Tuesday, July 22, 2025

The Progressives vs. The American Founding

Teddy Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson famously said, “If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” This statement reflects the broad rejection by the leading academic and political progressives of the 1880’s to the 1920’s (the “Progressive Era”) of the American Founders’ assertion of natural law and natural rights both in the Declaration itself, as well as in the Founding era speeches and political writings. This “new” approach to rights, progressives argued, was based on the emergence of a more “modern” view of political history, economic, and societal factors, garnered through their observation, study, and analysis.

Why was there such a significant shift in American political thought? What reasons did progressives give for their changed views of the founding? An oft-repeated theme was that the American Industrial Revolution of the late 1800’s generated significant economic problems marked by a significant shift from agrarian economies to industrialized ones. During this period, the number of factory workers and wage earners increased dramatically accompanied by a substantial rise in corporate monopolies connected to railroads, crude oil, electricity, banking, and other industries. The social dichotomy, both real and perceived, between capital and labor, rich and poor, gained momentum. Academics and politicians argued that the founding ideas were insufficient to deal with these more modern economic and social challenges. New and better ideas were needed – we needed to progress!
 
Another factor in the tension and change in thinking, was the fact that the Progressive Era’s political scientists and newly minted PhD’s were either educated in universities and educational institutions in Europe and Germany, or were often heavily influenced by them. Among the prominent influences during the Progressive Era were the writings of Karl Marx, particularly his ideas on class struggle between capital and labor. Marx was heavily influenced by G.W.F. Hegel, particularly Hegel's dialectical method (i.e., ideas and reality evolving from opposing forces), or way of viewing history. A companion theory among progressives, as well as another significant influence upon their political philosophy, was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution of life and populations over the course of generations. Applied to nations and society, “Social Darwinism” became a way to view political life as evolving and progressing, especially away from and beyond the 18th century founding ideals. The tension and disparity between these two ideologies and theories of political thought became very apparent and distinct.

The basic principles that progressives focused on, and essentially opposed, in the Declaration of Independence were Thomas Jefferson’s phrase in the Declaration,“The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God” –based on the writings of John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and others. “Natural law” essentially means that nature has immutable laws by which each individual has free will, a conscience, accountability for one’s actions, and a duty to not harm others or their property. As Jefferson also affirmed in the Declaration, men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Natural rights include the right to govern one’s life and property, and these rights are inherent to all humans and are not bestowed by the government. For example, the first President of the American Political Science Association, Frank Goodnow, wrote at the turn of the century in 1900: “The rights which [man] possesses are … conferred upon him, not by his Creator, but rather the society to which he belongs.”
 
The Progressive movement not only disregarded innate human liberty and “natural rights” and as a worthwhile political theory, but most often rejected the notion altogether. In Recent Tendencies by Charles Merriam, he surveyed the History of American Political Theories (1903). After mentioning Francis Lieber, Theodore Woolsey, and John W. Burgess (all from the German schools), he states, “The individualistic ideas of the “natural right” school of political theory, endorsed in the [American] Revolution, are discredited and repudiated.” Merriam then quotes the progressive political scientist John Burgess: “There never was, and there never can be any liberty upon this earth and among human beings, outside of state organization.” Merriam concludes that “these alleged [natural] rights have no political force whatsoever, unless recognized and enforced by the state.” And he adds that “Liberty…is not a right equally enjoyed by all. It is dependent upon the degree of civilization reached by a given people, and increases as this advances.” Another progressive political scientist, Frank Johnson Goodnow, first president of the American Political Science Association, in “The American Conception of Liberty,” wrote that, “The rights which [man] possesses are … conferred upon him, not by his Creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs.” This progressive theory of rights is based upon the inverse of the Declaration – i.e., man must have the state or a government first before he can be accorded rights including liberty. You can’t delegate what you don’t possess.

This same theme finds place in the writings and speeches of progressive leader and President, Woodrow Wilson. In his writing, “The Authors and Signers of the Declaration” (1907), after referring to the language of the Declaration, Woodrow Wilson states, “No doubt we are meant to have liberty, but each generation must form its own conception of what liberty is.” He believed that the progressive idea of human liberty is not fixed, but it is evolving through each generation. As John Dewey argued, the Founders “put forward their ideas as immutable truths good at all times and places: they had no idea of historic relativity.” Dewey puts forth his idea that, “effective liberty is a function of the social conditions existing at any time… [and] the necessity of liberty for individuals…will require social control of economic forces…” Thus, the progressive theory of liberty is relative to the times in which one lives, and is focused on the community and society, not on the individual. Wilson confirmed this common progressive view in Socialism and Democracy (1887), when he wrote, “Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals.” Thus, community rights and societal needs are superior to individual rights –including a person’s rights to liberty and property.

Another tension or departure from the Founding may be found in the progressives’ overall dismissal of the Federalist Papers, both in regard to its approach to human nature, as well as its arguments for the separation of powers and “checks and balances” in the Constitutional republic. In “What is Progress?” (1913) Woodrow Wilson argues that the Federalist speaks of checks and balances in terms of Issac Newton and the solar system: “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is a mechanical form, and “they [the founders] constructed a government as they would have constructed an orrery, –to display the laws of nature. Politics in their thought was a variety of mechanics.” Wilson continues, “The trouble with that theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing…under the theory of organic life…It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment….” He concludes that, “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.” For Wilson and other progressives, the Founders’ (and the Federalist’s) concern with tyranny, especially majority tyranny (see Federalist 10 and 51), was misplaced.
 
