A. Lincoln, by Ronald C. White, Jr.

Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals remains my favorite Lincoln book.  But the comparison is hardly fair, since Goodwin gave us four biographies for the price of one.   This book, A. Lincoln is my favorite single volume biography of President Lincoln to focus solely on him.  What sets it apart from other works is the author's interest in Lincoln's development over time, and the analysis of Lincoln's skilled use of the English language, in his writings and oratory, to rally political support for policies that saved the Union and freed the slaves.

Lincoln's Journey of Faith

We do weird things with the dead.  We say that a particular founder "was a Deist" or that a particular 20th Century thinker "was a Communist" based on a particular piece of writing at a particular point in their life, as if their entire lives were static, from beginning to end, with no ebb, flow, or development of their opinions, including during those portions of their lives which make them most historically interesting. In Lincoln's regard, some modern historians will claim that he was a non-believer, and not a man of faith. Those who make this claim typically intend it as a compliment (reflecting their own values). However, if true, it would make Lincoln, whose speeches and writings in his final years were infused with Biblical language and theological suppositions, a rank cynic: using the language of faith in his masterfully powerful Second Inaugural to satisfy the common rubes, while holding himself aloof from such nonsense. This would hardly be a complimentary way to view Lincoln's character, whatever one's own personal beliefs. Nor would it be justified.  Lincoln was a shrewd politician, who knew how to balance competing interests.  But nothing in his life suggests he was full of such guile.

Here, we get a narrative that is supported by the evidence and rings much more true.   Like all Americans of his era, Lincoln knew the Bible extremely well.  (Once, upon learning by telegraph of a convention at which 400 Republicans had gathered together to select a new candidate to replace Lincoln on the ballot after his first term, Lincoln asked the telegraph operator to hand him a Bible, and quickly located an obscure passage about a meeting of 400 "discontented" Israelites who gathered together under David's leadership to unseat King Saul. 1 Samuel 22:2)   Nevertheless, a young Lincoln rejected the emotional displays of his parents' Baptist faith, and never joined a church.  What is more, early in his life, fresh from imbibing large quantities of Constantin Volney and Thomas Paine, he gave a speech offering his own similar critiques of revealed religion, which a friend, out of either offense, or to protect the young man, threw in the fire before he could finish reading it.  

Subsequently, however, as we learn from White, Lincoln became interested in the more rational and less emotional approach to religion offered by Springfield Presbyterian minister James Smith, in his book, The Christian Defense. Smith ministered to the Lincolns after the death of their son Eddie, and the Lincolns began attending his congregation, though Lincoln, riding the circuit, did not become a member and attended less frequently than his wife.  When his father's death was imminent, Lincoln wrote to his stepbrother, asking him to convey to his father that he should remember to call upon his merciful Maker, Who would not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him.  In the final years of his Presidency, Lincoln would increasingly invoke the comforts of God to parents of fallen soldiers in letters of consolation, and the designs of God in official pronouncements, such as the Emancipation Proclamation.  At Gettysburg, Lincoln added the words "under God" to his prepared text, speaking the words extemporaneously during the speech's delivery (as all of the contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the address, based on stenographer's notes of the speech as delivered, confirm), and Lincoln included that phrase in all three versions he would write out at later dates. 

In the latter months of his Presidency, Lincoln, as was his custom when trying to work through a logical or philosophical issue, wrote himself a short memorandum, not meant for public view.  These personal notes were kept by Lincoln in his hat, or desk drawer, and, White argues, are the closest thing we have to his intellectual autobiography. This particular personal memo, found some time after Lincoln's death, began with the words, "The will of God prevails."  The memo discussed the phenomenon of both sides in the Civil War claiming that God was on their side, the logical impossibility that they were both right, as God could not be both for and against the same thing at the same time, and the likelihood that neither side was wholly right, but that God had his own purposes, and was using and adapting the will and actions of men to achieve the same. As it was not intended for the public, this writing is the best evidence we have of Lincoln's personal religious beliefs in the final years of his life, as he led the nation through the war.  The writing is theologically sophisticated, addressing one of the core paradoxes of Christianity, the conflict between free will and God's omniscience, as it contemplates a God who manages to work in and influence history, yet does so without impinging on human beings' personal will and choice, which are adapted to God's purposes.  White traces some of the influences which might have led to Lincoln's thoughts in the memorandum, which would later resonate in certain passages of the Second Inaugural.  The man who gave that speech apparently believed in the theological and biblical language which it used, in the God which it invoked, and in the Christian principles of mercy, reconciliation, and service to the widowed and orphaned victims of the war for which it called.

Lincoln's Political Journey

Similarly, with respect to slavery, one will sometimes come across a particular type of libertarian revisionist crank, almost always from the South, who insists that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, which was fought over tariffs or something, and who will support their revisionist history by citing various statements of Lincoln that the war was being fought to save the Union, and any decision to free slaves would be based on whether or not it furthered that cause.  The crank inevitably forgets that the South started the Civil War and did so very much because of its desire to not only retain slavery, but to extend it to new territories, which desire became the chief political conflict of the decade before the war.  (The Confederacy was formed, and Jefferson Davis chosen to lead it, before Lincoln was even inaugurated, and the South fired the first shots of the war, upon federal vessels bringing aid and non-military supplies to Fort Sumter, all of which events occurred on the basis of Southern outrage over the election of an anti-Kansas Nebraska Republican to office.) If we want to know why the Civil War was fought, it is the South's reasons for secession which must be examined, not Lincoln's response.   Moreover, the crank's simplistic analysis also forgets that historical figures are not static, and that political figures are constrained by that which is politically possible.

White does an excellent job of tracking Lincoln's willingness to apply his own personal beliefs against slavery into more proactive political action, over time. From early in his political career, Lincoln was opposed to slavery, which he felt was a moral evil ("If slavery isn't wrong, nothing is wrong.") But he was not elected, or even nominated as the candidate of his own party, as a radical abolitionist.  The Republicans chose him, instead of Seward, because the latter was too radical. Lincoln did not believe the Government had the ability under the Constitution to end slavery. His debates with Douglas, and his Presidential campaign, were based on the principle that slavery must not be extended into the territories, but restricted to where it already existed, where he promised it would not be interfered with (a promise he likely would have kept, had the South taken him at his word and not seceded).  Candidate Lincoln firmly believed the Federal Government had the right to restrict any extension of slavery, but he did not call for its abolition where it already existed, while running for President.  

When that position proved insufficiently moderate to a South which seceded in protest of his election, Lincoln was sufficiently astute to know that, in order to retain support for the war among Northern Democrats, and border states, he needed to emphasize that the war was being fought to preserve the Union from which the South had seceded, not to end the institution of slavery which had caused that secession.  This was much to the chagrin of those who filled the more radical abolitionist wing of the Republican party. But White tracks how, over time, Lincoln came to understand the hollowness of any victory which did not end slavery, and his willingness to therefore become more overt about that purpose of the war, over time.  

His developing thinking eventually led Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation (freeing the slaves as a military measure, only in locations where the Proclamation could have no practical effect unless the war were to be won). This was followed, upon further developments in Lincoln's thinking, by his orders for the recruitment of black Union soldiers. In turn, this decision, upon its successful implementation, was followed by Lincoln's September 3, 1863 speech, written for James Conkling to read and deliver at a Springfield Illinois pro-Union rally (the largest held during the war), praising the valor of those black soldiers as against their confederate enemies who, "with malignant heart, and deceitful speech" strove to hinder an important historical "consummation" namely the end of slavery.  This passage made clear that ending slavery was indeed now one explicitly hoped for effect of the war, although Lincoln still emphasized that the war remained primarily a war to save the Union, and no soldier was yet being asked to fight solely to end slavery.  The speech noted that Lincoln could only be accused of making such a request upon Northern soldiers if he were to ask them to keep fighting solely for that cause after the Union had been preserved.  Finally, the culmination of Lincoln's evolving thought on these issues led to his advocacy for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.  Had he lived to complete his second term, and thereafter take on the status of a successful two-term President and "senior statesman" would his thinking have developed even further, towards complete racial equality?  It is not unlikely. 

