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"The best novel EVER on the U.S.Constitution."

Larry Schweikart, New York Times #1 bestselling author

Tempest at Dawn, Book 1

Maelstrom, Book 2

Book Review: The Patriot's History of Globalism by Larry Schweikart

 

A Patriot's Guide to Globalism: Its Rise and Decline

Larry Schweikart

There were two things I really liked about this book. First, it was titled A Patriot's History of Globalism, and that is exactly what it was. It starts with monarchical globalism and moves through militaristic, diplomatic, scientific, financial, medical, and finally spiritual, as represented by Earth worship. All these overlapped; none succeeded. All of which builds to an optimistic final chapter, which demonstrates that globalism is in decline. Thus, the book is also true to its subtitle. A nonfiction book that delivers on its title. How often does that occur?

One concern I have about the final chapter's optimism is the series of seven preceding schemes. When an approach to global domination fails, the power-crazed just slip right over to another game plan. You can’t defeat these people. They are relentless. The Founders understood this characteristic of autocrats and designed a government that would hem them in with a constitutional republic that limited power, balanced it among the branches of government, and checked its exercise.  

As proof that the Founders understood globalists, Gouverneur Morris, the stylist or “Penman of the Constitution,” said during the Constitutional Convention,

"As to those philosophical gentlemen, those Citizens of the World as they call themselves, I did not wish to see any of them in our public Councils. I do not trust them. The men who can shake off their attachments to their own Country can never love any other.”

I concur with Morris. I do not trust them. I have never heard a globalist explain the structure of this governing body of an entire planet. It certainly won’t be modeled after the United States system. It has been around 250 years, and nobody has copied the most successful republic in history. In an autocrat’s eyes, our Constitution has two fatal flaws. The “checks and balances” thing throws a monkey wrench in authoritative control. The second flaw is that our system is far too simple for a bureaucrat. (The rejected European Constitution was 66,647 words in English; more than ten times the length of the U.S.A Constitution.) To a globalist, laws must be so complex only ordained priests can interpret them. 

You know, “trust the experts.”

Jefferson and the Declaration - My Article at American Thinker

“It can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded… merely as curiosities in glass cases.” 

So spoke Harry Truman about the Declaration of Independence. He also called it a “supreme expression of our profound belief.” How did this world-shattering document come about?

Read all about it at the American Thinker

American Exceptionalism

Samuel Adams and the Boston Tea Party

“Friends! Fellow Countrymen! We have petitioned. We have remonstrated. We have supplicated. We have prostrated ourselves before the throne of British majesty, and it avails us nothing! This meeting can do nothing more to save the country! Let every man now turn his face toward Griffin’s Wharf.”

I heard these words from Samuel Adams at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. I immediately leaped to my feet and joined the throng marching to Griffin’s Wharf. The destination of the rowdy mob was a cargo of tea owned by the British East India Company. We tossed the tea into the harbor in protest of taxation without representation.

My participation was not on December 16, 1773, the famed night of the Boston Tea Party. It was December 16, 2005. Although a reenactment, it remained a stirring call to arms. Adams’s meaning was clear: the time for talk was over. Samuel Adams’ famous words, “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country!” forced the protesters out of their pews and into the street.

Every revolution needs a rabble-rouser, and Adams was the pervasive firebrand of the American Revolution. He was of normal height for the time, with sharp, angular features. One observer described him as “lean as a greyhound.” John Adams, his second cousin, said, that when riled, his eyes “sparkled like diamonds.” His roots were Puritan, and he disdained finery. A British officer sneered that he looked like a “threadbare clergyman.” Despite appearing average in stature, Adams possessed a larger-than-life personality.

Samuel Adams formed the Boston Committee of Correspondence (1772) to share information, coordinate protests, and expose British tyranny. Within two years, there were 300 similar committees throughout the colonies, converting Boston activism into a colony-wide fight. He amplified a small riot until it became the infamous “Boston Massacre.” He helped found the clandestine Sons of Liberty, which added street muscle to the resistance. He popularized James Otis Jr.’s slogan, “no taxation without representation,” orchestrated the Boston Tea Party, and helped organize Paul Revere’s Ride. Samuel Adams was omnipresent. No wonder he is called the “Father of the American Revolution.”

Adams was a revolutionary, but of a different nature than most. British officials scoffed that Adams’ followers were a “tippling, nasty, vicious crew” from seedy taverns. The truth of the matter is that he recruited Sons of Liberty partisans from church choirs. Adams blended faith and rebellion to build a grassroots army that toppled an empire.