Progressives felt that minority tyranny was a greater threat in their times, particularly in the economic forms of corporate greed and monopoly power. They defined these as “special interests” that could only be controlled by more aggressive “law, legislation and adjudication (courts).” Theodore Roosevelt in The Right of the People to Rule (1912) exclaims, “I have scant patience with this talk of the tyranny of the majority. Wherever there is tyranny of the majority, I shall protest against it with all my heart and soul. But we are today suffering from the tyranny of minorities. It is a small minority that is grabbing our coal deposits, our water powers, and our harbor fronts…[it] is a small minority that lies behind monopolies and trusts.” The progressives’ focus was more on economic inequality and the rights of labor and less on individual equality (such as racial inequality). Quoting Abraham Lincoln, they emphasized the superiority of labor over capital (See, Roosevelt’s The New Nationalism). This, among other things, led to their fixation over economic rights over natural rights. As a result, the separation of powers and checks and balances as set forth in the Federalist were seen as obstacles to their agenda and policies of an expansion of federal power and administration to correct economic problems caused by industrialization and wage labor. Additionally, progressives didn’t want their agenda of needed changes to be delayed by the wheels of “separations” and “checks,” or result in a “clog [in] the administration” (Federalist 10) of desirable legislation, impeding and hampering their improved, “more democratic” order.
 
The Progressive movement stands not only in tension with, but generally in opposition to, the political principles and institutions of the American Founding. No progressive academic, political leader or President seemed to ever defended the concept of “natural rights,” or the idea that our rights are inherent at birth bestowed by a divine Creator, as set forth in the Declaration. While they often referred to, and quoted, the Founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, they substituted “equality of opportunity”[1] for equal, natural rights and “effective liberty”[2] for natural or inherent freedom. Not one defended the Federalist Papers, nor its assumptions of human nature and the need for “auxiliary precautions” (No. 51), as laid out in the separation of powers and the checks and balances of the three branches of government. To some degree, progressives diminished the notion that America is a constitutional republic and elevated “democracy” in its place. Yet, as they generally supported representative government, they effectively exalted majority rule over individual and minority rights. As James Madison warned, “It is in vain to say, that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests [of capital and labor, and of minority and majority factions], and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm…[and] democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property.” (Federalist No. 10). Finally, to progressives the Founding was out of date, and inapplicable to their more complex times and difficulties. They firmly believed and felt that American society had evolved and progressed beyond the need for the fundamental ideas and principles of 1776 and 1787.
__________________________
[1] Teddy Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, pp. 214-215.
[2] John Dewey, The Crisis in Liberalism, CP., p. 70).

Monday, June 16, 2025

The Emergence of Democratic Government in America 1776-1787

In 1776 ten states adopted constitutions: New Hampshire, South Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. These new constitutions established the relationship between the people and their government and were designed to convey the moral conditions of liberty, set forth certain natural rights, and define legislative, executive and judicial powers. For example, the Pennsylvania Constitution of September 28, 1776, reads:

I. That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights, amongst which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. 

 II. That all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding… 

 IV. That all power being originally inherent in, and consequently derived from, the people; therefore all officers of government, whether legislative or executive, are their trustees and servants, and at all times accountable to them.

Reflective of revolutionary thought, this constitution confirms that: (i) men are born equal, free, and possess certain inalienable rights including freedom of conscience, and (ii) the power to govern is derived from the people, with all officers of government being accountable to them. Adopted a few years later, the Massachusetts Constitution of March 2, 1780, states:

III. As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of GOD, and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality… 

In the colonial mind, the principles of religion and morality serve as pillars of self-government and a free republic and are woven in many state constitutions. They also recur in many of the writings of the Founders, including Washington’s Farewell Address.

Another primary purpose of the state constitutions was to democratize the state legislatures. For example, all 1776 state constitutions provided for annual elections, most established bi-cameral legislatures, and term limits such as four years. Some contained unique features such as Pennsylvania which had a twelve-member executive council (instead of a governor), a unicameral legislature, and a Council of Censors, whose duty was to identify constitutional violations. The object was to limit legislative power and allow for expanded representation, which also resulted in many ordinary folk being elected to legislatures. Another universal feature of the constitutions was to divide and separate the legislative, executive, and judicial powers. 

The colonists were very familiar with the writings of Montesquieu who wrote, “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.” For example, the Virginia Constitution of June 29, 1776 reads: “SEC. 3. That the legislative and executive powers of the State should be separate and distinct from the judiciary…” and many others had similar, distinct provisions for the separation of powers. They believed that this was critical to the protection of individual liberty. However, if the state constitutions had a democratic weakness, it was that none were ratified by the people directly, as was the U. S. Constitution in state ratifying conventions.

In contrast to state constitutions, the Articles of Confederation fell short of the revolutionary ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence in several respects:

• The Articles formed a confederation of the States –not ratified separately by the people. 
• The Articles created a single Congress which exercised legislative, executive, and judicial powers, thus violating the principle of separation of powers. 
 • There was neither a bicameral legislature, nor an executive that could execute the laws with requisite authority, nor a Bill of Rights to protect the natural rights of citizens. 
• The Articles required unanimous approval of the States to be amended.
In their operation, unlike the Constitution, the Articles generally failed to properly secure the people’s natural rights with appropriate checks on federal powers. 

