environment is far less aware of these natural forces.

He wants light, he flips a switch. He's too hot, he flips a switch. He wants food, he calls for some, pays for some. He is so separated, as obviously, that's the norm for us, it's the norm for me. They're so separated from the harsh realities of life that

they grow distant from the traditional virtues, from ties to particular places. We realize this when we live in these artificial environments. You might drive a thousand miles and it's the same coffee shop. It's the exact same design.

The cup of coffee comes from the exact same factory. It has been tooled so that it tastes precisely the same as it does a thousand miles away. And we no longer appreciate the differences between place and place. The rootedness, the sense of place, these are important distinctions that are all too obvious in a traditional society. in the Negrarian society. Now, I say all of this in preparation to approach a very interesting point with Taylor, and this is one that I must say I have very complicated feelings concerning. This point was very fruitful.

There are, there's a lot of correspondence between Taylor, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson himself on this point, which I have mined now for years and found tremendous inspiration in. It's all concerning the subject of equality, which is that very fruitful phrase, whatever else we might say about it, from Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. that all men are created equal. Now, this is troublesome, certainly, given that it is historically a leftist talking point.

John Adams, who I have a genuine admiration for, took issue with this, and said it's a preposterous statement. And late in life, after the passions of political debate had died down, Adams renewed his friendship with Jefferson, and they had a very fruitful correspondence about this precise thing. But John Taylor enters in to this discussion. Taylor is a great critic of Adams' defense of the constitutions of America, which is one of Adams' major works.

Adams really is worth our time, by the way. He's not the focus of this series. Obviously, we're focused on the sectional conflict. And Adams kind of falls out of the picture, sadly. The Federalists, we'll talk more about the Federalist Party later. But Adams' thought is not so important in this context. The Federalist Party dies, and a lot of these ideas are ushered out. Adams does have so much to contribute, though.

If you're interested in Adams, who ought to be treated very seriously, and we can learn so much from him, Russell Kirk edited some bits of Adams in his conservative reader and also in his very good book, The Conservative Mind, where he treats Adams very seriously, as he does actually. people like John Randolph, who Russell Kirk really liked. But Taylor, John Taylor, was insistent on political equality and democratic institutions. That being said, he is also a southern landowner, a minorial figure, who has many slaves. He has several dozen. When he's talking of equality, he's talking of it in a qualified way.

We can just take this for granted. But he is insistent on this overwhelming property-owning element in America being politically equal. John Adams retorts on this. Taylor actually writes a book against John Adams' defense of the Constitution. of America. Something that Adams had spent 20 years writing. Taylor, with steam coming out of his ears, presumably writes something like 500 pages in rebuttal of John Adams' magnum opus and puts it to press. And he even anonymously sent John Adams his book in the mail. It didn't even tell him. Who had written it? He didn't include a letter or anything. He just sent this, this substantial

volume to John Adams. John Adams recollects this in private correspondence. He may have been writing Jefferson, in fact, where he said, I received this tome in the mail, and I think it might have been John Taylor's book. It sounded very like his speeches in Congress. So he may have have in fact known who had written it when he received it. But Taylor criticizes Adams because Adams disparages the masses of the people. At least that's what John Taylor says. Adams insists that there are organized elites

that determine the fate of society. societies. This should sound very familiar to us. And this is one of the reasons why I believe Adams really deserves our serious attention. Taylor is an egalitarian agrarian. And this is a very important point to understand the sectional conflict. Because for, and I've been wanting to give Adams is due here. I think that Adams is correct. I think that Taylor is going too far in his criticism of Adams where he's alleging Adams is characterizing most American citizens as subservient slaves in a political sense, not illegal. And that Adams is elitist. Adams certainly is elitist

because Adams believes in elites. Just to give you a taste of what Adams has to say, here's an example. This is Adams on the subject of equality to Jefferson. I think that you'll find Adams' point very valuable. This is 1813, a letter to Jefferson. Has science or morals or philosophy or criticism or criticism or Christianity, advanced or improved or enlightened mankind upon this subject, and shown them

that the idea of the well-born is a prejudice, a phantom, a point, no point, a cape fly-away, a dream? I say it is the ordinance of God Almighty in the constitution of human nature, and wrought into the fabric of the universe, philosophers and politicians may nibble and quibble, but they will never get rid of it. So the idea you can raise a child around books, teach him discipline, right, orient his mind towards high things, teach him the scripture, take him to church,

you're going to get a very different result from the child that watches HBO night and day is never taught to do anything for himself. I mean, just take that as an example. The idea of being well-born, well-bred, that this makes substantial differences in people. Adam says this is the constitution of human nature. This is a law of God Almighty. this does make a difference.

Adams is saying that there really are substantial differences between people that everyone knows you cannot dismiss it as mere prejudice. Now, Adams is so compelling in this correspondence, which he does have with Taylor, though he can't get concessions from Taylor. Taylor is more intractable. He gets concessions from Jefferson. Adams finally concludes, I think that we more or less agree that there is natural aristocracy.

which is quite remarkable. He got that out of Jefferson. But that's an aside, ultimately. Let's go back to Taylor. Taylor, in an agrarian context, is insisting property owners are basically responsible by definition. And a citizenry, which is predominantly property owners, particularly farmers, rather than businessman, manufacturers, merchants. It produces a certain kind of citizenry that has a real political equality. And Taylor is very apprehensive

about a falling away of a property-owning citizenry into a citizenry of the employed. what he calls the paper system to emphasize the artificiality of the oikonemia, that we are not now involved in our regular lives, in our lifestyles, in fact, in producing real wealth, which are commodities. but in acquiring media for exchange, which he says is deracinating, alienating. This is such an interesting point. We have other great Southern Agrarians writers. People like John C. Calhoun, we occasionally, in academia,

in scholarship, you'll find people speaking of John C. Calhoun as an American Marx, not in the least because he had the same goals as Marx. He recognized some of the same things that Marx talked about, had a very different take on them. The artificiality of modern economy was for Taylor as for Calhoun, a recognized factor in their politics that they opposed. Ironically, we find Marx opposing the same thing, yet saying it's inevitable and the revolution will destroy it all. So it's an interesting factor we talk about in the Marxist context, you know, the alienation of labor and things like that. These are things that Taylor,

also appreciated. But Taylor didn't think it was at all necessary that we transition from that agrarian property-owning society to that alienated manufacturer consumer society. He didn't want that kind of system. He called it the paper system, emphasizing the artificiality of it. So Taylor, he warned that the paper and patronage aristocracy was being advocated by the likes of Adams. Adams, for his benefit, Adams disavows this entirely. One of the things Adams writes in response to Taylor is that he has always been an opponent of banks. Adams even says, I don't believe that banks have ever contributed substantial good to any place where they've been established. That they demoralize the populace, in fact.

That's what Adams says about banks. In that, Taylor and Adams are in complete agreement. But Taylor is convinced that these northern federalists, unfortunately Taylor did not have this long drawn-out argument with Hamilton, who was a much more worthy opponent on this field, though it's very interesting what resulted with the debate with Adams. Taylor is convinced there is a conspiracy, a power-hungry conspiracy to centralize wealth

and to create a patronized artificial aristocracy using the Philadelphia Constitution. Now, there are plausible arguments against this, and I would point to Forrest McDonald's work in particular. McDonald does not admit of any paper aristocracy conspiracy, but, that was certainly the effect of the federalist movement, the establishment of the Philadelphia Constitution. Hamilton and John Marshall affected. And Marshall is one of Taylor's other great combatants in his career. Taylor is convinced that this Hamiltonian faction in what is then the Federalist Party, they are going to set up aristocracy. Taylor is constantly charging that this is ultimately a monarchist conspiracy to set up these

titles, these special patronage and status in the economy, to central patronage and status in the economy to centralize wealth in the cities and the like, and that that's what it's all ultimately meant to do, which is why Taylor is the great advocate of the states organizing to resist it in their own jurisdictions. I couldn't find my notes on Calhoun, but I found some notes on Taylor. And actually, this is what I had,

that he advocated for an excited citizenry, that they must always be willing to take effective political action that any new subsidized class of capitalists needed to be uprooted. And he talked about suffering the same fate of England, a Whig olig oligarchy, class conflict, economic fluctuation, high taxation, standing army, inflation war, ruin of the productive classes. And he warned against the mercantilism of London and Washington, causing men to confound artificial, politically created property with the justly acquired property earned in the marketplace.

He actually made a distinction between saying that he was actually free market laissez-faire and not capital. Yes, indeed. And his model is very important because he's got a real political community in early Virginia where most everyone is involved in the production of everything they need to live. And they're very successful with this and they're exporting a lot and developing their communities. In addition to that, you were talking about how the property holders need to organize to resist the paper aristocracy, getting patronized in the cities, that they have to reform the institutions and stop this from happening. This is a major element in Taylor's thought he was the great proponent of the citizen militia, as opposed to a professional. army, which he saw as yet another special political interest, a source of patronage and corruption in our Republican institutions. So he was, for all of this, a great advocate of the state is the stated federalist policy of isolation or neutrality. And this is a common point. He would be in agreement with Washington's farewell address on these points.

He was a great critic, as I said before, a anti-federalist critic of the Philadelphia Constitution on the grounds that it was not representative enough, that it was, in fact, designed to be more aristocratic. He was very fearful and justly so, of the power of the courts, the federal judiciary, and was proposing a great many checks on the state level for the development of the judiciary power.

And, of course, we've seen in recent times, anyone that's been paying attention to it, the unelected federal judges are checking congressional legislation, executive actions all over the place. And this is an unprecedented kind of situation just in the last couple of years, but nevertheless it highlights Taylor's concerns way back then. He saw the possibility of that power, which he said was a patronized aristocracy with its own special interests, totally unaccountable to the citizens.

So he was in Jefferson's administration proposing all sorts of checks on the judiciary. Now, this actually created some very interesting actions. In 1804, Taylor got something that he had proposed. He had been advocating for the impeachment of Supreme Court judges. justices. And Justice Samuel Chase is brought before the Senate in 1804 to face an impeachment trial. Now, this is, in Jefferson's first administration, we have Vice President Aaron Burr, who is presiding over this. This is an unusual coincidence. Burr had just killed Hamilton. and had actually just come back to the Capitol after his faithful duel with Hamilton in New Jersey

to preside over the trial of Justice Chase. Samuel Chase was a federalist justice appointed either in the Washington or Adams administration, I forget which he came from. He was known to be very partisan. He was known to be very outspoken. He was also known to be unfair to Jeffersonian Republicans in his work, not necessarily in the capacity of a Supreme Court justice, but in those days, the Supreme Court justices actually traveled to appellate jurisdictions. They had regions that they served, and they went to hear federal cases in. various areas in addition to being a justice on the Supreme Court.

And he was known to be, he was known to get up on the bench and make political speeches in favor of the federalist position on controversial issues, which is a very improper thing for a judge to do. A judge is supposed to be impartial. And so he was kind of an outstanding example. this was very provocative, and the Jefferson administration was trying to hold into account. So he did get his trial. John Randolph of Roanoke was the major advocate for this, another one of these agrarian statesmen of the time.

And Randolph is making speeches in Congress demanding this trial, and he actually does get it. But Chase is acquitted. This is the only time a Supreme Court justice has ever been. held for impeachment, where articles of impeachment presented against him, a trial is convened. That's the only time in our history that happens. And it's never attempted again. Marbury v. Madison, which is the Marshall case, the first great case of Justice John Marshall, the great Hamiltonian jurist.

It's a very interesting story. President Adams had appointed a great many judges on midnight of his last day in office. So they go to post, and Jefferson is sworn, in the very next day, his Secretary of State, James Madison, who is party to this case, doesn't send out the mail. He just holds the mail from the executive at Post, and these judges do not get their appointments in the mail from Adams.

And this is part of Jefferson's policy where he's trying to reform the judiciary on on more Jeffersonian lines, obviously. This is the first transfer of power between parties in American history. Well, Justice Marshall, here's the case of Mr. Marbury, who is supposed to receive an appointment, who sues James Madison, Secretary of State, for not sending out the mail. And Justice Marshall determines the Supreme Court

determines what is in its purview. The Supreme Court ultimately, decides what its own powers are. It's the only unchecked branch of the federal government. This is an expansion, a radical expansion, of the judiciary power as understood in the time, and it was a controversial move. This is precisely what Taylor had been warning would happen, and alleging it's part of a bigger conspiracy to consolidate power.

So Taylor is adamant. There must be more done to check the power of the judiciary. We need to make various reforms. He is a great advocate of an amendment to the Constitution directify this. Now that you have a Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison, that is one potential remedy. And so he spends an awful lot of effort contending for this but does not actually get it. Do you have anything to add on this? No, not at this time.

So the Marshall matter. Marshall, in addition to Marbury v. Madison, he gives us the Dartmouth College case soon after. Taylor is writing books against Marshall at this time. One of his books is called Constitutions Construed, which in the title in the title itself we see it matters tremendously how we are going to interpret this Constitution. And he is the great enemy of Marshall. He actually gives us very detailed arguments against Marshall's jurisprudence and this expansive reading of the Constitution.

The Dartmouth College case is a very interesting one. the corporation of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire is being challenged by the state government of New Hampshire, which had incorporated the college. Marshall hears arguments from the great Daniel Webster, very early in Webster's career. He actually argues the case in favor of the college before the Supreme Court, later has a very long career in the Senate, and we will re-encounter him later on. Webster memorably says in his speech to the court, it is a small college, but there are those who love it. And that's just a line from Webster that everyone remembered.

Marshall decides in favor of the college against the state of New Hampshire, saying that the articles of incorporation are a contract that states cannot interfere with. Even though the state had made the corporation, it's an artificial institution created by law. It's immortal. The state actually wanted to make it a public institution. They were objecting to various things the board of the college was doing. and Marshall determines in the Dartmouth College case that the college is inviolate, that the state cannot change the nature of a corporation. Now, this greatly increases the power of these business combinations as well as other kinds of corporations like universities and is another major step towards

this vision of Hamilton, of business enterprises, these immortal corporate institutions, that the various states that chartered the institutions cannot regulate anymore. And this is alarming for Taylor, who has a vision of the small property owner, personal property, which is a very different form of property. It's far removed from the owner of a share of state. stock, who has never seen necessarily any of the enterprise that he is invested in, does not have any special knowledge of it necessarily. It's a very abstract kind of ownership. It's the most common kind of ownership.

Now it was novel then. It's the vision of Hamilton to make that the mainstay of American economic life. It is quite antagonistic to Taylor's very concrete vision of property, that this is something related to a person. This is something that they know all about because it's their lifestyle, that they have thorough knowledge of the property. of how to make it productive and even to use it for the enjoyment of their lives and to raise their families and the rest. It's a very interesting contrast, and we see the development of that jurisprudence has major effects.

Another Marshall case, and this will be my final point on Taylor for tonight. It's McCullough versus Maryland. So this was our major point in our last conversation, the argument concerning the Bank of the United States. We were going over Hamilton's arguments, Pro and Conn and Jefferson's, his strict construction of the Constitution, that the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to make this bank. we remember that Washington endorses the scheme after receiving arguments from Hamilton and Jefferson, in spite of Jefferson's more concise and plausible argument, Hamilton's interpretation of the necessary and proper clause as effectively meaning convenience. Whatever the federal government might find convenient to do, they may do that.

And using that for his own special purposes, his own special economic vision for the country and the patronage of manufacturers in particular. In McCullough v. Maryland, this fascinating case involves Taylor's primary focus in his career to rally the authority on a state level to check the expansion of the expansion of, the federal government and its power grab. The state of Maryland had passed a law outlawing the Bank of the United States, saying that it had no right to operate in the state of Maryland. Mr. McCullough was a clerk at the Bank of the United States branch in Baltimore. the Maryland authorities sent tax collectors to the Bank of the United States branch after the passage of this law outlawing the branch. Remember, this is a private institution.

80% of the shares are in private hands. The other 20% being owned by the federal government, and it's given a special deposit to get it off the ground and started. Nevertheless, it's constitutionally controversial, as we saw with Jefferson's opinion. So half the country thinks this is illegitimate, or more perhaps. The state of Maryland sends tax collectors to the branch, and they demand the tax from McCullough. When McCullough refuses, they take the money out of the branch and close it down. So this is a confiscatory tax. to put the bank branch completely out of business.

It's not a reasonable tax. The bank could be profitable and continue to operate with the tax. It was meant to close the bank down. So McCullough sues Maryland, and it's a federal case. The matter of the case is, does this bank, is this bank to be regulated by the state in which it operates? Or is this federal policy? Is this conflict ultimately between the state and the federal government? And Marshall reads Hamilton's opinion, Hamilton's interpretation of the broad powers of the Constitution into his opinion.

So this becomes the official opinion of the Supreme Court, thanks to John Marshall. And Marshall says, the federal government must prevail on any point. point of conflict with the states. And that these broad powers of the Constitution are what the Constitution means. Now, in response to this, Taylor writes a complete book. And it's a point-by-point criticism of the McCullough v. Maryland case. So we see in Taylor's various works, he writes a famous work on tariffs, in particular, It's called tyranny enmassed.

He writes another work that is an analysis of the Constitutional Convention in which Taylor is alleging the federalist plan to centralize power and to oppress the states. And it's called New Views on the Constitution. He writes a variety of works. And we see in Taylor the classical philosophical background of the preference of commodity producers, their effect on the political economy, the participation, investment, and virtue associated with the producers of commodities. And this is Taylor's, as it was Jefferson's preference for, the economic order of the United States, that we should be a nation of the broadest possible property ownership. And they were the great enemies of this consolidation. Taylor, in particular,

we might at times characterize him as paranoid about the intentions of the federalists. I don't think he was paranoid in relation to Hamilton. I think that he may have been more paranoid in relation to Adams, who I find very reasonable on the subject. But those were Taylor's enemies, and Taylor is the great spokesman of the agrarian, future southern, sectional, political economy in its tradition. And so that is my conclusion for John Taylor's agrarian vision.

Did you have anything to add tonight, Pete? You hit most of anything that I had in my notes on Taylor. The one historians have used this term to describe him. and it's one of the most odd terms I've ever heard. Radical Whigism. What do you think of that term? He is certainly an enlightenment figure. He is, we must associate Taylor

with a certain radical left, bent. And I know that that is a very alarming way to put it. I would like to have a different way of describing it. Taylor, in his service in the Virginia legislature at the end of our war of independence, he is very involved in disestablishing the church in Virginia. in distributing the lands and resources of the vestries of the churches, liberalizing policy on religion,

basically turning Virginia into an established religious organization into a liberal vision of freedom of religion. So he is a liberal reform. And in that aspect, he is related to the Whig position across the sea in England. Whig has a rather different association later in American history where we have a major political party, the Whig Party, which is related to Henry Clay, which has to do with liberal economic patronage. Taylor is Taylor would have none of that but he is a free

traitor which in his time is related to the wigs also he has the Enlightenment talking points and this is very important to remember

Jefferson has a lot of let's frame it in this way. Jefferson is very sympathetic with the French Revolution. James Monroe, future president associated with Taylor and Jefferson, is very enthusiastic about the French Revolution, a personal friend of Thomas Payne, the great atheist propagandist,

author of common sense, man known to publicly disparage the Virgin Mary, really distasteful figure Thomas Payne. And I would rather think the best about these kinds of associations, such as with James Monroe. Thomas Jefferson, to his credit, is rapidly disgusted with the progress of the French Revolution. So we have that to remember. doesn't want the same thing to happen here, though he says many things to suggest. The tree of liberty should be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants. The earth belongs to the living.

The dead should have their control curtailed, things like that, which are very radical statements. But this is the kind of Republican tradition that these men represent. they are talking about major breaks with their colonial tradition. Jefferson and Taylor do not want to end up like the way that Europe has developed. They are great reformers. And Taylor is using a lot of John Locke's talking points when it comes. comes to his opposition to monarchy and to aristocracy. Remember that Taylor has this huge beef with John Adams,

where he says that John Adams is characterizing the regular farmer as a spiritual slave, a mere heuer of wood and drawer of water, and Taylor is rather demagogic. on this attack with Adams. This is not actually what Adams is talking about. Adams has a much more considered position than that. Elite theory, in fact. But nevertheless,

Taylor's points about aristocracy and monarchy, he reduces to certain familiar talking points dismissing them as superstitious prejudice, which is very interesting. I would identify John Adams as more of a figure of the thought of the right on this front than Taylor, who is not as reasonable in his responses

about the subject of equality. But that said, Taylor's position is in the equality of property owners in a republic, not the equality of the proletariat, not in an abstract equality of all men. He does not believe that. In fact, he is very outspoken about the dangers of emancipation, fearing, in fact, that, The story of emancipation in the South will mirror that of the emancipation on Santa Domingo in Haiti, racial conflict and genocide.

