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- [00:09]
A
Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan.
- [00:12]
B
And I'm Juan Davalos. We are back with the Great American Story, A Land of Hope lecture number four, the New Nation.
- [00:19]
A
What a fun lecture to have in the year of our 250th anniversary. This is a story of how we declared independence, which is one thing that separates us from Britain, to forming the Constitution, which is establishing the new nation, which is quite another thing.
- [00:34]
B
And it's one of the most, at least for me, one of the most interesting periods of studying in the Founding, because, like we mentioned in a previous lecture, we tend to forget what happened before the Revolutionary era leading up to the Declaration. But we also tend to forget what happened after, which may be even more difficult.
- [00:53]
A
It kind of goes Lexington Declaration, Yorktown Constitution, and there's a few things that happen in between.
- [01:00]
B
Yeah, that's right. Forming the Constitution was actually pretty difficult. Between 1776, when the Declaration is signed, and 1789, when the Constitution is ratified, there's a big period of time where Americans are once again trying to learn how they're going to live as a new nation.
- [01:21]
A
Now, they actually had a different constitution.
- [01:23]
B
That's right, The Articles of Confederation, which they tried for some time to live under those Articles of Confederation, it didn't really have an executive power that had any authority to execute laws. There was no federal government. And they quickly found out that it wasn't working.
- [01:39]
A
Yeah, we shouldn't be too hard on them. It was a war constitution. It was conceived of and ratified during the Revolutionary War, and the war provided a lot of unity that peace did not. So the Articles, to their credit, got us through the war, or at least the men who were operating under the Articles got us through the war. But then, for a more solid and lasting foundation, our founders recognized that they needed a more solid and lasting institution. And that's where we get the Constitution.
- [02:07]
B
If you'd like to read more about the history of this time period, Maclay's book, the Land of An Invitation to the Great American Story is a great resource to look at actually everything in this course, but specifically on this time period as well. To get a copy of the book, you can go to Hillsdale. Edu Course and click on the Books tab. That's Hillsdale. Edu Course.
- [02:33]
A
Now let's turn to Dr. Maclay in lecture four of the great American Story, A Land of the New Nation.
- [02:41]
C
Welcome back. And this is lecture number three, entitled the New Nation. And we've just declared independence. But declaring independence was the Easy part. It's not hard to produce even a beautiful, resonant, ringing declaration of independence. But making it stick, getting beyond a few scattered minor military triumphs and defeating the mightiest military power in the world, that was another matter. The United States, such as they were, the disunited United States, went into this conflict with huge and fairly obvious disadvantages. To begin with, it was hardly even a country, yet it was not united, far from fully united in embracing the revolutionary cause. It's sometimes said there were third of Americans who were for third who were against and third who didn't know what they thought. George Gallup wasn't around to have any polling data to offer in supplement to that. So we just have to take that for what it is and acknowledge that this was a country more in aspiration than in actuality. It did not yet have a functioning form of political organization, did not even have a proper constitution. Also a disadvantage is there was simply no guarantee that the country would be able to hold together in the years, possibly of grueling, punishing war that lay ahead on the very day that independence was declared. Almost a sign when independence was voted on by the Continental Congress, almost as a sign to the nation. The British were easily able to land without facing any resistance, a large contingent of troops on Staten island in New York, at the mouth of New York harbor, the first installment in what by August of 1776 would be a siege force of more than 30,000. They were not impressed by the Americans high flown words. But all was not lost because the Americans did enjoy certain very real advantages. For one thing, they had only to play defense. They needed not to win every battle. They needed not to win any battles. So long as they were able to keep the war going long enough to exhaust the patience and willingness to fight of the British opponent, they could lose the battles and still win the war. In other words, if they could exhaust their foe. Given the fact that the British were surrounded by old rivals like the French, who were still licking their wounds after the French and Indian war and were spoiling for a chance to get back at the British, it was entirely possible that the colonies could get a valuable ally and in the end they would to support their cause. And that might compensate for a great many of the inherent weaknesses of the American position. Another advantage, an incalculable advantage that the Americans had, I can express in two words, George Washington. They had the person of George Washington, a man of such fine and admired, widely, universally admired character and military skills, political savvy. He commanded the loyalty of nearly all Americans, and thus served as a unifying force. When he was made commander in chief of the Revolutionary American forces, He signaled his willingness to play this role by appearing at the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia wearing his military uniform. So he was ready to play and from June 1775 on, was commander in chief of the Continental Army. He received the position