Sugar, Taxes, and Currency

In the "long train of abuses and usurpations" which caused intolerable hardship in North America's thirteen colonies during the 1700's, and which finally caused the American independence movement, a variety of harms were inflicted on the residents of North America by the king, by the Parliament, and by both. It is a significant interpretive question, whether one holds the crown, the Parliament, or both guilty of the violations which led to the American Revolution. In any case, both the human rights and the civil rights of the colonists were violated. Again, the question is open whether it was the actual misery caused by the taxes, or whether it was the principle that such taxes were enacted in a legislative body which contained no representatives from the thirteen colonies, which ultimately provoked the colonists to action. Historian Les Standiford writes that

In any case, at the same time that Parliament approved the Sugar Act (which also added other duties and allocated funds for the upgrading of the British customs service), Grenville warned that there might be further measures proposed in the following session of Parliament, among them a tax for appending an official stamp on most legal documents, newspapers, and magazines used in the colonies. Such a tax, in Grenville's eyes, was nonregressive and would affect no specific group unduly. Furthermore, a number of such taxes had been levied by Parliament upon its citizens to no particular uproar.

George Grenville, who had become prime minister in 1763, was overly blunt in his manner. He made no effort to soothe or assuage the colonists, but merely informed them that they would have to pay this tax, and that they would likely have to pay even more in the future. Had Grenville attempted in any way to persuade the colonists to accept the tax - rather than merely telling them that it would be levied - he might have had a chance of getting them to go along with it. But his abrupt manner did nothing to persuade the colonists to accept the taxation. Grenville falsely reasoned that, if the British citizenry went along with such taxes, the colonists should too. Grenville ignored the fact that the British citizens had elected representatives to the House of Commons, while the residents of North America had not.

Each of the thirteen colonies had sent representatives to London, who were free to listen to the proceedings, and to sometimes to lobby members of Parliament, but who had no vote in Parliament. Among those representatives was Benjamin Franklin. Taxation seemed inevitable. The French and Indian War had been costly. Those bills needed to be paid. The ongoing defense of North American colonies, subject to attacks by the French or by the Spanish or by the Native Americans, would also be costly.

To Franklin and a number of his fellow colonial envoys, the prospect of some tax being levied seemed inescapable. After all, the recent rebellion of tribesmen led by Chief Pontiac in the just-acquired territories of New France had reminded most responsible officials on both sides of the divide that someone would need to pay for maintaining a peacekeeping force on the colonial frontier. One knotty question remained, whoever: who?

The colonists in North America offered two facts for consideration: first, it was necessary to note that the officials sent from London to oversee taxation and regulation in North America were men of little or no ethical standards; second, the colonists could defend themselves better, and at lower cost, than the soldiers being sent to colonies from England.

Part of the colonists' antipathy to the revenue-boosting measures was attributable to a growing distrust of those who were sent from England to handle their principle affairs. As one American who had been living in London for a time wrote in a 1758 letter, "most of the places in the gift of the Crown have been filled out with broken Members of Parliament, of bad if any principles, pimps, valets de chambre, electioneering scoundrels, and even livery servants. In one word, America has been for many years made the hospital of Great Britain for her decayed courtiers, and abandoned, worn-out dependents." Paying for necessary services was bad enough, but the prospect of turning over one's hard-earned pennies to schemers and incompetents was to most colonists simply beyond the pale.

Although the colonial militiamen were capable of defending the colonies, their expertise was ignored by the British army. Why should the colonists be content to have their abilities ignored, while being ruled over by officials so corrupt that London had seen fit to send them to America as a way of getting them out of England?

Likewise, the concept of paying for a permanent garrison of 10,000 British troops on the borders of Canada and the bayous of New France raised hackles among many. The prevailing sentiment was that colonial militiamen, among them a certain George Washington, had proved themselves to be as capable as, if not more able than, the king's troops in the sort of irregular actions that had characterized much of the fighting on the frontier during the French and Indian War. Yet for all the ability of the colonial fighters, it was nearly impossible for a colonial militiaman to obtain a commission in the king's army.

If historians are divided as to whether the blame properly lies with the king, with the Parliament, or with both, it is an even more obscure question about how much of the blame, if any, lies with the population of Britain. Did the ordinary farmer or tradesman in England have knowledge of, influence on, or an opinion about, what was happening in North America? And to which degree? To a middle- or lower-class citizen of a town like Ringwood or Manchester, North America must have seemed infinitely far away, and the policies concerning it either abstract, or filled with unintelligible minutia, or both. Ordinary Englishmen might have resented the colonists, because Englishmen had traveled uncomfortably far from home to defend the colonies, and some Englishmen had died there. But ordinary Englishmen might have felt some kinship with the colonists - colonists who were, after all, Englishmen who'd simply been transplanted. Les Standiford continues:

From the opposite standpoint, few Britons gave the colonies much thought at all. The primary political concern of the nation was outmaneuvering its traditional rivals: Holland, France, Spain, Prussia, Germany, and Russia. Where the colonies registered at all, it was primarily among the merchant class. There was a fair amount of profitable trade with the colonies, though the perception was that the colonies were certainly on the receiving end, there only to be profited from. In short, in the minds of most Britons, the colonies existed primarily for the benefit of the mother country, and the colonists who sent there should be pleased at whatever benefits they might accrue from association with the most powerful nation in the world.

The question to be investigated, then, is whether the Parliament and the king accurately represented the English citizenry in oppressing the colonists. In any case, however, the egregious violations against the colonists inevitably provoked the revolution. Taxation was inhumane, both in principle and in practice: in principle, because the colonists lacked representation in Parliament; in practice because it amounted, simply, to the government stealing the property of ordinary citizens.

