"More Worried About Armed Blacks Than British Redcoats"

"It's because of several things. The emphasis on the Second Amendment has been crafted as a well-regulated militia in terms of (opposing) a tyrannical government or stopping a foreign invasion, and the individual right to bear arms. That's the way it's been cast in the legal debates. That's driven our historical debates. We've got a weird bifurcation in the scholarship between the history of slavery and the history of the Second Amendment. What I'm doing is saying these things are all happening at the same time."

John Blake at CNN interviews Carol Anderson about her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

"Traffic Analysis, in a Different Form"

"Along with Yale University historian Edmund S. Morgan and other contemporaries, he challenged the theory of Charles A. Beard that the founders were wealthy opportunists less interested in ideas than in power, using revolutionary rhetoric to arrange a society that primarily benefited themselves. Through a close reading of political pamphlets, Bailyn believed that the founders held sincere and reasoned ideas about democracy and profoundly objected to British claims of ultimate power to enact laws for the colonies."

Hillel Italie at The Daily Sentinel reports the death of Bernard Bailyn.

Gordon Wood praises Bailyn in a 2015 Weekly Standard article.

As does Daniel N. Gullotta at The Bulwark.

"There Was No Slaveholders' Ploy"

"A good way to summarize what actually happened inside the convention is to recall the place of slavery in the different plans that the convention considered about electing the president.  The delegates weighed three options: the president would be selected by direct popular vote, by Congress, or by electors who would be chosen either by the people or the state legislatures. Direct election failed, but not because it was intolerable to the slaveholders, as Amar maintains. It failed because it enjoyed little support in the convention, for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery. The real choice for the framers was between the congressional method and the electoral method. Both methods gave the slave states an extra measure of power in selecting the president; so once direct election was scrapped, the convention was bound to grant the slave states some sort of bonus. But this was because the great majority of the convention did not trust in the people at large to choose the president." 

Sean Wilentz at History News Network writes that "like most of my fellow American historians, I have been wrong about slavery and the Electoral College."

"A False Dichotomy"

"But there is no basis for saying that the United States is somehow 'not a democracy, but a republic.' 'Democracy' and 'republic' aren't just words that a speaker can arbitrarily define to mean something (e.g., defining democracy as 'a form of government in which all laws are made directly by the people'). They are terms that have been given meaning by English speakers more broadly. And both today and in the Framing era, 'democracy' has been generally understood to include representative democracy as well as direct democracy."

Eugene Volokh in a 2015 Washington Post article tries to settle the issue.

"America's Obsession With Guns Has Roots in a Long, Bloody Legacy of Racist Vigilantism, Militarism, and White Nationalism"

"Our national mythology encourages Americans to see the Second Amendment as a result of the Revolutionary War—to think of it as a matter of arming Minutemen against Redcoats. But, Dunbar-Ortiz argues, it actually enshrines practices and priorities that long preceded that conflict. For centuries before 1776, the individual white settler was understood to have not just a right to bear arms, but a responsibility to do so—and not narrowly in the service of tightly regulated militias, but broadly, so as to participate in near-constant ad-hoc, self-organized violence against Native Americans. 'Settler-militias and armed households were institutionalized for the destruction and control of Native peoples, communities, and nations,' Dunbar-Ortiz writes. 'Extreme violence, particularly against unarmed families and communities, was an aspect inherent in European colonialism, always with genocidal possibilities, and often with genocidal results.'"

At the New Republic, Patrick Blanchfield reviews Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. 

"Without Strong Governments and Effective Laws, They Believed, Liberty Inevitably Degenerated Into Licentiousness and Eventually Anarchy"

"I have been researching and writing about the history of gun regulation and the Second Amendment for the past two decades. When I began this research, most people assumed that regulation was a relatively recent phenomenon, something associated with the rise of big government in the modern era. Actually, while the founding generation certainly esteemed the idea of an armed population, they were also ardent supporters of gun regulations."

Saul Cornell at The Conversation discusses "Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved."

"We Do Not Need to Take Sides in These Battles to Do Justice to Their Histories"

"In books like 'Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s' (1984) and 'Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination' (1992), Dr. Appleby challenged this view.

"She argued that the revolutionaries were more individualistic and optimistic than they had been given credit for. John Locke and Adam Smith had as much influence—or even more—than the radical Whigs on founders like Thomas Jefferson. In her view, the revolutionaries believed that the public good would arise out of the harmonious pursuit of private interests in a market economy."

 

Sewell Chan in The New York Times writes an obituary for historian Joyce Appleby.

And Randy Kennedy reports the death of critic John Berger.

And Robert D. McFadden reports the death of author and journalist Nat Hentoff.

