The Founders : Personalities of Import
(c 2002, retardomontalban/j.d.a.)
DisclaimerIt has always been my desire to write a book of artful if eccentric biographical sketches of the Founders of America, whose creation, though horribly mangled and mutated, is still such a force in the world today. These men were the first and, so far, last crop of genuinely thoughtful politicians, from an age in which politics and law was the practice of the first-rate, unlike today when it is the practice of the fifth-rate corrupt dyslexic cretins we "vote" into office, and ambulance-chasing corporate whores who specialise in sophistry of the basest variety.
My little retort to the Fascist Nun speech on another thread gave birth, through caesarian section, as it were, to this idea, though, as I stated, it had already been in labor for quite some time. It seems my idea is shared, if not "precognitively plagiarised," by Joseph Ellis, whose recent
Founding Brothers I have not read, but whose
American Sphinx : The Character Of Thomas Jefferson I have read and found mildly agreeable.
I take now this opportunity to form a rough draught of my long-standing ambition, and to do it in such a way that is bound to be less artful than my ultimate intent but hopefully just as educating to myself and others, as well as self-disciplinary for I intend to write these profiles from only memory. Lest anyone leap to the assertion that my endeavor is meant to demonstrate some vainglorious notion of precocity, let me state that I only wish to "check myself" in an environment where, as I have many ideological enemies, my memory for facts and my consistency in value-judgement shall be put under rigorous test. In short, I have been a serious student of the Founders since childhood; and I wish to test myself in hostile ground. So, enemies--fact-check me, it's a dare! I'll give this a week of debate, then fact-check myself and the objections to my portraits and the conclusions drawn from them, and follow-up accordingly.
I post this in the debate forum because it is relevant to current discussions. Also, because the "debate" itself shall be on the importance of these men, who was most important within the group, and who holds the most importance to US today. I posit that Jefferson, Hamilton and Marshall are equally important to US today, for various reasons, good and ill, that should be self-evident if I am to do my job correctly.
Disclaimer two: I am posting this on the writer's forum before debate forum, in two parts, with this section, the Federalists, being first. I do this to solicit corrections on grounds of grammar, style, syntax; to discover typos and redundancies, etc. Once I complete the second half--still without looking at a book--i shall post the entire piece on the debate forum, should the moderators allow it.
Why am I doing any of this, going in direct opposition from scholarly protocol in NOT doing research? To see if I can. I am exasperated that my expertise in a certain field is disregarded and unappreciated. Also, I am constantly annoyed by the plethora of people on television, radio, the internet, and real life who make false and idiotic claims in regard to the Founders to further their thoroughly pig-headed ideologies. If I am wrong here on anything it is on the third-party reference to the election of 1824--that's the only thing i'm iffy on. One may notice that I have not mentioned Dolley Madison's maiden name--it's because I can't remember it. Again, this is all from memory, to test myself. I know I can't prove that to most of you, but to those who know me here, they know I speak the truth. I swear it on my grandparents' graves.
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To simplify the debate :
1. Who was the most historically important Founder?
2. Whose "philosophy" of government or decisions made while in influence hold still the most power over US today?
3. Whose original intentions have we as a country most abandoned?
4. From whom are most modern politicians ideologically descended?
My answers are
1. Jefferson, Hamilton, and Marshall, fairly equally, for good or ill--mostly ill.
2. Hamilton's, Marshall's, and Washington's
3. Jefferson's, Madison's, Mason's and Paine's
4. Hamilton, Gouvenor Morris, Burr, Jefferson (his bad side)
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Generally : Just like today, the world of the elite in America was very small in the Founders' time. They all, to a large extent, knew each other personally to the point of incestuous political relations. They were of the gentry class, with, to be fair, all the predjudices thereof; they came from the same social circles; they often lived on glamourous, even ostentatious estates; they were mostly of high-intelligence; they were mostly of English stock; most were reasonably well-read, versed in the latest theories of government, and, most importantly, read history with some voracity. With a few exceptions, they all read the same books, could equally discuss the merits or demerits of slaves or servants, enjoy the latest fashions from France, imbibe the finest wines. While not all were as filthy rich as George Washington, Gouvenor Morris and Robert Morris, nearly
all were at least well-to-do. That said, most died broke or very near it; some were forced to sell their last possession or emigrate to avoid debtor's prison.
Of course, the biggest myth in America is that we are an egalitarian society when we have in actuality never been any such thing; though in the founding days of America, this fact was a bit less-disguised and far less problematic. Where today in, say, Delaware, The Dupont De Nemours Corporation (whose original patriarch was a recent immigrant in the founding days and one of Jefferson's favourite pen-pals) and MBNA, a credit card company, operate the state like a fiefdom, back then states were fiefdoms of Families. In the New York of Burr, Hamilton and Jay, one had better have been related to, married into, or worked for one of three families : the Schuylers, Clintons, and Livingstons. Hamilton married General Schuyler's daughter Elizabeth, while Burr worked for (and played against each other) all three families at one time or another, before finally being politically crushed by Jefferson and the Clintons. John Jay ingratiated himself in the same way as Burr; and it helped too in the fact that both Jay and Burr themselves came from famous, though far less powerful, families. In Massachusetts, John Adams of course fathered future President John Quincy Adams, and was cousin to patriot Sam Adams, of college keg-party fame. Virginia too had its families and alliances, with Jefferson, Marshall, and John Randolph of Roanoke all being first cousins, while parodoxically being political arch-enemies : they despised each other. On the other hand, Jefferson had tenuous but (mutually) opportunistic ties with fellow Virginian Washington, while he cultivated friendship and perhaps overbearing influence on Madison and Monroe. While plutocracy is never a good thing, the point is that it was easier in the founding days, especially to a clever charming man like Hamilton, to ingratiate oneself into an opportunity with the Families, while today of course there is no hope of opportunity (assuming, of course, that someone decent would
want such a thing) with our Corporate Lords, unless one inherits a large enough stock portfolio.