Civil Rights Hero: Calvin Coolidge

The presidency of Calvin Coolidge began unexpectedly with the death of President Warren Harding in August 1923. As vice president, Coolidge took the oath of office and became president, taking over the Harding administration in mid-term.

Although Harding’s years as president have been overshadowed by a series of financial scandals - mostly surrounding oil drilling rights in the “Teapot Dome” area - historians have discovered that Harding himself had nothing to do with the fact that the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, received funds in a manner which was unethical and illegal. Harding either didn’t know about payoff, or found out about it only shortly before his death. Although there is no proof, some historians have speculated either that the news shocked Harding badly and caused his death, or that Harding perhaps committed suicide upon learning of the scandal. But good historians don’t engage in speculation.

In any case, the scandal diverted attention from the Harding administration’s many worthwhile achievements. During the Harding years, the United States made significant progress toward reducing taxes, reducing the national debt, reducing government spending, and reducing the annual budget deficit. This led to better economic conditions, especially for the lower and middle classes, who experienced rising real income.

President Harding also took significant steps in the realm of civil rights. Before Warren G. Harding took office, African-Americans had suffered greatly under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who had been in office from March 1913 to March 1921. Wilson’s goal had been to undo the progress which Blacks had experienced during the Reconstruction Era. Some federal operations - the Post Office, for example - had been integrated or de-segregated. Wilson’s administration reintroduced segregation into these federal offices. Wilson had also worked to deter African-Americans from applying for admission into colleges and universities. Most notoriously, Wilson had praised the KKK in an essay he had written. Wilson also praised The Birth of a Nation, a film which was understood by many as praising the Klan, although it has never been quite clear whether the film’s director, D.W. Griffith, had precisely that intent. Wilson had also discouraged attempts by Republican congressmen to pass anti-lynching laws.

African-Americans were encouraged by the Harding administration’s departures from Wilson’s racist policies. Coolidge continued Harding’s work of ensuring civil rights for Blacks. While both Harding and Coolidge sought these advancements in civil rights, the two presidents worked in different ways, each according to his style and personality. Harding was a popular speechmaker, and used his skills to address large audiences, boldly stating that African-Americans held full and equal citizenship. Coolidge, by contrast, lived up to his nickname ‘Silent Cal’ and spoke little on any subject, including civil rights. Whereas Harding was a man of words, Coolidge was a man of action: both were needed; both moved the cause of civil rights forward. Coolidge took a firmer stand against the Ku Klux Klan and promoted anti-lynching legislation. Historian Robert Ferrell writes:

Coolidge may not have seen many blacks in Vermont or even in Massachusetts, and his position on injustice did not stand out on the grand tablet of presidential utterances on that subject. Harding had at least shown some interest and said some good things and, if only in contrast to Wilson, looked good on the issue. Coolidge’s predecessor had gone down to Birmingham, spoken to a mixed audience of whites and blacks, and said, “let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote.” He advised his audience to “lay aside any program that looks to lining up the black man as a mere political adjunct” and asked for “an end to prejudice.”

Coolidge’s support for African-American civil rights was highlighted in the 1924 election. When the Democrats publicly embraced the KKK at their national convention, the Coolidge administration, in the form of Charles Dawes, began to speak decisively on the matter. Dawes, who had been a general during WWI, was Coolidge’s nominee for vice president. As Coolidge’s running mate, and as national candidate for vice president, General Dawes overruled some cautious voices within the party and spoke for the majority of the Republican Party in opposing the Klan. Observers wondered if Coolidge would support his running mate’s strong statements against the Klan; he did. Coolidge and his campaign cheerfully embraced the anti-Klan identity with the slogan ‘Keep Kool with Koolidge,’ mocking the KKK and letting the voters know that they would continue Harding’s quest for civil rights.

At the Madison Square Garden convention, the Democratic party refused to disavow Klan support, although Davis later made an anti-Klan statement, as did La Follette and Wheeler. General Dawes went to Maine, which was a notable Klan bastion, and told six thousand people at Augusta on 23 August that “I first desire to speak … relative to the Ku Klux Klan,” whereupon he made himself clear: “Government cannot last if that way, the way of the Ku Klux Klan, is the way to enforce the law in this country. Lawlessness cannot be met with lawlessness if civilization is to be maintained.” He had been told not to do so by party managers, but received an ovation. Afterward he visited Coolidge at the Notch, where political writers assumed that he was to be “spanked” for his Klan utterances. He later said that the president did not mention the Maine speech; the visit was a courtesy call. That fall, slogans adorned billboards, “Keep Kool with Koolidge” and Klansmen were telling one another that the Episcopal cathedral being built on Mount St. Alban’s in Washington was going to be the pope’s new home, where he could command the nation’s capital with field guns.

As the campaign continued toward the November election, the Democrat Party’s continuing connection with Klan encouraged Black voters to come to polling places in larger numbers, and to vote for Coolidge when they arrived. Historian Jonathan Bean writes:

The Ku Klux Klan was the hot civil rights issue of the 1924 election: it was a national organization directing its hatred not only at blacks, but especially at Catholics and others deemed less than “100% American.”

Coolidge’s habitual reticence meant that he did not deliver long fiery speeches against the Klan, but rather simply made it clear that he was opposed to the KKK. For Coolidge, one word was as good as a thousand. The voters seemed to understand this; they knew that a single “no” from Coolidge was more solid than a long tirade against the Klan. The Democratic candidate, John W. Davis, was pro-segregation and vocal about this stance. He continued to be active in politics and law after losing the 1924 election, and

Davis is best known for defending segregation in the Brown v. Board case.

