Stay ConnectedJoin host Dr. Anthony Comegna on a series of libertarian explorations into the past. Liberty Chronicles combines innovative libertarian thinking about history with specialist interviews, primary and secondary sources, and answers to listener questions.
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Coming soon, a brand new podcast from Libertarianism.org...
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Today Anthony Comegna (@DrLocoFoco) leaves us with one final message as we end chronicling liberty: “I certainly will continue my own end of the deal we have struck here—you couldn’t drag me away from my Locofocos, my Spiritualists, my Free Love anarchists, or my radical English Dissenters, to name just a few—but I’ll close with one final plea to each of you: History is not an instruction manual; it is a cautionary tale. No intellectual tradition, no set of good or just ideas, no heroes nor villains are ever remembered unless we do the labor of memory. Our tradition, our ideas, our tales of heroes and our villains all deserve to be remembered, and we deserve to learn from their examples.”
Be sure to check back with libertarianism.org to learn about our new history adventures in the coming months.
The Possession of Frances Whipple
Reasonable Crimes: Humanizing Pirates
There’s No Excuse for Slavery (Updated)
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Last week we left off with selections from William Graham Sumner and we pick up right there today with Christopher Preble. Preble’s new book was released today on our site and it not only explores America imperialist tendency in the past, but also recognizes our foreign policy blunders of today.
Does the U.S. think they are in a perfect position to solve the problems of other countries? How did the war against Spain turn out? Does the American imperial empire exist today? When did the U.S. start to get influenced by the imperial mindset of Europe? What is corporatism? Was it honorable to be a soldier in the 1900s? What was the anti-war movement and what happened to it after World War II?
Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy, written by Christopher A. Preble, available April 30, 2019.
Dreams of a City on a Hill, 1630, written by John Winthrop
Address Delivered at the Request of the Committee for Arrangements for Celebrating the Anniversary of Independence, written by John Quincy Adams
Jackson: The First Imperial President, Learn Liberty
The Conquest of the United States by Spain, written by William Graham Sumner
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Christopher A. Preble joins us for the first episode of a 2-part discussion about early America’s role in the world. Comegna and Preble focus their conversation around two historical documents that are cited in Preble’s new book Peace, War, and Liberty. The first document is John Quincy Adam’s “Address Delivered at the Request of the Committee for Arrangements for Celebrating the Anniversary of Independence”. The second document is, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain”. Be sure to tune in next week to hear part 2 of this discussion and to download a free copy of the Preble’s book!
What is realpolitik? Why weren’t Native Americans seen as sovereign peoples by the United States? What did Americans think of their place in the world by 1820? Did Americans still fear the British in 1820? How did we use the Navy to expand markets in the early and late 1800s?
Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy, written by Christopher A. Preble, available April 30, 2019.
Dreams of a City on a Hill, 1630, written by John Winthrop
Address Delivered at the Request of the Committee for Arrangements for Celebrating the Anniversary of Independence, written by John Quincy Adams
Jackson: The First Imperial President, Learn Liberty
The Conquest of the United States by Spain, written by William Graham Sumner
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Can you imagine people getting themselves all worked up over banks and money today? Having that intensely boring issue so thoroughly dominate political life that presidents and parties rise and fall on this one subject alone? No one today knows anything about the Fed and no one wants to know about the Fed. People back in the 1830s and ‘40s, were in a constant state of agitation about it. It seemed to Jacksonian Americans that the individual pursuit of self interest was natural and inevitable.
What was important about Adam Smiths’ Wealth of Nations? Were banks corrupt? Have banks always been corrupt? How did views of banks and the Fed change since Jacksonian America?
The Myth of Class in Jacksonian America, Cambridge University Press
The Bank War and the Partisan Press, written by Stephen W. Campbell
Andrew Jackson, Banks and the Panic of 1837, Lehrman Institute
Jackson Kills the Bank, Part One, written by Andrew Jackson
Jackson Kills the Bank, Part Two, written by Andrew Jackson
Make America Young Again, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Edgar Allen Poe was far from being defined as a Locofoco. He was no lover of democracy. He idolized the “devoted loyalty” of old Virginia gentry. As a dark romanticist poet, he believed the America’s Old World aristocracy was fighting the noble cause of attempted to preserve the elevated cultures of the past.
What did Edgar Allen Poe think of the class struggle? Did Edgar Allen Poe think that Americans were spoiled? How did Poe think America erected an aristocracy? Was Edgar Allen Poe a conservative?
The Fall of the House of Usher (Story by Poe), written by David Rush
Edgar Allen Poe, Poetry Foundation
Who was Edgar Allen Poe?, The Poe Museum
Mushrooms & Men, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
An Introduction to Imaginative Literature, Part IV, written by Jeff Riggenbach
Libertarians, Class, and the Left, Anthony Comegna & Caleb O. Brown
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For our 100th episode we interviewed Caleb Brown to gain a better understanding of how Quakerism aligns with libertarianism. He discusses his own experience as a Quaker, but he also makes larger claims about how Quakerism can foster a sense of community to the life of an average libertarian.
What is attractive about Quakerism? What is a ‘true-believer’ Christian? How does Quakerism mesh with libertarianism? Are there a lot of communitarian elements to Quakerism? How do Quaker meetings take place? What role does Quakerism play in your life?
Friends for 300 Years, written by Howard H. Brinton
Amazing Grace, directed by Michael Apted
Cato Daily Podcast
Libertarians, Class, and the Left, interview between Anthony Comegna and Caleb Brown
The Antinomians, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Sam Gorton: Antinomian Radical, by Literature of Liberty Reviewer
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For classical liberals and libertarians, class is a social phenomenon marked by largely artificial distinctions between people based mainly on their access (or lack of access) to raw physical force and a willingness to use force against other people. Classes do not form in society simply because some people have more material wealth racked up than others, nor because some people are better at drawing or sewing or rollerblading than others. Even ideological content of the mind is not really the stuff of class. Sure, plenty of societies have divvied up rights and privileges based on religious or political adherence to one kind of orthodoxy or another, but even in those cases, the ideas do not create the classes.
Who is the ruling class? How were they viewed in Jacksonian America? What is a tyrant? Who are the parasites of the class system? How would you define the class struggle?
Class and Class Struggle, written by Henry Heller
Class Struggle Analysis: A Critique of Class Structure, written by Alvin Y. So
Bastiat’s Theory of Class: The Plunders vs. the Plundered
Class for Classical Liberals, written by Jason Kuznicki
Equality: The Meaning of Class, written by R. H. Tawney
Adam Smith, Class Warrior: A Contentious Legacy, written by David S. D’Amato
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It is a mistake to think of the Civil War a just a conflict between slavery and freedom. Planters and industrialists were interrelated groups that were dependent on the output of one another. The Civil War was not a clear contest between two groups as many academics make it out to be.
What was at stake during the Civil War? What impact did the Civil War have on America in the years following? Did the Civil War make the Federal Government to powerful? How did the Union use the Constitution throughout the Civil War to their advantage?
Civil War Created the Modern US Economy, written by Jeremy Bender
The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865. written by Mark R. Wilson
Was the Civil War a Libertarian Moment?, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Why Did the Southern States Secede?, written by Anthony Comegna
Seward’s “Little Bell”, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Anthony interviews Nicholas Mosvick to discuss the issue of conscription during the Civil War and its’ lasting impact. During the time of the Civil War, conscription was certainly a strain on constitutional authority. Originally a state power to force citizens into fighting, but by the summer of 1862 the Union was growing desperate for manpower & volunteerism was on the decline.
What is conscription? Did it change the outcome of the Civil War? Is conscription an abuse of federal power? What is habeas corpus? Who were the War Democrats during the Civil War? Could there be a military draft at any time? Is the all-male draft style constitutional?
Should women be required to register for the draft? Commission likely to recommend big changes, written by Gregory Korte
The Draft Should Be Left Out in the Cold, written by James Jay Carafano
Abelman’s Shadow: State Struggles over Habeas Corpus, written by Nicholas Mosvick
Garrison on the Civil War and Conscription, written by George H. Smith
Conscription: The Means of Interventionism, written by Justin Raimondo
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On the one hand, Seward’s “little bell” was a wonderful encapsulation of Republican excess and the wartime erosion of liberties which Democrats prided themselves on vigilantly protecting. On the other hand, it was a fabrication, an example of the Democrats’ own penchant for excess and the dramatization of their sufferings during Lincoln’s war—but even if Seward never actually said it, he well could have.
What was Seward’s “little bell”? How was Seward a poor Secretary of State? Why was Steward allowed to approve arbitrary arrests? What is the writ of habeas corpus? What did Fort Lafayette represent during the Civil War?
Mr. Seward’s Little Bell, written by Rick Beard
The Lincoln Administration and Arbitrary Arrests: A Reconsideration, written by Mark E. Neely, Jr.
Lincoln the Colonizationist Part 1, with Phil Magness, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Everything Wrong with the Tyler Administration, written by Anthony Comegna
Was the Civil War a Libertarian Moment?, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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The Confederacy, being far less developed industrial-wise than the Union, had to revolutionize their approach to the war before they could ever hope to win it. Therefore, they had to create the conditions that allowed for the expedition of war-effort necessities. For example, some southern railroads companies existed almost entirely to service the government’s military efforts.