That is his outspoken fear about that. So it doesn't believe in the equality of races. Doesn't believe in the equality of cultures. Does not believe in the equality of classes. He is speaking of the equality of property owners. Well, I think Taylor can definitely be sound like a liberal and even Calhoun in his disquisition on government can sound very liberal, but that's only because their their assumption is white European, a white European populace and pretty much an agrarian populace.

And once outsiders from that tradition are introduced, then that can quickly fall apart. And it's also very dangerous for outsiders from that tradition to be introduced because they will, the guard will, the guard of the white European will be down. And the small minority can definitely, especially in a system of, of, of, Gibbs, for lack of a better term, can gain power rather quickly because they can organize quickly under the nose of the white European living a liberal lifestyle among his own people. Indeed. And obviously, that's outside of the purview of these people.

they could scarcely imagine such a thing. But they're taking for granted the composition of their political community, which is why they don't talk about it much. The differences with Taylor and Adams, Adams, we might say, and I would follow Herbert Agar on this point, who I think is very insightful on this. If you want some more information about that,

look for Agar's Land of the Free. And he himself is an agrarian by conviction, though not from the South. Agar thinks that John Adams had a more realistic vision for America, that Adams knew there would be a level of manufacturing. He did not want it to dominate our culture or our political system, Adams wanted a policy that allowed for the maximum number

of responsible people, which he believed was limited to some degree to own property and be responsible and be active citizens. And he distinguished them from the irresponsible. So there was a real difference that must be. be acknowledged between the two. And that had political implications. I think that is fascinating. And obviously, a topic of separate investigation, though I've mentioned it several times in this show.

But Taylor is coming from a more, let's say, idealistic and Jeffersonian agrarian position where the people in Taylor's community, and these, obviously, these are the Anglo-Americans, they have a enterprise, a cohesive culture, a drive what Taylor and Jefferson, Randolph, Calhoun are going to describe as the aspects of an agrarian culture, where they are a more responsible people. These men do not live in cities.

They don't have any cities. There are like 35,000 people in Charleston in 1860. When the Civil War begins, there aren't any cities in this whole region. The people that they know, these are agrarian people. These are people that are all more or less engaged in agriculture, virtually everyone. They're responsible people. They're taking that for granted. And that's why they're so offended with Adams saying, not everyone is responsible, you know, and there must be some political account for that. They say, oh, well, he wants to set up the artificial aristocracy with government

patronage. He's a monarchist. Because they associate that with the British Empire, which they want to separate themselves from with their various reforms, with their independence, in fact, with their republic. And they're shocked to encounter these northern ideas, in Adams' case, I think a

realistic idea. And it doesn't correspond to what they see in their own political environment. I'm hoping that makes sense. Makes sense to me.

All right, Mr. Bagby. I'm sorry. I thought of something to share in relation to Taylor. It was several years ago. I went out to the Northern Neck, and I saw Stafford House, which is where Robert Lee was born. That's the old home of the Lee family. And it's very beautiful there. That's old tobacco country in the time.

water along the Potomac, looking over at Maryland. And the land is no longer agriculturally productive. It had long been exhausted by the over-cultivation of tobacco. It's still very beautiful. John Taylor was very interested in that, in the exhaustion of the land, and was an important agricultural. cultural scientist, among other things, advancing

innovative ways to restore the productivity of exhausted soil. Because Taylor did not, he was not so favorable about expanding American territory. He had questions about that. Republican questions. Because the more territory you have,

the more people you have, the more difficult it is to have representative institutions. And that was another factor that Taylor appreciated in his work. So Taylor wanted to restore the productivity of the Eastern Seaboard. And that was one of his major accomplishments. That was actually his most popular work, his errator. But when I went to Westmoreland County, I went down to Caroline County while I was over there.

I was traveling with some friends. friends. We went to Port Royal, which was Taylor's town. He was the head of a private school there on the board. And I sought out his plantation. And I found it. There was nothing to market there. But I studied before we went. And we went out into a field down a dirt road and there was corn planted and I knocked on doors

there were several houses on the property I knocked on doors and I found an ancient man who was who had a nurse with him he was in a wheelchair he couldn't speak he was so weak

and I asked him where is John Taylor I want to see John Taylor and he pointed out to the middle of his cornfield and there was a clump of trees there and I said is John Taylor out there and he said yes he nods and I said may I go and see him

and he nods again so I walked with my friends across this man's cornfield to this clump of trees and I found John Taylor's grave. And it was all overgrown with these hardwood trees and the trees had grown up in between the tombstones and knocked them over and punctured the caskets and such. And it looked like there were animals living down beneath these tombstones

and in the remains of the family cemetery. But that's when I found John Taylor of Carrier. Caroline on a summer's day in old Virginia. I am glad that I didn't end this early, and you got to share that adventure with us. Thank you. You're welcome. Pleasure to join you tonight.

Thank you. Always great to have you remind people where they can find your work and your research and the books, Absolutely. Yeah, I've got a website. That's www. Tallmenbooks.com where I republish

histories, memoirs. I've created a few volumes unique to my collection. I've edited scholarly papers by Walter Fleming, a Southern historian, Charles Transcendant, Francis Adams Jr., the great-grandson of President John Adams and others.

I've got memoirs from Reconstruction. I've got new biographies of famous American Indians and outlaws and gunfighters from the Old West all there on my website. So do check that out. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bagby. Until the next episode. I want to welcome everyone back to.

the Pekineau show. George Bagby is back, and we are going to continue the series looking at the lead up to America's Civil War. How are you doing this evening, Mr. Bagby? I'm doing well.

I'm as busy as a bee. I've been under the weather lately. It's really weird when you get fever and you have delirium. Have you had that happen before? Only once.

Really? Yes. Well, it's really strange because you feel very detached, but you become, or at least I become obsessed about very obscure matters. And I'll stay up all night thinking of things that have no significance. Yeah. Which is what I went through a couple of nights ago. But I'm on the mend now.

Well, that's good. That's good. Yeah. I remember, I think the reason is. is because you can't think straight. You can't keep a thought so you're constantly bouncing from one subject to the next in your mind. Yeah, it's a very confused situation. It's a strange mental state.

But I've got here for us tonight material about the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. So we continue on this theme of conflict between the federalists and the Republicans. The Republicans being Jefferson's faction in the early Republic, better identified with the Democrats, what becomes the Democratic Party later on. But at this stage, they're more commonly called the Republicans. So back during the Washington administration in this period that we've been discussing recently with the debate over the bank and the debt and the constitutional powers and interpretations, the Republic of France was just getting started. The French Revolution was underway. you remember at the start of Washington's administration, he recalls Thomas Jefferson, who was the very francophile American ambassador in Paris.

He replaces Thomas Jefferson. Well, Thomas Jefferson becomes Secretary of State, so his foreign minister. he replaces Thomas Jefferson with Gouverner Morris, the famous New York Federalist, man who physically wrote the Philadelphia Constitution. He was known to have a very good hand, and so they asked him to be the pinman. But Gouverner Morris goes to Paris, and he's quite appalled by the progress of the French Revolution. Even Thomas Jefferson was eventually startled by the excesses of the French Revolution. Their war on the clergy, they're martyering the priesthood in Paris and really grotesque things going on there. This is all before the terror, of course.

But Governor Morris becomes very antagonistic to the Jacobin, Corp. the Republicans in Paris. The French Republic has a very complex relationship with the United States. They assume the king's debts and assets, and so they assume the money that the United States government owes to the former king, King Louis, and they eventually agree to some treaties and such, but the relationship during the Washington administration is antagonistic with the French Republic. Washington makes it known that he doesn't want to have anything to do with the French Republic's numerous wars of these egalitarians, these dreamers, revolutionaries, they declare liberty,

equality, fraternity, and then they declare war on all of their neighbors and propose to disestablish their churches, presumably martyr their clergy, and liberate them all from their nobility and monarchs. which their neighbors are not so interested in having done to them. So there's war that springs out across Europe. The French Republic sends Citizen Guinea to America as their ambassador. Citizen Guinea has a brief tenure in America, but he is the cause of much controversy while he is here.

It's interesting to note that for all the differences that we've delineated between Hamilton and Jefferson and their perspectives, that Hamilton is from the start, a great critic of the French Revolution, and a great sympathizer with the king. Jefferson, not surprisingly, being a very radical Democrat, and a personal friend of Thomas Payne, Thomas Payne is a figure here that is always lurking around. The people who are willing to be friends with Thomas Payne discredit themselves to some degree in this generation. And it is important to note how friendly Jefferson was and also Jefferson's protégion. the future president James Monroe

was very good friends with Thomas Payne. Actually, has Thomas Payne live with him for long periods of time. So their affections in this stage, it reflects their political beliefs in disposition here in America, but it plays out very dramatically over in France. So Gannay is sent. to America to collect the debts that were owned owed to the former king. He wants to reestablish French holdings in the Americas.

So he wants to foment rebellion in French Canada. He wants to get French Louisiana back from Spain, which is a Catholic monarchy that the Republic is now at war with. And he's also interested in interfering in American internal affairs in the early republic. He wants to make the United States a base of privateers against British merchantmen in the Atlantic. So he brings a budget along for this and he talks with lots of local officials to get this established. Now, this obviously could make us a kind of party to France's war in Europe.

So it's a naturally security concern. Ganes' privateers, which he sponsors in the Americas, they sail up the Delaware River one day and just happened to find a British merchant ship there. they capture it and tow it back to Philadelphia as a prize. So this is going on inside of our territorial waters. Gennay really wants to draw in the American Republic on the side of the French Republic's European adventures. And he is constantly writing correspondence to

officials and private persons across the United States trying to lobby for these efforts. And he does have a budget involved here. Surprisingly, he gets George Rogers Clark, General Clark, from Kentucky to correspond with him, about the possibility of leading Kentucky Rifleman down. to the lower Mississippi Valley to take New Orleans from the inland, from the Spaniards, who were in charge of it at that point. So Gennay goes quite a distance. Gennay eventually corresponds with Secretary of State Jefferson. Jefferson unwisely corresponds with Genné, but his correspondence isn't ultimately discrediting to him.

Jefferson is a lifelong francophile and initially a big fan of the French Revolution. Gennay is asking Secretary of State Jefferson what the American attitude would be to General George Rogers Clark leading a personal expedition down to take Louisiana from the Spanish. and Jefferson responds very tactfully and tells citizen Gennay, being that the Spanish are not at war with the United States, and being that these are American citizens who are talking about doing this, this could mean treason charges for all involved if they are undertaking on their own initiative,

war with a foreign power, to try to get us involved in entanglements in Europe. We are totally against that. We don't want that. And anyone that enlisted with you to do that would probably get a treason charge. But Jefferson was also careful to sign his correspondence on this occasion. He says, I write you as citizen, Mr. Jefferson, not in the capacity of Secretary of State. So he's kind of trying to divide his office from his person here.

But we see some of the dangerous things that Gannay is up to. In the eventful year 1793, the French Republic declares formal war on Great Britain, and Washington responds with a declaration of neutrality. Once again, we see a division between, Jefferson and Hamilton, as we usually do in the cabinet. Hamilton says that the executive should have the prerogative to make these major foreign policy declarations. Jefferson says, no, this should be a representative process. It should come out of Congress. Congress should debate pros or cons of neutrality. And then Congress should

declare the policy. And then the president does it with the authority of Congress. The president just proclaims whatever Congress has to say. So we see that very procedural sort of process. And this is part of Jefferson's ultimate idealism about the democratic process as a form. He believes that this is going to solve all manner of problems. And of course, this is not how these things efficiently work. The president does make any number of policies and declarations. So Hamilton has the description there. That is ultimately how it ends up working. But Gannet, with the declaration of neutrality,

the French Republic takes this as a hostile statement from the Americans, that they are not willing to signal solidarity with fellow republics like themselves. Gannet is given instructions from his handlers back in Paris to foment popular demonstrations in the new capital of Philadelphia against Washington. So these are pro-war demonstrations going on in Philadelphia. This so alarms Vice President Adams that he orders chests of arms to be brought in to defend the government because he's worried about a violent riot. Adams calls this the terrorism excited by Gennay in his memoirs. In a cabinet meeting in the summer of 93, when Gennay is up to his shenanigans there in Philadelphia,

trying to pressure the Washington administration to declare in France's favor and to give them concessions or even on an alliance, Secretary of War, Knox, presents the president with a lithograph made in Philadelphia, presenting George Washington in line at a guillotine. So this is what Gannay is promoting in Philadelphia. violent riot or threats of violence against the president and his ministers. This ultimately overwhelms even the friendly Thomas Jefferson who won't tolerate too much criticism of France. Even Thomas Jefferson eventually agrees this man is persona non grata. We cannot tolerate this kind of activity by an official.

agent of a erstwhile ally. What results in the following years is very interesting. The proclamation of neutrality, the famous farewell address where Washington is advising a continued policy of neutrality. In the Adams administration, which follows, we have the interesting quasi-war with France. So France starts attacking American shipping in the Atlantic. This is mostly operation taking place at sea. And this lasts from 1797 to 1800.

This is all but declared war with France. There are casualties. French and American warships are meeting each other and exchanging fire in the Atlantic. And you also have a coincidence with this, the curious XYZ affair in Paris. So this is the mission of Elbridge, Jerry, Charles Pinckney, and I forget who else. Several American diplomats in Paris were told, more or less, by French agents, code named X, Y, and Z, that they must pay a substantial bribe to the French in order to be recognized in the court. And this was just a shocking attempt of corruption. And it really

exasperated American officials, and it was a major source of frigid relations between the United States and France with the following years. It's really quite remarkable that at this stage, we avoided war with France, with everything that was going on. These insults to our ambassadors, demands for bribes in order to have normal diplomatic correspondence, the quasi-war, which goes on for several years, all in response to this, to lead up to my point and the main subject of our... of our episode today.

John Adams in 1798 requests and receives from the Federalist Congress. So these are mostly New England congressmen who write these bills and sign off on them as Speaker of the House and such. He gets the Alien and Sedition Acts. So it's necessary for us to understand

the circumstances. This doesn't come out of nowhere. These are circumstances very close to a major war with a European great power. So the Alien and Sedition Acts, there's a whole series of them.

I'm going to read to you excerpts from two main elements so that we can get a reading understanding of what these legislative acts constitute. So, an act concerning aliens, June 1798, be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives, the United States of America and Congress assembled,

that it is lawful for the President of the United States at any time during the continuance of this act to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States or have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret mechanations against the government thereof to depart out of the territory of the United States within such as time or such a such time as shall be expressed in such order which order shall be served on such alien by delivering him a copy thereof, or leaving the same at his usual abode, and return to the office of the Secretary of State by the Marshal or other person to whom the same shall be directed.

And in case any alien, so ordered to depart shall be found at large within the United States after the time limited such order for his departure, not having obtained a license from the president to reside therein, or having obtained such license shall not have confirmed thereto. Every such alien shall, on conviction, be imprisoned for a term not exceeding three years, and shall never after be admitted to become a citizen of the United States. Now, this is a very interesting act. Now, this is not the one that caused so much controversy. This does not get a such a angry response from the states and from the Republicans.

Gannay had certainly overstayed his welcome and had fomented rebellion against the legitimate authorities of the country. To make all this very ironic, the same year he is rabble-rousing in Philadelphia and apparently promoting images of George Washington waiting to lose his head at the guillotine

Ghana is identified as an enemy of the revolution back in Paris of the French authorities, the Republicans, they request that Gine be returned to Paris to face his tribe. and Gannay is forced to go hat in hand to the American authorities to beg their leave to stay so he might keep his head. This the Americans obliged to do. He actually settles in the state of New York, lives the rest of his days there.

But we can see the origin of the alien act. John Adams is quite adamant as are his. federalist allies in Congress at the time that they do not want any of these foreign agents. There's a lot of worry about these foreign lobbyists

that are trying to work their way into influencing American policy, that they're throwing money around like Citizen Gennay was doing, trying to intimidate American elected office holders and trying to manipulate them into intervention on their side in another

continent. And this is very subversive and legitimate interest. So hence we have the Alien Act. Now we have the more controversial of the two acts, the Sedition Act. Now, sedition is another word for treason. July 1798. So we see that there is a slight date difference between the two. The Alien Act I just read was from June of the same year. Be it enacted that if any persons shall unlawfully combine or conspire together with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person from holding a place or office under the government of the United States,

from undertaking, performing, or executing his trust or duty, and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise, or attempt to procure any, any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination. Whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and on a conviction before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof shall be punished by a fine, not exceeding $5,000, and by imprisonment during a term not less than six months, nor exceeding five years.

And further, at the discretion of the court may be holden to find sureties for his good behavior in such sum and for such time as the said court may direct. Now, this is the section that is less controversial. It is against the law to plot to overthrow the government. this is kind of self-evident the government can arrest you for plotting to overthrow the president to overthrow the

constitution this is the legitimate risk of such a conspiracy but obviously the wording of this law certainly resonates with me quite differently after the summer of love. People counseling, advising, or attempting to procure

insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination. This all resonates with me very much. Maybe because we don't see any effort to prosecute people who are obviously guilty of sedition. The second part of the Sedition Act, this is the controversial part. So, Section 2, it be further enacted that if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause, or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering, or publishing,

any false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either House of the said Congress or the said president, or to bring them or either of them into contempt or disrepute. or to excite against them or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to sur up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein for opposing or resisting any law of the United States or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law or the powers in him vested by the Constitution of the United States,

and so on. the person being convicted thereof before any court of the United States having jurisdiction shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $2,000 and by imprisonment not exceeding two years. So that is the troublesome law. This is the one that gets the Adams administration excoriated on the state levels. we must remember that with Jefferson's failure, in his opinion on the bank, the Jeffersonians are going down to the state level for their main opposition. They are not in the Adams administration. John Adams, unlike Thomas, or unlike George Washington, he does not ask. people of the anti-federalist persuasion into his cabinet. Adams has a thoroughly federalist

cabinet. Jefferson, however, is John Adams's vice president, not because they are good friends, but because Thomas Jefferson got the second highest number of electoral votes. So the way that the presidency works in this period is that the primary electoral vote getter becomes president of the United States. The person who comes in second becomes vice president of the United States. So they do propose party tickets and recommend, you know, certain support. The federalists wanted Pinckney of South Carolina to be the vice president, but he he didn't. make it. He came in third. So Jefferson, who is a member of the Republican opposition, he is actually vice president at this time. But the various states who are Republican heavy

decide to oppose this federalist overreach. This is obviously a abrogation of freedom of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The vagaries of misleading people lying about the intentions of the government, what does it say, publishing false, scandalous, and malicious writings to defame the government or the president to bring them into contempt or disrepute. These are all less than objective sorts of descriptions of activity. We have seen plenty of recent examples in our own legislation and enforcement based on alleged malice or falsehood. in people's pleas or public speech is very interesting

that the January 6th rioters come to mind. They are pleading that they went to a peaceable demonstration, that they did not break any laws while they were there. They're charged with attempting to overthrow the government and lying in their plea. that they're part of a conspiracy and so on. So we see how this criminalization of saying false things, saying scandalous things. You know, there's so much about the January 6 people that they believed and promulgated what the federal authorities said was a false reckoning of the election.

and this is basically their charge against them. You aren't allowed to believe that about the election. It's illegitimate to demonstrate concerning that. And these are all interesting details, but we see some of the civil aspects of the Sedition Act. The first part of the Sedition Act is not so controversial. I suppose it's just a restatement of law forbidding treason. And you must remember this was done in a time of practical war, all but declared war with France.

The second part doesn't work so well, especially considering the First Amendment. Now, this was precisely what the Bill of Rights was supposed to protect. The Republicans are unwilling to speak too loudly about this in public places because that would now malign the president or the intentions of Congress. these are specifically excluded by the Sedition Act. Thomas Jefferson is quite upset by the Sedition Act. He is vice president of the United States when this is passed by Congress and signed into law. He is fearful that if he speaks publicly and in his own name about this act,

that he's going to get rounded up. He is going to have this law enforced against him. It is enforced against other public characters. There's a very amusing fellow from Vermont. His name is Matthew Lyon. He is a newspaper editor, a colorful figure. At one point, he gets into a real fight with a congressman from Connecticut. in Congress, I believe he spits in the congressman's eye before he starts caning him over the head.

It's one of the famous caning incidents in Congress. He's a Vermonter, Matthew Lyon. Shout out to my favorite New England state, Vermont. Lyon is also a Republican. and he is bent on saying what he thinks. So after the Sedition Act is passed, Lyon goes back to his hometown newspaper, is running for re-election for Congress at the same time,

and maligns the president in print. Well, the president then sends a marshal up there to fine the congressman and imprison him for his offense. of bringing in to disrepute the president of the United States. So we see this is abrogation of freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Matthew Lyon, ironically, is popularly elected back into Congress out of his jail cell. So it's a funny little story that's incident here. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson, no, it might be actually in Washington at this stage.

I think Adams is the first president to occupy the White House. So I think they might be in Washington City at this point. Jefferson and his colleague, James Madison, are privately approached by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia. They are asked to anonymously write resolutions from both states condemning the Sedition Act and also outlining their strict construction of the Constitution. And so we find the famous Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. I'm going to focus today just on the Kentucky.

