The history of Delaware during the War years is little known, but the actions of the Republican Party in the State expose the ruthless tactics the Party was willing to undertake to root out and destroy political opposition.  There is a reason Bayard called the Republicans in Congress and in Delaware “reptiles.”  They wrecked the election process, violated civil liberties, confiscated mail, and subverted republican institutions for their own partisan gain.  The clearest example would be the November 1862 invasion of the State by the United States military with the sole purpose being to influence the elections for both State and federal offices.  This event had the consent of both State Republicans, including the candidate for governor and the Republican congressional delegation, and the Lincoln administration, including Abraham Lincoln himself.

Delaware Republicans, namely Congressmen George P. Fisher, feared “Southern sympathy” in the State would lead to defeat in the upcoming elections and thus began to petition the Lincoln administration to take action.  Fisher, for whom Lincoln had “a warm feeling and a high regard,” wrote the President on 14 August in reference to the November election.  Since he had received only a “plurality” of 247 votes in 1860, he wanted the Lincoln administration to keep Delaware troops at home to vote in the election.  These 500 to 1000 votes, he thought, would strengthen Republican chances of carrying the State.  Additionally, Fisher asked Lincoln to postpone drafting troops in Delaware until after the election and urged the administration to strip Democrat Governor William Burton of all appointment powers over the volunteer and militia unites of the State.  Fisher believed this would save State Republicans from the “fury of our enemies.”  Lincoln agreed to most of his requests, and stated he was “painfully surprised” to hear of his concern over the matter.  He closed his letter by assuring Fisher that he wished for his success “as much as you can wish it yourself.” Lincoln’s assurances of support would not be enough to placate Fisher and other State Republicans, and by October Delaware Republicans secured Union troops to help influence the election.

The results of the “little” elections in October terrified Delaware Republicans.  Democrats swept most local offices in the State, and Republicans feared an impending Democratic victory in the November election.  False reports that Southern sympathizers from Maryland would be brought north to help influence the November election, and that hostile Democrats crowded polling places in Kent and SussexCounties moved quickly through Republican channels.  Fisher and Republican gubernatorial candidate William Cannon continued to solicit help from local military officials to put down this Democratic resurgence and help place them in office.  In mid-October, between one hundred and one hundred and twenty United States cavalry “paraded” through the State, attended political meetings, cheered for Republican candidates, and insulted the Democratic candidate for Congress, William Temple, and other members of his party, including Bayard.  The cavalry remained in the State for two weeks, and most Democrats concluded that the troops arrived to spread alarm and produce “intimidation among the Democrats.”

On the Sunday before the general election, Fisher and other Republican officials attended a meeting in Milford, Delaware to discuss the prospects for military occupation on election day.  Fisher wanted to petition the federal government for armed intervention in the elections, and the others in attendance agreed that troops were necessary to prevent a Democratic victory.  When Fisher’s request for troops was initially denied by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, gubernatorial candidate William Cannon took matters into his own hands by personally asking Colonel James Wallace (a slave-holding Republican partisan) of the Maryland Home Guards to enter the State on election day.  This group had previously been in the State disarming and arresting anti-Republican militia units.  Cannon’s move was highly irregular, for this request would normally be made by the State Executive, a position Cannon coveted but did not yet occupy.  Stanton eventually complied with Fisher’s demand, as did Wallace, and days before the election, 1200 troops arrived in Kent and SussexCounties.  The troops were divided into units of between forty and sixty men under the command of Provost Marshals and distributed to polling places throughout the State.  The Provost Marshals were considered “active and violent partisans of the Republican party,” and were appointed without Governor Burton’s authority.  In fact, Burton had been given no indication of the impending military invasion by the federal government.

The military presence intimidated voters across Kent and Sussex Counties.  Soldiers stood with drawn sabers at the voting window in Georgetown, while Democrats were charged with fixed bayonets in Dover.  Some prominent Democrats were required to take an oath of allegiance before voting, and in many cases, Democratic ballots were replaced Republican ballots.  Troops arrested and incarcerated Democrats suspected of being disloyal, or those who refused to take the oath, and drove many voters from the polls.  Republican officials claimed that troops were necessary to prevent disorder among voters, but when questioned about the subject during a legislative investigation following the election, few Republicans could recall any instances of violence that would have necessitated federal intervention in the State.  Troops had been introduced, in the words of one prominent Republican, to prevent being “beaten badly” at the general election.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, the troops did not have the desired effect.  Cannon was elected governor, but Fisher lost his seat to William Temple and Democrats gained control of the Delaware Legislature.  Following the election, future Delaware Governor Gove Saulsbury formed a committee to investigate the military occupation.  After the testimony of over one hundred citizens, most of whom thought “that troops were not necessary on the day of the election, either to preserve peace or ensure a fair election,” Saulsbury concluded that the Lincoln administration should be branded “in infamy and everlasting disgrace” for the introduction of troops into “one of the feeblest states in the union, for no other purpose than to determine the result of her local election,” for involving the country in a destructive civil war, for suspending the writ of habeas corpus, for suppressing free thought and free speech, and for depriving many of life and liberty.

Saulsbury’s report is available for free online, but outside of a few State historians, no one knows it exists and it has rarely been cited in academic works.  It is a sweeping indictment of the Lincoln administration, particularly in regard to the usurpation of power by the executive branch.  If no other event damns the Lincoln administration, the military invasion of Delaware in 1862 should certainly pierce the supposedly impenetrable armor of the Lincoln myth.  One can only hope. (A portion of this essay is reproduced from my dissertation at the University of South Carolina, A Lonely Opposition: James A. Bayard, Jr. and the American Civil War)

Georgetown Law Professor Louis Michael Seidman created a bit of a stir recently with a December 30 op-ed in the New York Times titled "Let's Give Up on the Constitution." He was the subject of a similar piece for The Chronicle Review in mid-December titled "The Constitution: Who Needs It?" Both articles support his forthcoming book, On Constitutional Disobedience, a sweeping challenge to the United States Constitution. In essence, Seidman contends that because the Constitution has been disregarded for several decades, Americans should cease to pay homage to an outmoded document littered with structural problems and open to diametrically opposed interpretations, i.e. originalism and "living constitutionalism." The American people, he said, are "at a stage where there is a growing realization that a lot of constitutional law is empty posturing." He added, "This is not a stable situation." Translation: the written Constitution is dead and because our "unwritten" constitution has served Americans quite well, we should ignore the written document and follow common law precedence. If the general government in Washington passes an unconstitutional law, Seidman contends "each of us should answer with a perfectly straight-forward, but deeply subversive, two word question: u2018So What?'" Seidman makes several valid points in both pieces and in this interview, but his solution — the recognition and acceptance of the "unwritten" constitution — is dangerous, and more importantly his belief in a "national" American polity is the inherent weakness of the "unwritten" model.

Sideman told Megyn Kelly of Fox News that he opposes gun control legislation not because it is unconstitutional, but because it does not work, and he thinks that Americans should support free speech in the abstract, not because a piece of parchment "gives" that right to Americans. I agree on both points. If Americans considered gun ownership to be a natural right of self-preservation and self-defense, as William Blackstone famously called it in his commentaries on English law, then the current debate on gun control would not be taking place. Additionally, if the American public (and by default the central government) believed in reciprocal civil liberty, then there would be no need for the Bill of Rights. But they don't and historically never have. That was the greatest rallying cry for a Bill of Rights in 1787 and 1788. As Thomas Tredwell of New York said in his State Ratifying Convention in 1788 in arguing against the Constitution devoid of a Bill of Rights:

In this Constitution, sir, we have departed widely from the principles and political faith of '76 when the spirit of liberty ran high, and danger put a curb on ambition. Here we find no security for the rights of individuals, no security for the existence of our state governments; here is no bill of rights, no proper restriction of power; our lives, our property, and our consciences, are left wholly at the mercy of the legislature, and the powers of the judiciary may be extended to any degree short of almighty. Sir, in this Constitution we have not only neglected — we have done worse — we have openly violated, our faith — that is, our public faith.

