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In general, Progressives favored direct democracy. The 17th Amendment was part of a general movement that resulted in state-level changes providing for referendum, recall, and initiative. Popular election of senators was sold as a product of the same impulse.

Another argument for popular election of senators was that some states had gone years on end without two US senators because bicameral state legislatures in which the two houses were controlled by different parties couldn’t agree on whom to elect.

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A conviction entails removal from office. The Senate then can choose to ban him from ever holding federal office again.

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No, a republic certainly was a sovereign state. I suppose one might call a province’s government “republican,” however, without its being sovereign–just as one might have a masculine attribute without being a man.

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You’re right: it does seem contradictory. As Prof. Robert Paquette of Hamilton College will explore in a forthcoming book, Jefferson had become dedicated to the idea of bringing slavery to an end via “diffusion,” followed by state-level emancipation, by the time of the Missouri Crisis. Banning slavery from Missouri would mean that the Atlantic states would have skyrocketing slave populations, thus very little likelihood of ending slavery, and so to him this could only be harmful both to slaves and to masters.

[gutzmank]

Okay, I can’t help myself, so I’ll add one more suggestion: Lino Graglia’s Disaster by Decree: The Supreme Court Decisions on Race and the Schools is the best book by a law professor I’ve ever read. It explains, for example, the ongoing controversy about Biden and the segregationists–even though it was published 40 years ago, and even though it doesn’t mention Biden. Plus, Graglia’s writing is deadly. I predict you’ll love it.

[gutzmank]

One more thing: the documentary series “Eyes on the Prize” is excellent. It shows period video of all the major moments in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. I notice that it is viewable on YouTube. Yes, you can tell occasionally that it was made by mainline Democrats of the 1980s variety, but still, it’s probably the place to start.

I think the most important figure in the fight for black rights in the 20th century was Thurgood Marshall. I’ve assigned both Williams’ biography of Marshall and the first volume of Tushnet’s 2-volume version, Making Civil Rights Law. Williams isn’t an attorney, and he sometimes flubs the law. Tushnet is a Red, so ditto. Marshall was generally an awful Supreme Court justice, but he was a momentous attorney–the most important American attorney of the 20th century. Tushnet captures that.

[gutzmank]

I think the best book on this subject is Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights. I’ve assigned it to my graduate students. Although it isn’t libertarian, it isn’t slanted.

I also think Branch’s Parting the Waters is quite good, though it’s not libertarian either.

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That slavery would have disappeared soon after 1861 anyway is a common assertion among libertarians and Southern patriots, but I don’t see any reason to believe it. For one thing, slaves reached their highest value in the same year as Lincoln was elected, 1860, which is a good barometer of the market’s view of the institution’s future. For another, Eugene Genovese showed in The Political Economy of Slavery that when Lincoln was inaugurated, only half of the farmland in Georgia — Georgia! — was being farmed. Besides that, the events of 1861-65 showed that the South’s ruling elite was devoted to slavery’s future; antislavery sentiments such as those of Jefferson and Madison had not been in common circulation among prominent southerners for decades by then.

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In general, striking was intermittently disallowed by court injunctions prior to federal legislation legalizing it. I can’t say this general subject is my bailiwick, however.

Yes, child labor was common until relatively recently (that is, the last few generations). There’s interesting treatment of this issue in Tom Woods’ 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask.

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The old warhorse in this connection is Bray Hammond’s Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War. Hammond concludes generally that the second BUS gave the United States the most stable money supply it has ever had. Here his thinking reflects Milton Friedman’s idea that what is ideal is for the money supply to grow at a low, steady, predictable rate over time. By his reading, the Panic of 1837 resulted from Jackson’s economic policies, including the Bank Bill Veto, Removal of the Deposits, putting federal funds in the Pet Banks, and the Specie Circular. A good short introduction to that is Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War, which although heavily slanted in favor of Jackson (who was Remini’s idol) gives a clear account of the major issues. For my money, the best account of the financial issues in high politics during the Jacksonian era is Irving H. Bartlett, John C. Calhoun: A Biography. Calhoun fathered the Independent Treasury created by Congress during the Van Buren Administration, which performed excellently and satisfied the constitutional requirements.

No, the BUS did not print currency, but it did issue bank notes–which served a similar function. (Jackson thought this delegation of power was unconstitutional.) I’ve never heard anything about his disliking the Bank because it didn’t (couldn’t) print money.

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Congress has over time given presidents discretion to levy tariffs as a negotiating tactic. Like you, I think this was unconstitutional, but in general, federal courts have proven unwilling to keep Congress from delegating legislative authority to various organs of the Executive Branch.

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James Madison’s “Vices of the Political System of the United States” listed the inability of Congress to intervene in case of events such as Shays’ Rebellion within a state. This concern seems to have been the chief motivating factor here. During the ratification contest, the idea that it also meant the US Government could intervene to suppress slave insurrection was also mentioned by both sides, depending on the state.

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I’m skeptical of this too.

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Other than the shortcoming the Supreme Court identified in McCulloch v. Maryland, I don’t see that the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional. That’s unsurprising, as its chief authors — Senators Paterson (NJ) and Ellsworth (CT) — had been the chief authors of Article III in the Philadelphia Convention.

[gutzmank]

Perhaps Sam Houston?

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