Kentucky resolution because it is in some ways more forthright and it's also Thomas Jefferson's. So this gets adopted by the legislature of Kentucky. It is some years later, it's 1814, I believe, when our own John Taylor of Caroline reveals that Thomas Jefferson was the author of this resolution. it was assumed before then that it was a Kentucky statesman by the name of Breckenridge who had authored this, but he had not publicly avowed it. It was just assumed so. Later on it comes out that it's Thomas Jefferson, and it was John Taylor who actually revealed that. So the Kentucky Resolution of 1798 resolved that the several states composing the United States of America are not United States. on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government,

but that by compact under the style and title of a constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes. So we see the framing here. It's important to note just how, they understand the formation of the union. They say, look here, we have all these sovereign states. They've won their independence from Great Britain. Now they've organized a union government for themselves. This is their special agent. They have not surrendered all of their legal powers to this creation of theirs that they made just a few years ago. This is actually a special power meant for special purposes.

And we know what those purposes are. They are all enumerated in the Constitution. So you see here he's insisting the states are the parent. The federal government is the child of the parent. The states are preliminary. The federal government is an extension of the power of the states and obviously subordinate to them, just as a child is subordinate to its parents. He says these special purposes delegated to that government, certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government. and that whatever the general government assumes undelegated powers,

its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. So he is proposing, ultimately here, the states are a check on undelegated powers to the federal government. they can review things the federal government does and they can reject various powers. This is partly the essential argument that we find in the Declaration. It's not surprising Jefferson is the author of both. That when a government steps outside of its bounds is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. That's what the Declaration says.

that this compact each state has acceded as a state and is an integral party, its co-states forming as to itself, the other party, that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself. Okay, so he's insisting the federal government cannot judge the extent of its own powers, that that is the definition of tyranny, in fact, since that would have made its discretion and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers, but that, as in all other cases, of compact among parties having no common judge,

each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress. So, he continues, resolved, that the construction, applied by the general government, as is evinced by sundry of their proceedings, to those parts of the Constitution of the United States, which delegate to Congress of power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposes, and exizes to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,

and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper, for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or any department thereof goes to the destruction of all the limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution, that words meant by that instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of the limited powers ought not be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers. So this is his attack on Hamilton's expansive reading of the vague phrases of the Constitution, namely the necessary and proper clause and the general welfare clause.

He says, because if you expand those readings to mean that the government determines the extent of its own powers, then the rest of the Constitution is meaningless. why put any any other barriers up on any debatable point? And there must also be a final check on that power. Jefferson here, and by extension, Kentucky, Virginia, and James Madison, they are proposing the states are a check on the federal power, the expansive reading that Hamilton favors. resolved that the preceding resolutions be transmitted to the senators and representatives in congress from this commonwealth of kentucky who were hereby enjoined to present the same to their respective houses

and to use their best endeavors to procure at the next session of congress a repeal of the aforesaid unconstitutional and obnoxious acts lastly resolved that the governor of the Commonwealth be and is hereby authorized and requested to communicate the preceding resolutions to the legislatures of the several states to assure them that this Commonwealth considers union for specified national purposes and particularly for those specified in their late federal compact to be friendly to the peace, happiness, and prosperity of all the states, that faithful to that compact according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation that it does also believe that to take from the states all their powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government without regard to the special delegations and reservations,

solemnly agreed to in that compact is not for the peace, happiness, or prosperity of these states, and that therefore this Commonwealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-states are, tamely to submit to undelegated and consequently unlimited powers in no man or body of men on earth, that if the acts before specified should stand, these conclusions would flow from them, that the general government may place any act they think proper on the list of crimes and punish it themselves, whether enumerated or not enumerated by the Constitution, as cognizable by them, that they may transfer its cognizance to the president or any other person who may himself be the accuser, counsel, judge, and jury,

whose suspicions may be the evidence, his order, the sentence, his officer, the executioner, and his breast the sole record of the transaction, that a very numerous and valuable description of the inhabitants of these states, being by this precedent, reduced as outlaws to the absolute dominion of one man, and the barrier of the Constitution, thus swept away from us all, no rampart now remains against the passions and the powers of a majority of Congress, to protect from a like exportation or more grievous punishment the minority of the same body,

the legislature judges, governors, and counselors of the states, nor their other peaceable inhabitants who may venture to reclaim the constitutional rights and liberties of the state and people, or who for other causes, good or bad, may be obnoxious to the views or marked by the suspicions of the president, or be thought dangerous to his or their elections, or other interests, public or personal, that the friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment. So he's playing the heartstring tug right there. But the citizen will soon follow, or rather has already followed, or already has a sedition act marked him as its prey,

that these in successive acts of the same character, unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to drive these states into revolution and blood, and will furnish new calumnies against Republican governments and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed that man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron. That it would be a dangerous delusion where a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights, that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those

whom we are obliged to trust with power, that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further our confidence may go, and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition Acts, and say, if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits. Let him say what the government is, if it not be a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on the president, and the president of our choice has assented to and accepted over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country and its laws had pledged hospitality and protection, that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the

president than the solid rights of innocence, the claim of justification, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and justice in questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the claims of the Constitution. that this Commonwealth does not, therefore, call on its co-states for an expression of their sentiments on the acts concerning aliens and for the punishment of certain crimes herein before specified, plainly declaring whether these acts are or are not authorized by the Federal Compact. So he says here, and this is very important, it's ultimately up to the states to determine whether a controversial law is

constitutional or not. This is the doctrine of state nullification or interposition that the states retain authority to judge the meaning of the contract of union that they assented to because they are parties to this contract and that the agent they created the federal government does not have the ultimate authority to determine what that contract means, which actually created it. So this is the novel doctrine here, and this is a very important doctrine for our understanding going forward. This is the famous States Rights doctrine of the Jeffersonian School. And we see its origins here in 1798. These are afterwards referred to as the principles of 98.

This is a Jeffersonian rallying cry. So to continue, and I'm almost done here with the document. It doubts not that their sense will be so announced as to prove their attachment unaltered to limited government, whether general or particular, and that the rights and liberties of their co-states will be exposed to no dangers by remaining embarked on a common bottom with their own, that they will concur with the Commonwealth in considering the said acts as so palpably against the Constitution

as to amount to an undisguised declaration, that the compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the general government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these states of all powers whatsoever, so that the Constitution doesn't in fact limit what the federal government can in fact do, that they will view this as seizing the rights of the states and consolidating them in the hands of the general government, but a power assumed to bind the states not merely in cases made federal, but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made not with their consent, but by others against their consent, that this would be to surrender the forms of government we have chosen, and to live

Thunder one deriving its powers from its own will and not from our authority, and that the co-states recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal will concur in declaring these acts void of no force, and will each unite with this Commonwealth in requesting their appeal in the next session of Congress. So we see there his climactic conclusion. The governor of Kentucky, through this resolution drafted by Jefferson, declares the Sedition Act void and of no force in the Commonwealth. This presents ultimately a conflict between two executive roles. Will the president send his enforcers, ultimately backed by the United States Army, to ensure that the law of the land is enforced in Kentucky and Virginia.

Will this lead to conflict between the governor's state forces and the army of the United States? It could. It did not on this occasion. Instead, the federal authorities backed off, John Adams was not interested in forcing the issue. It turned out to be extremely unpopular law, and it tempted his opponents to extremity.

They were all very eager to act out and get charges so they could make examples. Curiously, what follows is, in 1800, Thomas Jefferson replaces Adams in the White House. Jefferson then commutes various sentences and there are popular drives among the Republicans to raise funds to restore those fined by the Sedition Act, which is all very interesting ordeal.

But this is the story of the Alien and Sedition Acts, both of which maybe our particular interest to Americans at this point in our history. And I feel, I lament to say we seem as divided on the question now as we were then. But the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, the Kentucky resolution, which we went in some depth with here, the origin of the substance of nullification, the major weapon of the state's rights school. So with the Kentucky resolution, we see the pivot of the Jeffersonians. Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Randolph, they lose some of the key battles in the Washington administration. they exhibit their position and such, but they don't carry the day.

Hamilton more or less gets everything that he wants. They take their battle back down to the state level. The result in the Adams administration is the resolutions against the Alien Instition Acts. So they're trying to rally state interposition as their final. barrier for their vision of the strict construction of the Constitution. I cannot overstate just how important this element is in the future of the sectional conflict. The Southern Jeffersonians, what becomes the Democratic Party, later in our history, think of the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson.

they are referencing bits like this from our former history. However, they are not the only ones to reference this. As I will point out presently in a future episode, this doctrine that the state's reserved rights and that this is somehow guarded by the 10th Amendment, that they are sovereign powers and may restore, a full measure of sovereignty, when they choose, at least potentially, this comes up during the War of 1812 in a really interesting way, and we'll go in some depth on that point later on.

But this is the origin of the theory of nullification, and its original and brilliant exponent in Thomas Jefferson and the Kentucky Resolution. do you have anything else to add to all of this tonight p no that was very thorough that was very thorough good background good examples and definitely leading up to you know the subject that we we're going to end on this is one of the most important things for people to understand

that the uh if the states felt that a a law was unconstitutional, they had a right to say no. Exactly. It's so simple. That's the thing about it is it's a very, a lot of people think that, you know, take political theory and you can dive down all these rabbit holes. But as far as our system was designed, this is very simple. Yes.

And it can get kind of hairy to dissect because of the complex nature of this huge continent-sized union, that we have this great and mysterious division of sovereign powers between the state and the federal government. So we have all the different states and their own institutions, their own stories and regions, and differing laws. And then we have the federal level. And the federal government does a number of things the states don't do, and the states do a number of things federal government doesn't do. There's this interesting division between them.

And yet we see from the very start a conflict in power, and what the claims of power are in each sphere. how sovereign each is each actor in this. There is a very good book about this particular subject, which I really wish I had with me. My library is still packed up, awaiting the sale of my house. Say a prayer for me. Not many people are coming to look at it.

But there's a book called Empurium at Imperio. and it's by Forrest MacDonald, who is one of the greats on this issue. And it's all about this matter of states asserting sovereignty in whatever context. So he meticulously documents this, and this is an excellent work on this particular subject. And we see that it is not just a sectional issue. It's not something that only Southerners believed in. It's not something that was peculiar to the Dixiecrats at one point or something. Or that was done for other motives, like a theory that's cooked up because they really want to get something else done or something.

It's something very old, and it's done in many parts of the country. We have interesting examples, which we will get to. The Maryland government outlaws the Bank of the United States, basically taxes it out of existence. This is an effort to check federal power by a state law and by state authority. It's overruled famously by John Marshall in his landmark case, McCullough v. Maryland. where he basically reads Hamilton's theory into the constitutional opinion.

But this doesn't stop the effort of nullification, even on the same manner. After McCullough v. Maryland, the state of Ohio, which is a northern state, taxes the Bank of the United States out of existence in Ohio, and simply ignores the Supreme Court ruling. Other examples of this, after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, several northern states, including Massachusetts and Wisconsin, nullify the Congressional Fugitive Slave Act in their states. And that's federal law.

but there was a popular reaction and it gets nullified at later dates. So we see here this issue of nullification is not particular to the southern states. This is an American tradition and it's exercised in any number of issues and also in spite of Supreme Court rulings. Because ultimately the argument in the Kentucky Resolution, as we just saw, is that the state is a party to this compact. The state is an adherent to this agreement that forms the union. Therefore, the state has an authority to say just what that agreement constituted. And that the Supreme Court is not the ultimate authority.

A federal judge doesn't have the ultimate say in what the law is. the state can have a stay too. Now, that's a very complex theory. And we can have legitimate disagreement about just how all that works out. But that's the origin. All right. Already looking forward to the next episode. Just in case somebody is picking this episode up first.

Do your plugs, please. Yes, indeed. So I'm George Bagby. I'm doing lots of podcast work presently. I'm the proprietor of Tallman Books, which is my press. I republish lots of history books, primarily. I've got a lot of stuff about the Civil War and Reconstruction, republishing a big series about American history.

It's 50 volumes of American history from Yale University Press from the 1920s. It was a series called The Chronicles of America. You can find all of this on my website, which is www.tallmenbooks.com.

And I appreciate your patronage. Thank you, Mr. Bagby. Until the next time, take care. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Picanuano show. George Bagby is back and we are going to do part five of the lead up to America's Civil War.

How are you doing this evening, Mr. Bagby? I'm doing well. Been very busy, doing lots of reading and studying. It's been very good. Awesome. Awesome. Looks like we're going to talk about the Marshall Court tonight. So I'll hand it over to you.

Yes, indeed. So the big question of the. Supreme Court is just how many powers does this body of government have and how many is it supposed to have and such. The most important figure in the entire history of the court is John Marshall of Virginia. And he proves to be in some ways more important in a constitutional sense than Alexander Hamilton was because John Marshall was the great chief justice. John Marshall was the man that was most instrumental in reading Hamilton's constitutional opinions into constitutional law, or at least our tradition of what we think of when it comes

to how we interpret the Constitution. So ironically, it was yet another Virginian that proved to be the most instrumental of the Hamiltonians, which shows that this was not just a sectional thing. This was a broader American kind of conflict. You have Hamilton from New York. you've got John Marshall, who is the most important of the Hamiltonians from Virginia. So the powers of the Supreme Court, especially the power of the court to review cases, to review congressional legislation, to review actions of the executive, the power of judicial review,

is what this is called, is a controversial power in the history of the court. And there are great many people attached to the court in its history that have expressed skepticism of the court's powers. Charles Evans Hughes, who was an unusual Supreme Court justice, a chief justice, in that he was in presidential politics and actually ran. against Woodrow Wilson as the Republican nominee before going back into the Supreme Court. Hughes said, we are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is. And that's a kind of truism, a kind of proverbial observation about the Constitution. The judges have a tremendous amount of power to say what the Constitution means at any controversial point.

The Supreme Court and the federal judiciary are designated aristocratic branches of the federal government. They are special branches in that they don't stand for a law. election. We don't have any popular check on the powers of the judiciary, certainly not in practice, though the Constitution does provide for something like this. It hasn't proven to be an effective check on the judiciary. The judiciary, the federal judiciary and the Supreme court. They are specialized members of government. They are chosen for their expertise, or at least their excellent political connections that get them this kind of sinecure job that is more or less impossible to lose. And this was a, this was very early a controversial element about

the judiciary. Article 3 of the Constitution gives us a little option that has proven to be completely insufficient to check the power of the judiciary. I've got it marked here. Here we go. Here's Article 3 of the Constitution. The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such imperial courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and Imperial 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.

So there is this slight description of a check. on the power of the judiciary, they should hold their offices during good behavior. This was early grounds to challenge the tenure of federal judges. And during the Jefferson administration, impeachment was attempted to check the power of the federalists that were running the Supreme Court at the time. judges who were doing very controversial things and we'll get into. This was completely unsuccessful in Jefferson's administration. And it has not seriously been attempted ever since.

Federal judges have not faced impeachment. No Supreme Court justice has ever been removed from the bench since the impeachment of Justice Chase during the Jefferson administration. That failed, and it has not been attempted since then. So it's been a kind of tradition about the judiciary. The judiciary has become the unchecked branch of the federal government. No impeachment has been attempted since the administration of Thomas Jefferson. And in practice, it has become completely independent and unaccountable. So this is a very important branch in that it is not elected, and it has a lot of special arbitrary powers, most of which it has granted to itself. And that is the controversy

about judicial review, the doctrine of judicial review, because it was created by John Marshall and invested as a power of the Supreme Court. And we'll talk about the implications of that. This is, let me remind our listeners, precisely the kind of fear the anti-federalists had about this proposed constitution, the Philadelphia Constitution. The Supreme Court in Article 3, there's not very much that's said about it, that they're going to have the power to review cases arising from the states that concern the Constitution and the powers of the federal government. If I can read a bit of Section 2 from Article 3 here, this outlines the powers of the Supreme Court. It is a little involved, but it's important to understand exactly what the Constitution

says on this. The judicial power 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 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 citizen thereof, and foreign states, citizens, or subjects. 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 before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations, as the Congress shall make. So this is an allusion to judicial acts of Congress, which establish federal courts and also define, to some degree, the powers of the Supreme Court. Notice there is nothing in Article 3 about just how many Supreme Court justices we will have, nor even anything about subordinate federal courts, the federal appeals, the federal appeal. court jurisdiction and such things. It just says that Congress has the power to establish such things and that Congress shall make laws to define them. Now, this is so broad and so defined as to be very dangerous as a political power. And the anti-federalists early speculated that this would be used to curtail the powers of the states, that the Supreme Court would strike down state laws and even state constitutions, curtailing the claim of the states to sovereignty.

This was actually precisely what federalist justices, most notably Justice John Marshall of Virginia, had in mind, he manifested in his career the specific concerns of the anti-federalists, thereafter better known as the Republicans. Confusingly, Thomas Jefferson's opposition party was known as the Democratic Republicans. They have more in common or more of a heritage associated with the Democratic Party, the oldest political party in the United States that unfortunately has suffered from schizophrenia in recent times. Complete personality change, in other words, not at all proud of their connections to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, who were their greatest leaders in times past.

So another historian of the Supreme Court, J. Allen Smith, wrote about the concerns of the judiciary overruling the legislative power, both the power of Congress to make laws. Of course, Congress is a representative body. It's a Republican body. It has accountability to the electrow. and so on, and also state legislatures. The concept of judicial supremacy, giving the federal courts or even state courts power to review legislature that arises from an accountable Republican body, the legislature or Congress, is a controversial doctrine. Nevertheless, it was very early established in our constitutional history by John Marshall. So Jay Allen Smith, a historian of the Supreme Court, he said,

The advocates of judicial supremacy were careful to support judicial supremacy as a means of protecting popular rights and enforcing constitutional checks on officials. No other instance in the whole history of constitutional development where public opinion, there is no other instance where public opinion has been so misled as to the fundamental nature of a political arrangement. The real purpose was to centralize political authority largely in the Supreme Court through the power of final interpretation. So this was an ambition of the federalists.

This was something that they privately hoped they could accomplish, and they were very careful not to be explicit about this publicly. Nevertheless, the anti-federalists and Republicans were wise, to their scheme. And John Taylor of Caroline is the best example of the man that saw the Federalist judicial scheme quite clearly in his book, Constitutions construed, which is his great attack on John Marshall's tenure, specifically the landmark case, McCullough versus Maryland, which we'll talk about in a moment. So early in Washington's administration, we see the first of the Judiciary Acts of Congress. We see the Judiciary Act of 1789. This is the act of the legislature that creates subordinate

federal court jurisdictions and also establishes the Supreme Court with its original justices. There were six originally, which is an interesting choice on their part. We now think of the Supreme Court as deciding most controversial questions of constitutional import, and we have had a tradition now for quite a while of having nine Supreme Court justices. incidentally, if you're wanting a very good and succinct and critical evaluation of the Supreme Court as a branch of government, I recommend the book Nine Men by Fred Rodel. This is a classic of the genre. It's also very manageable, written for a popular audience, and I much appreciate it.

for his skepticism of various points in the Supreme Court's assumed powers. It's also very realistic, right? This is a matter that is particularly American in the sense that American or the framers, the founding fathers, they were very optimistic that they could write down our fundamental laws in a succinct way, that this was going to be the basis of our political union, and that the meaning of the article of union, the Constitution, was going to be a straightforward kind of thing. This was unrealistic optimism, as we've already discussed at some length here. They were figures of the Enlightenment. It's very important for us to keep that in mind. And even the opposition of the Federalists with Thomas Jefferson and his friends, like John Taylor,

they were also men of the Enlightenment. They believed they could read the Constitution and clearly understand what it established. In retrospect, we can look at this and say, men of goodwill, men of education, men of highest motives, could come away from reading the Constitution, and its associated interpretation, such as the Federalist Papers, the Constitutional Debates, the Convention Debates, they could come away from that with radically different ideas about what kind of union government we have.

This is a special American political tragedy, but it is also unavoidable conflict. that ambitious statesmen like Hamilton, who wanted to establish a more centralized form of government, had everything that was necessary to carry out their wishes. And those opponents of a more centralized form of government, the Republicans later more strongly associated, particularly with the South, for several reasons, could come away thinking that they understood the real design of the government and could manage the union in some way with their own particular vision. They come into fundamental conflict with one another, and this is the legal interpretation of the sectional conflict. there are other grounds on which they fall into competition with one another and eventually decide to fight one another on this issue.

It's basically a, it amounts finally to a political separation, a independence movement, in fact. The differences in interpretation are so fundamental that it finally results in, Civil War, the Southerners resolving on independence because they no longer believe that they can maintain their particular interpretation and the checks that they've developed against this centralizing tendency. Both, well, I think maybe especially the Republicans, the Southerners, Republican in the Jeffersonian sense, I mean, are particularly diluted on this point, that they could read the Constitution and say, yes, but we disagree with its interpretation from these official sources, such as the Supreme Court.