Without a codification of those rights, Treadwell and others believed that the general government would run roughshod over American civil liberties and the sovereignty of the States.

Of course, Seidman can point to arguments against a Bill of Rights in support of his position. Both Alexander Hamilton and James Wilson thought that an enumeration of such rights would allow the government to abuse others. As Hamilton wrote, "Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which such restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power." Hamilton was working on the assumption — and a disingenuous one — that the government would abide by the written limits of the document. Yet, those written limits would disappear if the Constitution was scrapped in favor of the unwritten British model. Civil liberty would have to rely on the public at large for enforcement, and judging by the current state of political discourse in the United States, that would be a frightening scenario. It would take a dramatic educational paradigm shift to make most Americans believe that their fellow citizens at large are interested in the preservation of their rights. The founding generation understood that as well, which is why in addition to both governing documents for the United States, the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution, every State wrote a Constitution in the founding period.

Siedman is also correct that the Framers made amending the Constitution exceedingly difficult. This was pointed out both in Philadelphia in 1787 and in several of the State ratifying conventions. The Constitution was amended twelve times by the founding generation including the Bill of Rights, but only fifteen times since. Yet, if the Constitution was followed as ratified, then amending the Constitution would become irrelevant. The States, equipped with their own codified bill of rights and armed with the sovereignty and legitimacy of the people, handled all domestic issues, moral, legal, and political. Decentralization, in other words, prevented the need for amendments.

Anyone who lives in Alabama can attest to the problems presented by a strongly centralized government and a constitution that is outrageously simple to amend. At last count, the Alabama State Constitution had over 850 amendments. Local governments cannot sneeze without permission from the State. That is what Americans would be (and are) subjected to under the current unwritten Untied States Constitution. All issues would become, by default, national issues, which is what Siedman wants. Nationalism, "this (meaning the singular United States) is our country," creates an inherently uncivil climate in relation to the individual and the rights, customs, and cultures of the local community. An unwritten national Constitution may work among a generally homogenous population, but never over a diverse region like the United States. Joseph Taylor of North Carolina spoke for many in the founding generation, North and South, when he said in 1788, "We see plainly that men who come from New England are different from us. They are ignorant of our situation; they do not know the state of our country [North Carolina]. They cannot with safety legislate for us." Bay Staters thought the same of their Tar Heel counterparts. Nothing has changed. The "Chicago way" is not the Alabama way — thank God.

The unwritten Constitution that Siedman glorifies has led to the trampling of civil liberties, the suppression of free government, the destruction of individual rights, and the centralization of power in the hands of 545 elected and unelected oligarchs. What the American political system needs is a good dose of federalism and decentralization and a return to the Constitution as ratified through the Tenth Amendment. As Kirkpatrick Sale recently said in this video, "The problems that we face now, there's not a one of them that could not be solved or at least ameliorated considerably if we didn't face it at a smaller scale." I agree with Siedman that the Constitution of the founding generation is dead and that no one follows it, but by capitulating to the "So What?" mindset, the American experiment of limited, written, decentralized constitutional government would meet its ultimate doom. We might as well raise a toast to "God Save the Queen!" and forget that Washington, Henry, Adams, Jefferson, Rutledge, Dickinson, Franklin, or Sherman even existed.

Brion McClanahan [send him mail] holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of South Carolina and is a faculty member at Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom. He is the author or co-author of four books: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes (Regnery, 2012), The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012); Forgotten Conservatives in American History (with Clyde Wilson, Pelican, 2012); and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).

The Best of Brion McClanahan

On 20 March 1861, United States Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware began a three day speech on the prospects of war and the legality of secession. He began by offering a resolution in the hope of avoiding what he predicted would be a long, bloody conflict. It read:

Resolved by the Senate of the United States, That the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, has full power and authority to accept the declaration of the seceding States that they constitute hereafter an alien people, and to negotiate and conclude a treaty with "the Confederate States of America" acknowledging their independence as a separate nation; and that humanity and the principle avowed in the Declaration of Independence that the only just hosts of government is "the consent of the governed," alike require that the otherwise inevitable alternative of civil war, with all its evils and devastation, should be thus avoided.

Today, November 15, is Bayard's birthday. His is one of the most important but forgotten United States Senators in American history. There are no monuments to his honor, no buildings named after him, and outside of Delaware hardly anyone has heard his name, but he was one of the few men in the Congress with the resolve to resist the headlong rush to war the Lincoln administration and the Republican Party foisted on the American people, North and South. He privately called Lincoln an "ordinary Western man" that had no concept about American government. Bayard was a rock, a crusader waging what seemed to be, at times, a one-man defense of the Constitution and the Union of the Founders. He was threatened by mob violence, his mail was searched and was later confiscated, he was denounced in the press as a traitor, was hung in effigy in Philadelphia, and later resigned from the Senate rather than continue among the "reptiles" in Congress as he called them. Such a man deserves our attention.

Bayard openly questioned the motivation behind the war against the South and wondered aloud how people could defend such a cause. "Could there be a more revolting proposition than that the individual man, who is domiciled in the State, and residing there, shall be held in the position that he is guilty of treason against the State if he does not side with her, and of treason against the General Government if he does?" He contended "humanity alone" must side with the "law of domicile" in such a situation. When his son-in-law joined the Union army in 1861, Bayard warned, "In embarking on this war therefore, you enlist in a war for invasion of another people. If successful it will devastate if not exterminate the Southern people and this is miscalled Union. If unsuccessful then peaceful separation must be the result after myriads of lives have been sacrificed, thousands of homes made desolate, and property depreciated to an incalculable extent. Why in the name of humanity can we not let those States go?"

In a July 1861 speech entitled "Executive Usurpation," Bayard roasted the Lincoln administration and lamented the loss of liberty. The Constitution "which we had supposed gave us, as citizens of a free country, free institutions, in contradiction to the absolutism which reigned in France" was being subverted by an administration that smacked of Louis XIV, Oliver Cromwell, or Napoleon Bonaparte. Personal liberty was the cost of centralization. "If [you cherish] the principle of civil liberty, [you] cannot sustain this action of the President [suspension of habeas corpus] which violates the laws of the land, and abolishes all security for personal liberty to every citizen throughout…the loyal States….power always tends to corruption, and especially when concentrated in a single person."

Bayard typically reserved his harshest statements for the Republican leaders in Congress. He wrote in late 1861 that, "Their intent is the devastation and obliteration of the Southern people as the means of retaining power, and yet I doubt in the history of the world has ever, with the exception of the French reign of terror, shown so imbecile, so corrupt, so vindictive rulers over any people as those with which this country is now cursed." He voted against appropriating money for the war effort, was dismayed by the reckless government spending — "God help the tax-payers if the money can be borrowed" — urged his son to buy gold when the National Bank Acts passed, thundered against their attempts to expel members of Congress for their opposition to the War, denounced troops at the polls, the military occupation of Delaware, and the arrest of dozens of Delawareans for suspected disloyalty, and believed that the "more moderate" Republicans were being "governed by the violent and ignorant." He wrote, "If the people of the U.S. were not more practical and informed than the element the French Jacobins dealt with I believe we should have the atrocities of the u2018Mountain' renewed. Fear alone sustains them." In 1862 he wrote, "State necessity has always been pleaded for the suppression of liberty."

Recent events, of course, make Bayard relevant. Tomorrow, thousands of Americans will flock to see Stephen Spielberg's new film about "Honest Abe," and will doubtless leave feeling a surge in admiration for the "Great Emancipator." Assuredly, Bayard's description of events will not make the film. At the same time all fifty States and over 675,000 people and counting have petitioned the White House to accept the peaceful separation of their State from the Union. Barack Obama has compared his administration to Lincoln's. Perhaps the two have more in common than he realizes.

