[gutzmank]

In the era of the American Revolution and the generations immediately following, squatters’ rights were widely respected. Thus, for example, in LIBERTY MEN AND GREAT PROPRIETORS, Taylor shows how the design of well-connected absentee landlords for Maine — that it would become an entirely hierarchical society with a few near-lords occasionally visiting tenants who rented small areas and maintained the landlords in great luxury — was thwarted by Lockeans who insisted that not some Massachusetts legal title, but actual possession of the ground via farming and building houses conferred morally legitimate ownership. When the Jeffersonians came to power in Massachusetts (of which Maine was still a part) in the 1810s, they ratified the squatters’ claims.

The same kind of process was replicated in several parts of Trans-Appalachian America at the same time and thereafter. For example, take a look at the description of early Ohio in Cayton’s FRONTIER REPUBLIC.

When President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, he rejoiced that now Americans would be able to remain primarily agricultural “to the thousandth and the thousandth generation.” The Federal Government’s later decision not to privatize that land, but to keep it forever as a socialist storehouse of resources, has had a marked effect on the sociology and politics of the United States — one opposite of that for which Jefferson hoped. I think that we ought to demand that the Federal Government sell virtually all of its landholdings, as Jefferson envisioned.

[gutzmank]

I quite like the Friedmans’ FREE TO CHOOSE, which is an adaptation of their extremely successful TV series of the same title. I’m also a huge admirer of Charles Murray, particularly his classic LOSING GROUND and his follow-up, IN PURSUIT: OF HAPPINESS AND GOOD GOVERNMENT. In the former, he demonstrates conclusively that the Great Society was/is counterproductive, which he explains using classical economics, and in the latter, he takes his experience in the Third World as showing why some societies have been both free and prosperous while others….

[gutzmank]

I do.

As Tom Woods and I discuss in WHO KILLED THE CONSTITUTION?, the Court tried this several decades ago in Missouri v. Holland, but that precedent has since been overturned.

[gutzmank]

I think that this generalization is probably a bit off the mark. I could name you several prominent Enlightenment-influenced Antifederalists and no few Calvinist Federalists.

[gutzmank]

The absence of a “meeting of the minds” would make a contract or treaty invalid. In the Constitution’s case, that would mean it was invalid.

[gutzmank]

1) Yes, it would be correct to say that. In fact, Virginians understood May 15, 1776 — the day that their revolutionary Convention adopted a resolution calling for adoption of a written republican constitution — as the date of their independence. For more on this story, see Maier’s AMERICAN SCRIPTURE and my VIRGINIA’S AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

2) United in the war effort and in declaring their independence.

3) The union “as we know it” is unlike what it was 50 years ago, let alone 150 years ago. I don’t know what to make of this question.

[gutzmank]

We can only know what he said, not what he had in mind. Reasonable inferences can lead us in several different directions in this regard. One motive that you left out is that he hoped it would yield further black enlistment in the Union military, which it apparently did.

[gutzmank]

You’re welcome.

[gutzmank]

There is good discussion of this question in Gary Gallagher’s THE CONFEDERATE WAR. Prof. Gallagher explains why it was extremely unlikely that President Davis would adopt this approach early in the war. Of course, by the time Davis decided on it, it was too late.

[gutzmank]

Judicial review is one thing, “final arbiter” is another. Nowadays, under the rubric of the Supreme Court as “final arbiter” (since Cooper v. Aaron (1958), at least), once the SCUS says something, people passively accept it. We could have judicial review as part of ongoing conversation concerning constitutional meaning, as Jefferson, Jackson, and even Lincoln advocated, but instead we have the current awful system.

I agree completely with what Dr. McClanahan says about review of state laws. FLETCHER V. PECK (1810) was a terrible decision, in every sense.

[gutzmank]

I am in the other camp from Dr. McClanahan. One reason to doubt that it was Randolph Jefferson is that no one said so until absolute proof that it was some male Jefferson who fathered at least some of her children came up a few years ago. A funny development, that.

On the other hand, I don’t see why people care so much. It seems a big ad hominem argument to me. Here’s my take on it:

http://takimag.com/article/when_tom_met_sally/#axzz2iz6NWMTt

[gutzmank]

At one point, James Madison said slaves ought to count 100% for purposes of apportioning the upper house and 0% for purposes of apportioning the lower. In the end, Southerners wanted to count slaves 100% for representation purposes, while Northerners wanted to count them 100% for taxation purposes. The result was the 3/5 compromise.

[gutzmank]

Lincoln’s emancipation policy ultimately meant the end of slavery in North America. The point that it didn’t free them immediately is a bit silly: within three years, they were all free.

Lincoln said it was a war measure. Harry Jaffa says that was just another lie in what had been an unbroken string of lies by Lincoln to hide from people that he really had always intended to abolish slavery. There is of course no way dispositively to disprove that he had always intended to do what he finally did, but there’s no proof other than that he ultimately did it to support that he had always intended to do so. It’s hard to believe that anyone could have been so committed a liar for decades on end, but you can believe that if you’d like.

[gutzmank]

I don’t spend money on anything that Doris Kerns Goodwin does.

[gutzmank]

I agree: very little. I wrote a book chronicling this development from start to finish, THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION, and Tom Woods and I wrote a book that explains where we currently stand, WHO KILLED THE CONSTITUTION?

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