Meanwhile, Coolidge took another swipe at the Klan by linking freedom of religion to the struggle against racism.

Coolidge spoke eloquently of religious and racial toleration before a parade of one hundred thousand Catholics honoring the Holy Name Society. Klan leaders grumbled when the president refused to show up for their parade.

Chicago’s leading African-American newspaper, The Chicago Defender, praised Coolidge’s anti-Klan stance. Coolidge continued by delivering the commencement address at Howard University, a historically Black college. This was an amazing societal breakthrough: an incumbent United States president giving the graduation speech at an African-American university in 1924. Coolidge had not delivered bombast; rather, he had made it quietly but firmly clear that he was against the Klan and would act to promote Black civil rights. The voters rewarded him by returning him to the White House in November 1924.

Calvin Coolidge and Foreign Policy

The diplomatic efforts of the Coolidge presidency, taking place as they did between the two world wars and during the prosperity of the 1920’s, often receive less attention than they deserve, being overshadowed by the administration’s domestic matters. To be sure, Coolidge’s domestic policies are noteworthy: his repeated efforts to get Congress to pass anti-lynching laws, and his amazing ability to simultaneously reduce taxes, government spending, and national debt. Coolidge achieved several budget surplus years while in office.

In the realm of foreign policy, Coolidge was occupied by the world balance of power. Taking office four years and a few days after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, he was concerned to stabilize international relations in the wake of World War One. This brought him into some amount tension with America’s allies, especially France, who were intent on punishing Germany and relentless in demanding war reparations. Yet Coolidge saw that the ruthless terms of the Versailles Treaty, and the cruel strictness with which its terms were being imposed, could easily lead to another world war.

While Coolidge’s style in domestic policy may be described as “hand-on”, he prefered to delegate much of the diplomatic work. For this purpose, he assembled an excellent team. Charles Evans Hughes served as Secretary of State, starting before Coolidge took office until March 1925; before Coolidge took office, he negotiated a separate peace with Germany to avoid implicating the United States in the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles and led global peace and disarmament talks resulting in the signing of several treaties; under Coolidge, he worked to ensure that the United States would not recognize the Bolshevik dictatorship which had formed the USSR. Charles Dawes, Coolidge’s vice president from March 1925 to March 1929, had served as Director of the Bureau of the Budget under President Harding; he was then appointed to deal with the looming geo-financial crisis regarding Germany’s economy and created the Dawes Plan, which kept Germany and Europe economically sound for the rest of that decade.

In seeking to avoid the scenario in which France provoked another war by its harsh treatment of Germany, Coolidge saw himself as acting in America’s interests. He feared that the United States would again be dragged into a major land war in Europe. His policies were neither internationalist nor isolationist, as David Greenberg writes:

Secretary of State Hughes secured the president’s blessing to organize a commission of delegates from Belgium, France, Britain, Italy, and the United States to craft a solution. To lead it, Coolidge named the dynamic Charles Dawes, a wealthy financier who had been Harding’s economy-minded budget director. Though the president stayed out of the negotiations, he threw his weight behind the Dawes Committee and joined its fortunes to his own. Negotiations commenced in earnest in Paris in January 1924, and by early April a compromise emerged: in return for a withdrawal from the Ruhr, the Allies would restructure the German debt and reorganize the German central bank. Providing the critical ingredient, the United States would furnish Germany with the capital to help repay its loans. Despite criticism from isolationists like Hiram Johnson, who decried the meddling European affairs, Coolidge stuck with the plan.

Foreign policy influenced domestic politics, as is always the case. Having had no vice president during his first years in office, Coolidge selected Dawes at the 1924 Republican convention as his running mate as Dawes’s fame was on the rise because of these diplomatic achievements. Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury during Coolidge’s entire presidency, would see to it that Dawes continued to be influential in policy decisions. Amity Shlaes writes:

On June 7, even as the Republican Party was selecting its vice president, came the news that the German Reichstag had voted to support the Dawes Plan; it was another coup for Dawes and sealed Dawes’ candidacy. Mellon had a plan to give the vice president greater powers, including supervision of some bureaus and agencies, so that the executive need cover less. This appealed to Dawes.

Another crucial appointment made by Coolidge was Frank Kellogg as Secretary of State from March 1925 to March 1929. Coolidge initiated, and Kellogg organized, a conference at Geneva in 1927 in an attempt to limit arms. Approach by the French diplomat Briand with an idea of a bilateral treaty, Kellogg countered with the idea of a multilateral treaty which would finally involved 62 nations under the title “The Kellogg-Briand Pact.”

Coolidge saw Europe in the 1920’s as having the potential for another great war. Seeking to avoid that war, by stabilizing the global economy and by limiting the international arms race, was the impetus for much of Coolidge’s foreign policy.

The Other Declaration

Prompted with the words 'Revolution' and 'Declaration', most students will produce the idea of the Declaration of Independence, written by the Second Continental Congress - rough draft by Thomas Jefferson, revisions by the committee - and dated July 4, 1776 - although not all the signatories placed their ink on the document that day.

There have been other documents titled 'declaration' and associated with various revolutions - notably, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" adopted in 1789 by the leaders of the French Revolution, to which was added in 1791 the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen" and the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793" - the relatively quick accumulation of which points to the intellectual confusion underlying the French Revolution, which was manifested in its failure, as it turned to mass murder and the denial of the very rights which it initially proposed as its cause.