The Founders, with the exception of Jefferson and his followers (Madison, Monroe and, later, Jackson), disliked and distrusted democracy. However, with perhaps the exception of Hamilton, they equally in principle if more passionately in practice detested monarchy: as the founding years rolled on, the Hamiltonians were more truthful in charging Jefferson's camp as democratic fellow-travelers than the Jeffersonians had truth in claiming that the Hamiltonians wished to install a monarchy. It also must be noted, thankfully, that with the passage of time it became less of an insult to accuse another of democratic tendencies.
Most had puny charity enough to admit the indecency of slavery, if not quite condemn it as the moral abomination it truly was. Nearly all of the southerners owned slaves, and more than a few northerners, at least in the very early days, owned a black person. Those who did not own their fellow humans often in practice "owned" indentured servants, along the same lines as many wealthy people today who do enjoy their often Latin American domestic help, whom they notoriously underpay.
The Founders had read the even then classic political theorists of the Enlightenment : Locke, Hume, Montesquieu. But then, cynically, it goes without saying that all had at least a passing acquaintence with Macchiavelli. Most if not all had read their Thucydides and Herodotus, and grabbed up the recent
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Lord Gibbon. They knew their Aristotle and Plato; most had a thorough education in the history of Rome and Greece and so were perfectly educated in Western Civilisation, at least for their time. This is important to remember, especially to admonish those ignorant modern Americans (who reduce to absurdity a trend that started in the reign of Andrew Jackson, the "common man") who insist that their leaders be just as clueless as to history and the mechanics and intents of government as they themselves are. (That it's precisely
because of ignorant corrupt leaders and a depraved corporate culture that the average American is poorly educated confuses things a bit.) Where Franklin and Adams would pass time discussing the latest from Voltaire and J.Q. Adams spoke seven languages, what do Bush and Rumsfeld discuss, in near-English, but
The Hunt For Red Oktober reruns on TNT? Small wonder how the former pair could help form a functioning, relatively honest government, where the latter pair run even further into the ground the already corrupt and menacing mess we have for a government today. The Founders were intelligent, and less-corrupt, while the moderns are morons, and thoroughly corrupt. Where Burr was a friend and intellectual companion of Jeremy Bentham and Adams and Franklin could and did converse on fairly level ground with an admittedly aged Voltaire, Clinton exchanged banalities with the dread Depak Chopra or the admirable Maya Angelou, while Nixon traded anti-semitic musings with the awful Billy Graham and Bush manages to state his own name correctly to the nerdly fascist George Will. If one only examines the degradation in the quality of American public servants (and
their social circles), one cannot but help to subscribe to the Theory of Dysgenics.
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In may come to a scandalous surprise to the myriad Christian Americans as ignorant of history and human nature as they are well-versed in the fairy tales of the Lord, but the Founders were a secular lot, both in belief and in practice, and for those right-wingers who insist their public servants follow a 1950s TV version of "family values", the Founders' sexual proclivities more closely resemble that of the movie
Dangerous Liasons than that displayed in a episode of TV's Beaver fucking Cleaver.
Jefferson was an early widower, and was notorious for his flirtations and affairs with his friends' wives, notably the spouse of a miniaturist painter while he was on diplomatic mission to France. He certainly was the lover of his own slave, Sally Hemmings, a fact which was of course denied in the harshest terms for better than 150 years. That the composer of the Declaration Of Independence was the lover of this wholly
enslaved woman is irony and somber enough, but add to that the fact Sally Hemmings was in all probability Jefferson's wife's half-sister, and we see a truly bizarre soap opera only real life can provide. Burr and Hamilton, law partners in their relative youth, whored around early vivid New York like most men of their class, and almost certainly, even in their later days, shared the same lovers. Hamilton, no doubt to his long-suffering Christian wife's horror, was also the lover of Mrs. Charlotte Church, his wife's sister. Burr, having married the measurably older Theodosia Prevost, was too an early widower, and played the raking bachelor schtick until a stroke felled first his libido and then his person, in his eighties. A legend, whose factual basis is doubtful at best, has it that Burr is the true father of eighth President Martin Van Buren; and indeed, Burr was in Kinderhook, New York, the Van Buren hometown, at the time Van Buren was conceived, but nothing else corroborates the story, unless one considers the almost totally irrelevant fact that Burr certainly fathered at least one bastard, who grew up to become a silversmith in New York City. It was Burr who played matchmaker to Madison and Dolley, she of pastries fame; Madison being a very shy studious man, vivacious Dolley in sore need of rescue from boring widowhood, and Burr being the ultimate diplomat between them. Franklin fathered at least one bastard, who in turn fathered a bastard, and all three made the trip to France to beg for help during the Revolution, thus demonstrating how blase' the attitude was toward such "scandals." Washington, though probably sterile and built in such a way as to suspect endocrinal problems, was a well-known womaniser, though more in the flirtatious sense, as Martha held the purse-strings (from her first husband, Washington married into widow Martha's money) and therefore George's balls. Paine was a hedonist in all things; his vices, if one wishes to call them so, were many. Monroe is as unremarkable in this regard as he is in most others, while Jackson, whom I would call the Transition President, from the Founders to the Wreckers, was a rigid foul-mouthed Protestant who nonetheless commited adultery and made his wife a bigamist, as the former Rachel Donelson had not yet recieved a legal divorce from her first husband when Jackson wed her (they were married two years before that "technicality" was corrected). Adams the Puritan was a straight arrow in this regard, as well he should have been, for his wife, Abigail, was a brilliant and loyal woman, who, in less-sexist days, would have made a fine public servant--or anything else her ambition desired.
