WEBVTT

NOTE The States' Rights Tradition Nobody Knows

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000
Well, I've been told that today, June, I guess today is June 21st.

2
00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:14.000
Apparently, this is an important anniversary in American history because in 1788, New Hampshire ratified the Constitution.

3
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.000
So, thus, the requisite nine states had ratified and it went into effect.

4
00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:22.000
So, there's a big mistake.

5
00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.000
All right, anyway, we'll talk about this later.

6
00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:38.000
I'd like to just start off by, first of all, mentioning a few books because I always forget to mention recommended reading as I'm going along.

7
00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:44.000
I want to reiterate a couple that I mentioned the other day on these general topics.

8
00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:53.000
James Kilpatrick, K-I-L-P-A-T-R-I-C-K, his book The Sovereign States is indispensable.

9
00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:03.000
Secondly, William Watkins, Reclaiming the American Revolution, is a book on the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 and is equally important.

10
00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:11.000
The Watkins book is useful because it gives the background to the resolutions, the discussion of the resolutions themselves,

11
00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:16.000
the persistence of the principles of 98 and the relevance of some of these ideas even to today.

12
00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:26.000
And he mentions issues as contemporary as the medical marijuana issue and how these principles are pertinent.

13
00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:34.000
Then there's a book I didn't mention yesterday that I more or less recommend by Forrest MacDonald called States, Rights and the Union.

14
00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:40.000
That came out, I think, within the past 10 years. I mean, I remember being a student buying it, reading it.

15
00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:45.000
So those are the ones I recommend and other ones will occur to me as we move along.

16
00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:52.000
But certainly I would say those are the indispensable starting points for covering this type of material.

17
00:01:52.000 --> 00:02:00.000
Now this third talk today I think concludes a kind of a unit with the first two.

18
00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:08.000
Then the one this afternoon is sort of on its own and then the next three days, each day will in effect be a unit in and of itself.

19
00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:14.000
But I think it's useful just to recall the important points that I think I've been trying to make.

20
00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:22.000
Just collapse them together briefly so that the material today makes logical sense and you see how it follows from these ideas.

21
00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:28.000
I've been trying to discuss, beginning with the discussion of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798,

22
00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:34.000
Jefferson's theory of the Union basically, a theory that's shared not only by Calhoun

23
00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:40.000
and also by lesser-known figures like St. George Tucker and Abel Upshur and still others.

24
00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:49.000
And that view is premised upon the idea that the United States is composed of sovereign states

25
00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:56.000
that joined the Union for certain limited finite purposes, delegated limited powers to a central government,

26
00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:01.000
reserved the remainder of the powers to themselves, but also according to the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions,

27
00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:21.000
I then wanted to make the point that these ideas of Jefferson did not just emerge fully formed out of his head, but that instead they represented the culmination of a line of thought that had been germinating for ten years.

28
00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:27.600
Jefferson, did not just emerge fully formed out of his head, but that instead they represented

29
00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:32.560
the culmination of a line of thought that had been germinating for ten years, ever since

30
00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:35.660
the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788.

31
00:03:35.660 --> 00:03:42.880
The Virginians, when they ratified the Constitution, inserted, they developed, they drew up an instrument

32
00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:47.880
of ratification, a document whereby they ratified the Constitution accompanying that decision

33
00:03:47.880 --> 00:03:48.880
to Ratify.

34
00:03:48.880 --> 00:03:54.240
And in that document, they made quite clear what their understanding of ratification was,

35
00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:57.560
what ratification really amounted to.

36
00:03:57.560 --> 00:04:02.420
And we looked at the primary drafters of that ratification instrument, there was a committee

37
00:04:02.420 --> 00:04:11.080
of five, and I quoted for you Edmund Randolph, who was on that committee, and who assured

38
00:04:11.080 --> 00:04:16.440
his fellow Virginians at the convention that the ratification of the Constitution was in

39
00:04:16.440 --> 00:04:23.440
was in a certain sense not as momentous as some people were making it appear because it was merely a league of states

40
00:04:23.440 --> 00:04:31.440
and that Virginia reserved all undelegated powers to itself, the new federal government had only those powers that were expressly delegated

41
00:04:31.440 --> 00:04:41.440
and he used the word expressly and he said that as did the instrument of ratification itself

42
00:04:41.440 --> 00:04:50.940
that Virginia retained the right to in fact recall powers that it had delegated to the federal government.

43
00:04:50.940 --> 00:04:55.440
So the compact theory is all over this instrument of ratification.

44
00:04:55.440 --> 00:05:02.940
And then in the ensuing years, we get not only Patrick Henry's 1790 resolution reaffirming these ideas,

45
00:05:02.940 --> 00:05:14.940
But we also get thinkers like John Taylor who began to propose the idea that the state legislatures ought to be intervening to prevent the enforcement of unconstitutional laws

46
00:05:14.940 --> 00:05:20.940
and then finally the Virginia-Kentucky resolutions where we get the idea of interposition and nullification.

47
00:05:20.940 --> 00:05:29.940
It develops logically from these original promises made by pro-constitution people, made by Federalists like Edmund Randolph.

48
00:05:29.940 --> 00:05:38.940
Then, at the end of last time, I want to look at something specific.

49
00:05:38.940 --> 00:05:46.940
I mean, the Virginia-Kentucky resolutions are specific, but look at specific applications of these ideas, even in states that had once opposed these ideas.

50
00:05:46.940 --> 00:05:58.940
And so I gave the example of the embargo imposed during Jefferson's second term that did tremendous damage to commerce and to the economic well-being of New England.

51
00:05:58.940 --> 00:06:03.300
New England. And we saw how did New England respond to that. Well, they responded in some

52
00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:07.080
cases, they called for the secession from the Union. We've got a southern president

53
00:06:07.080 --> 00:06:10.860
who knows nothing about northern interests, we need to secede from the Union. But more

54
00:06:10.860 --> 00:06:18.940
commonly we got other types of lesser forms of resistance. We got, for example, a congressman

55
00:06:18.940 --> 00:06:24.600
from New York expressly recalling the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions and saying, how can

56
00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:29.320
And we blame Massachusetts for appealing to, in effect, these principles.

57
00:06:29.320 --> 00:06:31.960
Why shouldn't she appeal to these principles?

58
00:06:31.960 --> 00:06:36.500
So the Virginia-Kentucky resolutions are being appealed to by the very section of the country

59
00:06:36.500 --> 00:06:39.680
that had once spurned them.

60
00:06:39.680 --> 00:06:46.760
We even get certain New England states saying that the embargo is not legally binding on

61
00:06:46.760 --> 00:06:51.640
them because it's unconstitutional, regardless of the fact that a federal court found it

62
00:06:51.640 --> 00:06:53.840
to be perfectly constitutional.

63
00:06:53.840 --> 00:07:05.840
So these are very lively forms of resistance that we see, and they're taking this Jeffersonian form.

64
00:07:05.840 --> 00:07:14.840
All right, well, today I'd like to start with, I said yesterday I wasn't going to talk about the Louisiana Purchase,

65
00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:18.840
but I think I will just briefly because I don't want to assume people know about this stuff.

66
00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:23.840
We're going to go backward in time for a few years, and then we'll go forward in time to the War of 1812.

67
00:07:23.840 --> 00:07:31.840
It's worth mentioning that in 1803, when the United States made the Louisiana Purchase and acquired an amount of territory,

68
00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:37.840
of course it's not simply confined to the present-day state of Louisiana, but in fact doubled the size of the country.

69
00:07:37.840 --> 00:07:42.840
When this took place, there were people who were opposed to it.

70
00:07:42.840 --> 00:07:49.840
In fact, I read not long ago, Stephen Kinsella can give you the link, I think you can bother him about it,

71
00:07:49.840 --> 00:07:57.840
about somebody who recently drew up a whole series of imaginary articles of impeachment for Jefferson for going through with the Louisiana Purchase.

72
00:07:57.840 --> 00:08:02.840
So there are still people today who would fault him for this. Why would he be faulted for it?

73
00:08:02.840 --> 00:08:06.840
Well, first of all, why is he so eager to acquire this territory from France?

74
00:08:06.840 --> 00:08:29.840
Jefferson, being in large part an agrarian, was of the opinion that it's generally preferable for a person living in a free society to, in effect, be his own boss, to be a landowner, just sort of like the old sturdy Roman Republican type, where you own your own land, you are your own boss, you don't take dictation from anybody.

75
00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:31.840
That's what Jefferson liked.

76
00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:37.840
That was the secure foundation on which he reposed the hopes of the country,

77
00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:41.840
was the great mass of people who were individual property owners,

78
00:08:41.840 --> 00:08:46.840
and what Jefferson feared was that eventually, of course, as population increases,

79
00:08:46.840 --> 00:08:51.840
you're going to run out of land, and it will not be possible for people to live that kind of lifestyle,

80
00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:57.840
and instead they'll have to crowd into the cities where they're going to be just miserable wage slaves,

81
00:08:57.840 --> 00:09:05.840
working for somebody else, answerable to somebody else, and not the kind of sturdy independent character in whom Jefferson placed his hopes.

82
00:09:05.840 --> 00:09:13.840
But if you acquire the Louisiana territory and you double the size of the country, then you indefinitely postpone that much feared day

83
00:09:13.840 --> 00:09:18.840
because there's all this open land for people to go and use and settle on.

84
00:09:18.840 --> 00:09:23.840
So Jefferson's quite anxious, though of course he has constitutional scruples.

85
00:09:23.840 --> 00:09:34.840
The way Jefferson interprets the Constitution, very simply, is that if you propose some Federal action, before he even considers the wisdom of the action, he wants to consider the legality of it.

86
00:09:34.840 --> 00:09:41.840
So he'll look at Article 1, Section 8 and see if the proposed power is listed among the delegated powers to the Federal Government.

87
00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:51.840
And if he does not see it there, then his presumption is that it is unconstitutional and that an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary in order to grant that power to the Federal Government.

88
00:09:51.840 --> 00:09:58.840
Well, of course, Jefferson does not see any authorization for the purchase of additional territory.

89
00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:02.840
He doesn't see that, but he really, really wants this territory.

90
00:10:02.840 --> 00:10:08.840
And naturally his thought is we should amend the Constitution, but the French are fickle here.

91
00:10:08.840 --> 00:10:15.840
They may not want to stick around making this offer this whole time during the deliberately difficult

92
00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:18.840
and time-consuming process of amending the Constitution.

93
00:10:18.840 --> 00:10:22.200
So this opportunity may pass very quickly.

94
00:10:22.200 --> 00:10:25.720
So Jefferson allowed himself to be talked into the position

95
00:10:25.720 --> 00:10:28.920
that the treaty-making power implicitly contained

96
00:10:28.920 --> 00:10:31.480
the authorization for what it is that he sought.

97
00:10:31.480 --> 00:10:36.080
And so he went ahead with the Louisiana Purchase

98
00:10:36.080 --> 00:10:38.480
and he concluded that since the American people

99
00:10:38.480 --> 00:10:40.760
are in the last resort, the ultimate guardians

100
00:10:40.760 --> 00:10:43.400
of the Constitution, they can render their judgment

101
00:10:43.400 --> 00:10:45.720
on him in the next election if they believe

102
00:10:45.720 --> 00:10:52.280
and he has unjustly gone beyond the limits of federal power.

103
00:10:52.280 --> 00:10:56.940
Well there were people, as I say, who were opposed to this and in particular we have

104
00:10:56.940 --> 00:11:01.360
New England Federalists, people who belong to the Federalist Party, tend to favor a stronger

105
00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:06.100
central government, who are Jefferson's political opponents, were actually opposed to this and

106
00:11:06.100 --> 00:11:09.920
one of the arguments that they raised was constitutional.

107
00:11:09.920 --> 00:11:14.140
They argued that Jefferson has interpreted the constitution in a manner that is unduly

108
00:11:14.140 --> 00:11:30.140
Well, well, well, in my opinion it sort of serves them right because all during the 1790s they were advocating a broad interpretation of the Constitution and now they suddenly realized that certain dangers come from this.

109
00:11:30.140 --> 00:11:36.140
Yes, they do. Yes, they do. So the Federalists were opposed, a great many of them, to the purchase.

110
00:11:36.140 --> 00:11:48.140
But apart from the constitutional question, what concerned them in addition was that if you add this enormous amount of additional territory to the country, you're going to absolutely swamp New England.

111
00:11:48.140 --> 00:11:57.140
New England's interests will be much less easily protected because New England proportionately will be less influential in the Union with it being that size.

112
00:11:57.140 --> 00:12:04.140
So they're very concerned. They believe New England has interests, distinct interests of its own that are less likely to be protected in the future.

113
00:12:04.140 --> 00:12:14.140
So they oppose this, and in fact there is talk of New England's secession, secession from the Union over this issue.