Lincoln the Writer and Orator

The author also relishes Lincoln's skills as a writer, a thinker, and an orator.  The passages in which White analyzes Lincoln's more important writings and speeches, and examines the rhetorical tools he utilized, are among the book's best.  And the description of how Lincoln, again and again, rallied political support for his policies when they came under fire, via a well-timed speech, or widely published letter to a newspaper editor or a political caucus, tell an important part of his story which no film (the primary medium through which most Americans have formed an image of Lincoln today) could ever capture. Lincoln's effective employment and deployment of the English language as a political tool reflected the founders, and is one of the reasons I like to think of him as the final founder.  Like Lincoln, almost all of the founders, save Washington, came to prominence and fame, and directed the course of history, on the basis of their way with the written word.

In our own era, screens have replaced newspapers, soundbites have replaced well reasoned writing, and political ideas too complex for an internet meme or a bumper sticker don't get very far.  This, as much as anything, explains why we are unlikely to ever see another Lincoln (or Adams or Jefferson or Hamilton or Madison) in our lifetimes. Whether we can find leaders fit for our times and its challenges, on the basis of whether those politicians come across as well on the screen, as Lincoln and his predecessors did in well-reasoned and passionate writing, remains to be seen.  But the evidence so far is not encouraging.

A. Lincoln by Ronald C. White, Jr.  (Random House 2010) Trade Paperback.  4 Stars out of 4.

James Madison: A Federalist and a Republican (Part 2 of a Review of Lynne Cheney's biography, James Madison, a Life Reconsidered)

{This is PART 2 of a Review of James Madison: A Life Reconsidered, by Lynne Cheney.  For PART 1, See:  http://dadsbookreviews.blogspot.com/2014/10/some-thoughts-on-religious-liberty.html}


Lynne Cheney, in "James Madison: A Life Reconsidered" is not simply writing a biography.  Rather, like McCullough on Adams and Chernow on Hamilton, she is engaging in an act of advocacy. Cheney likes Madison, agrees with his views, and wishes to promote his importance in the American pantheon. Thus, she arbitrates every historical argument in his favor, and places him in the best possible light on every question and in each episode of his life.  I don't have a problem with this.  I actually like to understand how people saw themselves, and a sympathetic biography which argues its subject's side of every story is not a bad place to start.  I'm always in favor of a little hagiography when it comes to the founders.  I do love the Fourth of July.

Nevertheless, such advocacy can have its pitfalls, if it causes an author to gloss over tough issues, and thus skip over the most fascinating questions. Hence, the second big problem I had with Cheney's book is that it leaves largely unexamined the great conundrum of Madison's life: how to explain his sudden shift, once the Constitution was created and its Bill of Rights securely in place, from being the nation's leading Federalist, to its second most important Republican.  Indeed, given Cheney's sympathetic tone throughout, the reader can be excused for feeling a bit of whiplash as Cheney warmly admires Madison's achievements on behalf of nationalism in one chapter, only to have his arguments against federal power spoken of with equal fervor and admiration in the next.

Madison left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia terribly concerned that, should the delegates' handiwork be ratified, the resulting U.S. Government would not be nearly as strong as he had hoped. If he was bitterly disappointed that the small states had won the battle for equal representation in the Senate, he was even more completely mortified that the national government would have no veto right over state legislation.  This national veto over state laws had been a key element of Madison's Virginia plan, which, to his horror, had been unceremoniously rejected from the Constitutional text.  How is it possible that a man with such views would, just a few short years later, work with Jefferson to craft the nullification resolutions in Virginia and Kentucky, arguing for exactly the opposite policy: that federal legislation should be subject to state veto?  How exactly does one understand this great irony?

For Cheney, a few brief remarks from Madison suffice:  Madison was interested in equipoise.  Under the unwieldy articles of confederation, the power of the individual states had made it impossible for anything of national importance to be accomplished in a unified fashion.  Once the Constitution had rectified this imbalance, it became equally important to prevent the national government from becoming overly powerful, and prevent the individual states from pursuing their own best interests. But such equipoise would never have been maintained under the Virginia Plan which Madison had brought to Philadelphia, and which he was so disappointed to walk away from Philadelphia without achieving (until he realized his original handiwork could never have been ratified by the States). So other factors were clearly at work in Madison's turnabout.

As it turns out, far more interesting theories than his own self-serving explanations abound.  Cheney's book would have been more interesting if she would have examined them. Instead, the reader is left to other sources.  For a pro-Madison viewpoint, one can review Gordon Woods' book, Revolutionary Characters, in its chapter entitled "Is There a James Madison Problem."  For a more cynical and much more interesting take, Joseph J. Ellis, in his book, American Creation, has examined the question in a chapter entitled "The Conspiracy." Both are great reads, and examine theories such as the following:

Was it Jefferson's influence?  This seems highly likely.  Madison always deferred to Jefferson's wisdom (although he also played an important role in bringing Jefferson's poetic rhetoric down to practical earth: a subject which Cheney does a great job on in some of the most enjoyable passages of her book).  Madison's turn away from Federalism and towards Republicanism accompanied Jefferson's return from France to take up a post in Washington's first Constitutional administration and was developed during a cruise up the Hudson river the two of them took together in 1791.  The fact that, late in his life, Madison would, once again, become an important voice in favor of the Union, during the nullification crisis of the 1830s, after Jefferson had passed away, lends further credence to this idea.

Was it just good politics?  The debate over whether to ratify the constitution had been particularly ugly in Virginia, where it had taken all of Madison's abilities to withstand the arguments of Patrick Henry and his fellow anti-Federalists against ratification, and eke out a narrow victory for the union cause. To the extent that anything the federal government did ever seemed to favor northern over southern interests (an inevitability in future compromises), the narrow support the Constitution had received in Virginia was likely to soon vanish.  Madison could only hope to remain in politics if he was elected to national office from his home state of Virginia.  And since only States-rightists were going to get elected in Virginia, Madison's about-face may be explainable via the most prosaic of all political realities: he simply did what he needed to do to get elected.  The same practical politcal strategy which has been followed by every politician who has ever tacked to the left or right during a primary, and back towards the center in a general election, was, perhaps, invented by Madison, who has been called not only the father of our Constitution, but also of our politics: If you want to serve in elective office, stand with the people whose votes you need.

Was it about slavery?  Any purely political reasons for Madison's turnabout raise the question of why Virginia politics required successful politicians to be wary of federal power in the first place. One obvious answer is the "peculiar institution" of slavery, which sourtherners feared a northern dominated federal government might one day abolish, as indeed ultimately occurred. The niceties and political hypocrisies of the day prevented any open reference to this subject by Jefferson or Madison as a motivating cause of southern political preferences.  (It was apparently somewhat annoying, when waxing eloquent on the thesis that the greatest capacity for republican virtue lay among southern agrarian planters, to be reminded that those same planters were engaged in the most obviously immoral, unvirtuous, and tyrannical activity ever known to man.)  Nevertheless, as argued by Ellis, the very silence of the southern founders on the question of slavery may be the best proof of its elephant-in-the-room status, and later Virginia politicians would be more forthright: "Tell me if Congress can establish banks, make roads and canals, whether they cannot free all the slaves in the United States."  Nathaniel Macon, as quoted by Joseph J. Ellis in American Creation, (Vintage 2007) at p. 175.  Slavery certainly played a role, and Americans who, today, find themselves overly enamored with Jeffersonian rhetoric about about republican virtue, would do well to temper their enthusiasm with a little salt.  In the ultimate test of regional virtue, the Civil War and the fight to abolish slavery, the Republican Jeffersonians were not only on the losing side of history, but the morally wrong side as well.   As Lincoln said, if slavery isn't wrong, nothing is wrong.  It took a strong federal government to end slavery, and then to end Jim Crow, and it took a union much stronger than anything Jefferson envisaged to fight the 20th Century's various forms of anti-republican totalitarianism.