While delegates had term limits, they were to be “appointed in such manner as the legislatures of each State shall direct.” Regarding the necessity to rule by “consent of the governed” in his essay titled Vices of the Political Systems of the United States, James Madison noted that “in some of the States, the Confederation is recognized … [as] part of the [State’s] Constitution … however [in others] it has received no other sanction than that of the Legislative authority.” Hamilton argued that it was a “gross heresy” that State legislatures have a right to revoke and elect to withdraw from the compact (Federalist No. 22). The multiplicity, mutability, and injustice of State laws were other vices identified by Madison under the Articles.

Practically speaking, the federal confederacy governed with unchecked and unbalanced powers, an unequal system of taxation, and a lack of unified provisions for the regulation of commerce and common defense. Without the practical ability to collect taxes and obtain consistent revenues, the government couldn’t function. And with nine States required for approval of any Congressional act, the structure proved lopsided and feeble in its application. As a consequence of its weaknesses and shortcomings, the Articles became a source of contention among the States, particularly between the larger States versus the smaller ones.
 
In Federalist No. 15, Alexander Hamilton said that the fundamental imperfections of the Articles of Confederation were in substance admitted by both opponents and friends of the new Constitution, and he proceeded to list these imperfections and “errors in the building,” arguing that as a result they had “reached almost the last stage of national humiliation”:

• Debts owed to foreigners and citizens 
• Territories and posts yet to be surrendered by foreign powers 
• Lack of troops and treasury to repel aggressions 
• Collapse of public credit 
• Diminution of land values 
• Scarcity of money

In order to forge an effective Union of the people under a new Constitution, the primary vice of the Articles of Confederation had to be confronted -- that the State governments operate “in their corporate or collective capacities as distinguished from the individuals of which they consist,” i.e., the national government under the Articles had no direct authority over individual citizens. In order to do this, Hamilton implicitly confirms that “the People” are sovereign -- based on their individual natural rights, and thus they are the ones creating a new compact between themselves and the federal government, not the States. He argues that only by adhering to this “first principle” and “main pillar” can they form “the characteristic difference between a league and a government; [and] extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens, -- the only proper objects of government.” Correcting the significant defects of the Articles was the task of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which ultimately led to a new federal constitution.

Sunday, May 4, 2025

The Birth of American Federalism


The existence of the states pre-dated the Constitution, having formed (as thirteen colonies) an embryonic union upon the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The states continued as relatively independent, sovereign entities under the Articles of Confederation. As the Constitutional Convention approached, James Madison wrote that he had “sought for some middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority” while not excluding the states as “subordinately useful.” This effectively framed the great dilemma of federalism: how do you delegate and vest supreme authority and sovereignty in the new national or federal government while retaining sufficient authority and subordinate sovereignty in the state governments? Can imperium in imperio actually exist and function? 

First, the federal government was designed to be limited in its power, with the bulk of power reserved to the states or retained by the people. As Madison said, “The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general.” The limited or “definite” powers delegated by the people to form the national republic were intended to create a separation and balance, not only between the branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial), but also between federal and state authority. The ultimate objective of these limitations was to protect and preserve individual liberty and self-government while guarding against tyranny. 

Secondly, Madison confirmed this constitutional objective and described the rationale for a dual or “compound” republic with shared sovereignty: 

In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself (Federalist No. 51). 

Thus, under federalism: (1) a “double security” is provided to protect the rights of the people, and (2) the federal and state governments are to “control each other.” However, this dual sovereignty was not easy to achieve. 

Finally, in the Constitutional Convention debates held in the summer of 1787, the inherent tension between proposed federal and state powers, as well as the potential imbalance of political influence between large and small states in the new national legislature were plainly manifested and vigorously argued. The issue that loomed the largest in the debates was centered on representation – how would the people individually and the states themselves be represented in the national legislature? 

The Virginia Plan proposed that the national legislature should be bi-cameral and that: “the people of each State ought to elect the First Branch of the National Legislature; [and] the Second Branch of the National Legislature ought to be elected by the first, out of a pool of candidates nominated by the state legislatures.” After prolonged debates, the large and small state delegates reached a concession, known as the “Connecticut Compromise.” Madison himself confirmed that the provision to be adopted would be “partly federal, partly national,” by letting “the people be represented and the votes be proportional [in the House]. In all cases where the Government is to act on the States as such … let the States be represented and the votes be equal [in the Senate] (note: as originally established, the state legislatures elected their U.S. Senators). This great compromise between the large and small states formed a significant core of American federalism under the Constitution.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

The Constitutional Freedom of Speech

Fifty years before the Constitution was adopted, in November 1737, Benjamin Franklin wrote: “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.” (The Pennsylvania Gazette). This statement would probably reflect the views of all of the Founding Fathers and the vast majority of the American colonists in the 18th century. As set forth in The Declaration of Independence, all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….” In the minds of the Founders these God-given, unalienable rights not only included “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but also freedom of speech, including the right to express both civic and religious opinions, and to dissent or criticize the government. As with the others, this was considered as a natural or inherent right.