Today, we hear “no taxation without representation” and think the hullabaloo was about taxes. Our Revolution was primarily about the lack of representation, rather than taxes. Prominent men of the era, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were angry that they did not have the privileges of British citizenship. They were subjects of the empire. If the colonists could not be British, then they would become Americans.

Adams signed the Declaration of Independence immediately after John Hancock’s oversized signature. He did not serve as a soldier in the war, stating that his weapon was “the pen, not the sword.” Adams refused to attend the Constitutional Convention because he feared giving more power to the government and fought for a Bill of Rights before supporting ratification. Revolutionaries often fade away in disillusionment or take control of the government they helped foment. Adams chose the second course and served three terms as governor of Massachusetts. Ironically, as governor, he crushed Shays’ Rebellion.

Revolutions require more than rabble-rousers; otherwise, they go awry. Successful revolutions require a clear and workable philosophical underpinning. The Enlightenment provided the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. The Founding of the United States of America is the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment.

Samuel Adams studied Enlightenment ideas at Harvard and referenced Locke in his short and forceful “Rights of the Colonists” (1772). He did not write intellectual treatises. He was a man of the street. He turned Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau into slogans, riots, and policy.

Samuel Adams had a knack for exciting people to act. He envisioned a new nation where “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”

His genius was getting others to share this vision … and make it happen.

This article was first published in Constitution America.

Buy the American Exceptionalism Series HERE.

Michael E. Newton Hamilton Books

The Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, New York recently published a piece by Jesse Serfilippi titled “As Odious and Immoral A Thing: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver.”

Was Alexander Hamilton an enslaver?

Two Hamilton historians, Philo Hamilton and Michael E. Newton, dispute the accusation.

A recent essay by Jessie Serfilippi published by the Schuyler claims to reveal, according to the work’s subtitle, “Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver.” The errors, omissions, assumptions, speculations, and misrepresentations in that essay called for a more complete and accurate evaluation of Hamilton’s history with slavery.

There is no evidence that Hamilton owned slaves or was an ‘enslaver.’ While there is evidence that he helped his in-laws with slave transactions, it appears that Hamilton in these transactions was acting merely as a banker. Regarding Hamilton himself, there are at least five pieces of evidence—two census records, a contemporary statement by Angelica Schuyler Church, a comment by John C. Hamilton in his biography of his father, and the lists of assets Hamilton drew up just prior to his death indicating that Alexander Hamilton did not own any slaves … Alexander Hamilton was on the right side of the slavery issue. In addition to not owning slaves, he actively sought to abolish the evil institution in his own state. Rather than being an “enslaver,” Hamilton opposed slavery, advocated for manumission and supported enslaved and freed blacks to the extent that his limited means allowed.

 

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Tempest at Dawn

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"The best novel EVER on the U.S. Constitution."—Larry Schweikart, author A Patriot's History of the United States and over a dozen other history books

"I find hope and confidence in the wonderfully written Tempest At Dawn, by James D. Best" Allen Ball, Beaufort Observer

"The novel captures the real drama that ensued behind closed doors as they hammered out what is now the oldest living constitution and the foundation of the nation. Read it for its historical value. Read it for its dramatic value. But read it!"—Alan Caruba, Bookviews

"Thanks to James Best’s masterpiece, Tempest at Dawn, I felt like the 56th delegate at the Constitutional Convention. Using vivid narrative and expressive dialogue, Tempest at Dawn presents all the major issues the Founding Fathers struggled with."—Michael E. Newton, author of Alexander Hamilton and other history books.

"This book was absolutely fabulous. If you want a terrific historical fiction book, I recommend you start with this one." Selbrede 40 Book Challenge

"This is an important story told in a lively fashion. Tempest at Dawn might be the ideal way of introducing the American public to the gripping story of how our Founding Fathers gave birth to our constitution."—Jon Bruning, Attorney General, Nebraska

Great Labor Day Read

The real story of our nations founding

"The best novel EVER on the U.S.Constitution."--Larry Schweikart, author A Patriot's History of the United States and over a dozen other history books

"I find hope and confidence in the wonderfully written Tempest At Dawn, by James D. Best" Allen Ball, Beaufort Observer

"The novel captures the real drama that ensued behind closed doors as they hammered out what is now the oldest living constitution and the foundation of the nation. Read it for its historical value. Read it for its dramatic value. But read it!"--Alan Caruba, Bookviews

"Thanks to James Best's masterpiece, Tempest at Dawn, I felt like the 56th delegate at the Constitutional Convention. Using vivid narrative and expressive dialogue, Tempest at Dawn presents all the major issues the Founding Fathers struggled with."--Michael E.Newton, author of Alexander Hamilton and other history books.

