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  • The Politics

     |  The Apple of Gold/Frame of Silver

    The Politics The Politics 1 Aristotle Thomas Jefferson began studying Greek at the age of nine, and later in life employed so many Greek phrases in his letters that John Adams, his frequent correspondent, complained of them. The Founders' interest in classical languages was not academic, but political and philosophical. Among the ancient books that they drew upon was Aristotle's Politics, a catalog of constitutions and a guide to understanding regimes. C. 335-322 B.C. Book 1 Chapter 1. (1) Since we see that every city is some sort of partnership, and that every partnership is constituted for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what is held to be good), it is clear that all partnerships aim at some good, and ...

  • Second Treatise of Government

     |  The Apple of Gold/Frame of Silver

    Second Treatise of Government Second Treatise of Government 1 John Locke (1632-1704) Locke's Two Treatises of Government presented a critique of the divine right of kings and outlined the principles of natural rights and government by consent. Written during the 1670s, they were not published until after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the passage of the English Bill of Rights in 1689. Locke was the political theorist quoted most frequently by Americans in the 1770s. 1690 Chapter II. Of the state of nature. 4. To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions, and persons ...

  • The Constitution of the United States of America

     |  The Apple of Gold/Frame of Silver

    The Constitution of the United States of America The Constitution of the United States of America Fifty-five delegates from twelve states (Rhode Island declined to participate) traveled to Philadelphia to attend the Constitutional Convention, which began in May 1787. They quickly scrapped the existing Articles of Confederation, and after four months they concluded their business by adopting a new frame of government. On September 17, thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution. It was nine months before the requisite nine states ratified the Constitution, putting it into effect. The thirteenth state, Rhode Island, did not ratify it until 1790. Subsequently, it has been amended twenty-seven times. September 17, 1787 Preamble We the People of ...

  • Fragment on the Constitution and the Union

     |  The Apple of Gold/Frame of Silver

    Fragment on the Constitution and the Union Fragment on the Constitution and the Union 1 Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) This never appeared in Lincoln's public speeches, but it is possible that he composed it while writing his First Inaugural Address. It draws upon the King James translation of Proverbs 25:11—"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver"—to describe the relationship between the principles of the Declaration and the purpose of the Constitution. January 1861 All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining ...

  • Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved

     |  Natural Rights/American Revolution

    Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved 1 James Otis (1725-1783) Otis rose to prominence in 1761, after he gave a courtroom speech opposing the Writs of Assistance—blanket warrants issued by the British for searching suspect property. He edited that speech into this essay three years later, after the passage of the Sugar Act. Its arguments contain the seed of the American Revolution—an appeal to natural rights applied against particular abuses of political power. Struck by lightning in 1783, Otis did not live beyond the Revolution. But John Adams remarked that he had never known a man "whose service for any ten years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of his country as those ...

  • A Summary View of the Rights of British America

     |  Natural Rights/American Revolution

    A Summary View of the Rights of British America A Summary View of the Rights of British America 1 Thomas Jefferson Jefferson began his public career in 1769 in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the colonial legislature. British implementation of the Coercive Acts of 1774 (also known as the Intolerable Acts)—passed in response to the Boston Tea Party—prompted the "Summary View," Jefferson's first publication. Written for Virginians who were choosing delegates to the First Continental Congress, it laid the groundwork for later appeals by a "free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature." July 1774 Resolved, that it be an instruction to the said deputies when assembled in General Congress with the deputies from the other ...

  • Letter to Roger Weightman

     |  Natural Rights/American Revolution

    Letter to Roger Weightman Letter to Roger Weightman 1 Thomas Jefferson Written just days before his death on July 4, 1826, this letter to the mayor of Washington, D.C., encapsulates the great cause of Jefferson's life. June 24, 1826 Respected Sir: The kind invitation I receive from you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration on the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation ...

  • The Northwest Ordinance

     |  Religion, Morality, and Property

    The Northwest Ordinance The Northwest Ordinance Adopted by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance set forth a model for the expansion of the American republic. Providing a governing structure for the territory that would later become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, it prohibited slavery, protected religious liberty, and encouraged education. Following the adoption of the Constitution, the new Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance again in 1789. July 13, 1787 An Ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio Section 1. Be it ordained by the United States in Congress assembled, That the said territory, for the purpose of temporary government, be one ...

  • Vices of the Political System of the United States

     |  Articles of Confederation

    Vices of the Political System of the United States Vices of the Political System of the United States 1 James Madison In this essay, Madison outlines the main issues that the Constitutional Convention should address. His early arrival in Philadelphia allowed him to incorporate his ideas into a recommended plan for the Convention—what came to be called the Virginia Plan—representing no mere revision of the Articles of Confederation, but the adoption of an entirely new Constitution. April 1787 1. Failure of the States to comply with the Constitutional requisitions. This evil has been so fully experienced both during the war and since the peace, results so naturally from the number and independent authority of the States and has been so uniformly ...

  • Draft of the Declaration of Independence

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Draft of the Declaration of Independence Draft of the Declaration of Independence 1 Thomas Jefferson Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a critique of King George III's involvement in the slave trade. Although not approved by the entire Second Continental Congress, it indicates that the leading Founders understood the slavery issue in moral terms. 1776 ...He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare ...