The history of free thought and free speech was grounded in both the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In 1644, John Milton wrote in Areopagitica, “The State shall be my governors, but not my critics….” In other words, government has a role to administer the duties and responsibilities of the State, but not to censor its citizens. Milton argued that there should be an open debate or encounter about political and religious matters and that is how truth can prevail: “Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.” (Id. p. 13). In the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1785), Thomas Jefferson wrote: “truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.” Later, in 1859, John Stuart Mill in “On Liberty” agreed with Jefferson and Milton, and similarly reflected:
 
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
 
These significant views of the power of truth vs. error, would manifest themselves in the American founding period, as well as indirectly influencing Supreme Court decisions during the 20th century. The prevailing view has been that darkness (bad speech) should be allowed and exposed to light.

As the new nation was being established, the Constitution was adopted in 1787, with the promise of a Bill of Rights being fulfilled in 1789. James Madison’s version of the speech and press clauses, introduced in the House of Representatives provided that: “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.” (1 Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789). The final version of the Bill of Rights, Amendment I, (adopted December 15, 1791) states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” In theory and in practice, freedom of speech is integrally connected to the other first amendment rights, such as the free exercise of religion and the freedom of the press in particular.

As The Declaration of Independence also states, “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” How can a self-governing people “consent” to a delegation of their natural rights to government without freedom of speech? The consent of the governed would naturally necessitate or require both reflection and choice on who to vote for, what laws and policies to support, as well as the right to disagree and to dissent. While we have a democratic republic, and the majority has great sway in governing, the rights of the minority have been guarded though constitutional forms, including separation of powers, checks and balances, but particularly in the First Amendment itself. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California (1927), “recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they [the Founders] amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.” (Joseph R. Fornieri, Free Speech: Core Court Cases, 2020, p. 24, cited as Fornieri). In this regard, Justice Brandeis also wrote:

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that, in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end, and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. (Id.)

It is also evident that a rational deliberation on policy should lead to best outcomes for individuals and society as a whole. In a related vein, societal progress can and is often spurred by a “marketplace of ideas” (see: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes concurring opinion in Abrams v. United States (1919), Fornieri p. 12). As Justice Holmes notably argued:
 
[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” (Id.).

As our Founders believed in the connection between virtue and good government, they also believed that virtue was essential to happiness. As George Washington said, “there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists … an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.” (First Inaugural Address, 1789). In order for virtue to triumph over vice, individual character development, human flourishing, and the education of the mind must all have a wide-open door, and simply cannot occur and prosper without free inquiry and free speech. Freedom of speech and expression also manifests themselves in individual autonomy, will, self-determination, and in the arts and sciences – all keys to human progress.

While it can be viewed negatively, freedom of speech can also function as a “safety valve” – allowing radicals to vent and blow off steam. Again, in Whitney, Justice Brandeis writes, “fear breeds repression; … repression breeds hate;… hate menaces stable government; … the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.” (Fornieri, p. 24). In order to uphold and maintain freedom of speech we should always allow and even welcome contradictory and opposing views. The resulting contrasts in ideas and opinions are essential to our democratic republic and may even be redemptive.

Monday, January 13, 2025

Benjamin Franklin "On True Happiness"

Benjamin Franklin said, “virtue and happiness are mother and daughter” (Poor Richard's Almanac). He believed that real happiness was not just about pleasure and positivity but more about our character, conduct, and in doing good deeds. He wrote:

“The desire of happiness in general is so natural to us that all the world are in pursuit of it; all have this one end in view, though they take such different methods to attain it, and are so much divided in their notions of it.

Evil, as evil, can never be chosen; and though evil is often the effect of our own choice, yet we never desire it but under the appearance of an imaginary good.

Many things we indulge ourselves in may be considered by us as evils, and yet be desirable; but then they are only considered as evils in their effects and consequences, not as evils at present and attended with immediate misery.

Reason represents things to us not only as they are at present, but as they are in their whole nature and tendency; passion only regards them in their former light. When this governs us we are regardless of the future, and are only affected with the present. It is impossible ever to enjoy ourselves rightly if our conduct be not such as to preserve the harmony and order of our faculties and the original frame and constitution of our minds; all true happiness, as all that is truly beautiful, can only result from order.

Whilst there is a conflict betwixt the two principles of passion and reason, we must be miserable in proportion to the struggle, and when the victory is gained and reason so far subdued as seldom to trouble us with its remonstrances, the happiness we have then is not the happiness of our rational nature, but the happiness only of the inferior and sensual part of us, and consequently a very low and imperfect happiness to what the other would have afforded us.

If we reflect upon any one passion and disposition of mind abstract from virtue, we shall soon see the disconnection between that and true, solid happiness. It is of the very essence, for instance, of envy to be uneasy and disquieted. Pride meets with provocations and disturbances upon almost every occasion. Covetousness is ever attended with solicitude and anxiety. Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us; its appetite grows the keener by indulgence, and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.

The passions, by being too much conversant with earthly objects, can never fix in us a proper composure and acquiescence of mind. Nothing but an indifference to the things of this world, an entire submission to the will of Providence here, and a well-grounded expectation of happiness hereafter, can give us a true satisfactory enjoyment of ourselves. Virtue is the best guard against the many unavoidable evils incident to us; nothing better alleviates the weight of the afflictions or gives a truer relish of the blessings of human life.