"This book was absolutely fabulous. When you read, it makes you feel like you are the 56th delegate. If you want a terrific historical fiction book, I recommend you start with this one." Selbrede 40Book Challenge

"The book brings our founders to life with great writing, historic accuracy and amazing wit."--On Transmigration

The State of History in the United States

The New York Times

On May 11, 2019, the New York Times published Rick Atkinson's “Why We Still Care About America’s Founders.” 

Atkinson is the author of the forthcoming book, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777. Promotional articles are often written to build momentum for a nonfiction book launch. Regrettably, this op-ed says more about the state of history as a discipline than it does about Atkinson’s book.

Normally, a book launch is a joyous occasion, especially when the tome is by a prominent historian who has won Pulitzer Prizes in history and journalism. But these are tough times for historians, especially historians of American history. Progressive activists have belittled white men and toxic masculinity as the scourge of humankind, and American history is just filled with dead, white men.  Some of them slaveholders, as well. Atkinson spent years writing a history book fraught with landmines that could offend the political correctness vigilantes. What’s a historian to do?

Grovel. 

Before getting into the meat of his article, Atkinson pays homage to social warriors hunting for offense. Here are the first three paragraphs of his article. 

There’s a lot to dislike about the founding fathers and the war they and others fought for American independence.

The stirring assertion that “all men are created equal” did not, of course, apply to 500,000 black slaves — one in five of all souls occupying the 13 colonies when those words were written in 1776. Nor was it valid for Native Americans, women or indigents.

Those who remained loyal to the British crown, and even fence-straddlers skeptical of armed rebellion, were often subjected to dreadful treatment, including public shaming, torture, exile and execution. In a defensive war waged for liberty and to secure basic rights, the Americans invaded Canada in an effort to win by force of arms what could not be won by negotiation and blandishment — a 14th colony.

Although voting rights did not extend to women, slaves, or Native Americans, Atkinson failed to mention that voting rights were broader in the United States than in any other major power. In fact, voting rights for free males were greater in the colonies than in Great Britain itself. (In the late 18^th Century, English voting rights were still doled out by nobility.)

The third paragraph is just gratuitous genuflecting. Loyalists who didn’t actively work for the British were seldom subjected to the atrocities listed, and the Canadian invasion is likewise skewed to appear more belligerent toward Canadians than the British. Military leaders certainly hoped to spark a simultaneous rebellion in Canada, but if that failed, they would be content to draw British forces to the north. American colonialists had no intention of conquring new territory while simultaneously fighting the strongest military force on earth.

Historians should not skew the past to make our ancestors look better, nor should they present the past in a way to advance the narratives of present-day social warriors. People and events should be judged in their time, not ours.

Another irritation with modern historians is the tendency to over-play the perspective of ordinary people. Letters and diaries can provide contemporaneous insight, and as a historical novelist, I greatly appreciate research into past lifestyles. It provides me the details to bring my characters to life. But ordinary people don’t bend history. Extraordinary people do. If we want to change our world, we need to study how it has been done in the past.

As Theodore White wrote, In Search of History, “Threading an idea into the slipstream of politics, then into government, then into history…is a craft which I have since come to consider the most important in the world.”

The Founding of this great nation was unique. Up until 1776, with a few brief exceptions, world history was about rulers and empires. The American experiment shook the world. Not only did we break away from the biggest and most powerful empire in history, we took the musings of the brightest thinkers of the Enlightenment and implemented them. Our Founding was simultaneously an armed rebellion against tyranny, and a revolution of ideas—ideas that changed the world.

And that is why we still care about America’s Founders.

The Founders—A Mixed Lot

People frequently refer to the Founders as if they were a homogenous group. They did share a belief in key principles, but they were very different in other respects. For example, George Washington was a wealthy plantation owner, but his top officers in the Revolution included Major General Nathanael Greene, who entered the war as a militia private and was the son of a small farmer; Major General Henry Knox, a Boston bookstore owner who later became President Washington’s Secretary of War; and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, born illegitimate in the West Indies to a struggling mother who died when Hamilton was thirteen. Hamilton went on to become the first Secretary of the Treasury.