Was it about economic ignorance?  Madison's shift from federalism occurred when he opposed the financial programs and policies initiated by his former friend (and collaborator on the Federalist Papers) Alexander Hamilton, during Washington's presidential tenure.  Hamilton's financial program was modelled after British institutions and policies which had allowed that nation to become among the most prosperous on earth.  Hamilton had spent years of private study learning about those institutions, and the implementation of Hamilton's proposed legislation during his tenure as America's first Secretary of the Treasury make him the most successful and important person to ever hold that office.  The Hamiltonian program allowed the new nation to finally gain a secure financial footing, which it had sorely lacked from the date it declared its independence, and laid the foundations for subsequent free market capitialism which would make Americans among the most socially mobile people on the planet.  Nevertheless, that program's implementation was fought by Jefferson and Madison every step of the way, and with an increasingly paranoid righteous fervor, which, as Ellis points out, can only be completely understood in light of the fact that Madison and Jefferson didn't understand the first thing about economics, and couldn't begin to comprehend many of the principles which Hamilton was talking about.  For all their political genius, Jefferson and Madison were no economic Einsteins: both men would die broke and deeply in debt.

Whatever the cause of Madison's dramatic turnabout, Cheney need not have shied away from this fascinating question, which ultimately strengthens her hero's claim to preeminent importance in American history.  Because Madison's reversal may be the most important thing he ever did for the Constitution.

In a sort of "only-Nixon-could-go-to-China" moment, by joining the ranks of the anti-Federalists, Madison turned them into something other than anti-Federalists.  He tranformed the anti-Federalist movement into Jeffersonian-Republicanism, whose new agenda no longer included overturning the Constitution, but, instead, simply seeking to interpret the Constitution narrowly, and in such a way as to limit federal power.  There is probably nothing Madison could have done to more powerfully secure the ongoing existence of the Constitution, then to thus end any debate over it's continued existence.  By converting the political movement known as anti-Federalism into small federal government republicanism, Madison ensured that the Constitution would survive.  When Jefferson came to office, he did simplify and shrink the size of the Federal Government.  But he didn't overthrow it.  Much of the Federalist program which had been developed over the past 12 years remained in place.  And Jefferson was canny enough to ignore his own limited-government principles when they might stand in the way of important national interests, such as the Louisiana Purchase.

In the meantime, Madison became the father of America's first opposition political party, and introduced party politics into American life.  As much as Americans may claim to hate partisanship, political parties played an important role in the ongoing existence of the union, and continue to stabilize the country today. After the Republicans replaced the Federalists in office, it was no longer possible for any future government to treat its mainstream political enemies as insurrectionist threats to the legitimate government, as the Federalists had done when they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Rather, political parties, and the eventual tradition of those parties finding themselves peacefully rotating in and out of power, gave us a nation which had to tolerate and give credence to the idea of a loyal opposition.  This helped America avoid the fate of other post-revolutionary societies, where the guillotine or the coup d'etat was the only way for transitions of power to occur.

All hail to James Madison, one of the most important fathers of our freedoms.  Someday someone will write a book about him which does him greater justice.  But for now, Cheney's extremely readable and engaging tome will have to do.

Some Thoughts on Religious Liberty. A Review of Lynne Cheney's James Madison, A Life Reconsidered, Part I

The first thing to know about James Madison, A Life Reconsidered, by Lynne Cheney (yes, that Lynne Cheney) is that it is very well written.  Cheney knows how to tell a good story, and the book is an engaging page turner.  The chapters on young Madison's involvement in organizing and securing the attendance of George Washington at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, his advocacy for the Virginia Plan at that convention, the writing of the Federalist Papers, the debate against Patrick Henry and Henry's fellow anti-federalists to secure Virginia's endorsement of the Constitution, and the enactment of the Bill of Rights, Madison's most important achievements, each in its own way absolutely fundamental to creating the nation in which we now live, are especially compelling. If Madison was not the father of our Constitution, he was certainly its midwife, and this book deserves to be widely read if for no other reason than to tell that remarkable story.

It is therefore incredibly frustrating that I cannot give the book my full endorsement and that I was so severely disappointed in certain aspects of Cheney's narrative.  My most significant concern is with Cheney's botched treatment of Madison on religious liberty, a subject on which she gets seriously sidetracked by a pet theory which leads her far, far, astray.  Religious liberty is a subject which could not be of greater importance, and on which we need a true account of Madison's views, now more than ever.  Cheney refuses to give us one.  

Madison's Contributions to the Cause of Religious Liberty

Madison should be seen as one of the great heroes of American history, not only due to his role in forming the union, but also for his great achievements in advancing the cause of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  His primary contributions to that cause are fourfold, each of monumental and hopefully enduring significance: 

1.  First, as a young, new, and still obscure member of the Virginia legislature which found itself in need of creating a new form of state government in the wake of the colonies' declaring of independence, Madison got himself appointed to George Mason's committee for establishing a Declaration of Rights and a Constitution for Virginia.  Mason wrote an article on religious freedom for the Declaration which was based on Locke's wording, about as far as the ball had been taken up until that time: "all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate."  But Madison was ready to advance the cause further than Locke.  Showing his political savvy, he worked through other, older and more prominent committee members, to obtain a rewording of the section into a statement that went beyond mere "tolerance" for minority or dissenting religous opinions: "all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion."  Equal freedom to exercise one's religion would now be recognized as a civil right in the largest and most influential of the 13 original colonies.

2.  Madison's second great contribution to the cause of religious freedom was his successful fight against a Virginia bill which would impose governmental taxes for the support of Christian churches. Having served my mission in a country where the two official religions were supported by church taxes administered and collected by the state, and your religion was considered a mere "association" (not a church) if its members tithed themselves voluntarily, I'm especially appreciative of this principle. Madison waged this particular fight through his anonymous authorship of the "Memorial and Remonstrances Against Religious Assessments" which killed public support for the bill.  The Memorial and Remonstrances is a remarkable document, which deserves to be far more widely read and remembered today than it is, setting forth, as it does, both the best possible theological arguments of a believing Christian, and the most compelling secular and political arguments of a gifted lawyer, for its assertions.  The document ought to be especially appreciated by Latter-day Saints, for its argument that Christianity existed in its purest form before it was corrupted by integration with the organs of the state, in passages which might have been written by an early Mormon Apostle explaining the apostasy and need for a restoration, and which one can imagine having been a familiar passage among early converts to the LDS faith:

"[E]xperience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishment [i.e., establishments of religion, 18th Centuryese for official state churches], instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries [i.e., since the 3rd Century official incorporation of Christianity into Constantine's Roman Empire] has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy."

3.  Madison's third important contribution was utilizing his increasing political savvy and influence, as well as the political momentum generated by the Memorial and Remonstrances, to shepherd into law the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson, his life-long mentor. Madison was so enthusiastic about this victory that he wrote Jefferson exulting that he flattered himself that he and Jefferson had "in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind." Clearly, Madison, for all his foresight, could not predict 20th Century liberalism and political correctness.  Still, his vision proved true for many years to come, and has only in recent decades begun to crack under the weight of modern liberal puritanism and intolerance for dissent.  

4.  Finally, Madison was the chief advocate in the first Congress for passage of a Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, whose final language was not quite as powerful as it could have been (had we stuck with Madison's original proposed language) but has, nevertheless, protected us against offical state religions (via the establishment clause) and against prohibitions on our freedom of religious exercise (through the free exercise clause) ever since.  

Ironically, in light of the ultimate importance of the Bill of Rights in modern American life, Madison's views on the subject were ambivalent.  He felt, initially, that a bill of rights was unnecessary. The federal government was supposed to be a government of enumerated powers in any event, and thus could not pass laws on subjects (such as gun ownership or religious establishments) beyond the scope of those limited powers which had been delegated to it, if such laws would infringe on areas which were left to the State governments of general jurisdiction.  Not only was a bill of rights therefore redundant, but such a list might confuse and dilute Americans' understanding of these systemic Constitutional workings and the protections they were designed to afford (as, indeed, some modern scholars argue has taken place). Nevertheless, upon realizing that the lack of a bill of rights was the most effective argument the anti-federalists were using to agitate for a second constitutional convention, where they could reject the Constitution outright and stymie the creation of another such document, Madison eventually reconciled himself to the idea, if primarily for political purposes, even coming to believe that a listing of such rights would have the salutary effect of making them well known to future generations of Americans who would thereby be more likely to jealously safeguard them, a truth which, as Cheney argues, could be attested by millions of future children, introduced to the Bill of Rights on their elementary school classroom bulletin boards. And so it was that, primarily with Madison's nudging and prodding and drafting and exhorting, the First Congress took time from other matters most of its members felt to be more important, to formulate the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, and provide us with the Bill of Rights, which would prevent a second constitutional convention from ever being held, preserve the continuing support of the States whose ratification of the Constitution had been conditioned on the inclusion of such a listing, and thus save the Constitution from an early demise.  With the passage of the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights was no longer a mere instrument of federalism, delineating the boundaries of the federal government's law-making powers, but became a protection for all Americans against any encroachments of their rights by both national and local governmental entities, including, under the First Amendment, the right to freedom of religious exercise, and freedom from official state or national churches.    