All we need is to have our men in the Supreme Court. They finally get that in the Jackson administration. He puts a Jeffersonian in the Chief Justice's chair, Justice Tawny of Maryland, the famous man who decides the Dred Scott decision, which is another landmark decision we'll eventually get to. This is not enough. The institutions have been built. It's a Hamiltonian machine. and they cannot retool it and curtail its powers. And the next big presidential administration of Lincoln,

the ascension of the GOP into the White House and Congress cinges it for them. They realize, wow, we can't turn this back. And that's why they finally decide on independence. So much of this is built into the interpretation of the law. So back to the Judiciary Act, the first one, 1789. It gave the Supreme Court the power to affirm or reverse on appeal state laws after a high court ruling in their states of origin, or give a ruling that a certain federal law was bad. So we see kind of implicit in that congressional act a kind of judicial review, giving the Supreme Court a purpose.

What kinds of cases will the justices here? We see the Supreme Court justices in the early days, this original panel of six justices, all of them notable federalists, they travel far and wide. The Supreme Court actually does not have very many cases that ascend to that high level of jurisdiction. the Supreme Court justices instead spend most of their time traveling around hearing cases in the federal courts in the various regions. So they spend an awful lot of time traveling. For much of their history, they don't even have a dedicated building in the Capitol. when John Marshall ascends to the Supreme Court under the Adams administration, the Supreme Court is actually meeting in a room in the basement of the Capitol.

It's kind of an ironic oversight. This is very important branch of government doesn't have an independent building. Actually, until the 1940s, that's when the current Supreme Court building is built behind the Capitol in Washington. D.C. by the Roosevelt administration. In 98, we see the Sedition Act passed Congress and is signed into law by President John Adams. This results in a great many important federal cases because this is a federal law, and we've already gone over the contents of the Sedition Act. it is a very partisan kind of act. Curtailing the press, curtailing political speech is specifically concerned with what's called malicious speech against elected officials,

specifically the Adams administration, specifically President Adams and the Federalist Party. And here we see the outbreak of specific partisan kind of speechifying and politicking from the bench. Justice Samuel Chase, a very important early Supreme Court justice, and a high federalist, a Hamiltonian, if you will. he takes specific delight in prosecuting Republican newspaper editors. These are newspapermen, journalists and such who are supportive of Thomas Jefferson's policies are more pro-French in their beliefs. We can identify them as on the radical side. and yet the federalists are enforcing the Sedition Act against them.

They are imprisoning newspaper editors. They are fining them. And they take the opportunity to grandstand on the bench, to make political speeches from the bench in relation to the rulings on the Sedition Act. This is very unpopular and discreditable, and it results in a backlash by 1800 when we see the attempt of President John Adams to run for re-election, we see the first party change in the executive, the ascension of Thomas Jefferson to the White House. Just before Jefferson takes office, the lane gregers, the lane.

duck federalists who still have John Adams in there for a few more months, they make a couple of really bold moves. In 1801, they pass the Second Judiciary Act. They greatly expand the federal judiciary. They create a lot, a bunch of new federal appointments, so they are hoping to hold judicial power far after their departure from Congress and from the White House. So they're hoping for a federalist continuity. They create many more federal judge seats by the 1801 Judiciary Act, and President Adams appoints John Marshall to the Chief Justice position in the Supreme Court. This is one of the most consequential choices ever made by a president to put Marshall in

the chief chair in the Supreme Court. Lastly, John Adams on his last night as president moves quickly to try to appoint as many of these judges from the Judiciary Act as he can. He appoints 42 judges and deposits their commissions in the executive mailbox before leaving office and giving way to Thomas Jefferson's inauguration. So when Jefferson shows up with his cabinet, notably he makes James Madison, who is himself destined to go to the White House, He makes James Madison his Secretary of State. So the Secretary of State at that time did other things as well as being the chief foreign minister. He also sent out the mail. James Madison decides not to send out the judge commissions, the so-called midnight judges of the last night of Adams' administration.

Because the Republicans are aware the federalists are trying to perpetrate their power into the future by appointing as many justices as they can or as many judges as they can before they leave office. Many of these judges, by the way, are very minor roles like justices of the peace. They're like local officials. They don't have very much power in the federal judiciary. But this becomes important. Jefferson makes mention of the Sedition Act in his inaugural address. And we recall Jefferson is also the author of the Kentucky Resolution, which advocates for state interposition of these federal laws that violate the Bill of Rights. really doing a lot to build up the southern tradition of state sovereignty,

states' rights to check federal legislation and actions of the executive and the judiciary. Jefferson also calls out the partisan official grandstanding during the Adams administration. This is a slight illusion in his inaugural address that is directed, towards Justice Chase of the Supreme Court and other federal judges who are known to use their position to grandstand for political causes, basically attacking Republican sentiment. They're attacking the opposition party of their time from the bench and then prosecuting, punishing, imprisoning, and fining their political. political enemies through the Sedition Act. This comes to a head with Marbury v. Madison

and the impeachment of Judge Chase. So the federalists leave the Congress and they give way to the wave of Republican congressmen that rise with Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election. So Congress is now switched over to the opposition party. The opposition party is running Congress. The Democratic Republicans are there, and they have the White House as well. Jefferson and his cabinet are in favor of curtailing the judiciary and the powers thereof through impeachment. This is their plan. They call up Justice Chase to Congress with articles of impeachment.

The House votes in the majority in favor of impeaching Justice Chase for his frank partisanship on the bench. He goes to the Senate. Aaron Burr is presiding over the trial. in the Senate because the Senate acts as the judge in impeachment cases. Ironically, Aaron Burr has just been in his duel with Alexander Hamilton. He actually comes back from the duel directly to preside over the impeachment of Justice Chase. This is discreditable. Aaron Burr loses an awful lot of status through his famous

duel with Hamilton for obvious reasons. He killed a prominent statesman. Totally beside the point whether or not this was justified under the circumstances or whatever, Hamilton did accept the challenge of the duel from Burr and so on. That itself is an interesting tale that I'll get into later. But we have the acquittal of Chase. Chase does face a vote. in front of the Senate, and he is acquitted. So he keeps his office. This is the only time that a Supreme Court justice has ever faced impeachment. And it was due to that very controversial clause that judges shall hold their office in good behavior. So how do you define bad behavior? Well, partisan behavior seems to be, seems to fit that bill, but it did not carry with with Chase.

The Senate was not convinced and they release the judge. He is acquitted on the articles of impeachment. The second matter is the first of Marshall's landmark cases, Marbury v. Madison. Marbury was one of the judges that was appointed by President John Adams at midnight on his last day of. office. This was an important moment. Marbury brings suit against James Madison, specifically because James Madison did not post his commission of appointment to the federal judgeship. This was a short-term appointment. This was not an important appointment. Marbury, William Marbury, his name immortalized in this landmark Supreme Court decision,

was appointed Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia for a period of two years. This is very low stakes, but this was a test case that Marshall made an opportunity out of. Marshall decides, he decides to take this case under the request of a court order. So Marbury has petitioned the Supreme Court for mandamus, which is the Supreme Court delivering an order for something to be accomplished, namely the commissioning of the executive. appointment of Marbury. So Marshall rules in Marbury versus Madison. He says that the judges were entitled to their commissions. So he is faulting Madison for not sending the commissions. Marshall goes on to say, and this is very important, and we see something of Marshall's brilliance here. He was an incredibly capable legal mind. Though he was not educated in law

specifically, he turns out to be one of the most brilliant legal minds that the country has ever seen the like of. Because he is extremely clever in his ruling. He is avoiding conflict with the executive, and at the same time, he is amplifying the powers of the Supreme Court. Though he rules that Madison was at fault for not sending the commission and that Marbury was entitled to this commission, Marshall attacks the Judiciary Act of 1789 from Congress, he does not attack the executive, nor order the executive to make the appointments. Instead, he actually turns to the congressional authorization of Supreme Court powers and declares the congressional bill establishing Supreme Court powers is technically unconstitutional. So this, a simpler

ruling would be the mandamus. What Marbury was asking for. He wanted his job. He wanted to be a federalist judge. That would have been the simple ruling, but Marshall knew he would be in direct conflict with the executive there. And he wisely avoided that conflict. He was not going to tell the president what to do who to appoint. He was not going to deliver a mandamus. In fact, he turns to the Judiciary Act of 1789 from Congress, which defines various Supreme Court abilities, and he declares the ability to issue a mandamus unconstitutional. So he said that technically the Supreme Court cannot order the delivery of the Commission, and that the 1789 Act permitting the order of mandamus is void. This establishes the precedent, the most consequential precedent of the Marshall Court,

which is judicial review. The Supreme Court assumes the power through logical argument, not from precedent that they have the power to check the lawmaking abilities of Congress. Even though they are not an elected body, they are an aristocratic and in practice totally unaccountable body. So this establishes the judicial review in effect of executive actions and of Congress. It creates judicial review and it does not follow precedent. The Supreme Court may not be ordered to do something, but may order. In effect, that's the result of Marbury v. Madison. So this establishes the concept of judicial review in our legal tradition.

Fred Rodell writes in his history, an opinion is huddled up in conclave. Perhaps, or no, no, this is Jefferson quoted by Rodel. Jefferson is critical of this power assumed by the court of judicial review. He says, an opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates of the Supreme Court by a crafty chief judge who sophisticates the law to his mind by the turn of his own reasoning. And so Jefferson is very opposed to this, saying that this is of unaccountable.

power grab on the part of Marshall. Now, things follow from this. Marshall is the author of several major landmark decisions in Supreme Court, and I will here go through a few of them. In 1819, where several major decisions come through the court, Marshall presides over the case of Dartmouth versus Woodward. This concerns Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Dartmouth College happened to be a federalist stronghold, a small, at that time, all-male college, a private college, established by King George III, actually, who gave the college its charter.

They had had a falling out because of political differences with the state government of New Hampshire. So the state government of New Hampshire had become a Republican kind of stronghold. They were unusual in New England and that they had diverged from the federalism. the government of New Hampshire wanted to re-charter Dartmouth College and have a say in who is going to be a member of the board, who had the authority to choose professors and govern the school. So this was a question of charters, but John Marshall made this question of contracts. So the charter establishes a state corporation. Now, this is a little strange because this predates the Republican institutions of America.

This is actually a royally chartered institution. This is not a controversial point in the case itself. They take that as they take that for granted. So there was the attempted state takeover, and they're attacking the original stated purpose of this institution. Dartmouth College was started by a congregationalist minister specifically to educate the Indians in Christian theology. They had diverged from that and in a kind of panic, the board of Dartmouth College, when they're dealing with this suit with New Hampshire that wants to make their school a public university, in effect, with board members appointed by the state, it would no longer be a private institution. and they want to force out the Federalist Old Guard that run the school. The school, amusingly, goes into French Canada to recruit Indians for education as quickly as they can.

They actually bring them down the Connecticut River to Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth College is, And as soon as the Indians come in sight of the town of Hanover with its smokestacks and its busy streets and everything, they panic, they jump overboard and swim over to Vermont and disappear into the wilderness. And so Dartmouth is embarrassed. They're trying to do what their original charter said and have Indians there at the university free of charge to educate them in Christian theology, supposedly to show that they really are doing what their charter said. But it's this amusing little episode where that completely fails. they appeal to the Supreme Court on the matter of the charter. And Dartmouth hires Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, a lawyer, a brilliant man, as we will see, a centralizing sort of force in American politics. we will later analyze his career as relates to the union and the sectional conflict, where he figures very largely.

He becomes one of the giants of the Senate, though he does not represent his home state of New Hampshire. He ends up representing Massachusetts. But Webster had actually gone to Dartmouth. And Webster is in the end of federalist sentiments in the way of Hamilton. He is a nationalist in his thought. He is also an advocate of Hamilton's ideas about the future of the United States wrapped up in these corporate structures. So he plays this key role in this particular case which safeguards corporate charters.

This is the importance of Dartmouth versus Woodward. Webster defends Dartmouth in front of the Supreme Court, and this is the occasion of a very famous speech that he makes. Webster emotionally recollects his experiences with Dartmouth, says that Dartmouth is being attacked by those that ought to love it most, and he says, it is a small school, but there are those who love it. And of course, he is counting himself as one of them. And this is a very powerful bit of rhetoric at the time, and it's one of the most famous lines Marshall ever delivers. That's all next to Marshall's opinion. When Marshall writes his opinion for the case, he says, the charter is a contract. And this is a sacred sort of legal device that states,

may not interfere with. So it is unregulatable by the states. It is unchangeable by the states. Now, this in retrospect is extremely important. It means that business corporations, not just universities, but business corporations are held to be founded by legal contracts, though the state actually creates these immortal legal persons, the state cannot regulate them after they are chartered. So according to Albert Beverage, who is one of the great biographers of John Marshall, in addition to being a famous progressive Republican senator from Indiana, this created a brand new confidence in the business classes, the merchant classes.

It made, it encouraged and enlivened all manner of investors and corporate securities, because now there is a landmark Supreme Court decision safeguarding corporate charters, generally. there is no law impeding these contracts. And it strikes down the state power asserted by New Hampshire at the time to regulate corporations that they themselves had chartered. The next case is McCullough v. Maryland, which was also decided in the same year as Dartmouth. And once again, Daniel Webster is presenting the case to the Supreme Court. So he is a lawyer presenting the case.

This is an interesting one because it concerns the Bank of the United States. And so it has particular interest for us because this is a fundamental question about the interpretation of the Constitution, if the Constitution shall be interpreted broadly or not. The state of Maryland had passed a tax on the second bank of the United States. The first bank dissolves in 1811. After its 20-year charter, Congress authorized the establishment of this federal corporation, the Bank of the United States, in Washington's administration. But James Madison, though he actually called on its recharter, left it up to Congress.

And his own vice president, James Madison's own vice president, casts the deciding vote against the rechartering of the Bank of the United States in 1811. Very consequential choice, because this was right before the very expensive war of 1812. So Madison kind of sabotaged his own ability to prosecute that war by the dissolution of the bank. Nevertheless, the state of Maryland, which was an adherent to Jefferson's interpretation of the Constitution, the strict interpretation, had instituted a confiscatory tax on the Bank of the United States, designed to close its operations in the boundaries of Maryland. Now this was a federally chartered corporation. So the question is whether a state can impose its will on something the federal government wants done.

But it is a very complex argument because Marshall must first, assert that the federal government had the authority to establish this corporation. Marshall revisits the argument Hamilton made for the broad construction of the Constitution, and this is the key element in McCullough v. Maryland. Marshall reads Hamilton's liberal construction of the clauses of the Constitution, that permit the government to do what it finds convenient, he reads it into a landmark case of the Supreme Court. Marshall notably says in this case,

the power to tax is the power to destroy. Now, in that, he is in conflict with Maryland's declared power to tax. to tax a federally chartered corporation. Marshall first argues, using Hamilton's argument, that the Bank of the United States is a constitutional corporation. Second, Marshall argues, state supremacy over federal charters and law is unconstitutional. So he strikes down Maryland's law that taxes the Bank of the United States.

This is a landmark decision for two important reasons. Hamilton's interpretation becomes the official interpretation of the Supreme Court. Secondly, Marshall uses this special power of the Supreme Court to strike down a state. law from a state legislature. And he is insisting on the inferred constitutional powers of that old argument between Jefferson and Hamilton from Washington's administration. Lastly, with Marshall, we have Gibbons versus Ogden, which is an 1824 case. This is a complex one, and it involves business, corporations, and interstate commerce.

So some years previous, the remarkable Robert Fulton had installed a steam engine on a ship in Hudson River just beside New York City. And he patents his steamship invention and gets key backing, financial backing, from the Livingston family, which is an old and important political family in the state of New York. They produce several governors and such. they establish a steamship monopoly in New York so that only the Livingston Fulton Company can run steamships in Hudson River and elsewhere. They actually get a steam monopoly in New Orleans as well, so they are branching out to other areas. and this is a patent and they're trying to keep anyone from using their special steam technology. In 24, a operator who had contracted to use the Fulton steam technology on ships in New Jersey had received his own special monopoly to operate steamships off the coast of New Jersey

by the New Jersey Governor, Mr. Ogden. Now, Mr. Gibbons, who holds the steamship monopoly in New Jersey, has his contract revoked by the state of New Jersey. This goes to law and goes to the Supreme Court. because the federal government has jurisdiction over interstate commerce. And the Livingston-Fulton outfit is trying to monopolize interstate commerce. So Gibbons suit against New Jersey, revoking his right to run his steamships off the coast of New Jersey. he is asserting that states should not hold monopolies on trade because this is an element that concerns other states.

So this is an involved argument, but we can see the importance of it. This is a matter of interstate commerce. Once again, Daniel Webster is delivering the brief forgiveness. before the Supreme Court. So we see Webster's very important legal career figuring prominently in the story of John Marshall. Webster argues New Jersey Governor Ogden is wrong to deny steam, to deny the steam monopoly or the license to run steam ships to Mr. Gibbons because Congress has power over interstate commerce. And this monopoly doesn't come from Congress.

It comes from a state government. So we see here, Gibbons v. Ogden is another conflict between state governments and the federal power. And it involves the interpretation of federal powers. Although Marshall had ruled in the Dartmouth College case on the sanctity of contracts, And he has precedent to rule in Ogden's favor for the in unalterable character of corporate charters, which is what this concerns. Marshall, again, is extremely clever. and his goal is to amplify federal powers using Hamilton's construction and to establish the Supreme Court as this means to increase the power of the federal government.

And so though we can look at the precedent and say, Marshall could have ruled in that way, Marshall does something very clever and again increases federal power over the states. So Marshall rules in Givens v. Ogden, where the Congress has special powers, the states have none. So he abolishes the state charters related to the steamship monopolies. Now, in response to this, a Republican senator, not Republican in the sense of the GOP, I realize these terms do get very confusing. But in the context, I'm referring to people that are in sympathy with Jefferson's strict interpretation of the Constitution. Senator Richard Johnson of Kentucky said of the Marshall Court, we are admonished to receive their opinions as the ancients did the responses of the Delphic Oracle

or the Jews, the communications of heaven. Another Supreme Court justice from the 20th century, Harlan Stone, said of the powers established in the Marshall Court, particularly judicial review. The only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint. So Supreme Court justices have extremely broad powers. They conduct their decision-making in secret. They even choose or ignore petitions for review of any number of controversies. They conduct that process in secret as well. We do not know the internal workings of the court, and these things remain secret and are likely never to be publicized.

In extension from that, I've prepared a list of cases to illustrate how Supreme Court rulings have changed norms in very unexpected places. Way back in 2014, I was just a new history teacher, and I've been set to teach an American government class, what eventually became a class I entitled Political Science. One of my favorite accomplishments, I actually put together a textbook for that class, which was made of primary source readings, including Supreme Court cases. But way back in 2014, or it might have been the spring of 2015, I remember well, I got up to explain to my seniors in my political science class how Supreme Court opinions built on one another. and my my special focus was the upcoming gay marriage case,

which we were anticipating to come from the court that summer when they would release their opinions. And I got up in front of my students and I gave them the history of a number of modern Supreme Court cases. So I started my review with Griswold v. Connecticut, which was the Supreme Court case of 1965. Griswold v. Connecticut established a famous Supreme Court doctrine called the right of privacy. Griswold v. Connecticut was a suit of the Griswold family against the state of Connecticut to strike down a blue law of Connecticut that forbade the use of. of contraceptives by married couples.

This was a very old law dating back to colonial days. Connecticut was also not doing anything serious to enforce that law in 1965, but it remained on the books. And this was one of these special advocacy kinds of cases that make their way to the Supreme Court. There was money and a bunch of high-profile lawyers willing to litigate this pro bono because they wanted to change laws with the Supreme Court precedent. So they took it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court struck down the law against the use of contraception. Effectually ruling that sexual behavior is only fruitful when a sexual behavior is only fruitful when a,

individual or couple wants it to be. That's the takeaway from Griswell versus Connecticut, but it does establish the famous doctrine of the so-called right of privacy, something evidently that does not apply to the NSA or Congress itself, which reauthorizes the Patriot Act with regularity. The second case was related to Griswold. and that's Eisenstadt v. Baird. Eisenstatt v. Baird is another ACLU case decided in 1972. It was a professor in Boston who decided to distribute contraceptives to his undergraduate students at college. This was against the law in the state of Massachusetts.

for the very simple reason that it's encouraging promiscuity among the unmarried and that this was a legitimate state interest because the state disproportionately ends up saddled with the results of promiscuity. You are encouraging the production of bastards in the community, literally. by promoting promiscuity by distributing contraceptives to the unmarried. So this violates a law of the state of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Health Department was party to this case, and once again, the right of privacy strikes this down. So no longer is sexual behavior recognized in state law

as something necessarily involving the married or should involve exclusive, exclusively the married. So sexuality and reproduction is not something natural or recognized by legislation. It is married or not married. It is productive, natural, or not. Next is Loving versus Virginia, 1967, which was another special advocacy kind of case that strikes down Virginia's law against miscegenation. Mr. Loving of Virginia with his poetically appropriate name, perhaps, had married a woman who was part black and part Native American. This is technically against the law of Virginia, which legislates against miscegenation. What's more important here is not the miscegenation, but the Supreme Court finding that marriage is a

constitutional right that cannot be denied in law. So that's the takeaway here that I was focusing on. Next, of course, is Roe v. Wade, 1973, which strikes down all state laws against abortions, The justification for Roe v. Wade was the right of privacy, established with Griswold v. Connecticut, or, you know, stated by the Supreme Court. This means that even after conception, sex does not necessarily have any connection with procreation unless it is desired. So we have a stopgap with the technology of abortion. Next is Lawrence versus Texas, a case from 2001. This strikes down all state laws against sodomy for unnatural sexual acts. The story of it is incidental, not particularly important.