During the Civil War, what was the difference between a ‘conservative’ and a ‘revolutionary’? Were the confederates conservatives or revolutionaries? Did the Confederacy exhibit a type of wartime socialism?
Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, written by Jeff Hummel
War Socialism and the Confederate Defeat, written by Chris Calton
Karl Marx and the American Civil War, written by Donny Schraffenberger
The Confederacy and Liberty, written by Jason Kuznicki
Was the Civil War a Libertarian Moment?, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Why Did the Southern States Secede?, written by Anthony Comegna
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We have a tendency to treat the past as some sort of ideal world where historical actors played out their ideal scenarios under ideal conditions. We grant Lincoln the superhuman powers of creating the war all by himself and being responsible for everything done in the Union’s name. We go to some wild efforts to place historical agency in the hands of particular people or groups to avoid blaming the historical actors with whom we identify personally. There was a time when historians found it both easy and convenient to present the Confederacy as an exercise in Jeffersonian liberalism.
Was Lincoln both the Great Emancipator and the shredder of the Magna Carta? How did the Civil War have libertarian underpinnings? How did Frances Whipple use poetry to describe the Civil War as a movement?
Sarah O’Dowd, A Rhode Island Original: Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall, 2004.
“Elleanor Eldridge: Folk Hero of African American Feminism”
“Let Usurpers Tremble: The Unrepublican Anomaly”
The Possession of Frances Whipple, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Liberty Chimes: Free Speech, the Tyrant-Slayer, written by Frances Whipple
Liberty Chimes: The Slave Mother, written by Frances Whipple
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Michael Braddick joins us to discuss John Lilburne’s legacy of political activism. Lilburne did not want to be considered a martyr. He fought for what we now understand as the English legal tradition, which is really the backbone of American democracy. He defended political freedom when very few mechanisms existed to mobilize support.
Who is John Lilburne? What influence did Lilburne have on the English legal tradition? What is Christian Egalitarianism? How did mobilization work during the English Civil Wars? Is John Lilburne a martyr? Were the Levellers the first modern political party?
The Common Freedom of the People, written by Michael Braddick
John Lilburne- Leveller Leader, by the UK National Archives
Radical Weirdness in the English Civil Wars, Anthony Comegna and Caleb Brown
Agenda for Liberty: A Biography of John Lilburne, written by Jim Powell
Profiles in Locodom: William Cullen Bryant, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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In today’s episode, we shift to the radical end of the spectrum to investigate the life of another Locofoco archetype: William Cullen Bryant, who played the role of venerable, wise, old sage, whose ancient knowledge and cool demeanor kindled radical flames for generations. We explore his early life that led him to write for the Evening Post. Also, we explain how he formed a mentor relationship with William Leggett, which inspired the Evening Post to turn to radical views of politics.
Who was William Cullen Bryant and what inspired him to start writing? How did Bryant change the Evening Post? How was he able to be a mentor to William Leggett? What were the political views of William Leggett and William Cullen Bryant and how did they portray them through the Evening Post?
William Cullen Bryant, Poetry Foundation
William Cullen Bryant, written by John Bigelow
Ep. 87: Profiles in Locodom: Fernando Wood, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
William Leggett, Encyclopedia of Libertarianism
Property, Real & Imagined: Leggett on the Ownership of Ideas, written by William Leggett
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Lincoln was a proponent of gradual compensated emancipation. He hoped that between 1860 and 1900 that slavery would be eliminated. However, he wanted the the dissolving of slavery to be tied to colonization abroad. He believed that slaves who would willingly move to the Caribbean and Central America would not only give the former slaves a place to go, but would also strengthen America’s present abroad.
Did Lincoln view slavery as the the irritant that culminated in the Civil War? Why did the Emancipation Proclamation not include anything about colonization? How did Lincoln’s view of colonization get taken advantage of by other political actors? What did Frederick Douglass think of colonization? Should we continue to put Lincoln up on a pedestal, when in reality, he was a proponent of relocating freed slaves to the Caribbean and Central America?
Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement, written by Phil Magness
Abraham Lincoln: Campaigns and Elections, written by Michael Burlingame
How Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump, written by Andrew Prokop
Lincoln the Colonizationist Part 1, with Phil Magness, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Abraham Lincoln and the Abolitionists, written by George H. Smith
James Birney, Colonization, and Abolitionism, written by George H. Smith
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Colonization was the process to actually remove the freed slaves and settle them elsewhere, other parts of the world that whites thought were more suited for the African-American race. Lincoln was a supporter of the Colonization Society and it is debated whether or not he helped start a chapter in Illinois. Lincoln was first and foremost a Whig who viewed Henry Clay as a hero. However, going into the 1860 election Lincoln was viewed as an underdog candidate.
What was the “Whig formula”? Why was Pennsylvania integral to the 1860 Presidential election? What was Lincoln’s tariff strategy for Pennsylvania? How did Lincoln address all the coalitions of the Republican Party? Who is Henry Charles Carey?
Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement, written by Phil Magness
Abraham Lincoln: Campaigns and Elections, written by Michael Burlingame
How Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump, written by Andrew Prokop
The Confederacy and Liberty, written by Jason Kuznicki
Abraham Lincoln and the Abolitionists, written by George H. Smith
Spooner and the Secret Six, with Phil Magness, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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All history is a string of sense perceptions linked together by individual minds in meaningful patterns we call moments, minutes, hours, days, months, years, wars, eras, periods, ages, and so on. History is sensation, and all sensation is done by the fundamental units of the human species; the individual. In this episode, we explore the Civil War through sensor history in order to fully understand what it was actually like on the battlefield and at home from the perspective of all 5 senses.
What is sensory history? Is sensory history important to understand the depth of the human experience? Should history be hyper individualized? How can sensory history help us learn more about what we believe we already know? Can sound be revolutionary?
The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War, written by Mark Smith
Looking Back: The explosion of sensory history, written by Mark Smith
[The Confederacy and Liberty](https://www.libertarianism.org/blog/confederacy-liberty](https://www.libertarianism.org/blog/confederacy-liberty), written by Jason Kuznicki
Why “Libertarian” Defenses of the Confederacy and “States’ Rights” are Incoherent, written by Jonathan Blanks
Conflicts Among Peace Advocates During the Civil War, written by George H. Smith
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We dive into the secession winter of 1860-1861 when politicians sacrificed unity and stability for personal power. The story of secession cannot be defined as simply an abolitionist versus slaveholders story. There were many factions of people in between the two extremes who were anti-slavery, deportationists, and everywhere in between. It was not as cut and dry as many historians tend to argue.
Who were the “fire-eaters”? What were the differences between the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the Confederate States of America? Was the election of 1860 the reason that secession conventions were held?
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion, Vol. I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. New York: Oxford University Press. 1990. The Road to Disunion, Vol. II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007.
Channing, Steven. Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1970.
Thomas, Emory. The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865. New York: Harper & Row. 1979.
Why Did the Southern States Secede?, written by Anthony Comegna
Conflicts Among Peace Advocates during the Civil War, written by George H. Smith
Who Killed Jefferson(ianism)?, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Nicholas Mosvick joins us to detail the life of Fernando Wood and how he was the mayor of New York who wished the state would have seceded during the Civil War. Wood was best known for being an ideologue rather than a political agitator.
Was Fernando Wood a Van Buren man or a Calhoun man? Did Fernando Wood represent a glorious American future? Was Wood sympathetic to the South?
Fernando Wood: A Political Biography, written by Jerome Mushkat
Mayor Wood’s Recommendation of the Secession of New York City, speech by Fernando Wood
The Roots of Modern Libertarian Ideas, written by Brian Doherty
Tensions in Early American Political Thought, written by Joseph R. Stromberg
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Every family has Christmas traditions, some are more conventional than others. On Christmas Eve in 1826, the cadets at the West Point Military Academy decided they would create a little tradition of their own with some holiday spirits, in both senses of the word. Unfortunately, what started out as some Christmas cheer with a young Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, ended as a full on riot against the bureaucracy.
What is the history of Christmas? Who was Jonathan Pintard and what research did he do about Christmas?
Christmas in America: A History, written by Penne Lee Restad
How Christmas Became Merry, written by Andrew Burstein
1826: The great ‘Eggnog Riot’ at West Point when cadets revolted, written by Jonathan Croyle
The Christmas Conspiracy, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Part two of our discussion with Joseph Kelly is about how the whole first three years of Jamestown was basically the struggle of common laborers who discovered what the reality on the ground was and who tried to escape. Many of them did, by melting into the Native American population, others got caught, tortured, and made examples of for their fellows who didn’t make it out.
How did the Virginia Company interact with the Native Americans? Who was John Smith? Was he a pirate king? Was Jamestown a slave-labor camp? Do we view the founding of America as truly a pilgrimage story?
Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin, written by Joseph Kelly
The Thanksgiving Story You’ve Probably Never Heard, written by Joseph Kelly
America was Founded by Runaways & Renegades, with Joseph Kelly, Part One: Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Soul Liberty, Toleration, and the Emergence of Religious Freedom in the Colonies, written by Micheal Rieger
The Horrifying Lives of Early Virginians: Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Professor Joseph Kelly joins us today to talk about his book Marooned and how much of our understanding about the beginning of the New World is simply names of people and approximately when they died. Stephen Hopkins, a passenger on the Sea Venture which shipwrecked in Bermuda in 1609, is an exception to that trend.