"May Be the Only Founding Father Who Wouldn't Be Baffled or Outraged by America as We Know It Today"

"During America's crucial first years, as the battles were fought to define American notions of freedom, and decide who should have it, Burr was the most powerful voice calling the young country to actually live up to its radical ideal of freedom for all."

In the wake of Hamilton-mania, Carey Wallace in Time defends Aaron Burr.

"Our Misguided Tendency to Blindly Worship the Constitution"

"Pennsylvania physician Benjamin Rush was less diplomatic. 'What is the present moral character of the citizens of the United States?' he asked during the ratification controversy. 'I need not describe it…. Nothing but a vigorous and efficient government can prevent their degenerating into savages.' 'Democracy,' he insisted, 'is the devil's own government.' By the late-1780s it had become conventional wisdom among political elites that, as Elbridge Gerry put it, 'the evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy.' The Constitution was designed to reverse the democratic trajectory of American politics.
"The problem with the economic interpretation, however, is that it tends to conflate elitism with selfishness."

Matthew C. Simpson at The New Republic reviews Michael J. Klarman's The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution.

"Truly Our First 'Civil War'"

"Taylor's not interested in a triumphalist account of the nation's origins; instead, his core arguments deliberately overturn the notion that the Revolution was fought for egalitarian, democratic principles. Most colonists, Taylor highlights, felt deeply attached to the British monarchy on the eve of the Revolution. There was no distinct American identity to speak of, and everywhere Britain's American colonists looked—north to French Canada, south to Spanish America—they saw settlers with virtually no political autonomy. Their king, meanwhile, granted them greater civil liberties than any other European ruler; for much of the 18^th century, British monarchs allowed elected Colonial assemblies to run their own affairs. But rather than inculcating a sense of independence, these Colonial assemblies only made American colonists cherish more deeply their status as 'free-born Englishmen.'
"So why, then, a war for independence?"

Eric Herschthal in Slate reviews Alan Taylor's American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804.

"The Entire Insurrectionist Theory of the Second Amendment Is Fabricated"

"Taken at face value, all of this rhetoric adds up to one very clear belief: If you believe the United States government has grown tyrannical, the Second Amendment protects your right to rebel violently against it, using firearms, to reclaim your liberty. Cruz and his ilk rarely specify precisely what this revolt would look like, but the implication is extraordinarily clear: Armed Americans should shoot enough government officials as is necessary to overthrow perceived oppression. The Cruz-endorsed insurrectionist theory of the Second Amendment, in other words, is basically a tacit permission slip to assassinate political leaders whom one deems to be oppressive.

"And that, it seems, is precisely what Trump implied on Tuesday."

Mark Joseph Stern in Slate discusses how "the GOP's current framing of gun rights quite explicitly licenses an armed revolt against tyrants."

And in a 2011 Atlantic article, Garrett Epps explains the fallacy of "the insurrectionist idea."

The Ordeal of Monticello

"Television correspondent Shannon Lanier is a direct descendant of Sally Hemings through her son, Madison Hemings. 'It's been an interesting journey for me, because it started out when I was a kid, me standing up in class and saying, "Thomas Jefferson is my great-great- great-great-great-great grandfather," and being so happy and proud to brag about it when we're studying the presidents. But then the teacher says, "Sit down and stop telling lies," and all the kids laugh at you.'
"By the mid-1990s the laughing had stopped. Historians even at Monticello were becoming believers. Lanier was 19 when he attended the controversial, first-ever combined Hemings-Jefferson family reunion at Monticello in 1999. 'Before that reunion, I had only known the Hemings descendants from the Madison line of the family,' he said."

Martha Teichner of CBS News reports on recent chronicles about Thomas Jefferson and slavery.

And in The New York Times, Jennifer Schuessler discusses debates over Jefferson, and Paul Finkelman denounces the third president.

First Freedom?

"As both Mr. Clinton’s and Mr. Bush’s uses of the phrase suggest, the ostensible reason for ascribing primacy to religion among constitutionally protected freedoms is its place as the first mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Contrary to Mr. Romney’s 'first freedom' claim, the actual Constitution does not say anything about religious liberty except to state in Article 6 that no religious 'test' will be required of officeholders. Nor does the document once use the word 'God,' an omission that some 18th-century Americans decried. ('A Papist, a Mohomotan, a Deist, yea an Atheist' might someday even become president, one critic warned.)
"The First Amendment, adopted four years later in 1791, does protect 'the free exercise' of religion–but only after barring government from 'establishing' religion. Viewed strictly in terms of sequence, the First Amendement’s 'first freedom' might be seen as freedom from rather than freedom of religion."

Peter Manseau at The New York Times questions the emphasis by politicians on religious liberty.