What is without us has not the least connection with happiness only so far as the preservation of our lives and health depends upon it. Health of body, though so far necessary that we cannot be perfectly happy without it, is not sufficient to make us happy of itself. Happiness springs immediately from the mind; health is but to be considered as a condition or circumstance, without which this happiness cannot be tasted pure and unabated.

Virtue is the best preservative of health, as it prescribes temperance and such a regulation of our passions as is most conducive to the well-being of the animal economy, so that it is at the same time the only true happiness of the mind and the best means of preserving the health of the body.

If our desires are to the things of this world, they are never to be satisfied. If our great view is upon those of the next, the expectation of them is an infinitely higher satisfaction than the enjoyment of those of the present.

There is no happiness then but in a virtuous and self-approving conduct. Unless our actions will bear the test of our sober judgments and reflections upon them, they are not the actions and consequently not the happiness of a rational being.”

Pennsylvania Gazette (1785)


Sunday, December 1, 2024

The Glorious Cause of America


By: David McCullough (1933-2022)

Two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of 1776 and John Adams, gave this address at Brigham Young University on September 27, 2005.

“One of the hardest, and I think the most important, realities of history to convey to students or readers of books or viewers of television documentaries is that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened. Any great past event could have gone off in any number of different directions for any number of different reasons. We should understand that history was never on a track. It was never preordained that it would turn out as it did.

Very often we are taught history as if it were predetermined, and if that way of teaching begins early enough and is sustained through our education, we begin to think that it had to have happened as it did. We think that there had to have been a Revolutionary War, that there had to have been a Declaration of Independence, that there had to have been a Constitution, but never was that so. In history, chance plays a part again and again. Character counts over and over. Personality is often the determining factor in why things turn out the way they do.

Furthermore, nobody ever lived in the past. Jefferson, Adams, George Washington—they didn’t walk around saying, “Isn’t this fascinating living in the past? Aren’t we picturesque in our funny clothes?” They were living in the present, just as we do. The great difference is that it was their present, not ours. And just as we don’t know how things are going to turn out, they didn’t either.

We can know about the years that preceded us and about the people who preceded us. And if we love our country—if we love the blessings of a society that welcomes free speech, freedom of religion, and, most important of all, freedom to think for ourselves—then surely we ought to know how it came to be. Who was responsible? What did they do? How much did they contribute? How much did they suffer?

Abigail Adams, writing one of her many letters to her husband, John, who was off in Philadelphia working to put the Declaration of Independence through Congress, wrote, “Posterity who are to reap the blessings, will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.”[1] Alas, she was right. We do not conceive what they went through.

We tend to see them—Adams, Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, George Washington—as figures in a costume pageant; that is often the way they’re portrayed. And we tend to see them as much older than they were because we’re seeing them in the portraits by Gilbert Stuart and others when they were truly the Founding Fathers—when they were president or chief justice of the Supreme Court and their hair, if it hadn’t turned white, was powdered white. We see the awkward teeth. We see the elder statesmen.

At the time of the Revolution, they were all young. It was a young man’s–young woman’s cause. George Washington took command of the Continental Army in the summer of 1775 at the age of 43. He was the oldest of them. Adams was 40. Jefferson was all of 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Rush—who was the leader of the antislavery movement at the time, who introduced the elective system into higher education in this country, who was the first to urge the humane treatment of patients in mental hospitals—was 30 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Furthermore, none of them had any prior experience in revolutions; they weren’t experienced revolutionaries who’d come in to take part in this biggest of all events. They were winging it. They were improvising.

George Washington had never commanded an army in battle before. He’d served with some distinction in the French and Indian War with the colonial troops who were fighting with the British Army, but he’d never commanded an army in battle before. And he’d never commanded a siege, which is what he took charge of at Boston, where the rebel troops—the “rabble in arms”[2] as the British called them—had the British penned in inside Boston.

Washington wasn’t chosen by his fellow members of the Continental Congress because he was a great military leader. He was chosen because they knew him; they knew the kind of man he was; they knew his character, his integrity.

George Washington is the first of our political generals—a very important point about Washington. And we’ve been very lucky in our political generals. By political generals, I don’t mean to suggest that is a derogatory or dismissive term. They are political in the sense that they understand how the system works, that they, as commander in chief, are not the boss. Washington reported to Congress. And no matter how difficult it was, how frustrating it was, how maddening it could be for Washington to get Congress to do what so obviously needed to be done to sustain his part in the fight, he never lost patience with them. He always played by the rule. Washington was not, as were Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton, a learned man. He was not an intellectual. Nor was he a powerful speaker like his fellow Virginian Patrick Henry. What Washington was, above all, was a leader. He was a man people would follow. And as events would prove, he was a man whom some—a few—would follow through hell.

Don’t get the idea that all of those who marched off to serve under Washington were heroes. They deserted the army by the hundreds, by the thousands as time went on. When their enlistments came up, they would up and go home just as readily as can be, feeling they had served sufficiently and they needed to be back home to support their families, who in many cases were suffering tremendously for lack of income or even food. But those who stayed with him stayed because they would not abandon this good man, as some of them said. What Washington had, it seems to me, is phenomenal courage—physical courage and moral courage. He had high intelligence; if he was not an intellectual or an educated man, he was very intelligent. He was a quick learner—and a quick learner from his mistakes. He made dreadful mistakes, particularly in the year 1776. They were almost inexcusable, inexplicable mistakes, but he always learned from them. And he never forgot what the fight was about—“the glorious cause of America,” as they called it. Washington would not give up; he would not quit.