More interesting, and more fruitful, would be the other declaration produced by the Second Continental Congress, a full year prior to the famous Declaration of Independence. That document bore the lengthy title,

A declaration by the representatives of the united colonies of North America, now met in Congress at Philadelphia, setting forth the causes and necessity of their taking up arms.

The text was largely a joint effort by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson. Although born in Maryland, Dickinson spent most of his life in Pennsylvania and Delaware. While one of his teachers was a Presbyterian, he gravitated toward Quakerism, his wife being a devout Quaker, but never formally joined the Society of Friends, having himself a moderate pacifism in contrast to Quakerism's radical pacifism. The text of the 1775 declaration highlights the connection between the French and Indian War and the American independence movement. While England claimed to have been acting in order to protect the colonies during that conflict, it had violated the rights of the colonists in the process. The inhabitants of the thirteen colonies claimed, as Englishmen, the rights set forth in the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Jefferson and Dickinson wrote:

If it was possible for men, who exercise their reason to believe, that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the parliament of Great-Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them, has been granted to that body. But a reverance for our Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.

Accusing Parliament of exerting slavish and illegitimate power over the colonists, the text addresses the purpose of government. Governments exist to serve people, not people to serve government. A government can "promote the welfare of" its citizens by, in a roughly Lockean formulation, protecting their lives, freedoms, and properties. This, and the parallel formulation of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," is the understanding of welfare in the eighteenth century tradition of 'classical liberalism' which includes John Locke, Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. The document's repeated allusions to slavery as a metaphor for Parliament's tyranny over the colonies also foreshadows the abolitionist movement which was even then already making itself felt. Jefferson and Dickinson refer to the original understandings under which the colonies were formed:

Our forefathers, inhabitants of the island of Great-Britain, left their native land, to seek on these shores a residence for civil and religious freedom.

The notions of freedom circulating in the American independence movement are always multivalent. Political liberty, economic liberty, religious liberty, intellectual liberty are all in the mix, and not always to be sharply distinguished from one another. Further, they should not be distinguished from one another, because, in order for any one of them to flourish, they all must flourish. Economic freedom and political freedom led to prosperity, and prosperity allowed the colonies to emerge successfully from the French and Indian War.

Societies or governments, vested with perfect legislatures, were formed under charters from the crown, and an harmonious intercourse was established between the colonies and the kingdom from which they derived their origin. The mutual benefits of this union became in a short time so extraordinary, as to excite astonishment. It is universally confessed, that the amazing increase of the wealth, strength, and navigation of the realm, arose from this source; and the minister, who so wisely and successfully directed the measures of Great-Britain in the late war, publicly declared, that these colonies enabled her to triumph over her enemies.

In the minds of the colonists, they were capable of defending themselves and had largely done so; they did not perceive the British army's intervention as decisive. In London, Parliament tended to view itself as having rescued the colonies. The colonists saw the British army as unnecessary, because they could have defended themselves, as troublesome, because hosting the English soldiers was a financial and a social burden, and as expensive, because after the war Parliament wanted to raise painful taxes upon the colonists to pay for the British military intervention. Parliament saw the colonists as ungrateful, refusing to pay for the soldiers who had saved them. Further, the colonists saw Parliament's legislative acts, and the king's directives, as violating what were by then long-standing legislative institutions in the colonies.

As in the 1776 Declaration, there is a list of grievances, and the 1775 list is similar to the 1776 list. The 1775 document cites Parliament's statement, in the 1766 Declaratory Act, that it has the

full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever

Jefferson and Dickinson then recount how the colonists have suffered from such legislations, how they have civilly and peacefully protested and petitioned for relief from such tyranny, and how the British government has brutally enforced such regulations and taxes upon the colonists. They write a narrative which explains how tax enforcement morphed into a cruel occupation by the English military of the colonial cities, chiefly Boston. The colonies responded to this tyranny:

We are reduced to the alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. - The latter is our choice. - We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. - Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Explaining their firm resolve to continue military action - hostilities had commenced in April 1775; Jefferson and Dickinson were writing after approximately three months of warfare - the colonists still maintain that there is some slight possibility of a peaceful reunion with the mother country. Even at this late date, the colonists might be persuaded to rejoin the British Empire if their representation in Parliament were guaranteed and effective, obtaining for them the full rights of Englishmen.

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored. - Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them. - We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.

To avoid misinterpretation, Jefferson and Dickinson clarify the objectives of the Second Continental Congress. Their goals, understood as the only goals of any legitimate government, serve to highlight the fact that the Crown has been negligent in executing its proper duties: thus the monarchy is guilty of omission, in not carrying out its proper functions, and guilty of commission, in acting tyrannically. The colonial military action is justified:

In our own native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it - for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

The surprise, perhaps shocking in hindsight, is the equivocation, however slight, included in the document to the extent that a slight possibility is left in the text for a reintegration of the colonies into the British Empire. By July 1775, while the sentiment toward independence was strong, it was not solid enough among the representatives at the Congress to allow for an unconditional declaration. Indeed, the desire for complete independence was never unanimous among the entire population of the thirteen colonies, but by July 1776, it was the consensus of the leadership. The situation a year earlier was less solid, as James Srodes writes that

there also were sharp divisions even among those who were resolutely for a clean break and independence as to just what kind of new order was to be set up in its place.

Not only was there the open question of whether or not to seek complete political independence, but there was also the question of what type of government the colonies would institute once they had such independence. Not all of the members of the Second Continental Congress were classical liberals in the sense of John Locke; not all of them understood liberty as the primary goal.