What happened was in Houston there was a police chase underway. And there was a fugitive who is running through a residential area, breaking into houses, running through houses while police were hot on his tail. What happens is the Houston Police Department go into a private residence and find two men. They are arrested because this is a law on the books and they were witnessed in the act. of a felony, and it is taken, once again, the ACLU active to change social norms whenever they see an opportunity, litigated it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court strikes it down, strikes down, indeed, all state laws, defining natural sects. Now, with those cases, I outlined them to my students, and I announced to them back in, I think the spring of 2015 is when I did this particular lesson.

I said, in my view, the logical progression of the Supreme Court is overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage. And indeed, only a couple months later we got Obergefell v. Hodges. which strikes down all state laws defining the limits of marriage as between a man and a woman. That it is in fact natural law. That it's designed by our creator to be procreative. All of the previous precedents on this matter serve to undermine that interpretation. indeed to manifest a distinct hostility against that interpretation. And I still remember speaking to my students and just kind of matter-of-factly saying,

we're going to have a gay marriage ruling, given all these precedents. This is the direction the Supreme Court's been moving in my whole life. And indeed, long before. But I turned out vindicated. I wasn't happy about that. But it is the process of judicial review that was established so long ago that changes American legal norms, not through the acts of legislatures, but through the acts of judges who have a particular vision of what they think the law should be, which is one of the downside. of judicial review, aside from the fact that it's a way of making laws outside of the legislative process. And this is the great argument historically against the doctrine of judicial review,

from which all of the cases that we have covered here fall under, that it is a power assumed by the Supreme Court outside of precedent that amplifies their unaccountable pseudo-legislative power. And this was a particular point of opposition in the growing sectional conflict. So that is my brief on the career of John Marshall and his landmark cases. we will continue on these points. I'll make reference to these things later on. But I do have a certain satisfaction in looking back at that because I am a partisan for the grandeur of the great state of Virginia, where I lived many happy years, that it wasn't enough for the remarkable Alexander Hamilton to state his opinions as a cabinet official.

It took a Virginian to really install them into our constitutional law. It took John Marshall, who is one of the great Virginians, though I question the ultimate impact of his legacy. obviously. Yeah, I think with everything you just went over and considering the overarching theme of this series,

I think people, if they're paying attention, they know exactly where this is going and why this becomes relevant later. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So thank you.

We'll be back back soon, probably next week, to pick it up, but please remind people where they can support you and find your work. Yes, indeed. I've got a website. It's www. Tallmanbooks.com. I have been hard at work at a couple of volumes in my Chronicles of America series. And I also have a biography of John Taylor of Caroline. that's already it's just waiting for its cover. I've got a couple of volumes

related to what we've been talking about here that should be coming online any day now. If you watch my account on X which is at Tallman Books you'll see me announce the availability of those volumes there. I've got

one volume, Washington and his colleagues. which is an overview of the Washington and Adams administrations, very succinct a volume about them. And I have another one called John Marshall and the Constitution by one Corwin. And this is a high federalist take on John Marshall. This guy thinks John Marshall hung the moon. But nevertheless, it is a very valuable and succinct overview of the life and career of John Marshall. So I have both of those books coming online very soon, just in the next couple of days.

If you watch my social media, you'll be able to see links to those when they come online. And I'll let you know when John Taylor's biography comes online. I'm really excited about that one. I was motivated to do John Taylor after I edited Corwin's volume. I wanted to have a counterbalance to his federalist position. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you, Mr. Bagby, and excuse me, have a good evening. Until the next time.

My pleasure. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana show. George Bagby is back, and we are going to continue our series of the lead-up to America's Civil War. How are you doing this evening, Mr. Bagby? I'm doing well. I have a very happy cat next to me. So if his rumble comes through, that's what's going on. He just won't leave me alone. I'm his favorite person.

Second person I've recorded with today, who the first one had a cat on his lap while we were recording. Very nice. Yeah, cats are good companions for this kind of work. All right, sir. I love to hear. tales of Andrew Jackson and yeah so let's do it okay well I've got a precursor we're on our way to Jackson but first we're going to take a diversion to New England and talk about sectionalism leading up to the the drama during the Jackson administration so during the Jackson administration there we have a trio of great giants in the Senate.

Historians have called them the great triumvirate. We have Henry Clay of Kentucky, the great Whig, really a magnificent statesman, and I like him for many reasons. We have John C. Calhoun, who is the greatest political scientist statesman of the South, in his still study today. And we have Daniel Webster, who we've talked about in his context contending cases before the Supreme Court.

But he goes into the Senate. And there are some very interesting debates that result in the Jackson administration. But they do much concern the era of 1812 and the demise of our first. and oldest political party, the federalist party that we've talked a lot about up until now. So these federalists, they find themselves on the outs after the first two administrations. Washington and Adams are both federalists, and they are a very noble bunch, you know, a tremendous number of prominent statesmen of the era, the most famous that we ever had in a group. Washington, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, John Jay. They're all federalists. John Marshall, a federalist.

So the decline of this party and its final collapse is kind of an unforced error. It's kind of a self-inflicted decline. But it's also extremely interesting in our approach to the sectionalism before the Civil War. So you recall that the federalists are very opposed to the French Revolution. This determines many things, including the Alien and Sedition Acts, which we were talking about earlier. They are relating Jefferson's Republicans who are actually the precursors to the Democratic Party. I know this is kind of confusing and hard to keep track of. But if I say the Republicans in this context, I'm talking about the Jeffersonians. They're relating the Republicans to the Jacobins in France.

So the Republicans are not helping themselves on this line. Thomas Jefferson is an outspoken supporter in the early stages of the French Revolution. He eventually gets disillusioned with it. But you have other associates of the Republicans, Tom Payne, the great radical propagandist, atheist pamphleteer and the rest. He is actually a member of the revolutionary French legislature. He leaves America and serves in France until like many others. he gets disavowed by that radical body and they seek to have his head. And so he has to flee France.

But he does become citizen pain of France for a time. It's important to note that Hamilton, John Adams, and many of these later federalists are very outspoken against the French Revolution in the same capacity. that they're outspoken against the Republicans, and they relate them to each other. This is not unwarranted. We have great Republican leaders and future presidents, James Monroe, for instance, who is a close associate of Tom Payne. He actually has Tom Payne come and live with him for a time.

That's how close they are. So when John Adams says, well, these Jacobins, they are, they're wanting to seize property. They're wanted to abrogate property rights. And then the Republicans turn and they accuse the federalists of monarchist attributes, centralized power. They say that the federalists are elitist. They criticize federalist inventions like the electoral college and the Senate as elitist institutions. And no, the Republicans kind of run the gamut on this. There are many examples of this.

But American politics kind of get framed during the Washington and Adams administrations along the same lines as the politics of Revolutionary France. So Hamilton, John Adams, and other federalists, they write extensively against the French Revolution. And the Republicans are ascendant in America, but are also rather chagrined to find themselves in a defensive position concerning the French Revolution, which is kind of burning itself out at this stage, and Napoleon is ascendant and dissolving, you know, the Committee of Public Safety and things like that. But Thomas Jefferson gets elected in 1800. We have this

this really curious set of bitter arguments on both sides. So like the radicals on the Republican side are saying that the New England federalists, this is where the federalists remain

strong, is in the northeast. They say that they are aristocratic elitists trying to centralize power. The federalists on their part, criticize the aristocratic Democrats of the South and accuse them of tyrannizing tendencies

trying to remove federal judges from office, trying to remove civil servants, tax collectors, and stuff based on their political allegiance. So Thomas Jefferson really wants to have a spoils system. He wants to put his own people into these offices of the civil service. And so he's trying to clear out the administrators from the Adams and Washington regimes, especially judges. The main focus is on the judiciary. This is during the Jefferson period where they're trying to impeach federal judges

who have really crossed a line with the enforcement of the Sedition Act. So the federalists are very apprehensive about Jefferson, and then the Louisiana purchase takes place in 1803. This causes the federalists to really start speaking out, and we see a radical faction of the federalists form in New England. This is called the Essex Hoonto. So this is a faction of the Federalists. It's led by people like Timothy Pickering and George Cabot and Mr. Griswold from Connecticut. I think it's Oliver Griswold of Connecticut. So there are a number of congressmen from the New England states that join this group.

they are interested pretty early on, even before the Essex-Hunto forms, like as a named faction, these radical federalists, if we might characterize them so, they're very interested in working behind the scenes, perhaps to separate the sections of the union. And this is a fascinating thing. We have an associated congressman named Rufus King of New York, which is kind of interesting to me. It's kind of an unusual name. There is a current congressman named Rufus King. Is he from Maine? Is that where he's from?

Do you recognize? I don't, I'm not, let me see. look it up a curiosity there just happens to be a congressman of the same name that was recently active

anyway. No, I'm not seeing anyone. Oh, really? Well, maybe I'm mistaken. I thought there was a congressman of that name. Maybe it was in recent history or something.

But back in 1794, Rufus King encounters John Taylor of Caroline, who we have already talked about. They're both in the Senate. And Rufus King calls Taylor aside with Senator Ellsworth of Connecticut. And according to Taylor, Taylor actually writes a memorandum of this. Taylor says, King approaches him and says,

the southern and eastern people in this context, eastern means northeast, New England. The southern and eastern people think quite differently, and the south has clogged and counteracted every operation of government. So they're referring to the Republicans and their rise. At this point, the Republicans are not in power. So that's interesting. This is during the Federalist administration. King tells Taylor, a dissolution of the union by mutual consent was preferable to a certainty of the same by a less desirable mode.

So he says, the union's going to split eventually because the North and the South think so differently. And they want to run the general government in such radically different ways. This is 1794, and this is a northern senator from New York, that's approaching John Taylor of Caroline, who is on the far side of the other side, right? John Taylor is the old Republican is the term for it, the paleo Republican, if you will. So there's this interesting connection and conversation. John Taylor writes a memorandum and sends it to James Madison. And that's the context in which we have the information. So James Madison actually corresponds with Taylor about this.

They ask each other interesting questions. They're like, is this effort to intimidate us? What exactly does this mean? And Taylor, funny enough, is advocating the union in this instance. Of course, this is when the Republicans are on the rise to federal power. And so they're going to be attempting the reforms. Well, anyway, Pickering is one of the firebrands of the Essex Honto. Pickering writes his associate George Cabot of Massachusetts in 1804.

So this is right after the Louisiana purchase. The federalists really don't like the Louisiana purchase. Recall Federalist paper number two that Providence has been pleased to give this one united people, or this one united country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, practicing the same religion, very similar. and manners and customs and so on. The federalists did not imagine the union would get big. They certainly did not imagine member states of the union of French stock,

of Roman Catholic faith, and they are very adamant against the Louisiana purchase. And they are very concerned about financing it. Now, these are the same people that are interested in financing big national schemes, but they don't like financing doubling the size of American territory, especially because the new member states in that territory, the populous areas of Louisiana, or Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri, all slave areas. They see new slave states, new agrarian states, new estates, new estates that, new states that are going to be opposed to them politically,

but also states with the different ethnic composition, different religious heritage, the Roman Catholic, all of them are in 1803. There are no Protestant churches in that area because it was all Spanish territory. Previous, just to Napoleon basically taking it and selling it as soon as he had possession of it. The French governor had not even a row.

arrived in Louisiana when Napoleon had sold the place. So Pickering writes to George Cabot. He says, I do not believe in the practicability of a long-continued union. The people of the East cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West. The latter one beginning to rule with the rod of iron. So he's referring to the new Western states. He's referring to Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, who have constituted a very distinct interest, very agrarian, and also rapidly changing.

So to identify his concerns here is not entirely fair. The Western states do change very quickly in what they are wanting politically. But Pickering says, a Northern Confederacy would you know? congenial characters and present a fairer prospect for public happiness. The last refuge is New England, but New York must be associated. So Pickering says we're scheming to form a northern confederacy. We're interested in severing the union with these Republicans who are now running it or Jefferson. We do not trust them. They have different manners, different political ideals, a different way of life, a different vision for the country. So we need to separate from them,

but we need New York involved. And this becomes very important. Pickering writes to Rufus King, again in 1804, the Federalists here anxiously desire the election of, Aaron Burr to the chair of New York. So this is the upcoming governor's election in the state of New York. Mr. Burr alone, we think, can break your Democratic flanks. And we anticipate much good from his success. Griswold of Connecticut also writes to an associate, the election of Colonel Burr is the only hope of rallying a defense of the northern states. So this is interesting because Aaron Burr was a vice presidential candidate in 1800. The way that the electoral college works at this time is a little confusing.

The electors are asked to vote for two, the president and vice presidential candidates. And then they take a tally of the total. So because of a lot of favorite sons from different regions, like Charles Pinckney is running from South Carolina as the federalist vice presidential candidate, what happens is it splits the votes both for president and vice president because they're all tallied together. And the way that it works is that the number one vote recipient becomes president. The second place is the vice president. So Jefferson did not get his preferred vice presidential candidate. There was a Republican vice presidential candidate, but he didn't get him.

Instead, he got Aaron Burr. But the vote was so close it actually went to a House vote. The House of Representatives actually had to break the tie in the Electoral College. So Aaron Burr becomes vice president. He's not an associate of Thomas Jefferson. He's actually a very independent kind of figure, but he was in one vote's breadth from winning the presidency himself, though he wasn't even running for the office. he was that much of a popular candidate for the vice presidential seat.

He almost won the presidency in the House because they were voting on the top candidates. So it's kind of a complicated situation, but Aaron Burr is actually vice president. Aaron Burr runs for the governor's office in New York while he's vice president. And he is in association with the federalist facts. action in New England. The idea is that Aaron Burr will conspire with the federalist secessionists who are opposed at this stage to the Louisiana purchase primarily. That's all very interesting because of Burr's own history in the Louisiana territory. This is the subject of his treasoned trial and such later on. But nevertheless, this is really curious. Burr later goes to Louisiana.

Presumably, he was charged with trying to form territories somewhere in the northern reaches of Spanish, Mexico, or some such thing. He's tried for treason and acquitted by John Marshall, actually. That's beside the point here. But anyway, the federalists are very interested in getting Burr elected because he is in association with them. We have a lot of the members of the Essex Honto who are writing about Burr's relation with them. They're campaigning for Burr for the office of governor of New York. We have another federalist senator. This is William Plummer of New Hampshire,

who says in correspondence, this isn't said publicly, but he's organizing and he's campaigning for Burr. He says, the eastern states, this is the northeast, must and will dissolve the union and form a separate government, and the sooner the better. So this comes to a head famously with Hamilton contending for DeWitt Clinton for the governor's office in New York over Aaron Burr. Now, Hamilton is also a federalist, but we must remember the Essex Federalists, the so-called Essex, Honto, they are a distinct faction of New England federalists.

Many of them come from Essex County, Massachusetts, which is where the name comes from. But it also includes these figures from New Hampshire, Connecticut, and other places. Hamilton goes to federalist meetings in New York, and in the context of a party meeting, excoriates Burr's character, says that Burr is untrustworthy. According to one William Cooper of New York, who publishes a letter in a New York paper concerning Hamilton's campaigning for Clinton and against Burr, attacking Burr's character,

Cooper says, Hamilton and his friends look upon Mr. Burr as a dangerous man and one who ought not be trusted with the reins of government. So this is a public letter of Cooper saying what Hamilton has said in a more private context. Burr then loses the election to Clinton in New York. and Burr is quite chagrined with Hamilton. He blames Hamilton's public attacks, well, in the context of these meetings, and then the publication of the contents of his attacks by this Mr. Cooper as instrumental in his loss. So he says that Hamilton has defamed his character, calling him a dangerous man, an untrustworthy leader. So he challenges Hamilton to a duel.

Or he first asked for clarification. Hamilton kind of dissimulates and he says, well, Cooper was not really specific about this. He didn't say exactly where I said this or when I said this. And Burr responds angrily and he says, you are not denying you said it. So I demand satisfaction. And they agree. Hamilton accepts the charge. It's rather as if Hamilton is accepting responsibility.

They go to Weehawken, New Jersey, just across the river. It's right beside Hoboken. And Hamilton famously turns in the duel and shoots into the air. He does not aim at Burr. Burr shoots Hamilton. in the chest. Hamilton returns, or his friends return him to his home in Manhattan, and he dies soon afterwards.

But not before disavowing, dueling, accepting a deathbed baptism by a Methodist minister. The Methodist minister requires Hamilton to disavow dueling and to disavow dueling and to proclaim his sin in participating in the duel before he submits to give him baptism, and Hamilton does comply. And Hamilton dies surrounded by his friends. And this is the context. Curiously, immediately after this infamous combat, Burr returns to Washington, where he is sitting in judgment of Justice William Chase of the Supreme Court. The only impeachment proceedings ever attempted against a Supreme Court justice. And a great many people write about it at the time.

They considered it all very discreditable because Burr was presiding. And everyone knew that Burr was even potentially on the run from the law in New York. That's why they did not duel in New York because they were known to prosecute such a thing in the state of New York. Burr concludes the impeachment trial and then resigns the vice presidency and leaves on his adventure in the Louisiana territory, where eventually he is apprehended and brought back for a treason trial. And that's kind of beside the point right here. But it's a very interesting tale. the federalists, they lose this attempt in 1804 to put their associate burr into the office in New York. So now they don't have New York in association as they'd hoped.

So this kind of puts a break on things for them for a few years. In 1807, Jefferson signs into law, the trade impasse. with France and England. This is yet another attempt to try to avoid war in Europe, to be drawn into the Napoleonic Wars. Both France and England have greatly offended the United States. Both of them have acted very, very hostily to the United States. They've both apprehended American sailors impressed them on the high seas. During the Adams administration, the French Navy is actually

having minor battles with American frigates on the high seas. This is a phenomenon that's known as the pseudo-war. It's also the context of the alien and sedition acts, which is very interesting. We were right on the cusp of war with France on that occasion. And you remember the heavy attempts of the French to lobby to change American foreign policy in favor of the French during that period. So in 1812, we see, well, no, 1807, let me finish the embargo. The trade embargo is very contrary to the interests of New England. New England is a shipbuilding center. They send tens of thousands of their young men to see as sailors. The major

investment in New England is in shipping in maritime trade. One of their major industries is shipbuilding and naval stores. They are one of the few seats of manufacturing for export trade, and the embargo with great disproportion affects them negatively. So the New Englanders protest this. They are extremely upset about it. they say that the Jeffersonians have no consideration for them. Pickering says of this,

no act of the national government has ever produced so much solicitude or spread such universal alarm. Are our thousands of ships and vessels to rot in our harbor? Are our 50,000 seamen to be deprived of employment? and their families reduced to want and beggary. Now, we should also remember the last executive to close the port of Boston to trade was King George III in 1775. So this is reminiscent to this generation, the same men who had seen the lead up to the War of Independence were instrumental

in declaring independence and winning independence from England are now associating Jefferson, President Jefferson, with the policies of King George III. Pickering, again, the very verbose leader of the Federalist faction, he says, I am disgusted with the men who now rule us, the coward at the head, that is Jefferson, is like a French revolutionary. So they're relating the embargo to a tax on private property and business. And they're relating this, of course, to the Jacobins, who are in power in France.

Pickering says, I therefore say, come out from among them and be ye. separate. So he quotes the Bible. He says, without a separation, can our states ever rid themselves of these negative leaders? What he says is, can we be without Negro presidents and Negro Congresses and regain our just weight in the political balance? So we, we, we're going to We see his association of his political enemies with slavery, which is the import of what he's talking about. And that's his quote. So the result of this is increased tensions. Following 1807 and the embargo, there is a tremendous depression that disproportionately affects New England.

And this is partly because of Jefferson's complete thought process inside of agrarian economy. Jefferson is an agrarian. Jefferson rightly understands that the vast majority of the country is involved in agriculture, that manufacturing and maritime trade, shipbuilding, and ship owning are all small portions of the economy. Hamilton is emphasizing their great promise in the future, but Jefferson is emphasizing the agrarian component, and Jefferson sees the embargo as worth the cost because it preserves us from war that we were ill-prepared for. And we certainly were ill-prepared for it.