Who is America’s real founding father? What did the Virginia Company do in 1608-1609? Was Jamestown a utopia or a dystopia? Did the Virginia Company have any leadership to guide it? Did they have any real power? What was the difference between colonial Virginia and colonial Bermuda? What is a doctrine of mutual consent?
Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin, written by Joseph Kelly
The Thanksgiving Story You’ve Probably Never Heard, written by Joseph Kelly
“Virginia is Horrible; Send Cheese”: An Indentured Servant Writes Home, written by Richard Frethorne
The Roots of Modern Libertarian Ideas, written by Brian Doherty
The Horrifying Lives of Early Virginians, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Southerners strived to protect slavery as thoroughly as possible. In order to do that, they embraced a pragmatic ideology tailored to fight their Northern opposition. To many Southerners, slavery represented comfort, but others embraced slavery as their Christian duty to save Africans from the drudgeries of freedom and supposedly meek lives of Northern industrial workers.
What is methodological individualism? Was there a monolithic south? What is enlightenment liberalism? Who was Nathaniel Beverly Tucker?
America Mobbing, 1828-1861, written by David Grimsted
The Life and Literature of Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, written by Robert Doares, Jr.
Jeffersonian Optimism vs. Country Pessimism, from Literature of Liberty Reviewer
Radical Individualism in America: Revolution to Civil War, written by Eric Foner
Compromising Compromisers, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Southerners did not support Jeffersonianism as a matter of principle, but as a strategy that would ensure the survival of slavery and institutionalized racism. This support of Jeffersonian liberalism was ill-founded and tainted the philosophical tradition for many years after.
What is the relationship between libertarians and the southerners who were proponents of limited government? How did slavery make the phrase “states’ rights” dirty? How did southerners use the Jeffersonian philosophy to their advantage? Why did southerners fear the health of the republic without slavery? Did southerners actually support a small and limited government or was that just a facade?
Ericson, David. The Debate Over Slavery: Antislavery and Proslavery Liberalism in Antebellum America. New York: New York University Press. 2000.
Finkelman, Paul. Proslavery Thought, Ideology, and Politics. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1989.
Finkelman, Paul. Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2003.
Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion, Vol. I: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854. New York: Oxford University Press. 1990.
The Road to Disunion, Vol. II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007.
The Slaveholder’s Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1992.
Spooner & The Secret Six, with Phil Magness, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Was Frederick Douglass a Libertarian?, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Libertypublicans, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Phil Magness joins us this week to teach the radical nature of Lysander Spooner. Spooner’s legal career started in an apprenticeship under 2 lawyers and he was best known for his support for the Abolitionist movement. His philosophy of liberty heavily influenced his law practice as well as his activist lifestyle.
Who was Lysander Spooner? Is there a connection between his post office activism and his abolition activism? What radical politics did Spooner practice? What is the secret six? How does natural law relate to slavery?
Two Treatises on Competitive Currency and Banking, written by Lysander Spooner
John Brown and the Secret Six, Massachusetts Historical Society
Cannibals All!, with Phil Magness, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
An Essay on the Trial by Jury: Juries vs. Representative Democracy, written by Lysander Spooner
Lysander Spooner on Natural Law, written by George H. Smith
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The Democrats and Republicans in the House were doing everything they could think of to force the hands of their opponents into appointing the House Speaker. However, no one could secure the majority number of votes to take over the position. The crisis reached a breaking point when a congressman actually suggested that everyone from the House resign in order eliminate the issue entirely. With every passing day, party lines became clearer and our Loco-Focos were at the core of the anti-slavery Republican movement.
Why was there a speakership crisis? How did the House overcome the crisis? What happened to the Loco-Focos in the 1850’s? Did the speakership crisis just serve as a foreshadowing of the trouble to come for the U.S.?
Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2005.
Bigelow, John. William Cullen Bryant. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. 1980. (Original printing: 1890).
Brooks, Corey M. Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2016.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Perennial Classics Edition. 2002. Originally Published: 1988.
Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Knopf. 1996
Compromising Compromisers, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
1848 and Its Aftermath, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
Libertarian Anti-Capitalism, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Stephen Maizlish sifted through 1700-1800 different documents and speeches from the 19th century in order to recreate an accurate depiction of the discourse that was occurring in Congress prior to the Civil War. His book, A Strife of Tongues: The Compromise of 1850 and the Ideological Foundations of the American Civil War (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era), is the product of his outstanding work. He found that many speeches and documents of lesser-known congressman of the time were the most profound and the least read by historians today.
What exactly caused the Civil War? What is the importance of intellectual history? What are the power of words when reconstructing a reality? How different really were the Northern and Southern Congressmen during the Compromise of 1850? How was the division between the North and the South created? How prevalent were the concepts of masculinity in discourse during the time of the Compromise of 1850?
“How Calls for Civility Led to the Civil War,” by Oliver Bateman
Holt, Michael. The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Hill & Wang. 2004.
Ransom, Roger. Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and the American Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989.
A Strife of Tongues: The Compromise of 1850 and the Ideological Foundations of the American Civil War (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era), written by Stephen W. Maizlish
The Virtues of Compromise, written by Charles Jared Ingersoll
1848 and Its Aftermath, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
The Greatest of Nullifiers, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Prior to 1857, no one had ever heard of Hinton Helper. To be clear, Helper was not a libertarian, he was a vehement racist who made it quite clear that he did not believe that people of color belonged in North America at all. Helper had one great contribution to history and that was his book The Impending Crisis of the South. However, if you read his work closely, his racist remarks were class-oriented to appeal to poor whites. He urged them to revolutionize society. Helper detested the rich white planter elite which was the result of excessive slavery.
Who was Hinton Helper? Was his book, The Impending Crisis of the South, more influential than Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Was Helper an abolitionist? Did Helper see slavery as having any value? What was Helper’s version of manifest destiny?
Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South
George Frederickson, “Chapter 2: Antislavery Racist—Hinton Rowan Helper,” in The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspective on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality, Wesleyan University Press. 1988.
Brooks, Corey M. Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2016.
Cannibals All!, with Phil Magness, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
There’s No Excuse for Slavery (Updated), Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Phil Magness best describes George Fitzhugh as an “eccentric character” because that frames the intellectual direction of his life. Fitzhugh had an obsession with reading about the medieval world and throughout his life he had contempt for philosophers. He is famous for viewing free society as a failure and he also claimed that “all government is slavery”.
Who is George Fitzhugh? Was he ever a southern planter? What influence did Thomas Carlyle have on Fitzhugh? What were Fitzhugh’s religious views? How did Fitzhugh critique feminism? What did Fitzhugh find valuable about the feudal relationship?
George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society, Richmond, VA: A. Morris, 1854.
George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters, Richmond, VA: A. Morris, 1857
Slavery as Socialism, written by George H. Smith
There is No Excuse for Slavery, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
What is Classical Liberal History?, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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One of the biggest drawbacks of thinking in “vulgar libertarian” fashion is that you forget that there were ever alternatives available to people, that the way that we live now or the way we’re used to living is the only way that was ever reasonable or good. The rise of the modern state marks a time in history when authorities began to and continue to control more about people’s lives. The modern state also intrudes on people’s lives in a fashion that is so much greater than before. With that being said, we are still hesitant to look at other society organizational possibilities even though the modern state continues to control us more than most would prefer. Kevin Carson joins us to discuss the depths of capitalism and if the possibility for a post-capitalism world exists.
What is the definition of capitalism? What is the history of the word “capitalism”? Who were the Boston Anarchists? What is “vulgar libertarianism”? Are there alternative social structures that we do not acknowledge because we are stubborn and stuck in our ways? Is post-capitalism occurring?
Center for a Stateless Society website
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism, by Kevin Carson
Why Not Capitalism?, Free Thoughts Podcast
Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?, Free Thoughts Podcast
The Corporation Problem with Gary Chartier, Liberty Chronicles Podcast
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Historians usually mark off the years, about 1815 to 1845 as the Jacksonian era and for Americans, and many other people across the planet, these were years of singularity. This period of time is remembered for many inventions and innovations. Most notably was Samuel Morse’s magnetic telegraph. His magnetic telegraph “eliminated the greatest problem plagued by all republics since the ancient days of Rome” because it was able to connect the states through rapid communication. Originally, Congress thought that the telegraph would be used as an extension of the Postal Service, but they could find no way for it to be profitable, so they left it up to the private sector to decide how to best utilize the service.
When was the Jacksonian era? How did the way Americans travelled change through the Jacksonian era? What was the most impressive innovation of that era? How did the magnetic telegraph affect the way Americans communicated?
Feller, Daniel. The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815-1840. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995. Howe, Daniel Walker.
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007.
Calhoun’s “Cords of Union” Speech
There’s No Excuse for Slavery, Liberty Chronicles Episode
Defenses of the Right of Secession, written by George H. Smith
Why Did the Southern States Secede?, written by Anthony Comegna
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Abram Smith caught political fire as a radical Locofoco Democrat, a friend of working people and outsiders. Smith was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1852 after he spent some time as a notable defense attorney. Let’s not forget that in 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act was revamped in order to ensure that Northerners were not a hinderance in the capture of slaves who had escaped their southern masters. In fact, Northerners were now required to return any slaves whom they knew to be fugitives. Smith, as a judge, was in utter disagreement with this act and he made that quite apparent when he nullified the Fugitive Slave Act for his state after a slave by the name of Joshua Glover was thrown into the city jail. Sherman Booth had been helping Glover maintain his freedom. Smith decided that Glover should be liberated and Booth should be cleared of any wrongdoing.
