Liberty Chronicles

In the Winter of 1837-1838, New York’s “Locofoco” or  Equal Rights Party tidily collapsed back into Martin Van Buren’s Democratic Party. It was the first libertarian movement in American history, and they’d fought a two-year political war against Tammany Hall to control the state and national party. In most ways, they were successful. But actually, 1840 was their year—their chance to permanently change America. It might just be the most important election year ever, and 178 years later, I’d say it still is.Further Readings/References:Comegna, “The Dupes of Hope, Forever:” The Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Movement, 1820s-1870s. (PhD Dissertation: University of Pittsburgh). 2016.Curtis, James C. The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 1970.Silbey, Joel. Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2002.Widmer, Edward. Martin Van Buren. New York: Times Books. 2005.Music by Kai E

Abram D. Smith is a forgotten figure in American history. Smith was born in either Lowville or Cambridge, upstate New York, in 1811, just before the post-war boom years of rapid social and economic change. As a young man, he experienced and contributed to a wave of nationalistic romanticism, enraptured with the wonders of American republicanism and democracy.  He was in these regards fairly unremarkable, and yet in September 1838, probably in some Ohio forest, surrounded by blazing torchlight, a circle of revolutionary conspirators called the Brother Hunters elected Abram D. Smith—Mr. Average American—to be President of the Republic of Canada.  Further Readings/References:“Abram D. Smith: Nullification,” on Classics of LibertyBonthius, Andrew. “The Patriot War of 1837-1838: Locofocoism With a Gun?” Labour/Le Travail 52 (Fall 2003), 9-43.Dunley, Ruth. “A.D. Smith: Knight-Errant of Radical Democracy,” (PhD Diss.). The University of Ottowa. 2008.Kinchen, Oscar. The Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters. New York:

The Young Americans were New York’s next generation of artists, intellectuals, and activists, and reformers, many of whom were inspired by the Loco-Foco movement, which challenged Tammany Hall for supremacy in the Democratic Party from 1835 to 1837. Their philosophies generally came from the great classical liberals, radicals like Tom Paine and William Leggett, equal in stature to most Young Americans, and they shared a deep faith in America’s world historical destiny. A Young American might have been in either party, but their philosophy [00:03:00] was almost always some strain of Loco-Focoism.Further Reading:Comegna, “Art as Ideas: Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire” and “The Artist as Exemplar: Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life”John L. O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity”Tymn, Marshall, ed. Thomas Cole’s Poetry: The Collected Poems of America’s Foremost Painter of the Hudson River School Reflecting His Feelings for Nature and the Romantic Spirit of the Nineteenth Century. York, PA: Liberty Cap Books.

During the painful Panic Winter of 1837, America’s first identifiably libertarian political party neared the end of its short life. After the February flour riots and facing nothing but dire circumstances, movement faithful gradually peeled away from the party.Further Readings/References:Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam. The History of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party: Its Movements, Conventions, and Proceedings with Short Characteristic Sketches of Its Prominent Men. New York: Burt Franklin. 1967.Curtis, James C. The Fox at Bay: Martin Van Buren and the Presidency, 1837-1841. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 1970.Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013.Roberts, Alasdair. America’s First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Po

On 11 and 20 of January, 1836, the Equal Rights Democrats renounced all connections with Tammany and passed resolutions calling for ward me tings and delegate elections to a county convention.  Delegates assembled on 9 February in the Eighth Ward. Moses Jacques served as President and wrote the “Declaration of principles.” He was history embodied.  Moses’ father was a colonel in the New Jersey militia during the Revolution.Further Readings/References:Bridges, Amy. A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1984.Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam. The History of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party: Its Movements, Conventions, and Proceedings with Short Characteristic Sketches of Its Prominent Men. New York: Burt Franklin. 1967.Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics

The conspirators fully expected Tammany regulars would play whatever dirty tricks necessary to maintain control over the convention.  Each conspirator attended the meeting with pockets full of “Loco Foco” matches and candles. They were a new invention, friction candles ignited by striking the match tip against a surface. Locofoco supposedly entered the American lexicon as a bastardization of the Italian words for moving fire. And these people were definitely fireballs set into motion.Further Readings/References:Ashworth, John. “Agrarians & Aristocrats:” Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846. London: Royal Historical Society. 1983.Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam. The History of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party: Its Movements, Conventions, and Proceedings with Short Characteristic Sketches of Its Prominent Men. New York: Burt Franklin. 1967.Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press

