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I’ve not encountered these books.

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This question should be posted to the forum on Western history since 1500.

In America, the Revolution left the economy essentially free. Far from deciding to free people, governments simply didn’t have mechanisms to regulate them.

Before the Revolution, people such as Thomas Jefferson had argued for a natural right to trade freely with all the world. Prior to Henry Clay’s House speech unveiling the “American System So-Called, but Anglican System in Fact” (as William B. Giles dubbed it), free trade was the American policy. Thereafter, a Hamiltonian impulse would wax and wane, finally triumphing in 1860 and after.

[gutzmank]

His book on the Panic of 1819 is the leader in the field. I’m not thrilled with his evaluations of matters such as George Washington’s role in American history, etc., where he often seems to reason thus:

1) Government is bad;
2) George Washington was in the government;
3) George Washington was bad.

After a few trips around that bush, the trip becomes rather dizzying.

[gutzmank]

My reading is that Lincoln didn’t want to avoid it. Take a look at Crofts’ RELUCTANT CONFEDERATES for incoming Secretary of State William H. Seward’s desperate efforts to patch together a way to avoid war.

[gutzmank]

Not at all confusing.

People commonly say now that the Federal Government has exclusive power over immigration. This is incorrect. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution says that “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight,” which means that the states’ preexisting complete control over this area of law remained intact until then.

Nothing in the Constitution says that the states’ power in this area ended in 1808. While Congress can legislate about it, recent court decisions in this area have been based on the incorrect assumption that it is up to the Federal Government whether taxpayers of a state must provide illegal immigrants free education, medical care, etc.

[gutzmank]

In the Richmond Ratification Convention, one of the three chief spokesmen for ratifying the Constitution without first amending it–Governor Edmund Randolph–repeatedly said that Congress would have only the powers “expressly” delegated. There is no express mention in the Constitution of a federal power to require that states allow sale of contraceptive devices. This is a classic example of federal self-aggrandizement via invalidation of perfectly constitutional, though silly, state policy.

It’s also one of the few examples of Ron Paul saying something about the Constitution with which I disagree. When I heard it, I gulped.

[gutzmank]

In writing a review of Mark Levin’s book, I provided a history of the recent movement for an amendments convention. Please read the review and follow the links in the review.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/do-we-need-a-new-constitutional-convention/

Nullification is not an adequate response to the problem. You can’t nullify undeclared wars, Fed money printing, absurd Supreme Court decisions, federal redefinition of “marriage,” or much else that the Federal Government does.

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If I had to read something like that, I’d have a gun to my head or a check on the table.

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You’ve pinpointed the reason why no one under the sun agreed with the chief justice’s explanation of his vote.

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Zinn was a Marxian historian, and so his book is typical race/class/gender/oppression-studies stuff. I find it rather tedious.

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Jefferson thought that the queen was a bad influence on the king, who was himself a good man. In fact, he used that phrasing. Later in life, he looked back upon the French Revolution’s early days with regret that the leading French figures had not stopped with the radical reforms of the monarchy that Louis XVI had willingly, even eagerly, granted.

[gutzmank]

Precisely.

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Jefferson capitalized oddly in private correspondence and unpublished manuscripts, often using the lower case throughout a paragraph after capitalizing the first letter. In public documents of his day, one often finds old-fashioned capitalization more akin to German capitalization, in which nouns were capitalized and other words weren’t. In general, however, one should not read any significance into capitalization of 18th- and early 19th-century writings

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Phil Magness recently posted a good takedown of Spielberg’s depiction of Stevens: http://philmagness.com/?page_id=470

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I reviewed Isenberg’s Burr biography in MODERN AGE a few years back. That tome is definitely not the place to start.

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