114
00:12:14.140 --> 00:12:19.140
And one of the leaders of that secession movement is a man named Timothy Pickering.

115
00:12:19.140 --> 00:12:24.140
Now Timothy Pickering is not just, you know, some yahoo, you know, fell off the turnip truck.

116
00:12:24.140 --> 00:12:29.140
Timothy Pickering had been Secretary of State and he's a Senator from Massachusetts.

117
00:12:29.140 --> 00:12:34.140
in Massachusetts, he was a distinguished figure, totally unlikable.

118
00:12:34.140 --> 00:12:37.140
I haven't found a single historian who likes this guy.

119
00:12:37.140 --> 00:12:42.140
But nevertheless, he's a qualified, he's not just a nobody.

120
00:12:42.140 --> 00:12:47.140
And Pickering was interested in advocating New England's secession.

121
00:12:47.140 --> 00:12:53.140
But the thinking was that if New England secedes and forms its own confederation,

122
00:12:53.140 --> 00:12:59.420
It would be more likely to succeed in the long run if New York joined it.

123
00:12:59.420 --> 00:13:04.420
New York is a large, influential state, so we want to get New York's cooperation.

124
00:13:04.420 --> 00:13:11.740
So the plot that was more or less hatched by some of these Federalists was to bring Aaron Burr on board.

125
00:13:11.740 --> 00:13:18.020
As soon as I mention Aaron Burr, I get snickers and laughter because my students know about him.

126
00:13:18.020 --> 00:13:21.020
Why do you think my students know about Aaron Burr?

127
00:13:21.020 --> 00:13:26.460
Oh, the dual, that's true, but no, no, no, no, no, no, much, much, no, you're way too sophisticated at a level here.

128
00:13:26.460 --> 00:13:33.220
Why else? The milk commercial, remember the milk commercial, the more intelligent people remember saying,

129
00:13:33.220 --> 00:13:37.180
I have no idea what that is, that's good, that's a good sign.

130
00:13:37.180 --> 00:13:43.140
The milk commercial is where this guy is trying to answer this contest question over the phone,

131
00:13:43.140 --> 00:13:47.580
but his mouth is full of, what is it, cake or peanut butter or something,

132
00:13:47.580 --> 00:13:51.580
So he can't get the name, and the answer to the question is Aaron Burr.

133
00:13:51.580 --> 00:13:54.580
And he can't get the name, he's talking about Aaron Burr, and it's not coming out, and they're saying,

134
00:13:54.580 --> 00:13:57.380
oh, sorry, and he doesn't win the prize.

135
00:13:57.380 --> 00:14:02.580
That's what my students were, oh yeah, Aaron Burr, yeah, the peanut butter milk guy.

136
00:14:02.580 --> 00:14:06.580
Yes, yes, that's who he is. Yes, thank you so much.

137
00:14:06.580 --> 00:14:11.580
Well, that's right, but they also do know about the duel, but let's just first say about Aaron Burr,

138
00:14:11.580 --> 00:14:16.980
that the idea was that we get Aaron Burr elected as governor of New York,

139
00:14:16.980 --> 00:14:21.300
and then he will secede New York from the Union and join us.

140
00:14:21.300 --> 00:14:26.220
Now, it's not clear how explicitly Burr acceded to this.

141
00:14:26.220 --> 00:14:30.020
I mean, there's no ironclad proof that he said,

142
00:14:30.020 --> 00:14:33.020
yes, I will carry out this quid pro quo,

143
00:14:33.020 --> 00:14:36.180
but it does seem to have been an unspoken understanding.

144
00:14:36.180 --> 00:14:40.580
Well, as you may know, he does not get elected governor of New York

145
00:14:40.580 --> 00:14:45.020
and he believes that one of the reasons he was not elected

146
00:14:45.020 --> 00:14:50.020
was that Alexander Hamilton had been speaking very badly of him.

147
00:14:50.020 --> 00:14:55.020
I mean, in saying, you know, he was a sexual deviant and a number of other things, a scoundrel,

148
00:14:55.020 --> 00:14:58.020
and that this contributed to his defeat.

149
00:14:58.020 --> 00:15:03.020
And so this is why the duel, it takes me, challenges Hamilton to a duel.

150
00:15:03.020 --> 00:15:11.020
Now, since dueling is actually, you know, illegal, typically, you know, because it would be considered murder if you shot, killed somebody,

151
00:15:11.020 --> 00:15:19.020
You can't just advertise, hey, everybody, it's a duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Why don't you come out and bring your picnic basket and whatever?

152
00:15:19.020 --> 00:15:26.020
This is actually illegal. And when Burr does shoot and kill Hamilton, he is actually on the run at that point.

153
00:15:26.020 --> 00:15:34.020
So it is possible to have a more notorious vice president, possibly, than we have now.

154
00:15:34.020 --> 00:15:40.020
But in any event, they have this duel and, of course, Burr shoots Hamilton. Now, Hamilton goes into the duel.

155
00:15:40.020 --> 00:15:45.020
The Theory of Money and Credit

156
00:16:10.020 --> 00:16:18.520
Sometimes when someone is challenged to a duel, if the two people, the two participants of the duel show up at the duel, sometimes that was considered enough.

157
00:16:18.520 --> 00:16:22.720
They look at each other and say, all right, well, we're both courageous people. See you later.

158
00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:26.320
And they just go home and that would be the end of it. So that could have happened.

159
00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:31.420
What also could have happened is that Burr might have shot and missed. That's happened in the past, too.

160
00:16:31.420 --> 00:16:37.520
There have been a number of duels where that's happened. So Hamilton sort of hoped that that might take place.

161
00:16:37.520 --> 00:16:48.520
It didn't. Hamilton was shot, but he did not die instantly. He was in agony for about 40 hours, and then he died.

162
00:16:48.520 --> 00:16:54.520
So, funny, you can't tell what this audience is going to laugh at.

163
00:16:54.520 --> 00:16:59.520
So poor Hamilton died. Now, whatever people thought of Hamilton, and I'm not a big fan of him.

164
00:16:59.520 --> 00:17:03.520
You know, I don't think he should be shot. You know, I mean, I think he has a right not to be shot.

165
00:17:03.520 --> 00:17:33.520
and so when this happened it tended to throw the whole New England secession movement you know into disrepute and it was discredited because anything that Aaron Burr touched or was associated with now just turned to rust and so the whole thing the whole thing collapses as a result of that but the beginning of or at least part of a great American tradition of dueling one of my favorite American duels by the way if I may go on a tangent is is a duel between Andrew Jackson and

166
00:17:33.520 --> 00:17:34.520
Thomas Hart Benton

167
00:17:34.520 --> 00:17:42.520
Now, they had this duel, and then years later, Andrew Jackson becomes president.

168
00:17:42.520 --> 00:17:48.220
And Jackson is, it so happens that I believe Thomas Hart Benton was Speaker of the House

169
00:17:48.220 --> 00:17:49.220
at that time.

170
00:17:49.220 --> 00:17:54.120
So it's very odd that, sure enough, the two duelers are more or less facing each other

171
00:17:54.120 --> 00:17:57.240
in Washington, D.C.

172
00:17:57.240 --> 00:18:01.060
And if I can remember, somebody's going to have to refresh my memory on this, but one

173
00:18:01.060 --> 00:18:06.820
One of them shot the other in that duel, and the bullet was sort of too deep at first for

174
00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:11.380
them to get it out, and eventually later on they did get it out.

175
00:18:11.380 --> 00:18:16.900
And I believe it was that, if I remember correctly, it's that Jackson shot Benton, but all you

176
00:18:16.900 --> 00:18:20.620
Jackson scholars email me and tell me that if I was wrong on this.

177
00:18:20.620 --> 00:18:24.300
But the way it goes is that, oh, no, no, I'm pretty sure it was the bullet was in Jackson.

178
00:18:24.300 --> 00:18:26.060
Right, the bullet was in Jackson.

179
00:18:26.060 --> 00:18:32.220
So Jackson sends the bullet to the house with a note to Tom's heart, Benton, saying,

180
00:18:32.220 --> 00:18:36.260
Dear sir, I believe this belongs to you.

181
00:18:36.260 --> 00:18:42.180
And then Benton reads it, wraps it back up, returns it to Jackson, and says that, no,

182
00:18:42.180 --> 00:18:46.100
he believes it, I believe it belongs to you by right of long possession.

183
00:18:46.100 --> 00:18:52.820
So I mean, it's like a different world really, a whole different world anyway.

184
00:18:52.820 --> 00:18:57.820
But that's the significant thing, that here you have the New England states seriously contemplating secession.

185
00:18:57.820 --> 00:19:03.820
And as I say, there's a secession proposal of lesser significance during the embargo,

186
00:19:03.820 --> 00:19:10.820
and then there are secession proposals being thrown around, around the time of the Hartford Convention in 1814,

187
00:19:10.820 --> 00:19:14.820
which I'll get to, although the convention itself was more moderate.

188
00:19:14.820 --> 00:19:16.820
But it goes to show that in the early 19th century,

189
00:19:16.820 --> 00:19:21.820
you were much more likely to associate the idea of secession with the northern than with the southern states.

190
00:19:21.820 --> 00:19:25.820
Well, let's say something about, though, the war.

191
00:19:25.820 --> 00:19:30.820
New England, then, was a purchase, too. There was an ugly Catholic.

192
00:19:30.820 --> 00:19:40.820
But because, you know, the New England's were Protestant and this idea of bringing in two different languages, all of which were Roman Catholic.

193
00:19:40.820 --> 00:19:43.820
Right, they were quite clear. They're absolutely right. Yeah, they're quite clear about that.

194
00:19:43.820 --> 00:19:47.820
And Di Lorenzo brings that point out in his chapter on this subject, in his book on Lincoln.

195
00:19:47.820 --> 00:19:56.820
Now, the War of 1812 issue contains some points that are pertinent to our discussion that I think are not as well known.

196
00:19:56.820 --> 00:20:04.820
The War of 1812, of course, has a number of causes that are posited,

197
00:20:04.820 --> 00:20:13.820
and one of them involves the same kind of harassment of American shipping that had been taking place at the time of Jefferson's embargo,

198
00:20:13.820 --> 00:20:19.880
It encouraged him to look in that direction, to propose an embargo.

199
00:20:19.880 --> 00:20:24.540
So you've got both the British and the French are violating American neutral rights, though

200
00:20:24.540 --> 00:20:28.420
of course the War of 1812 is launched only against Britain.

201
00:20:28.420 --> 00:20:35.340
You have the problem of impressment of sailors because the British Navy had a tremendous

202
00:20:35.340 --> 00:20:40.340
problem of desertion because the conditions and the pay were quite poor.

203
00:20:40.340 --> 00:20:46.700
Some commentator described the British Navy as a floating hell, that it's not the most

204
00:20:46.700 --> 00:20:52.540
enjoyable working conditions, and so sometimes British sailors would desert.

205
00:20:52.540 --> 00:20:56.220
And after deserting, it would occur to them, well, what do I know how to do for a living?

206
00:20:56.220 --> 00:21:00.180
I know how to be on a ship, so sometimes they would join, sometimes they'd be on the merchant

207
00:21:00.180 --> 00:21:03.380
marine somewhere or they'd work on some ship.

208
00:21:03.380 --> 00:21:07.820
Well, some of them became American citizens and then worked on American ships, but the

209
00:21:07.820 --> 00:21:13.380
The British claimed a right to impress these soldiers back into service.

210
00:21:13.380 --> 00:21:16.820
That is to say, forcibly bring them back into the service of the British Navy, because the

211
00:21:16.820 --> 00:21:21.240
thinking was that once you're in the British Navy, you're always in the British Navy.

212
00:21:21.240 --> 00:21:24.620
So they can come and get you, even if you've become an American citizen.

213
00:21:24.620 --> 00:21:28.900
And so from the American point of view, this is an insult, and it shows that the US is

214
00:21:28.900 --> 00:21:34.580
not being treated with the dignity that a sovereign nation merits, because the British

215
00:21:34.580 --> 00:21:49.580
The British were boarding their ships and searching for deserters and sometimes plucking people who had become American citizens into the service, and in at least some cases impressing people who were American citizens who had never been in the British Navy.

216
00:21:49.580 --> 00:21:54.580
So sometimes the British were not terribly discriminating in the people they impressed.

217
00:21:54.580 --> 00:22:08.580
We get some testimony about life in the British Navy and impressment by the fact that I've read of one case of a guy who was impressed back into the service of the British Navy 11 times.

218
00:22:08.580 --> 00:22:14.580
He just stinks at this, right? It never occurred to him to just put on a false mustache or something.

219
00:22:14.580 --> 00:22:21.580
or cases of people who jump overboard and drown rather than go into the British Navy.