Cheney's Epileptic Theory

Cheney has developed a theory on what motivated Madison's devotion to the cause of religious liberty, and it goes like this: (1) Madison suffered from occasional debilitating symptoms which he (rightly, and ahead of the science of his time) recognized as symptomatic of an affliction which was likely related to epilepsy, and perhaps a form of epilepsy, a view which modern science confirms.  (2) The Christian dogma of Madison's day treated epilepsy as a sign of spiritual uncleanliness, related to the stories of demon possessions in the New Testament.  (3)  Madison would have been familiar with this Christian dogma and would have been deeply troubled by the same, and would have grown to resent it. (4) Therefore, Madison would have been motivated to oppose political support for religious dogma, as a result of his bitterness over the religious views of his day on this subject.  "Madison's zeal" Cheney writes, in the cause of "religious freedom--which both [he and Jefferson] saw as part and parcel of intellectual freedom" was "likely heightened by the misery he knew as a young man when he realizedthat Christian orthodoxy insisted on a supernatural explanation for epilepsy." (p. 72).

Cheney makes a fairly sound case for the first element of her theory, and I can accept it.  Point two seems fairly strongly supported as well, although it is a perilous thing for a 21st Century author to try to understand the religious sentiments of bygone eras, and she may be on more shaky ground here.  I find for example that when outsiders write about my faith, even those who are writing in a manner which is friendly or neutral, something nuanced often gets lost in translation, which I am sure is true of my own understanding of other religions as well.  The words are correct, but the emphasis is off, the focus misunderstood.  It's possible that something like that is happening here.  Cheney's portrayal of the official biblical exegesis of the day may be accurate, but how often did people actually talk about this stuff at the time? And how did the Christians of the day treat epilepsy among their own families and flocks?  This is harder to know, and Cheney may or may not be accurately explaining the true underlying views of the day.  

The third and fourth elements of the Cheney theory seemed to this reader to be extremely tenuous, and ultimately unsupported. Had Madison read all of the various statements of various classical and Christian authors on epilepsy which Cheney has found and quoted?  Who knows?  Was he troubled by them?  Perhaps.  But if so, he doesn't seem to have left any record of such concerns in letters or other writings, at least not that Cheney quotes (and, presumably, if the record was there, she would have drawn on it for support).  Did these concerns lead to a distrust of dogma and a belief in religious freedom of thought?  Again, if so, that process (much less the connection between that process and Madison's epilepsy) does not seem to be documented anywhere, other than in Cheney's speculations. Cheney assures her readers that Madison departed from orthodox beliefs in 1773 and 1774 (pp. 39-40), but her evidence for this claim is not based on any of Madison's writings (indeed, she states, he would not have "publicly" made an "issue" of his altered thinking--pp. 41-42-- which begs the question, how does she know to what extent his thinking had altered?)  Instead, Madison's unorthodoxy is said to be demonstrated by his increasing hostility during this time period to the privileges afforded the official state church of Virginia, and its treatment of minority religious groups such as the baptists.  These were, however, political positions, regarding the authority of organs of State government, which say nothing of Madison's private religious or doctrinal views, let alone how those private views were affected by official church dogma regarding epilepsy.   

In the end Cheney's theory is interesting, but not all that convincing.  Indeed, it's easy to speculate that what's really going on here has more to do with Cheney's life and resultant interests than Madison's.  Given Cheney's age and the majority attitudes of her generation during her younger years, and given her family's prominence in the more conservative of America's two political parties, it is not hard to imagine Lynne Cheney having held, for most of her life, fairly orthodox and traditional views on homosexuality, which she likely later grappled with, and to some extent, or perhaps fully, rejected, upon one of her daughters announcing her homosexuality and seeking out a same sex marriage.  It is not hard to imagine that Cheney's intellectual struggles in that regard may have been extremely similar to those which she now ascribes to and imagines for Madison, as he allegedly grappled with  the subject of Christian doctrine concerning epilepsy.  Her theory may therefore be more about projection than history.  

But now I'm engaging in unsupported speculation.

Whatever the reason for Cheney's development of this theory, and however well or poorly supported her reasoning, my main concern with the theory is its unfortunate and distorting effect on how Cheney tells the story of Madison's contributions to the actual tenets of religious liberty.  By assuming that Madison was motivated by his own bitterness over Christian dogma, Cheney gives us an anti-religious Madison, crusading for his cause based on hostility to religious belief, instead of the true Madison, upset by religious persecution.  This telling of the story, in turn, prevents Cheney from ever fully analyzing and appreciating both sides of the coin of religious freedom which was minted through Madison's efforts. 

The Two Great Pillars of Madisonian Religious Liberty 

There are two important principles of religious liberty referenced throughout Madison's writings and ultimately enshrined in the First Amendment: 

(1) First, the establishment clause principle: which is that the government should not officially recognize or endorse any religious institution or church as the official religion of the state (i.e., should not create what 18th Century Americans referred to as an Establishment of Religion, and what we today would call an Official State Church), but must be neutral towards the competing claims of differing religious sects.  This vital principle of religious liberty is most frequently referenced today under Jefferson's shorthand phrase: "separation of church and state." 

(A brief digression: some now argue this principle was provided to give us freedom from religion, rather than freedom from officially state endorsed religion, by requiring not only governmental neutrality among different religions, but between religion and irreligion.  One of the best and most concise historical arguments against this overzealous understanding of the establishment clause may be found by reading Justice Rehnquist's dissenting opinion in the school prayer case of Wallace v. Jaffree, the entire text of which decision, including Rehnquist's dissent, can be found here:  http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=472&invol=38  It must however be recognized that, while compelling, Rehnquist's argument is provided in a dissent, which tells us where we are today.) 

(2) Second, the free exercise principle, pursuant to which the freedom to exercise one's religious beliefs was established and enshrined in our First Amendment, which freedom encompasses not merely the freedom to worship or to privately hold religious beliefs, but to exercise, or act upon, the same, without being unduly constrained by governmental fiat.  

In Cheney's telling, the first of these important principles is misconstrued, and the second is simply ignored, with Cheney's version of Madison coming across as a man far more concerned with freedom from religion than freedom for religious exercise, a distortion on both counts.  With respect to the establishment principle, it is true that Madison was deeply opposed to establishments of religion, fighting against the privileges enjoyed by Virginia's official church, and to ensure that no national church would be established.  But nothing he wrote for the cause of religious liberty suggests any hostility to private churches and religious institutions. With respect to the free exercise principle, Cheney's telling, necessarily, omits Madison's maintenance of the right to exercise one's religion free from constraint.  An uninformed reader of Cheney's tome would easily assume that Madison cared solely about freeing citizens from religious influence, and not a whit for protecting citizens' rights to freely exercise their faith.  

But the real Madison cared just as deeply for the right of a citizen to exercise his religious beliefs as he did for disestablishing official state churches, as proven in the record of Madison's actual words, set forth within his actual achievements.  For example, his preferred language in the Virginia Declaration of Rights retained the language concerning "free exercise" of faith.  The Memorial and Remonstrances against Religious Assessments included a passage describing the exercise of religion as not only a right but also a duty, and not only a duty, but a duty which took precedent over the duties one owed to the state, and which, until exercised, even prevented full acceptance into civil society:  "It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the General Authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign."  This is hardly the statement of a latter-day atheist, concerned with protecting the citizenry from any religious influences, in favor of allegiance to the secular State.  The line about saving one's precedent allegiance to God is especially salient to certain modern controversies: Madison would likely have approved of the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance.  (Whether he would have approved of the pledge at all is a different question, and would depend on whether you were talking to Madison in the 1780s or the 1790s, but that's a subject for part 2 of this post.)

