"Making This Promise Real Has Been the Work of Generations"

"The new birth of freedom that Abraham Lincoln extolled in the Gettysburg Address required the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which amounted to a second founding. It was this second founding that made the first founding worthy of being saved. Much like the founders before them, those who ushered in a second founding learned from experience, working to improve an imperfect Constitution.  At Gettysburg, Lincoln cast the nation as 'conceived in liberty' and 'dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.' Lincoln's effort was to complete the 'unfinished work' of the founding generation. If Lincoln cast this 'unfinished work' as an effort to restore America to its foundations, to a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, this was an effort to return to something real, but that never actually existed—only the promise of it did."

George Thomas at The Bulwark discusses "America's Imperfect Founding."

"Jackson's Out, the Franklins Are In"

"In recent years, Joe Biden has also become vocal about racial issues, citing the horrors of the Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally in 2017 as his motivation for jumping into the 2020 presidential contest, and calling in his inaugural address for confronting the threat of 'white supremacy.' In response to the civil unrest last year prompted by police brutality against African Americans, Biden made a point of rejecting calls to defund the police but made promises to push for criminal justice reform. Both as a candidate and in his first days as president, Biden has challenged Americans to live up to their ideals, including the proposition that 'all men are created equal.' Ben Franklin's story, therefore, from slaveholder to staunch antislavery advocate, can help remind us of the power and importance of living up to the revolutionary promises of the founding."

Daniel N. Gullotta and Kelsa Pellettiere at The Bulwark discuss "[h]ow to understand President Joe Biden’s choice of Oval Office art."

"Historians Find Evidence Of Nation's Founding Lobbyists' Campaign To Influence Constitution"

"Evidence also suggests that the original lobbyists were skilled in dampening opposition to their clients' agendas. Recovered ledgers revealed that an early attempt at universal healthcare—via a welfare clause in Article IV—was voted down after an advocate for the Apothecaries Guild procured front-row duel tickets for the entire Pennsylvania delegation.According to witness accounts of the time, the Constitution's authors were regularly spotted in the colonies' most exclusive taverns, where a different member of the wax or beaver pelt lobbies would cover their exorbitant three-figure tabs and lavish them with exquisite silk garments and spices from beyond the Orient. Preserved woodcuts depict a number of Founding Fathers relaxing on the palm-lined beaches of Hispaniola as they and their families enjoyed luxury accommodations courtesy of the sugarcane industry."

From The Onion.

"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.

"How Could They Create a System That Would Be Most Likely to Be Filled with Men of Civic Virtue but Avoid Creating Temptations That Might Corrode That Virtue?"

"And all of it has happened, Teachout admonishes, because the founders' understanding of corruption has been methodically taken apart by a Supreme Court that cynically pretends to worship the founders' every word. 'We could lose our democracy in the process,' Teachout warns, a bit of hyperbole that maybe it’s time to start taking seriously."


Thomas Frank in The New York Times reviews Zephyr Teachout's Corruption in America: From Ben Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United.

"More Is Learnt of Mankind Here in a Month Than Can Be in a Year in Any Other Part of the World"

"With 15,000 black inhabitants, London had the greatest urban black population in the empire. Some had recently arrived from Africa, some were colonial slaves like Scipio and others were Londoners born and bred. Some were desperately poor, but others met at parties, balls and taverns. Most worrying for colonial slave owners was the fact that the 'market value' of house slaves dropped by about half once they had been to England. (They were spoiled, it was felt, by London’s easy ways.) As Robert ran errands for his master, he enjoyed a greater freedom than ever before. For the first time, he also received money for his services: tips for dropping off a letter or for serving guests at his master’s house. 'Money does him no good,' Henry Laurens moaned, rightly fearing that he was losing control."

In The New York Times, Andrea Wulf reviews Julie Flavell's When London Was Capital of America.

When That New Party Army Came Marching Right Up the Stairs

"President Obama, speaking at Cairo University last month, described his 'unyielding' belief that various rights espoused by the founders, including free speech, representative government, and respect for property, deserve global support because they are 'not just American ideas.' In fact, they never were."

Adam Freedman in The New York Times connects the Declaration of Independence to English legal traditions.

To the Letter

"He was shocked to see that the first such letter was a copy of one written by Benjamin Franklin to the secretary of the governor of Maryland. He had never seen the missive before. Houston believed he'd seen everything Franklin ever wrote, but he quickly checked his own files as well as the authoritative 'Papers of Benjamin Franklin' and saw no mention of it. Riffling through the other letters in the volume--of which 18 were written by Franklin--he realized that they were all unknown to historians.
"'I felt kind of a lump in my chest,' Houston said. 'I started to bounce. I wanted like a rocket to shoot out of my chair.'
"It being a library, he merely exited the room and called his wife with the news."

Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post (in the Chicago Tribune) reports on the discovery in the British Library of previously unknown copies of letters written by Benjamin Franklin in the 1750s.

Got Breastmilk?

"This makes it all the more worrying that the evolving rules governing human milk, including the proposed Breastfeeding Promotion Act of 2007, look a muddle. They indulge in a nomenclatural sleight of hand, conflating 'breastfeeding' and 'feeding human milk.' They are purblind, unwilling to eye whether it’s his mother or her milk that matters more to a baby. They suffer from a category error. Is human milk an elixir, a commodity, a right? The question is, at heart, taxonomical. And it has been asked before."

Jill Lepore in The New Yorker traces the history of, and current controversies surrounding, breastfeeding.

And Emily Bazelon in The New York Times notes the death in 2008 of Edwina Froehlich, co-founder of La Leche League.

Your Poor Huddled Masses, Let's Club 'em to Death

"A PROMINENT American once said, about immigrants, 'Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.'
"This sentiment did not emerge from the rancorous debate over the immigration bill defeated last week in the Senate. It was not the lament of some guest of Lou Dobbs or a Republican candidate intent on wooing bedrock conservative votes. Guess again.
"Voicing this grievance was Benjamin Franklin. And the language so vexing to him was the German spoken by new arrivals to Pennsylvania in the 1750s, a wave of immigrants whom Franklin viewed as the 'most stupid of their nation.'"

Kenneth C. Davis in The New York Times outlines America's history of anti-immigration.