220
00:22:21.580 --> 00:22:25.580
So that's a source of irritation as well.

221
00:22:25.580 --> 00:22:32.580
But let's also be frank that there is at the same time a desire on the part of some people who favor the war to annex Canada.

222
00:22:32.580 --> 00:22:36.580
There is this land hunger and you think, well, didn't you just get the Louisiana Purchase?

223
00:22:36.580 --> 00:22:40.580
Why do you still have land hunger? I don't know either. It's just never enough.

224
00:22:40.580 --> 00:22:43.980
Let's get some really, really cold territory, too.

225
00:22:44.740 --> 00:22:47.700
So there is a desire for additional land, in the case of Canada.

226
00:22:47.780 --> 00:22:50.180
Let me take the questions afterward, please.

227
00:22:50.260 --> 00:22:53.900
So there's no question about that, and New Englanders saw that,

228
00:22:53.980 --> 00:22:59.300
that there was, at least on the part of some people, a desire to annex Canada.

229
00:22:59.380 --> 00:23:04.340
But the reason for annexing Canada is not just simply limited to land hunger.

230
00:23:04.420 --> 00:23:09.020
There was also this conception that the British position in Canada

231
00:23:09.020 --> 00:23:15.260
was permitting the British to outfit some of the American Indian tribes with weapons

232
00:23:15.260 --> 00:23:21.660
and that this was obviously not something that would conduce to American security.

233
00:23:21.660 --> 00:23:26.540
So there are a variety of rationales that are proposed for the war.

234
00:23:26.540 --> 00:23:31.580
And in June of 1812, Madison goes and gets a declaration of war,

235
00:23:31.580 --> 00:23:38.140
but typically in American history, declarations of war are extremely lopsided in terms of the vote.

236
00:23:38.140 --> 00:23:43.140
I mean, if you look at the declaration of war on Japan, for example, in World War II.

237
00:23:43.140 --> 00:23:50.140
But in the case of the War of 1812, in the House, the House votes 79 to 49 to go to war,

238
00:23:50.140 --> 00:23:53.140
and the Senate votes 19 to 13 to go to war.

239
00:23:53.140 --> 00:23:59.140
Very close, very close, really, by comparison with any other war.

240
00:23:59.140 --> 00:24:06.140
So close that, in fact, Samuel Elliot Morrison, around the time of the second half of the 20th century,

241
00:24:06.140 --> 00:24:12.140
said this is the least popular American war, and he included Vietnam in that.

242
00:24:12.140 --> 00:24:19.140
Interesting. Well, anyway, as the war goes on, New England becomes more and more alienated from it.

243
00:24:19.140 --> 00:24:26.140
They were not particularly in favor, by and large. The Impressment issue irritated them,

244
00:24:26.140 --> 00:24:31.140
but they never thought that the numbers were significant enough to warrant a full-fledged war

245
00:24:31.140 --> 00:24:37.140
against Britain, which they feared could interrupt profitable trade.

246
00:24:37.140 --> 00:24:41.140
The harassment of shipping, as I said, they had ways of getting around that.

247
00:24:41.140 --> 00:24:47.140
They didn't like it, but New England would make statements.

248
00:24:47.140 --> 00:24:53.140
New England spokesmen and newspaper editorial writers would make statements repeatedly during the war.

249
00:24:53.140 --> 00:24:57.140
What a shame it was that here's the country from which so many of us are descended,

250
00:24:57.140 --> 00:25:02.140
and that we're at war with them and it's going to cut into our prosperity

251
00:25:02.140 --> 00:25:05.140
and of course late in the war, by the last year of the war,

252
00:25:05.140 --> 00:25:11.140
the British are imposing a blockade on the coast and it's going to cause them difficulty.

253
00:25:11.140 --> 00:25:17.140
Well, New England therefore becomes less than enthusiastic about lending its support to the war.

254
00:25:17.140 --> 00:25:22.140
So what's very significant in the connection with the state's rights issue

255
00:25:22.140 --> 00:25:30.140
is that under the authority of President Madison, General Henry Dearborn issued an order to Massachusetts and Connecticut

256
00:25:30.140 --> 00:25:37.140
demanding that they call out their militias in order to protect the coast from possible British raids.

257
00:25:37.140 --> 00:25:45.140
Now the federal government has the authority to call the state militias into action for these,

258
00:25:45.140 --> 00:25:53.140
To execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.

259
00:25:53.140 --> 00:26:04.140
Well, from the Massachusetts point of view, they didn't see that really any of these three cases that would justify calling out the militia were in fact operative at that time.

260
00:26:04.140 --> 00:26:13.140
And they took the position that we have the reserved right as a state to decide for ourselves if any of these three conditions hold.

261
00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:43.140
So, for example, the Massachusetts governor answered General Dearborn by saying the states reserve the power to determine whether these three conditions held, and he requested that the Massachusetts Supreme Court render a judgment on the matter, and the Massachusetts court agreed with the governor, and declared, as this power, that is, the power to determine whether these three conditions held,

262
00:26:43.140 --> 00:26:46.720
to see whether any of these three conditions holds.

263
00:26:46.980 --> 00:26:51.380
As this power is not delegated to the United States by the Federal Constitution

264
00:26:51.540 --> 00:26:56.080
nor prohibited by it to the states, it is reserved to the states respectively

265
00:26:56.340 --> 00:27:00.180
and from the nature of the power it must be exercised by those with whom the states

266
00:27:00.340 --> 00:27:04.440
have respectively entrusted the chief command of the militia.

267
00:27:04.900 --> 00:27:09.380
That's a very radical position, isn't it? A very radical position.

268
00:27:09.540 --> 00:27:12.880
I wonder what all the anti-war but pro-central government

269
00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:17.880
Connecticut followed suit. Connecticut, here's an official statement.

270
00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:22.880
It must not be forgotten that the state of Connecticut is a free, sovereign and independent state.

271
00:27:22.880 --> 00:27:27.880
That the United States are a confederacy of states.

272
00:27:27.880 --> 00:27:32.880
That we are a confederated and not a conservative state.

273
00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:37.880
That the United States is a free, sovereign and independent state.

274
00:27:37.880 --> 00:27:42.520
that the United States are a confederacy of states, that we are a confederated and not

275
00:27:42.520 --> 00:27:44.640
a consolidated republic.

276
00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:50.120
The governor of this state is under a high and solemn obligation to maintain the lawful

277
00:27:50.120 --> 00:27:56.320
rights and privileges thereof as a sovereign, free and independent state, as he is to support

278
00:27:56.320 --> 00:28:01.280
the Constitution of the United States and the obligation to support the latter imposes

279
00:28:01.280 --> 00:28:05.480
an additional obligation to support the former.

280
00:28:05.480 --> 00:28:22.480
So if it were the case that the militia were ever to be called out for a purpose other than those listed in the Constitution, according to the state of Connecticut, it would be not only the height of injustice for the militia, but a violation of the Constitution and laws of this state and of the United States.

281
00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:29.480
And they went on to say that the president had no authority to demand that the militia of Connecticut

282
00:28:29.480 --> 00:28:33.480
quote, assist in carrying on an offensive war.

283
00:28:33.480 --> 00:28:36.480
That's how they looked at it. It's a war to go after Canada.

284
00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:40.480
And in fact, we'll get to that in just two seconds.

285
00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:47.480
Connecticut declared that they would not participate until such time as New England should be threatened

286
00:28:47.480 --> 00:28:51.480
by an actual invasion of any portion of our territory.

287
00:28:51.480 --> 00:29:11.480
Now, it's a fact that some companies of militia absolutely refused to cross over into Canada when the United States government began operations against Canada, because here is the confirmation of what they had suspected that at heart this is not fundamentally a defensive war.

288
00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:17.480
Interestingly, it was militia units of the state of New York that declared,

289
00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:25.480
quote, we were enlisted to protect our state, not to invade foreign territory.

290
00:29:25.480 --> 00:29:32.480
Now, of course, the War of 1812 ultimately, from a political point of view, wound up basically a draw,

291
00:29:32.480 --> 00:29:39.480
because the Treaty of Ghent that ended it in December 1814 essentially reestablished the status quo antebellum.

292
00:29:39.480 --> 00:29:43.680
There was no transfer of territory, indemnities, any such thing.

293
00:29:43.680 --> 00:29:46.680
In effect, things just were as they were before.

294
00:29:46.680 --> 00:29:52.680
None of the issues on which the war reposed were in fact even mentioned in the treaties.

295
00:29:52.680 --> 00:29:55.780
Nothing on impressment, nothing on harassment of shipping.

296
00:29:55.780 --> 00:30:03.480
But the harassment of shipping was dwindling away anyway as the Napoleonic Wars had wound down.

297
00:30:03.480 --> 00:30:06.480
So the issues were dissolving in any event.

298
00:30:06.480 --> 00:30:09.280
But the point is that the war winds up more or less a draw politically.

299
00:30:09.280 --> 00:30:11.840
From a military point of view, it was a complete British route.

300
00:30:11.840 --> 00:30:15.760
It was a route of an unprepared American population.

301
00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:20.440
I mean, as many of you know, it involved even the burning of the White House.

302
00:30:20.440 --> 00:30:26.840
The British soldiers actually ate the meal that had been prepared for Madison and his wife,

303
00:30:26.840 --> 00:30:30.880
and then they burned the place down.

304
00:30:30.880 --> 00:30:32.840
Bad cooking, I don't know.

305
00:30:32.840 --> 00:30:39.080
Anyway, but because it was very bad,

306
00:30:39.080 --> 00:31:01.080
It was going very badly. In fact, the greatest American victory, land victory in the war, was the Battle of New Orleans, and the symbolism of that, symbolizes how badly the war went, was that that battle occurred two weeks after the war had been declared over, but General Jackson didn't know that, hadn't actually reached him, so there he is winning this glorious victory, and the war is over.

307
00:31:01.080 --> 00:31:15.080
Well, that's how it went. Well, it shouldn't be surprising then to learn that Congress seriously considered the possibility of military conscription as a way of fighting the war.

308
00:31:15.080 --> 00:31:23.080
And here is where Daniel Webster comes into the picture. Daniel Webster was a long-time senator from Massachusetts.

309
00:31:23.080 --> 00:31:27.080
I'm from Massachusetts. Everything is named after Daniel Webster.

310
00:31:27.080 --> 00:31:32.080
The Daniel Webster Inn, Daniel Webster Highway, Daniel Webster Overpass.

311
00:31:32.080 --> 00:31:36.080
It's like no one ever came from Massachusetts other than Daniel Webster.

312
00:31:36.080 --> 00:31:44.080
But I suppose it's better than the Ted Kennedy Highway or the Ted Kennedy, I don't know, back alley or whatever.

313
00:31:44.080 --> 00:31:49.080
So Daniel Webster is highly regarded at that time.

314
00:31:49.080 --> 00:31:55.080
and even by his opponents, they at least respected him as a great speaker

315
00:31:55.080 --> 00:31:58.080
and as somebody who loved the country whether you agreed with him or not.

316
00:31:58.080 --> 00:32:05.080
Well, Daniel Webster is very often a villain in my opinion in American history, but here he's an unbelievable hero.

317
00:32:05.080 --> 00:32:11.080
I don't know how many people in this room have ever read Daniel Webster's speech against conscription.

318
00:32:11.080 --> 00:32:14.080
Anybody ever read it? It's beautiful.

319
00:32:14.080 --> 00:32:26.080
It was reprinted in the 1960s in the New Individualist Review, which some of you know is the publication that Ralph Reiko was involved in when he was at University of Chicago and Jim Powell.

320
00:32:26.080 --> 00:32:32.080
Great publication. You can get the full bound edition of all the issues in its tremendous journal.

321
00:32:32.080 --> 00:32:39.080
And they republished Webster's speech against conscription. This is my favorite line from that speech.

322
00:32:39.080 --> 00:32:44.080
Webster said, and by the way, you will see what the connection of states' rights is and principles of 98.

323
00:32:44.080 --> 00:32:47.080
Webster says, where is it written in the Constitution?

324
00:32:47.080 --> 00:32:54.080
In what article or section is it contained that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children

325
00:32:54.080 --> 00:33:01.080
and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?

326
00:33:01.080 --> 00:33:04.080
Now, could you imagine saying that today?

327
00:33:04.080 --> 00:33:09.080
You know, you'd be considered a wacko, anti-American, unpatriotic, and whatever.

328
00:33:09.080 --> 00:33:16.080
Here's Daniel Webster. Now, if you're going to be deranged enough to say Daniel Webster is unpatriotic and anti-American,

329
00:33:16.080 --> 00:33:18.080
then there's probably no hope for you, I would say.

330
00:33:18.080 --> 00:33:22.080
So, I mean, I just wonder what the neocon establishment would say about Daniel Webster.