Madison's letter to Jefferson describing the passage of the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty included the observation that it was supported by "a general convention of the Presbyterian Church" which had "prayed expressly that the bill . . . might be passed into a law, as the best safeguard short of a Constitutional one, for their religious rights." Again, this enthusiastic observation would not have been made by a man whose actions were motivated by anti-religious sentiment.  Finally, there is Madison's first proposed draft of what became the First Amendment, ultimately diluted by his colleagues, but which would have afforded even clearer protections for the faithful against governmental encroachment than what the final draft afforded: "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed."  I can think of a number of recent State and Federal Court decisions upholding statutory infringements on religious exercise, which would have been decided differently had Madison's original language, protecting against such infringements "on any pretext" been both preserved and also followed.

Clearly, Madison was just as concerned with protecting religious freedom, including freedom of action, exercise and worship, as he was in preventing the establishment of a national church, and there is simply no evidence that his distaste for offically established religious institutions was based on any particular dislike of private religions or their doctrines.  It is truly tragic that Cheney's book, likely to be read for some time as the currently definitive single volume work on Madison's life, fails to get that part of the story right.  This tragedy is especially acute given the tenor of our times, which increasingly regards the establishment clause as a tool for the overzealous expulsion of religious sentiment from the public square, under the pretext of historically inaccurate and overly broad readings thereof, while at the same time ignoring the free exercise clause altogether.  These trends are shown by the recent need to shore up free exercise rights through legislation such as federal and state religious freedom restoration acts, designed to overcome court precedents which have allowed the free exercise clause to be ignored "on any pretext" available. This trend is also demonstrated by the recent backlash against those very RFRA laws, as in the liberal media's shallow and misleading excoriation of the Hobby Lobby decision applying the federal RFRA to Obamacare's abortifacient mandates, and the backlash against an Arizona bill which would have strengthened that State's RFRA statute.  Cheney's book could have helped to overcome these dangerous trends of our time, which bode ill for the religious liberty which Madison did so much to affirm and preserve.  Instead, Cheney's book may end up contributing to these modern misunderstandings and to the erosions of the Madisonian liberties which will inevitably follow.         

{For Part II of this Book Review, on Madison's shifting federalist and anti-federalist loyalties, see here: http://dadsbookreviews.blogspot.com/2015/01/james-madison-federalist-and-republican.html}

James Madison by Richard Brookhiser

This is not really a full throated biography.  We learn little of Madison's upbringing, and only the sparest of details about his relationships with his siblings, parents, or even with his famous wife Dolley.  Given the definitive-for-their-time and exhaustive-as-can-be-managed-in-one-volume biographies we've recently received for Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson (as well as several recent books on Franklin) Madison is obviously due for such treatment, and, as it is now his turn, there is no doubt some famous author is busily researching and scribbling away on such a project right now, for inclusion on some publisher's future Father's Day list.

In the meantime, this will do.  And this is a political biography.  Brookhiser argues that Madison is not only the father of our Constitution but the father of our politics as well.  His admiration for his subject rests in his admiration for Madison's political achievements: as a formidable advocate of religious liberty, as the moving force behind the creation of our Constitution and of its first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, and as a leading partner, with Jefferson, in establishing the Virginia Dynasty in our presidential politics.  That's where Brookhiser's interests lie, and that's what he focuses on. 

This focus is helpful, and provident, as Madison's ideas obviously still matter a great deal.  By giving us just a brief narrative background of Madison's early years and family life, Brookhiser is able to slow down and start giving more detail when Madison's life gets to what Brookhiser obviously considers "the good parts."  These would be the political battles in which Madison framed and defended and won acceptance for the ideas and ideals which are still being argued about today.  Rather than be bothered by what some have referred to as the "James Madison Problem" of Madison's inconsistency on some political issues (especially States' rights vs. the strength of the National government, which seemed to vary depending on which office Madison was holding at any given time), Brookhiser argues that no life lived as long in the political arena as Madison's, should be expected to live up to some ethereal ideal of clean and virtuous consistency.  Indeed, Brookhiser encourages us not only to admire Madison's genius for winning and accomplishing that which he wished to accomplish politically, but to also admire, rather than hold our noses, at the muck and tumble and sometimes dirty politics that was necessarily involved.

And it must be said, Madison was consistent in many of the areas where it counted most: especially in standing up for religious liberty, and in the fight to preserve the Constitution as creating a limited national government of enumerated powers.  If he sometimes went too far on this latter point, and, through his and Jefferson's "nullification" schemes set the ideological and intellectual precedents for secession and Civil War, he can surely be forgiven by our generation, which has seen our leaders go far too far in the opposite direction, allowing the Federal Government to become a true behemoth with far more reach into our individual lives than any of the founders, likely even Hamilton, would have approved.  We could use a little Madison around here these days.  Essential reading.

Great Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Reading

Some great quotes on reading from Theodore Roosevelt, taken from "Theodore Roosevelt's History of the United States" complied by Daniel Ruddy (Harper 2011 -Trade Paperback Edition) Part I, On Writing History / History as Literature:

"Books are the greatest of all companions. Ah, I like books--like to look at them, like to see them standing there so learnedly on the shelves, like to read them, review them, and would, if I had time, like to write them. I like to read better than anything else. I am forever reading. It is history, in great party, history with action to it, which most attracts me." 

"I admit a liking for novels where something happens.  I want ghosts who do things.  I don't care for the Henry James . . . kind of ghosts.  I want real sepulchral ghosts, the kind that knock you over and eat fire, ghosts which are ghosts and none of your weak shallow apparitions."

"I am old fashioned, or sentimental, or something, about books.  Whenever I read one I want, in the first place, to enjoy myself, and, in the next place, to feel that I am a little better, and not a little worse, for having read it.  It is only the very exceptional novel which I will read if He does not marry Her, and even in exceptional novels I much prefer this consummation.  I am not defending my attitude.  I am merely stating it."  

Revolutionary Characters, by Gordon S. Wood

Although my sympathies were not always in the same place as the author’s, I found this short book to be a wonderful and vitally important read for anyone wishing to understand the revolutionary period, and the founding of the United States.  It sets the stage with an introductory chapter on the Enlightenment, and then gives us brief vignettes of eight of the leading figures of the founding era: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Paine, and Burr.  It then concludes with a chapter on public opinion, describing how the founders established a democratic nation which abolished the very system which had made their own elitist class, and its contributions, possible.

The book is clearly meant as primarily an intellectual history.  This should not be surprising. Gordon S. Wood is one of America’s most lauded and well respected academic scholars of the Revolutionary era, and he is as interested in the historiography of the time--the history of how historians, and Americans in general, have treated and seen their founders in subsequent decades-- as he is in the founders’ actual lives.  He is steeped in the scholarly and academic debates over this time period which university professors, writing for a limited audience, each other, in scholarly journals, have engaged in both recently and in the past.  He sees himself as one who can be an arbiter in these issues (as in his treatment of whether there is “a James Madison problem”). He is also less interested, at least in this volume, than a popular historian (McCullough, for example) might be, in the events which the founders lived through and influenced, and also less interested in their personalities, than he is in their intellectual writings and contributions and the value and effects of their political and philosophical ideas.  One major exception to this is Washington, who was not a deep thinker, but a man of action, whose importance Woods nevertheless explains in one of the first chapters of this volume, entitled simply and without irony, "The Greatness of George Washington."

The impression left by this approach is far different than that which would come from reading a lengthier biography of any of these men.  And it has its pros and its cons.  There is, after all, more to a person than merely their ideas.  McCullough’s John Adams is a personal hero of mine, for the way he lived his life, and the beauty and sincerity of his writings on a variety of subjects, reaching far beyond politics.  Wood’s John Adams becomes irrelevant after his contributions to independence, because his constitutional theories had become obsolete (with no connection to the more important Federalist Papers) by the time he wrote them down, in a post-aristocratic America.