Always known for his tart tongue, Adams must have admired and been immensely proud of Abigail's cutlass-work in her heated letters to Jefferson, whose very existence, considering his many enemies, some deserving, was based on his ability to evade such slashings. Abigail was a worldly genius where the equally Christian Elizabeth Hamilton was provincial and facile. But not all the Founders shared the prevailing view that women were inferior, or as common put, "above" such nitty-gritty endeavors as politics and law. Burr's only legitimate child was a daughter, Theodosia, named of course for her mother. Burr intentionally raised her as the average man of his class would raise a son; he taught her or had others teach her Latin and Greek, the works of the English poets, Shakespeare of course, mathematics, the standard liberal arts education which made those lucky enough to get it in that era some of the most knowledgeable people the world has ever seen. Theodosia often discussed political strategy with Burr, and politics may have even been responsible for her marriage to Senator Alston of South Carolina, where Burr needed support late in his career. Letters between the father and daughter are witty and almost flirtatious--Burr tells her adhesive details of his mistresses and adventures; candidly advises her on sexuality and worldly issues in a manner which would render at least uncomfortable most modern fathers (and daughters). Burr was the moral opposite of the Puritan Adams, and is absolutely alien to modern WASPs in his earthiness and candour; while it's odd in the sense that he was known for a time as the finest gentleman in New York (and its most eligible bachelor), he was like a benign sort of Borgia, benign to everyone but Hamilton, that is...
Which brings us to the subject of battles, political and physical, moral and mortal. The founding days where a time in which one had to watch what they said, and to whom they said it. An insult like "scoundrel", from a social equal, could result in strenuous demands for retraction, if not immediate instructions to meet in a secluded field for pistols at ten paces. These men were comrades in purpose, to a point, but comeraderie was often wholly absent from their dealings. Adams hated Franklin, Hamilton and Jefferson; Washington hated Burr and Monroe; Hamilton hated everybody at one time or another; Jefferson hated Burr, Marshall, Adams (though they eventually reconciled), and Randolph of Roanoke; Monroe hated Hamilton and Washington; everyone but Jefferson ended up hating Paine; and so on. Of course they all loathed the idea of political parties, bless them, but eventually they began to cluster around certain ideologies, and the fighting betwixt was gorey and often personal, among the Founders and among their underlings. While Jefferson employed often brilliant (in their character assassinations) hacks to do his dirty work, and thus shielded his person if not his reputation from retaliation, Hamilton, who had made his way in the world with only his mouth and mind, didn't know when to shut the fuck up. He often got himself into hot water, and in an irony of fate Burr interceded to stop a certain duel between Hamilton and Monroe, managing to save both men's honor, always the ostensible purpose of duels themselves, in the process. Hamilton's son Philip was killed in a duel. Jackson, always a hothead, fought several duels, killing at least one man, and himself taking a bullet in the process. John Randolph of Roanoke was an eager duelist, every bit as cantankerous and hotheaded as Jackson. Then there's the most famous duel of all, in which Burr killed Hamilton at Weehawken, New Jersey. Though the political reasons behind the duel are complicated and considerable, in reality both men were finished as Founders. While Burr's career was in shambles, thanks to completely unwarranted and ruthless actions by Jefferson and the uncle-nephew duo of George and DeWitt Clinton, Hamilton had managed, as he did so often, to destroy himself while intending to destroy others (where he too was successful, and indeed was
too successful), others being in this instance Adams then Burr. At the time of his death, he was neting pitiful results in forming a Christian Party (Hamilton converted after his son's death, while piously insisting that he himself would never again duel, a promise he broke at least once too often). But where he was about to sink into obscurity had he lived, Hamilton gained fame forever death, while taking great pains before finally expiring to blacken Burr's reputation so much that Burr is still villified to this day. Still, Hamilton's insults, some going back 10 years, and his political machinations don't seem like enough to warrant Burr's challenge to duel. Burr was famous for being the most thick-skinned man in the public spotlight, never refuting a claim that he was so and so's lover, or so and so's father; and not offering much rebuttal when the Jeffersonian press regularly and viciously libelled him. Hamilton must have said something else, something of immense gravity in which Burr, even in his later years, would never discuss. Though we will never know the truth, surely the most interesting theory is that Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton because Hamilton made the ghastly (but correct??) assertion that Burr had carnal relations with his own daughter Theodosia.
Monroe, Washington and Hamilton in uniform at Valley Forge; Franklin, Jay and Adams in dire diplomatic straits in Paris; Hamilton, James Wilson, and Mason at the Constitutional Convention; Burr, Luther Martin, Marshall, and Jefferson (in absentia, through the Federal Prosecuters) at Burr's treason trial; the Founders often worked through their hate for each other to bring about, often inadvertently, some of the best things in our Government now gone wrong; just as the adversarial system works fairly well in law, the Founders as adversaries brought often fair if not often pleasant results to the problems of government. Today, politicians never fail to pat each other on the back in "mutual respect", however much they badmouth each other when speaking to their Faithful. In truth, the modern politician has but little in the way of difference to his colleagues on the "other side" of the supposed ideological fence. The same corporations, more or less, pay for both parties, and the differences between politicians and parties are now just in degree, and never in fundamentals. This sad condition is by design, for in America no party can be truly populist or truly reformatory; it operates for the sole intention of maintaining the status quo, whereas the noblest of the Founders, at their best, abhorred the status quo of their day.
