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One mistake that people make in regard to politics, and indeed in regard to religion, is that they overlook the extent to which factors other than intellect lead people to make their commitments. For example, in the 19th century, if you were an Irish-American, you were almost certainly a Democrat. If you were a WASP, you were almost certainly a Republican.

This remains true today. People who want to assemble political coalitions can take some things for granted. White southerners and blacks will be in opposite camps. WASPs and white southerners will generally be in opposite camps.

The best predictor of one’s political allegiance is one’s parents’ allegiance.

Your older relative likely has visceral identification with the political party in which he grew up. Life-long identification is very difficult to overcome. At some point, one has to weigh the costs of trying against the benefits.

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I read slowly and retain what I read. I scribble in the margins, but more because I imagine myself arguing with the author than to aid myself in recollecting. If I’m using a book in a project of my own, I likely only read the pertinent sections.

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That’s a Whig version of the history of that period. A similarly slanted, standard account from the Democrats’ perspective is Watson’s LIBERTY AND POWER.

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On page 400, that book cites K[evin] R. Constantine Gutzman, “A Troublesome Legacy: James Madison and ‘The Principles of ’98,'” THE JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC 15 (1995), 569-89. Howe also wrote an endorsement on the back cover of the hardback edition of JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA.

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You’re welcome.

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That the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was built on a fabrication wasn’t news in 2005. This fact was widely discussed in the 1990s, when one of those involved (by which I mean someone who knew it was a scam, not one of the scammers), Admiral James Stockdale, was Ross Perot’s vice presidential running mate.

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Jefferson actually believed, when he thought about it, that blacks were equal in the sense he meant–that they were entitled to self-government. It was this conviction, in tandem with his idea that a biracial society was impossible, that led him to support colonization of blacks abroad.

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I’m sorry, but this isn’t my field. I recommend posting this question in the general forum.

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You’re welcome.

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Finkelman published a short collection of primary pro-slavery documents a few years back. My students have found it quite approachable, and it’s well selected. I recommend it highly.

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I agree with Brion about Kirk’s Randolph, with the caveat that he makes Randolph pretty much a Catholic–an idea that Randolph himself could have been expected to find either humorous or insulting, I think. Then again, he found many things either humorous or insulting. You can glean an idea of the outline of Randolph’s career from Kirk’s book, and particularly read his selection of Randolph’s speeches. William Cabell Bruce’s two-volume Randolph biography includes extensive excerpts from Randolph’s writings too; he’s just hard to resist.

Henry Adams’ Randolph biography is only appropriate for people who already know Randolph well, as it is essentially Adams family retribution against the man who dubbed John and John Quincy Adams “The American House of Stuart.” Do read it in the end, however, because Adams is a fabulous writer.

My favorite John Randolph biography is THE EDUCATION OF JOHN RANDOLPH by Dawidoff. It’s detailed and even-handed. The best short description is the introduction to him in Coit’s Calhoun biography, where she paints him pacing around the House chamber followed by his dogs and a slave.

Kirk edited Randolph’s letters to Dr. John Brockenbrough, a leader of the Richmond Junto whose house later became the Confederate White House. That book gives the flavor of Randolph’s personality. Again, however, read Dawidoff first. Bouldin, his nephew I think, wrote a Randolph biography over a century ago. It’s not what you want.

I’m not just yammering: these are all on my bookshelf. Randolph is my favorite congressman. He was funny, brilliant, and a good friend, and he had the right principles. Of course, the laudanum sometimes clouded his brain.

One more thing: in the illustrations section of JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA, you’ll find a sketch of Randolph that had never been published before (except by me in an obscure magazine many years ago). Take a look at that, and you’ll see what his illnesses did to him.

[gutzmank]

People who claim that one American people ratified the Constitution need to consider several bits of pertinent data:

1) That’s not what Article VII of the Constitution says;
2) If that were true, Rhode Island and North Carolina would not have been outside the Union when the First Congress convened;
3) Federalists of the ratification campaign, such as James Madison in The Federalist #39, said that ratification was a federal (not a national) act–that is, that there were plural parties to it;
4) George Nicholas, one of three leading Federalist orators in the Virginia Ratification Convention, explained to his fellow delegates that if they ratified the Constitution, they would be one of thirteen parties to a compact (not one of thirteen parts of one party to … whatever); and
5) Under Article V of the Constitution, it is a certain number of states, not even necessarily a majority of the American people, who can amend the Constitution–just as Article VII did not require a majority of the American people to ratify the Constitution.
And on, and on, and on.

I deal with this question at length in JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA. Madison and his confreres–Jefferson, Taylor, Nicholas, Nicholas, Pendleton, and others–insisted consistently that the federal Constitution was a federal one, not a national one.

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This is why federal courts exist. The short of it is that such a statute would be enjoined immediately, and anyone who attempted to implement it would be sent to jail for contempt of court. Resistance to such attempts would have outcomes such as at Little Rock in 1957, Oxford in 1962, and Tuscaloosa in 1963; in each of those cases–the first one involving the US Army, governors backed down rather than go to jail.

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My book THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION describes American constitution history from the onset of the Revolution through the drafting of the Constitution, its ratification on the basis of a specific set of assurances about its meaning, and its gradual and ongoing transformation since. Take a look at that.

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Like the Federalists of 1787, I do believe that the Articles of Confederation were imperfect. A government that cannot keep an army in the field or pay for embassies to the three main European countries is not fit to be. I also think it made sense to change the structure of the Congress to give population apportionment in one house. Article V makes sense to me, as do Article VI and Article VII.

With benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the Confederate Constitution’s provision that state legislatures could impeach and remove CSA officials within their territories was a good idea–a very good idea. In fact, it’s too bad that Madison’s promise that the Federal Government would be tried without inferior courts wasn’t actually implemented.

I think that the preamble Thomas Jefferson wrote for the Virginia Constitution of 1776 is far superior to Gouverneur Morris’s US version–and that’s no accident. Certainly it would have had better effects if used in the US Constitution than the US version has had, even if it had had no effect at all.

Virginia’s 1776 Constitution provided term limits for congressmen, which I think are sorely needed now. Virginia also didn’t give the Executive Branch veto power, and I think that would be a good idea in the US Constitution too.

I could go on, but you get the point: the US Constitution is highly imperfect, and better arrangements are available in the record of American history. It would be a waste of time to draft a better constitution, however, as nothing would come of the exercise. I am involved as a board of advisors member in the Compact for America effort to add a balanced budget amendment–and thus move toward Jefferson’s wish that government borrowing could be eliminated.

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