Lincoln, the dishonest, Hamiltonian, dictator, and Obama, the Marxist, Keynesian, emperor, both have shredded the Constitution and both have faced a decision on how to handle open defiance of their administration. Obama's will mirror Lincoln's, at least in regard to the legality of secession. Secession, he will say, is illegal, unconstitutional, treasonous, and unpatriotic. And why not, he has so-called conservative support. Bayard said in 1861 that "I believe the great value of the American Union…is the preservation of liberty — by which I mean a Government of laws, securing the right of free speech, securing the freedom of thought, and securing the free and ample discussion of any question." The American people may not be ready for secession and are going about it the wrong way, but let's hope there is a James Bayard in the current crop of United States Senators, someone with the manly resolve to contest the flimsy arguments that will certainly be used against the American principles of independence and self-determination. I don't have much optimism.

Brion McClanahan [send him mail] holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of South Carolina and is a faculty member at Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom. He is the author or co-author of four books: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes (Regnery, 2012), The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012); Forgotten Conservatives in American History (with Clyde Wilson, Pelican, 2012); and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).

There is a common mantra among those who pursue the old republican principles of freedom and limited government that the Constitution limits the power of the central government, and therefore if we just followed the document everything would be ok; if it were only that simple. They are not entirely wrong, but the characterization of the Constitution as a u201Climiting documentu201D is only partly true.

During the great "sales job" of 1787 and 1788, proponents of the Constitution swore that the powers of the central government, as enumerated in the Constitution, could never be enlarged or enhanced. The Constitution, it was said, differed from the English model because it was a written document, as opposed to the unwritten British model of common law that could fluctuate with the will of ambitious and unscrupulous judges. The only interpretation could be found in the language of the document itself, and if the general government exceeded its constituted authority, the people were no longer duty bound to follow such tyranny. Alexander Hamilton said as much in the Federalist essays, as did other proponents of the document, such as James Iredell of North Carolina, George Nicholas and Edmund Randolph of Virginia, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, among others.

Many of the proponents of the document were good, honest men who believed in sound American principles of government. Roger Sherman of Connecticut, John Dickinson of Delaware, and John Rutledge of South Carolina come to mind. Yet, no one would ever accuse Hamilton and Wilson of being anything more than ardent nationalists, but there they were, in 1787 and 1788, defending the Constitution on the basis that its powers were limited by their strict enumeration and that the Constitution would continue the federal republic as under the Articles of Confederation. The States bought it and ratified the document. Unfortunately, the story did not end there nor did all Americans believe such shysters as Hamilton and Wilson. There were holes in their story.

The ratification of the Constitution was a messy business precisely because the opposition understood what the Constitution could and would ultimately do to liberty and good government in the United States. Violence, intimidation, and the suppression of a free press in many States followed. That is the untold story. In Pennsylvania, opponents of the document were forcibly dragged to their seats by a mob in order to secure a quorum to call for a ratifying convention and then once the document was ratified, mobs whipped up on their opponents in drunken jubilation, literally at times. At the same time, the press virtually ignored the opposition and often printed only the speeches and pamphlets written in support of the document.

The situation was worse in Connecticut. There the opposition — labeled as the "Wrongheads" — was blacklisted from the press, and the only surviving speeches from the January ratifying convention come from the proponents, not by accident. Connecticutter Hugh Ledlie, a veteran of the French and Indian War and the American War for Independence and a member of the Sons of Liberty, wrote shortly after the document was ratified in his State that the Constitution would "in the end…work the ruin of the freedom and liberty of these thirteen dis-united states…" and he called the Constitution "a gilded pill."

Most Americans also probably don't know that Hamilton was taken to task in the New York Ratifying Convention and, in essence, exposed as a liar. After one of his speeches in support of the document, John Lansing produced his notes of the Philadelphia Convention which showed that Hamilton wanted and favored a Constitution unlike the one he supposedly supported. Lansing said Hamilton could not be trusted. New York ratified the document anyway by two votes. As in Pennsylvania, violence then gripped the State as proponents took to the streets in New York City. It was hazardous to your health to be a so-called "Anti-Federalist" in 1788. Of course the famous essays of "Brutus" and "An Old Whig" along with the speeches of Patrick Henry of Virginia (every American should read them) and the close votes in New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts clearly show that the Constitution was not the glorious culmination of wisdom that modern Americans view it to be.

How could people like Ledlie, Henry, "Brutus" and "An Old Whig" describe the Constitution as a document that would subvert liberty when, if the "limiting document" school is correct, the powers of the general government are circumscribed by their enumeration? Simple. Because opponents correctly saw the Constitution and the powers granted to it by the people of the States as a vehicle for unlimited tyranny. The Constitution established a powerful central authority — with the ability to tax, spend, borrow, and wage war — one that if unchecked and unleashed would destroy the "Principles of '76," namely republicanism, decentralization, and liberty.

To opponents, the only proper check was a bill of rights, and almost every State that submitted a set of proposed amendments placed a "State sovereignty" amendment at the top of the list. These proposed "State sovereignty" amendments were a direct assault on the vague language of the document, namely the infamous "sweeping clauses" now known as the "Necessary and Proper Clause," the "Supremacy Clause," and the "General Welfare Clause." The Constitution only became a "limiting document" with the ratification of the Tenth Amendment, and that is why its enforcement is paramount. Without it, the Constitution as written opens a malleable Pandora's Box for scheming politicians to use to their advantage. It was not sold to the States that way in 1787 and 1788, nor would it have been ratified had the people of the States thought the general government would turn out to be the modern leviathan in Washington D.C., but when arguing that the Constitution is a "limiting document," it must always be remembered that is only the case if we faithfully adhere to the Tenth Amendment and the Constitution as ratified and sold to the States. Otherwise, the opponents of the document who warned against its ratification will forever be proven correct. We were warned.

Brion McClanahan [send him mail] holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of South Carolina and is a faculty member at Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom. He is the author or co-author of three books: The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012); Forgotten Conservatives in American History (with Clyde Wilson, Pelican, 2012); and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).

Just after taking office as President of the United States in 1789, George Washington wrote in two separate letters that he had both "feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution," and that he "greatly apprehend, that my countrymen will expect too much from me." No one man in the eighteenth century measured up to Washington's reluctant statesmanship. He resigned his military commission along with every political office he had or could have obtained following the American War for Independence, retired to Mount Vernon, and preferred to live as a planter. He was the American Cincinnatus. But Washington knew in 1789 that, thankfully, the Constitution as ratified by the States did not allow for a dictator or a king. He could not unilaterally "save" the United States (and it could be debated whether the United States needed saving). Such work required the hands of many, most importantly the States and the Congress. Washington was not the government.

Ron Paul supporters should find solace in Washington's words. No one in the Paul camp is under the delusion that he is the "savior" of the Constitution, but I think many would be disappointed in a Paul presidency, just as the Tertium Quids were disappointed with Thomas Jefferson. The realities of the Constitution and Washington politics would have limited Paul's effectiveness, and rightly so. Americans don't need a presidential tax or spending plan. The president cannot raise taxes, lower taxes, cut spending or increase spending. We often hear "Reagan cut taxes," or "Obama spending increases" but both are incorrect. It was the Congress that did both and the Congress should be held accountable. But this is where Ron Paul can win by losing and be more effective from the sidelines.

As many have pointed out (Jack Hunter most recently), the young age and enthusiasm of most Paul supporters provides hope for the future of the federal republic. They can breathe life into the Constitution. The plan, however, should be to turn our attention away from the presidency for good. As per the Constitution as ratified, the States and the Congress have more power than the president. Washington knew it and we should remember it. A three part plan under the guidelines below could change the course of the United States forever.