He wants to avoid foreign conflicts. So we see that even though Jefferson is associated with the Jacobins, at this point, Jefferson is most concerned with maintaining that policy of neutrality. Jefferson is disillusioned to some degree about the Jacobins, about the whole revolutionary process. He is kind of sobered with the rise of Napoleon and such. the depression that results from the embargo is an important aspect to remember here. So the New Englanders are suffering from the trade depression. Many of the ship owners manage to get their ships abroad so that they can maintain business outside of the American Union. their ships cannot come home to port.

New England sailors cannot return home for years as the embargo is maintained. And then in 1812, Louisiana is admitted to the union as a state. So once again, we see the return of this issue. Herbert Agar, who is a great historian on the question. he wrote a book called The Price of Union, which anyone following this series is going to greatly enjoy this book. It's an excellent book of themes of sectionalism in American history and the cost of unity in American history. It's a very good survey of these questions. But Agar says the admission of Louisiana as a state in 1812 was more important than the act of war.

So he says that the sectional inflammation of Louisiana admitted as a state in the union was ultimately more important in the crisis of the union than the declaration of war. Declaration of war obviously drives the sections further apart. Here, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, another radical federalist in Massachusetts, he gets up before Congress, so he's in Washington. He makes a speech against Louisiana statehood. And he says about Louisiana's admission to the union, I am compelled to declare the bonds of this union are virtually dissolved. that the states which compose it are free from their moral obligations and that it will be the right of all and duty of some to prepare definitely for a separation amicably if they can, violently if they must. Now, this is said in Congress, this is a very clear threat of secession. and it is about the expansion of the union to include a Roman Catholic state,

which at this time all of the settled population in Louisiana. Since the Louisiana purchased, lots of Anglo-Americans are going to Louisiana, and the first Protestant churches are built there. They are overwhelmingly southerners and overwhelmingly of Republican Jeffersonian persuasion. So Quincy is looking at French Roman Catholics, primarily, when he is excoriating Louisiana. He is a New England Puritan. He's a congregationalist, the Puritan church, and he rather defines himself in opposition to Roman Catholics.

This is a regional interest. This is rather confined to New England. And wherever the Puritans have gone afterwards, places like Connecticut and New Hampshire, and then places further west, the upstate area of New York, northern Ohio, and other places where the New England diaspora goes, these kinds of thoughts do resonate there, that America is a Protestant project. And this is also a very important idea. Just what did people think would compose the union religiously at the time the Constitution is written and debated?

It is a Protestant country. It is overwhelmingly Protestant. It must be close to 99% Protestant. Now, they are divergent. You have Protestants like Quakers, and you might ask, well, Is it really fair to call them Protestant? Indeed, is it fair to call them Christians? And that is a fair of criticism. They are not Trinitarian.

Okay. So this is quite a way's way. The Calvinist Puritans are certainly Protestants and typify the heritage of protest against Roman things, right? So they fit the bill pretty well. But there's still a lot of variety of Protestants. there are an awful lot more Catholics at this stage. And the federalist faction is certainly thinking of that issue.

That is something historically that is extremely important to them and we should take seriously from them. But 1812, of course, is also very notable because of the outbreak of the War of 1812. So this is something, again, opposed by the federalists, by the election. of 1800, the federalists are consigned to be a regional force. They lose to Jefferson twice. Then they lose to James Madison twice. So they've been out of power for a long time now. The federalists are proposing their own constitutional reforms at this time. They are proposing for instance, no state should be admitted to the union or territory expanded in the union without a two-thirds congressional majority. So they're proposing this interesting amendment.

They propose an amendment to limit presidential administrations to one term, which is certainly a response to Jefferson's two terms and Madison's two terms. They are very upset with what Pickering calls the aristocratic Democrats of the South, which he frequently talks about how much he loathes. And this is kind of ironic because he accuses Jefferson and the Republicans of being elitists. that they are this patrician-virginian set. He saves a lot of bile for the Virginia statesman in particular. And this is kind of ironic because the Republicans, Jefferson and his colleagues,

return the same measure to the federalists. The federalists, they say, are monarchists and advocates. for nobility. They say the New England states are so very small. They are disproportionately represented in the Senate, which is true, right? They say, they point to Adams's administration and characterize him as autocratic. Adams, memorably, wanted to be known as Your Excellency, I believe. term for the president, a short-lived kind of term, and wanted to have a fancy coach and be introduced

by a foot servant and things like that. So there were some trappings that Adams attempted that the Republicans accused of him putting on airs as a monarch. And of course, John Taylor attacks Adam. in that line. The War of 1812 is an extremely important event. The Western congressmen are particularly adamant in favor, and there are lots of Southern congressmen in favor. There are some important Southerners who are against the War of 1812. John Randolph of Roanoke, who deserves special mention. We could make our own episode on him. rather like we did for John Taylor. Very interesting guy.

Thomas Jefferson was never strict enough in his construction of the Constitution for John Randolph's taste. And it was also amusing they're actually cousins as well. John Randolph is also the nephew of Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General in Washington's administration. But Randolph is opposed to the war of 1812. He says, we should not go to war with the English because we're all related to them. We should cultivate good relations with the mother country, among other things. And he says we aren't adequately prepared for it and so on. And that was true as well.

Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina is also an example of a peace dove in the War of 1812. But most of the doves are actually from New York. and New England, they say we do not have an adequate Navy. That is true. They say we do not have adequate coastal defenses. That is true. They say Madison has abolished the Bank of the United States. Where will we get the funding? That is also true. The First Bank of the United States is not rechartered in 1811, right before the War of 1820. We no longer have a large federal bank. So we only can rely on small banks, regional banks.

Nevertheless, the War of 1812 is declared the British blockade or begin blockading our ports. Trade is is abrogated with all European powers, thanks to this blockade. the New England states, in response to this war, which is very unpopular in New England, they call it Mr. Madison's war, they refuse on the local level to finance the government. So the federal government needs a lot of money to carry out this war with England. The New England banks will not buy government securities. Most New England citizens will not subscribe to minor bonds, to low price bonds, to finance the war effort. The war effort is so very unpopular in New England. The Federalist authorities make it known to the British.

They want no part in this war and have no intention in participating. The British respond by ceasing to block a. courts in New England. And on local authority, and extending into the state government to some level, smuggling illicit trade with the British is taking place in New England during the war of 1812. The New England governors refused to send their militias out of New

England. Indeed, when the British come into the Chesapeake Bay in 1814, the New England states reject President Madison's call to rally the militia to defend Washington, D.C. It's mostly the Maryland militia that shows up and tries to contend with the British outside of Baltimore after the famous bombardment of Fort McHenry. The British land, they march on D.C. The Marylanders get away. They don't have enough to resist this British force. And Washington, D.C. is burned.

And Madison and his cabinet are made refugees. He doesn't have a seat of government for the rest of the war. The New England states are, openly withdrawing from federal control at this stage. By late 1814, so this is only months after the burning of Washington,

the federalists convene a convention in Hartford, Connecticut. This is the famous Hartford Convention of the fall of 1814. They are chaired by George Cabot, who is one of Pickering's close associates. Pickering himself does not attend, but he's kind of the instigator of this. He's been contending for just this kind of convention for many years at this point.

Something really unexpected takes place when the Hartford Convention convenes. They get two unwelcome pieces of information. The Hartford Conventioneers, are looking at the disasters on the eastern seaboard in the war of 1812 with a mixture of horror and satisfaction. The worse that the war goes in the east, the better it is for the federalists and their ambition of separating from the union. They see the union as dominated by a cultural antagonist, the Republicans of the South. They see their interests curtailed. They are Hamiltonian in conviction. They believe in a broad construction of the Constitution.

But they've also drawn back into states' rights thinking, which is very important. Now, you've got to remember this is the same generation that saw the ratification of the Constitution. They know something about what they thought their state was getting into, of what they thought the reserve powers of the states were. And these are also states where anti-federalist sentiment was not unknown. There was a plurality of support for the Constitution in Massachusetts, but Massachusetts was also the home of famous anti-federalists, Sam Adams, and John Hancock, which shouldn't be forgotten. These were men who were skeptical of the Constitution and advocated for securities for reserve powers for the states. You remember, Rhode Island actually rejected the Constitution the first time around. And ironically, for the Republicans, they didn't do it in a convention.

They did it with a direct Democratic vote, which was what the Jeffersonian Republicans liked better and said it was more credible. They wanted more regular plebiscites on things and greater proportion of representation and Congress and things like that. So this opportunity for them at Hartford is extremely interesting, and they get two bits of information that greatly dismay them. The first is that Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams have negotiated peace with the British at Ghent. The Napoleonic Wars are over.

And there is no more reason for the British impressment and conflict with our maritime trade. So the British ministers sign a peace treaty, which is basically status quo antebellum. That is the way that things were before the war began. This is good. the British are not interested in holding anything that they had taken in the Americas. They occupy Long Island for a time. They invade a very sparsely populated area of Maine. They invade in the Chesapeake, of course, they burn D.C.

None of these places do they intend on staying. They are not interested in acquiring territory or carving up the union. by invading it. These are just like punitive measures as they understand it. The British have sent a large force to New Orleans. Now, this, the federalists know about when they go to Hartford. They anticipate yet another military disaster. they expect and they actually really frankly wish the British would take Louisiana

and that it wouldn't be a part of the American Union. But just the same, they have no confidence in the disasters they attribute to the Republicans, the demise of the Bank of the United States, the repudiation of several of the Hamiltonian politics, policies, what they see is the attack on the judiciary. They don't want to be in the union. This is their position. They go to Hartford. At Hartford, they are anticipating a victory for the Brits at New Orleans. And among other things, they report, quote, if the union be destined to dissolution by reason of the multiplied abuses of bad administration, it should, if possible,

be the work of peaceable times and deliberate consent. Whenever it shall appear that the causes are radical and permanent, a separation by equitable agreement will be preferable to an alliance by constraint among nominal friends but real enemies. This is how they speak of the federal government of their time, that it claims to represent them. They claim to be friendly, those Virginia statesmen. There actually are real enemies. Well, then the federalists get the second bit of unwelcome news,

that Andrew Jackson has won the Battle of New Orleans, and it wasn't narrow either. He overwhelmingly defeats the British. Inflicting over 2,000 casualties, he loses five dead or something. It's extremely small casualty list. This greatly discredits the Federalists. They were expecting at least the British would prevail at New Orleans. Now they look almost treasonous. And ironically, this is how the Republicans characterize them afterwards.

And say the federalists were trying to backstab us at the cusp of an equitable peace and a great military victory. And the end of the war and the end of the embargo with the war takes away the main causes of the federalist's convention. and secession ambitions. It would be akin to the Continental Congress meeting to vote on the Declaration of Independence and a courier from King George showing up assenting to many of their demands on the spot. Their declaration of independence would be seen as utterly discredited. Like they were willing to risk war? when the king was actually amenable to their demands,

the king would have short-circuited the whole thing if he had made major concessions at that point. Of course, here, it's not the federal government that's making concessions to New England. It's the end of the war and a great American victory at New Orleans that really diffuses all of the federalist reasons for what they say they're doing.

So the Federalist Convention at Hartford dissolves, they go home and the Federalist Party collapses in the wake of this. Federalists are interpreted through the radical actions of this faction. People like John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster have distanced themselves from the Hartford faction. they do not want to have any part of that. John Quincy Adams is actually in Congress at the time. He is a federalist, but Adams is excoriating the Hartford conventioneers, that wing of his party. Now, it could have gone either way, really. No one knows beforehand how things are going to turn out.

It could have been that New Orleans was a disaster. It could have been that the British were demanding concessions at Ghent. and not status quo antebellum. In fact, the British didn't want anything from the Americans. They thought of this as a very minor affair and embarrassing for the Americans and really much more in their interest to reopen trade with the Americans. And the Americans were whooped militarily on the East Coast, where the vast majority of Americans lived.

They didn't have any credible success. they were actually dealing with serious problems of unity with New England. The New England states just blowing off orders, refusing to send the militia out of the region and so on. So it could have gone very differently. And it was, you might say, bad fortune for the federalists here, that the whole thing went so radically against them. when they could have bet on one or the other plausibly at this stage, we can see their thought processes, and they were not unreasonable in their expectations. But they were extremely embarrassed by the results on both fronts, the treaty and the victory at New Orleans. So the result is that federalists that had disavowed this publicly, they retain their status.

They become a different kind of Republican. We go to a new period, a one-party period during the James Monroe administration following Madison. We call it the era of good feelings. And it is a peculiar stage in our history. It's the end of our first party system, which saw the Democratic Republicans, which is Jefferson's colleagues, and the Federalist Party. So the Federalist Party implodes. In a couple of years, federalists are not even elected on a local level, and the party organization ceases to exist. One very interesting commentator on this, the great commentator on this, is Henry Adams,

one of the greatest of American historians who wrote a huge history of the Jefferson and Madison administrations. It's something like nine volumes in the original. The Library of America has an edition out that has reduced. it in size, I believe they might have made it four volumes or something. But Henry Adams concluded that the Federalist became a sectional party. They became associated with a certain section of the Union, and they had a very negative reaction to the expansion of the Union. These characteristics doomed the Federalist Party to a regional character.

and ultimately to the collapse of the party. So they start out as nationalist with Hamilton really coming up with their big ideas. Once they're out of power, they are reduced to regionalism and become most strongly associated with regionalism. And then their discreditable stand, which I like them for. I like leaders that stick up for the legitimate interests of their people. And New England was being overlooked at this stage. The decision to go to war in 1812, for instance, was a very bad choice. We were not at all prepared to fight for it.

The Republicans, because of their priors, they believed that an all-volunteer militia would be sufficient, not just to defend our own borders, but also to conquer Canada. They were wrong. The militia was not well organized. and the militia was not available for service very far outside of their home states. And this was true in several regions of the country during the war. Famously, just as an example of this, Andrew Jackson has a ton of problems with the militia in Alabama during the Creek War. He has to stand up to mutinies among his militia,

several times. Now, strangely, this does not, this does not cause Jackson to question the policy of using the militia as national defense. He is always in favor of that in his whole career. He thinks they make the best soldiers. But it's really the arrival of regular army units in the end of the Creek War that cinches it for Jackson. When he fights at Horseshoe Bend, the great climactic battle of the Creek War, Jackson has just received regiments of regular infantry, including one officer Sam Houston, who fights very gallantly at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, destroying the sacred center, the ceremonial village of Chief Red Eagle. but it was the infantry that carried the day there.

We can look at the militia's situation in Maryland in the Washington campaign as another example. It's only the militia that are actually on the spot in their home state that end up doing most of the fighting. And militia that's summoned from nearby states is either very tardy showing up or refused to go. So the Republican stance about militia was wrong. The Republicans not investing in a Navy adequately is also short-sighted. The Americans do have a few frigates. I believe we have six. We have some other minorships at this stage as well.

They do contend very gallantly on the high seas against the British. They have a number of victories. the USS Constitution, for instance, old iron sides. This is a very noble and gallant ship with a really excellent service. They go into conflict with several British ships on the high seas and carry the day and the battles. We have the remarkable career of Oliver Hazard Perry on Lake Erie. He builds his own fleet there. He prevails against a fleet of superior numbers and strength at Put-in Bay off of Ohio, and he wins. He famously sends the message to William Henry Harrison. We have met the enemy, and they are ours. He actually captures the British fleet on Lake Erie, and this facilitates

a limited invasion of Ontario and the death of Tacumsa. But the militia is not the backbone of our national security here, contrary to the idealism of the Republicans. The federalists say we should have made some investment in national defense. The federalists say we should use resources in time to build more adequate coastal defenses. Those were certainly needed. We should build up a Navy. New England has the resources. New England has the know-how.

They should do this. And that would have been a good compromise because they had been disproportionately affected by the embargo. The Republicans do not have the political wisdom to bring in the New England federalists for these pressing security needs. And they should have. President James Monroe has the good sense to do both, and he has a mandate to do both. In the era of good feelings where we see the collapse of the Federalist Party, James Monroe starts building a larger Navy using New England shipyards and sailors. He also starts building the third system of forts, the big new master-planned coastal defense network.

built, well, the construction begins right after the war of 1812. This includes Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fortress Monroe at Newport News in Virginia, Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island, Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, and great many others. The most notable forts, the most famous forts in the country are these third system forts. This is a massive building campaign. This is the biggest outlay for the military defense until the Civil War. And they're using New England brick and New England granite for these forts. They're actually patronizing New England. And that was political wisdom because they were bringing in the disaffected sectional element.

They felt alienated from the union. They felt like they were being maliciously treated by people that did, if they understood them, they were being malicious. If they did not understand them, they were dangerous to be in association with because they were so cavalier with the necessary basic economics and political interests of. of the New England states. I don't think that Thomas Jefferson really understood New England's legitimate political concerns during his administration.

I don't think that he meant to offend New England as much as he did. Pickering characterizes Jefferson as malicious that he's deliberately trying to hurt us and embarrass us. I don't think that that was true. I think Pickering is

blowing things a bit out of proportion, but we can understand as well why Pickering thought the way that he did. It was a really bad time for New England, and New England was feeling so ignored, so put upon by the

Republicans, that they were driven to this scheme of secession. But I like the federalists for their advocacy for their people. And as they understood it, using the reserve powers of the states to contend for their people's interests, even to the point of bringing up a split in the union. So that's my story for tonight. you can see how important this is for the remainder of our tale of the sectional divide between the north and the south. In the decades that follow the drama of the collapse of the anti or of the federalist party, the Southerners bring up these matters and talk about the tradition of

state sovereignty, of state interposition. They bring up the embargo. They bring up the Hartford Convention. They bring up smuggling during the War of 1812. They bring up the federalist's contention for the reserved powers of the states. And it's the most important element in this argument that this idea of federalism, federalism in the sense that the states do have reserved powers and acclaim to sovereign power that is very instrumental in the references and rhetoric of the coming conflicts between the North and the South. Ironically, we find the northern factions do not have so long of a memory on these matters, or alternately that the southerners have a more historical frame of reference. But that is my story. It's considering the theme, just seeing how the tensions, how early,

they presented themselves. And, you know, in many cases, not only between the north and the south, but between, you know, fractions in the north and the south, it's a wonder it's a wonder it made it's 1861. It really is. It's a really interesting drama. And this is something that, once again, Herbert Agar goes into a lot of detail about, It really is an unlikely political federation.

And when we look back to 1794, we have this really interesting private conversation between John Taylor of Caroline and Rufus King about the future of the union. And Rufus King is saying we need to split this thing up. It's not going to work. we should do it politically before it becomes violent because Rufus King anticipated this. He anticipated unpleasant disunion, unpleasant modes of splitting up the union of the states. So it comes to a head soon after that. We see it in 1803, 1804 with the Louisiana Purchase. and gets diffused by the victory in 1812. But these essential differences,

especially the construction of the Constitution, are very important. And obviously, we're going to talk about lots of other differences in the near term. I'm putting together information about cultural differences and ethnic differences. between the North and the South. We'll have a whole episode on that in the near future.

But we'll document all the different ways that the North and the South found themselves antagonistic to one another. It's not just these constitutional matters, though this is an occasion for serious disagreement. So there are two, there are really two big interpretations about how the union would work with such big differences between regions or between individual states. There is not to confuse things, but this is the political term used to describe this. This is not a specific historical reference.

The federalist solution. So federalism is supposed to be greater state autonomy. All right, that's what federalism is supposed to mean in political science. I've talked about the federalists so much in this stream. Let's not confuse federalism with the federalist party. This is what they claimed they stood for. And we see, with the Hartford Convention, that really did have teeth. We should take them seriously when they were claiming that.

The anti-federalists, in spite of their name, are more federalists, more emphasizing state sovereignty than the federalists were. And they actually object to the federalists calling themselves federalists. When they say, no, they actually like central government more. They want to accumulate more central power. So you either unite all these different political communities with more state and local communities with more state and law. local autonomy, or you unite them through overwhelming central power by a strong union, by a national policy, by a strong central government. So you either have to tighten your hold on them to keep them from escaping or asserting

their own essential differences, or you let them do more on their own. if you want to keep a union. Like there has to be some balance between those two. You have to have a union government that does some things, and you have to have the state governments that are doing other things. But this could all spin out of control in either direction. So it's a very precarious balance. And we even see Timothy Pickering saying that very thing.

He's saying, we need to assert our own regional priorities and regain our place in the political balance. Those are the words he uses to describe their situation. And that is the delicacy of the American Union. All right. Mr. Bagby, tell people where they can find your work, support your work. work. Yes, indeed. You can find me at www.Talmenbooks.com. I just released a book about the Creek War in Alabama. It's called Red Eagle and the Wars of the Creek Indians. That is a very interesting biography. It has much

do with Jackson in Alabama. I also have another great title that I was referencing material from this evening, Tacomsa and the Quest. No, no, let's see. I forget the subtitle. It's a book about Tacoma, A biography of Tacoma, by Eggleston. And those are both available on Tallmanbooks.com. Thank you.