Who was Abram Smith? What was the Fugitive Slave Act and did it change during the Compromise of 1850? What did Abram Smith decide about the Fugitive Slave Act?
Dunley, Ruth. “A.D. Smith: Knight-Errant of Radical Democracy,” (PhD Diss.). The University of Ottowa. 2008.
Abram D. Smith: Nullification, from Classics of Liberty
“From President of Canada to Governor of the People”
Music by Kai Engel
The Slave Trade and the Constitution, written by George H. Smith
There’s No Excuse for Slavery, Liberty Chronicles Episode
Why did the Southern States Secede?, written by Anthony Comegna
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All the way from the 1770s to the 1850s, Americans had plenty of political disagreements, but nothing ever seriously disrupted the machinery of state until abolitionists and planters began forcing the slavery issue. Prior to the election of 1856, some much-needed rearrangement occurred in politics. In 1856, the newly-minted Republican Party lost on the back of John C. Frémont, but they gained crucial insight out of the election. The Republicans realized that they could take over the White House without a single vote from the Southern states. In 1860, along came an ambitious Republican from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, who used the trail blazed by early libertarians.
How did the Republican Party arise? What happened to the Free Soilers and Whigs in response to the birth of the Republican party? Who was the New American Party? Who were the “Know-Nothings”? Was there a Loco-Foco Party?
James Buchanan: Campaigns and Elections, written by William Cooper
United States presidential election of 1856, written by Richard Pallardy
Gienapp, William. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856. New York: Oxford University Press. 1987.
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995.
Music by Kai Engel
There’s No Excuse for Slavery (Updated), Liberty Chronicles Episode
Whiggery’s Last Gasp, Liberty Chronicles Episode
Free Soil After Van Buren, Liberty Chronicles Episode
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This is a updated version of “There’s No Excuse for Slavery” which was released on July 3rd, 2018. Enjoy!
The planters of the South believed that slavery had grown up with American society and its’ institutions. John C. Calhoun argued that slavery was a “positive good” because he believed that no well-off society existed in which “one portion of the community did not in point of fact, live on the labor of the other”. How did beliefs like these and those of Calhoun’s followers further split the Union?
How could a man like Jefferson at once declare all humanity’s equal, natural rights and yet hold hundreds of people in bondage? What was state-made racism? Who were the beneficiaries of slavery? Who were the Quakers and how did they influence the anti-slavery movement? What is the argument of slavery as a “positive good”? Who really was John C. Calhoun?
John C. Calhoun and Slavery as a “Positive Good:” What He Said, written by Clyde Wilson
John C. Calhoun: He Started the Civil War, written by Civil War Times
Music by Kai Engel
Libertarians and the Confederacy, by Jason Kuznicki
Why “Libertarian” Defenses of the Confederacy and “States’ Rights” are Incoherent, written by Jonathan Blanks
Kansas Changes Everything, Liberty Chronicles Episode
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In the mid-20th century, it was fashionable for historians to speak of a “Blundering Generation” of pre-Civil War politicians, people who—well intended or not—made a long series of foolish and short-sighted mistakes. They made blunders that make for wonderfully detailed political histories “from below,” as it were, but what appear to be mistakes were often intentional, and what appear to be great men were often just the schemers whose plans succeeded in the end.
Who is the worst politician to come out of Illinois? Who were the “F Street Mess”? What happened to the Whig party between 1852 and 1856? Who were the first Republicans? Was the Civil War avoidable?
Stephen A. Douglas: A Featured Biography
Stephen A. Douglas, History Channel
What Can the Collapse of the Whig Party Tell Us About Today’s Politics?, Smithsonian Magazine
Music by Kai Engel
Whiggery’s Last Gasp, Liberty Chronicles Episode
Was Frederick Douglass a Libertarian?, Liberty Chronicles Episosde
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In 1850, American politics was nearing its breaking point. The Senate as well as the Administration was doing much in order to keep the peace between the Southern and Northern politicians. For example, Henry Clay was pulling out all the stops to pass a combination of compromise measures that would finally resolve the territorial crisis. However, his bill kept failing on partisan lines. No Southerners wanted to vote for restricting slavery, even if it meant getting a souped-up fugitive slave law in return. And no self-respecting or self-interested Northerner, wanted to vote for that fugitive slave bill, even if it meant abolishing the slave trade in Washington.
What did the Compromise of 1850 solve? Did it just put off an inevitable split in our nation over the slavery issue? What happened in the Presidential Election of 1852? Did nationalism take over in this period defined by great stress and division?
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Life of Franklin Pierce” Holt, Michael.
The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Hill & Wang. 2004.
Silbey, Joel. The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841-1852. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1967.
Music by Kai Engel
1848 and Its Aftermath, Liberty Chronicles Episode
The World Wide Revolution, Liberty Chronicles Episode
The Virtues of Compromise, written by Charles Jared Ingersoll
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Jeff Hummel joins our lengthy debate about who Van Buren really was as a person and as a President. Hummel argues that Van Buren took a small “r” republican position for most of his career, both in the law and in politics. Hummel also argues that Van Buren was more consistent as President than those who came before him.
Why would Jeff Hummel categorize Van Buren as the “least bad” President? Why is Van Buren considered the first “ethnic President”? Was Van Buren consistently classically liberal? How does Van Buren compare to Calhoun? What did Van Buren think was the purpose of political parties?
Jeff Hummel’s articles on Van Buren: In The Independent and from Reassessing the Presidency
Curtis, James C. The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 1970.
Silbey, Joel. Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2002.
Van Buren, Martin. Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1867.
The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, Edited by John C. Fitzpatrick. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 1920.
Widmer, Edward. Martin Van Buren. New York: Times Books. 2005.
Music by Kai Engel
Free Soil After Van Buren, Liberty Chronicles Episode
Van Buren’s Dirty Game, Liberty Chronicles Episode
What’s a Loco-Foco?, Liberty Chronicles Episode
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Whigs were happy to have the White House, but many of them, at least, could still see the trouble lying head at the inevitable contest of 1852. On the strength of surprisingly large margins, the Free Soilers actually had a serious seat at the table. The Loco-Focos were the ones out there leading the young America cultural movement, they were the ones integrating Whigish abolitionism, with Jacksonian anti-monopoly, even when Van Buren had left them behind.
What happened to the Free Soil Movement after Van Buren was elected? What was the Speakership Crisis of 1849? Were the Whigs more reliable allies than the Democrats? What were the Loco-Focos doing during this time of upheaval in Congress? What role did the Wilmot Proviso play in this time defined by factions?
Blue, Frederick. The Free Soilers, Third Party Politics, 1848-54. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 1973.
Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995.
Brooks, Corey M. Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2016.
Music by Kai Engel
1848 and Its Aftermath, Liberty Chronicles Episode
Van Buren’s Dirty Game, Liberty Chronicles Epsiode
Polk- What a Horrible President!, Liberty Chronicles Episode
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Our conversation about how all history is revisionist and open to creativity with Michael Douma continues this week. Douma believes that a history classroom should not be about memorizing facts that a professor believes matter. It is more important to train people to think critically and creatively. Douma believes that history is always written from the perspective of the historian, describing it as, “a discussion without end”, meaning history is never completely solid or solved.
What is the definition of creativity? How is history like a pencil? Is history all conspiracy? What is a history buff? What is a crack-pot?
Michael J. Douma website
Creative Historical Thinking, written by Michael J. Douma
What is Classical Liberal History?, written by Michael J. Douma
Music by Kai Engel
Creative Historical Thinking, with Michael Douma, Part One, Liberty Chronicles Episode
What is the Importance of History, written by David Boaz
Is there a Purpose to History?, Free Thoughts Episode
What is Classical Liberal History?, Liberty Chronicles Episode
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Michael Douma joins us for the first part of a two-part series to discuss how we see the past as as an interpretative history. He argues that history is a creative discipline because we choose to arrange facts in a certain way.
Douma goes through his new book, Creative Historical Thinking, and how he typically asks his students to draw a timeline of their lives or a timeline of American history. Quite often, each students’ timeline forms differently. Relating that to the study of the past, Douma argues that every timeline a historian draws, is a different interpretation of the past, creating history. Everyone has a different mental model or “timeline” in which they view their lives and that allows history to be a creative endeavor.
Is the past simply what happened? With that in mind, is history our interpretation of the past? Is history how we give meaning to the past? What is the difference between an error in conception and an error in fact? If you had to drawl the timeline of your life how would you drawl it?
Michael J. Douma website
Creative Historical Thinking, writtenby Michael J. Douma
What is Classical Liberal History?, written by Michael J. Douma
Music by Kai Engel
What is the Importance of History, written by David Boaz
Is there a Purpose to History?, Free Thoughts Episode
What is Classical Liberal History?, Liberty Chronicles Episode
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Timothy Sandefur joins us this week to discuss how Frederick Douglass and his beliefs do not align perfectly to today’s political factions. He is often mischaracterized due to his legendary status. Has Douglass been purposefully distorted over time? Does the omission of facts about what he did and how he acted play a large role in that distortion?
Frederick Douglass is defined as an individualist, which is best exemplified by his speeches and attitudes toward serving in the military. In his speeches and writings, he believed that slaves should join the army, not to serve their country, but rather, to give themselves a sense of pride. This, he believed, was a crucial way for the slaves to feel empowered because they earned their freedom in a way that ensured that it would never be taken away.
Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, by Timothy Sandefur
How Libertarians Ought to Think About the U.S. Civil War by Timothy Sandefur
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself
Music by Kai Engel
Slavery in America, Encyclopedia of Libertarianism
What to a Slave is the Fourth of July, written by Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, Free Thoughts Episode
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1848 was a wild ride. That year the Free Soil Party tried to force Whigs and Democrats to take a stand on the issue of slavery in the territories. Once and for all, politicians would have to openly declare themselves either in favor of Free Soil for free society or Slave Territory, for the planters’ personal dominion.
Johnson, Reinhard. The Liberty Party, 1840-1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University. 2009.
From historian Joel Silbey:
The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841-1852. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1967.
Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2002.
Party Over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 2009.
Music by Kai Engel
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The average Free Soiler was a radical Loco-Foco, probably from New York, touched by more than a decade of early libertarianism. But always and everywhere there were also the opportunists, the schemers, the self-advancing office seekers, desperate to leverage free soil into greater personal power, and right there at the top of this magnificent new party was the schemer in chief, the little magician, the Red Fox of Kinderhook, the architect of the Second Party System itself, and now the perpetrator of one of the dirtiest double games in all of politics, Martin Van Buren.
For an overview of the later Loco-Foco movement
Blue, Frederick. The Free Soilers, Third Party Politics, 1848-54. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 1973.
Earle, Jonathan. Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004.
Mayfield, John. Rehearsal for Republicanism: Free Soil and the Politics of Antislavery. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press. 1980.
Rayback, Joseph G. Free Soil: The Election of 1848. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press. 1970.
Music by Kai Engel
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The Polk Administration was a strange time in the early history of American Libertarianism called Locofocoism. In many ways, it was the time of ultimate triumph. Polk was as committed to their economic program as anyone else on the national stage, including their champion, Martin Van Buren. He was a Republican nationalist and an expansionist, and so were many of the more hopeful and naive Locofocos. By 1844, Locofocoism was all over the country, from the shores of New England, through the mountains of New York, and out to the plains of Ohio and Wisconsin, right the way down, even in the South, to places like Montgomery, Alabama, and for at least a brief period, Polk was their man. Everything looked bright, but the peace within the democracy was uneasy at best. Then along came Polk’s war on Mexico, an unforgivable tragedy to some, and an insurmountable political disaster to most others. To set things aright, to protect the power and interests of the North’s free citizens, to expand the zone of liberty and Republicanism, in the face of both British and slave-holding aggression, Northern radicals rose up in political revolution.
Blue, Frederick. The Free Soilers, Third Party Politics, 1848-54. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 1973.
Earle, Jonathan. Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004.
Mayfield, John. Rehearsal for Republicanism: Free Soil and the Politics of Antislavery. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press. 1980.
Rayback, Joseph G. Free Soil: The Election of 1848. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press. 1970.
George H. Smith, “The Liberty Party”
Music by Kai Engel
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In the end, a few thousand early libertarians in New York made the Mexican War a possibility. And almost right away, Polk began betraying Van Buren defectors. He ignored Van Buren’s cabinet suggestions and supported the conservative faction in New York.
For an overview of the later history of locofocoism
“The Artist as Exemplar: Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life”
A quick life of Thoreau in the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism
Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas (1871)
Polk’s Special Message to Congress (11 May, 1846)
Lincoln’s “Spot Resolutions” at the National Archives
Music by Kai Engel
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Dr. Nima Sanandaji has a PhD in Engineering from Stockholm’s Royal Institute, and he has written over 20 books on policy, philosophy, current affairs and history. He joins me now to talk about his latest, “The Birthplace of Capitalism,” which explains how and why ancient Middle Easterners invented capitalism and entrepreneurship.
Nima Sanandaji’s Wikipedia entry
His latest book, The Birthplace of Capitalism: The Middle East, Timbro (2018)
Dr. Sanandaji’s 2016 speech on Nordic socialism at the Cato Institute
Roderick Long joins Free Thoughts to talk about libertarian themes in Confucianism
Music by Kai Engel
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Corporations are so commonplace, so ubiquitous, and considered so necessary that we barely stop to ask whether it’s ever been justifiable in the first place. Here to help us tackle one of the great, relatively forgotten questions in Libertarian history is Gary Chartier.
Gary Chartier’s Wikipedia entry
His archive at the Center for a Stateless Society
“Corporations: A Contractual Program” in Literature of Liberty, December 1979
“The Limited Liability Corporation” in Literature of Liberty, September 1982
William Leggett, “The Restraining Law and Its Abominations,” August 1836
Music by Kai Engel
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In the grand catalog of 19th century America, there are few villains so worthy of a Libertarian’s scorn, as James K Polk. The Jacksonian period was one flush with eager upstarts, middling men who hit it big with cunning and peculiar talents. Polk, too, was one of these eager, young, upstart Americans.
Frances Whipple, ed. Liberty Chimes. Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Providence. 1845.
May, Robert. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2002.
Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1997.
Sellers, Charles. James K. Polk, Jacksonian: 1795-1845. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1957.
James K. Polk, Continentalist: 1843-1846. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1966.
Music by Kai Engel
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We often learn that Manifest Destiny was the invention of racists and conquest-hungry imperialists, and there is some truth to that, but much as historians have ignored it and much as we might like to do the same, America’s first libertarian movement was also responsible. Jacksonian radicals called Locofocos provided the ideology that helped transform the United States from a limited republic into a continental empire. Uncomfortable as it might be, we will find that their early libertarianism was a jumping-off point for what only later became a much more typical racist imperialism.
“Battling the Empire,” Part One and Part Two
“A Latent Leaning Toward Texas:” Republicanism vs. Empire
John L. O’Sullivan: The Great Nation of Futurity
Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1981.
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation. New York: Knopf. 1963.
Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill & Wang. 1995.
Music by Kai Engel
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As we have seen over the last several months on this show, America’s first libertarian movement called Locofocoism was, but one among many reform movements dotting the Jacksonian period. For a century and a half, historians have diligently detailed the stories of abolitionists, working people, feminists, land reformers, prohibitionists, suffragists, and suffragettes, free lovers, communists, industrialists, progressivists, free thinkers, transcendentalists, socialists, and the Young America Artistic Movement that lent credibility to the broad cause of reform. This week, we turn to an example of yet more mixed success in which radical Locofocoism was both implemented and watered down at the same time. New York’s Anti-Rent War and the Revolutionary Constitution of 1846.
“Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions,” 7 June 1629
Cheney, Edward P. The Anti-Rent Agitation in the State of New York, 1839-1846. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 1887.
Huston, Reeve. Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000.
McCurdy, Charles W. The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839-1865. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. 2001.
Music by Kai Engel
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Frances Whipple was born into the quintessential American aristocratic family. On her father’s side, the Whipple line included Rhode Island heroes like Abraham, who led the burning of the British ship Gaspee in 1772, and some of the earliest settlers of the colony. On Frances’ mother’s side, the Scotts included some of Roger Williams’ earliest and closest associates in the foundation of the Rhode Island colony. In 1815, though, nature leveled the Whipple clan. A storm called the Great Gale ravaged Providence, flooding wharves and destroying crops within a 40-mile radius of the city. It was also the year without a summer, thanks to the Tambora volcano in Indonesia, which erupted so violently that the ash clouds actually cooled the planet. With a future of nothing but drought, sooty clouds and gloom, her father sold the family farm in 1816 and Whipple was destitute. Frances supported herself through odd jobs and self-education. She became a very different sort of Whipple, and over her lifetime, she helped make America a very different sort of place.
Sarah O’Dowd, A Rhode Island Original: Frances Harriet Whipple Green McDougall, 2004.
“Elleanor Eldridge: Folk Hero of African American Feminism”
“Let Usurpers Tremble: The Unrepublican Anomaly”
Whipple, Might and Right: By A Rhode Islander, Providence: A.H. Stilwell. 1844.
Music by Kai Engel
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Little is known about the personal life of Ann Parlin, the woman who came up with the idea for clam bakes to raise relief money for the families of imprisoned suffragists. She married Dr. Louis Parlin on July 7th, 1839, in Maine before moving to Providence. In 1841, they appear in the city’s business records through Dr. Parlin’s homeopathy clinic. He’s considered the founder of homeopathy in Rhode Island, and he practiced there for two to three years while participating in the city’s bubbling radical politics. The Parlins were fairly well off and Louis was a landholder or a freeman allowed to vote, but both of them believed fully in the people’s sovereign power to reform their governments at will.
“A Woman of Spunk: Ann Parlin’s Vision for Revolution”
Zagarri, Rosemarie. Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Earl American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2007.
Zboray, Ronald & Mary. Voices Without Votes: Women and Politics in Antebellum New England. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press. 2010.
Music by Kai Engel
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We are celebrating Liberty Chronicles’ one year anniversary with a special Free Thoughts/Liberty Chronicles crossover episode featuring Free Thoughts Podcast host Trevor Burrus. We’ll discuss the Dorr War and its Supreme Court Case Luther v. Borden.
Luther v Borden (1849)—Taney’s Majority Opinion and Woodbury’s Dissenting Opinion
Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831-1861. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. 1976.
Gettleman, Marvin. The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism: 1833-1849. New York: Random House. 1973.