On the other hand, the chapters on Jefferson and Hamilton, focused as they are on these two men’s political ideologies, provide an extremely handy primer and distillation of where and how they and their fellow Republicans and Federalists differed from each other.  It would have been helpful to have read these chapters in this book before reading any of the much lengthier biographies of Hamilton and Jefferson currently available, to better understand why those biographies matter.  As anyone who starts reading heavily about the founders will soon learn, to understand the differences between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians is a key to understanding much of our history.  Theodore Roosevelt once claimed that Lincoln had bridged the gap between these two philosophies, finally giving us a united Hamiltonian Nation, but founded on Jeffersonian democracy.  TR’s statement requires a lot of background knowledge and information to even understand, let alone agree or disagree with.  And this book provides the shortest possible method for understanding what he meant.

Key takeaways and/or my own personal impressions developed while reading this book:

-Washington’s greatest deed, which brought him international fame and established the basis for a free American republic, was the return of his commission to the Continental Congress, after successfully winning the revolutionary war.  America is one of the only nations on earth which, after experiencing a military or otherwise violent overthrow of the existing order, did not find itself led by a despotic military dictator, installing himself into office for life.  There would be no Cromwell, no Napoleon, no Lenin, Castro, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein in America, and this would be the case for one reason: George Washington’s greatness in refusing to pursue any such course.

-Franklin, like Hamilton, rose through the ranks of his society due to the patronage of wealthy and well-placed men, in a system of patronage which was a key feature of the society at the time, and its primary method for lifting talent out of obscurity.  He loved Britain, and after gaining the wealth and fame which allowed him to retire in his 40s, he aspired to a position of rank and importance within the British Empire, which would allow him to positively influence its continuing success.  He was Americanized when these hopes were denied.

-The great irony of the FDR-created shrine to Jefferson in Washington D.C. is that none of its quotes include the theme which was nearest and dearest to Jefferson’s heart and about which he wrote as much as anything: the need to keep the United States government small, its judiciary weak, and the focus of power in all but foreign affairs in local State hands.  Still Jefferson probably qualifies as a modern day liberal.  His affection for the French Revolution, despite its excesses, and his alignment with Paine’s views on religion and criticism of Washington (though he would never have written about either of these subjects with the directness or viciousness Paine employed), and his belief in the future rather than the traditions of the past, all make him look very much like a forbear of later American Marxists, willingly blind to the evils of Communism.

-Hamilton wanted America to be a great nation, like unto Britain, a fiscal-military state.  He would have loved the modern United States.  He would have loved our sophisticated banking system and stock exchanges and financial institutions.  He would have cheered the independence and strength of our judiciary (if not all of its decisions). He would have loved the social mobility afforded by free enterprise and business.  He would have loved our strong and well funded military and the taxes which allow its strength, and he would have been immensely proud of our CIA and our Pentagon.  He would have loved that most Americans think of themselves, first and foremost, as Americans, and that their patriotism is generally directed at their nation rather than their State.  He would have loved that we abolished slavery.  But he would have been horrified by how democratic and egalitarian we have become.

-Madison was more nationalistic, and a bigger advocate of centralized government, than even Hamilton, going into the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, and the Virginia plan which he sought to pass at that convention was even more federalist than anything the federalists would have dreamed of, reducing the States to what Woods describes as little more than bureaucratic administrative units of the Federal Government.  Nevertheless, after the Constitution was enacted, he quickly allied himself with the small-central government, pro-states-rights Jeffersonian Republicans.  This inconsistency is the “Madison Problem” which Woods tries to argue, but not very convincingly in my opinion, doesn't really exist.

-While many would criticize Madison’s inept handling of the War of 1812, which led to the burning down of the American capitol, Madison was extremely proud that the nation made it through the crisis without devolving into a fiscal military state.  (Here is a great mystery of American history.  The founders feared the threat to liberty represented by a standing army.  America today has the largest standing army in the world. But, unlike many other nations which have experienced various military coups, our military has, for decades, served us well, and never posed any real threat to our liberty that I can think of.  Why is that?  This would be a topic worth someone writing a book about.)

-The one virtue/ideal/ideology on which all of the founders seem to have agreed was the importance of what they called disinterestedness: that is to say, their duty to involve themselves in public affairs for the benefit of the public, and of the entire nation, without the hope of thereby acquiring personal or financial gain, beyond an honorable reputation.  If the greatest thing Washington ever did was to imitate his Roman hero Cincinnatus, by returning his commission at the end of the revolutionary war, it was based on this value and virtue.  Similarly, the greatest thing Hamilton may have ever done, motivated by the same virtue, was to work tirelessly to keep the Federalists in congress from throwing the tie vote between Jefferson and Burr towards Burr.  Despite his own fears that Jefferson’s political ideology might undo everything he, Hamilton, had accomplished through his Federalist allies in the Nation’s first twelve years, Hamilton believed there was something even worse that could happen to America than the election of a President whose political views were radically different than his own: the election of a President, Burr, whose every instinct was to use political office for personal gain, and who did not believe in disinterestedness.  That’s a great story, and one that all Americans, Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian, can appreciate, as a part of our legacy we ought to be proud of, and, to the extent necessary, try to reclaim.

Coolidge, by Amity Shlaes

"Debt takes its toll."  Could a book with that as its opening sentence have been published at a more opportune time?   Well, yes, it probably could have.  A few years ago, before it was too late.

It is difficult to imagine a President less likely to stir the interests of modern readers than Calvin Coolidge. He was a reticent man with a non-flamboyant personality, and, therefore, inherently less interesting to read about than say, Theodore Roosevelt.  He presided during times in which nothing of great historical significance occurred: no depressions or world wars or civil wars or major social movements.  And, so, I'll admit that, at times, this new Coolidge biography by Amity Shlaes was pretty dry stuff.  Nevertheless, after learning more about him, he might just be one of my favorites.

Utilizing the theory of "scientific taxation" (which we would recognize today as essentially supply side economics) he was able to improve the economy and the government's ledgers.  Coming into office at a time when the country was not doing well economically, and the government was in debt, he embraced a philosophy that was the opposite of our current President's, who came into office under similar circumstances.  Instead of doubling down on debt through massive Keynesian stimulus packages, Coolidge reduced taxes, and let the citizens of the United States, with more of their own money in their own hands, improve the economy.  At the same time, he reduced government spending.  The result?  The economy improved, and government revenues increased.  Reaganomics without the (needed and appropriate cold war- ending) military spending increases.

Coolidge was slow to heed calls for federal aid to disaster stricken regions of the country, believing that State governments should be primarily responsible for their own citizens' well being, and that private, rather than governmental, welfare should be drawn upon first.  And he insisted on maintaining tight control over budgets in the executive offices and its departments.  In short, he may very well have been the last President of the United States who actually believed in the Constitutional notion of a Federal Government of limited and enumerated powers, and, though I haven't looked it up, it must certainly be the case that federal spending per year during his Presidency was lower than it has ever been since.

Alas, his successors did not heed his example.  As economic clouds erupted a few years after he left office, his predecessors, such as Hoover and FDR, met those crises with a new deal of unprecedented governmental spending and ever more intrusive federal governmental involvement in the affairs of the economy.  And, despite the many ways in which that federal intervention likely prolonged the agony of the depression, we have never looked back.

But, if we ever do look back, and if (in some far distant future generation, when the Obama era's debts have finally been paid down) we seek to understand how it was that, once upon a time, we were able to live within our means and not mortgage our entire economy to China, Calvin Coolidge would be a good place for us to start.

Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham

“I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another: for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.  And I am for encouraging the progress of science in all its branches; and not for raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy . . . [and not] to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement, to believe that government, religion, morality, and every other science were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than what was established by our forefathers. . . .  The first object of my heart is my own country.  In that is embarked my family, my fortune, and my own existence.  I have not one farthing of interest, nor one fiber of attachment out of it, nor a single motive of preference of any one nation to another but in proportion as they are more or less friendly to us.”
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 1799, as quoted in Jon Mecham, Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power (Random House 2012) pp. 319-320.

Reconstructing Jefferson.

