[Brion McClanahan]

Tariffs, excise taxes, and the sale of public land. Revenue sources were much more limited and thus the general government was limited by these restricted revenue sources. Borrowing was also a possibility, particularly when the government maintained a central banking institution.

[Brion McClanahan]

I don’t think you will find anything from a libertarian perspective. There are several scholarly histories available, but nothing that meets that standard.

[Brion McClanahan]

Sovereignty cannot be lost, annihilated, destroyed, etc. It can be usurped, as the general government and the political class in D.C. have done.

Dr. Woods and Gutzman have a great chapter on this issue in their “Who Killed the Constitution.” I think that would be a good place to start to answer your question. I am sure one or both will chime in on this question in the near future.

[Brion McClanahan]

A compact theory does not exist. It is a compact fact. If you say theory, you are playing to the opposition.

[Brion McClanahan]

There are dozens of books on Burr, from the academic (Milton Lomask wrote a 2 vol biography that is decent) to the popular (Gore Vidal). Gore Vidal’s is the most famous. He is a very interesting figure to say the least but not one that has been forgotten. Simon and Schuster published a bio in 2011 and there are two newer monographs involving Burr in the last 2 years.

[Brion McClanahan]

After my experience in graduate school, I am a bit more cynical and skeptical concerning the profession. Most of the “pros” I ran across only read the material that agreed with their point of view and marginalized or ignored the rest. They don’t take into account your scholarly treatment of VA, both in journal articles and in your thoroughly researched book, so it is not just primary material they ignore. Of course, as Novick outlined in “That Noble Dream,” objectivity is something that has been rare to non-existent in the profession since its inception.

[Brion McClanahan]

Lincoln floated several proposals to end slavery during the war, ranging from compensated emancipation to colonization. Both were rejected by congressional leaders for being too expensive. In fact, members of his administration met with the largest slave-owner in Delaware (a Republican) and the two hammered out a deal which would have paid slave-owners quite well for emancipation. Lincoln was a typical politician who said what he thought people wanted to hear. He had long been against slavery extension but was not a committed abolitionist. The Proclamation, as Kevin suggests, was the first step in ending de jure slavery in North America, but Delaware maintained slavery until December 1865. The EP did nothing to free slaves in the North or border States, only those under military occupation. I have long said that people should celebrate the 13th amendment if they wish to mark the end of slavery, not the EP.

[Brion McClanahan]

I have not watched it yet, but I will eventually.

[Brion McClanahan]

I was openly critical of Maier in the original conclusion to my “Founding Fathers Guide to the Constiutiton,” for the same reasons Kevin outlined, but that was omitted through editing. I intended the FFGTC to be a brief primer on the Constitution as ratified taking into account the way the Constitution was argued it would be interpreted in the ratifying conventions. I think the historical “profession” has willfully ignored these debates because it contradicts the Hamilton/Marshall/Webster/Lincoln paradigm.

[Brion McClanahan]

The prohibition on narcotics predated the 18th Amendment (Harrison Act of 1914). To answer your question simply, the Constitution is dead (as both Dr. Woods and Dr. Gutzman have written about in their book on the topic), and the political class in D.C. has not cared about constitutional restraint because the people that put them in power have not held their feet to the fire, the States have been emasculated (charges of racism), and the State representatives have been afraid to push the issue..

[Brion McClanahan]

According to the Constitution as ratified, very little, with the exception of term lengths, as you suggested. In fact, I would suggest that the ratified Constitution died in 1789 with the Judiciary Act. You had several proponents of the document become arch-Jeffersonians in the early federal period when they realized that others lied about ratification, John Dickinson most prominent among them.

[Brion McClanahan]

Most people, even “history teachers,” have no idea why the compromise was written into the Constitution nor the debate surrounding the issue.

Southerners wished to count slaves as a whole person at the Philadelphia Convention, with one delegate from North Carolina even calling them “rational beings,” while Northerners rejected the idea and insisted that slaves were nothing more than chattel. You are correct that the heart of the debate was representation, and the underlying issue was specifically the taxing power of the government. Southerners feared that the North would tax them out of existence with direct taxes and navigation laws; thus, a higher population toward representation meant a better chance of blocking these laws. Mason even proposed a prohibition on navigation laws without a 2/3 majority. The 3/5 compromise was born out of an agreement between the SC and CT delegations.

[Brion McClanahan]

James Callender floated the story in 1802 after Jefferson jilted him for a job. The Federalist press ran with it, but Jefferson never commented on it publicly and he and his family denied it privately. The story went away by the time Jefferson died and it was only revitalized in the late 19th century. I talk about this in my PIG to the Founding Fathers. I am in the camp that does not think it was Jefferson, but his brother, Randolph, that fathered Hemings children. William G. Hyland’s book on the topic, In Defense of Thomas Jefferson, is pretty good.

[Brion McClanahan]

I discuss this issue in my Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution, pages 62-77, and pages 110-112. There are several quotes there that may help you.

[Brion McClanahan]

You’re welcome, John. My pleasure.

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