  • The Northwest Ordinance

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    The Northwest Ordinance The Northwest Ordinance Congress of the Confederation Passed when only a single state outlawed slavery, the anti-slavery stance of the Northwest Ordinance—barring slavery in the territories, and thus in future states—gave weight to Abraham Lincoln's later argument that the Founders sought to place slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction." July 13, 1787 Article VI ...There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed ...

  • Five Founders on Slavery

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Five Founders on Slavery George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison on Slavery None of the leading Founders ever declared slavery to be a just or beneficial institution. In fact, they hoped to see the slave trade eradicated, and eventually the entire institution of slavery made illegal. George Washington Letter to Robert Morris 1 April 12, 1786 "...[T]here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it...." John Adams Letter to Robert J. Evans 2 June 8, 1819 "...Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.... I have, through my whole life ...

  • Query XVIII: Manners

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Query XVIII: Manners Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII: Manners 1 Thomas Jefferson The primary author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was well aware that his ownership of slaves violated the principles he espoused. 1784 The particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that State? It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual ...

  • Letter to John Jay

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Letter to John Jay Letter to John Jay 1 Alexander Hamilton Hamilton, a founder of the New York Manumission Society, writes to John Jay, a co-founder of the Society and then-president of the Continental Congress, arguing that slaves should be allowed to fight for the American cause in the War for Independence, earning their "freedom with their muskets." Eventually, some 5,000 blacks served as soldiers in the war. March 14, 1779 Dear Sir: Colonel Laurens, who will have the honor of delivering you this letter, is on his way to South Carolina, on a project, which I think, in the present situation of affairs there, is a very good one and deserves every kind of support and encouragement. This is to raise two, three, or four battalions of negroes ...

  • Federalist 54

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Federalist 54 Federalist 54 1 James Madison Madison here gives voice to the understanding of the South regarding the three-fifths clause of the Constitution, which required that three-fifths of the slaves in each state be counted for purposes of representation. This clause had a strange history. Most Southerners argued that slaves should be counted as full persons for voting purposes, while Northerners opposed to slavery advocated that they not be counted at all. Here Madison's "Southerner" presents the compromise position with approval, but in the process admits much of its moral illogic. February 12, 1788 The Apportionment of Members Among the States ..."We subscribe to the doctrine," might one of our Southern brethren observe, "that ...

  • Letter to the English Anti-Slavery Society

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Letter to the English Anti-Slavery Society Letter to the English Anti-Slavery Society 1 John Jay (1745-1829) In 1777, Jay's first attempt to abolish slavery in New York failed. In 1788, the state banned the importation of slaves. By 1799, the New York Manumission Society advocated for a bill, signed into law that year by then-Governor Jay, specifying that as of July 4, all children born to slave parents would be freed by a certain age. Less than a year after the Constitutional Convention, Jay addresses concerns from his British counterparts that anti-slavery progress in America is too slow. June 1788 Gentlemen: Our society has been favored with your letter of the 1st of May last, and are happy that efforts so honorable to the nation are ...

  • Letter to Henri Gregoire

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Letter to Henri Gregoire Letter to Henri Gregoire 1 Thomas Jefferson The Constitution specified that Congress could not prohibit the importation of slaves until 1808. President Jefferson signed the bill to bring about this prohibition in March 1807 and it went into effect on January 1, 1808. Writing here a year later, he maintains hopes for an end to slavery itself. February 25, 1809 Sir: I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the "Literature of Negroes." Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and ...

  • Speech on Reception of Abolition Petitions

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Speech on Reception of Abolition Petitions Speech on Reception of Abolition Petitions 1 John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) The number of slaves in America had grown from 700,000 in 1790 to over two million in 1830. Northern opposition to slavery was growing in the 1820s and 1830s, as it became clear that hopes for a withering away of slavery were unrealistic. This elicited a similarly strong response from slavery's foremost advocates. In 1836, the House of Representatives passed a "gag rule" that tabled abolition discussions. Here, Senator John C. Calhoun champions a similar resolution in the Senate. His argument became the linchpin of what came to be called the "positive good" school of thought regarding slavery, one all but absent from the debates of the two previous ...

  • Speech on the Oregon Bill

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Speech on the Oregon Bill Speech on the Oregon Bill 1 John C. Calhoun Even worse than political errors such as the Northwest Ordinance, Calhoun argues here, are theoretical errors, chief of which is the equality principle of the Declaration of Independence. June 27, 1848 ...I turn now to my friends of the South, and ask: What are you prepared to do? If neither the barriers of the constitution nor the high sense of right and justice should prove sufficient to protect you, are you prepared to sink down into a state of acknowledged inferiority; to be stripped of your dignity of equals among equals, and be deprived of your equality of rights in this federal partnership of States? If so, you are woefully degenerated from your sires, and will well ...

  • Letter to John Holmes

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Letter to John Holmes Letter to John Holmes 1 Thomas Jefferson Awakened to the looming crisis over slavery by the Missouri Compromise, Jefferson foresees in this letter that the Compromise was far from the final word on the matter. April 22, 1820 I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the ...
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