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Experience the real story of our nation's founding.

"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

Why did the colonists revolt?

We are approaching our 250^th anniversary of Independence Day. In the 1770s, American colonists were comparatively prosperous, lightly taxed, and their safety was protected by the military might of the British Empire. The American colonists were relatively well-fed, sheltered, literate, unthreatened by war, with land and opportunity just over the horizon for the industrious. So, why did the colonists revolt? 

Because they believed in God-given rights.

American colonists were far more educated than most of the world. In 1776, the American colonies had nine well-established colleges. These included Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, William and Mary, the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia University), Queen's College (Rutgers), and College of Rhode Island (Brown University). Beyond formal education, life-long self-learning was fashionable, and most of the Founders were familiar with the teachings of Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Our people … were observed by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.” Ben should know. He built an enormous fortune selling products that required a literate audience.

The Declaration of Independence lists the particulars for the revolt, but the overarching reason was that the British monarchy believed the colonists were mere subjects. Under English common law, anyone born within the King’s dominions was a natural-born subject, not a citizen, of the British Crown. This lack of British citizenship chafed the American colonists. They viewed themselves as English and took the Enlightenment's definition of “natural rights” seriously. As Boston tour guides are fond of saying, the colonists never yelled, “The British are coming,” because they believed themselves to be British.

Almost three years prior to the Declaration, the Boston Tea Party made rebellion the topic of conversation at the dinner table, in taverns, and in churches. The battle cry was “No taxation without representation!” Today, we naively assume the colonists were angry about taxes, but the operative part of that slogan was the last two words. That’s what got their ire up.

The British were on top of the world. The popular patriotic song of the day, Rule Britannia, made that clear. Englishmen had rights, limited at the time, but those rights were sacrosanct. Even these limited rights were not bestowed upon the colonists. Propertied English males could vote for a person to represent them in the halls of government, but the powers-that-be refused to bestow that same right to colonists. Thus, no representation.

The irony is that even without representation in Parliament, the colonists enjoyed more personal liberty than their English counterparts. To have properly functioning colonies three thousand miles away from the mother country, the colonists were allowed to make many of their own rules through locally elected legislatures. The colonists had developed a taste for self-government and preferred to be somewhat independent of the rulers of the British Empire. Edicts that sailed in from across the Atlantic were more than annoying. The colonists grew increasingly enraged with the palpable disrespect they received from London. Two examples illustrate this point.

The view was different from London, of course. The rulers of the British Empire saw the colonists as getting a free ride. The great British Navy kept the seas safe for New England ships, and the mercantilist Parliament regulated trade, allowing the American maritime industry to prosper. To keep the colonies safe from foreign invasion, England built forts and posted troops throughout their North American holdings. The French and Indian War caused a major drain on the British treasury. Parliament looked at these costs and saw colonials acting like ungrateful, spoiled children who had grown large enough to pay their own way.

Were the colonists’ feelings hurt because the English refused to allow them to join their club as full members? Not exactly. Their belief in self-governance was heartfelt and part of their character. The American Revolution may have been sparked by an overbearing crown, but the fuel was an educated populace that was experienced in home rule. The edicts from England rubbed the colonists the wrong way because they were used to making decisions for themselves and had adopted Enlightenment teachings, which held that self-governance was a natural right.

Or as Thomas Jefferson powerfully put it, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Read all about it!

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.

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

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

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.

Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration

"It can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded not as the supreme expression of our profound belief, but merely as curiosities in glass cases." Harry Truman

On June 11, 1776, the second Continental Congress appointed a committee to write a declaration of independence. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman were elected to the committee. One of these five was a renowned writer. For nearly thirty years, only the Bible outsold Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, and his articles made the Pennsylvania Gazette the most successful newspaper in the colonies. But Franklin declined to draft the declaration, supposedly due to poor health, so the committee asked the thirty-three year Thomas Jefferson to draft the document.

In less than three weeks, Jefferson presented the rest of the committee with this historic document. For the most part, the committee accepted the document as written; except that Franklin made some subtle, but important revisions.  For example, Jefferson had written “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” which Franklin revised to “self-evident.” Some have suggested that Franklin was pushing the text toward the analytic empiricism of David Hume, but it’s more likely that the master editor was wordsmithing for a more graceful rhythm to the words. 

Constitutional Speed Bumps

“The powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” Thomas Jefferson

To a degree, each branch of the national government operates in slight fear that another branch will chastise or even overrule its actions. This was an intended consequence of the design. Madison wrote in Federalist 51, “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.”

In Madison’s opinion, liberty can only be protected by power restraining power. The Constitution doesn’t contain any language preserving the boundaries of the three branches. It is up to the three branches to defend their independence with their assigned powers.

Let’s take a look at the checks between the three branches, starting with Congress.

Are the Founders Worthy of Our Admiration?