331
00:33:22.080 --> 00:33:25.080
They'd probably have him hanged, for heaven's sake.

332
00:33:25.080 --> 00:33:34.080
The very idea that you could say that the government may actually engage you in a wicked or silly war.

333
00:33:34.080 --> 00:33:39.080
Apparently that's just ipso facto impossible, what you'd hear today.

334
00:33:39.080 --> 00:33:48.080
Well, you'll forgive me, but I'm going to read a few passages from this address, because it just leaves me speechless, how wonderful it is.

335
00:33:48.080 --> 00:34:03.080
Webster says, when the present generation of men shall be swept away, and that this government ever existed shall be a matter of history only, I desire that it may be known that you have not proceeded in your course, those who favor conscription, unadmonished and unforeward.

336
00:34:03.080 --> 00:34:08.440
And when the present generation of men shall be swept away, and that this government ever

337
00:34:08.440 --> 00:34:13.200
existed shall be a matter of history only, I desire that it may be known that you have

338
00:34:13.200 --> 00:34:19.360
not proceeded in your course, those who favor conscription, unadmonished and unforewarned.

339
00:34:19.360 --> 00:34:23.240
Let it then be known that there were those who would have stopped you in the career of

340
00:34:23.240 --> 00:34:27.440
your measures and held you back as by the skirts of your garments from the precipice

341
00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:32.680
over which you are now plunging and drawing after you the government of your country.

342
00:34:32.680 --> 00:34:35.280
And then he went on to say this.

343
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:39.520
It is time for Congress to examine and decide for itself.

344
00:34:39.520 --> 00:34:42.520
It has taken things on trust long enough.

345
00:34:42.520 --> 00:34:47.480
It has followed executive recommendation till there remains no hope of finding safety

346
00:34:47.480 --> 00:34:49.440
in that path.

347
00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:53.520
What is there, sir, that makes it the duty of this people now to grant new confidence

348
00:34:53.520 --> 00:34:59.200
to the administration and to surrender their most important rights to its discretion?

349
00:34:59.200 --> 00:35:02.840
On what merits of its own does it rest this extraordinary claim?

350
00:35:02.840 --> 00:35:07.720
When it calls thus loudly for the treasure and lives of the people, what pledge does

351
00:35:07.720 --> 00:35:13.020
it offer that it will not waste all in the same preposterous pursuits which have hitherto

352
00:35:13.020 --> 00:35:15.860
engaged it?

353
00:35:15.860 --> 00:35:20.840
In the failure of all past promises, do we see any assurance of future performance?

354
00:35:20.840 --> 00:35:25.500
Are we to measure out our confidence in proportion to our disgrace, and now at last to grant

355
00:35:25.500 --> 00:35:36.500
What is there in our condition that bespeaks a wise or an able government?

356
00:35:36.500 --> 00:35:40.500
What is the evidence that the protection of the country is the object principally regarded?

357
00:35:40.500 --> 00:35:44.500
In every quarter, that protection has been more or less abandoned to the states.

358
00:35:44.500 --> 00:35:48.500
That every town on the coast is not now in possession of the enemy or in ashes

359
00:35:48.500 --> 00:35:51.500
is owing to the vigilance and exertions of the states themselves

360
00:35:51.500 --> 00:35:57.500
Now, here's the military conscription. It's beautiful. He says,

361
00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:25.860
Management, both of overcoming reluctance to the service and of subduing the difficulties

362
00:36:25.860 --> 00:36:27.500
of the exchequer.

363
00:36:27.500 --> 00:36:31.820
The administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion.

364
00:36:31.820 --> 00:36:36.620
It contends that it may now take one out of every twenty-five men, at any part or the

365
00:36:36.620 --> 00:36:40.300
whole of the rest, whenever its occasions require.

366
00:36:40.300 --> 00:36:43.920
Persons thus taken by force and put into an army may be compelled to serve during the

367
00:36:43.920 --> 00:36:45.920
war or for life.

368
00:36:45.920 --> 00:36:50.480
They may be put on any service, at home or abroad, for defense or for invasion, accordingly

369
00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:52.700
to the Will and Pleasure of the Government.

370
00:36:52.700 --> 00:36:56.760
The power does not grow out of any invasion of the country or even out of a state of war.

371
00:36:56.760 --> 00:37:03.640
It belongs to government at all times, in peace as well as in war, and it is to be exercised

372
00:37:03.640 --> 00:37:07.180
under all circumstances according to its mere discretion.

373
00:37:07.180 --> 00:37:11.320
This, sir, is the amount of the principle contended for by the Secretary of War.

374
00:37:11.320 --> 00:37:14.440
Is this consistent with the character of a free government?

375
00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:15.440
Is this civil liberty?

376
00:37:15.440 --> 00:37:17.640
Is this the real character of our Constitution?

377
00:37:17.640 --> 00:37:19.720
Indeed, it is not.

378
00:37:19.720 --> 00:37:24.100
The Constitution is libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves

379
00:37:24.100 --> 00:37:29.440
such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure

380
00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:34.760
and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves. Where is it written, as I said, that's the

381
00:37:34.760 --> 00:37:39.020
quotation about taking children from their parents, under what concealment has this power

382
00:37:39.020 --> 00:37:44.060
lane hidden which now for the first time comes forth with a tremendous and baleful aspect

383
00:37:44.060 --> 00:37:49.080
to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will show me any

384
00:37:49.080 --> 00:37:53.480
constitutional injunction, which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender

385
00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:58.040
everything valuable in life and even life itself, not when the safety of their country

386
00:37:58.040 --> 00:38:02.120
and its liberties may demand the sacrifice, but whenever the purposes of an ambitious

387
00:38:02.120 --> 00:38:04.360
and mischievous government may require it.

388
00:38:04.360 --> 00:38:09.640
Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable

389
00:38:09.640 --> 00:38:12.640
doctrine has no foundation in the constitution of the country.

390
00:38:12.640 --> 00:38:16.720
It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free government

391
00:38:16.720 --> 00:38:20.720
and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty.

392
00:38:20.720 --> 00:38:24.720
An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution

393
00:38:24.720 --> 00:38:30.720
is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from substance of a free government.

394
00:38:30.720 --> 00:38:35.720
It is an attempt to show by proof and argument that we ourselves are subjects of despotism

395
00:38:35.720 --> 00:38:41.720
and that we have a right to chains and bondage firmly secured to us and our children by the provisions of our government.

396
00:38:41.720 --> 00:38:50.720
And then so on and on. And of course, the argument for conscription comes from the power to raise armies in the Constitution.

397
00:38:50.720 --> 00:38:57.720
But the power to raise armies does not necessarily imply the power to conscript people forcibly into the army.

398
00:38:57.720 --> 00:39:06.720
So Webster addresses that point. He says the Secretary contends, with connection to this idea that the Congress has the power to raise armies,

399
00:39:06.720 --> 00:39:13.720
that no restraint is to be imposed on the exercise of this power, except such as is expressly stated in the written letter of the instrument.

400
00:39:13.720 --> 00:39:19.720
In other words, that Congress may execute its powers by any means it chooses, unless such means are particularly prohibited.

401
00:39:19.720 --> 00:39:28.720
But the general nature and object of the Constitution impose as rigid a restriction on the means of exercising power as could be done by the most explicit injunctions.

402
00:39:28.720 --> 00:39:33.960
It is the first principle applicable to such a case that no construction shall be admitted

403
00:39:33.960 --> 00:39:37.240
which impairs the general nature and character of the instrument.

404
00:39:37.240 --> 00:39:41.880
A free constitution of government is to be construed upon free principles, and every

405
00:39:41.880 --> 00:39:46.240
branch of its provisions is to receive such an interpretation as is full of its general

406
00:39:46.240 --> 00:39:47.320
spirit.

407
00:39:47.320 --> 00:39:52.960
No means are to be taken by implication which would strike us absurdly if expressed.

408
00:39:52.960 --> 00:39:56.780
And what would have been more absurd than for this constitution to have said that to

409
00:39:56.780 --> 00:40:01.440
To secure the great blessings of liberty it gave to government uncontrolled power of military

410
00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:07.300
conscription, yet such is the absurdity which it is made to exhibit under the commentary

411
00:40:07.300 --> 00:40:09.540
of the Secretary of War.

412
00:40:09.540 --> 00:40:18.820
And then, at great length, going on in this regard, continuing his exegesis of the clause

413
00:40:18.820 --> 00:40:25.180
that permits the Congress to raise armies and explaining why this does not in fact authorize

414
00:40:25.180 --> 00:40:28.980
Military Conscription.

415
00:40:28.980 --> 00:40:33.420
I'll just conclude with one of his last points. He says,

416
00:40:33.420 --> 00:40:37.580
All the means and instruments which a free government exercises, as well as the ends and objects

417
00:40:37.580 --> 00:40:41.580
which it pursues, are to partake of its own essential character

418
00:40:41.580 --> 00:40:44.380
and to be conformed to its genuine spirit.

419
00:40:44.380 --> 00:40:47.300
A free government with arbitrary means to administer it

420
00:40:47.300 --> 00:40:48.500
is a contradiction.

421
00:40:48.500 --> 00:40:51.820
A free government without adequate provisions for personal security is an

422
00:40:51.820 --> 00:40:52.880
absurdity.

423
00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:57.280
A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is a solicism, at

424
00:40:57.280 --> 00:41:05.960
once the most ridiculous and abominable that ever entered into the head of man.

425
00:41:05.960 --> 00:41:09.520
I know, it's incredible, it's incredible, and as I say, today this would be banned,

426
00:41:09.520 --> 00:41:12.440
like there are people who would want to ban this, and it's Daniel freaking Webster for

427
00:41:12.440 --> 00:41:13.440
heaven's sake.

428
00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:19.360
I mean, no greater supporter of the Union can be found than Daniel Webster.

429
00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:23.800
Now here's the key, not only was that a wonderful thing to listen to, but here's the key.

430
00:41:23.800 --> 00:41:27.320
What happens if the conscription bill should pass?

431
00:41:27.320 --> 00:41:32.000
Then in that case, according to Webster, these are his words, it would be the solemn duty

432
00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:36.880
of the state governments to protect their own authority over their own militia and to

433
00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:42.800
interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power, interposition, the exact language of

434
00:41:42.800 --> 00:41:48.200
the Virginia Resolutions of 1798.

435
00:41:48.200 --> 00:41:54.520
The Connecticut legislature announced that the proposed conscription bill was not only

436
00:41:54.520 --> 00:41:59.840
intolerably burdensome and oppressive, but utterly subversive of the rights and liberties

437
00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:07.800
of the people of this state and the freedom, sovereignty and independence of the same.

438
00:42:07.800 --> 00:42:19.020
In December 1813, a new embargo was imposed, more oppressive than even the one of 1807-9.

439
00:42:19.020 --> 00:42:22.580
New England began to protest yet again.

440
00:42:22.580 --> 00:42:28.480
The state legislature of Massachusetts was overwhelmed by petitions and demands and expressions

441
00:42:28.480 --> 00:42:32.760
of frustration and anger.

442
00:42:32.760 --> 00:42:39.640
The Massachusetts legislature then decided to establish a committee at least to try to

443
00:42:39.640 --> 00:42:42.360
develop some kind of a response to this situation.

444
00:42:42.360 --> 00:42:46.960
That committee was headed by a gentleman named William Lloyd.

445
00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:51.920
February 1814 he issued a report that has become known as Lloyd's Report.

446
00:42:51.920 --> 00:42:57.580
It was approved by the Massachusetts General Court and it said this, he's going to be making

447
00:42:57.580 --> 00:43:02.620
the same sort of point that New England states tried to make years earlier when they argued

448
00:43:02.620 --> 00:43:09.620
He also argued that the federal government's power to regulate commerce does not extend to a power to annihilate commerce.

449
00:43:09.620 --> 00:43:14.620
He says, a power to regulate commerce is abused when employed to destroy it.

450
00:43:14.620 --> 00:43:22.620
And a manifest and voluntary abuse of power sanctions the right of resistance as much as a direct and palpable usurpation.

451
00:43:22.620 --> 00:43:28.620
The sovereignty reserved to the states was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States,

452
00:43:28.620 --> 00:43:31.620
as well as for purposes of domestic regulation.

453
00:43:31.620 --> 00:43:36.080
We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign and independent state of Massachusetts is

454
00:43:36.080 --> 00:43:41.520
reduced to a mere municipal corporation without power to protect its people and to defend

455
00:43:41.520 --> 00:43:46.140
them from oppression from whatever quarter it comes.

456
00:43:46.140 --> 00:43:50.440
Whenever the national compact is violated and the citizens of this state are oppressed

457
00:43:50.440 --> 00:43:58.200
by cruel and unauthorized laws, this legislature is bound to interpose its power and wrest

458
00:43:58.200 --> 00:44:09.200
There it is again. There it is again. The language of interposition. This is why I want to emphasize it.