Having in recent years read three sympathetic biographies of men who became, to lesser or greater degrees, political adversaries of Thomas Jefferson, I had come to develop a rather dim view of the man.  David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, and Ron Chernow’s biographies of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, each, in praising their own Federalist subjects, can’t help but paint the Republican Jefferson in less-than-charitable terms.  In these biographies, Jefferson comes across as he did to the men those books were written about: He could be hypocritical.  He originated that unfortunate American habit of ascribing to his political enemies the worst of all possible motives, accusing them of being closet monarchists, instead of simply having a different point of view.  He was capable of unscrupulous behind-the-scenes political conniving -- seeking to undermine two administrations in a row from within their own ranks, and using scandal-mongers to surreptitiously stab former friends in the back.  He was blind to the violent excesses of the French Revolution, and was so self-righteous about his own political opinions that he could accuse the Revolution’s greatest stalwarts, even Washington, of political heresy for the simple crime of disagreeing with Jefferson’s views.   Not a very flattering picture.

But I have always wanted to like Jefferson.  He is, after all, the author of some of the best sentences ever written in the English language: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.  That among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these needs, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”   Aaaahh.  That should be put to music.  Thousands of pages of Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment distilled to their most important essence in a few memorable sentences that continue to affect history.  What a different country we would have today if schoolchildren recited those sentences every morning instead of the Pledge of Allegiance.  Or maybe they could alternate between the two: Jeffersonian Republicans reciting the Declaration one day and Hamiltonian Federalists reciting the Pledge the next.

So I’ve been looking for a biography of Jefferson that would portray him in a more positive light, as he saw himself; highlight his virtues, and help me develop a more appreciative view of the man. 

Jon Meachman’s recently published biography couldn’t have been more perfectly suited to this purpose.  Indeed, that this book was written for readers like me, whose views on Jefferson have been negatively influenced by recent popular history on the nation’s Federalist triumvirate, is explicitly confirmed in Meacham’s Author’s Note, at the end of the text, in which he explains:

“This book, I hope, neither lionizes nor indicts Jefferson, but instead restores him to his full and rich role as an American statesman who resists easy categorization.” And why is this “restor[ing]” necessary?  Meacham goes on:   “Jefferson has not had an easy time of it in recent years.  The 1998 DNA findings and subsequent scholarly reevaluation that established the high likelihood of his sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings –a liaison long denied by mainstream white historians– gave fresh energy to the image of Jefferson-as-hypocrite.  Then came nearly two decades of highly acclaimed biographies of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington that understandably emphasized the virtues of their protagonists, often at Jefferson’s expense.” 

So there you have it.  I was looking for a book that would give me a counterpoint to the Federalist hagiographies I have recently so thoroughly enjoyed, and, little did I know it, one was being written for me.

Meacham’s biography does much more lionizing than indicting.  His central thesis is that to understand Jefferson, we must understand that he lived his life in a 50 year period of American conflict with Britain (sometimes cold, sometimes hot), which was as central to his political philosophy as the conflict with Soviet Russia was to Ronald Reagan’s. Jefferson’s fears about the possible restoration of monarchy in the United States may appear to us (as they did to Washington) to be overheated fanciful paranoia.  And his willingness to accuse his federalist enemies of being closet “Monarchists” may sound to our ears like absurd and unfair ad hominem political attack.  But just because these perceived threats never rose above perception doesn’t mean the fears were not legitimate, or at least very real to Jefferson.  In the decades before the American Revolution, monarchy had been deposed and come back to power in Britain, and in the decades after, the same would occur in France.  More importantly, this was not rhetoric which Jefferson stoked for mere political advantage.  It was the way he legitimately saw the world.  Progress from the chains of history meant providing more and more power to the people.  And the threat of reasserted monarchical power and hereditary aristocracy was, in his mind, always imminent.

So, did Meacham succeed with this particular reader?   Do I like Jefferson better now?  Hmmm.  That remains hard to say. I like him better than I used to, but not as much as Mecham likes him.

Jefferson, Pro and Con.

I certainly have a deeper appreciation of Jefferson’s political gifts and achievements.  It may be true, as Chernow argued, that Hamilton better foresaw our modern American condition, and laid its groundwork, than Jefferson, such that we are now living in a Hamiltonian, not a Jeffersonian, America.  Nevertheless, Jefferson triumphed politically in his own time, with his election spelling the doom of the Federalists and inaugurating a 50 year era of successful Presidential candidates who ran and governed as  “Jeffersonian" politicians.  Imagine Ronald Reagan succeeding in not only transforming the Republican party, but a majority of the whole voting nation, into majority conservative voters from 1980 to 2030, and one might begin to understand the depth and extent of Jefferson’s political victory.  Meacham’s book explains the political skill which set those events in motion. 

There were faults and missteps in his presidency (Jefferson’s hatred for anything that smelled like British influence in our society ironically made him weaken our Navy, which, in the years before the War of 1812, left us more vulnerable to . . .  Britain).  But, overall, Jefferson’s political accomplishments were undoubtedly good for America.  A President lacking Jefferson’s light touch might have bungled the greatest and most important opportunity any American President has ever received: the chance to buy half a continent in the Louisiana Purchase. 

Presidents as politically diverse as FDR and Ronald Reagan have looked to Jefferson’s language and rhetoric to support their own visions of America.  Here’s a little bit of trivia that might help us understand just how triumphantly Jefferson’s influence bestrides American politics: He was living in France when the First Amendment was enacted and had absolutely nothing to do with its wording or meaning.  But almost 200 years after its enactment, when the U.S. Supreme Court began wrestling with 1960s and 1970s school prayer cases, requiring it to interpret the “establishment clause,” the Justices determined that the clause’s meaning must be determined on the basis of the understanding of the founders.  And to what source did they look to determine this understanding?  The writings of Madison, who drafted its text?  The floor debates of the men who voted to approve its final language?  No: they enlisted support from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, 14 years after the Amendment was passed, in which Jefferson described the clause as erecting a “wall of separation” between Church and State.  More than 150 years after his death, Jefferson was still being given the final say on how we should understand constitutional language which he had nothing to do with drafting.  For better or worse, Jefferson matters.  The Art of Power indeed.

After reading this book, I also have a better understanding of and appreciation for Jefferson’s intellectual gifts and wide-ranging curiosity.  (JFK once lauded a group of Nobel Prize recipients being honored at a White House reception as perhaps the most extraordinary collection of talent and human knowledge ever gathered at the edifice, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.)  He was a brilliant human being, and he got that way by spending his time reading, thinking, and writing about serious subjects.  We’d be better off if more American Presidents (especially the ones who have ruled during my lifetime) had done the same.  His concerns over undue Federal governmental power may have been premature in an era when the greatest dangers to the nation were weakness and disunion, but they can also be seen as ahead of their time, as his words, with remarkable foresight, predicted many of the problems the nation faces today from an overly large, powerful, and intrusive Federal government.

Politically, Jefferson remains enigmatic.  Modern political conservatives like myself can’t help but admire his rhetoric in support of a Federal Government of limited and enumerated powers, his belief in State’s rights, individual liberties, and his fear of the mischief which could be done by an unrestrained judiciary.  (Although, this must be said, his alternative to judicial review, State nullification theory, provided the ideological underpinnings for secession and the Civil War.)  He can be praised for reducing the Nation’s debt and for preaching against a government which takes from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned.  His advocacy of a free press and freedom of religion and conscience should be universally admired by both sides of the political spectrum.  His decision to step down after two terms solidified Washington’s example and turned it into a tradition so sacrosanct that it would be centuries before a President came along with the audacity to violate it (causing the nation to wisely thereafter formally insert it into the Constitution).  His fear of monarchy and his advocacy in favor of the rights of individual conscience were prophetic warnings against overweening 20th Century totalitarian governments. 

But therein lies a rub: For those totalitarian systems did not take the form of monarchy, as Jefferson feared.  Rather, they took their inspiration from many ideals which Jefferson’s writings favor:  they were, or claimed to be, progressive and secular movements, allegedly based on science and reason and therefore free to jettison the outmoded thinking of prior eras.  In this there were dangers which Jefferson failed to see.  Those who put greater trust in the future than in the past would come, after Jefferson's time, to eagerly overthrow organically developed institutions which had stabilized society for centuries, in order to murderously require society to re-start itself from scratch on supposedly more enlightened and more future-looking ideals.  If Jefferson had lived to see our day, would he have recognized the odious 20th Century totalitarianisms of our time as yet another version of the monarchy he had spent his life warring against?  Would he have discovered that secular ideologies can be just as subversive to human freedom as what he termed “monkish ignorance”?  Or would he have been, like so many modern leftists, swept up by their progressive rhetoric and proven himself to be the radical Jacobin his political enemies always accused him of? 