and accepted it on the condition that he received no pay for it. That was the kind of guy George Washington was. He was charismatic, he was courageous, he was selfless, tireless. He was not a world class intellect like Jefferson, but he was always learning and had a great deal of practical and prudential wisdom. He was known for his character, his noble character. He self consciously modeled himself on the great classical Republican leaders, the unselfish, virtuous and civic minded public figures of classical antiquity. He had been deeply influenced by a play by Joseph Edison about the life of Cato that he had seen and he loved it so much and what it taught, that he had it performed again and again for his own troops. Because Cato in this drama presented the kind of example that he was himself and that he wanted to his men to know and experience and esteem. The greatest challenge that Washington would face was simply one of recruiting and holding together a credible army. This was not an easy job. There was a sense of fragility about the whole enterprise, so that the morale and willingness to serve of soldiers waxed and waned depending on circumstances in the field and weather conditions which were very important in the American Revolution. In August of 1776, not long after the Declaration, he had 28,000 men under his command. By December, that number had shrunk to 3,000. What had happened was that his troops had been driven from New York, New York City, by British regulars, back and back and back until they ended up in Pennsylvania. The army's morale was bad. It was always unstable. It was always hostage to events, to successive peaks and valleys, and consequent hope and despair, depending on how the war effort was going. Washington through all this, had to keep a cool head. He had to not be too influenced either by the giddiness of success or the despondency of failure. As it turned out, the winter, that winter, 1776-77, was an exceptionally bad winter and made for a gloomy time of discouragement. Fortunately for the patriot cause, Tom Paine chose at that time to write yet another contribution to the war effort, a series of pamphlets called the American Crisis, which the most famous lines from that which some of you may have heard go like this at the Beginning, he says, these are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Yes, he conceded that things looked very bad, but the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. Paine put it just the way Washington would have liked to have been able to. And George Washington ordered that Paine's words from the American crisis be read to his troops who were suffering through this bitter winter. And they had the desired effect of rousing them to a new burst of fighting spirit. So twice in the year 1776, Paine had made a great gift to the colonial cause. And then on Christmas night of 1776, Washington struck back. He led a force through snow and sleet across the Delaware River. You've all seen the painting of that which is not exactly historically accurate, but who cares? It's a beautiful painting. And he surprised at dawn a sleeping force of Hessians, the hated Hessians, at Trenton in New Jersey. A week later, his forces had a similar triumph at Princeton. Two small victories bought reason for hope that they could be auguries of good things to come. It appeared the American forces would not be defeated quickly, as the British had hoped. And there was further evidence of this coming in the year 1777, which actually would be crucial for the success of the war effort. The British had formulated a plan whereby they hoped to cut off New England from the rest of the colonies and that that would ensure the defeat of the revolutionary cause. But this, it was a three pronged assault with three defeats. And the most crushing of all came at Saratoga, where General Johnny Burgoyne, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, who got bogged down in the woods north of Saratoga with his wagon train, including 30 carts carrying his personal wardrobe and champagne. A wonderful little detail that tells you a lot. And the American forces surrounded him and defeated him, took his army prisoner. This victory at Saratoga was important not only in its own right, but for the signal it sent to the French that the Americans were sufficiently strong, sufficiently resolute, sufficiently formidable to be worthy of French support. They weren't going to just leave the French looking humiliated. The French immediately extended diplomatic recognition to the United States and concluded a commercial agreement and a treaty of alliance. And this included the access to the resources of the French navy, which was something the United States had no navy to speak of. The British had then, as later, the most outstanding navy in the world. So the French navy, being on the revolutionary side, could help A great deal in obviating some of the British advantages at sea. It would turn out to be very important indeed. But there was a great obstacle before all of that could come to pass, and that was the winter of 1777-78, which was even worse than its preceding winter. And it was really a time of testing, a low point for Washington's army, which was encamped at valley Forge. This is the famous winter at Valley Forge, 18 miles outside of Philadelphia. Hunger, exhaustion, exposure, disease combined to batter away at Washington's army and leaving it of very nearly a fragment, a helpless fragment of itself. More than 2,500 soldiers died by the end of February 1778. Another 1,000 had deserted. Another 7,000 were too ill for duty. Faith in Washington's leadership was hanging by a slender thread. But with some help from a German general, von steuben, a leading figure in the Prussian army, he got the army back in fighting shape, drilling it, subjecting it to an intense regiment. And by May, he had them refashioned into a reasonable