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Specifically IAlexander Hamilton : The First Secretary of the Treasury, and de facto "power behind the throne" in Washington's administration, Hamilton was perhaps the most ingenius though most reckless of the Founders. Hamilton was born in the West Indies, the bastard of a Scottish nobleman. Thus by illegitimate birth the already-sizable Puritan minority in the country would not accept him as an
elected public servant. Add to that his birth on foriegn soil, his extremely elitist personality, and his incontinent slanderings, and one can see how Hamilton had to use other means to gain power. The means lay in his charm, especially in his ability to seem as a son to doddering old men like Washington, and in his brilliance in the field of economics, learned as a child from Jewish financiers at his island home. Hamilton's efforts at law and economics gave America mastery over its fiscal problems inherited from the costly Revolution; his programs insured that the U.S. would gain an excellent credit rating, and a place where foriegn investment was seen as safe and welcome.
Like so many who superficially though relevantly exhibit over-compensations--people like Stalin, Napoleon and Hitler--Hamilton, if to less-dreadful immediate results, also left the people more like himself to rub shoulders with those who would never truly accept him as an equal. Thus Hamilton, who should have made common cause with the common man, detested Democracy in all its forms. Hamilton's aim was that America be a land governed by elites, a land of commerce and factories, a country with a strong central government whose might would be furthered by military and diplomatic aggression. Obviously, Hamilton's basic design has been followed with bloody and dollar-driven alacrity; America is a Hamiltonian world of elites, always busy making money in the bloody business of foriegn adventures, while his strong central government keeps the malcontents at bay at home, with its police everywhere kicking down doors to arrest or kill "terrorists", drug users, parking violators, or whomever in its particular taste at the time : years ago, it was the speakeasy, while today it's the offices of some Islamic Charity. Who's next? By 1802 Hamilton dismissed the Constitution as "a worthless fabric," a sentiment also shared in mind and in practice by his many modern imitators.
Hamilton came to power in New York, enjoying the patronage of the powerful Schuylers. He was renowned as a brilliant lawyer, though his vanity sometimes compelled him to claim more than he'd earned, as was also true in the instance he claimed authorship of some of Madison's best essays in the "anonymously" written
Federalist Papers which defended the newly-minted Constitution. As one of the original and most fundamentalist of the Federalists, he incurred the wrath of many political rivals, which often led to long-running quarrels of a personal and libelous nature. Perhaps still worse were his rivalries within his own party, which, indeed led to the very destruction of his party after Hamilton engineered a viscious smear-campaign against then-President John Adams, whom Hamilton saw as a traitor to ideology for his peacemaking with France in 1799. When Hamilton saw that Burr was leaning toward picking up the pieces of the Federalists to further his own ambitions, it was the shot that spurred the avalanche which eventually led to his death and Burr's Western adventures.
Hamilton was famous for his charm with women and indeed his womanising. He was short and redhaired, with a fair complexion. He was a brave man in the Revolutionary War, always harbored military ambitions (whatever his office, he liked to be refered to as "General"), and his Napoleon-fetish was apparent in his dreams of conquering Mexico after his political "retirement". He was known to have a fine singing voice and to be an excellent conversationalist. His son's death affected him greatly, though he apparently wasn't above using the tragedy for political purposes. Hamilton's home, called The Grange, was just north of New York City, where he is buried. Were it not for General Schuyler's money, Hamilton's wife and daughter (reduced to a catatonice state by her brother's death) would have been destitute, as Hamilton was in massive debt, and no amount of brilliant shystering on his part ever did bring his books into the black; like most of the Founders, Hamilton died in insolvency--ironic, for such a master of economics.
George Washington: The first President and "Father of the Country," Washington is probably the most famous of all the Founders; his fame giving rise to many legends.
Born in 1732, Washington was a yeoman type, never of the true upper-class, until he married the wealthy widow Martha, rather late in his life. He started as a land-surveyor, and then worked his way up in the British Colonial army, with several lack-lustre performances in the French and Indian War. But Washington had force of personality and an incredible sense of his own importance which
usually elicited, contrary to normal presumption, confidence and subservience in his countrymen and colleagues. Washington never did cut down a cherry tree, nor did he exhibit any military genius at any time--in fact, Washington never won a battle unless his army had at least a 4-to-1 advantage over the enemy. He often failed to seize intiative, and his defeat in New York is still one of the humiliating ever suffered by an American army. Still, Washington commanded respect and attention, and though he was careful to seem regal and serene, he had a famous temper that soldiers respected--or else.
Several in the American Army took issue with Washington's failures and the Continental Congress which Washington politically manipulated in order to save face and insure his opportunities. Burr was one, as well as General Gates, General Arnold, and Captain James Monroe. Proving that forgiveness, humility, and responsibility aren't prerogatives of the American Character, the American Father never forgot those who knew of his failures. Thus, when Senator Burr of New York wished to research Revolutionary War documents, in the Executive Library, he was stopped by Jefferson on order of Washington, on the specious grounds of "separation of powers". Legends must be protected from such ugly things as facts.
The cherry tree story comes from Parson Mason Locke Weems, Washington's first biographer, whose madly successful book unfortunately set the pace for most American histories and caused the national myth-making habit so prevalent today. Weems wrote a cornball story, half-fantasy, but perfect for the Disneyland society we continue to pay to live in.
The need for a strong national government, while not exactly intelligently argued by Washington, was nonetheless fueled by his ideology and character. Washington was, to be kind, intellectually simple, even in the opinion of his admirers, but his belief in Law and Order was infectious, especially to snobbish Democracy-haters like Hamilton. Thus, when poor veterns of the Revolution rebelled against a tax on their whisky, Washington was first to demand they be crushed. One can see how this appeals to Our Holy Masters of the Police State today, and has always throughout our history been a precious sentiment to the Imperialists and Plutocrats among US. Obviously, a Revolution was a good thing, when against King George the Autocrat and the protections of (his) property at the expense of the welfare of the populace, but to our George (then and now), Revolutions against Plutocrats and their property-protectors is a naughty thing, to be crushed by, then, the militia's muskets, and crushed now by the rubber-bullets and tear gas of riot police. The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act-ors can take some solace in knowing not much has changed. For the rest of US, there's taxation without
true representation, or emigration.