Grimstead, David. American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998.
Music by Kai Engel
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Steve Horwitz is the Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise in Ball State University’s economics department. He has a PhD in economics from George Mason University, and his most recent book is Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions. In the interest of more clearly identifying the relationship between his highly theoretical discipline and our evolving set of humane histories here on Liberty Chronicles, Professor Horwitz joins us now.
Steve Horwitz’ personal website
His Libertarianism.org author’s page
“Libertarians and ‘Unicorn Governance,’” A Cato Daily Podcast Interview (Jan. 25, 2017)
Music by Kai Engel
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In this episode of Liberty Chronicles, we are joined by Mike Douma and Phil Magness to discuss their new book “What is Classical Liberal History?” Mike Douma is an Assistant Research Professor at Georgetown University and the Director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics. Phil Magness is a professor at Berry College’s Campbell School of Business and author of Colonization after Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement.
Douma & Magness, eds. What Is Classical Liberal History? Lexington Books. 2017.
“Creative Historical Thinking,” Mike Douma’s blog
Phil Magness’ personal website
Benedetto Croce, Selections from History as the Story of Liberty. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 2000.
Comegna, ed. Liberty and Power: A Reader. Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute. 2017.
Music by Kai Engel
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David M. Hart is the Director of Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty. His latest book, Social Class and State Power, is a reader in libertarian class theory including documents from Richard Overton in the English Civil Wars all the way down to Libertarianism.org contributor Roderick Long.
Music by Kai Engel
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In July 1842, Rhode Island had two state governments divided into armed camps. The rest of New England watched, wondering if what they called “The Rhode Island Question” would spill into a widespread civil war. The fight was over which of the state’s two dueling authorities was legitimate—the Charter government established in 1663 by King Charles II, or the People’s Constitution which bypassed the legislature with a popular convention and vote.
Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831-1861. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. 1976.
Gettleman, Marvin. The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism: 1833-1849. New York: Random House. 1973.
Frances Whipple & Levi Slamm: “Let Usurpers Tremble: The Unrepublican Anomaly” (1842)
Ann Parlin, Speech at New York’s Shakespeare Hotel (1842)
Marcus Morton’s Clam Bake Letter (1842)
Music by Kai Engel
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Last week on Liberty Chronicles, we left off with May 19, 1842, when Thomas W. Dorr—The People’s Governor of Rhode Island, dressed up like Napoleon and carrying a sword—ordered his makeshift little army to storm the Providence state arsenal.. Most of Dorr’s warriors, though, were young men trying to impress girls in their neighborhoods. It was the furthest thing imaginable from a professional, committed army, and when met with even slight resistance, Dorr’s lines broke and his army scattered.
Chaput, Erik. The People’s Martyr: Thomas Wilson Dorr and His 1842 Rhode Island Rebellion. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. 2013.
Conley, Patrick T. Democracy in Decline: Rhode Island’s Constitutional Development, 1776-1841. Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society. 1977.
Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831-1861. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. 1976.
Gettleman, Marvin. The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism: 1833-1849. New York: Random House. 1973.
Grimstead, David. American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998.
Music by Kai Engel
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In Rhode Island, 1842, politician Thomas W. Dorr (calling himself “The People’s Governor”) threatened civil war throughout New England. His main target was the famous colonial Charter issued by King Charles II in 1663. In the 19th century the document of world historical importance—the planet’s oldest existing written constitution at the time, and surely the most liberal in its own day. Radical Jacksonian and America’s first professional historian, George Bancroft, declared, “Nowhere in the world have life, LIBERTY, and property been safer than in Rhode Island.”
Chaput, Erik. The People’s Martyr: Thomas Wilson Dorr and His 1842 Rhode Island Rebellion. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. 2013.
Conley, Patrick T. Democracy in Decline: Rhode Island’s Constitutional Development, 1776-1841. Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society. 1977.
Shalhope, Robert. “The Radicalism of Thomas Dorr,” Reviews in American History 2, No. 3 (Sep., 1974): 383-389.
Dan King, “The Life and Times of Thomas Wilson Dorr” (1859)
Music by Kai Engel
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In the Winter of 1837-1838, New York’s “Locofoco” or Equal Rights Party tidily collapsed back into Martin Van Buren’s Democratic Party. It was the first libertarian movement in American history, and they’d fought a two-year political war against Tammany Hall to control the state and national party. In most ways, they were successful. But actually, 1840 was their year—their chance to permanently change America. It might just be the most important election year ever, and 178 years later, I’d say it still is.
Comegna, “The Dupes of Hope, Forever:” The Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Movement, 1820s-1870s. (PhD Dissertation: University of Pittsburgh). 2016.
Curtis, James C. The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 1970.
Silbey, Joel. Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2002.
Widmer, Edward. Martin Van Buren. New York: Times Books. 2005.
Music by Kai Engel
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Abram D. Smith is a forgotten figure in American history. Smith was born in either Lowville or Cambridge, upstate New York, in 1811, just before the post-war boom years of rapid social and economic change. As a young man, he experienced and contributed to a wave of nationalistic romanticism, enraptured with the wonders of American republicanism and democracy. He was in these regards fairly unremarkable, and yet in September 1838, probably in some Ohio forest, surrounded by blazing torchlight, a circle of revolutionary conspirators called the Brother Hunters elected Abram D. Smith—Mr. Average American—to be President of the Republic of Canada.
“Abram D. Smith: Nullification,” on Classics of Liberty
Bonthius, Andrew. “The Patriot War of 1837-1838: Locofocoism With a Gun?” Labour/Le Travail 52 (Fall 2003), 9-43.
Dunley, Ruth. “A.D. Smith: Knight-Errant of Radical Democracy,” (PhD Diss.). The University of Ottowa. 2008.
Kinchen, Oscar. The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters. New York: Bookman Associates. 1956.
James Gemmel, “Two Years in Van Dieman’s Land”
Benjamin Wait, Letters from Van Dieman’s Land
Music by Kai Engel
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The Young Americans were New York’s next generation of artists, intellectuals, and activists, and reformers, many of whom were inspired by the Loco-Foco movement, which challenged Tammany Hall for supremacy in the Democratic Party from 1835 to 1837. Their philosophies generally came from the great classical liberals, radicals like Tom Paine and William Leggett, equal in stature to most Young Americans, and they shared a deep faith in America’s world historical destiny. A Young American might have been in either party, but their philosophy [00:03:00] was almost always some strain of Loco-Focoism.
Comegna, “Art as Ideas: Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire” and “The Artist as Exemplar: Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life”
John L. O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity”
Tymn, Marshall, ed. Thomas Cole’s Poetry: The Collected Poems of America’s Foremost Painter of the Hudson River School Reflecting His Feelings for Nature and the Romantic Spirit of the Nineteenth Century. York, PA: Liberty Cap Books. 1972.
Walt Whitman’s “Democratic Vistas”
Widmer, Edward. Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999.
Music by Kai Engel
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During the painful Panic Winter of 1837, America’s first identifiably libertarian political party neared the end of its short life. After the February flour riots and facing nothing but dire circumstances, movement faithful gradually peeled away from the party.
Curtis, James C. The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 1970.
Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.
Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013.
Roberts, Alasdair. America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder After the Panic of 1837. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2012.
Music by Kai Engel
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On 11 and 20 of January, 1836, the Equal Rights Democrats renounced all connections with Tammany and passed resolutions calling for ward me tings and delegate elections to a county convention. Delegates assembled on 9 February in the Eighth Ward. Moses Jacques served as President and wrote the “Declaration of principles.” He was history embodied. Moses’ father was a colonel in the New Jersey militia during the Revolution.
Bridges, Amy. A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1984.
Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.
Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013.
Music by Kai Engel
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The conspirators fully expected Tammany regulars would play whatever dirty tricks necessary to maintain control over the convention. Each conspirator attended the meeting with pockets full of “Loco Foco” matches and candles. They were a new invention, friction candles ignited by striking the match tip against a surface. Locofoco supposedly entered the American lexicon as a bastardization of the Italian words for moving fire. And these people were definitely fireballs set into motion.
Ashworth, John. “Agrarians & Aristocrats:” Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846. London: Royal Historical Society. 1983.
Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.
Lause, Mark. Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2005.
Music by Kai Engel
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Last week we explored the life and ideas of William Leggett—the founding father of America’s first identifiably libertarian movement. This week we begin with his attack on censorship as a gross abuse of government power, a sure sign that freedom was dying.
Earle, Jonathan. Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004.
Grimstead, David. American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998.
Music by Kai Engel
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Somewhere during the course of his tour—somewhere in the Mediterranean—William Leggett developed a “life-long hatred of authority,” a libertarian spirit within him that revolted against power wherever it existed, wherever people attempted to constrict the liberty of others. Historians tell us the 1820s, 30s, and 40s was the Jacksonian Era, but this week and next we will follow Walt Whitman in declaring this “The Age of Leggett.”
Worton, Stanley. “William Leggett, Political Journalist (1801-1839): A Study in Democratic Thought.” (PhD Dissertation): Columbia University. Columbia University Press. 1954.
Music by Kai Engel
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Nine Masons signed the Declaration of Independence, 13 helped draft and ratify the Constitution, George Washington and James Monroe were Masons, and for that matter so was Andrew Jackson. So was Henry Clay! Even the South American Washington, Simon Bolivar, was a Mason. All four of Napoleon’s brothers joined Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Voltaire, Ben Franklin, and innumerable other important artists, philosophers, and scientists in the fraternity.