It is, of course, impossible to say.  Jefferson’s politics were of his own time, and what he feared and loved politically was based on the recent history his own generation would have grown up studying and the contemporary history they then lived through.  He did not have the benefit of our hindsight into how the French Revolution, and other similar 20th Century versions of Jacobinism, would turn out.  But his apologetic attitude towards the excesses of the French Revolution remain troubling, and do seem like an emblematic precursor of the kind of moral blindness that 20th century Marxists would engage in.  For example, his statement that the ideals of the French Revolution would be worth shedding so much blood over that only an Adam and Eve for every nation remained to repopulate the earth is more than just unsettling: it's one of the worst things any founder ever thought, wrote, or said.  Ultimately, if Jefferson embraced certain philosophies that cause me disquiet instead of admiration, it is because I tend towards the conservative worldview that there is much in any given society which has been proven over time to work and ought to be preserved, whereas Jefferson was much more prone to the liberal outlook that there is much in any given society which is outmoded unexamined tradition, and ought to be replaced, damn the unintended consequences.  Of course, both points of view are necessary in roughly equal proportions for a society to avoid either stagnation or anarchy, and there are times and places when one philosophy is more suitable than the other.  Jefferson's outlook made him the perfect man to write the Declaration of Independence, breaking our nation free from its British past.  But it's probably just as well that he was in France when the Constitution was being created, allowing us to create a stable society of law and not of men, to replace what Jefferson had helped to overthrow.

There is much in Jefferson’s personal life that also prevents me from admiring him as much as I do some of the other founders.  Even when comparing their faults, Jefferson seems to come out worse.  Hamilton’s adultery (with a woman whose con-man husband had pimped her out to the cause in order to set Hamilton up for blackmail payments) looks like unfortunate weakness on Hamilton’s part.  Young Jefferson’s years-long attempt to unsuccessfully seduce the wife of a close friend comes across as far more venal.  Washington and Jefferson both shared in the bounty of the sin of slavery.  But Washington at least freed his slaves in his will.  Jefferson’s written critiques of slavery are among some of the sharpest ever written, such that he does not appear to have shared Washington’s intellectual blind spot over the issue.  But Jefferson’s intellectual awareness of the lack of moral justification for slavery makes his own refusal to free his own slaves that much more dispiriting.  (Jefferson did arrange for Sally Hemings to be treated as, de facto, free, upon his death, and arranged for her children to gain their freedom on their 21st birthday, to honor promises he had made to Sally while in France, in exchange for her agreement to stay by his side and return home with him, even though France’s laws would have allowed her to abandoned him to her acquire her own freedom.)  

Then again, but yet, but yet, . . . .  Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, whose ideals of equality we continue to lurch toward in our day, wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and spent his lifetime as an advocate for freedom of speech and conscience and thought, founded the University of Virginia and made a love for art, architecture, and science deeply American ideals.  He was undoubtedly a key figure in mankind’s great leap away from hereditary monarchy, freeing us from the idea that some men are born, booted and spurred by divine right, to ride others.  Hereditary monarchy is a ridiculous idea.  Aristocracy and a House of Lords are absurdities.  Jefferson was a key figure in helping humankind get to the point where these truths could be fully recognized, and even the English now use their monarchy primarily as a tourist draw.  He deserves credit for that, even if later radical revolutionaries would take those ideas too far, and subvert them for gruesome totalitarian ends.  In the end, Mecham has certainly proven this much: Jefferson "resists easy categorization.”  Was he our first forward-looking future-oriented liberal, wary of tradition, but insufficiently wary of the law of unintended consequences?  Our first small government conservative?  Our first libertarian?  Who knows.  He was Jefferson.

Federalists and Republicans.

Had I lived in the 18th Century,  would I have been a Federalist or a Republican?  The Federalists were right about some of the big questions: the need for a more powerful centralizing government after the disaster of the articles of confederation, to avoid disunion and balkanization; the need for a unified monetary system to allow nationwide commerce; the utility of a Navy and Military; the propriety of entering into the Jay Treaty to keep the young nation out of a war it could not yet afford, despite the treaty’s obnoxiousness; and, most of all, the need to work for the abolition of slavery.   The Republicans were right about some big issues too: the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts under the First Amendment, and the need to restore freedom of the press and of conscience by overturning the same; the importance of promoting a government of republican simplicity rather than aping European monarchies. 

The Republicans and the Federalists seem to have fought as much over America’s relationship with France vs. its relationship with Britain as they did about anything.  It’s hard for modern Americans to understand why this debate was so important and rancorous.  Like a 20th Century Central-American Banana Republic trying to decide which side to join in the cold war, the fledgling (and, at the time, relatively insignificant) republic of the United States apparently saw its future as inexplicably tied to which sphere of influence (that of Britain or France) it would volunteer to belong to.  For all the rhetorical heat this issue created though, we were lucky that we didn’t get too drawn towards either direction.

Here’s the thing. The Federalists and the Republicans were both wrong on this issue, and instead of arguing endlessly about whether we should ally ourselves with France or Britain, we would have done well to let our political arguments follow what we actually did in the event: steer a neutral course.

It’s true, as the Federalists argued, that we shared a common culture, language, religion, law, and outlook, as the British.  But it would be many decades before the British would be able to treat us with anything but contempt, and the years immediately after the Revolution were no time to try to re-establish our ties with that monarchy and potentially be sucked back into its imperial ambitions.  Our “special relationship” with Britain, and the union of English speaking peoples that saved the world in the 20th century, was still a long way off. 

The Republicans had some valid points about France.  We owed that nation a great debt for its assistance in the war of independence.  And it was only natural that the French Revolution would be seen as a sequel to our own: the ongoing march of history to elevate democracy over tyranny.  Except that the French Revolution wasn’t really a sequel to America’s revolution.  The American Revolution was about restoring pre-existing legal rights of citizenship which the colonists felt had been denied them, and ultimately determined could only be restored through independence from what they finally came to realize was a foreign power ruling on American shores.  It was about independence and establishing our own sovereignty, not a remaking of society.  While some of the rhetoric of the early French Revolution mirrored American ideals, it was ultimately to prove a much darker affair, fueled by far different motives, which would not lead to a constitutional republic for another 80 years.  In hindsight, the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon look a lot more like a prequel to 20th Century communist revolutions and the rise of Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, et al., then a sequel to the American Revolution and the rise of an American Republic.

Fortunately for the Country, both factions often governed by taking a far more centrist course than their rhetoric suggested, and were not as far apart as the partisan newspapers of the day would lead the country’s citizens to suppose.  For all the supposed pro-British anti-French sentiments of the Federalists, John Adams' most significant achievement as President was keeping the country out of a war with France.  For all his pontificating about the evils of an overly powerful executive, Jefferson quickly took a more pragmatic view when he was the one holding the reigns of office, and when opportunities arose, such as the Louisiana Purchase, which could only be taken advantage of through a more expansive view of constitutional power than he himself subscribed to, Jefferson didn’t let ideological purity stand in the way of doing what was right for the country. 

In the end, the United States was probably greatly blessed to have men who leaned towards a Federalist point of view in charge for the first 12 years.  The last thing the country needed after enacting a constitution which remedied the defects of the articles of confederation, would have been a President who didn’t understand the nature of those defects.  When Republicans came to power, they probably ended up ratifying (by not dismantling) as much of what the Federalists had wrought as they modified.  At the end of that dialectical process, the country was, for the most part (with the exception of the continuing sin of and coming crises over slavery) on a firm footing.  Jefferson deserves as much credit for that as anyone.  However his historical reputation may wax and wane, he played a major positive role in establishing a great modern nation: sovereign, independent, and full of people who are, thanks to his guiding hand, still free to think for themselves and vociferously argue with each other about many of the same issues that were relevant in his own time.  For that he will always have my gratitude.

Ranking: 4 stars out of 5.
Completed January 16, 2013.