There were those, like cousins Sam and John Adams, who wanted to create a kind of better England where the benefits and responsibilities of democracy would be reserved for the respectable classes of citizenry who would uphold the rule of law and the stability of society. But while England had offered a Whiggish model of orderly government, it had also sent the New World its “17th-century levelers,” those who thought no man should have too much while any man had not enough.

A clear choice lay before those who would form the future of the new nation. Would America choose freedom as its primary value, assigning to the government the task of protecting and maintaining economic liberty, political liberty, religious liberty, and the freedoms of speech and of the press? Or would America succumb to simply another form of tyranny, in which cruel taxes continued to inflict suffering on the residents of the colonies?

The politicking and negotiating between July 1775 and July 1776, i.e., between the two declarations, would decide. James Srodes tells us that

the plotting Adams cousins and their unlikely allies, the Lees of Virginia, who make a shaky and improbable alliance with a cast of conflicting and conflicted radicals from other colonies, some of whom were not even delegates to the Congress.

We might call Sam Adams, John Adams, and the Lee family the "freedom faction" among the various political views represented at the time. (Two of the Lee family, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, would be signers of the 1776 Declaration of Independence.) To reach a critical mass, and nudge the Second Continental Congress clearly toward both independence and a clear statement of liberty, they understood that

they could only get independence approved with the support of those town craftsmen, small merchants, debt-ridden farmers, newly arrived German settlers and, most unruly of all, the Scots-Irish who pushed ever westward looking for land that was free of cost and the constraints of English law. These were the men who ordinarily would be denied a vote, but they had formed themselves in to armed militias throughout the Colonies and were the backbone of Congress‘ own army. They had guns, and now they had the vote.

This freedom coalition managed, as we now know, to carry the day, and so it was that the United States was founded upon a series of texts which emphasized individual freedom and personal liberty. Had the freedom faction not won, it might have been that the United States would have gained its independence, only to subject itself to a tyrannous taxation as cruel as Britain's taxes had been. Thankfully, that was not the case.

Suffering under Tyranny

The inhabitants of North America suffered in many ways prior to 1775. As John Locke had noted a century earlier, people endure a lot of abuse before they finally rise up against their oppressors. The long string of mistreatment would, however, eventually be sufficient to start a revolution.

Although there were already injustices in the 1600's, the first three-quarters of the 1700's would prove to be an era of one insult or provocation after another. In the process of enduring this abuse, those living in the thirteen colonies would become all the more perceptive, learning to detect in each new tax or regulation the hand of tyranny. George III, king of England, was not the only tyrant; among several others was George Grenville, Prime Minister of Great Britain from April 1763 to July 1765. Historian Les Standiford writes:

Though the mother country had never levied any tax directly on its American dependency, various trade duties had been applied over the years. Earlier in 1764, in fact, Grenville had pressed for passage of the Sugar Act, a modification of a piece of 1733 legislation imposing a duty on molasses imported into the colonies from Britain. The new Sugar Act actually reduced the levy on molasses from 6 pence to 3 pence per gallon, a tactical move that Grenville hoped would find favor among colonists who had responded to the original act by smuggling most of their molasses past British customs agents - those few they were unable to bribe, that is.

England's economy was in a slump in the years after the French and Indian War. That war had ended in 1763. England and France were at odds with each other anyway, but the war was initiated when Prussia's Frederick the Great attacked Austria's Empress Maria-Theresa. The English were dragged into that European war because they were pledged allies of the Prussians, and the French likewise were pledged allies of the Austrians. With the English and the French fighting each other in Europe, it took little incentive to get English colonies in North America to fight against French colonies in North America. The land in the Ohio River valley area - desired by both sides - was more than enough motive. The Indians - the native Americans - fought from time to time as mercenaries for both sides. The English won the war, but at great financial cost. Wartime debts now had to be repaid. This burdened the British economy; Parliament sought to raise taxes to pay the debts, but taxes only made the economy worse.

Such taxation was doubly harmful to the residents of North America. First, they were taxed, which is detrimental in any circumstance; second, they were taxes by a representative body to which they were not allowed to elect any representatives! Les Standiford explains:

The "new" tax was roundly descried as onerous by the colonists, however, as their own economy suffered in direct proportion to the downturn in Great Britain. Trade with the distressed mother country was down, and with the war over and its associated free spending dried up, prospects were grim. Moreover, a theoretical objection was also raised by opponents to the measure when it was noted that the British Constitution excepted its subjects from "taxation without representation." Previous revenue-producing measures imposed by the British had been cloaked in the rhetoric of "trade regulation," but colonists argued that the Sugar Act was a bald-faced tax. And although the citizens of England might rightly be themselves taxed by the members of a Parliament that they themselves had elected, the colonists had no representatives in that body.

No less a luminary than Benjamin Franklin was sent to London to plead the colonial case. While the demand of the colonies was well-founded, based on the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the Parliament chose expediency over justice.

Each of the thirteen colonies employed a liaison to Parliament, an envoy - as was Franklin - sent across the Atlantic to lobby for its part of thirteen different sets of interests, but that was not the same thing as having a properly apportioned voting membership on the floor. "No taxation without representation" would of course become a rallying cry for the colonists, justifying a wide range of future actions. But whether it was the 3-penny sugar tax itself or the principle of the thing that sent the colonists inching down the road toward rebellion is an issue that has had historians wrangling ever since.

From this situation, it would become clear that nothing less than proper representation would constitute justice, and it would also slowly become clear that the thirteen colonies would need to begin working together as a unit. The British government could sometimes play the colonies against each other as long as they were thirteen uncoordinated colonies. The colonies had two evils inflicted against them, two injustices which they had to overcome: first, that they were taxed; second, that they were taxed without representation.