Last week we explored the life and ideas of William Leggett—the founding father of America’s first identifiably libertarian movement. This week we begin with his attack on censorship as a gross abuse of government power, a sure sign that freedom was dying.Further Readings/References:Earle, Jonathan. Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004.Grimstead, David. American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998.Sedgwick, Theodore III. A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (2 Volumes). New York: Taylor & Dodd. 1840.White, Lawrence, ed. Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy. Indianapolis: Liberty Press. 1984.Music by Kai Engel See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Somewhere during the course of his tour—somewhere in the Mediterranean—William Leggett developed a “life-long hatred of authority,” a libertarian spirit within him that revolted against power wherever it existed, wherever people attempted to constrict the liberty of others. Historians tell us the 1820s, 30s, and 40s was the Jacksonian Era, but this week and next we will follow Walt Whitman in declaring this “The Age of Leggett.” Further Readings/References:Leggett, William. Leisure Hours at Sea: Being a Few Miscellaneous Poems, by a Midshipman of the United States Navy. New York: G.C. Morgon and E. Bliss & E. White. 1825.Sedgwick, Theodore III. A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (2 Volumes). New York: Taylor & Dodd. 1840.White, Lawrence, ed. Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy. Indianapolis: Liberty Press. 1984.Worton, Stanley. “William Leggett, Political Journalist (1801-1839): A Study in Democratic Thought.” (PhD Dissertation): Columbia University. C

Nine Masons signed the Declaration of Independence, 13 helped draft and ratify the Constitution, George Washington and James Monroe were Masons, and for that matter so was Andrew Jackson. So was Henry Clay! Even the South American Washington, Simon Bolivar, was a Mason.  All four of Napoleon’s brothers joined Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Voltaire, Ben Franklin, and innumerable other important artists, philosophers, and scientists in the fraternity.Further Readings/References:Elder David Bernard, ed. Light on Masonry, Utica, NY: William Williams, 1829.Hugins, Walter. Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen’s Movement, 1829-1837. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1960.Pessen, Edward. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics. Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press. 1969.Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1768-1850. New York: Oxford University Press. 1984.Music by Kai Engel See acast.com

While the two parties gripped one another in mock mortal combat, struggling for votes more than for principles, some precious few Americans remained unimpressed. In corners all over the country, people saw through the myth making and the gamesmanship. Put frankly, American democracy was a sham and the evolving two parties were vast conspiracies against the public’s liberty, security, and well-being.Further Readings/References:Clay’s “American System” SpeechesKohl, Lawrence. The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.Pessen, Edward. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics. Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press. 1969.Music by Kai Engel See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We should not fool ourselves into thinking democracy was some benevolent aristocrat’s generous gift. Nor should we believe democracy was something average people heroically fought for and won. The truth is, ballots have never translated to real political power and influence—they never have. The near-universal patterns in these democratizing state legislatures and constitutional conventions were political pragmatism and opportunism.Further Readings/References:“The Votes and Speeches of Martin Van Buren” Kohl, Lawrence. The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.Meyers, Marvin. The Jacksonian Persuasion. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1957.Pessen, Edward. Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics. Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press. 1969.Music by Kai Engel See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of economic history at Northwestern University. He has a PhD from Yale, he has taught and studied all over the world, and has supervised many dozens of doctoral students in pursuit of the past. He joins us today to talk about his latest book, A Culture of Growth, and the creeping revolution that enriched the world.Further Readings/References:Mokyr, A Culture of Growth, Princeton University Press. 2017.Mokyr, Joel. The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2009.Prof. Mokyr’s biography & CVMusic by Kai Engel See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We have to remember that American democracy was not something won courageously over time so much as it was a long, drawn out process of corrupt bargaining between politicians and the voting public, Conspiracy- and coalition-building between current voters and potential voters, and Nasty, Nasty Deals.George Kremer to Andrew Jackson, 8 March 1825Andrew Jackson to Henry Lee, 7 October 1825Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 20 April 1820Hammond, Bray. Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1957.Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court. 1996. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What if I told you that Christmas—the holiday we know and love so well—was a capitalist Conspiracy to indoctrinate the working class into bourgeois culture and values? At one end of the Conspiracy was the very real circle of New York City antiquarians and aristocrats trying to snuff out earlier forms of the holiday, replacing these folk practices with the distinctly quiet, calm, peaceful, productive, contemplative, bourgeois form of the holiday we know today. At the other end stands their greatest creation—the defrocked bishop Santa Claus and his apparently vast, never-ceasing workshops fed by partially enslaved elf labor.Clement Clarke Moore, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (1823)Pintard, Letters, Vol. II: 1821-1827; Vol. II: 1828-1831Clark, Christopher. Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. 2006.Penne Restad, Christmas in America: A History, Oxford University Press. 1996.Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of