When he took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge in the summer of 1775, Washington had probably 14,000 troops. And from those troops and from the officers who were there at the time when he arrived, he selected two men as the best he had. Here is another aspect of his leadership that must not be overlooked or underestimated: Washington was a great judge of other people’s ability and capacity to stay where the fighting was the toughest and to never give up. He picked out Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox.

Nathanael Greene was a Quaker with a limp from a childhood injury. He knew no more of the military than what he had read in books, and he was made a major general at 33 years of age. Henry Knox was 25. He was a Boston bookseller. He was a big, fat, garrulous, keenly intelligent man who, like Greene, had only about the equivalent of a fifth-grade education but had never stopped reading. He, too, knew of the military only what he had read in books. But keep in mind that this was occurring in the 18th century, their present. It was the Age of Enlightenment, an era when it was widely understood that if you wanted to know something, a good way to learn was to read books—a very radical idea to many in our day and age.

Those two men were quintessential New Englanders. Greene was from Rhode Island and Knox had grown up in Boston. Washington had discovered very soon after arriving in New England that he ardently disliked New Englanders, so to single out these two, he also overcame a personal bias.

To skip far ahead, let me point out that Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox, along with Washington, were to be the only general officers in the Revolutionary War who stayed until the very end. So Washington’s judgment could not have been better. Nathanael Greene turned out to be the best general we had, and I’m including Washington in that lineup—Greene, the Quaker with a limp, the man who knew nothing but what he had read in books, who, like Washington, learned from his mistakes.

Let’s not forget what a war it was—eight and a half years, the longest war in our history, except for Vietnam. Twenty-five thousand Americans were killed. That doesn’t sound like very much to those of us who have been bludgeoned, who have been numbed by the horrible statistics of war in the 20th or 21st centuries. This was 1 percent of the American population of 2.5 million. It was a lot. If we were to fight for our independence today and the war were equally costly, there would be more than 3 million of us killed. It was a long, bloody, costly war.

And as it wore on in the year 1776, we suffered one defeat after another. At Brooklyn—a huge battle over an area of six miles with 40,000 soldiers involved—we were soundly defeated. We were made to look foolish. We were outsmarted, outflanked, outgeneraled, outnumbered. Some of us were immensely heroic, but we never had a chance.

But then, in a miraculous escape from Brooklyn Heights on the night of Oct. 29, we got back across the East River and were saved. It was the Dunkirk of the Revolution. If the wind had been in the other direction that night or the two or three nights preceding it, there’s not much question that the war would have been over then because Washington and 9,000 American troops would have been captured. If the British had been able to bring their warships up into the East River, between Brooklyn and Manhattan, they would have had us right in the trap. But because there was a howling storm out of the northeast, they weren’t able to do that. 

Washington ordered that every possible small craft be rounded up and be made ready to bring the army back to New York. It was to be done at night. An organized retreat for an experienced army is the most difficult maneuver of all when faced by a superior force. But for this amateur pick-up team, this rude, crude, un-uniformed, undisciplined, untrained American army of farm boys—some of whom had been given a musket and told to march off only a few weeks before—for that kind of an army to make a successful retreat across water at night, right in the face of the enemy without the enemy knowing, was a virtual impossibility. And yet they did it.

When they went down to the shores of the East River, right where the Brooklyn Bridge now stands, to start the crossing, the same wind that was keeping the British from bringing their fleet up was keeping the river too rough for them to make the crossing. It looked as though they weren’t going to be able to pull it off. Then, all of a sudden, almost like the parting of the waters, the wind stopped. The makeshift armada started going back and forth, back and forth, all night long, ferrying men, horses, cannon—everything—back across the river to New York. And they succeeded. Nineteen thousand men and all their equipment—horses, cannon, and the rest—were taken across the river that night without the loss of a single man and without the British ever knowing it.

I wanted to write about that event, the reality of what happened there, as much as anything else in my book 1776. It shows so much that we need to understand. First of all, it was said right away that the hand of God had intervened in behalf of the American cause. Others trying to interpret what had happened used the words Providence or chance. But it couldn’t have happened only because of chance or the hand of God. It also required people of skill and experience with the nerve to try it.

That escape was organized and led by a man named John Glover from Marblehead, Mass., and his Marblehead Mariners—fishermen, sailors who knew how to handle small boats. During the crossing—and the East River can be a treacherous place to cross, even in the best of conditions—boats were loaded down so that the gunwales were only a few inches above the water. No running lights, no motors, no cell phones to talk back and forth. And they did it. It was character and circumstance in combination that succeeded.

The men were totally demoralized. They had been defeated; they were soaking wet; they were cold; they were hungry. They lost again pathetically at Kip’s Bay. They lost again in the great battle of Fort Washington, when nearly 3,000 of our troops and all of their equipment were taken captive.

By the time Washington started his long retreat across New Jersey, they were down to only a few thousand men. Probably a quarter of the army were too sick to fight, victims of smallpox, typhoid, typhus, and, worst of all, camp fever, or epidemic dysentery. Men deserted, men defected—went over to the enemy by the hundreds. Or they just disappeared, they just went away, never heard from again. By the time Washington was halfway across New Jersey, he had all of 3,000 men.