Catching Spies

The business of finding spies who've lodged themselves as "moles" in one's government is difficult. Once they've been caught, knowing what to do with them can be complicated, too. Many history students are familiar with the Espionage Act of 1917, passed through Congress at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson. With the Democrats controlling both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Wilson's desires were eagerly fulfilled.

The law has become a frequent textbook example of bad legislation - fueled by public fears during the war, and motivated by Wilson and other progressivists who simply saw it as a way to control people, the Espionage Act of 1917, renewed in a slightly different form in 1918, violated freedom of speech.

Most historians and most history books let the law slip from sight after the WWI era. But the law remained on the books, and found occasional uses. One such case was that of Mikhail Gorin, a Soviet spy who was sent to gather classified military information in the United States. In the Washington Post, Walter Pincus writes:

The spy, Mikhail Gorin, a Soviet citizen, came to the United States in 1936 as an employee of Intourist, the Moscow-run tourist agency, whose salary was paid by the Russian government, according to court documents in the early-1940s case. In the indictment and in the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Gorin was referred to as "the agent of a foreign nation."

This case was part of a larger trend, in which various Soviet spies, like Alger Hiss, gathered information for the KGB and other Russian intelligence agencies, while journalists like I.F. Stone, also known as Izzy Stone, directed the public's attention away from communists efforts to destabilize the United States government. Such journalists and spies received payment from the Soviet government. Historians Medford Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

The first major Communist penetration of the American government occurred in the 1930s. The Communist Party USA had been founded more than a decade before, encouraged by Moscow and financed through such helpful go-betweens as Julius and Armand Hammer. But the party of that era was small, ineffective, and far outside the national mainstream, mostly headed by leaders who were foreign born, with a membership tilted to émigrés, many of whom could not speak English. Its chances of infiltrating federal agencies, or other important institutions, were meager.

Seeing that their efforts were weak, the Soviets improved their spying game. Mikhail Gorin would be part of that upgrade. The Washington Post report continues:

Gorin received reports from Hafis Salich, a Russian-born emigre who had become a U.S. citizen and worked for U.S. Navy intelligence in San Pedro, Calif., as a civilian investigator. In the course of the relationship, Gorin paid Salich $1,700, which came from Soviet government funds.

Meanwhile, the Soviet spying effort was improving in other ways. Moscow saw that it would be necessary to get native-born U.S. citizens into their employ, who would be less conspicuous, and who would more easily gain confidence and security clearances from various agencies in the United States government, as Herbert Romerstein and M. Stanton Evans explain:

All this began changing in the 1930s, chiefly though not entirely as a result of the Great Depression. Thanks to the political/economic crisis of the age, a lot of people would become disillusioned with capitalism and the American system in general and begin casting about for something different. A number of these would be attracted by the pat and seemingly cogent “class struggle” slogans of the Marxists and the claimed successes of the Soviet Union, and decide that Communism was the answer they were seeking. This would in particular be true with certain members of the intellectual classes, and at some prestigious centers of higher learning.

Sensitive and classified military information flowed to Moscow. The Washington Post tells us that

Salich, according to court documents, provided Gorin with the contents of over 50 reports that, among other things, detailed the activities of Japanese military and civil officials and the movements of fishing boats suspected of espionage.

Eventually, caught, Mikhail Gorin would appear before the United States Supreme Court, indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917.

The Supreme Court, in its opinion in the Gorin case, said the reports "gave a detailed picture of the counter-espionage work of the Naval Intelligence" and could assist a foreign government in checking on U.S. "efficiency in ferreting out foreign espionage."

The Soviets realized that they had to work to be ever less noticeable, planting their moles deeper, and finding ways to subvert reputable Americans. A better class of spy would be formed from well-educated, socially connected, U.S. citizens who could be persuaded to betray their nation by selling secrets to the Soviets, as M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA was undergoing a makeover of its own at the behest of Moscow and American party chief Earl Browder, downplaying its more violent aspects and presenting itself as a peaceful, democratic group of patriotic nature. Given cover by the 1930s proliferation of party-sponsored front groups that seemingly blended Red revolutionary concepts with less threatening leftward causes, the Communists appeared to many unfamiliar with such tactics as simply promoting a more rigorous version of widely held progressive notions.

But even the hapless Mikhail Gorin would have his day. Convicted by a lower court, his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court. Yet, as the Washington Post tells us, he got away:

After being convicted and losing his appeal in the Supreme Court, Gorin was sent back to the Soviet Union rather than having to serve his six-year sentence in a U.S. jail.

One wonders who made the decision to release Gorin rather than make him serve his sentence; one wonders how and why that decision was made.

The Red Scare - Causes and Coverups

Historians use the phrase "Red Scare" to refer to more than one period of time. The first was roughly from 1919 to 1921. But what visibly erupted in 1919 had been brewing invisibly for some time. A coalition of socialists, communists, and anarchists had been working to find ways to destroy both the American concept of political liberty and the economic system of the United States. This plot had been encouraged by the communist revolution which had gained control of Russia, and by some aspects of President Woodrow Wilson's progressivism.

The socialists and communists of this era were not simply people who preferred a different economic or political views. They were agents working for, and sympathetic to, the government of the Soviet Union, and who were actively working to overthrow violently the United States government.

This coalition was joined by people from an extreme segment of the labor union movement. This segment was quite different from the mainstream of the organized labor movement. The mainstream of the collective bargaining movement sought better hourly wages, protection from unwarranted dismissal, safer working conditions, and the like. By contrast, the extreme segment of the movement sought to confiscate factories, leaving their current owners penniless, and to take control of the government, inspired by the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" from Marxist texts.