1. One thing the progressives did well in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries was bridge the gap between political theory and political action. Most knew that Americans would never accept Marxism in large doses, so they conceived of a two-pronged strategy to dupe the American people into accepting their destruction of the first American principles of liberty and decentralization. The first involved the popular philosophy of pragmatism. In short, these progressives would insist on a piecemeal approach to American socialism and by the time Americans realized that they had embraced the political slogans of the Communist Manifesto, it would be too late.

The second involved a scientific concept called permeation. This is where Ron Paul supporters could make a move. The progressives joined every conceivable civic organization they could, from local political parties to civic clubs, in an attempt to drive public opinion toward their agenda. If enough Paul supporters made a determined effort to do this, the Republican Party would look drastically different in five years. Furthermore, because liberty and freedom are not difficult concepts for Americans to embrace, and because Paul supporters advocate a return to principles of 1776, Americans are already primed to accept this message, albeit gently if necessary. Successful efforts by Paul supporters to swing the delegate count in the Republican primary process by becoming active at the local level is a nice example of how this could work on a broader scale.

2. As a wonderful new book edited by Don Livingston has pointed out, Americans are beginning to rethink the American union in light of the crushing social, political, and economic problems the United States is facing. This grass roots effort would breathe life into the next part of the strategy. Americans need the States to grow a backbone, and by guiding the Republican Party at the State and local level, Paul supporters would be able to sway the legislative agenda in statehouses across America. Imagine if seventy-five percent of the States were controlled by people interested in decentralization, and at the very minimum several Constitutional amendments that would forever destroy the leviathan in Washington D.C. Don't think it could happen? Just look at the sweeping changes brought forth by the progressives with the 16th-19th Amendments to the Constitution. If three quarters of the States proposed and ratified a slate of amendments designed to reduce Washington to the general government it was designed to be, Congress and the President could do no more about it than part the seas and make it rain (Al Gore to the contrary). The States are the key, and our focus needs to be there.

3. Ron Paul is retiring, but there are members of Congress who are worth their salt. Rand Paul and Justin Amash are nice examples. Again, this all hinges on controlling the State and local parties. If Paul supporters could determine who is a candidate for office at the State and local level, then perhaps as much as thirty percent of the Congress could be controlled by "Paulites." The Paul campaign has shown that a liberty minded candidate can raise money and on the local and State level have a real chance at winning. A voting block of that nature could propose or defeat legislation at will and would force the statists and centralizers to the bargaining table. One or two members of the United States Congress do not have much power, but one-hundred would.

Americans are hungry for this type of action, but it will take dedication and the willingness to make the local more important than the "national." The Constitution as ratified by the founding generation is the blueprint, and the progressives, for all of their faults, knew how to make local politics into an effective weapon. Ron Paul will not get the nomination (of course he will be closer than the pundits think), but he can still win the war. It took the progressives over one hundred years to get here, the modern mess of debt and government power. They were patient. A little patience, a little perseverance, and a lot of hard work are all liberty minded individuals need to strike the heart of Washington and kill the monster. It must be gutted from the outside in and the bottom up. The president cannot and should not "change" America lest we have a love for a totalitarian dictator. Ron Paul 2012 has to be the start of something bigger. The young people have the bug; now it is time to run with it.

Brion McClanahan [send him mail] holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of South Carolina and is a faculty member at Tom Woods’s Liberty Classroom. He is the author or co-author of three books: The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012); Forgotten Conservatives in American History (with Clyde Wilson, Pelican, 2012); and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).

In case you missed it (I did), Friday was Abraham Lincoln's
birthday. In honor of the Great Centralizer, the United States Mint
unveiled a new design for the penny. This should put to rest all of
the discussion about the elimination of the worthless copper-clad
zinc cent, but the real emphasis should be on the new message the
penny pushes on the American public: Lincoln "saved the Union"
and State's rights is a fallacy. Don't forget it.

The face
of the penny will remain unchanged, but the reverse will feature
a shield with thirteen stripes and the phrase "E Pluribus Unum"
emblazoned across the top. The Mint described the symbolism of the
new penny as thus: "The new Lincoln “Preservation of
the Union” penny is emblematic of President Lincoln's “preservation
of the United States of America as a single and united country.”
The 13 vertical stripes of the shield represent the states joined
in one compact union to support the Federal government, represented
by the horizontal bar above [emphasis added]." At the unveiling
of the new penny in Springfield, IL, Mint Director Ed Moy said,
"This one-cent coin honors the preservation of the union, which
was Abraham Lincoln’s ultimate achievement. Because of his presidency,
despite bitter regional enmity and a horrific civil war, we remained
the United States of America." This shield was widely used
in the North during the War for Southern Independence as a propaganda
piece. Nothing has changed. The penny will be in circulation for
at least 50 years.

Senator Dick
Durbin of Illinois pushed legislation to redesign the penny through
Congress, and it is probably no coincidence that the new penny directly
attacks the rejuvenated interest in State's rights and Tenth Amendment
issues across the United States. Notice that according to the Mint,
the States are in the Union to support the "Federal" government
and are a "single united country." That would be news
to the founding generation. Outside of the ardent "nationalists"
like Alexander Hamilton or James Wilson, very few believed that
the States joined in a compact to "support the Federal government."
In fact, the Constitution would not have been ratified had this
been the case.

Even Lincoln's
contemporaries doubted his character and his decision to go to war
to "preserve the Union." Few Americans realize that less
than forty percent of the American public voted for Lincoln in 1860
and that he narrowly won re-election four years later (he trounced
George McClellan in the Electoral College but received only fifty-five
percent of the total Northern vote. Had the South voted,
he would have lost). United States Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware
called Lincoln an "ordinary Western man" who had no idea
about "republican government." During a three-day speech
in 1861, Bayard labeled Lincoln a tyrant and issued this warning:

"You
may attempt by war to keep the States united — to restore the
Union; but the attempt will be futile. Conciliation and concession
may reunite us; war, never! The power may be exercised for the
purpose of punishment and vengeance. It may be exercised if you
propose to conquer the seceding States, and reduce the nation
into a consolidated nation; but if your intention be to maintain
the Government which your ancestors founded — that is, a common
Government over separate, independent communities — war can never
effect such an intention."

The
other Senator from Delaware, Willard Saulsbury, remarked in 1863
that, "I firmly believe that the usurpation of arbitrary power
upon the part of the Executive to arrest peaceful citizens in loyal
States has done more to render that disunion of these States, which
now is a fact, permanent and eternal, than anything else…."
Representative Fernando Wood of New York opined that Lincoln had
created permanent sectional animosity by waging war against the
South, and more importantly, had destroyed the United States. "Graves
in our valleys, sufferers in our hospitals, desolation at every
hearthstone, distrust in our rulers, distrust in ourselves, bankruptcy,
anarchy, and ruin — these are the triumphs won by your relentless
policy."

This
is just a scattering of the multitude of comments made in opposition
to Lincoln and the War, and to these men, Lincoln did not preserve
the United States; he forged a new centralized despotism, the antithesis
of the Founders' "united States." The Mint, the Congress,
and Americans in general gloss over the fact that many Northerners
resisted the Federal draft, believed Lincoln started the War and
unnecessarily whipped the North into a bloodthirsty frenzy, and
blamed Lincoln for the destruction of the Constitution. The new
penny is another attempt to whitewash the historical record and
dupe Americans into believing that Lincoln was the greatest president
in American history and the savior of the republic. Those treasonous
Southerners deserved the beating they received, and every American,
North and South, rejoiced once the Union had been "preserved"
and State's rights crushed under the Federal heel. It seems the
winds of decentralization have blown into Congress and the propaganda
machine is revving up to meet this new challenge to their authority.
The misnamed "Preservation of the Union" penny is the
clearest example yet. Keep applying the pressure.

February
17, 2010

Brion McClanahan,
Ph.D. [send him mail],
is the author of The
Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers and a
history professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix
City, AL.