459
00:44:09.200 --> 00:44:16.200
This is why, as I say, Chapter 4 of the Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is geared toward this issue,

460
00:44:16.200 --> 00:44:23.200
because it just doesn't go away. Nor should it go away. It's wonderful, right? These are great. This is what a free people is all about.

461
00:44:23.200 --> 00:44:30.200
Well, one final word about the War of 1812 before moving on to other issues where we see these principles.

462
00:44:30.200 --> 00:44:38.200
It should be mentioned that in December 1814 there was an event called the Hartford Convention in Hartford, obviously Hartford, Connecticut,

463
00:44:38.200 --> 00:44:50.200
in which leading Federalists attended to discuss what should be done because by this point they were absolutely beside themselves with opposition to the war

464
00:44:50.200 --> 00:44:56.640
War, and to James Madison, they called it Mr. Madison's War. I sort of miss that, that

465
00:44:56.640 --> 00:45:03.320
old terminology, Mr. Madison's War, Jimmy Polk's War, or Mr. Wilson's War, and whatever,

466
00:45:03.320 --> 00:45:09.880
we should bring that back. It's his war, right? It's not my war. I mean, there is a distinction

467
00:45:09.880 --> 00:45:14.200
between the government and the people. We are not the same thing, for heaven's sake.

468
00:45:14.200 --> 00:45:19.760
Well, the Hartford Convention is totally opposed to the war, and they also believe that New

469
00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:23.760
New England's interests are not being adequately protected in the Union.

470
00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:28.760
And in particular, the fact that by historical standards later on, they couldn't have known about, of course,

471
00:45:28.760 --> 00:45:36.760
but that the War of 1812 was actually voted on by a very close vote, by war standards,

472
00:45:36.760 --> 00:45:42.760
they began to propose amendments to the Constitution that would more adequately protect New England.

473
00:45:42.760 --> 00:45:48.760
And so one of the amendments proposed at the Harvard Convention was that there should be a requirement of a two-thirds vote,

474
00:45:48.760 --> 00:45:51.760
A two-thirds majority before going to war.

475
00:45:51.760 --> 00:45:54.760
That obviously would have prevented the outbreak of the War of 1812.

476
00:45:54.760 --> 00:46:00.760
The thinking behind this was, before you engage in a matter so grave as war,

477
00:46:00.760 --> 00:46:03.760
you want to make sure that the whole country is fully on board with it,

478
00:46:03.760 --> 00:46:09.760
or at least a very substantial portion of it, not just 19 to 13 in the Senate, for goodness sake.

479
00:46:09.760 --> 00:46:15.760
Other proposals were that you can't have two presidents in a row from the same state.

480
00:46:15.760 --> 00:46:18.760
I wonder, do you think that's aimed at Virginia?

481
00:46:18.760 --> 00:46:23.760
You can't have presidents having more than one term, limit them to one term,

482
00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:26.760
because they're pretty tired of two Jefferson terms, two Madison terms,

483
00:46:26.760 --> 00:46:30.760
little do they know that they've got two Monroe terms still to go.

484
00:46:30.760 --> 00:46:36.760
So they're proposing things of this kind to protect New England.

485
00:46:36.760 --> 00:46:42.760
And so historians have more or less concluded that the Hartford Convention was basically dominated by moderates

486
00:46:42.760 --> 00:46:49.260
by moderates who wanted to reform the Union so as to make it more congenial to New England,

487
00:46:49.260 --> 00:46:53.860
more protective of New England's interests, and really to discourage secessionist sentiment,

488
00:46:53.860 --> 00:46:57.060
which was at a peak once again in New England.

489
00:46:57.060 --> 00:47:01.480
But we should nevertheless remember that at the time of the convention, secession proposals

490
00:47:01.480 --> 00:47:04.840
of various kinds were all over the Federalist press.

491
00:47:04.840 --> 00:47:12.120
There was a proposal by a guy named John Lowell that the original 13 states should secede

492
00:47:12.120 --> 00:47:15.960
and just leave the West to be its own country, just abandon the West.

493
00:47:15.960 --> 00:47:17.640
The West got us into this war.

494
00:47:17.640 --> 00:47:21.040
There were other proposals that New England should just get out

495
00:47:21.040 --> 00:47:24.360
and Virginia is largely responsible for our plight.

496
00:47:24.360 --> 00:47:28.520
All kinds of proposals were coming out in the Federalist press

497
00:47:28.520 --> 00:47:31.760
as possible points of discussion at the convention.

498
00:47:31.760 --> 00:47:35.720
So secession sentiment was, in fact, still very much live.

499
00:47:35.720 --> 00:47:39.760
And the convention closed with this note that they would meet again

500
00:47:39.760 --> 00:47:45.260
in the following year in Boston and reassess the situation, particularly if their demands had not been met.

501
00:47:45.260 --> 00:47:51.760
And there, I think it's probably not crazy to assume that secession would at least have been entertained at that point.

502
00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:54.760
They had received absolutely no redress at all.

503
00:47:54.760 --> 00:48:00.760
So the idea of secession is still floating around. It's not considered a crazy idea, a ludicrous idea. It's considered a progressive idea.

504
00:48:00.760 --> 00:48:06.760
This is the way, peacefully, people who have irreconcilable differences resolve those differences.

505
00:48:06.760 --> 00:48:11.760
Now, instead of going to a total war with each other and killing one out of every four of their citizens,

506
00:48:11.760 --> 00:48:14.760
just go your separate ways in peace.

507
00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:22.760
Now, let's say a few words, if we may, about the bank, the central bank, or we should say the national bank,

508
00:48:22.760 --> 00:48:30.760
in the United States, because here again we have states trying to resist the federal government.

509
00:48:30.760 --> 00:48:40.760
Now early on the first bank of the United States around 1791 was being debated on constitutional grounds and it was approved.

510
00:48:40.760 --> 00:48:46.760
Jefferson had been against it on strict construction grounds and because he didn't think a national bank was necessary.

511
00:48:46.760 --> 00:48:50.760
He didn't see the federal government had been delegated a power to establish a national bank.

512
00:48:50.760 --> 00:48:58.760
Hamilton took a broader view of the Constitution that in effect the bank was necessary and proper to carry out other functions of the government.

513
00:48:58.760 --> 00:49:07.760
He favored the National Bank, and George Washington, it would be hard to find somebody who knew less about national banking than George Washington,

514
00:49:07.760 --> 00:49:11.760
it changed his mind depending on who was the last person who spoke to him on the subject.

515
00:49:11.760 --> 00:49:20.760
And so Hamilton got to him last, I think, but also Hamilton being the Secretary of the Treasury, Washington thought this was sort of his area.

516
00:49:20.760 --> 00:49:23.760
He does finance and that sort of thing, so he gave him the National Bank.

517
00:49:23.760 --> 00:49:30.760
The National Bank. Well, it had an expiration. It was set to expire in 20 years. It had a 20-year charter. It expired in 1811.

518
00:49:30.760 --> 00:49:40.760
But then later it was renewed. Madison, James Madison, as president, supported the renewal of the bank, a new bank, the second bank of the United States, in 1816.

519
00:49:40.760 --> 00:49:51.760
And that too, unless renewed, would expire in 1836. And it's not pertinent to my discussion, but in the 1830s you get Andrew Jackson,

520
00:49:51.760 --> 00:49:57.760
He's reviled by historians for opposing the second bank of the United States, but he's totally heroic on this.

521
00:49:57.760 --> 00:50:03.760
There are some great banking treatises written in the 1830s that are totally sound.

522
00:50:03.760 --> 00:50:07.760
They have exactly the right reasons for being against the second bank.

523
00:50:07.760 --> 00:50:12.760
My favorite scene from that is when Jackson, at one point, has taken ill.

524
00:50:12.760 --> 00:50:15.760
He's fighting against the bank. He's fighting against the bank.

525
00:50:15.760 --> 00:50:18.760
His vice president, Martin Van Buren, goes to visit him.

526
00:50:18.760 --> 00:50:39.760
The second bank of the United States began to get a reputation for corruption, mismanagement, favoritism,

527
00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:44.760
also discombobulating local economies through inflationary policies and so on.

528
00:50:44.760 --> 00:50:49.760
and so on. And so a number of the states had really grown quite impatient with this bank.

529
00:50:49.760 --> 00:50:58.760
It had opened branches in ten different states, and so these states had a direct day-to-day connection with the bank.

530
00:50:58.760 --> 00:51:10.760
Now, the bank question had been dealt with by the Supreme Court, and John Marshall had declared the National Bank to be constitutional.

531
00:51:10.760 --> 00:51:20.760
And he also said that the states could not tax the bank, tax their state branches of the bank.

532
00:51:20.760 --> 00:51:23.760
Because a number of the states had begun trying to do that.

533
00:51:23.760 --> 00:51:31.760
To levy taxes on the branches of the bank in their state for the express purpose of hobbling the national bank.

534
00:51:31.760 --> 00:51:36.760
And so, you know, as a libertarian you wonder, well, I don't know, I have kind of mixed feelings here.

535
00:51:36.760 --> 00:51:40.760
On the one hand, I hate the national bank. On the other hand, I hate taxes.

536
00:51:40.760 --> 00:51:43.760
Well, how do I feel about taxes on the national bank?

537
00:51:43.760 --> 00:51:46.760
I guess I favor that. I favor if it would shut down the national bank,

538
00:51:46.760 --> 00:51:49.760
and then maybe they would collect the taxes and maybe give them back to the people.

539
00:51:49.760 --> 00:51:52.760
Maybe that would be the best way to do it. I don't know.

540
00:51:52.760 --> 00:51:56.760
But anyway, the states are trying whatever they can to give this bank some problems.

541
00:51:56.760 --> 00:51:59.760
And I'm sure a lot of you have heard the phrase,

542
00:51:59.760 --> 00:52:02.760
the power to tax involves the power to destroy.

543
00:52:02.760 --> 00:52:32.760
Well, the context for that phrase was Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall arguing that when the states are imposing taxes on the bank's branches, they're doing something that's going to tend to destroy the bank because the power to tax, the power to destroy, therefore the states don't have the power to tax the bank because the bank was something that was established by the whole union and no individual state has the right to interfere with a measure that was imposed by the whole union. Well, of course, there were still people who believed that

544
00:52:32.760 --> 00:52:36.760
So what if the bank was unconstitutional? So what if John Marshall thinks it is?

545
00:52:36.760 --> 00:52:40.760
Plenty of people thought it was not, and on top of it, it was obnoxious and terrible.

546
00:52:40.760 --> 00:52:46.760
Okay, well, what in fact do the states try to do?

547
00:52:46.760 --> 00:52:52.760
Well, as I say, they try to tax the bank, and I'd like to look at some specific examples of that.

548
00:52:52.760 --> 00:53:01.760
But we should also note on the constitutional point that even though there has been an official statement from the Supreme Court in this matter,

549
00:53:01.760 --> 00:53:06.680
That does not close the issue in the same way that when a federal court found the 1807-1809

550
00:53:06.680 --> 00:53:10.400
embargo constitutional, that did not close the matter for Massachusetts.

551
00:53:10.400 --> 00:53:13.480
They said that that would be a tyrannical idea, that we can't even debate something

552
00:53:13.480 --> 00:53:16.600
once the Supreme Court or some federal court has spoken.

553
00:53:16.600 --> 00:53:20.720
So in fact, the chief judge of the Virginia Supreme Court, Spencer Rowan, who was a great

554
00:53:20.720 --> 00:53:26.720
guy, who would have been appointed by Jefferson as chief justice if he had had the chance,

555
00:53:26.720 --> 00:53:33.720
I do humbly conceive that the states never could have committed an act of such egregious folly

556
00:53:33.720 --> 00:53:38.720
as to agree that their umpire should be altogether appointed and paid by the other party.

557
00:53:38.720 --> 00:53:46.720
So he's saying that the idea that the Supreme Court could be the final judge of a dispute between the states and the Federal Government

558
00:53:46.720 --> 00:53:52.720
when the Supreme Court is itself part of the Federal Government would have been supreme folly.

559
00:53:52.720 --> 00:53:57.420
The Supreme Court may be a perfectly impartial tribunal to decide between two states,

560
00:53:57.420 --> 00:54:03.720
but cannot be considered in that point of view when the contest lies between the United States and one of its members.

561
00:54:03.720 --> 00:54:10.820
So, basically, Rowan is saying that the states have the right to tax the bank,

562
00:54:10.820 --> 00:54:19.720
and it's up to the states themselves to decide ultimately what is the constitutional position on this issue.

563
00:54:19.720 --> 00:54:25.720
So I'd like to look at the case of what happened in Ohio because this is my favorite one.