Much of Washington's Presidency was devoted to restraint. Rightly, Washington feared setting the wrong precedent, and so perhaps inevitably set a precedent for inactivity, righteously adhered to among his followers in office, except, of course, when it's time to make a fun war or annex other people's lands. Most of Washington's time in office was devoted to choosing finery like Presidental china or Presidential Seals for the sides of the Presidential coach. He took great pains to establish elaborate protocols for his court : how one should address the President, where supplicants should stand, and so on.
Laizzez-faire man that he was, Washington let Hamilton control the daily functions of his cabinet, and though Hamilton was almost certainly corrupt in his years at the Treasury, Washington never lost confidence in his pupil and military heir-apparent, even to the extent that he, while in public keepping a neutral stance, supported the New Yorker over his fellow Virginian, Secretary Of State Thomas Jefferson.
To further explain Washington's fatherly attitude to Hamilton, one need only point to Washington's lack of a male heir. Indeed, if Washington had had a son, America might have been founded as a monarchy, as it was, the Founders toyed with the idea of an official nobility, using the title "margrave." In the end, they didn't make official that which exists in fact, and so of course we are spared the indignity of addressing our corporate rulers as Margrave Gates or His Margraveship Bush. Small comforts...
Physically, Washington was a tall man, tall by even modern standards; this commanding attribute was alas tempered somewhat by his tendency to corpulence, which was exacerbated by a penchant for wearing his old army uniforms, several sizes too small, and his odd build. The Father of America, so very manly indeed, happened to have the breasts and buttocks of a woman, possibly from a hormonal imbalance. Adding to his lack of attractiveness is the sad fact that Washington had suffered from smallpox in youth, and so was deeply pockmarked about his body and face, with a generally jaundiced complexion. He was plagued by carbuncles--what we would call boils or huge pimples. His mansion of course was the famous Mount Vernon, surrounded by pecan trees, in Virginia, where he died in 1799.
John Jay: First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, one can think of Jay as having, essentially, the same prejudices as Hamilton and Washington, though less meanly stated while more thoughtful, respectively. From an old New York family of French Huguenot-descent, Jay was at times a lawyer, judge, Governor of New York, and diplomat. Jay was co-author, with Madison and Hamilton, of the
Federalist Papers, though he only contributed about ten essays to the whole. He was ill during the Constitutional Convention, and so his mark is not personally felt in the document, but his spirit is there, as it was forcefully shared by Hamilton and Adams and the rest of the Federalists. Jay signed the treaty ending the Revolutionary War, as treaty whose stipulations proved very unpopular at home; before that he was sent, with Franklin and Adams, to beg for French aid to the cause, during which, Adams wrote of him, "[he's] honest--I think." Jay eventually resigned his Chief Justiceship when he grew disenchanted with the job, and was seen little in political affairs thereafter. Jay was a tall thin man with a hooked nose, and thus easily and somewhat fairly caricatured as a condescending snob.
Gouvenor Morris : New York representative to the Continental Congress as well as to Constitutional Convention, Morris was one of the wealthiest of the Founders, and shared the fear of Democracy, hatred of the French Revolution, and anti-Jacobinist paranoia so endemic to the Federalists. Morris was always a close friend and ally of General Hamilton, close enough to give the benediction at Hamilton's funeral. Often called on as envoy to British interests and respresentatives, Morris was a smooth diplomat and wrote candid and interesting commentary on his contemporaries. Naturally, he was religious in a social sense, though enough of an 18th century-styled voluptuary to enjoy good food, wine, and women, as per most of the other Founders, to varying degree. As a younger man Morris lost his left leg at the knee in a coachwreck, and so was famed and easily identified by his wooden pegleg. Morris's mansion was conceitedly named, in characteristic absence of self-consciousness, "Morrisiana."
Benjamin Franklin: Oldest representative to the Constitutional Convention, Franklin lived to see his eighties, and was certainly the most famous American of his time. Inventor of the Franklin stove, the lightning rod, and bifocals; "discoverer" of electricity; publisher of
Poor Richard's Almanac; Franklin was a true man of the Enlightment, a man of many interests and specialties. The Sage of Philadelphia was famous in Europe. well-liked in France and England, even during the war, and, as was Hamilton, a British spy. He alone held the American delegation at Paris together during the dark days of the war, where his sloth and hedonism incurred the wrath of fellow diplomat John Adams. Franklin was famous for his wit, his knowledge of science, and general worldliness. As a man who made his name on his own, his extremely rare success has unfortunately been touted by conservatives as "typically American." On the other hand, they are not so wont to brag on his womanising, slothful, voluptuary ways. Franklin famously argued for the wild turkey to be the national symbol, as opposed to the forbidding eagle, which he thought ignoble.
Politically, though he died before the age of schisms, Franklin was a conservative, and despite his loose Frenchified ways, he favored English interests and customs. He alone among the Conventionists argued for a unicameral legislature, instead of the bicameral congress we settled on. Yet despite his conservative ways and friendship with proto-plutocrats, Franklin often voiced warnings on the interests of the elite. Probably the most bizarre anecdote about Franklin is that, due to suffering from a kidney stone, he often had to stand on his head to urinate. Franklin was a stout, balding man, often unkempt.