"That's Right, the Father of Our Country Had No Difficulty Imposing a Health Insurance Mandate"

"Six years later, in 1798, Congress addressed the problem that the employer mandate to buy medical insurance for seamen covered drugs and physician services but not hospital stays. And you know what this Congress, with five framers serving in it, did? It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. That’s right, Congress enacted an individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. And this act was signed by another framer, President John Adams."

Einer Elhauge in The New Republic explores health-care policy during the Early Republic.

"The Deep, Founding Roots of Rowdy, American Populist Protest and Insurrection"

"Like it or not, though, it is Occupy Wall Street that has the most in common, ideologically, not with those Boston merchants and their supporters but with the less well-known, less comfortably acknowledged people who, throughout the founding period, cogently proposed and vigorously agitated for an entirely different approach to finance and monetary policy than that carried forward by the famous founders. Amid horrible depressions and foreclosure crises, from the 1750′s through the 1790′s, ordinary people closed debt courts, rescued debt prisoners, waylaid process servers, boycotted foreclosure actions, etc. (More on that here [9] and here [10].) They were legally barred from voting and holding office, since they didn’t have enough property, so they used their power of intimidation to pressure their legislatures for debt relief and popular monetary policies."

William Hogeland in Salon compares Occupy Wall Street with the Shays' and Whiskey Rebellions.

But Lee Fang at Think Progress connects the protests to the Boston Tea Party.

"A Tale of Greed, Legal Chaos, and Corrupt Business Practices"

"Just how these contests over land play into the Revolution is one of the most debated questions in American history. In 1909, historian Carl Becker argued that the American Revolution was not so much about home rule as 'who should rule at home.' The struggle for independence, in other words, centered less on exalted principles than on the quest for political and economic power by provincial elites. Popular among muckraking classes during the age of Robber Barons, this interpretation was hard to reconcile with a patriotic account of the nation's founding and eventually fell out of favor.
"So Randall is stuck between a rock and a hard place, interpretatively speaking. He wants to connect the Vermont insurrection to 'a greater cause,' to make it the first battle of the American Revolution. And perhaps it was. But if so, does it turn Allen and his Green Mountain Boys into patriots, as Randall would have it? Or does it turn the leaders of the Revolution into bandits, seizing an entire continent for personal gain and dressing the crime up with pretty words?"

François Furstenberg in Slate reviews Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen: His Life and Times.

"All That Gordon Wood Business!"

"His work has made a difference in one more way. It reinforced the center when it was under heavy attack from both extremes. In a gentle reproof to scholars on the left, Wood has offered evidence that 'what is extraordinary about the American Revolution is not . . . the continual deprivation and repression of the mass of ordinary people, but rather their release and liberation.' To conservatives on the right he makes very clear that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were conceived by their framers in dynamic terms, and were intended to grow."

David Hackett Fischer in The New York Times reviews Gordon S. Wood's The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States.

"Purest Podsnappery"

"The ideology of American exceptionalism holds that the Founders of the United States were the most brilliant individuals who ever lived and that the future prosperity and power of the country are to be attributed chiefly to the genius of the federal constitution, drafted in 1787 in Philadelphia (never mind that this was the second U.S. Constitution, replacing the first, the Articles of Confederation, a miserable failure). In the same way that Bible-thumping fundamentalists insist that all of the answers to all of today’s problems can be found in the Good Book, American exceptionalists thump the Federalist Papers. If the history that followed the American founding provides any guidance to us today, it is only the subsequent history of the United States itself. As good American exceptionalists, we are not allowed to peep beyond our borders, to learn from the successes and mistakes of people in other countries.
"Americans have always been proud of their republic--but not too proud to learn from others."

Michael Lind in Salon questions right-wing views of American exceptionalism.

"A Time of Freewheeling Debate"

"The editors assert bluntly that the gentry who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution 'opposed popular democracy and social equality. . . . They did not hold fundamental values that we accept as common currency today.' The book’s goal, they explain, is to help Americans 'grasp the full scope of the American Revolution' by taking “seriously its most progressive participants' and incorporating 'them into our national narrative.'
"Have they succeeded? In large part, yes."

Mary Beth Norton in The New York Times reviews Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation, edited by Alfred F. Young, Gary B. Nash, and Ray Raphael.

"Without a Single Footstep to Guide Us"

"One area where Wood makes a particularly noteworthy contribution is in tracing the surprise development of America’s democratic identity. 'Surprise' is the word. Too often forgotten is the fact that America’s patrician founders harbored great fears about the 'excesses of democracy.' Though the new country was to be a daring trial in self-government, it was expected to be guided less by egalitarian impulses than by the aristocratic beliefs of well-bred gentlemen. That day, however, was quickly waning."

In The New York Times, Jay Winik reviews Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.