And until the next time. Thank you very much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Yenos show. George Bagby is back and we are going to continue our look at the road to America's Civil War. How are you doing tonight, Mr. Bagby? I'm doing great. I had a long conversation with a CIA agent. Coincidentally, tonight, a CIA agent who had never heard of Iran Contra.

You can believe it. That really just goes to show how, just how inept the government is at this point. I get that impression very often. And that that's maybe the most compelling argument against the very elaborate conspiracy ideas we have about what the government does. That there are people don't know the first thing about it. So you either have to have confidence there's a higher level of control or that they just simply couldn't pull it off. And that's a curious split. I'm more inclined with the former.

I think that there must be a higher level of control. I think there's just too much evidence that they've had their hands in all sorts of things. But at the end of my conversation, the CIA agent offered to recruit me. And I was very sweet about it. And she was very nice person. And we had had a nice dinner and so on. And I said, I'm sorry, but I'm not that kind of patriot. She said, but they want your kind of patriot.

I said, I'm sure you do, but that's not for me. It is really so refreshing. I couldn't possibly give up going into American history and talking about things where things really made so much more sense. and that's my that's my forte that's what I've dedicated myself to and with that in mind

tonight we're going to zoom out a bit we're going to talk about the growth of sectionalism between the north and the south so we're departing from our narrative though I hope to back

go back into the narrative at the end of tonight's show and talk about the Missouri compromise, but we need to talk about the division between the north and the south. And this is something long cultivated in our history. It dates back to colonial times, and this is something well covered in our circles. The different groups of English settlers, mostly English, some Scottish and such, who came to colonial North America and what their divisions were. So we'll start out with cultural divisions, particularly religious divisions.

many of this or much of this has been gone over elsewhere and yet it deserves touching on just for the sake of completing our survey so the northern colonies Pennsylvania and the New England colonies were particularly radical Protestants and there is a certain nobility to this, and I think that we both have an appreciation for the legacy of Oliver Cromwell and him, you know, clearing out the corrupt elites in England and so on. but we should go in a bit to the distinctive characteristics of the two major sects in the north. So in Pennsylvania, we have the Quakers, and our associate, Mr. Dutton, our English friend, has recently published a book about the Quakers. I wonder if he was, inspired by Curtis Jarvin's assertion that the Quakerism is the unofficial religion of the West today. Something Yarvin wrote about way back in unqualified reservations days when he was first starting his

literary career. A really compelling assertion that I think is quite convincing. Many things that the Quakers believe are just normal kinds of assertions that people make about religious matters these days. The Quakers believed in the doctrine of the inner light. They believed that every individual had a direct connection to God. They disavowed religious leadership. They disavowed religious authority. they disavowed traditional Christian doctrine. They are not Trinitarian, for instance.

They discount miracles. They disavow the corruption of sin in human nature, tending to attribute evil to experience. So they, for instance, they thought that their children were spiritual purity and would even, they were famous for putting women in the pulpit to preach on street corners and in the religious services. They were some of the first to do such things, kind of early feminists in that sense, believing in, in, ideals of equality and so on, famously dissenters about slavery to the point where they would boycott goods that were related to slavery, but even calling on children to lead prayer and even hold forth in their religious services and such. So they're radically egalitarian,

even at this very early stage of American history, very individualist in that they believed that God would enlighten individual believers and give them special insights into divine revelation and so on. Because of this, it was very difficult to pin them down on any dogmatic religious assertions. They believed in a radical kind of simplicity. They had sumptuary laws and such. Laws prohibiting outward displays of wealth, though they were very prosperous. They had a slogan. They talked about things being needless, like the adornment of houses, the adornment of clothing.

connected with their sumptuary laws and such. They had a doctrine of universal human brotherhood. And also pacifism, radical pacifism. Famously, they disavowed violence of all sorts. They didn't believe that it was even legitimate to punish criminals with violence or excessive intervention. They were great proponents of the penitentiary as a reform for criminal justice, which of course now we all kind of take for granted, more or less,

that that's what you do with felons. You lock them in a room and tell them, now you just think about what you've done. Their religious worship is also very peculiar. They disavow symbols. and ritual virtually of all sorts. They were called Quakers because initially they were known for very expressive religious worship that they would shiver and shake in religious worship.

So they had a kind of charismatic approach by our standards. But then they became quietist later on. And so the Quaker meeting, this is a curious, church construction where they put the women on one side and the men on the other, and there was no pulpit, there was no altar, because there was no order of service, there was no ritual that they came together to do, and anyone in the meeting that felt compelled could get up and speak. So they had no set leadership, they had no clergy, they had no ordination, so they are quite radical by Christian standards

and that they're disavowing basically everything that Christians have ever done in public worship and also in dogmatic teaching. More or less, they're disavowing these things. And they think that every individual has his own way to God, which should sound familiar to us. That's more or less the common perception of what religion amounts to in the West today. So they are one species of radical.

Famously, they didn't get along with any other Christian sectarians in America at the time. The Puritans are the other force, and they are much more formidable for many reasons. They're very intellectual. They are Calvinist by tradition. They're Trinitarian. They practice common Christian ordinances, though they wouldn't call them sacraments. They are iconoclastic to a remarkable degree. They don't recognize the church calendar.

They don't celebrate religious holidays. notably they they like the Old Testament primarily. So some have related them to the Judaizers of our own day, that they were very interested in the stories of the Old Testament, the covenant with the Hebrews in the Old Testament, and so on. they like to give their children lots of Old Testament names, but also they would pick phrases out of the Bible and name their children according to phrases. So they would name their children things like forsake fornication. And they would name their children things like kill sin. And if God had or if Christ had not died for thy sin, or if Christ had not died for thy sin, sins that what's been damned, that was a given name in a Puritan family. They're related to the pilgrims, the famous Plymouth Brethren.

They eventually combine. Of course, the pilgrims who came on the Mayflower, they do predate the Puritans in Massachusetts, but they are a much less important group. But just as an example, William Brewster of Plymouth in Massachusetts, he named his sons love and wrestling. These are not at all normal given names for Englishmen. And it was a sign of their radical separation from their heritage, from their religious heritage. They were of the opinion that the Church of England was irreparably corrupted through its association with the Catholic Church. So they were very radical reformers, and they highly emphasized the literary interpretation of Scripture.

They were very intellectual in their focus. They were very famous for extremely long sermons in their churches, very intellectual orientation, and less emphasis on the sacramental nature of communal worship. They disavowed music, for instance. They ditched Gregorian notation, which is the origin of our musical scales, because that was too Catholic. And instead they relied on what they called wrote singing. So they did sing in their churches, but not according to musical scales. Instead, they encouraged everyone to sing to their own liking, which resulted in this cacophonous worship service that outsiders found quite remarkable and striking and kind of appalling as well.

But they set up our earliest institutions of higher learning to train the clergy. They trained them in the literary criticism of the Bible. They required everyone that went into Harvard or Yale to read Greek and Latin as their admission exam. And the focus of those schools was to train the clergymen for what became the congregational church. And so their intellectual tradition is one of their great contributions to American culture. They emphasized total depravity, very unlike the Quakers. They believed that man's reason was utterly depraved and that we needed divine intervention in order to see what was true. This corresponds to their Calvinism, of course.

they found the New England colonies. All of them have connections to this diaspora. And they call New England a shining city on a hill that will be an example to the whole world. That they're going to build culture correctly. They're going to do it differently. They're setting themselves apart from England. and they want to distinguish themselves from the culture of the old country and the religion of the old country, the Church of England, though Protestant, not nearly Protestant enough to their taste. So they are defined by cultural innovation, by a uncomfortable recognition of what they see to be the burdens of their ancestral inheritance.

They're recognizing problems there and trying to distinguish themselves from it. Now, as this progresses into the early republic, the congregational church falls into decay. They were formerly very strict Calvinists and Orthodox Christians in the sense that they believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the church ordinances, baptism, and the Lord's Table, and such things. They have a very strict membership policy in their churches, reliant on personal experience of divine intervention in life. But they experience a major religious decline, and this is partly because of the emphasis on literary criticism. So in the schools that train their clergy, the students are encouraged, well, they're, you know, informed, you know, the tradition is faulty. You cannot believe the church

fathers, the people who have historically interpreted the Bible, they got it all wrong, right? Because that was Catholicism. So we must very carefully interpret a while. some lines, but in practice what this meant was the growth of Unitarianism. So there is this conflict between the intelligentsia in New England and the clergy in New England as time progresses. So you get the growth of the Unitarians and this becomes the religion of the most prominent citizens of New England, from John Adams to John Quincy Adams to later figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson. They're all Unitarians. And the congregational church becomes much more progressive over time, much less adherent to the doctrine of the Trinity and traditional strict Calvinism and the like.

So that's interesting to keep in mind. We're going to return to that theme of religion. innovation later, which is largely a northern phenomenon. It's not that the South is not affected by this. It is to some degree, but it takes a very different form in the South. So the Southerners, the Southern diaspora from colonial days, is made of very different stock. We have a large number of the Scotch-Irish, which are primarily Scottish-ish, by, ancestry. They are called into the mountains of Pennsylvania by the Quakers, originally, because the Quakers are unwilling to fight, even when it means defending their own families from an Indian massacre. So they call in the Scotch Irish, who are of a different stock and

different belief, and they believe that there is such a thing as legitimate violence, and they are the buffer for the frontier. The Scotch Irish are fiercely independent people. They are Presbyterian. So they are a different variety of Calvinist. They're not quite so iconoclastic, though historically we would relate them to iconoclasts. They do not have images.

They do display the cross. They do celebrate Christmas. unlike the Puritans of Massachusetts. But they go out into Appalachia and they spread through the Appalachian South. Some of them go north and end up in Vermont and such places. But most of these people go south and their folk culture is strongly related to southern culture. So they've kind of followed the Appalachians down into Tennessee. North Carolina and such.

They are very independent people. They want to be left alone. They're historically very resistant to outside regulation. Don't like cities as a rule. They are maligned for being a backwards people. This is not an accurate reflection of their real achievements. They are Protestants. They are believers.

in the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the source of their faith and their connection to God. Therefore, they highly prize literacy. And at the time of American independence, the Scotch Irish as a specific people, are more literate than are the regular peasant people, the regular farming folk of England, or any Catholic country.

And it's because of this specific religious belief that highly prizes literacy. So they're doing this on their own. They aren't living in towns or villages. They frequently don't even set up places of worship until some later period. They kind of pioneer these backward, these backwark. mountain areas and such and they are settled rather far apart from one another so it's kind of hard to get them together for things but they do eventually build churches and you drive through Appalachia today and you can see kind of how that developed over time you'll

now find towns and such but you'll you'll frequently find churches that just stand alone in mountainous areas. And that reflects the Scotch Irish tradition where they would build a church and then they would go to the church, often from long distances, in order to have communal worship together. So this was something that develops over time. But they are a famous instance of that tradition of rugged individualism. They are very rooted to their places. They are very rooted to their places where they settle, though it is often very poor for farming. And they have a more affirmative sort of approach to their heritage. And this is what I want to emphasize here.

The element of the cavaliers in Virginia are another very strong example of this. These are people that are collectively far more comfortable with their heritage. The cavaliers of Virginia are primarily Episcopal or Church of England. They want to transplant English culture in the Americas. They like their heritage. They are more affirming of their heritage. Now, this manifests itself in many ways, in contrast, we can look at the Quakers and Puritans, for example. We talked about how the Puritans had jettisoned the musical tradition, the Gregorian notation, which is the origin of our musical scales, the way that we document music so we can reproduce it.

That was invented by Pope Gregory the Great. And it was disavowed by the Puritans because it had this very notable Catholic origin. The cavaliers in Virginia, they preserve this. They like harmonious musical production. And so their church worship is very different. The cavaliers, they display the cross. They like things like stained glass, so certain kinds of representation are for them permissible. They're hardly high church Anglican people.

But nevertheless, they are members of the Church of England, and they aren't out to purify it. They are not of the belief that it is very corrupt as of its origins and everything. They're more affirming of it. They like English culture. In the English Civil War, the Puritans, with their champion Oliver Cromwell, they abolish the monarchy in England. They cut off the head of King Charles. They shut down the theaters. They destroy stained glass windows, wherever they find them.

They haul out the icons out of the medieval churches and destroy them. They even attack the relics that were still extant in England in Reformation times. The Church of England did not destroy all of these relics. The Puritans went out and destroyed great many of these religious relics, the graves of saints in England, such as Saint Bede. of Yarrow, they utterly obliterate his relics and destroy his tomb. At the same time, the cavaliers in Virginia with their governor, Berkeley, or Berkeley, they are adherents of the king's cause in the English Civil War.

So while the Puritans in Massachusetts celebrate the ascension of Oliver Cromwell, the Cavaliers in Virginia are calling the Puritans regicides, who have attacked the basis of their culture and so on. Governor Barclay invites the defeated faction in the English Civil War, the Cavaliers, to Virginia. And a great many of them come and settle in Virginia. And these are some of the famous families of Virginia. The Randolphs, the Washington's, the Tollivers, there are great many famous names that are prominent in the history of Virginia.

Those families were partisans in the English Civil War, and they lost. and so they came to Virginia. And this has been a symbol of the Commonwealth of Virginia ever since. You can go to UVA, for instance, and their mascot, or the name of their sports team, they're the Cavaliers. And this is a reference to the English Civil War. So we see here in the early roots of American history the prominence of English themes and English conflicts. they figure large in American history, and a great many historians have reflected on this that the American Civil War is a kind of rehash of English conflicts in previous centuries,

which might strike us as a bit far-fetched, But when we look at the principal conflicts in American history and the diasporas that came out of colonial British America, we can make some of these connections. Now, this is not to say that these were static institutions, these religious cultures in these sections. I've already mentioned the deterioration of the Puritan confession. In Virginia, as an example, and this is comparable, the Episcopal established culture in Virginia had its own dissenters, and they were largely the Baptists and the Methodists. And this corresponds to the back country of Virginia,

where centers of religious authority were much more far spread, and people were far more reliant on their own resources, rather like the Scotch Irish were up in the mountains. So this gives rise to a predominant low church Protestantism in the South, which is still the most extant religious, Protestant tradition in the American South today. The Baptist churches, there are great many kinds of Baptist churches, they predominate in population by the time of independence. There are many more Baptists and Methodists in Virginia than there are Episcopalians,

though the establishment remains largely Episcopalian, as George Washington was and and so on. It was the typical religious adherence of southern elites. Another very important difference is industry. So the north has a remarkably different climate than the south. The north is very rocky. It's extremely difficult to farm. And if you go through old settled areas of New England, you will see rock. walls, just going out in all directions that marked out the farms of the early settlers. They would hit these rocks in their fields, and they would haul them out, and they would build walls and boundaries between their farms. And this was rather a never-ending process.

They had a very short growing season, and they had less arable land than did. the more semi-tropical south. They have long winters. In the winters, they would devote themselves to other kinds of productive activities. So very early on, this was a center for artisan activities of all sorts. The making of tools, the making of clothes,

and so on. even before New England was settled, John Smith, who has a famous career in Virginia, in Jamestown, John Smith voyaged along the coasts of New England and promoted New England for settlement, saying that the fall line, which is very close to the shore in New England, would be an ideal place to build all manner of mills. And of course, this was what happened in New England. They built mills all over the place, and it became a major center early in our history

for things like textiles. They would import southern commodities like flax and cotton, also wool from further inland in New England, where there was a large wool industry, in places like New Hampshire and Vermont and upstate New York. And they would weave these into fabrics. And these mostly served the domestic market. And this was the origin of many of the early mill towns in New England.

They got their start with textiles. They invested in industry. They invested in shipbuilding. They invested in sailing in merchant trade and also in finance. So a major part of the development of the North was the early establishment of banks and the first American stock exchange in Philadelphia, which was something that the Quakers were particularly interested in. The Quakers were known to be financial whizzes and speculators. and Philadelphia was our first banking center and also our first stock exchange, later displaced by New York, of course.

Now, the South was from its earliest times interested in agriculture. After the Jamestown settlers, the adventurers from earliest American English settlement, they discovered there was no gold lying around, nor were there pearls readily available. John Rolf cultivated the first commercial crop of tobacco in Virginia. He had brought it from the Caribbean. And this became the first great cash crop of the South. And the use of tobacco is rapidly increasing in the old world. and it becomes a very lucrative investment.

So this brings a lot of people to Virginia. It makes Virginia a profitable place to go and settle. Later on, you have the development of long fiber cottons, cotton crops, on the sea islands in South Carolina and Georgia. Now, this was a special crop. Later on, it expanded. ends inland, but for a good portion of our early history, it's something confined to the sea islands, places like Jekyll Island and Hilton Head Island off of Georgia and South Carolina, they are growing lots of cotton out there, and they're populated and this is bringing people

into the area. That particular variety of cotton only grew in that, that, that, specific climate. There were other varieties of cotton, short fiber cottons that you could make clothing out of and the rest, and it had some value. But if you understand, like, the short fibers, you make a shirt out of short fiber cotton, it's not going to withstand much washing, right? It's going to come unraveled because the fibers, the natural fibers of the cotton are just too short. So the long fiber cotton was much more valuable. But the South was, as we have said before, very agrarian in its focus. It was a very rural population broadly dispersed over the land, far more interested in land and commodities as the basis of their lives. And the cash crops were how they made money,

but they're doing lots of other things there too. So they're raising, They're breeding horses. They're growing lots of vegetables for their own consumption. They're cultivating other crops like flax, for instance, so they can make linen clothes for themselves. It's not a major export crop, but they are growing flax and such. It is more of a lifestyle. They are less connected to business, business. and the selling of commodities is something they typically only do once a year,

when they take their cash crops to market, and the vast majority of Southerners, even by the time of the Civil War, the vast majority of Southerners do not live in towns or cities. The South does not have big cities. The great exception is New Orleans, which is by far the largest city in the South at the time of the Civil War. but New Orleans is exceptional for so very many reasons. So they have a kind of antagonism to industry and also to the merchant class,

as we've previously discussed in relation to John Taylor of Caroline and his agrarian philosophy. Now, something that we have not yet mentioned is the institution of slavery, which is what we initially think of when we think of the sectional divide. Now, slavery is a very important subject, and we will have far more to say of it. But for the moment, let's talk about the institution of slavery and how it develops in British America. In 1776, all 13 American colonies had legal slavery. This was far more prominent in agricultural regions than it was in New England, though every single New England state had legal slavery in 1776.

The very first New England state to outlaw state, slavery was the Vermont Republic, which never had much of a presence of slavery. I believe there were all of six slaves in the region of Vermont in 1777 when Vermont declared its independence. Vermont has a remarkable history. Vermont is my favorite New England state. I'm rather partial to it. I spent a little time there right after college. Between 77 and 1791, Vermont was an independent republic, landlocked, of course, completely agrarian, as modern-day Vermont remains rather agrarian, kind of outstanding among the states today. It's a state full of the most picturesque farms you've ever seen.

And it is, it is extremely beautiful. If you haven't been to Vermont, I highly recommended. But in 77, they declared the total abolition of slavery with no indenture or apprentices. So this, this was a remarkable feature in the New England area. And it was not a major impact. on the people that actually lived there, because there were hardly any indentured servants and virtually no slaves in the region.

And those that did have such investments were advised to leave. So this is a remarkable thing. Massachusetts started a process of gradual emancipation in 1776. So this was not a decree, all slaves are liberated. And this also was not a really big reform in Massachusetts. Most of the slaves in Massachusetts were domestics. They served in households. But in 1776, Massachusetts declared a gradual emancipation. And the way that this worked was they would set a future date at which all slaves born after that date would be liberated at a certain age. So just as an example, a little later, the state of New York declares gradual emancipation in 1799.

so this is sometime later. The state of New York, which was the biggest gradual emancipation program, they actually set aside money for this and such. They were compensating people for the emancipation. They declared that after July 4th of 1799, all slaves born in the territory of New York would be manumitted

the men freed at the age of 28, the women freed at the age of 25. Those born before July 4, 1799, would remain slaves. So this is what gradual emancipation looks like. In effect, what happened in New York was that people that owned slaves sold them southwards. Now this this becomes an issue obviously with the ratification of the Constitution, the debates about the Constitution. So I'll mention that in passing here. The Philadelphia Constitution is debated there in the 1780s in Philadelphia and then taken to the states.

There wasn't as much debate about these points in the states, but the Constitution does recognize the institution of slavery. It never uses the word slavery, but it does recognize it legally. The Philadelphia Convention famously decided that the southern states would be apportioned representation for Congress by a census and also by counting the slaves in the southern states for three-fifths credit for representation. Now, this is not really what people think it was. people today, they look at that and they say, oh, they only looked at slaves as three-fifths the value of a full citizen and this is white supremacy and so on.