army. Washington was strong enough to go after the withdrawing British forces across New Jersey. Eventually, the French army played a leading role in bringing the war to. To a successful conclusion. General Cornwallis of the British army had been storming through the south successfully, but he became entrapped at the peninsula at yorktown, virginia, by approaching troops on land and by the French navy at sea. It was a pincers movement. It left him trapped, with no choice but to surrender his large army on October 19th. He did just that. And it said, we don't know for sure, but it's too good a story not to tell you. It said that the forces marching out. As the forces marched out, the British band struck up a familiar English ballad. The world turned upside down, and I won't go through the words of that which are in the book land of hope. But it felt like the world turning upside down. The underdog Americans, who it seemed in no way were in a position to muscle their way through to victory, had somehow managed to succeed despite great odds, despite great hardship, and much of it owed to the phenomenal leadership of George Washington. One thing we sometimes forget is that the revolutionary war was in many ways like a civil war. You remember that division of the country into thirds that I described before? Well, there were many cases in which the war pitted family members against family members, Loyalists against patriots, splitting towns and regions and social classes, and, as I said, families against one another. Loyalty to the crown, after all, was a powerful and in some ways admirable feature. Of those who resisted the revolution. And of course, many of them ended up leaving the country and moving to Canada and elsewhere. Historians debate all this and have debated it forever. But I think it's important to realize that the revolution was not just an elite event, a sort of changing of the chairs for the elite classes. So the homegrown elite took the place of a foreign elite, that it affected all levels. One of the most effective weapons in the revolution was the boycott of British goods. This was something that had to take place among Americans of all social classes and all means. There were 5,000 African Americans who fought in the revolution. Didn't these groups also deserve some share of the triumph? Doesn't the freeing up of energy brought about by a change of regime have something to say to them as well?
- [18:37]
D
Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this week's program, we talk with Kelly Shackelford. He's president and CEO of First Liberty Institute. We'll talk about the current state of religious liberty in the United States, where it stands in the courts, and his work on President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission. Also, if you like Kelly's, you're in luck, Dr. Kelly. Scott Franklin joins us too from the English department here at Hillsdale. We start a new series on Emily Dickinson this week focusing on death sets a thing significant. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio, including YouTube. You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed Podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louis, Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamed4hillsdale.com and enroll today. That's Unashamed. F O R hillsdale.com to experience the Genesis Story alongside the Robertsons.
- [20:27]
C
The challenge ahead for those who were thinking about statecraft, about what kind of union this new union would be, were also immense. How could you keep the Republican character, the self ruling character of smaller forms of government, while having the unity that a nation really needs to be effective in the world? Many philosophers said you couldn't have a republic unless it was small in size. So how could a nation, how could a nation state that spanned at least the eastern seaboard not yet. The full continent managed to finesse that. Anyway, in the wake of 1776, most of the energy and interest in constitution making centered upon the states because everybody agreed pretty much that states would continue to be the principal locus of power. And the Articles of Confederation, which were what passed for a national constitution, it wasn't even formally adopted, ratified by the States until 1781. So it didn't. It didn't last all that long, although the Continental Congress more or less pretended as if it was in effect, even when it wasn't. What was the Articles of Confederation? What did it look like, and what might have been wrong with it from the standpoint that it needed to be revised into a constitution, proper constitution? Well, it described itself as a league of friendship rather than a national union. And the primacy of the states was made explicit in Article 2, which said as follows. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. All of that wording is interesting, but it's very clear that the primacy of the states, the autonomy of the states, the sovereignty of the states, the word sovereignty is used, is going to be protected. Each state, irrespective of its size, had a single vote in Congress. And for the passage of the most important measures, currency, tariff, military, diplomatic affairs, either unanimous vote or super majority was required. And the national government was not to be given any coercive tools, courts, executive power, power of taxation, none of that that would allow it to act independently and force the individual states to do its bidding. I think it's not hard to see why this was not going to work, but it's also important to understand why the revolutionary generation overwhelmingly favored it at first. For one thing, the war was still going on during much of the time that the Articles were the law of the land, and no one wanted to repeat the same governmental horrors as they saw it that they had fled from. So I think this preoccupation with centralized