Voting rights in the Constitution

Some accuse Constitutional Conservatives of wanting to return our country to slavery and restricted voting rights. This is deflection. Constitutional conservatives want the government to adhere to the Constitution, including amendments, so this argument is specious. Amendments have solidified American positions on these issues and these amendments are part of the supreme law of the land.

Many also harbor misunderstandings about how the main body of the Constitution addressed slavery and voting rights. Despite obvious shortcomings, by 1775, the American colonies were the most democratic places on earth. In Britain, voting rights were far more limited than in the colonies. Less than ten percent of men could vote in Britain, and those who could vote were selected by local nobility. A far larger segment of men voted in the colonies and the requirements were set by law, not officials. Voting rights traced back to the earliest history of the colonies. Within days of landing in Jamestown, for instance, the first colonists elected an executive officer. Only six men were allowed to vote in this embryonic colony, but from that moment forward, colonists expanded the right to vote to broader segments of the population.

The Anti-Constitution Mercenaries

In the past, I blogged at What Would The Founders Think? One of my articles was titled, “The Founders Fear.” The article asserted that the Founders architected a limited government because they feared unrestrained power. This was written way back in 2011, but I received a scolding from a troll last week. Reeve wrote: 

Why did the colonists revolt?

In the five centuries following the Magna Carta (1215), Englishmen had gradually gained individual rights, so that by the late eighteenth century, the English were beginning to exercise a degree of self-government. The King and nobility still wielded substantial power, but Parliament had gained increasing authority, especially the elected House of Commons. 

Toward the end of this period, the opinions of those outside the aristocracy were increasingly influenced by the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of the seventeen and eighteenth centuries. Enlightenment thinkers began to challenge existing religious, government, and social norms, and pushed for additional individual liberty and the free exercise of natural rights. They argued that mankind not only had a capacity for self-government, but that it was a natural right. Through an evolutionary process, Englishmen grew to enjoy an ever-increasing say over who made the laws that governed their lives. That is, those Englishmen who lived in England. If an Englishman happened to live in one of the British colonies, he was still a mere subject of the crown with no representation in Parliament.

Benjamin Franklin  before Lords in Council in Whitehall Chapel

Can Tempest at Dawn be taken seriously?

Tempest at Dawn is a novelization of the Constitutional Convention. As a novel, it is not bound by the rigorous constraints of a nonfiction history book, but it does not deviate from the historical record except for modernizating language, re-sequencing of debates for logical presentation, and attributing a few speeches to a different delegate because that person was already established as a character. It’s confusing to tell a story with more than sixty characters, so I had to choose a representative sample and occasionally attribute to them the words or actions of others.

The real story of our nation's founding.

James Madison’s comprehensive convention notes provided a solid framework for what happened inside the locked doors of the Pennsylvania State House. The events outside the State House occurred, but literary license was used because there were very few recorded details about them. For example, Franklin’s dinner, the John Fitch Steam Boat demonstration, horse races, and George Washington having a carriage built were all outside activities during the convention.  The Fourth of July celebration happened pretty much as portrayed, and delegates did witness a two story house being moved down the street. 

Other than speeches, conversations were speculative, but based to a large degree on what must have been discussed in private meetings to shift the votes and opinions expressed in the proceedings.

The Founders on the Economy

Many think the Founding Fathers were a bunch of old-fogies who lived way before iProducts, and have little to contribute in handling modern economic issues. Those people would be wrong. The post-war economy under the Articles of Confederation was in a tailspin. Alexander Hamilton under the leadership of George Washington saved this nation from economic collapse. (See The Man who saved America from financial ruin.)

What would the Founders think about our current economic problems? Here is what they said in their own words.

In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this country, but symptoms of a leveling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarters to give notice of the future danger. — James Madison, Federal Convention, June 26, 1787

The Founders on Power

The Founders distrusted overly strong governments. That’s why they engineered a limited republic. Today, Americans seem to turn to their government to validate and protect real and presumed rights, and increasingly rely on government to guarantee the substance of life. Many modern Americans embrace national authority and fight to enlarge governmental powers.

The Founders would be appalled.

“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.”—James Madison

“A mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.”—James Madison

“No wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.”—George Washington

“The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”—James Madison

Commentary—Were The Framers Fears Justified?