I have often
required my students on the first day or two of class to use the
Oxford English Dictionary and define the following words:
nation and state. Most do not follow my directions and submit
a modern Webster's or online distortion of the word, and
those who use the Oxford often fail to provide the etymology
of either word. I can't fault them for that, because they have
probably been taught since first grade in the public "school"
system to submit the first definition they find. Thus, the common
results of the activity are similar to the following:

Nation
— noun: a large body of people, associated with a particular territory,
that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess
a government peculiarly its own. (from dictionary.com)

State
— noun: the territory, or one of the territories, of a government.
(from dictionary.com)

How profound,
statist…and completely absurd! If both are true, than the United
States should simply be the "United State." A state
is simply a "territory…of a government"? A nation is
simply a large body of people that occupy a territory? That would
be news to the founding generation. Of course, a careful reading
of the history of both words could correct this mess and place
the Union of the States within its proper historical context.

The word
"nation" found its way into the English language around
the 14th century. Under the old definition, a nation
was a group of people who shared a similar racial, cultural, or
religious background that often included elements such as a common
language. A State was a sovereign political entity, not simply
a "territory…of a government." By viewing the United
States through that lens it becomes clear that modern definitions
of nation and state are the product of centralization and the
mischaracterization of the federal government as a "national
government."

Certainly
no one in the founding generation would have argued that Virginia
and Massachusetts possessed the same cultural heritage. Virginia,
with its strong Cavalier tradition, and Massachusetts, with its
Puritan or roundhead foundations, were clearly at odds during
the seventeenth century and beyond. The two colonies may have
been populated by white, English Christians and who shared a common
language, "English," but as David Hackett Fischer beautifully
explained in his Albion's
Seed, the two cultures were diametrically opposed in almost
every conceivable way. From dress to food to speech, Virginia
Cavaliers and Massachusetts Yankees were in many ways two separate
nations, not simply separate cultures. The "shining city
upon a hill" Puritans and their decedents never let Southerners
forget their differences, nor did Southerners want to be lumped
together with self-righteous Yankees. William Berkeley, the dominant
figure in Virginia during the seventeenth century, despised Puritans
and fought against them in the English Civil War. Later American
sectionalism was little more than an explicit recognition of cultural
differences and the existence of separate nations in North America
dating to the early days of English settlement.

Adding to
this American cultural cornucopia were the Celts, the Quakers,
American Indian tribes, and African slaves, groups that had interesting
and culturally significant contributions to the fabric of their
respective regions as well. Thus, America in the colonial period
was "multicultural" in a way that extended beyond race
or religion. Western civilization and the English tradition dominated,
but separate nations blotted the North American landscape. One
of the most respected American historians on slavery, Eugene Genovese,
wrote this about American culture in his Roll,
Jordan, Roll: "Blacks and whites in America may be
viewed as one nation or two, or as a nation within a nation, but
their common history guarantees that, one way or another, they
are both American." This statement accentuates the point
that the phrase "American nation" is a rhetorical fabrication
of the last 150 years of American history.

This was
not lost on the founding generation. John Adams once wrote that,
"I expressly say that Congress is not a representative
body but a diplomatic body, a collection of ambassadors from thirteen
sovereign States…." Each state had its own political and
cultural life and each was "sovereign." Robert Yates,
writing as Brutus in 1787, observed that "In a republic,
the manners, sentiments, and interests of the people should be
similar. If this not be the case, there will be a constant clashing
of opinions; and the representatives of one part will be continually
striving against those of the other." If applied to the United
States, Yates concluded that:

The McCain/Palin
ticket differed little from the Obama/Biden in form, and only
minimally in substance. Palin was certainly a wildcard and in
some ways an anti-establishment addition to a statist ticket.
Heck, her husband at one time possibly supported Alaskan independence.
But without question, if McCain had won, the United States would
have continued on its slow plodding course toward national socialism,
though many conservative Americans would have felt secure because
the man who held office had an "R" behind his name.
See George W. Bush. Americans may be shocked by our current headfirst
plunge into third-world communism, but it has spurred the American
conservative spirit, a process that has only been possible because
Obama won in 2008. This is why conservative Americans should embrace
the Robert W. Whitaker voting strategy in future elections.

Whitaker,
a populist conservative who spent some time in the Reagan administration,
wrote an interesting treatise on American politics in 1976 titled
A
Plague on Both Your Houses. The book attacked the liberal
elites of both the Republican and Democrat Parties, but it was
his critique of the common policy of "choosing the lesser
of two evils" that should have garnered the most attention.

Whitaker
wrote: "Today's populist uprising is against both new establishment
excesses in the name of social progress and its fake opposition
which pushes military-industrial interests in the name of free
enterprise and patriotism. We hold to those ideals. It is to professional
liberals and professional conservatives who use those ideals that
populism says, u2018A plague on both your houses!' Beyond the populist
reaction lies a new age. Our failures today are due largely to
the fact that out policies are geared to fatten the establishments
rather than to solve our problems."

He later
outlined the limited political "choices" that "populist"
Americans had in the Democrats and Republicans. The two had essentially
morphed into a statist coalition using populist rhetoric to enhance
their own power and economic muscle. Thus, he argued Americans
should not choose "the lesser of two evils," but a true
third-party candidate or the greater statist or "establishment"
candidate of the bunch. That way, things would reach a boiling
point more quickly and the de-legitimization of the political
process could be corrected by Americans who truly believed in
populist ideals. Professional politicians be damned.

Of course,
that was 1976, but his statements still ring true in 2009. Americans
have been duped to think that "R" or "D" makes
a difference, and that if only (insert your favorite Republican
or Democrat here) had won, things would be better. The real battle
has become statism vs. liberty. Obama is, hopefully, the tipping
point. He is the culmination of 100 years of progressive infiltration
of the American political system, but Americans need to avoid
the trap being set by the major parties, particularly the Republicans.

Returning
Republicans to power in Congress in 1995 and to the executive
mansion in 2001 resulted in fourteen years of higher debt, greater
spending, a housing bubble, suppression of civil liberties, and
out-of-control government. We should have expected no less. They
are and have been part of the establishment and most are statists.
And Leftists have been disappointed in Obama's resistance to their
socialist agenda, regardless of how bad the Right has portrayed
it. He has pushed the envelope, to be sure, but as the selection
of Van Jones as the "Green Czar" illustrated, the Left
wants much more. Obama has betrayed Leftists on the war in Afghanistan,
the dismissal of Jones, and the elimination of a "public
option" from health care "reform." Leftists vote
Democrat and continually get left in the cold.

Voters who
wish to see "change" should remember this lesson. The
only real choices are third-party candidates at the federal level,
or if none exists, vote for the person you don't want to
win or simply don't vote. This will again hasten the de-legitimization
of the political process. The forty-five percent of the total
voting population who choose not to vote in federal elections
are making a solid statement against the federal leviathan. At
the same time, Americans should be concentrating their efforts
at the state and local level. As I pointed out in Decentralization
for Socialists and Why
the Tenth Amendment? the state offers the only hedge against
cultural, religious, or economic centralization and ultimate annihilation.
The states are not perfect but definitely closer to the location
of power, and that is precisely what both the Left and Right want:
greater control over the direction of the government.

So, in future
elections, if a third-party candidate does not suit your political
philosophy, vote for the individual who least resembles
your ideology and then bolster your power by selecting state and
local candidates who will push a state rights message. The Right
should be privately cheering Obama's election. He is quickly bringing
down the Democrat Party. Just don't let the Republicans swoop
in and take credit. They need to go, too. Vote Obama and bring
down the federal leviathan!

September
17, 2009

Brion McClanahan,
Ph.D. [send him mail],
is the author of The
Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers and a
history professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix
City, AL.

This
would be well and good if their arguments were logical. They of
course forget that the South seceded through a democratic process,
but beyond that, one only has to look at the history of American
socialists and reformers to find that many of them were secessionists
and viewed decentralization as the logical path to their "utopian"
society. The case of the failed "utopian" experiment
Brook Farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts nicely illustrates how convoluted
the Leftist argument against secession has become.

