Seven Events That Made America America

by Larry Schweikart

  We have arrived, however, at the bottom of a ravine courtesy of the “slippery slope.” Liberty, lost an inch at a time, is very difficult to reclaim. The argument that “we’ve already done that” can be accurate, yet irrelevant. If you’ve already swallowed poison once, it’s a good idea not to try it a second time.

  The fact that as of 2009, the United States government weighs in on something as fundamental—and utterly out of human control—as climate, or that there are large bureaucracies to provide music, art, and television programs that, if left to the free market, would never see the light of day, testifies to just how deep that ravine is. Moreover, when such issues as the constitutionality of these kinds of activities are raised, the standard sneering dismissal by the mainstream media itself has become a clarion that liberty is eroding. One cannot imagine any politician of any stripe impinging on the freedoms of early Americans without most of the citizenry and at least half of the presses shouting out in response.

  Lincoln said reverence for the Law should be spoken at every opportunity. Perhaps a second truism needs to be reiterated unceasingly—that government grows. It always grows, like a living creature it seeks to expand, and like a living creature it will not relinquish what it already has without a struggle. The task for modern Americans, who have grown troublingly comfortable with accepting favors, support, and advice from Washington, D.C., as well as their state governments, is to once again strive to view government as the problem, not the solution. And to paraphrase Lincoln: preach it, brother!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As will be apparent, some of these chapters have proven much more fun to write than others, most notably the chapter on rock and roll. As a former rock drummer (my bands opened for such “Golden Age” rock acts as Steppenwolf, Savoy Brown, the James Gang, and Mother’s Finest), it was a particular privilege to interview a number of the top musicians of the era for this research, including Mark Stein and Vinny Martell of Vanilla Fudge, Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals, David Paich of Toto, Robby Krieger of the Doors, Jimmy Haslip, Dave Mason, and Alice Cooper. I thank all of them for their time and thoughts, and for their energy: at times I half-believed I could pick up my sticks and pound out the Fudge’s version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (but those impulses usually disappeared after a timely nap!).

  I would also like to express my gratitude to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, particularly Steve Branch and Mike Duggan with the National Archives and Records Administration. At the University of Dayton, I received research assistance from a former student, Peter Cajka, whose work on the Dayton Flood is heavily cited here, and Matthew Kniess. Cynthia King proofread much of the manuscript, and as always, I received generous support from the university in general and the history department in particular. Everywhere I go, I’m asked, “How does a conservative survive in a university setting?” I always reply that I can’t answer for others at other institutions, but at UD I have received nothing but support.

  Christopher Castelitz also provided valuable research assistance. To Gary Taubes, whose book Good Calories, Bad Calories, not only changed my mind but my life, I am deeply indebted. In each case, none of the opinions or conclusions—and certainly none of the errors—that appear here are anyone’s but my own.

  As always, the crew at Sentinel has been wonderful. Adrian Zackheim helped develop the concept of this book; Brooke Carey, my editor, helped refine it; and my publicist at Sentinel, Amanda Pritzker, has ensured that no stone is unturned in bringing my work to the attention of the media. Writing is a lonely sport, so it’s always refreshing to have so many individuals that I can talk to, rely on, and argue with during the process of fashioning a book.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  1 Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, Thomas Jefferson Library of Congress Exhibition, U.S. Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html.

  2 Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 59.

  3 Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Vital Statistics in American Politics, 1997- 1998 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1998), 193-95; Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 23, 39, 180, 404.

  4 George Washington’s Farewell Address, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp.

  5 “Federalist #10,” in Clinton Rossiter, ed., The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (New York: New American Library, 1961), 78.

  6 John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1918, II (Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1920), 125; Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System, 96; Mike Wallace, “Changing Concepts of Party in the United States: New York 1815-1828,” American Historical Review 74 (1968): 453-91.

  7 Albany Argus, January 29, 1822, and October 8, 1824.

  8 Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 41.

  9 “United States Federal State and Local Government Spending,” 1800, http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year1800_0.html.

  10 Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 33.

  11 Tiarr Martin, “The Growth of Government During the ‘Age of Jefferson and Jackson, ’” 1989, unpublished paper in author’s possession.

  12 John Quincy Adams, “Inaugural Address,” 1825, in James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), 294-99.

  13 Larry Schweikart, The Entrepreneurial Adventure: A History of Business in the United States (Ft. Worth, TX: Harcourt, 2000), ch. 4, passim; Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti, American Entrepreneur (New York: Amacom Press, 2009), ch. 4, passim.