"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression." James Madison

An idea is powerful. It can change the world. A great leader may be able to alter the course of history, but without instilling new ideas, the world resumes its old course. When an idea or value is shared by the majority of a community, it becomes a cultural linchpin. That culture will not change until that idea is jerked out of the general consciousness and replace with a different idea.

Constitutionalists share an idea. At one time, most Americans subscribed to this idea, but no longer. What is this idea? Fear of overly powerful government. 

It sounds simple. But this fear was the overriding emotion that drove the Framers to design a republic with limited national powers. Inside the State House, which we now call Independence Hall, the delegates’ fear of government was strong and universal. Their entire focus was on constraining, checking, and decentralizing government power. This had never happened in world history.

American Exceptionalism Explained

Throughout history, new nations have come into being because of conquering armies, internal rebellion, or the edict of a great power. Although the United States of America was conceived in revolt, our governing institutions were born in calm reason. Our Constitution comes from a convention and ratification process where reasoned debate eventually led to a decision by a large segment of the population to put a new government in place.

Our founding was unique, and the type of republic we formed was profoundly foreign to most of the world. With a few brief exceptions, world history until 1776 was written about kings and emperors. The American experiment in self-government rudely shook up a world used to rule by nobility. Not only did we break away from the biggest and most powerful empire in history, we took the musings of the brightest thinkers of the Enlightenment and implemented them in the New World. Our founding was simultaneously an armed rebellion against tyranny and a revolution of ideas—ideas that changed the course of world history.

It doesn’t take much study to conclude that early Americans held dear a few key principles, and risked their lives, families, fortunes, and honor to build a republic based on those very same principles. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and most of their contemporaries believed they had witnessed and participated in events that were more than merely unusual. Our forefathers repeatedly said that the founding of the United States of America was truly historic—a unique event in human history.

The Founders on a Living Constitution

The Founders believed that the Constitution was a legally binding agreement between Americans and their government. What would the Founders think about a living Constitution? Here is what they said in their own words.

“On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”—Thomas Jefferson 

“The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.”—James Wilson, in Of the Study of Law in the United States 

The Patriot Who Refused to Sign the Constitution

The eyes of the United States are turned upon this assembly and their expectations raised to a very anxious degree. May God grant that we may be able to gratify them, by establishing a wise and just government. —George Mason, in a letter to his son.

George Mason

In the end, George Mason did not believe the Constitution established a wise and just government. He was one of only three delegates present in the final days of the convention who didn’t sign the document. The other two refused due to their personalities. Elbridge Gerry was mercurial and cantankerous by nature, and Edmond Randolph was afraid to be associated with something that might fail. George Mason, on the other hand, refused to sign based on his principles.

In early 1776, before the Declaration of Independence, Mason drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights and framed Virginia’s constitution. George Mason was rightfully proud of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and pleased that it became a model for other states.

SECTION I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

SEC. 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.

James Madison’s Worst Nightmare

“There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.”

Madison believed the greatest threat to democracy was factions, what we call special interests. This wasn’t a theory; it was an observation he made by studying the demise of democracies down through the ages.  If a faction, or a coalition of factions, gained control of the levers of government, then democracy would collapse on itself—usually sooner, rather than later.

To protect America from this threat, Madison and the other Framers devised a limited republic instead of a democracy. Elected officials would make laws, not the people at large. This put a buffer between unbridled passions and lawmaking. A republican form of government would help, but the true shield would be enumerated, balanced, and decentralized powers with potent checks on abuses. The Framers believed that if they could harness government powers, they would reduce the risk of tyranny. This design of the Framers worked effectively for over two hundred years.

A Danger Greater than Factions

As much as Madison wanted to protect the nation from factions, there was something he feared far more than factions—attempts to eliminate factions.

Factions cannot exist if people do not possess the freedom to form and express opinions. In the above quote, Madison was being facetious with his second method of removing factions. He wanted to emphasize his point that liberty is essential to the existence of factions, and factions are a natural byproduct of a free people.

Democracies can be destroyed by factions; but eliminating the threat requires the withdrawal of the freedom to hold an opinion contrary to the public mood. It may sound like a Catch-22, but the Framers had an answer: let factions thrive, but craft a government that would be enormously difficult to capture as a prize.

We have veered from the Framers design, and now there are few restrictions on federal powers. Constitutional checks and balances are tattered. It may now be possible for a group of determined activists to gain control of an unfettered national government.