We are taught to honor and celebrate those great men who wrote and voted for the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. But none of what they committed themselves to—their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor—none of those noble words about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, about all men being created equal, none of that would have been worth any more than the paper it was written on had it not been for those who were fighting to make it happen. We must remember them, too, and especially those who seem nameless: Jabez Fitch and Joseph Hodgkins; little John Greenwood, who was all of 16 years old; and Israel Trask, who was 10 years old. There were boys marching with the troops as fifers or drummers or messenger boys, not just Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox and John Glover and George Washington. And they were in rags—they were in worse than rags. The troops had no winter clothing. The stories of men leaving bloody footprints in the snow are true—that’s not mythology.

Washington was trying to get his army across the Delaware River, to put the river between his army and the oncoming British army, which was very well equipped, very well fed, very well trained—the best troops in the world led by an extremely able officer, Cornwallis. On they were coming, and they were going to end the war. But Washington felt that if he could just get across the river, get what men he had left over on the Pennsylvania shore on the western side, destroy any boats the British might use to come chasing across the river, that they’d have time to collect themselves and maybe get some extra support. Again they went across at night. Again it was John Glover and his men who made it happen. They lit huge bonfires on the Pennsylvania side of the river to light the crossing.

The next morning a unit from Pennsylvania rode in—militiamen, among whom was a young officer named Charles Willson Peale, the famous painter. He walked among these ragged troops of Washington’s who had made the escape across from New Jersey and wrote about it in his diary. He said he’d never seen such miserable human beings in all his life—starving, exhausted, filthy. One man in particular he thought was just the most wretched human being he had ever laid eyes on. He described how the man’s hair was all matted and how it hung down over his shoulders. The man was naked except for what they called a blanket coat. His feet were wrapped in rags, his face all covered with sores from sickness. Peale was studying him when, all of a sudden, he realized that the man was his own brother.

I think we should feel that they were all our brothers, those brave 3,000, and remember what they went through, just as Abigail Adams stressed in her letter. And that they didn’t quit!

Washington took stock, just as the British army was taking stock, of the situation, as were most every officer and all of the politicians, many of whom had fled from Philadelphia by this time. It seemed clear that the British were heading for Philadelphia and there was nothing to stop them. Most everybody concluded that the war was over and we had lost. It was the only rational conclusion one could come to. There wasn’t a chance. So Washington did what you sometimes have to do when everything is lost and all hope is gone. He attacked. 

They went up the river nine miles to McKonkey’s Ferry on Christmas night. They crossed the Delaware, famously portrayed in the great painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, which as everyone knows is inaccurate in many ways. But it does portray with drama and force what was one of the most important turning points, not just in the history of the war, but in the history of our country and, consequently, of the world. He had the nerve, the courage, the faith in the cause to carry the war once more to the enemy. After the crossing, they marched nine miles back down the river on the eastern side and struck at Trenton the next morning. 

The worst part of the whole night was not the crossing, as bad as it was. The worst part was the march through the night. Again a northeaster was blowing, and again that northeaster was beneficial to our cause because it muffled the noise of the crossing and the noise of the march south. But it also increased by geometric proportions the misery of the troops. It was very cold. What the wind chill factor must have been can only be imagined. It was so cold that two men froze to death on the march because they had no winter clothing. 

They struck at Trenton the next morning. It was a fierce, house-to-house, savage battle. It was small in scale but very severe. It was all over in about 45 minutes, and we won. For the first time, we defeated the enemy at their own profession.

Now it wasn’t a great battle like Brooklyn. But its consequences were enormous, beyond reckoning. Because of the psychological effect, it transformed the attitude of the army and of much of the country toward the war. It was a turning point. They struck again at Princeton a few days later and won there too—again by surprise, again after marching through the night, again taking the most daring possible route, risking all and winning. In conclusion I want to share a scene that took place on the last day of the year of 1776, Dec. 31. All the enlistments for the entire army were up. Every soldier, because of the system at the time, was free to go home as of the first day of January 1777. Washington called a large part of the troops out into formation. He appeared in front of these ragged men on his horse, and he urged them to reenlist. He said that if they would sign up for another six months, he’d give them a bonus of 10 dollars. It was an enormous amount then because that’s about what they were being paid for a month—if and when they could get paid. These were men who were desperate for pay of any kind. Their families were starving.

The drums rolled, and he asked those who would stay on to step forward. The drums kept rolling, and nobody stepped forward. Washington turned and rode away from them. Then he stopped, and he turned back and rode up to them again. This is what we know he said:

My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance.3
Again the drums rolled. This time the men began stepping forward. “God Almighty,” wrote Nathanael Greene, “inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew.”[4]

 Now that is an amazing scene, to say the least, and it’s real. This wasn’t some contrivance of a screenwriter. However, I believe there is something very familiar about what Washington said to those troops. It was as if he was saying, “You are fortunate. You have a chance to serve your country in a way that nobody else is going to be able to, and everybody else is going to be jealous of you, and you will count this the most important decision and the most valuable service of your lives.” Now doesn’t that have a familiar ring? Isn’t it very like the speech of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think themselves accursed they were not here”?[5] Washington loved the theater; Washington loved Shakespeare. I can’t help but feel that he was greatly influenced. 