This is not at all what they were talking about. The Southerners wanted full representation for the slave population. the northerners didn't want representation for the slave population because they were not citizens. Why should they have representation? And that's a very interesting contrast. It's not at all what modern people think this debate was about or what this clause implied. So Southerners argued that slaves were members of households like women and children and the the otherwise indisposed. You know, the elderly dementia patient is a member of the household.

And though they do not have a say in politics, they are represented by the head of the household, which is, by the way, a very Republican idea. Republicans believe that people can be represented by a figure in their vicinity. We elect politicians that are supposedly representing our interests and so on. They believe that the authority of the individual can be delegated to a representative and that the family is a form of this. And we don't take votes among the children about what to do, what job to take, where to move, what to eat for dinner.

The parents decide this. And the man is the head of the household. We are talking of an age after all in which there is no women's suffrage. The man has the final responsibility for his family unit and all those dependent on him, including the slaves. So the southern position is that the slaves are represented by their masters, and they constitute a population of their communities. So they need representation. There are more people there.

So this is a compromise agreed on for that end. Also, the Constitution provides that in 1808, Congress may regulate the slave trade or end it. Now, this is also a very interesting position because in Philadelphia for the debate about the Constitution, what exactly Constitution would contain, the argument was mostly between the maritime interests plus the Deep South, such as South Carolina and Georgia, who were very interested. in keeping the slave trade open. Because although New England states were abolishing slavery by this time, they were still very much invested in transporting the slaves. And they did not want to end that activity.

It was a very profitable trade for them. The Deep South, South Carolina and Georgia mainly in the Constitutional Convention, were adamant to keep the slave trade open as well. It was the middle states. It was New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and so on that were arguing to end the slave trade early to give Congress authority to end it, in fact. So the compromise was to postpone that for some time, for a couple decades, till 1808. when Congress actually did ban the international slave trade. The last element in the Constitution is fugitive slaves.

So the Constitution provides that the slaves will be, if they run away to a state that has outlawed slavery or whatever, that the states will cooperate in returning fugitives from labor. So that is yet another compromise between the areas that were in the process of abolishing slavery in the areas that still had very large slave populations. So the southern experience of slavery is quite distinct from that of the north where they never had a sizable cash crop economy. they had small farms mostly for local consumption of food, and they had a more industrial sort of focus for their economy. In the South, cash crops predominate the major element of the economy and obviously the major element of American exports.

Just as an example, in 1860, cotton from the southern states was the largest and most valuable of all American exports. And also the primary source of money coming into the economy because it was such a huge export. It dwarfs all industrial exports at this stage. There's a huge labor demand in the South from colonial days. because these crops are very labor intensive. They don't have machinery to plant and harvest these crops. They need hands on the field to do all of it.

Now, this is also seasonal, right? There are two periods of time where there is a tremendous amount of manpower needed on the spot, and that is at planting and harvest. So they have a radically different rhythm of life and activity in these cash crop growing regions in the cotton and tobacco and sugar areas in the south where everyone is incredibly busy in the spring and in the fall. And the rest of the year, it is quite languid in comparison. So they are not nearly so busy while the crops are growing or in the winter when the land is just lying, waiting for the spring planting.

But you have to have an awful lot of hands available for those busy seasons. So this leads to really strange innovations to bring labor in. Initially, we have a large element of indentured labor, and these are mostly from the British Isles. They have a term of service and also a land grant once their term of service is done. And so this has the effect of settling the back country eventually. In the meantime, the indentured servants are more or less like slaves on the plantations. They do not have personal liberty. They may not make decisions for themselves.

They may not marry and start families while they're in their indenture. Remarkable in comparison because slaves typically were married and had families. It was one of the things that made slaves. in America quite different than slavery elsewhere. For an example in the Caribbean, the main import of slaves into the Caribbean, which is far, far larger than the amount of slaves brought in to the America, to North America proper to the United States.

In the Caribbean, most of the slaves imported were mail. They didn't even bring females in in large numbers. They also worked them far harder. There is not a downtime in the Caribbean. It's a tropical environment and they grow crops year-round. And most of those slaves did not reproduce. In the American colonies and what becomes the United States, the slaves not only reproduce, they reproduce at a high.

higher rate than the white population. The slaves also have comparable life expectancies to the white population, which is very interesting. And we know a lot about this. We have the federal census records, which is where we get this information from. So we have, just as an example of this, if you're wanting to read more about the southern agrarian culture and the, the nature of the cash crops and slavery, I recommend Francis Simkin's history of the South, which was published in 1947. So that's a standard resource for these things. We have the plantation system in the South, and this is a remarkable thing. It's very important because the plantation gentry, they disproportionately produce a great number of generals and statesmen in American history.

We can look at the record just of presidents, for instance, and we see a long procession of these men. Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Tyler, Taylor, Harrison. They are all Virginians by birth. They are all plantation gentry. They are all slaveholders. And we can go into that more. It's probably worth going into this more at a later point. owning a plantation and being the master of a community of slaves in addition to your own family obligations.

They frequently had their extended family there on the plantation with them, including, you know, the orphaned cousin, the deadbeat cousin, the aged great-grandmother, and so on. They would all populate these estates. and this was just a commonplace of the time. But the head of the household, the plantation owner, he was accustomed to being the executive. Not only was he wealthy, given his social station, not only was he expected because of his station

and because of his record of responsibility and management, it was expected to lead men into battle, and he was well fitted for that, being, you know, coming from his social standing and having his experience. But he was the executive of justice on his state. When there was crime, he was the man that all matters were brought to. and this was a minority in the South. There is a common impression that the South was filled with these plantations, that this was the predominant way of life. They were, in fact, the wealthiest people in America. And they were a distinct minority, though a very important one, as we see.

They are all over the place in politics up until the Civil War. And all over the place in the Army. They made very good executives from this particular training. They were expected to lead in battle. All of the matters that arose from their estate would be brought to them. Rather like King Solomon's subjects come to his. him with all of their disputes and he has to arbitrate. So they weren't calling the police when there was a misdemeanor or a felony.

They were instead going to the head of the household who had the ultimate authority there. So if there was an assault, a wounding, a murder, an adultery, this would be brought to the head of the household and he had to arbitrate these things. This made them well-fitted for executive action, which is precisely why we see this sort of man going into politics and doing such a good job of it. I mean, we can like or dislike these executives from this period and say, oh, well, you know, this man was a better leader than the other and so on. Just the fact they made it into that position was enough of a sign of evidence of their of their fluency with these matters they were trained executives and they were used to sitting in judgment of what was

right now this was also a time where you you don't have you don't involve the civil authorities with these local matters uh when these these uh felonies and misdemeanors take place on the plantations This is the origin of the famous systems of punishment that we see associated with the Annabellum South, with whippings, with rationing food, with confinement. That was a measure, though certainly not the most prominent, of branding. All of these, certainly the more outrageous ones to the modern mind, are associated with felonies. Right. So men get into a fight. One wounds another.

Say they're slaves. What is the punishment? Well, it might involve bread and water for a month and a severe whipping. There is a murder or a manslaughter. There is adultery. This might involve a brand. This might involve whipping. This might involve rations, strictures, confinement.

You aren't allowed to leave, you know, this area or so on. This is not the predominant experience, not any more than it is today. So maybe we should make an exception for today where we have such a large, number of malefactors that don't seem to be getting punishment or rehabilitation, for that matter. It was certainly a much more physical sort of interaction with all deal of wrongdoing. We are certainly more today more accustomed, if not oriented, towards the Quaker solution to these. which is to lock them in a cell and believe this spiritually refines them in some way. That was innovative at the time.

These are people of a distinctly more medieval mindset that believe in confronting evil with force and violence. These Southerners, they do believe in legitimate violence. So that is their brief anyway for these elements of slavery. The plantations, however, they do not dominate the southern economy. The small farmers predominate. And we'll talk about the distribution of slavery, the slave population and slave owners in just a moment. but the majority of the southern population does not own slaves,

and it is a significant majority. We're talking about 75% that have no holdings in slaves. They are small farmers. They are in contrast and frequently in conflict with the plantation class, the elites in the south, though they frequently do vote for these elites of various stripes, you know, from Henry Clay, the Whig, to Jefferson Davis, the Democrat, both of them being southern elites and large slave owners. They had very different political ideas, but nevertheless, they were the statesmen.

So the small farmers, what Frank Owlsley called the Plainfolk, he wrote a landmark study, a very important little book called Plain Folk of the Old South in 1949, where he is doing a major investigation with a tremendous amount of evidence about the size of the southern middle class, the non-send, slave-owning class, very important work. This is in contrast with an impression, still a very popular impression, from the likes of Olmstead. I'm trying to remember the guy's full name now. Do you remember Olmsted, the historian and landscape architect? What was his name? I don't remember what his first name was.

Well, I don't have a way to look it up right here. But anyway, Olmsted, famous for designing Central Park in New York. Also a prolific travel writer and kind of amateur historian. Frederick Law Olmsted. There we go. I was getting confused. We have Frank Lawrence Owsley and we have Fred. Frederick Law, Olmsted.

So we have the same initials for both of these gentlemen. And Owlsley is out for Olmstead's thesis. So Olmstead was an antebellum writer. He travels far and wide. He's really very valuable to learn about the old South. But Olmstead's thesis was that the South was made of rich planters and backwards, hopelessly illiterate, poor white track. And this was his impression in his wide travels through the South.

And he wrote a number of books about his travels, and they make very interesting reading. And I do recommend them. But his opinion of Southern culture was that there were two distinct classes in the South, outside of the slaves, of course, and that was the hopeless, poor white country trash and the aristocrat statesman planters. And what Owsley was doing was he was illustrating the huge southern middle class and ultimately illustrating that they could compete with the planters for resources, for land and so on.

The key for the southern middle class was the raising of hogs, which was a major cash commodity. All Southerners ate pork. It was very widespread food stuff. Salt pork and bacon were a major staple in the south and eaten all over the place. Really struck European traveling. to the south, they were just flabbergasted with the amount of animal proteins that

Southerners, of all descriptions, including the slaves, ate on a regular basis, which wasn't comparable to any description of people in Europe at the time. So the raising of hogs, which could not be done at scale. It had to be done on a small level, was, one of the ways that the southern small farmers, the plain folk, used to sustain themselves and also to compete very effectively for resources with those of great wealth and large numbers of slaves. So it's important to note that most that the slave owners themselves also tended to own small numbers. of slaves, even those that did own slaves, were using slaves at a much smaller level. Now, this varies across the South. So in 1790, where we have our very first federal census,

in South Carolina, there are 140,000 free whites in South Carolina, and 160,000, and 160,000, 7,000 slaves. So in the coastal areas of South Carolina, those that had been most long developed, the slaves actually outnumber the whites. Now, in South Carolina, in 1790, the ratio of ownership of slaves was 34%. Now, compared to Virginia,

and Virginia is very interesting here, in 1790, 442,000 free whites in Virginia. 292,000 slaves, of which only 25% of the white population were slave owners. So the small holders predominate in the slave-owning classes. the average number of slaves owned in 1860 to jump ahead a bit was eight so this this is a very small unit maybe two families of slaves and they are most often living in the same quarters under the same roof most slave owners live in very close proximity to their slaves, share their resources with their slaves, and that they sleep in the same room together. They share the same table. They eat the same food.

Something very remarkable about slavery in the South is that they are, they cannot segregate under this system. segregation is antagonistic to the institution of slavery. You can't send the slaves off to their own institutions to do their own thing because this is antagonistic to the control inherent in the system of slavery. This means that they are doing a lot of things together. So the average Southern slaveholder lives his entire life with his slaves in direct proximity to them. The average southern slaveholder, especially when we get into the 1800s, this is something that

he is known his entire life. This is not a lifestyle he has chosen. It's a lifestyle he's inherited, which makes a difference. The average southern slaveholder is not buying and selling slaves. He is not involved in the slave trade. he has inherited the slaves he owns. This is the average. Now, that's not to say there isn't plenty of buying and selling of slaves going on.

And frequently, well, we have many examples of this. We have entrepreneurs who are striking it rich in new lands in southern Louisiana or Arkansas or such places. they might bring resources with them. They might bring slaves with them. They may have come from played outlands in South Carolina or Tidewater, Virginia, where the ground is not, the ground is exhausted and it can no longer be effectively planted with the cash crops. And they might move their entire household with all the slaves to a new holding on the Arkansas River somewhere. and set up operations there. And then they may go down to New Orleans and buy more slaves and transport them up the river and so on.

So there are great many examples of people who did precisely that. And this is involved in the Westward movement. There is also the displacement of the older slave populations on the East Coast with the development of Western lands, the conquest of Alabama in 1814, the opening up of the black belt of Alabama, which becomes a major cotton producing area, the opening of the Tennessee Valley, the Louisiana Purchase, the settlement of Arkansas and Missouri, the established populations in Tidewater, Virginia, with their tobacco culture, tobacco being extremely dead. detrimental to soil nutrition, they would sell their slaves west. And there is a huge migration that accompanies the opening of these Western lands. So there is buying and selling going on, but the average experience of the slaveholder is the inheritance of slaves from his forebearers. These are people he's known his entire life and close proximity to them.

They do not worship in different churches. They worship in the same church. Segregation in worship was a norm from colonial days in New England. There was segregation there from colonial days. They did not bury in the same graveyards. They did not worship in the same. same services. They did not eat at the same table. It was a very different experience and also a far less prominent one. There never were very many slaves there. But segregation remained a feature there.

Segregation was not a feature in the South. And that corresponds with the element of control and proximity necessary in slavery. There is a certain level of segregation in the big plantations. So the slaves in the big plantations, most of them are field hands. Most of them have cabins or even larger dormitory-like facilities in relation to the fields where they worked. They might organize slave churches on those plantations and may even patronize black preachers or even slave creatures at those plantations, though that was all according to the call of the head of the household. He made those decisions.

The lifestyle on these farms was the routine that I described before, the planting, the harvest, really large amount of leisure time in the year where there is not any prescribed hours. Instead, what they had was a system. It was called the task system. So the slaves were given various tasks. Once the task was complete, the rest of the time was theirs. And they were strongly encouraged to develop their own arts

and even their own garden patches. This is an obvious benefit because the more they do for themselves, the less has to be done for them. So if they're growing their own vegetables, making their own food and clothes, making crafts of all sorts, which they were encouraged to do, and this was a source of money for them as well, they could sell things in South Louisiana, for instance, one of the famous slave crafts was the collection of Spanish moss for pillows and mattresses. So they would stuff pillows and mattresses with the spongy Spanish moss that hangs from our trees down here. And this was an export item. They would actually sell these to wholesalers and they would take them far and wide.

because this was, in the days before, foam rubber, it was highly desirable. It was one of the softer things that you could sleep on with your pillow and all the rest. And that was a source of money, private money, that the slaves could earn for themselves. So the private sphere there, the farm routine, this is the regular experience in the rural South. Relations to plants and animals, features of farms, it's not a single crop economy,

though the main emphasis at a plantation would be cotton. That's not the only thing they're doing there. If we take Mount Vernon, Washington's estate on the Potomac, You have not only the tobacco, which is the cash crop at Mount Vernon. You have a millworks there. They're bringing in lumber. They are turning the lumber and making furniture out of it. You have a distillery.

They're brewing cider. They are making whiskey. And they're selling that in the surrounding area. There's all sorts of things going on at a big plantation. A big plantation is quite comparable to a village. And everything you might see going on in a village, you might see going on in a plantation. There is a specialization of labor. There are craftsmen of various sorts.

Washington had brewers and distillers. These are slaves, some of these people. Sometimes Washington would hire a specialist at wages for these positions, but the slaves are often apprenticed to these things. You have weavers, makers of textiles. You have people that are making clothes. You have people who are making shoes. These are all activities on a plantation,

which is aiming to be a self-sufficient. community to do all of the various things that human beings require for living. So they're fascinating and very complex places, and they're comparable to a medieval fiefdom, and that they have an aristocrat, though he doesn't have a title necessarily. He might be called colonel due to his station in the militia, but he is not called baron. he might as well be a bear because he has this big community that all answers to him. And he's also expected to defend them in battle. So there's interesting correspondence there and that that's a part of the culture there.

This also corresponds to that southern cultural attitude of affirming the old culture of Europe. a sense of inheritance and comfortableness with that tradition. Now, the discipline we talked about previously, the main problem with the discipline and the fear are runaways and rebellions. Now, runaways frequently did not go very far. I'll have information in a future episode about the famous underground railroad, of which tremendous amount of nonsense is frequently said. I was talking to someone recently.

She was describing an area of her city where there were great coal shoots and coal storage, like underneath businesses and households and such that formed a system of tunnels. And then she mentioned that it was all part of the Underground Railroad, which is not on the face of it, clearly untrue or preposterous. Runaway slaves may, in fact, have hidden out in such spaces. But her argument

was because it was underground, which was precisely not the element of the underground railroad. Just because it's called underground, it doesn't mean that it involved tunnels. Wherever Americans find tunnels in Anabellum times, they like to imagine it was part of the Underground Railroad. And this is just preposterous and ridiculous. And they had trains down there too, right? That's what they think. And they think that Harriet Tubman was some.

kind of engineer driving a locomotive as well. But I'll have more to say about that at a later date. And she had a browning machine gun, too. We've, we've had a lot of propaganda about that over the years. But the main, the main question was rebellions. That was the paranoia, the fear. And there were ground. for this.

These are very interesting events. They are blown out of proportion and very perversely celebrated in American history. Maybe partly because

of our very deep-seated discomfort with the fact that most slaves in the United States never contemplated rebellion. That we find extremely disturbing, maybe because of our own cultural conceptions. Well, I would never put up with something like that. American Indians typically did not, and thus were very ill-suited as slaves. They were much more inclined to assert

themselves and also much more inclined to at least passively rebel by refusing to cooperate. This was not the experience with African American slaves in American history. Most of them did not rebel or conspire. Most of them complied with the institution. We can make of that what we will. That is the record. There were several famous rebellions, just as, as an example of a few early ones.

In 1712, there was a slave revolt in New York City. There was the murder of several white civilians. There was the arson of several private homes. There were nine white victims in total. 21 slaves were arrested in relation to this conspiracy and executed. This is 1712 in New York. In 1739, there is a famous rebellion in South Carolina, the Stono Rebellion. There are 20 white victims in the Stono Rebellion.

The object of the rebels was to leave South Carolina and make out for Spanish, Florida. where many runaways attempted to go because it was outside of American jurisdiction. And so it was a common object of runaways. There were other rebellions and conspiracies. These were the origins of a great many paranoias and such in the Old South. The most famous of all the rebellions is Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia, which we will get to at a later date. But there are very infrequent rebellions and conspiracies,

often involving things like murder and arson, the murder of women and children, and so on. All of these conspiracies were betrayed by other slaves, which is why they didn't get very far. There were great many conspiracies that never resulted in massacred, because they were betrayed by fellow slaves. This really is striking because this is comparable to the famous Indian massacre in Virginia in 1622 when the brother of Pocahontas, Opa Chocono, he conspires to wipe out the colony of Virginia

with a coordinated simultaneous assault at high noon. So he sent his warriors out into the communities of Colonial Virginia. And when the sun reached its zenith in the sky, they were all to take their weapons and strike. He succeeded in murdering a large proportion of the population. I forget just how much it was. It was like a quarter of the population or one third of the population. This was men, women, and children.

But even in that instance, the only reason Opichokano did not go further than he did was because of friendly Indians who betrayed that conspiracy. And this is also something curious about modern conceptions about this. There was a time in which the loyalty of slaves who did not want to see all the white people they'd ever known, gruesomely murdered or tortured, see their homes burned, and so on, where that loyalty was celebrated as a grounds for coexistence, as a grounds for friendship between the races. And we have seen the exact opposite, I know in your lifetime and mine, the exact opposite has been celebrated. So we see statues of Nat Turner in Richmond, Virginia, today, for instance.

So that is an initial overview of slavery. We're going to have much more to say of it. But I see I've already gone for an hour and a half. I've got tons more information about the Missouri compromise, but we will pitch that for our next encounter. Sounds good. That was extremely thorough, and I think a lot of people are going to get a lot out of that.

So thank you. You're very welcome. My pleasure. As I ask you to do at the end of every episode, plug your work. Yes, indeed. So you can find my little publishing house at www.

tallmenbooks.com. And there you'll find about 50 volumes that I've republished of American History. I've got a bunch of new titles that are on their way. I've got several biographies that I'm working on right now. I've been working on James K. Polk

and Sam Houston. So I'm hoping to announce a couple new titles here in the near future. But I've got a lot of good stuff in the works. Go check out my material. I've got a lot there about the Civil War. I've got a lot of Civil War memoirs there.

I've got Richard Taylor's memoirs. He was the son of President Zachary Taylor and Louisiana Confederate General. And he has a really remarkable account of his service in the Civil War. That's just one of many books that you can. find on my website. All right, Mr. Bagby. Until the next time, thank you very much. Thank you very much.