564
00:54:25.720 --> 00:54:37.480
They tried to make the operations of the bank difficult in Ohio in the 1820s by taxing each of the two Ohio branches about $50,000 a year.

565
00:54:37.480 --> 00:54:45.080
And of course, the bank refused to pay because they cited, you know, they said, look, the courts have spoken, you have no right to tax us.

566
00:54:45.080 --> 00:54:51.980
and a federal judge, in fact, helped to try to keep the state from collecting the taxes.

567
00:54:51.980 --> 00:54:56.880
Well, Ohio decided, well, to heck with the Supreme Court, to heck with these federal judges,

568
00:54:56.880 --> 00:54:59.580
we're going to collect these taxes anyway.

569
00:54:59.580 --> 00:55:08.080
So the state auditor ordered one of his employees to go down to the bank branches

570
00:55:08.080 --> 00:55:13.880
and collect the tax and tell them, you know, we're going to collect this tax from you peacefully, if possible,

571
00:55:13.880 --> 00:55:21.880
But this is your last chance. If you will not pay this tax to Ohio, we're going to do what we have to do.

572
00:55:21.880 --> 00:55:26.880
But one last time, the bank branch manager said, absolutely no way am I paying this tax.

573
00:55:26.880 --> 00:55:31.880
So this gentleman who was in the employee of the state auditor's office simply leaped over the counter,

574
00:55:31.880 --> 00:55:36.880
went into the vault and helped himself to $100,000.

575
00:55:36.880 --> 00:55:41.880
Must be fun working for the government, right?

576
00:55:41.880 --> 00:55:50.460
Well, Ohio of course then has to sort of give a reckoning of this behavior, and a special

577
00:55:50.460 --> 00:55:55.320
committee of the legislature said, the committee are aware of the doctrine that the federal

578
00:55:55.320 --> 00:56:00.820
courts are exclusively vested with jurisdiction to declare in the last resort the true interpretation

579
00:56:00.820 --> 00:56:03.520
of the Constitution of the United States.

580
00:56:03.520 --> 00:56:09.720
To this doctrine in the latitude contended for, they never can give their assent.

581
00:56:09.720 --> 00:56:39.720
Thus has the question whether the Federal Courts are the sole expositors of the Constitution of the United States in the last resort, or whether the states, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, have an equal right to interpret that Constitution for themselves, where their sovereign rights are involved, have been decided against the pretension of the Federal Judges by the people themselves, the true source of all legitimate powers.

582
00:56:39.720 --> 00:57:05.720
When the general government encroaches upon the rise of the state, is it a safe principle to admit that a portion of the encroaching power shall have the right to determine, finally, whether an encroachment has been made or not?

583
00:57:05.720 --> 00:57:15.720
In fact, most of the encroachments made by the general government flow through the Supreme Court itself, the very tribunal which claims to be the final arbiter of all such disputes.

584
00:57:15.720 --> 00:57:21.720
What chance for justice have the states when the usurpers of their rights are made their judges?

585
00:57:21.720 --> 00:57:25.720
Just as much as individuals when judged by their oppressors.

586
00:57:25.720 --> 00:57:30.720
It is therefore believed to be the right, as it may hereafter become the duty of the state governments,

587
00:57:30.720 --> 00:57:34.720
to protect themselves from encroachments and their citizens from oppression

588
00:57:34.720 --> 00:57:39.220
by refusing obedience to the unconstitutional mandates of federal judges.

589
00:57:39.220 --> 00:57:46.220
I mean, there's some courage there, right? Courageous, totally courageous statement.

590
00:57:46.220 --> 00:57:55.720
Well, finally, on the point of the true history of the principles of 98 and interposition and state resistance and so on and so forth,

591
00:57:55.720 --> 00:58:01.000
I want to say something about slavery and the various fugitive slave acts,

592
00:58:01.000 --> 00:58:09.160
because I think this is maybe one of the most interesting features of this history of all.

593
00:58:09.160 --> 00:58:16.040
Now, there is, in effect, a kind of nullification undertaken by a number of states against fugitive slave laws,

594
00:58:16.040 --> 00:58:20.440
and at first glance that may seem to run counter to the idea of nullification,

595
00:58:20.440 --> 00:58:34.440
Because nullification, as Jefferson understood it, and as later expositors understood it, involved declaring null and void an act that violates the Constitution.

596
00:58:34.440 --> 00:58:39.440
Well, strictly speaking, the Constitution does in fact call for the return of runaway slaves.

597
00:58:39.440 --> 00:58:48.440
So it may seem that to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act is really to violate one of the pillars of the doctrine of nullification.

598
00:58:48.440 --> 00:58:53.440
Because the Fugitive Slave Act, perhaps, may not be unconstitutional.

599
00:58:53.440 --> 00:58:57.440
And, of course, you may want to resist it for other reasons and other ways,

600
00:58:57.440 --> 00:59:02.440
but I'm just saying that it at first seems that it does not conform to the demands of nullification.

601
00:59:02.440 --> 00:59:06.440
But, in fact, it's not quite as clear as that.

602
00:59:06.440 --> 00:59:10.440
Because, for instance, one of the things that particularly irritated many of the northern states

603
00:59:10.440 --> 00:59:17.440
was the manner of enforcement of this fugitive slave clause that you see in the fugitive slave legislation.

604
00:59:17.440 --> 00:59:25.440
The first fugitive slave law is in the early 1790s, but there's widespread evasion of it.

605
00:59:25.440 --> 00:59:35.440
And already, from the 1780s onward, you see northern states passing so-called personal liberty laws,

606
00:59:35.440 --> 00:59:43.440
the purpose of which was to prevent slave owners from reclaiming any slaves that had managed to escape into the free states.

607
00:59:43.440 --> 01:00:01.440
And so, for example, New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio started to make it more difficult for people to reclaim their slaves, tried to at least establish jury trials for the slaves.

608
01:00:01.440 --> 01:00:13.440
But the Supreme Court in 1842 declared that any state law that obstructs a slave owner's right to recapture his slave was unconstitutional.

609
01:00:13.440 --> 01:00:18.440
So the federal government upholds slavery in that case.

610
01:00:18.440 --> 01:00:25.440
But undeterred, the states come up with other means of preventing enforcement.

611
01:00:25.440 --> 01:00:42.440
Massachusetts, for example, in 1843, passed a personal liberty law that simply would forbid any state official to take part in any way in catching runaways, or it would forbid the use of state facilities for that purpose.

612
01:00:42.440 --> 01:00:52.440
So that would mean that if I were a southern slave owner going up to a northern state, I would have to rely on federal officials to help me, and there weren't terribly many of those.

613
01:00:52.440 --> 01:01:07.440
So when the various northern states were engaged in this type of behavior, in violating the Fugitive Slave Act, in 1850 you got a tougher Fugitive Slave Act as part of the compromise of 1850.

614
01:01:07.440 --> 01:01:12.440
This is one of the features of that compromise that was meant as sort of a SOP to the south.

615
01:01:12.440 --> 01:01:17.440
And this really put teeth in the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution.

616
01:01:17.440 --> 01:01:22.440
because it took these fugitive slave cases and put them exclusively under federal jurisdiction

617
01:01:22.440 --> 01:01:30.440
and it provided, it allowed special, it looked for special commissioners

618
01:01:30.440 --> 01:01:36.440
who basically would be empowered to issue warrants for the arrest of fugitives and the return to their masters

619
01:01:36.440 --> 01:01:40.440
solely on the basis of an affidavit by the slave owner

620
01:01:40.440 --> 01:01:45.440
like he just simply says, well that's my slave, well that's good enough for us

621
01:01:45.440 --> 01:01:52.440
will arrest the guy and have a trial where he will not be allowed representation or a jury trial.

622
01:01:52.440 --> 01:01:56.440
So you can't testify in your own defense if you're accused of being a runaway slave.

623
01:01:56.440 --> 01:02:01.440
You can't testify in your own defense. You don't have the right of a jury trial.

624
01:02:01.440 --> 01:02:08.440
And these federal commissioners were told that they would make $10 if they found in favor of the slave owner.

625
01:02:08.440 --> 01:02:12.440
And they'd make $5 if they found in favor of the slave.

626
01:02:12.440 --> 01:02:15.440
Sort of stacking the odds, it seems to me.

627
01:02:15.440 --> 01:02:18.440
And then still other obnoxious ways.

628
01:02:18.440 --> 01:02:23.440
They could force bystanders to assist in the capture of a runaway slave.

629
01:02:23.440 --> 01:02:29.440
They could punish local marshals who allowed slaves to escape because of their own negligence.

630
01:02:29.440 --> 01:02:38.440
If citizens were found harboring runaway slaves or in some way impeding their arrest,

631
01:02:38.440 --> 01:02:42.840
for Arrest, they could be fined and imprisoned.

632
01:02:42.840 --> 01:02:51.480
This was viewed as an extremely obnoxious measure, so the result was still more attempts to evade.

633
01:02:51.480 --> 01:02:56.280
Forrest MacDonald tells us that in Chicago, the city council declared the Fugitive Slave

634
01:02:56.280 --> 01:03:01.280
Act to be void, and in fact the citizens of Chicago forced a federal commissioner to free

635
01:03:01.280 --> 01:03:04.400
a man being held as a fugitive.

636
01:03:04.400 --> 01:03:13.400
In fact, McDonald says that one effect of the Fugitive Slave Act was to convert thousands of previously conservative and law-abiding northerners to the cause of abolition.

637
01:03:13.400 --> 01:03:21.400
It also taught them that a state's rights position was more compatible with the cause than was looking to the federal government.

638
01:03:21.400 --> 01:03:25.400
Well, what I find most interesting is this.

639
01:03:25.400 --> 01:03:28.600
What the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared in 1859.

640
01:03:28.600 --> 01:03:34.400
Wisconsin had been variously ignoring the Fugitive Slave Act.

641
01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:37.100
And their Supreme Court makes an interesting statement.

642
01:03:37.100 --> 01:03:41.600
Let's first remind ourselves of some of the most significant words

643
01:03:41.600 --> 01:03:44.900
from Thomas Jefferson's Kentucky resolutions of 1798.

644
01:03:44.900 --> 01:03:46.800
Let's just remind ourselves of them.

645
01:03:46.800 --> 01:03:48.200
Jefferson had written,

646
01:03:48.200 --> 01:03:52.000
Resolved that the several states composing the United States of America

647
01:03:52.000 --> 01:03:56.320
are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their general government, but

648
01:03:56.320 --> 01:04:00.160
that by compact, under the style and title of a constitution for the United States and

649
01:04:00.160 --> 01:04:05.140
of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated

650
01:04:05.140 --> 01:04:09.960
to that government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself the residuary

651
01:04:09.960 --> 01:04:14.120
mass of right to their own self-government, and that when soever the general government

652
01:04:14.120 --> 01:04:21.080
assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no force, that to this compact

653
01:04:21.080 --> 01:04:25.560
Compact each state exceeded as a state and is an integral party, its co-states forming

654
01:04:25.560 --> 01:04:32.680
as to itself the other party, that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive

655
01:04:32.680 --> 01:04:37.260
or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have

656
01:04:37.260 --> 01:04:43.040
made its discretion and not the constitution the measure of its powers, but that as in

657
01:04:43.040 --> 01:04:48.580
all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right

658
01:04:48.580 --> 01:05:02.580
Here's how the Wisconsin Supreme Court defended Wisconsin's position that it was not going to assist the return of fugitives.

659
01:05:02.580 --> 01:05:11.580
Resolved that the government formed by the Constitution of the United States was not the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself,

660
01:05:11.580 --> 01:05:15.580
But that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge,

661
01:05:15.580 --> 01:05:21.580
each party has an equal right to judge for itself as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

662
01:05:21.580 --> 01:05:27.580
Resolve that the principle and construction contended for by the party which now rules in the councils of the nation,

663
01:05:27.580 --> 01:05:31.580
that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it,

664
01:05:31.580 --> 01:05:37.580
stop nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government,

665
01:05:37.580 --> 01:05:40.580
and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers.

666
01:05:40.580 --> 01:05:56.580
That the several states which form that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infractions, and that a positive defiance of those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done or attempted to be done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.

667
01:05:56.580 --> 01:06:05.100
So there are the principles of 1798, still going strong in 1859, and yet they are like

668
01:06:05.100 --> 01:06:11.020
the phantom principles of American history, totally lost, not ever mentioned, and it seems

669
01:06:11.020 --> 01:06:16.340
to me they should be mentioned like every three seconds if possible, which by the way

670
01:06:16.340 --> 01:06:19.620
as you notice that is what I have been doing for the past three lectures, every three seconds

671
01:06:19.620 --> 01:06:23.140
or so they have in fact come up.