Brook
Farm was established by George Ripley and his wife, Sophia, in
1841. They were transcendentalists who believed in the socialist
ideology of Frenchman Charles Fourier, the intellectual progenitor
of modern feminism. The Ripley's devised an autonomous community
that emphasized a communal lifestyle in the pursuit of leisure.
Every resident was to share equally in the task of growing products
for market in order to maximize the time each individual could
spend at leisure and learning. Sophia Ripley also ran the communal
school. What they found is that most preferred leisure to work
and a handful of the residents kept the rest afloat. Part of the
commune ultimately burned down, and the Brook Farm "closed"
in 1847.

But Brook
Farm illustrated how socialist utopians viewed secession, or the
removal from society, as the best means to practice their societal
values. Fourier ultimately believed that no more than 1600 people
should be involved in a single commune and each commune would
be autonomous with only a loose confederation to oversee the entire
process. In other words, there was very little large-scale centralization
and tremendous decentralization, which they rightly viewed as
the most democratic method of government.

Additionally,
abolitionists consistently called for secession during the 1840s
and 1850s. William Lloyd Garrison, for example, demanded an end
to the Union in 1843. Henry David Thoreau simply seceded from
society at Walden Pond. Other "reform" communities in
New York's "burnt over" district sought the protection
secession offered for their way of life. Secession need not come
from an established political entity to exist in fact. These groups
in many ways viewed themselves as autonomous and democratic societies
operating in disobedience of laws they considered unjust. John
Noyes and many of his followers were eventually run out of Oneida,
New York for partaking in group marriage, a practice that violated
the moral sensibilities of the rest of the state, but something
the community believed was perfectly justifiable and natural.
By flaunting their independent religious community and thumbing
their nose at the state government, the Oneida community ultimately
practiced a form of de facto secession from New York.

The same
could be said for many individuals who headed west in the nineteenth
century. Several towns operated outside the limits of the law,
and federal or state power was often non-existent. "Boom
towns" often exemplified the anything-goes spirit of the
West, though in time churches, banks, schools, and other civilizing
entities would show up. Even then, things remained fairly "rough"
as long as the gold and silver kept pouring out of the mines.
These were virtually independent communities and many of the people
who resided there were interested in evading government for one
reason or another. The West offered anonymity and protection from
government abuse. The Mormons, who headed to Utah after being
kicked out of Illinois, chose the West for that very reason and
ultimately went to war with the United States — and threatened
secession — after they were placed under the federal heel. But
in spirit, they were already independent and had their own laws
and government in place.

These were
not "right wing" groups by modern standards, particularly
the "reform" communes in New York and Massachusetts,
but they understood that decentralization offered a hedge against
alien threats to their society and lifestyle. Thomas Naylor of
Vermont, hardly a "right winger," has been trumpeting
the idea of an independent Vermont for almost a decade. He has
recognized that the lifestyle Vermont citizens want to enjoy will
be consistently retarded by imperial bureaucrats in Washington
D.C. This only makes sense. If Californians, for example, want
universal health care, have at it, but don't expect the people
of Alabama to pay for it. If New York wants to severely curtail
private gun ownership, go for it, but don't subject the people
of Georgia to the same loss of civil liberty. That is how federalism
should work and is how the founding generation designed it to
work.

Leftists
would do well to remember that their complaints about a slow and
unresponsive federal government could be solved by decentralization.
They have more control over state and local governments and could
implement their utopian vision of an egalitarian society more
quickly and easily. And, if you don't like where you live, you
can always move to a more suitable republic of your choice. There
would be plenty of "conservative" and "liberal"
republics to choose from in North America.

Of course,
as we all know, modern state socialism is an ideology of power,
money, and statism, which is why its "champions" at
the federal level, the "progressives," will never allow
decentralization to infiltrate their political vocabulary; however,
if enough Americans could be rightly persuaded that Washington
is not the answer, either for "conservative" or "liberal"
causes, then maybe the people would be willing to part ways and
allow the Left to dominate the Northeast and West Coast and the
Right to control the South and Mountain States. This is a peaceful,
just, and democratic solution to a centuries-old problem. Let
the people of each sovereign state decide their own fate. As Thomas
Jefferson said in 1801, "If there be any among us who would
wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form,
let them stand undisturbed as monuments to the safety with which
error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to
combat it."

July
29, 2009

Brion McClanahan
[send him mail] received
his Ph.D. in American History from the University of South Carolina
and is a History Professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College
in Phenix City, Alabama. He is the author of Politically
Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).

The true
expositors of the founding tradition are not the sectional president,
Lincoln, or the first progressive president, Roosevelt; they are
two Unionists who are often classified as Southern extremists:
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and John Randolph of Roanoke,
Virginia. These men were on the cusp of the founding generation.
Calhoun was born in 1782 and Randolph in 1773. They were too young
to participate in first events of the early republic but knew
many of the participants. Most importantly, they understood what
the founding generation meant by "union."

The Founders
forged a union based on the consent of the States — a compact
among them — for their benefit through defense and commerce. They
recognized sectional differences and knew that these differences
should be respected. Thus, many in this generation, Northerners
and Southerners alike, cautiously guarded the interests of their
communities through the sovereignty of the states. As long as
the benefits and burdens of the union were distributed equally,
they suffered and prospered together. Such had been the case in
the War for Independence. No one conceived that one section or
one faction should have the right to plunder the other. Madison
insisted in Federalist No. 10 that the Constitution was
written to protect against such infractions. Early American documents
are littered with statements in defense of a mutually beneficial
union. All that ceased in the following two generations.

In an 1833
speech, Calhoun made the following observation:

"In
the same spirit, we are told that the Union must be preserved,
without regard to the means. And how is it proposed to preserve
the Union? By force! Does any man in his senses believe that
this beautiful structure — this harmonious aggregate of States,
produced by the join consent of all — can be preserved by force?
Its very introduction will be certain destruction of this Federal
Union. No, no. You cannot keep the States united in their constitutional
and federal bonds by force. Force may, indeed, hold the parts
together, but such union would be the bond between master and
slave: a union of exaction on one side, and of unqualified obedience
on the other."

Such is what
Lincoln accomplished through the War Between the States. The South
was forced to remain "loyal" under the yoke of the federal
government. He preserved the "union," but not the union
of the Founders. It was a union of Lincoln's and the Republican
Party's creation.

Randolph,
in similar fashion, lectured Northern secessionists during the
War of 1812 for their stand against the good of the whole. He
reminded them that the South had stood shoulder to shoulder with
the North during the Revolution and that Virginia had sacrificed
far more for the good of the Union by ceding her western lands
to the central government than any Northern state in the history
of the confederation. Each section suffered due to British hostility,
and though Randolph personally opposed the war and foreign alliances,
he believed secession during a time of war damaged the prospects
of opposition. New England had its chance to secede in 1807 following
the Embargo Act, a time of peace, but 1814 was a different story.
He said, "Our Constitution is an affair of compromise between
the States, and this is the master-key which unlocks all its difficulties."

Randolph
was the consistent defender of state sovereignty throughout his
career, and he clung to the union of the "good old thirteen
states." Likewise, Calhoun insisted that state's rights was
the traditional policy of the founding generation. He called Jefferson
"the true and faithful expositor of the relation between
the States and General Government," and labeled the Virginia
and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 "the rock of our political
salvation" in a letter to the citizens of Philadelphia. Only
through a firm reliance on state's rights could the government
be brought "back…to where it was, when it commenced."

It must be
noted that Randolph did not trust Calhoun, and he considered nullification
a foolish doctrine (he preferred secession, and did not see how
a state could remain in the Union after it nullified a federal
law), but when Andrew Jackson as president threatened to use force
to coerce South Carolina during the Nullification Controversy
of 1832, Randolph said he would strap his "dying body"
to his horse "Radical" and enter the field of battle
rather than see a sovereign state threatened by the bayonet.