He was also greatly influenced, as they all were, by the classical ideals of the Romans and the Greeks. The history they read was the history of Greece and Rome. And while Washington and Knox and Greene, not being educated men, didn’t read Greek and Latin as Adams and Jefferson did, they knew the play Cato, and they knew about Cincinnatus. They knew that Cincinnatus had stepped forward to save his country in its hour of peril and then, after the war was over, returned to the farm. Washington, the political general, had never forgotten that Congress was boss. When the war was at last over, Washington, in one of the most important events in our entire history, turned back his command to Congress—a scene portrayed in a magnificent painting by John Trumbull that hangs in the rotunda of our national Capitol. When George III heard that George Washington might do this, he said that “if he does, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

So what does this tell us? That the original decision of the Continental Congress was the wise one. They knew the man, they knew his character, and he lived up to his reputation.

I hope very much that those of you who are studying history here will pursue it avidly, with diligence, with attention. I hope you do this not just because it will make you a better citizen, and it will; not just because you will learn a great deal about human nature and about cause and effect in your own lives, as well as the life of the nation, which you will; but as a source of strength, as an example of how to conduct yourself in difficult times—and we live in very difficult times, very uncertain times. But I hope you also find history to be a source of pleasure. Read history for pleasure as you would read a great novel or poetry or go to see a great play.

And I hope when you read about the American Revolution and the reality of those people that you will never think of them again as just figures in a costume pageant or as gods. They were not perfect; they were imperfect—that’s what’s so miraculous. They rose to the occasion as very few generations ever have.”


















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Notes
1. Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 8, 1777, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; spelling modernized.
2. John Burgoyne, in Sir George Otto Trevelyan, The American Revolution (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1926), vol. 1, p. 298.
3. Sergeant R——, “Battle of Princeton,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 20 (1896), pp. 515–16.
4. Nathanael Greene to Nicholas Cooke, Jan. 10, 1777, in The Papers of General Nathanael Greene, ed. Richard K. Showman and Dennis Conrad (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), vol. 2, p. 4.
5. Henry V 4.3.63–68.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

The "Revolution" of 1800


The presidential election of 1800 was an intense political contest. Pitting two clearly opposing parties against each other for the first time, the Federalists and the Republicans (organized in 1792, later called "Democratic Republicans") fought in what some historians have called the dirtiest campaign in US politics. Referred to by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 as “The Revolution of 1800,” the election results marked the first peaceful change of executive party in the U.S. and confirmed the role of both compromise and the electorate in choosing the American president. 
The election was also a political realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic-Republican leadership through 1825.

"The nation had a choice between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Federalists feared that Jefferson would return power to the states, dismantle the army and navy, and overturn Hamilton's financial system. The Republicans charged that the Federalists, by creating a large standing army, imposing heavy taxes, and using federal troops and the federal courts to suppress dissent, had shown contempt for the liberties of the American people. They worried that the Federalists' ultimate goal was to centralize power in the national government and involve the United States in the European war on the side of Britain. Jefferson's Federalist opponents called him an "atheist in religion, and a fanatic in politics." They claimed he was a drunkard and an enemy of religion. The Federalist Connecticut Courant warned that "there is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a Civil War. Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced."

Jefferson's supporters responded by charging that President Adams was a monarchist who longed to reunite Britain with its former colonies. Republicans even claimed that the president had sent General Thomas Pinckney to England to procure four mistresses, two for himself and two for Adams. Adams's response: "I do declare if this be true, General Pinckney has kept them all for himself and cheated me out of my two."

The election was extremely close. It was the Constitution's Three-fifths clause, which counted three-fifths of the slave population in apportioning representation, that gave the Republicans a majority in the Electoral College. Jefferson appeared to have won by a margin of eight electoral votes. But a complication soon arose. Because each Republican elector had cast one ballot for Jefferson and one for Burr, the two men received exactly the same number of electoral votes.

Under the Constitution, the election was now thrown into the Federalist-controlled House of Representatives. Instead of emphatically declaring that he would not accept the presidency, Burr declined to say anything. So, the Federalists faced a choice. They could help elect the hated Jefferson--"a brandy-soaked defamer of churches"--or they could throw their support to the opportunistic Burr. Hamilton disliked Jefferson, but he believed he was a far more principled and honorable man than Burr. [As the House of Representatives prepared to vote to break the deadlock, Hamilton conducted a furious letter-writing campaign to urge fellow Federalists to vote for Jefferson
].

As the stalemate persisted, Virginia and Pennsylvania mobilized their state militias. Recognizing, as Jefferson put it, "the certainty that a legislative usurpation would be resisted by arms," the Federalists backed down. After six days of balloting and 36 ballots, the House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson the third president of the United States."[1]

On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson walked from his boarding house to the Senate Chamber. John Adams had already left Washington, and as was the custom at the time, Jefferson gave his inaugural address before taking the oath as president. Uncomfortable speaking in public, he addressed an audience of approximately 1,000 people for fewer than 30 minutes. The speech was printed in the newspapers the next day and was well received by members of both parties. A significant passage follows:

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things...
[E]very difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it...."[2]

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[1] https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=2978 

[2] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau1.asp