Between 1815 and 1845, the world changed more dramatically than in any other previous 30-year period. Humanity began to break the food trap which had kept hundreds of generations barely producing enough to feed the living, keeping almost nothing to provide for the future.Further Reading:“Rip Van Winkle” on WikiSourceFeller, Daniel. “The Market Revolution Ate My Homework”Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.Stokes & Conway, eds. The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800-1880. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. 1996.Martin, Scott. Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789-1860. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2005. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Shownotes:Kevin Gutzman is a New York Times best-selling author and professor of history at Western Connecticut State University. He has a PhD from the University of Virginia and much of his research has focused on precisely that state. Three of his books—Virginia’s American Revolution, James Madison and the Making of America, and Thomas Jefferson: Revolutionary—flesh out what Gutzman takes to be a radical, revolutionary time and place in American history. We would be remiss if we did not try to understand the world from above just as we try to understand it from below. Further Readings/References:Kevin Gutzman’s personal websiteHis Amazon author’s pageCarroll, Francis. A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783-1842. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2001.Errington, Jane. The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology. Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 1987.Risjord, Norman. The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson

Reformist minded and very far from the Hartford Wits, to be sure, but the Jeffersonians were still fundamentally the agents of a different sort of American elite. While these white male mechanics and yeoman farmers made for a more democratic ruling elite than the great colonial landholders and office-mongers, they remained relatively content with driving slaves, dominating women and children, and using the power of government to support their own interests—local and relatively liberal as they may have been.“Anarchiad, a New England Poem” (1786-7)“The Design of Anarchy: ‘The Anarchiad,’ 1786-1787” by J. K. Van Dover, Early American Literature 24, No. 3 (1989): 237-247.Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1978.Parrington, Vernon Louis. Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920, Vols. 1-3. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1958 (Original Printing: 1927). See acast.com/p

Benjamin Lay was a fearless firework of “isms.” Part Quaker, part philosopher, part sailor, abolitionist, and commoner, Lay was also “The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.” Joining us this week is Marcus Rediker, one of the most important living historians and Lay’s most recent biographer.Further Readings/References:Marcus Rediker’s websiteHis Amazon author’s pageBenjamin Lay, All Slave-Keepers…ApostatesJames Nayler, The Lamb’s WarThomas Trion, A Way To Health, Long Life, and Happiness See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Few concepts or examples in history have a total sample size of exactly one. With history-making resolve, the slaves in Haiti seized their freedom, which revolutionary Paris only begrudgingly recognized. When the planters, the British, the Spanish, and finally Napoleon himself tried to re-enslave them, they simply refused and resolved themselves to fight to the death for the liberties they’d won.Further Readings/References:James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage. 1989.Scott, Julius Sheppard. “The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution,” (PhD Dissertation): Duke University. 1986.West, Martin, and Wilkins (eds.). From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International Since the Age of Revolution. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2009. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

 Who are the actual revolutionists?—the radicals or extremists who end up overpowering the moderates and installing the new regime?Further Readings/References:Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, Revised Edition. Vintage. 1965.Klooster, Wim. Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. New York: New York University Press. 2009.Palmer, R.R. The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, Volume One: The Struggle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1959. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.