From the
1880 through the 1908 presidential election, there was consistently
a clear divide between the North and South. The South voted one
way, the North another. Both sections implicitly recognized that
the Union was dominated by the North, and no election showcased
this more clearly than Roosevelt's victory over Alton Parker in
the 1904 election. Roosevelt was not a "national" candidate;
he was a sectional one with sectional support. He was not the
heir of the Founding Fathers and the founding principles of limited
government, state's rights, neutrality, and peaceful trade. He
was a bully, an imperialist, and a man who used executive power
in a way the founding generation consistently warned against.

Why does
this matter? Because Americans are still burdened by factional
government and the tyranny of elected despots. We now witness
a rural/urban conflict along with a North/South split. Half the
population can take from the other half and Americans feel helpless
in wake of the political onslaught of "progressivism."
But there is hope. Americans still have power in their state and
local communities. The states are still sovereign, and Americans
have more control over their state and local representatives than
those in congress or the executive branch. If Americans recognize
that the Union must burden and benefit all equally, as the founding
generation, Calhoun, and Randolph emphasized, than there is still
hope to salvage the founding principles of the United States.
Otherwise, the Founding Fathers will continue to be eliminated
from our historical consciousness or will be perverted by progressives
such as Barack Obama who invoke their name but know nothing of
the founding principles. Mount Rushmore should be split between
Jefferson and Roosevelt. That way, Americans could see the canyon
— not the bridge — between them.

June
30, 2009

Brion McClanahan
[send him mail] received
his Ph.D. in American History from the University of South Carolina
and is a History Professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College
in Phenix City, Alabama. He is the author of Politically
Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009).

It becomes
clear, then, that those who push for reasserting State power must
know how the Founders defined a republic in both size and scope
and what they meant by republicanism. Returning to the founding
principles of the United States is an obvious way to end the insanity
in Washington D.C., but it won't happen if State's rights are
consistently viewed as a knee-jerk reactionary response to unconstitutional
federal legislation. Yes, the 10th Amendment was included
in the Bill of Rights, but why did the Founders insist
on state sovereignty? Rather than a theoretical fabrication at
the 1787 Philadelphia Convention or the State ratification conventions,
State's rights were explicitly linked to the stability of the
United States from the Revolutionary War forward. That is the
key to the State sovereignty movement.

Thomas Jefferson
made two interesting statements concerning republics in 1816.
In a letter to fellow Virginian John Taylor — one of the most
insightful political economists and theorists of his day — Jefferson
said that a republic "is evidently restrained to very narrow
limits of space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable
beyond the extent of a New England township." He also told
Isaac Tiffany that "A democracy [is] the only pure republic,
but impracticable beyond the limits of a town." In other
words, a republic is only plausible over a small distance. Anything
beyond that would destroy the ability of the people to control
the government, and that is the foundation of republicanism. Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence that legislative powers
were "incapable of Annihilation" because "they
return to the People at large for their exercise." State
and local governments were most responsive to the people and thus
the most republican in form.

To the Founders,
diffusing power over large groups of people and then placing it
in a small number of representatives violated the principle of
direct control of the government, and more importantly, the Founders
understood that the States stood as a hedge against factionalism.
George Mason, speaking at the Philadelphia Convention, succinctly
addressed this issue: "From the nature of man, we may be
sure that those who have power in their hands will not give it
up, while they can retain it. On the contrary, we know that they
will always, when they can, rather increase it." Only the
States could check arbitrary abuse of power which is one reason
why Mason said he would rather cut off his right hand than sign
the Constitution without a bill of rights. Factions, either sectional
or personal, could destroy the interests of the people without
recourse; the States provided that recourse.

Thus,
the founding generation believed that the United States was nothing
more than a federal union formed solely for defense and commerce.
John Taylor, writing in his Tyranny Unmasked, explained
that "the experiment of a consolidated republic, over a territory
so extensive as the United States, is at least awful, when we
can recollect no case in which it has been successful. If the
people had believed it practicable, it would have been preferred
to our system of division and union…." Patrick Henry argued
during the Virginia ratification convention that State sovereignty
was the only safeguard against the "infinitude" of the
Constitution. He declared that "the delegation of power to
an adequate number of representatives, and an unimpeded reversion
of it back to the people, at short periods, form the principal
traits of a republican government," and feared that the Constitution
would lead to despotism and the subversion of republican principles.

The number
of Americans who consistently believe their vote does not count
on the federal level is a testament to the fact that the people
have truly lost their hold on the "representatives"
in Washington. Jefferson, Taylor, Mason, and Henry all understood
that the people had greater control over their State and local
representatives. They lived among them, went to church with them,
socialized with them, and maybe even had family ties. Four hundred
people protesting in Washington D.C. won't make a difference,
but four hundred people protesting in front of the local courthouse
will. It was, and is, simple economy of scale. Henry said, "The
governing persons are the servants of the people." State
sovereignty ensured that they remained the servants of the people
and that the culture and customs of local communities would be
preserved.

And,
this wasn't just a component of Southern political philosophy.
Northerners relied on State's rights to protect their local traditions,
too. John Adams once wrote that he considered federal representatives
to be nothing more than "ambassadors" from the several
states. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, one of most ardent
nationalists at the Philadelphia convention, considered the Senate
as originally designed before the perversion of the 17th
Amendment offered the only protection for the commercial States
of the East. Moreover, if the sections could not mesh politically,
he urged the following: "instead of attempting to blend incompatible
things, let us at once take a friendly leave of each other."
That was 1787. Roger Sherman of Connecticut considered the Articles
of Confederation to be insufficient for the facilitation of commerce
and defense, but he thought the powers of the States should be
protected in order to safeguard the cultural integrity of each
community. "Each state, like each individual, had its peculiar
habits, usages, and manners, which constituted its happiness.
It would not, therefore, give to others a power over this happiness,
any more than an individual would do, when he could avoid it."
Even Alexander Hamilton once said that the federal government
could not coerce a State. Incidentally, Massachusetts conditionally
ratified the Constitution with the understanding that a bill of
rights would be added. State sovereignty was number one on the
list.

Jefferson
affirmed that the States were "FREE AND INDEPENDENT"
in the Declaration of Independence. Nothing changed that, not
the Constitution or efforts to reduce State influence and power
by successive generations. Instead of focusing on the narrow issues
of taxes and "big government," advocates of the 10th
Amendment movement should emphasize that the State is the most
responsive level of government, the most democratic, the purest
form of a republic, and the political entity most able to ensure
republican principles, which Jefferson listed as "simplicity,
economy, religious and civil freedom." All the Founders would
agree.

May
1, 2009

Brion McClanahan
[send him mail] received
his Ph.D. in American History from the University of South Carolina
and is a History Professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College
in Phenix City, Alabama. He is the author of the forthcoming Politically
Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, June, 2009).

He was carried
around the room on the shoulders of the cheering delegates, and
two days later accepted the nomination to serve as the presidential
candidate for the Democratic Party. But not every Democrat rejoiced.
While Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech has been labeled
one of the most important political statements in American history,
many in his own party thought Bryan had subverted "Democratic
principles" by playing fast and loose with the facts and
by pandering to the masses. A famous political cartoon in Judge
Magazine depicted Bryan as a snake swallowing the Democratic
Party whole.

In response,
several prominent Democrats, including President Grover Cleveland,
supported the creation of a splinter party in order to give Democrats
an avenue to avoid voting Republican. Led by members from the
Cleveland cabinet and the United States Congress, the group met
in Indianapolis in September 1896 and selected John M. Palmer,
a former Union general and United States Senator from Illinois,
as its presidential nominee, and Simon B. Buckner, a former Confederate
general and ex-governor of Kentucky, as its vice-presidential
candidate. This event is now regarded as little more than a footnote
in American political history, but modern Americans, particularly
libertarians and paleo-conservatives, should take note of the
party, its history, and its platform.