  14 John Steele Gordon, Hamilton’s Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt (New York: Penguin, 1998).

  15 A short, but insightful, analysis of Hamilton appears in Charles Calomiris, “Alexander Hamilton,” in Larry Schweikart, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography: Banking and Finance to 1913 (New York: Facts on File, 1990), 239-48. The best recent work on Hamilton is Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2006).

  16 Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2004), 300.

  17 See Richard P. McCormick, “New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics,” American Historical Review 65 (1960): 288-301, and his “Political Development and the Second Party System,” in William Nesbit Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 90-116 (quotation “curious exceptions” on 107 fn. 14).

  18 McCormick, “Political Development,” 107.

  19 Richard McCormick, “Suffrage Classes and Party Alignments: A Study in Voter Behavior,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 46 (1959): 397-410 (quotations on 402 and 409).

  20 Paul Goodman, “The First American Party System,” in Chambers and Burnham, American Party Systems, 56-89.

  21 In our 2004 book, A Patriot’s History of the United States, Michael Allen and I refer to this as the most important election in American history, for it set the stage for nonviolent transitions of power between groups representing often radically different interpretations of America’s character (Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States from Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror [New York: Sentinel, 2004]).

  22 Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 424 (2000).

  23 Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, 252.

  24 Garry Wills, Explaining America (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 195.

  25 California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567, 592 (2000), Stevens’s dissent, 19.

  26 McCormick, “New Perspectives on Jacksoni
an Politics,” passim.

  27 McCormick, “Political Development,” 100.

  28 Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 550.

  29 James Stanton Chase, “Jacksonian Democracy and the Rise of the Nominating Convention,” Mid-America 45 (1963): 229-49.

  30 Lynn Marshall, “The Strange Stillbirth of the Whig Party,” American Historical Review 72 (January 1967): 445-69.

  31 McCormick, “Political Development,” 107.

  32 Richard H. Brown, “The Missouri Crisis, Slavery, and the Politics of Jacksonianism,” in Stanley N. Kurtz and Stanley I. Kutler, eds., New Perspectives on the American Past, vol. 1, 1607-1877 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 241-255 (quotation on 242).

  33 Ibid., 242.

  34 Ibid., 243.

  35 Adams quoted in ibid., 243.

  36 Jefferson to Holmes.

  37 Ibid.

  38 George Dangerfield, The Era of Good Feelings (New York: Harcourt, 1952).

  39 Brown, “Missouri Crisis,” 244.

  40 Ibid., 245.

  41 Ibid., 245.

  42 Van Buren’s reputation as opposing slavery is near-universal. As president, however, his actions in the Amistad case raise questions about his commitment to ending slavery: he lent every support of the executive branch that he could to the Cubans to reenslave the rebels and return them to Cuba; he had the State Department and federal attorneys working on the side of the Cubans, and had the U.S. Navy standing by to return the captives if and when the court found against them. U.S. Attorney Felix Grundy, without being requested to do so, submitted an opinion supporting the Cuban position and stating that American courts had no right to try the case. See William M. Wiecek, “Slavery and Abolition Before the United States Supreme Court, 1820-1860,” Journal of American History 65 (June 1978): 34-59, and Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956).

  43 Chase, “Jacksonian Democracy and the Rise of the Nominating Convention,” 239, and his Emergence of the Presidential Nominating Convention, 1789-1832 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973); Van Buren, Autobiography, 514; Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System, 151.

  44 Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System, 151.

  45 Ibid., 151.

  46 Ibid.

  47 Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party, 120.

  48 Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political System, 177.

  49 Richard B. Kielbowicz, “Newsgathering by Printers’ Exchanges Before the Telegraph,” Journalism History 9 (Summer 1982): 42-48.

  50 Thomas C. Leonard, News for All: America’s Coming of Age with the Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 13, 43.

  51 Ibid., 15.

  52 Allan R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 32-34.

  53 Robert V. Remini, The Election of Andrew Jackson (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1963), 77.

  54 Ibid., 49.

  55 Gretchen Garst Eweing, “Duff Green, Independent Editor of a Party Press,” Journalism Quarterly 54 (Winter 1977): 733-39 (quotation on 736).