672
01:06:23.140 --> 01:06:28.140
On the slavery issue, I think it is worth noting something that I'm sure a lot of you already know,

673
01:06:28.140 --> 01:06:35.140
is that a lot of the most radical abolitionists were in fact not unionists,

674
01:06:35.140 --> 01:06:39.140
in the sense that they felt uncomfortable about the Federal Union,

675
01:06:39.140 --> 01:06:45.140
and in particular the fact that the Constitution clearly recognized the slave relation.

676
01:06:45.140 --> 01:06:50.140
There were some abolitionists, for example, who did try to argue

677
01:06:50.140 --> 01:06:59.140
that the Constitution implicitly was anti-slavery and so if we just obey the Constitution as it was intended then it's anti-slavery

678
01:06:59.140 --> 01:07:04.140
but other people like William Lloyd Garrison took the other view

679
01:07:04.140 --> 01:07:09.140
Garrison was the founder of a newspaper in Massachusetts in 1831 called The Liberator

680
01:07:09.140 --> 01:07:17.140
and his newspaper wasn't that it had huge circulation but his articles would be reprinted in larger circulation papers and would circulate

681
01:07:17.140 --> 01:07:29.140
William Lloyd Garrison was well known because it so happens that the same year that he established the newspaper The Liberator, that was the year of the Nat Turner Rebellion.

682
01:07:29.140 --> 01:07:37.140
I'm thinking of somebody else. Nat Taylor was my graduate assistant in European history.

683
01:07:37.140 --> 01:07:57.140
The Nat Turner Rebellion was a terrifying slave revolt that really sent shock waves throughout the South, and it occurred in 1831.

684
01:07:57.140 --> 01:08:01.780
And the thinking was that Turner had in some way been influenced by William Lloyd Garrison.

685
01:08:01.780 --> 01:08:06.580
Could it really be a coincidence that Garrison starts this really fiery newspaper

686
01:08:06.580 --> 01:08:10.500
that takes on a much, much more violent rhetorical tone

687
01:08:10.500 --> 01:08:14.100
than the abolitionist movement had previously been associated with?

688
01:08:14.100 --> 01:08:17.860
You know, could this really be a coincidence? Well, almost certainly it was a coincidence.

689
01:08:17.860 --> 01:08:21.060
But the point is that that's the kind of fear that William Lloyd Garrison

690
01:08:21.060 --> 01:08:24.180
struck into the hearts of slaveholders. They knew who he was.

691
01:08:24.180 --> 01:08:30.180
And eventually he began the New England Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society.

692
01:08:30.180 --> 01:08:35.180
And he was an opponent of the Constitution. He was an opponent of voting.

693
01:08:35.180 --> 01:08:43.180
And he would publicly burn copies of the Constitution, which was not exactly endearing him to the mainstream of the country.

694
01:08:43.180 --> 01:08:46.180
So he was considered to be very much a radical.

695
01:08:46.180 --> 01:08:51.180
But very significant is that he actually passed through his American Anti-Slavery Society

696
01:08:51.180 --> 01:09:00.180
The requirement of a resolution resolved that abolitionists should make it as one of the aims of their agitation to dissolve the American Union.

697
01:09:00.180 --> 01:09:06.180
So he was a secessionist, but he favored the secession of the northern states.

698
01:09:06.180 --> 01:09:12.180
And he favored that partly because of his desire for political purity and the same kind of motivation

699
01:09:12.180 --> 01:09:17.180
that led him to discourage people from voting and taking part in the political process

700
01:09:17.180 --> 01:09:21.180
in a political process, because he thought you would be morally compromised by taking

701
01:09:21.180 --> 01:09:26.180
part in a political process whose heart, the Constitution, recognizes slavery.

702
01:09:26.180 --> 01:09:31.180
Well, that also motivates him to favor separation because he had the slogan,

703
01:09:31.180 --> 01:09:34.180
No Union with Slaveholders. I don't want to be associated with slaveholders.

704
01:09:34.180 --> 01:09:40.180
But secondly, of course, there's the strategic point that if you're a separate country,

705
01:09:40.180 --> 01:09:45.180
then you're no longer bound by the terms of any fugitive slave act of any kind.

706
01:09:45.180 --> 01:10:15.180
And so, slaves could just run away to the north and there'd be no obligation to return them and you could just turn away any federal agent who tried to get up there, turn them away, you have no, you get out of our country, you have no authority to come up here and this would, he thought, this would seriously disrupt the slave relations, certainly in the upper south and begin to put pressure on the whole system. So it's quite interesting to note that, you know, people who are under the impression that

707
01:10:15.180 --> 01:10:18.180
Well, state's rights is just for slavery and this and that.

708
01:10:18.180 --> 01:10:25.180
I think what we've seen so far is that any principle can be used for good or bad, just about, really.

709
01:10:25.180 --> 01:10:31.180
I mean, Christianity has been used for good or bad by people who either understand it or don't understand it or distort it.

710
01:10:31.180 --> 01:10:34.180
I mean, it's hard to exempt anything from that type of manipulation.

711
01:10:34.180 --> 01:10:39.180
But we've seen that, in fact, this tradition has been used in a great many other cases.

712
01:10:39.180 --> 01:10:44.180
In fact, sometimes on behalf of slaves, as we've seen, but also in a great many other areas

713
01:10:44.180 --> 01:10:48.180
Sometimes we don't even realize that these principles were referred to.

714
01:10:48.180 --> 01:10:56.180
So, having said all that, I think I had a whole other unit of stuff to do that would take us right up to the end.

715
01:10:56.180 --> 01:11:00.180
Instead, I think I'd rather stop and hear what you think about this.

716
01:11:00.180 --> 01:11:05.180
Because I think, as I say, this third one concludes sort of, I think, a self-contained unit of this material.

717
01:11:05.180 --> 01:11:10.180
So I'd be happy to hear any of your thoughts that you have or entertain any questions that you have at this point.

718
01:11:10.180 --> 01:11:29.180
You mentioned that you talked about New England being constrained in territory, and I remember from American history about the Connecticut Reserve and expansion of all the states across the Union until the East Treaty basically cut them off the Mississippi River.

719
01:11:29.180 --> 01:11:37.180
So in other words, they were expanding too, the New England states, in territorial claims.

720
01:11:37.180 --> 01:11:53.180
But not in 1803. I mean, the point is that in 1803, their thinking is that all these new Jeffersonian type agricultural, well, even then, they're not as industrialized in 1803 as they will be 10 years later.

721
01:11:53.180 --> 01:12:02.180
But their thinking is that they have distinct interests that can only be protected if they have more influence in the Union.

722
01:12:02.180 --> 01:12:08.180
And they think that, and as Dr. Prince mentioned, there's also this ethnic concern that you're going to have all these,

723
01:12:08.180 --> 01:12:18.180
and as you say, largely Catholic folks who live out there, who are going to introduce a discordant mix into the population.

724
01:12:18.180 --> 01:12:25.180
The relevant consideration is, what are the territorial boundaries of New England in 1803?

725
01:12:25.180 --> 01:12:31.180
And they are basically, remembering that Maine is part of Massachusetts at the time, they're basically what they are now.

726
01:12:31.180 --> 01:12:54.180
Two questions, but I'll leave myself to one. The argument that I've heard about is,

727
01:12:54.180 --> 01:13:06.180
This is a hard question. There was a minority of the people that actually supported malification, you know, just a Russian class or something like that.

728
01:13:06.180 --> 01:13:21.180
And so maybe it's not a valid argument to say that a minority can judge for the whole, whether it's malified or in Martian case, secede from the Union.

729
01:13:21.180 --> 01:13:23.180
I wonder if we could think about that argument.

730
01:13:23.180 --> 01:13:36.180
The question involves the Harford Convention and to what extent was it supported by the majority of the people and to what extent was it just an unrepresentative number of merchants.

731
01:13:36.180 --> 01:13:47.180
Well, we should remember that the Convention itself wound up recommending a fairly moderate course that I think a typical New Englander would have a hard time objecting to.

732
01:13:47.180 --> 01:14:00.180
The purpose of it was just to make sure that New England would not be overwhelmed by this series of Virginian presidents that seems to be just unstoppable at that time.

733
01:14:00.180 --> 01:14:11.180
So that point is different. In other words, the Harper Convention doesn't actually do things like say we're not going to obey the federal government on this or that point.

734
01:14:11.180 --> 01:14:18.140
at that point, various branches of New England governments were doing that up to then, but

735
01:14:18.140 --> 01:14:23.780
if they were actually going to engage in secession, let's say, an extreme measure like secession,

736
01:14:23.780 --> 01:14:27.600
then I think they would be fairly well obligated to do that, and I think the people would have

737
01:14:27.600 --> 01:14:32.380
forced them to take a measure that's that extreme through what people would have considered

738
01:14:32.380 --> 01:14:36.020
to be the proper channels for that, which would have been a convention elected for that

739
01:14:36.020 --> 01:14:38.420
purpose by the population.

740
01:14:38.420 --> 01:14:39.420
Yes?

741
01:14:39.420 --> 01:14:47.420
Was 1842 the first time the Supreme Court took upon itself to invalidate state law?

742
01:14:47.420 --> 01:14:58.420
It wouldn't be, because during John Marshall's tenure as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1801 to 1835,

743
01:14:58.420 --> 01:15:06.420
the corpus of his decisions is in the direction of the federal government as opposed to the states.

744
01:15:06.420 --> 01:15:13.420
Off the top of my head I can't think of the chronology in terms of in which case do we have,

745
01:15:13.420 --> 01:15:24.420
which would be the first example of Marshall saying or the Supreme Court saying that this state law is unconstitutional.

746
01:15:24.420 --> 01:15:34.420
But we certainly know that in 1832 with Worcester versus Georgia, and obviously there were ones before that,

747
01:15:34.420 --> 01:16:04.420
The ones before that, I mean, I think Dartmouth College would be an example, but already 1832, when Georgia was trying to impose Georgia law on the Cherokees, Marshall said that would be unconstitutional to do that, and Georgia did that through a law, and Marshall said it was unconstitutional, and then supposedly, although it looks like he didn't actually say this, Andrew Jackson said, well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it, but there are still earlier ones as well,

748
01:16:04.420 --> 01:16:10.420
But I don't know all the dates that are associated with it, but in the 18 teens there are a number of them that are significant.

749
01:16:10.420 --> 01:16:12.420
Another one? Yes, Dr. Prince?

750
01:16:12.420 --> 01:16:23.420
What is the future of the play back? Is that all part of the play back?

751
01:16:23.420 --> 01:16:25.420
Is that all part of it?

752
01:16:25.420 --> 01:16:28.420
Which Massachusetts? What are we talking about?

753
01:16:28.420 --> 01:16:34.420
I'm sorry, that's Missouri. Missouri combo. Is that all part of the play back?

754
01:16:34.420 --> 01:16:40.420
By the time of the Missouri Compromise, it was around 1820,

755
01:16:40.420 --> 01:16:45.420
what would have been operative at that time was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,

756
01:16:45.420 --> 01:16:48.420
which did not have nearly the teeth of the 1851,

757
01:16:48.420 --> 01:16:54.420
but it would have been taken for granted by all parties that that at that time was the law of the land,

758
01:16:54.420 --> 01:16:58.420
but as far as I know, it was not modified by the Missouri Compromise.

759
01:16:58.420 --> 01:17:00.420
Kevin?

760
01:17:00.420 --> 01:17:06.420
McCulloch v. Maryland is the three or four case where they, I'm just making sure I got the name right.

761
01:17:06.420 --> 01:17:15.420
I was being very interested in having you comment on the role of McCulloch, the way that history textbooks use McCulloch v. Maryland.

762
01:17:15.420 --> 01:17:21.420
I'll just describe at least my impression, if you can tell me if you think it's misguided.

763
01:17:21.420 --> 01:17:26.420
Basically it's part of a program to show the way the federal government came into its own, really.

764
01:17:26.420 --> 01:17:32.980
really came to sort of civilized rebellious and sort of backwards attitudes and things.

765
01:17:32.980 --> 01:17:39.100
So you have that, you have Marbury v. Madison, and they sort of go, this happened and this happened,

766
01:17:39.100 --> 01:17:42.780
look at these crazy people taxing the bank, it was just out of the blue, that's from nowhere.

767
01:17:42.780 --> 01:17:47.700
I mean, these people have to be talked to, you know, basically.

768
01:17:47.700 --> 01:17:55.420
Right, you know, it's hard to, I want to just put it this way.

769
01:17:55.420 --> 01:18:08.920
John Marshall's tenure as Chief Justice is really difficult to discuss because when he's interfering in the life of the states,

770
01:18:08.920 --> 01:18:13.320
he's very often doing so on behalf of property and contract.

771
01:18:13.320 --> 01:18:16.420
So, I mean, I have to admit that part of me thinks, well, you know what?