Politics
since the 1850s had become a game of sectional division. The Republican
Party was based on sectional animosity and when the Democratic
Party split in 1860, some Northern Democrats uncomfortable with
secession found a home with the Republicans until after the war.
The Northern "Peace Democrats" stayed true to the traditional
principles of the party: free trade, sound money, limited government,
and Constitutional law, but they were outnumbered and marginalized
in much of the North by the rabid Republican "reptiles"
as one Democrat called them. It seems that those who favor limited
government are always pushed to the back burner during times of
"crisis."

Reconstruction
altered the American political landscape. Men who considered military
Reconstruction an abomination defected in droves to the Democratic
Party, and as the South regained its political footing, the Party
reclaimed its national flavor. The stolen presidential election
of 1876 illustrated that a strong Democratic candidate with national
appeal could compete against the Yankee dominated Republican Party.
Democrats celebrated victory in 1884 when former New York Governor
Grover Cleveland defeated Maine Radical Republican James G. Blaine
in a close, mud-slinging contest for president.

Democrats
had regained power, but continued success appeared elusive. Cleveland
lost in 1888 due to voter fraud but returned to the executive
mansion in 1892; however, because of the Panic of 1893, the Party
seemed to be losing favor among the American public, particularly
in the South and West. Cleveland's support for a sound money policy
that maintained the gold standard and fiscal responsibility produced
cracks in the party. Several Democrats began pushing for inflationary
bimetallism and the free coinage of silver, and they found support
among farmers and debtors theoretically hurt by the deflationary
boom of the 1880s and 1890s. Never mind that the Sherman Silver
Purchase Act of 1890 – authored by the "Old Icicle,"
Republican John Sherman of Ohio, brother of General William T.
Sherman – had caused a run on gold and a currency crisis.
To them, silver seemed to be the inflationary tonic to their economic
troubles. More money in circulation meant a better economy, right?
Well, at least it meant potentially more votes.

Of course,
the newly created National Democratic Party (NDP) responded with
a resolute NO! The executive committee of the NDP published a
"Campaign
Text-Book" to provide facts and arguments and was "intended
for writers – especially for editors; and for speakers – particularly
those engaged in debate; and it is put in handy form that it may
be carried in the pocket and easily consulted." This little
handbook is a treasure of information and a valuable window into
the 1896 campaign and late-nineteenth-century politics.

The NDP emphasized
that it was the only national party left. By continuing to insist
on a protective tariff and illegal taxation, Republicans could
not count on many votes in the South or West, and the Bryan silverites
alienated Northern and Eastern sound money proponents. A platform
that adhered to the gold standard and limited, Constitutional
government would find support among all sections and people. This,
coupled with the nomination of a "Union/Confederate"
ticket showed that the NDP was willing to put sectional and class
division aside for the good of the United States. Too bad not
many listened.

The handbook
characterized a true Democrat as one who believed "in the
ability of every individual, unassisted, if unfettered by law,
to achieve his own happiness, and, therefore, that to every citizen
there should be secured the right and opportunity peaceably to
pursue whatever course of conduct he would, provided such conduct
deprived no other individual of the equal freedom of the same
right and opportunity." In short, true Democrats believed
in "Individual Liberty" and "disbelieved in the
ability of government, through paternal legislation or supervision,
to increase the happiness of the nation." To that end, the
party proclaimed it was "opposed to paternalism and all class
legislation." This, of course, is part of the American political
tradition, a tradition that has been co-opted by the left in an
attempt to portray "equality" and "justice for
all" through government aid as the foundation of the United
States. The NDP could see the writing on the wall in 1896. Anyone
with a brain could. Free silver was just the start.

Buckner
connected the dots in his acceptance speech. He insisted "that
for every one hundred cents' worth of work done by the laborer
he shall receive one hundred cents" and called for "the
commerce of the world shall be brought to our ports in free ships,
untaxed for the benefit of any special interest in this country."
Buckner declared that the free-silver platform championed by Bryan
and adopted by the Democrats at Chicago was a ruse and a trap.
They were not and could not be called traditional Democrats. Rather,
they were a ship flying the false colors of Republican "protection
and fiatism and Populistic communism, repudiation, and anarchism…"
in the hope that they would lull the unsuspecting American public
into their clutches and then bury them "in the chasm which
they dig for the prosperity of the country." Gold, fiscal
responsibility, and individual liberty were the only hallmarks
of good government.

Most Americans
forget or were never told that the Republican Party passed the
first income tax in American history and that it used "greenbacks"
to inflate the money supply during the War for Southern Independence
in order to pay for the military conquest of the South. Republicans
supported the fusion of government, finance, and industry, i.e.
state capitalism, and central banking. The NDP correctly illustrated
that the Republican Party was still the party of taxes in 1896.
(It still is; they just don't tell you that.) The Republican candidate
for president in that year, William McKinley, authored the bill
that provided for the highest protective tariff in American history,
the McKinley Tariff of 1890. This taxed imported goods at a rate
of forty-six percent, a rate that certainly prohibited free commerce
and in part led to the Panic of 1893.

The Republicans
did support the gold standard, and they used that to their advantage
in 1896 by running with the issue during the election. Many "gold
Democrats" supported McKinley because of that one issue in
both 1896 and 1900 and only defected in 1904 when Alton Parker
was nominated by the Democrats on a sound money platform. The
"gold Democrats" were finally smothered by the election
of Woodrow Wilson in 1912, the man who at one time backed the
NDP only to become one of the most ardent centralizers in American
history.

The creation
of the NDP was a last gasp effort to save the founding principles
of the United States. No major party has adhered to them since.
They tallied weak numbers during the 1896 election (less than
1 percent of the total popular vote) and only finished ahead of
the Prohibition Party candidate by seven thousand votes. The Party
posted fairly good numbers in the Northeast, and in Delaware and
Alabama, but not enough to swing any of those states. These small
numbers have led to the conclusion that they were irrelevant dinosaurs
of the late-nineteenth century. Not so fast.

The NDP proved
that there were still men of importance who favored limited government,
state's rights, fiscal responsibility, and the individual, and
though few of them voted for the Palmer/Buckner ticket, sound
money and limited government remained important political issues
until Franklin Roosevelt pulled the United States off a hard money
policy in 1934 and usurped legislative powers through the New
Deal. Excessive federal spending on both wars and social engineering
programs ultimately led the United States to abandon sound money
entirely under Richard Nixon. That, as Paul Harvey used to say,
is the rest of the story, but it doesn't have to be.

Americans
are beginning to relearn the benefits of a sound money policy,
and the principles of the NDP have not disappeared from the American
polity. The Party "text-book" could still be used today
as a general handbook of limited government and sound money. Most
of the book is dedicated to a defense of the gold standard and
a "myth busting" attack on free silver proponents and
inflationary zealots. In one particularly interesting section,
the NDP illustrates how falling agricultural prices had nothing
to do with the gold standard and how an inflated money supply
would neither raise wholesale prices nor bring prosperity. As
production and efficiency increase, prices will naturally decrease
relative to the value of the dollar. Inflation would not solve
that economic reality. Note the comic flyer inserted as evidence:

As
the NDP stated, "What the working man wants is a dollar whose
purchasing power either remains unchanged or increases."
Keynesian economics and the FED won't provide a stable and powerful
dollar – 100 cents for every 100 cents of work. Only limited
government and gold can do that. Americans may not have the NDP
or "gold Democrats," but we have their handbook, freedom
of speech, and the Internet, the only items needed to disseminate
the truth. The pendulum may finally be swinging back the other
way.

April
7, 2009

Brion McClanahan
[send him mail] received
his Ph.D. in American History from the University of South Carolina
and is a History Professor at Chattahoochee Valley Community College
in Phenix City, Alabama. He is the author of the forthcoming Politically
Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, June, 2009).