John Adams: Though one of the
few legitimate Christians among the Founders, John Adams of Massachusetts nonetheless drank, smoked, and enjoyed the works (and company) of his Deist, Agnostic, and Atheiest contemporaries, as well as read with great interest the glorious pagan past (this is said to prevent the primitive, moronic, modern Born-Again Christians from claiming, as is their wont, that the United States was founded by Christians for Christian ideals: as always,
they lie.) Adams served as the first Vice-President and second President of the United States, only to lose the political support of his "faction" thanks to some nasty manoeuvering by Hamilton. Adams sired John Quincy Adams, our sixth President, who in turn fathered Charles Francis Adams, Ambassador to England during our Civil War and later Congressman, who in turn sired the historians Henry and Brooks Adams, whose geopolitical theories were adapted by Theodore Roosevelt in a most Imperial fashion. Further exhibiting the de-evolution in American public servants, the Adams Family was the first political dynasty whose members served in a national capacity. One needs only to look at the other families on the list to see the rapid degradation from intelligence and rectitude to stupidity and avarice : in the sad journey from The Adamses to the Harrisons to the Kennedys to the Bushes one can see the inverse of supposed human progress and so the political/anthropological equivalencies shows de-evolution from
Homo sapiens to
Gorilla gorilla to
australopithecines to "Lucys," for whom love can only come from Leakeys whose shared intellectual and moral leakage has spilled onto the rubble and rabble of fossilised America to form a conglomerate clusterfuck, impervious to would-be excavators who wish to reconstruct the scattered buried Adamses within.
Adams was known as prickly or saucy, never one to be reticent with his opinions and notoriously thin-skinned. This may come as a surprise to those who think public discourse must be "respectful." To Adams, Hamilton was a "creole bastard" while Jefferson, his successor as President, was a hypocrite whose innauguration Adams, rather sourly, did not attend. This behaviour negates the opinions of those who think that graciousness, at all costs, is a sign of good character. Adams was rightly bitter in defeat, because of the betrayals by Hamilton and Adams's own inherited cabinet whom the Secretary of the Treasury controlled. In Hamilton's view, it was in our interest to make war on France, something Adams had no stomach for. And so he sent his own ambassadors to France to counter those already there under Hamilton's control, and signed a peace. This was so important to Adams that he wished it, above all his other accomplishments, to be his epitaph : "here lies John Adams, who made peace with France in the year 1799." Adams had carved upon the White House (of which he was the first occupant) mantlepiece, "may only good and wise men ever rule this house," which, of course, should have been taken down on principle so very many years ago. Naturally, John Kennedy had it most visibly restored when he remodeled the rest of the executive mansion.
Though certainly prosperous, Adams was far from grandly wealthy, and only had luxury to serve the public due to the faithful and expert management of his Braintree farm and homestead by his wife, Abigail. John and Abigail's letters are true American Literature; in reading them one is charmed if saddened, for Abigail's gender was the only "reason" for her lack of achievement in public affairs, and subsequent lack of fame : as a woman, she had not opportunity. Both Adams and Abigail were good on the evils of slavery; they often wondered, understandably, how men like Jefferson could enslave blacks while espousing the inalienable freedoms of mankind.
John Adams was probably the most dutiful and hard-working President we have had, with his only competition in that privilege being his son, John Quincy. Of course this isn't as grand a statement as it may seem, with Bushes always galavanting to Texas or Maine, Reagans taking naps during cabinet meetings, and Coolidges sleeping eleven hours a day, while others were often only busy when putting down martinis and whiskys and golf clubs, to order military strikes--even vacationing Presidents know how to get their kicks. As a type of Christian who truly lived the "Protestant Work Ethic," he was predisposed to notions of duty and toil. Since he was familiar with and enamored of the ideas of the Enlightenment, Adams was not one to force his religion upon others, a habit of the ugliest sort the vast majority of Christians have always clinged to. If one must give a short answer to the question, was Adams a believing Christian, the answer is yes, at least during his active life. But there are clues as to him releasing the dogma later in life, such as his comment written to Jefferson, after their reconciliation, that "several times upon my late reading, I have been at the point of crying out, 'would this not be the best of worlds, with no religion in it?'" If nothing else, sooner or later, John Adams became sensible regarding any subject. As far as his embrace of religion in his youth and active years, it is obvious though, atypically, pleasant: Adams was a Puritan, true, but already then the Unitarian church was becoming liberal and refined, as indeed it is one of the few Christian denominations in the modern era where one can be treated in a Christly rather than Falwell-ian or Manichean way; fire and brimstone preaching and serious talks of "God" are ugly to them. All this religion talk is to pre-mpt, of course, the modern Christians from hijacking, as it were, John Adams's legacy, while hopefully giving them a verbal thumb-in-the-eye for even entertaining that notion. John Adams, in rare sensibility for a Christian, supported the separation of church and state. The writer smiles as he writes these lines.
But John Adams did incorporate into the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, of which he wrote the bulk, many Christian
ideas, as opposed to dogmas and doctrines. Ideas like public assistance for the poor, public funding for infrastructures for the common welfare, public-funded compulsory education--liberal things, all. Of course Christians haven't a monopoly on such causes, and indeed one needs only to read the vitriolic babblings of modern conservative Christians to know they are often
against such things rather more than the general populace or the "heathens." Also added to his Constitution, which was on display and was used as an example during the Federal Constitutional Convention, were implorings for standard virtues like thrift, honesty, duty, etc.--all things any athiest, secular humanist, scientologist or new age crystal-worshiper would instantly agree with. Though he supported the military during the Revolution, when many in the land were clamoring for war with France, Adams sued for peace--in spite of his Christianity, Adams was no war-lover.