The first steps in the Red Scare were bombings and strikes. The bombings were, then as now, a typical terrorist tactic, and had been used as far back as the 1880's by a loosely-organized world-wide anarchist movement. The Red Scare's first wave of bombings took place in 1919, as Glencoe's history textbook explains:

In April, the postal service intercepted more than 30 parcels containing homemade bombs addressed to prominent Americans.

The socialists learned from their mistake - from the fact that their bombs were intercepted before they reached their targets - and worked more subtly the next time:

In June, eight bombs in eight cities exploded within minutes of one another, suggesting a nationwide conspiracy. One of them damaged the home of the United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Although it was clear that these "bombings were the work of radicals trying to destroy the American way of life," the multifaceted nature of the coalition did not allow the public to conceptualize this as the activity of a single group. There were numerous factions at work, as Cengage's history textbook explains:

This radical surge did not mean, however, that leftists had fashioned themselves into a single movement or political party. On the contrary, the Russian Revolution had split the American Socialist Party. One faction, which would keep the name Socialist and would continue under Debs's leadership, insisted that the radicals follow democratic path to socialism. The other group, which would take the name Communist, wanted to establish a Lenin-style "dictatorship of the proletariat." Small groups of anarchists, some of whom advocated campaigns of terror to speed the revolution, represented yet a third radical tendency.

Terrorist-style bombings were one tactic of the socialists; strikes were another. By 1919, the notion of a strike was already fairly well defined. Mainstream labor unions used strikes to temporarily stop the operation of a factory in order to gain better wages and working conditions. But the coalition of socialists and communists conceived of a new type of strike, one designed to transfer ownership of the factory to the workers, and designed to restructure the government. This was a very different type of strike indeed. The radical coalition, according to Glencoe, intended to use

strikes to start a revolution. Seattle's mayor, Ole Hanson, for example, claimed that the Seattle general strike was part of an attempt to "take possession of our American government and try to duplicate the anarchy of Russia."

There was, in any case, a direct link between the extremists in the United States and the fledgling government of the Soviet Union. The Industrial Workers of the World, known as IWW and as the "Wobblies", orchestrated some of these massive strikes, and its leaders, in more than one case, fled afterward to the Soviet Union for protection. The IWW leaders interfaced with a specific part of the Soviet government:

The Soviet Union established the Communist International in 1919 - an organization for coordinating Communist parties in other countries.

Already in 1918, the communist intentions toward the United States and other western democracies were clear: the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk created a separate peace between Germany and Russia, allowing Germany to direct more resources toward the western front, which translated directly into more deaths among American and other allied soldiers. Already responsible for increased casualties in war, the socialists were now responsible for the deaths resulting from the terrorist bombings, and for the deaths resulting from the strikes and their accompanying riots.

Communists were conspiring to start a revolution in the United States. Americans had been stunned when Communists seized power in Russia and negotiated a separate peace agreement with Germany. Many Americans viewed this as betrayal, and hostility toward Communists increased.

Emboldened by their success, the socialists went further the next year:

In September 1920, a bomb made of 100 lbs. of dynamite and 500 lbs. of steel fragments exploded in New York City, killing 38 people and injuring 300 others.

The ties between the radical trade unionists and the Soviet government became more clear. Cengage's history book notes that:

Longshoremen in San Francisco and Seattle refused to load ships carrying supplies to the White Russians who had taken up arms against Lenin's Bolshevik government.

This broad and unwieldy coalition included the communists, the socialists, the extreme unionists, and the anarchists, among others. They differed from, and argued with, one another on some points. In general, however, from the gritty slums to "the radical circles that gathered in apartments and cafes," they agreed on central goals: "its participants wanted to revolutionize," not merely to elect different parties, as a way "of building a radical political party and accelerating the transition to socialism."

The tactic of the strike was, for these socialists, not the same as it was for mainstream labor unions. In a mainstream strike, organized labor temporarily brought work in a factory to a standstill, hoping to convince the owners and managers of the factory to pay better wages and to improve working conditions. By contrast, in a radical socialist strike, the strike was not against the owners and managers of a factory, the strike was against society itself. The goal was not better wages and better working conditions; the goal was to transfer ownership of the factory without recompense and to restructure the government: a very different type of strike indeed! Historian Howard Zinn writes:

The IWW idea of a general strike became reality for five days in Seattle, Washington, when a walkout of the 100,000 working people brought the city to a halt.

An entire major city was held captive. Clean clothes and decent food were nearly impossible to obtain; citizens were forced to roam about in dirty clothes, scavenging whatever they could to eat. The unions patrolled the streets, forbidding most automobile traffic.

The city now stopped functioning, except for activities organized by the strikers to provide essential needs. Firemen agreed to stay on the job. Laundry workers handled only hospital laundry. Vehicle authorized to move carried signs "Exempted by the General Strike Committee."

Seattle was one example; riots took place in cities around the country, accompanied by bloodshed and death. While often beginning as a strike, the specific issues of the strike (wages and working conditions) usually took a back seat, and then gradually disappeared altogether, in a cloud of other demands: take ownership of the factories away from their current owners with no payment in return; restructure the government as a "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Yet the roots of the radical socialist movement in the United States, like the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat", go back even further, before the foundation of the Soviet Union. Professor Harvey Klehr writes:

The two most successful 19th-century radicals were Edward Bellamy and Henry George. Bellamy’s utopian novel, Looking Backward, eschewed notions of class struggle and was permeated with notions of the Social Gospel. George, whose single-tax program put the blame for America’s problems on land speculators, appealed powerfully to Irish immigrants. Large-scale industrialization and increasingly violent labor confrontations in the 1880s set the stage for the growth of the first substantial radical parties. Radicals were weakened because of incessant fights between purists unwilling to compromise and “opportunists” willing to accept small, immediate gains.

