x
Advanced
You Searched For:
Display by
Items 41-60 of 139

  • Section 4 Introduction

     |  Articles of Confederation

    Section 4 Introduction Having fought and won a revolution against unchecked political power, the American Founders were determined not to install a government of their own that would degenerate into tyranny. As they quickly discovered, however, the real scourge of the young confederation was not centralization, but the confederate form of government itself. Historically, confederations had been effective in rallying disparate and small powers against larger common foes. The 1781 "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" sought to unite the thirteen states against any external threat, especially Great Britain. Having seen the excesses of British rule, the colonists sought a form of government that would chasten rather than empower the central government. Designed ...

  • Section 5 Introduction

     |  Rethinking Union and Government

    Section 5 Introduction The Constitution establishes a structure of government without offering a defense of the principles that undergird it. For that we must look first to the Declaration of Independence, and also to The Federalist. In the words of Publius—the pen name chosen by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to unify their argument and to invoke the memory of Publius Valerius Publicola, the savior of the early Roman republic—it would be up to the American people "to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." Put another way, if republican government could ...

  • Section 6 Introduction

     |  Three Branches of Government

    Section 6 Introduction Publius moves in The Federalist's second half to explain the separation of powers and the three branches of government: Congress, including the House (52 to 58) and the Senate (62 to 66), the presidency (67 to 77), and the judiciary (78-83). In response to the Anti-Federalist demand for a more responsive government, Publius teaches us a lesson about the true meaning of "responsibility." Good government is not defined by its responsiveness to popular demands, but is responsible to the true, long-term interests of the people. In other words, it protects their natural rights. In his attempt to heal the American body politic, Publius here offers a strong dose of political moderation. A government that is responsive to every popular whim suffers from the ...

  • Section 7 Introduction

     |  Roots of the Slavery Crisis

    Section 7 Introduction For the Founders, equality meant that every human being is born free from the arbitrary or non-consensual political rule of any other human being. All legitimate government is hence necessarily based on the consent of the governed. The continued existence of slavery, the most extreme form of denying consent, was thus the great original flaw in the American constitutional order. It is why Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." In a similar vein, Abraham Lincoln would later describe slavery as the "cancer" in the American body politic. It is obvious from the official documents and private statements collected in this section that the Founders agreed that slavery was a moral evil because it violated the ...

  • Section 8 Introduction

     |  Crisis of Constitutionalism

    Section 8 Introduction The political contest between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas encompassed far more than a seat in the United States Senate or even the presidency itself. At stake in the 1850s was the very character of American self-government. In 1854, Congress enacted the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the brainchild of Douglas, then-chairman of the Senate's Committee on the Territories. The Act organized these vast territories, a necessary prelude to settlement (and railroad development, which was Douglas's original motivation), but did so in a way that placed the slavery issue in a state of permanent agitation that would persist until the Civil War. This land had been made forever free as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, but under Kansas-Nebraska the people ...

  • Section 9 Introduction

     |  Secession and Civil War

    Section 9 Introduction To secure their Creator-endowed natural rights, Americans constituted a form of government that addressed two distinct but related sets of questions: First, what regime will best secure those rights? That is: Who will rule in the United States? By what institutions will they rule? Finally, what way of life shall they pursue? Second, what kind of polity will best secure those rights? That is: How centralized will this system of government be? How extensive is its territory? How large is its population? The ancient Greek city-states had been centralized but small; the ancient empires and the feudal polities of Christian Europe had been large but decentralized. Modern states combined the size of some empires and many feudal realms with the ...

  • Section 10 Introduction

     |  Progressive Rejection of the Founding

    Section 10 Introduction It is impossible to understand the fate of the Founders' principles in American politics without perceiving how those principles have been replaced by those that animate today's administrative state. The administrative state in America emerged out of the dominant political ideas of the Progressive Era. As a practical matter, much of the infrastructure of today's system of property redistribution and centralized regulation was built during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. But the intellectual foundation for the New Deal came a generation earlier, in the Progressive Era—a fact acknowledged by no less an authority than Franklin Roosevelt himself, who in his 1932 Commonwealth Club Address credited the ideas of Theodore Roosevelt and especially ...