  56 Erik McKinley Eriksson, “President Jackson’s Propaganda Agencies,” Pacific Historical Review 7 (January 1937): 47-57.

  57 Green in the United States Telegraph, February 7, 1826, quoted in Culver H. Smith, “Propaganda Technique in the Jackson Campaign of 1828,” East Tennessee Historical Society Publications 6 (1934): 53. See also Fletcher M. Green, “Duff Green, Militant Journalist of the Old School,” American Historical Review 52 (January 1947): 247-64.

  58 Thomas Ritchie to Martin Van Buren, March 27, 1829, quoted in John Spencer Bassett, ed., The Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 7 vols. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1929), 4:17.

  59 Culver H. Smith, The Press, Politics, and Patronage: The American Government’s Use of Newspapers, 1789-1875 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977), 131.

  60 Richard B. Kielbowicz, News in the Mail: The Press, Post Office, and Public Information (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989).

  61 Gerald J. Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 7. Also see Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Thomas C. Leonard, The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), and his News for All, previously cited; Charles E. Clark, The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665-1740 (New York: Oxford, 1994); and Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

  62 See Gerald J. Baldasty’s dissertation, for example: “The Political Press in the Second American Party System: The 1832 Election,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1978, 140-70. He performed a content analysis of five metropolitan newspapers and four nonmetropolitan newspapers, in which he found that in the city papers, political topics made up more than one-half of all stories, and in the nonmetropolitan publications, nearly 70 percent (Baldasty, Commercialization of News, Table 1.1, 23).

  63 Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 280.

  64 Smith, Press, Politics and Patronage, 131.

  65 Washington, D.C., U.S. Telegraph, October 7, 1828.

  66 Louisville Public Advertiser, July 9, 1828.

  67 New York Lyons Western Argus, August 1, 1832.

  68 Carolyn Steward Dyer, “Political Patronage of the Wisconsin Press, 1849-1861: New Perspectives on the Economics of Patronage,” Journalism Monographs 109 (February 1989): 1-40; Milton Hamilton, The Country Printer: New York State, 1785-1830 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936),120; and Baldasty, Commercialization of News, 20.

  69 Carl E. Prince, “The Federalist Party and the Creation of a Court Press, 1789-1801,” Journalism Quarterly 53 (Summer 1976): 238-41; Michael Emery and Edwin Emery, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 6th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988); and Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 260 Years: 1690-1950, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1950).

  70 David Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,” William and Mary Quarterly, April 1999, 243-72.

  71 Ibid., 247.

  72 As Shane White pointed out, print remained an effective means of enforcing the slave system (Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 [Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991], 114-49).

  73 Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways,” 269.

  74 Donald Lewis Shaw, “At the Crossroads: Change and Continuity in American Press News, 1820-1860,” Journalism History 8 (Summer 1981): 38-50, quotation on 41.

  75 Ibid., 41.

  76 See table 3 in ibid., 41-42.

  77 Jeffrey A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart III, “The Gag Rule, Congressional Politics, and the Growth of Anti-Slavery Popular Politics,” unpublished paper, 2003, http://th.myweb.uga.edu/gagrule.pdf.

  78 William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); Stephen Holmes, “Gag Rules, or the Politics of Omission,” in Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad, eds., Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 15-70.

  79 See, for example, Larry Schweikart, Banking in the American South from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), ch. 4 and passim, and my article “Jacksonian Ideology, Currency Control, and ‘Central Banking’: A Reappraisal,” The Historian 51 (November 1988): 78-102.

  80 Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Autho
rity in America, 1859-1877 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  81 Ibid., x.

  82 Alexander B. Callow, The Tweed Ring (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).

  83 Burton T. Doyle and Homer H. Swaney, Lives of James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur (Washington: R. H. Darby, 1881), 61.

  84 Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865-1883 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).

  CHAPTER 2

  Epigraph: Mark R. Levin, Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005), 33.

  1 Don E. Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) remains a classic. David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis 1848-1861 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1977).

  2 Andrew C. Napolitano, Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2009).

  3 A graduate student at Duke, Kelly Marie Kennington, has traced these laws in her dissertation, “River of Injustice: St. Louis’s Freedom Suits and the Changing Nature of Legal Slavery in Antebellum America,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 2009.

  4 St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project, “Freedom Suits Case Files, 1814- 1860,” http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu/about-freedom-suits-series.php.

  5 Napolitano, Dred Scott’s Revenge, 59.

  6 Strader v. Graham, 51 U.S. 82 (1850).

  7 Napolitano, Dred Scott’s Revenge, 69.

  8 Donald E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

  9 Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).