Elder David Bernard, ed. Light on Masonry, Utica, NY: William Williams, 1829.
Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.
Pessen, Edward. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics. Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press. 1969.
Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1768-1850. New York: Oxford University Press. 1984.
Music by Kai Engel
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While the two parties gripped one another in mock mortal combat, struggling for votes more than for principles, some precious few Americans remained unimpressed. In corners all over the country, people saw through the myth making and the gamesmanship. Put frankly, American democracy was a sham and the evolving two parties were vast conspiracies against the public’s liberty, security, and well-being.
Clay’s “American System” Speeches
Kohl, Lawrence. The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Pessen, Edward. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics. Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press. 1969.
Music by Kai Engel
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We should not fool ourselves into thinking democracy was some benevolent aristocrat’s generous gift. Nor should we believe democracy was something average people heroically fought for and won. The truth is, ballots have never translated to real political power and influence—they never have. The near-universal patterns in these democratizing state legislatures and constitutional conventions were political pragmatism and opportunism.
“The Votes and Speeches of Martin Van Buren”
Kohl, Lawrence. The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Meyers, Marvin. The Jacksonian Persuasion. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1957.
Pessen, Edward. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics. Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press. 1969.
Music by Kai Engel
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Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of economic history at Northwestern University. He has a PhD from Yale, he has taught and studied all over the world, and has supervised many dozens of doctoral students in pursuit of the past. He joins us today to talk about his latest book, A Culture of Growth, and the creeping revolution that enriched the world.
Mokyr, A Culture of Growth, Princeton University Press. 2017.
Music by Kai Engel
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We have to remember that American democracy was not something won courageously over time so much as it was a long, drawn out process of corrupt bargaining between politicians and the voting public, Conspiracy- and coalition-building between current voters and potential voters, and Nasty, Nasty Deals.
George Kremer to Andrew Jackson, 8 March 1825
Andrew Jackson to Henry Lee, 7 October 1825
Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 20 April 1820
Hammond, Bray. Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1957.
Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court. 1996.
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What if I told you that Christmas—the holiday we know and love so well—was a capitalist Conspiracy to indoctrinate the working class into bourgeois culture and values? At one end of the Conspiracy was the very real circle of New York City antiquarians and aristocrats trying to snuff out earlier forms of the holiday, replacing these folk practices with the distinctly quiet, calm, peaceful, productive, contemplative, bourgeois form of the holiday we know today. At the other end stands their greatest creation—the defrocked bishop Santa Claus and his apparently vast, never-ceasing workshops fed by partially enslaved elf labor.
Clement Clarke Moore, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (1823)
Pintard, Letters, Vol. II: 1821-1827; Vol. II: 1828-1831
Clark, Christopher. Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. 2006.
Penne Restad, Christmas in America: A History, Oxford University Press. 1996.
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Between 1815 and 1845, the world changed more dramatically than in any other previous 30-year period. Humanity began to break the food trap which had kept hundreds of generations barely producing enough to feed the living, keeping almost nothing to provide for the future.
“Rip Van Winkle” on WikiSource
Feller, Daniel. “The Market Revolution Ate My Homework”
Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.
Stokes & Conway, eds. The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800-1880. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. 1996.
Martin, Scott. Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789-1860. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2005.
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Kevin Gutzman is a New York Times best-selling author and professor of history at Western Connecticut State University. He has a PhD from the University of Virginia and much of his research has focused on precisely that state. Three of his books—Virginia’s American Revolution, James Madison and the Making of America, and Thomas Jefferson: Revolutionary—flesh out what Gutzman takes to be a radical, revolutionary time and place in American history. We would be remiss if we did not try to understand the world from above just as we try to understand it from below.
Kevin Gutzman’s personal website
Carroll, Francis. A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783-1842. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2001.
Errington, Jane. The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 1987.
Risjord, Norman. The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson. New York: Columbia University Press. 1965.
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Reformist minded and very far from the Hartford Wits, to be sure, but the Jeffersonians were still fundamentally the agents of a different sort of American elite. While these white male mechanics and yeoman farmers made for a more democratic ruling elite than the great colonial landholders and office-mongers, they remained relatively content with driving slaves, dominating women and children, and using the power of government to support their own interests—local and relatively liberal as they may have been.
“Anarchiad, a New England Poem” (1786-7)
“The Design of Anarchy: ‘The Anarchiad,’ 1786-1787” by J. K. Van Dover, Early American Literature 24, No. 3 (1989): 237-247.
Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1978.
Parrington, Vernon Louis. Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920, Vols. 1-3. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1958 (Original Printing: 1927).
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Benjamin Lay was a fearless firework of “isms.” Part Quaker, part philosopher, part sailor, abolitionist, and commoner, Lay was also “The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.” Joining us this week is Marcus Rediker, one of the most important living historians and Lay’s most recent biographer.
Benjamin Lay, All Slave-Keepers…Apostates
Thomas Trion, A Way To Health, Long Life, and Happiness
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Few concepts or examples in history have a total sample size of exactly one. With history-making resolve, the slaves in Haiti seized their freedom, which revolutionary Paris only begrudgingly recognized. When the planters, the British, the Spanish, and finally Napoleon himself tried to re-enslave them, they simply refused and resolved themselves to fight to the death for the liberties they’d won.
Scott, Julius Sheppard. “The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution,” (PhD Dissertation): Duke University. 1986.
West, Martin, and Wilkins (eds.). From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International Since the Age of Revolution. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2009.
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Who are the actual revolutionists?—the radicals or extremists who end up overpowering the moderates and installing the new regime?
Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, Revised Edition. Vintage. 1965.
Klooster, Wim. Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. New York: New York University Press. 2009.
Palmer, R.R. The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, Volume One: The Struggle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1959.
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It is Reformation Day, and a particularly special one at that. 500 years ago today—as goes the legend—Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. In Luther’s day, Halloween was All Saint’s Eve—part of Allhallowsmas or Hallowstide, a three-day, ritual-packed observance of Christianity’s early martyrs and first saints dating to the eighth century. The unconverted Romans looked at the first saints and saw a small clique of radical, fanatical, cannibalistic zombie/death-cultists, but by Luther’s time Christians were no longer hiding out in catacombs. They ran some of the world’s most powerful institutions. With power came the ability to transform folk beliefs and theology into political weapons, tools for statecrafting.
Further Reading
Godwin’s Lives of the Necromancers [insert PDF link when made available]
Marshall, Peter. William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary. PM Press. 2017.
Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press. 1954
Trevor-Roper, H. R. The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1969.
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Sheldon Richman can be found on Twitter @Sheldon Richman, readers can find his articles at the Libertarian Institute, and his books at Amazon.
Beard, Charles. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, 1913.
Hyneman & Lutz (eds.) American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760-1805, Two Volumes. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 1983.
Morgan, Edmund. The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1956.
Richman, Sheldon. America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited. Griffin & Lash, 2016.
Wood, Gordon. The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. New York: The Penguin Press. 2011.
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In 1741, African slaves, Spanish sailors, Irish servants and soldiers, and antinomian Dissenters conspired to burn New York’s Fort George and murder the city’s wealthy and powerful inhabitants. They hatched their plot at John Hughson’s tavern and spread word to the surrounding countryside and down Long Island. At the sight of flames from the city, country slaves and servants should rise up, kill their masters, and move on the city where they would welcome a Spanish flotilla of conquerors and personal freedom.
Brown. Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791, Second Edition. Houghton-Mifflin.
Middlekauf, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005.
Nellis, Eric. The Long Road to Change: America’s Revolution, 1750-1820. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2012.
Rediker & Linebaugh. Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press. 2000.
Wood, Gordon. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf. 1992.
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The colonists governed themselves and had little need for imperial management; colonists all over disparaged the idea of monarchy and Tom Paine smashed it to pieces; the world’s most powerful state lost its most vigorous appendages, and the settlers expanded all sorts of civil rights to new cohorts. We remember the triumphant victory of a new nation-state, and the gains made by some toward exercising a greater control over that state; but revolution bred counter-revolution.
“The Indictment and Trial of Sir Richard Rum”
Bushman, Richard. From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1967.
Rorabaugh, W. J. The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1979.
Smith, Barbara Clark. The Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America. New York: The New Press. 2010.
Young, Alfred, ed. Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. 1993.
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Mauritius is a rare example of a Creole culture from the start. There really aren’t many of these in world history. The island had no indigenous human beings and the first human visitors to the island were Muslims from East Africa and Arabia in the medieval era. There were no permanent settlements there until the 17th century when the Dutch arrived.
Bernardin de St. Pierre, Paul and Virginia, 1788.
Gordon, Daniel, ed. Postmodernism and the Enlightenment: New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century French Intellectual History. New York: Routledge. 2001.
Vaughn, Megan. Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius. Durham: Duke University Press. 2003.
Vink, Markus. “The World’s Oldest Trade: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century.” Journal of World History 14, No. 2 (June 2003): 131-177.
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For two decades, New Orleans was a town with about 400 riotous, irreligious, desperate individuals. Jean-Baptiste, Sieur de Bienville always hoped the French Empire would take more interest in the area—it was the gateway to wider America, the key to the continent’s greatest river, its richest soils, and a highway for the Indian trade. If only it actually had people in it!
Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2005.
Ingersoll, Thomas. Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1716-1819. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. 1999.