  • Section 11 Introduction

     |  New Deal and Great Society

    Section 11 Introduction Pick any three letters of the alphabet, economist Milton Friedman said, put them in any order, and in the acronym you will discover an unnecessary federal agency. The alphabet soup of federal regulatory and administrative agencies grew into what it is today largely during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, two presidents whose names are well-known by their initials. Ronald Reagan, who majored in economics in college during the Great Depression, came much later to see LBJ's Great Society, especially, as inimical to freedom. It was his cause as president, Reagan wrote, to undo the damage it had inflicted upon the country, and to reduce government to a size more in keeping with the principles of the American founding. Franklin ...

  • An Election Sermon

     |  Natural Rights/American Revolution

    An Election Sermon An Election Sermon 1 Gad Hitchcock (1718-1803) Pastors and ministers were among the highest educated citizens in the American colonies, and often addressed politics from the pulpit. This sermon by Hitchcock was delivered on election day in 1774, in the presence of General Thomas Gage, the British military governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. It decries British monarchical rule and celebrates the idea of the consent of the governed, appealing to reason as well as revelation. 1774 ...In a mixed government, such as the British, public virtue and religion, in the several branches, though they may not be exactly of a mind in every measure, will be the security of order and tranquility—Corruption and venality, the certain ...

  • 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 Henry Lee

     |  The Apple of Gold/Frame of Silver

    Letter to Henry Lee Letter to Henry Lee 1 Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) In his later years, Jefferson answered hundreds of letters, including, in this instance, a query about the Declaration of Independence, explaining that it drew upon a long political and philosophical tradition and reflected principles widely understood by Americans of the founding era. May 8, 1825 Dear Sir: ...That George Mason was the author of the bill of rights, and of the constitution founded on it, the evidence of the day established fully in my mind. Of the paper you mention, purporting to be instructions to the Virginia delegation in Congress, I have no recollection. If it were anything more than a project of some private hand, that is to say, had any such instructions ...

  • 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 ...

  • Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

     |  Religion, Morality, and Property

    Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom 1 Thomas Jefferson Jefferson asked to be remembered on his tombstone as author of the Declaration of Independence, father of the University of Virginia, and author of this law. Long delayed because of the contentiousness of the subject and the powerful interests arrayed against it, the Virginia Statute was drafted in 1777, introduced as a bill in the 1779 legislative session, and adopted in 1786. Eventually the laws of all thirteen original states would prohibit an established church and guarantee religious liberty to all. January 16, 1786 I. Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to ...

  • Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association

     |  Religion, Morality, and Property

    Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association 1 Thomas Jefferson The Danbury Baptist Association, aware of Jefferson's earlier role in overturning the Anglican establishment in Virginia, expressed hope that as president he might help liberate them from the religious constraints in Connecticut. Jefferson's response, in which he employs the famous "wall of separation between church and state" metaphor, is not a demand for the separation of religion and politics; rather, it addresses the principle of federalism. As president, Jefferson is unable to interfere in this state issue. Likewise, Congress is prohibited from doing so by the First Amendment's religion clauses. The citizens of Connecticut must remedy their situation ...

  • Query XIII: Constitution

     |  Articles of Confederation

    Query XIII: Constitution Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIII: Constitution 1 Thomas Jefferson Virginia, the most populous state, adopted its state constitution in 1776, a month before the Declaration of Independence passed Congress. Jefferson, Virginia's governor from 1779 to 1781, addressed the problems that plagued the state's first attempt at self-government in his 1784 book, Notes on the State of Virginia. 1784 The Constitution of the State and its Several Charters ...This constitution was formed when we were new and unexperienced in the science of government. It was the first, too, which was formed in the whole United States. No wonder then that time and trial have discovered very capital defects in it. 1. The majority of the men in the ...

  • 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 ...

  • 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 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 ...

  • 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 ...
Display by
Items 41-60 of 139