Adams meanly discredited virtues in others that were, in himself, absent. He hated Franklin's smoothness and wit, he hated the broadness and multiplicity of Jefferson's personality (which admittedly and sadly, often took the form of hypocrisy), detested Burr's vagueness and opportunism; Adams was always blunt, sincere and principled. But then he was also what we would now call a paranoid, always certain that that he was underappreciated or schemed against. One might even say that he prefered having such an attitude, for he often was concerned that letting his guard down was easy when people were kind; in fact, Adams flourished in open conflict, it was his nature : "I thank God that He gave me stubborness when I know I am right." Alas, just because one is paranoid doesn't mean people aren't after them, as Kurt Cobain would agree; Adams was rightfully paranoid of Jefferson and Hamilton, who together, had him visciously slandered and ultimately crushed, politically. In fact, Jefferson's henchmen in the press, under the Sage of Monticello's obvious patronage, printed awful libels about Adams that led directly to the two men falling out, only reconciling an epoch later, when both were elderly. Abigail, always protective of her husband, was for years beforehand as much as Adams a pen-pal and friend to Jefferson, and so took bitterly the hack-jobs on her husband's character, and complained vividly to Jefferson for his betrayal of their trust and friendship.
Since he was blunt and pugnacious, Adams made a poor diplomat, though to his credit he never turned down a diplomatic mission, nor did he slack while on those missions. But in the end, his character was not cut out for such interpersonal finery; one British diplomat called him the most ungracious man he had ever seen. A stocky youth when he graduated from Harvard, Adams tended to corpulence in middle age; he lost much of his hair early, had an odd bird-like nose, was short, fastidious in his person and habits.
John Quincy Adams: Though Adlai Stevenson and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to name two, were very intelligent well-educated men, the modern politican is most often as vacuous and ill-educated as the common used car salesman, whom he also resembles in several other characteristics. A nice counter to Bush-like cretinism is John Quincy Adams, who was privy to one of the finest educations of any American. Harvard was standard of course for any Massachusetts boy of Adams's class, but unlike Bush who also attended Harvard, Adams actually learned arts and sciences and about the world, instead of relying on his family's influence on administration and professors so that his presence was tolerated. Add to Adams's university training his journeys with his father to Europe, where, as a boy already having Latin and Greek with his native English, he learned first French, which he perfected, then Dutch, then on to Prussia where he learned German, and then on to St. Petersburg (without his father), as a diplomatic secretary, where he learned Russian. One would like to resurrect Adams when foolish modern conservatives brag on Bush's ability to drawl "y tu?".
Having such an education and work ethic, Adams toiled in service to his nation starting in his adolescence; he never stopped, for he died in 1848 on the floor of Congress, in extreme old age for that era. Adams, alone among Presidents, accepted an inferior office after finishing his Presidency, becoming a Representative to Congress, where he among other things broke, finally, the protocols minted by Southerners which prevented a speaker from addressing slavery in open session. His final words were, "this is the last of earth; I am composed."
Like his father, John Quincy was too prickly and principled to form coalitions or effect compromises in order to keep power; just as John Adams was outmanoeuvered--out politicked--from office after serving a single term, so too was John Quincy. In the election of 2000, many pointed to the fact that a President taking office without truly being "elected" is a phenomenon that has happened before in our history, the most famous example given being John Quincy's "election" in 1824. In that year, the vote was sundered between several candidates, as the Federalist party had long ceased to exist, the Democratic-Republican party split, while that year marked the first appearance in American politics of a third party, the Anti-Masonics or "Know Nothings." Andrew Jackson got the most votes, but far from a majority, and so the election was thrown into the house. Since the powerful Henry Clay considered Adams to be the lesser of two evils, he whipped the Congress into voting Adams the Presidency, infuriating Jackson and guaranteeing the Adams administration would be met with bad faith from its very birth. Typically, there is a quid pro quo dynamic to these matters, and in this instance it was Clay's being named Secretary Of State, in that day an office considered stepping-stone to the Presidency, in Adams's cabinet. Incidentally, this disputed election led to universal sufferage, a disingenuous term as it meant, merely, that all white males could vote, rather than those white males who held property. The Founders were good in that way : Jefferson's iffy election of 1800 had led to a Constitutional Amendment reforming the ballot, as the election debacle of 1824 led to voting reforms. What reform shall come from the election of 2000? Answer : not a damn thing. The Founders were amiable to reform, where the Wreckers, the moderns, froth with reactionary sentiment anytime reform is mentioned.
Tant pis.
All of the Adamses wrote copiously; all kept diaries which can be read today. All were work-a-holics, rising before dawn to get to state business or tend to correspondence.
John Quincy's accomplishments were few during his Presidency: he had started with ambitious public works projects, like national observatories and road-building. Naturally, this makes him a "tax and spend" liberal, and of course John Maynard Keynes eventually demonstrated the validity and sensiblity of that economic mindset. But he was thwarted by what was by then a degraded population as exhibited by the campaign slogan "Jackson who can fight or Adams who can write"--writing and intellectualism being a "bad" thing. The country was more ignorant, more Christian, more frontier-minded, and more bent on killing Indians and stealing territory; the Wrecking had started, from the bottom upward.
But Adams's accomplishments were still great, though made through lesser offices. He, as James Monroe's Secretary Of State, created the "Monroe Doctrine", which essentially stated that while the United States would keep out of the affairs of the Old World, foriegn powers were to refrain from meddling anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Naturally, such a self-limit of Imperialism must be dispensed with by the Owners Of USA, Inc, and so this honorable policy ceased to have meaning after our nasty business in the Philippines. Movie goers might remember the excellent portrayal of John Quincy by Anthony Hopkins in the film
Amistad, in which J.Q. served as legal counsel to rebel slaves. This story as portrayed in the movie is mostly true, and indeed Adams's final years in Congress and law practice were spent doing good works for the cause of Abolition.