Code Noir or “Black Code” of Louisiana, 1724
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Spanish Missionaries intended to project power, but the Indians held the balance of power and Spanish authorities proved unable to control either mission culture or powerful native groups across the countryside.
Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill (NC): University of North Carolina Press. 2007.
—“Papers of Admiral Mateo de Vesga, 1620-1622,” pp. 119-137.
—“Reply of the Fiscal,” pp. 419-463.
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Along with Frederick Douglass, the most famous slave in history was probably Olaudah Equiano. On Equiano’s Middle Passage, he shared space belowdecks with other Africans from possibly dozens of ethnic groups, speaking different languages. Once loaded into the ship’s hold, they were all outsiders.
Music by Kai Engel
Further Readings
Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800. London: Verso. 1997.
Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History. London: Penguin Books. 2007.
Vincent Caretta. Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. London: Penguin Books. 2005.
Selections from Snelgrave: “Slavery’s Defenders vs. the First Abolitionists”
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Peter Leeson is the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. His work often reads as forays into high weirdness, voyages to strange unknown countries penetrated only by the light of economic reasoning.
Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Princeton University Press. 2011.
WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird. Stanford University Press. 2017.
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The Golden Age of Piracy raises the question: Who among you would turn down the opportunity to play Master to a small continent? Would you submit passively to be dominated by the world? Would we respect the lives and liberties of those weaker than ourselves, or would we, too, given the right opportunities, proclaim ourselves King?
“The Saga of Pirate Captain John Gow”
“From Pirate to Tyrant: John Plantain, King of Madagascar”
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In 1716, pirates regularly declared war on all nation-states, they tested the extreme limits of life and death, and quite literally challenged God to dare pass judgment over an angry pirate. If the Lord knew what was good for him, he would mind his own damned business and move along. A true pirate had no home but Hell.
“The Legend of Libertalia” on Libertarianism.org
Captain Charles John, A General History of the Pirates, Volume One and Volume Two
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Each new generation has the ability to dramatically improve upon their world. Neil Howe challenges us to think generationally. Neil Howe wondered why Boomers were so different from their GI elders. In the late 1980s, he developed an intricate yet broad theory of generational change. His model has been very influential, inspiring figures from Al Gore to Glenn Beck and Steve Bannon. Neil Howe joins us on Liberty Chronicles to talk cycles, generations, and the myth-making business of history.
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In his 1743 memoir, “The Infortunate,” Moraley detailed his sad circumstances and vague notions of bettering them in the Americas. In what appeared to him a chance encounter, an unknown man encouraged this flight of fancy and signaled that he would join William in Pennsylvania. After plying young Moraley with pints and sweet stories about American abundance, the two prepared and signed William’s indenture contract of five years. Once aboard ship, the recruiter disappeared to lull another fool into the trap.
Reid-Maroney, Nina. Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 1740-1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. 2001.
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin Books. 2001.
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The Salem trials were largely the result of a combination of personal animus, avarice, and cruelty within a deeply occultist culture. New England courts executed nineteen witches and subjected many repented convicts to purifying torture. One thing only ended the feverish trials: accusers gradually turned on the affluent and influential after using up the easier targets of marginalized and poor women.
Further Readings/References:
Godwin’s Lives of the Necromancers series
Marshall, Peter. William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary. PM Press. 2017.
Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press. 1954.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1969.
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By the mid-1630s, the English and Native populations were roughly equal in number and power. Parity meant all sides had a practical interest in peaceful coexistence, at least in the real experiences of daily life. The first generation of settlers could show little more force than occasional raids on Indian villages, burning the cornfield here and there, and other small-scale acts of violence. Waves of new settlers throughout the 1630s tipped the frontier balance of power toward the Puritans. John Oldham, a wealthy local fur merchant, patiently traded while the New English settled the frontier and hedged in the natives. He did not share the Puritan missionary mentality, but his death helped inaugurate the Pequot War and consolidate Puritan control of the coast.
Further Readings/References:
Bourne, Russell. The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-1678. New York: Oxford University Press. 1990.
Nash, Gary. Red, White, and Black: The People of Early North America. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice-Hall. Fifth Edition. 2006.
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Few contemporary or historical accounts of Bacon’s rebellion agree in every particular about the movement’s motivations and outcomes. For the Jacksonian Democrat, George Bancroft, Virginians had enjoyed free government for three generations on the edge of the wilderness. For Bancroft and nationalist historians, this was the prelude to the American Revolution—it was the people seizing their government, its policy-making apparatus, and its legitimacy so that the popular interest might once again govern Virginia. However, Twentieth-century historians with a more global perspective on British imperial activity recognized Bacon’s Rebellion as a racialized conflict against the Indians which transformed into a vehicle for the expression of popular discontent.
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The Antinomians did not just push for religious and political freedoms in the American colonies. Their ideas traversed the Atlantic and influenced groups in Britain, as well. During the upheaval of the English Civil War, the British Antinomians seized the opportunity to shape their world, creating a slew of new religious denominations and fighting for their liberty.
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True radicals who would actually live and let live have been in short supply since Bradford destroyed Morton’s maypole and the Puritan divines banished Anne Hutchinson.
The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637), Transcript
Thomas Morton’s Observations of the Puritans
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Peter Linebaugh received a PhD in Early Modern British history from the University of Warwick in 1974, where he studied under EP Thompson, one of the most important and influential historians of the 20th century.
Linebaugh is the author of a good many hugely important articles and books, among which are The London Hanged, Magna Carta Manifesto, and Stop Thief! Linebaugh is also the co-author of The Many-Headed Hydra.
Morton’s “New World Bacchanal”
Peter Linebaugh’s latest May Day article, “Omnia Sunt Communia: May Day 2017”
Peter’s author page at PM Press
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On July 25, 1609, aboard the Virginia Company’s slowing sinking ship the Sea Venture, a company of colonial gentlemen-adventurers, indentured servants, and sailors, all struggled for their lives. The crew plugged holes and splits with every available means and everyone —even the genteel and lordly—took turns carrying water for a time. Aboard the Sea Venture, circumstances forced rich and poor alike to join their labors in common cause and solidarity. The aqueous environment—agitated by catastrophe—dissolved class boundaries.
Richard’s Frethorne’s Letters to Mother and Father
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We have the ability to readily appreciate this transition and its impact on overall economic productivity. We live in a vastly richer world than has ever existed before and every one of us above the bare level of subsistence lives incomparably better than kings, emperors, and the wealthiest elites even just a century ago. But in many ways, medieval life was stolen from people during the fledgling days of Early Modernity, and libertarians—rather than wholesale ignoring or rejecting this legacy—should learn to reconcile with it, that we might avoid similar calamities.
Thomas’s Morton’s New English Canaan, “Original of the Natives”
Snelgrave’s A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (1734)
Law, Robin. The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1991.
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin Books. 2001.
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When you change your perspective on past events by changing the sources of information, the facts of your narrative change as well. We have some decent tools to guide our exploration of the past, so let’s start digging.
The First Charter of Virginia; April 10, 1606
Charters to Columbus and Walter Raleigh
The Dutch Path from Explorers to Monopolists
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History is the grand catalog of human action in the past. At its broadest, it encompasses everything that everyone everywhere has ever done.If all history is about individual actions, and all individual actions are based on some sort of perceived self-interest on the part of the actor, one may conclude that chronicles of an historical actor’s life would reveal patterns about how they expected to fulfill those interests.
Further Readings/References:
Rothbard, “The Conspiracy Theory of History, Revisited,” Reason (April 1977).
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Methodological individualism is the principle that only individuals act—only individuals consciously apply means toward the fulfilment of ends. whenever we investigate society we must do so through the experiences and actions of the individuals which compose it.
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We overview Marxism and classical liberalism so we can get a very full picture of what produces, change over time.
Further Readings/References:
On Marxism, see: Marx, Karl. “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859) from Lewis S. Feuer, ed. Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Anchor. 1959)
On Classical Liberalism: The collected works of William Leggett are available here:
https://archive.org/details/collectionofpoliwla01legg
https://archive.org/details/collectionofpolilg02legg
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By studying history, though, we empower ourselves to challenge received wisdom and create knowledge of our own. Sometimes doing history from below (rather than above) is as simple as broadening the scope of your evidence beyond the relatively controllable published record. It might mean deep dives into personal diaries, letters, newspapers, pop and material culture, archeological evidence, or the introduction of a variety of methodological approaches to oft-studied subjects.
Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil,”
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Welcome to the first installment of Liberty Chronicles!
Everything you were taught about why the world is the way it is was planted in your mind. What does the development of the bathtub have to do with how we think about history? On first glance, it might seem to contribute very little. It is, after all, only a mundane and humble tub.
Further Reading:
For a history of the history of the bathtub, see: Wendy McElroy, “The Bathtub, Mencken, and War” https://fee.org/articles/the-bathtub-mencken-and-war/
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Join host Dr. Anthony Comegna on a series of libertarian explorations into the past. Liberty Chronicles combines innovative libertarian thinking about history with specialist interviews, primary and secondary sources, and answers to listener questions. At its most useful, studying history is a sort of purgative process through which we can better understand past actors’ motivations and mistakes; we then use this wisdom to refine our own behavior as individuals. By approaching humanity’s past ‘from below’ and treating subjects as individuals and historical agents, Liberty Chronicles will help you navigate the present and future.
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