power and the dangers of centralized power probably blinded the framers of the Articles to a larger range of issues that they would have to face once they became a free and independent nation. There are some positive things about the Articles that if we had time to talk about, I would mention the biggest one being the Northwest Ordinance, a really fantastic piece of legislation to set the pattern for westward expansion of the country. But for the most part, it served the interests of the nation poorly. Britain refused to withdraw its forces from several military posts in the west, and the Government of the United States could do nothing about it. In the Southwest, the Spanish refused to yield their control over the Mississippi river, the commercial lifeline of the country. These were a thumb in the eye of the impotent American government. Moreover, the British were having a lot of success undermining the American economy, which was a wreck in the wake of the Revolutionary War. They restricted American imports abroad and they flooded the country with cheap British goods that would undersell American manufacturers. So commodity prices went way down, which hurt farmers and debtors, led to foreclosures on farms. In many cases, farmers who had gone off to fight in the revolution were paid in devalued money, then came back to find that they were losing their farms to bankers who had never left their homes in Boston. This is a tinderbox just waiting to explode. There were conflicts all over the place regarding these foreclosures. The most notable one perhaps was in Massachusetts. In western Massachusetts, a veteran named Daniel Shays led a march on Springfield to take over the Springfield arsenal and shut down the state supreme court. Stop the first foreclosures. This got the attention of the nation's leaders. George Washington wrote to James Madison, said, we are fast verging to anarchy and confusion. So the deficiencies of the Articles were clear. And in short order, Alexander Hamilton, who had been Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, managed to gather a convention deputies for the purpose of devising a plan for supplying such defects as may be discovered to exist in the Articles. Well, they had a lot more in mind than that. At least Hamilton did. And four months after the convention began, on September 17th of 1787, they came forth with an entirely new constitution for the United States States. This was the Constitutional Convention. I can't say enough good things about the high intellectual caliber of the 55 men who were there. And they were young. The average age was 42. There were a few older people. Washington, Benjamin Franklin. But a bulk of the work was done by people in their 40s and 50s and even 30s. James Madison was 36 years old, and we think of him as the architect of the Constitution. Madison was the polar opposite in some ways, of Washington. Washington was a big, strapping man. Madison was tiny. They called him little Jemmy, but he was a very shrewd man, a deep philosopher and also a shrewd tactician in politics. A very rare combination. And he thought the issue of the Constitution was all important. He said America would decide forever the fate of republican government. And these weighty words did reflect the framers remarkable combination of ambition and Humility. They were excited by the possibilities that lay before them and determined to lay hold of them. John Adams said they were living in a time which the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live. And they had a chance to contrive the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can contrive. So they were emboldened to expand their mission beyond merely fixing the defects of the Articles, and instead to devise something far better, something new, something reflecting the best thinking that they could bring to bear on this task. They understood politics as the art of the possible. And the best constitution would be one that was built with what's sometimes called the crooked timber of humanity in mind, one that heeds the warning that Washington expressed in one of his letters that we have perhaps had too good an opinion of human nature. The document that emerges out of the debates in Philadelphia would attempt to reflect that sobered, chastened view of human nature. There were a number of things that everyone there agreed about. They agreed that the form of government should be republican in character, not monarchical. They agreed that power, to the extent possible, because power corrupted, should not be concentrated in any one person, any one office, but should be divided and distributed as widely as possible. They favored a federal system in which power was formally distributed to states, localities, the national government, in ways that didn't localize or concentrate the power in any one level of government. But this was hard to do. It was easy to do on paper, but hard to do in practice. To combine the cohesiveness of local, smaller scale governments with the greater resources and power of a national government. This was going to be very hard to strike a balance and make it stick. The British Empire was already evidence of that in its own history. In any event, the Philadelphia Convention would have to address itself to the same kinds of questions that the British Empire had tried and failed to to answer, of how to reconcile these two divergent elements and how much power needed to be given to a national government for it to be effective? Presumably not any more than the bare minimum was absolutely necessary. But how to ascertain that? How would they ensure that this national government, a newly empowered presidency, would be fully accountable and not become too powerful? Well, thanks to Madison's copious notes, we know a lot about what went on at the convention and more than I have time to tell you about. But it's clear for one thing, that