Unlike our era where nepotism is considered par for the course, the Adamses were sensitive to the idea of public rectitude and also were notoriously hard on themselves as well as their relatives, and so father often withheld promotion from son--so much so that Jefferson complained for John Quincy's benefit when John Adams was to fill a departmental position. Both Adamses were grumpy and loathe to compliment others, yet they were harder still on themselves, expecting nothing but perfection and so rarely pleased even in victory. Would that we could have such tireless perfectionists as public servants today.
John Quincy went bald early, but was more finely built than his father, and thankfully--for him--inherited his mother's nose. He had an eye condition which made him constantly teary, and he tended to have a rather large pot-belly in his older age; he is the earliest president of whom we have a picture, rather than only paintings, as he lived long enough to see the invention of the daguerrotype, an early form of photograph.
John Marshall: A Founder, but probably the ultimate Shaper of the republic was Chief Justice John Marshall, nominated to the court by John Adams, who had rushed to fill with Federalists as many vacancies as possible in his final days in office. In some ways it was Marshall alone who had kept alive the Federalist tendency to elevate the Union at the expense of states' rights, quite a feat indeed after Jefferson and his following Virginians gained the Presidency.
United States Federal law is of course based on English common law, as is all state law with the wierd exception of Louisiana, whose student shysters have the misfortune of learning both common law
and the Napoleonic Code. As such, the US Federal Judiciary followed concepts such as
stare decisis, the sanctity attributed to precedent, that were and are foundations in common law. Since Marshall was the first Chief Justice to hold office for an appreciable amount of time (36 years, a long-standing record until William O. Douglas broke it in the early 1970s), he was able to set a great many precedents--considering the fact that Marshall was a total conservative, his precedent-setting is not on whole a very good thing.
While Marshall was for a stronger federal government, his conservatism, as is common with that ideology, made him value property at the expense of people; and so instead of, say, reinforcing the idea that the Bill of Rights should apply to the states, thus strengthening Federal control (not to mention enforcing what the authors of the Bill of Rights had intended all along!), a probable theoretical course for a Federalist to take, he ignored people but made damn sure the rights of property were protected. Our loss. Marshall thought it appropriate that government encourage business ("encourage" meaning, give it as many or more rights than people), which opened the doors to power for our current overlords, the Corporations. His reasoning for opposing the forced removal, by the Jackson and Van Buren administrations, of the Cherokee tribes was based on reasoning of property : the Indians were not being denied civil rights, but their land was being unfairly taken away from them. Eventually, the court's love of property at the expense of persons culminated in the Dred Scott decision, a major spark to the Civil War. Marshall's successor as Chief, Roger B. Taney of Maryland, was author of Dred Scott; one wonders if he realised he was only reaping what the court had sown when, in 1862 at the hieght of the Civil War and Lincoln's never-ending violations of the Constitution, Taney threw in rage a copy of the document at Lincoln's head. It was an expensive lesson, expensive in blood, that the Wreckers never intended to learn--and still haven't today.
Perhaps the exact moment when the original frame of the constitution was shattered came when Marshall delivered the court's decision in
Marbury vs. Madison (1803), a case in which a minor government employee demanded the job outgoing President John Adams intended him to have, but which the new Jefferson administration was determined to withhold from him. Marshall, slyly, declared the law in question unconstitutional, and so could not consider the merits of Mr. Marbury. Madison and Jefferson were happy, because they had denied a Federalist an office they intended for a person of their own party, while Marshall had to be secretly orgasmic : he had set a precedent that allowed the court to supercede Congress, a precedent in direct conflict with the intent--
and letter--of the Constitution itself. This act enormously increased the court's power. Often the court has used judicial review to noble ends, but just as often, especially before FDR's nominations changed the court (only to have Nixon's nominations send it straight back to hell), judicial review was used to smash reformatory populist laws that often were intended to temper the plutocrat's control of the country.
One decent thing to come out of Marshall's tenure on the court was probably less due to his legalistic reasoning and more due to his (mutually shared) hatred of his first cousin, Thomas Jefferson. The case was the Aaron Burr treason trial, and the result was that there was great burden put on the government to prove a treasonous action. Although modern jingos consider things like flag-burning treasonous, thanks to John Marshall the government can't imprison or shoot someone who merely states seditious phrases or enacts symbolic gestures; a fact that no doubt disappoints yahooing conservative morons just as it infuriated Joe McCarthy and Harry Truman. Aaron Burr considered the decision fair on the sensible grounds that it kept him from the gallows, where it obstructed President Thomas Jefferson's vendetta against his former vice-president, as well as having the obvious benefit of discouraging witch-hunts by unhinged Executive Powers, a nice thing indeed when one considers the as yet untested by the Supreme Court P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and our absolutely fascist Attorney General John Ashcroft now enforcing laws in accordance with his
personal contract with Jesus and idiotic notions of "loyalty".
Marshall was a tall man, with wide shoulders which set to even worse proportion his already comparatively small head. He had indian-black hair which fought gray quite successfuly even to his old age, and possessed dark--almost black--eyes.
"it is assumed that men become radicals because they are naturally criminal, or because they have been bribed by Russian gold .. [but their motivation] is simply the conviction that the Government they suffer under is unbearably and incurably corrupt.. The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."
--H.L. Mencken
"Let a wave of intolerance wash over you... Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation... We are called by God to conquer this country... We don't want pluralism."
--Randall Terry, founder, "Operation Rescue"
"Big Business, in America, is almost wholly devoid of anything even poetically describable as public spirit. It is frankly on the make... Big Business was in favor of Prohibition, believing that a sober workman would make a better slave than one with a few drinks in him." --H.L. Mencken
BemusedContempt
[This message was edited by retardomontalban on 10-30-02 at 07:04 AM.]
[This message was edited by rhon831 on 10-30-02 at 08:25 AM.]