772
01:18:16.420 --> 01:18:21.120
Maybe these states shouldn't be acting like this, you know, and John Marshall won't have to smack them around.

773
01:18:21.120 --> 01:18:30.120
But on the other hand, he's setting a precedent for future Supreme Courts to intervene in the life of the states,

774
01:18:30.120 --> 01:18:35.120
when, to say the least, we're not dealing with matters of property and contract.

775
01:18:35.120 --> 01:18:43.120
So obviously, as I think has become clear, my own instinct is that obviously the states can do incredibly obnoxious things,

776
01:18:43.120 --> 01:18:48.120
but the Supreme Court can do really, really super obnoxious things to all of them.

777
01:18:48.120 --> 01:19:02.120
And so that even though Marshall, you know, some of his decisions intend in the favor of, tend toward private property, I would still, you know, I'm still concerned about the centralization of power.

778
01:19:02.120 --> 01:19:13.120
So, you know, so Kevin, to answer your question, certainly Marshall's decisions, the major ones, are portrayed as unambiguously progressive, I think, by a lot of people.

779
01:19:13.120 --> 01:19:17.120
I mean, you might get some leftists who don't like the fact that he is intervening on the side of property.

780
01:19:17.120 --> 01:19:22.720
But by and large, that's overridden by their desire for centralized government.

781
01:19:22.720 --> 01:19:27.820
And so, typically this, right, it's portrayed as, you know, we had this loose confederation,

782
01:19:27.820 --> 01:19:34.220
but now Marshall sort of, through the force of the Supreme Court, you know, creating a kind of single unified whole.

783
01:19:34.220 --> 01:19:39.720
And since a lot of historians, without knowing it, are Whig theorists of history,

784
01:19:39.720 --> 01:19:45.920
they always look back in history as if our current situation is the desired goal.

785
01:19:45.920 --> 01:19:51.240
So you then read history in terms of, hey, look at this, John Marshall is leading us toward, you know,

786
01:19:51.240 --> 01:19:55.160
supreme court imposed feminism and whatever we have today, it's wonderful.

787
01:19:55.160 --> 01:19:57.480
They tend to impose that kind of reading on it.

788
01:19:57.480 --> 01:20:04.360
And I've often thought that what we need is, I'd love to read a good book that critiques

789
01:20:04.360 --> 01:20:09.120
Marshall's major decisions, like one by one critiques them.

790
01:20:09.120 --> 01:20:14.240
If there is such a book, I'd love if someone could tell me what it is, but if there isn't,

791
01:20:14.240 --> 01:20:18.020
One good place to start would be to read the dissenting decisions.

792
01:20:18.020 --> 01:20:20.680
Just read the dissenting decisions in these cases.

793
01:20:20.680 --> 01:20:24.080
And oftentimes there are super strong arguments there.

794
01:20:24.080 --> 01:20:27.760
And so I'd love to see somebody, or maybe even just a documentary reader,

795
01:20:27.760 --> 01:20:32.280
where instead of just reading the triumphant John Marshall decision,

796
01:20:32.280 --> 01:20:35.800
let's get into the meat of what the alternative perspective was.

797
01:20:35.800 --> 01:20:38.760
Because we came very close to having that perspective.

798
01:20:38.760 --> 01:20:42.320
If Jefferson had had a chance to appoint, you know,

799
01:20:42.320 --> 01:20:49.320
I was wondering who it was that there was, speaking to England and the War of 1812, was Westerners, honestly?

800
01:21:12.320 --> 01:21:20.320
John Randolph was against it, and some of them suspected that the intentions behind the war were not altogether defensive.

801
01:21:20.320 --> 01:21:28.320
But a lot of New Englanders were of this belief that this aggressive posture came from the West,

802
01:21:28.320 --> 01:21:33.320
and that's why the sort of crackpot John Lowell came up with this idea of,

803
01:21:33.320 --> 01:21:37.320
you know what, it was a mistake to have anything more than 13 states in the first place.

804
01:21:37.320 --> 01:21:41.320
We should have stuck with that, get rid of these imperialistic Westerners, get rid of them.

805
01:21:41.320 --> 01:21:51.320
And this was in every Federalist newspaper except one in Massachusetts featured Lowell's suggestion as a serious proposal.

806
01:21:51.320 --> 01:21:59.320
Maybe we should get rid of these states. My goodness gracious, how fluid political conversation once was.

807
01:21:59.320 --> 01:22:03.320
Any other? Okay, let's see. One, two, three, please.

808
01:22:03.320 --> 01:22:06.320
I'm sorry, like I'm in the classroom. I'm sorry to do that to you. Yes?

809
01:22:06.320 --> 01:22:24.320
I was just wondering to be more clear on the issue of slavery. Is it not true that the great emancipator said that he would not get involved, that he would not just love the slave institution at all?

810
01:22:24.320 --> 01:22:30.620
and I don't know if this is like a conspiracy theory or something,

811
01:22:30.620 --> 01:22:36.820
I heard that the reason why they created Liberia was a place for people to go back to their homeland,

812
01:22:36.820 --> 01:22:43.220
and a lot of our fathers were about sending slaves back to their homeland.

813
01:22:43.220 --> 01:22:44.020
Right.

814
01:22:44.020 --> 01:22:51.520
You know, I just, I want to be more clear on that issue, and is it not true that the Union had many slaves too?

815
01:22:51.520 --> 01:22:57.160
Okay, right, yeah, this is basically a question on Lincoln and related issues.

816
01:22:57.160 --> 01:23:02.400
The question involves, you know, what was Lincoln's position on slavery

817
01:23:02.400 --> 01:23:05.880
and what were his announced intentions with regard to slavery,

818
01:23:05.880 --> 01:23:11.000
and was it not true that some of the founding fathers and important early Americans,

819
01:23:11.000 --> 01:23:17.960
in fact, favored the removal of some of the black population to Liberia or elsewhere?

820
01:23:17.960 --> 01:23:20.000
Well, we'll do one of those at a time.

821
01:23:20.000 --> 01:23:30.000
With Lincoln, his Republican Party took the free soil position, which was the prevention of the expansion of slavery into the territories.

822
01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:37.000
It did not touch on the issue of slavery in the states. That doesn't mean that Lincoln had no moral position on the subject of slavery.

823
01:23:37.000 --> 01:23:48.000
You do sometimes hear him say that slavery is a bad thing and appalling and this and that, but with regard to what he believed his political authority permitted him to do,

824
01:23:48.000 --> 01:23:54.000
He did not believe it permitted him to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed and he said that repeatedly.

825
01:23:54.000 --> 01:24:03.000
He also said that if in order to keep the union together, which was his goal,

826
01:24:03.000 --> 01:24:10.000
if what he had to do was to approve an amendment to the Constitution

827
01:24:10.000 --> 01:24:20.000
that would have forever prevented the Federal Government from ever interfering with the institution of slavery ever in the future, then he would do that.

828
01:24:20.000 --> 01:24:30.000
He said that basically he considers that to be constitutional law already, and if you want to have an amendment to the Constitution that would solidify that principle, then he supports it.

829
01:24:30.000 --> 01:24:43.000
So he made that perfectly clear. So the slave issue basically becomes a question of if it advances the cause of the Union and hastens the end of the war, then we'll do it.

830
01:24:43.000 --> 01:24:57.000
Now with respect to the Liberia question, this isn't a conspiracy theory at all. It's just a fact that there was an organization founded around 1816 called the American Colonization Society.

831
01:24:57.000 --> 01:25:03.600
Society, and the purpose of it, the question was what do we do with what the census refers

832
01:25:03.600 --> 01:25:06.320
to as the free persons of color.

833
01:25:06.320 --> 01:25:10.880
American census would, when it classified people, had a classification called free persons

834
01:25:10.880 --> 01:25:12.000
of color.

835
01:25:12.000 --> 01:25:17.560
These were former slaves or the descendants of former slaves who were no longer enslaved.

836
01:25:17.560 --> 01:25:21.700
By the time you get to 1860 there were about a half million of them and slightly more than

837
01:25:21.700 --> 01:25:24.720
half of those lived in the south.

838
01:25:24.720 --> 01:25:30.460
Now the free persons of color could have gotten that way, by the way, by either just being

839
01:25:30.460 --> 01:25:37.460
emancipated by their masters, which did happen. Some of them might be fugitives, although

840
01:25:37.460 --> 01:25:41.320
I don't know if you'd want to be counted by the census if you're in a fugitive. The

841
01:25:41.320 --> 01:25:46.600
government says I'd like to count you. I think you'd just run away, probably. But also

842
01:25:46.600 --> 01:25:53.400
there were some who managed to buy their freedom because of the certain type of slavery they

843
01:25:53.400 --> 01:25:57.400
But anyway, the question became, what do we do with these people?

844
01:25:57.400 --> 01:26:07.400
And it didn't matter what you believed about slavery, because some slaveholders and some abolitionists agreed that they could not be assimilated into American society.

845
01:26:07.400 --> 01:26:12.400
Now, Garrison wasn't of that opinion. Garrison was reasonably egalitarian on this.

846
01:26:12.400 --> 01:26:21.400
But a lot of people thought, you know, whatever we feel about slavery, whether it's acceptable or whether it's an abomination, does not touch on this question.

847
01:26:21.400 --> 01:26:34.400
They need to be colonized and so the American Colonization Society decided on Liberia after looking around, they decided on this place, they called it Liberia, capital Monrovia after James Monroe.

848
01:26:34.400 --> 01:26:42.400
But after about four and a half decades of this or four decades, they'd only managed to settle about 11,000 people there.

849
01:26:42.400 --> 01:26:50.400
Now that's a drop in the bucket obviously and the reason for that was that they were not going to use coercion.

850
01:26:50.400 --> 01:26:55.400
It was only if people voluntarily wanted to go, and by and large they did want to go.

851
01:26:55.400 --> 01:27:02.400
The freed slaves believed this is our country, at this point I would be as out of place in Africa as anyone else.

852
01:27:02.400 --> 01:27:06.400
And I have no desire certainly to go and start something new over there.

853
01:27:06.400 --> 01:27:10.400
So that's basically the story of Liberia.

854
01:27:10.400 --> 01:27:16.400
However, it's worth noting just how many prominent Americans were involved in it.

855
01:27:16.400 --> 01:27:38.400
involved in it, and in fact some of them were officers of the organization. So Daniel Webster, Francis Scott Key, Roger Tani, Henry Clay was involved, a whole bunch of them. I don't want to say somebody and have it be wrong.

856
01:27:38.400 --> 01:27:45.400
I've libeled them forever, but there was a tremendous amount of support for this among people of all sections.

857
01:27:45.400 --> 01:27:49.400
But it foundered on the fact that people just did not want to go.

858
01:27:49.400 --> 01:27:57.400
Now for Lincoln himself, you know, there's this book by the editor of Ebony Magazine about,

859
01:27:57.400 --> 01:28:00.400
I think it's called Abraham Lincoln's White Dream,

860
01:28:00.400 --> 01:28:08.400
talking about Lincoln's absolute obsession with the relocation of the free black population

861
01:28:08.400 --> 01:28:13.400
and he considered at one point setting aside Texas for the slave population

862
01:28:13.400 --> 01:28:19.400
he looked at places from the Amazon to all around the world to resettle them

863
01:28:19.400 --> 01:28:27.400
and he considered a constitutional amendment that would have given the Federal Government the power to raise money for this purpose

864
01:28:27.400 --> 01:28:35.400
It is worth noting, by the way, that at the very time, the federal government would not put up money for roads and canals because it was unconstitutional.

865
01:28:35.400 --> 01:28:42.400
They did, early on in the history of the American Colonization Society, give a $100,000 grant to that organization.

866
01:28:42.400 --> 01:28:46.400
It tells you a little something about the state of opinion at that time.

867
01:28:46.400 --> 01:28:49.400
Okay, I hope that's at least some kind of answer to your question.

868
01:28:49.400 --> 01:28:51.400
Do we have time for just one more?

869
01:28:51.400 --> 01:28:55.100
What about Maryland in relationship to it? I don't believe Liberia and Maryland went to war.

870
01:28:55.100 --> 01:29:00.600
I think the capital was Buchanan, Nazi's colony in Liberia when they had their...

871
01:29:00.600 --> 01:29:04.800
I know there were two anti-slave societies and they had to pull up their colonies next to each other.

872
01:29:04.800 --> 01:29:06.700
There was Maryland and one was Liberia.

873
01:29:06.700 --> 01:29:11.500
I believe the capital of Maryland was Buchanan and the capital of Liberia was Monrovia.

874
01:29:11.500 --> 01:29:14.700
I never heard that, but that's very interesting. I never heard about that.

875
01:29:14.700 --> 01:29:16.200
Thank you very much.