the expanded office of the presidency was partly an easy sell, because everyone knew that George Washington was available to fill the job and establish precedents that would make the position both effective and deserving of the nation's trust. But debates erupted over other issues, and particularly the issue of representation. There were really two plans which we called the Virginia plan and the New Jersey plan. We which sought to allocate legislative representation either by population or by the states. That the states were the entities should be the entities represented and not the individuals comprising those states. It's a real philosophical issue, and particularly if you think of the Constitution or the United States of America, consider the name of the nation as being at bottom a union of sovereign entities. It makes sense to represent states. We may not be quite as inclined to think that way today, but certainly at the time it made sense. And of course representation of population made sense. But those two alternatives carried a lot of weight for contending states. If you were a big state, if you were Virginia, you loved the idea of representation. If you were an itsy bitsy state like Rhode island, the all time itsy bitsy state of American history, you liked the idea of representation by states because you were on the same par with Virginia. And after all, why shouldn't you be in a sense? So this was a clash that had interests involved, but it also had a philosophical dimension about the nature of representation, the nature of the national union. What the convention did was settle on compromise, have a bicameral legislative body in which one house hewed to the Virginia plan notion of representation by population, and the other that the New Jersey plan's notion of representation by states with the House of Representatives and the Senate respectively. It's a kind of compromise that looks like a kind of slicing of the baby in half. But actually the more closely you look at it, you realize it's a solution that in some ways was better than either of the other plans would have been by themselves. Since it incorporated these two divergent elements of governance, the solidarity and cohesiveness of small republican entities, but the conjoined power and unity of an effective nation. The results of this structure, I think, were arguably better than the sausage making process. That this is good sausage that came out of the convention. And behind it all is a very powerful idea that was in the minds of many of the delegates, and that is that conflict is endemic to human life. You will never eliminate conflict. It's part of human nature, part of the human condition. And neither is a desire for power, something that we can eliminate and the tendency to abuse it. Therefore, the best constitution, instead of ignoring these things or trying to wish them away, will try to channel them, will try to make use of their power. Just the way that an internal combustion engine channels and makes use of the power of the explosions in its chambers in its cylinders to drive the pistons and thus drive the automobile. It's designed to work with the grain of human nature rather than against it. For that reason, it's not always a very peaceable form of government, because it doesn't try to stamp down conflict. It tries to make conflict work for the general good. It's a Final Few Words about the Constitution we celebrate Constitution Day September 17th of every year. It's not a big deal the way the Fourth of July is. It probably should be as big a deal as the Fourth of July, because, after all, every nation has something like an Independence Day or a day celebrating the nation's existence. But only one nation in the world can claim to have been governed for 230 years, or more than 230 years by the same Constitution. This is really an extraordinary thing. And our Constitution is not just the software that we happen to be using at the moment to be replaced by other software. It is intrinsic to our identity in the way that, let's say the government of France, which has been around for a while, but there also have been other republics, there have been other empires, there have been other forms of government, revolutionary forms of government, all of which have occurred in what was still France. French identity is in some ways separate from the political institutions that embody it in America. Our Constitution is, with the minute exception of the few years under the Articles, the only form of national government we've lived under. So it's a remarkable document. It doesn't have the high sounding, high flying, soaring language of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. It's really a functional document. But the beauty of it is the way in which, through its actions, through its processes, and through the events by which it's been tempered, it would express the unfolding demands of history. It has been successful. It has survived. That's the main test of success, but not in every way. And next time I'll talk about some of the ways the Constitution has been in need of the repair of its own defects. Thank you.
- [38:32]
B
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. If you want to continue learning, please visit hillsdale.edu course. There you will find over 40 free online courses, including Ancient Christianity, the Genesis Story, Classic Children's Literature, and many more. The courses include additional readings, study guides, fully produced videos, and you can chat with your fellow students on a dedicated forum. Upon completing a course, you will also get a certificate. All Our courses are free because we believe that what you'll learn will enrich your life and that a virtuous citizen is the best defense for liberty. So pursue the education necessary for freedom and happiness at Hillsdale Edu. Coursetoday. That's Hillsdale Edu Course. Thanks for listening.