“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.”  Theodore White, In Search of History

The Founders of the United States lived over two hundred years ago in a completely different world. Some dismiss the Founders by saying that most were wealthy and many owned slaves. Let’s leave aside for a moment whether those are valid reasons to dismiss the Founders. These criticisms may be true for some of the more prominent Founders, but they are woefully misleading when applied to the great body of people who committed everything to the idea of self-government.

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 actually implemented them. Our Founding was simultaneously an armed rebellion against tyranny, and a revolution of ideas—ideas that changed the world.

For our purposes, let’s define the founding as extending from the Stamp Act through the first administration of George Washington. This would include the development of a revolutionary spirit, the revolution itself, a few non-war years under the Articles of Confederation, the adoption of the Constitution, and Washington’s first term, which set so many precedents. Who were the people involved in these events?

First off, it was a lot of people.

·         57   men committed treason by signing the Declaration of Independence

·         48   signed the Articles of Confederation

·         437 were members of Congress prior to the ratification of the Constitution

·         55   attended the Constitutional Convention

·         30   were members of the first Senate

·         67   were members of the first Congress

·         7     were Cabinet level or above in the First Executive

·         6     were members of the Supreme Court

A Most Audacious Letter

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. —Declaration of Independence

In February of 1787, Congress sanctioned a convention in Philadelphia “for the sole and express purpose of revising the articles of confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures, such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States, render the federal constitution, adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the union.”

The instructions were clear. The convention was to recommend changes to the Articles of Confederation, and submit them to Congress and the state legislatures for approval. Instead, the Federal Convention wrote an entirely new constitution—one that would dissolve the existing Congress and take away some state power. How in the world would they get this thing approved? It threatened every political figure in the country. The answer was simple. As stated in the Declaration of Independence, the Founders believed that all political power emanated from the people. They would bypass Congress and the state legislatures, and go directly to the people for ratification of their work.

There was a problem, of course. Congress and the state legislatures to might not agree to being marginalized. The convention’s solution was to send Congress a letter. The first draft was a convoluted rationalization for their actions and a long winded declaration that their motives were pure. No one thought it was convincing, so in the end, they just told Congress what to do and how to do it.

Letter to Congress from Federal Convention

The United States Government vs. We the People

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”—Declaration of Independence

In 1776, the world was ruled by royalty. Then some upstart colonialists penned the most revolutionary document in the history of man. The Declaration of Independence flipped the world upside down. The Divine Right of Kings became the consent of the governed. The individual was now endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. This was a world-shattering concept.

Like most revolutionary visions, this one didn't just suddenly spring onto the world stage. Ironically, the philosophical basis for self-governance came from subjects of the British Crown. John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine were among many who maintained that this new way of life was ordained by the laws of nature and of nature's God.

The Founders were steeped in this incendiary idea. They believed that all political power emanates from the people. This concept provides the rational for the Declaration of Independence which declared it is the right of the people to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The Founders on Taxation and Debt

This has not been a particularly joyful season inside the beltway.  All we've seen is a lot of clamoring, to little effect. In the hinterlands, we hear the echoes of raucous debate about government spending, government borrowing, and government intrusion into our homes and business. One side yells that the only solution is to tax the rich until they squeal, while the other side of the aisle insists we must reform entitlements or go the way of Greece.

What would the Founders think about all this? Here is what they said in their own words.

“The people of the U.S. owe their independence and their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.” —James Madison

“By any plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully.”—Thomas Paine

The Founding Principles on Powerpoint

Founding Principles from James D. Best

Mr. Madison Writes a Letter to Mr. Jefferson

“Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.” James Madison

Prior to championing a Bill of Rights in the First Congress, James Madison wrote a revealing letter to Thomas Jefferson in October of 1788. Interestingly, much of the letter was written in a secret code only the two of them shared. The following extract from the letter gives insight into Madison’s mindset and the thinking of many of the Founders.

"It is true nevertheless that not a few, particularly in Virginia have contended for the proposed alterations from the most honorable and patriotic motives; and that among the advocates for the Constitution, there are some who wish for further guards to public liberty and individual rights. As far as these may consist of a constitutional declaration of the most essential rights, it is probable they will be added; though there are many who think such addition unnecessary, and not a few who think it misplaced in such a Constitution. There is scarce any point on which the party in opposition is so much divided as to its importance and its propriety. My own opinion has always been in favor of a bill of rights; provided it be so framed as not to imply powers not meant to be included in the enumeration. At the same time I have never thought the omission a material defect, nor been anxious to supply it even by subsequent amendment, for any other reason than that it is anxiously desired by others.

Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. 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.

The restrictions however strongly marked on paper will never be regarded when opposed to the decided sense of the public; and after repeated violations in extraordinary cases, they will lose even their ordinary efficacy."