The hallmarks of the socialist movement seem to be, first, unwieldy coalitions whose factions hardly coordinate with each other, and, second, a persistent tendency toward violence. An exact

discussion of the Socialist Party of America reiterates the political problems radicals faced. Its base was among midwestern Protestants, both skilled workers and tenant farmers, and New York Jewish garment workers; it had messianic visions, but conservative social views. Neither its radical wing nor its reformist wing could surmount these internal tensions. Oklahoma had the most politically successful Socialist party in the country before World War I, but the party was destroyed when the small farmers who formed its core decided to march on Washington to seize the government after the U.S. declared war. The Green Corn Rebellion (the marchers planned to subsist on corn en route) was quickly suppressed and socialism in Oklahoma became a distant memory.

Inevitably, when one branch of the socialist coalition would soften and seek to obtain its goals by purely democratic means - speeches, elections, legislation - the other branches would nudge it back toward a more forceful version of fomenting the socialist revolution.

In Milwaukee, socialists captured city hall and remained in power for decades. But the largely German brewery workers at the party’s core were derided by other radicals as “sewer socialists” because of their inevitable need to focus on the mundane tasks of governing a city. Even the charismatic national leader of the Socialist party, Eugene Debs, was too smitten with Marxist notions of the inevitable collapse of capitalism to accept the idea that political reform was the best route to victory. And, in his romanticism, Debs embraced the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies), whose bloodcurdling rhetoric thrilled those who hated capitalism but terrified more moderate socialists.

This romantic desire for a revolution which, if not directly violent, would at least be an illegal rebellion permeated the movement from the sweatiest of factory workers to the upscale neighborhoods in which armchair socialists lived in luxury. Wealthy and well-educated, and having no first-hand experience of either labor or life in a factory town, these backers of socialism understood the movement from a strictly theoretical point of view. Because theoretical economics eventually and inevitably becomes just a bit boring, the occasional bomb, riot, or death appealed to these hypothetical socialists.

Another wing of the Socialist party also scorned moderation. Around the turn of the 20th century, a new cultural Left was emerging in America, centered in Greenwich Village and championing modernism in the arts, sexual freedom, and secularism. Its newspaper, The Masses — which was not

in fact read by the masses, but which circulated mainly among the college-educated holdovers from Woodrow Wilson's progressivism, and among those for whom even Wilson had not been quite edgy enough - this newspaper "scorned compromise, much preferring the Wobblies to the boring sewer socialists."

Among the leaders of this movement, several opted to move permanently to the Soviet Union when their criminal activities in the United States were discovered. William Haywood, known as Big Bill Haywood, had been convicted in late 1918; by 1921, his conviction was still working its way through the appeals process, but it was clear it would stand. He violated the terms of his bail and left for the Soviet Union. Upon arrival there, he was given a post as a highly-placed advisor on labor topics in Lenin's government. Later, he helped to found the Kuzbass Autonomous Industrial Colony, an experiment in workers' control in the Soviet Union. His warm reception in the Soviet Union, and his immediate placement into positions of power and influence there, confirm that he had already been a loyal employee of the USSR for some time prior to his presence in that country.

Likewise, after a strike at a textile mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, in which socialist union leaders had killed a police officer, Howard Zinn writes:

sixteen strikers and sympathizers were indicted for murder, including Fred Beal, a Communist party organizer. Ultimately seven were tried and given sentences of from five to twenty years. They were released on bail, and left the state; the Communists escaped to Soviet Russia.

There were no ordinary union leaders: the mainstream of the collective bargaining union was not sympathetic to the Soviet Union or to the socialists. One must carefully distinguish between mainstream organized labor and the socialist communist extremists on the fringe of the union movement. Writing in the Washington Times, Matt Patterson notes that

for a time in the 20th century, American unions turned from this seedy past to become defenders of economic freedom. As Ivan Osorio, labor expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, notes, “During the Cold War, the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and most major U.S. labor unions were staunchly anti-communist. In fact, the AFL-CIO under Lane Kirkland worked closely with the Reagan administration to aid the Solidarity movement in Poland."

Mainstream labor unions are friendly toward capitalism and toward free markets, understanding that these are the source of wealth which they hope to procure for their members. Extremist labor movements, by contrast, seek to establish some form of socialism, and in alliance with communists and anarchists, hope to seize ownership of factories - and the means of production in general - with no recompense to their owners; they hope to restructure government into a dictatorship of the proletariat, and have no qualms about murder, bombing, hostage-taking in the form of a general strike, or alliances with powers which, like the Soviet Union, have explicitly declared a goal of overthrowing the government of the United States.

This movement - partially funded and partially directed from the Soviet Union; killing civilians in major cities by means of terrorist bombings; holding an entire major city captive for five days without clean clothes, food, or the right to move about town; and causing deaths around the nation in riots - was clearly a major symptom of the danger posed by socialism and communism in the years after 1918. Why, then, the astute reader will ask, has so little been presented about this in certain history textbooks or in certain history curricula? Why have the tales of terrorist bombings, conducted by a socialist coalition, not been included in our educations? Why has a narrative about the citizens of Seattle living as prisoners in their own homes been hidden?