Saving the Economy, Again

The narrative of any nation can be told as a series of dangers which threaten the country, and a series of escapes by which the land and its people are returned to safety. Typically, histories conceptualize those dangers armies attacking the nation from without, subversives destabilizing the nation from within, weather inflicting floods or droughts, or diseases and plagues which sicken and kill the people in large numbers. Often a hero organizes the rescue.

At least since Karl Marx, but even earlier, we know also that economic dangers play a motivating role in history. While a doctrinaire Marxist claims economics as the chief or even sole engine of history, it is less controversial to hypothesize that economics are among the main movers.

In 1920, the United States found itself enduring economic hardship. Although the war had been over for more than a year, its lingering effects included massive debt and an anemic trade relationship with Europe. But the war was not the only reason for a weak economy. Damage had been done to the nation’s financial system even prior to the war. The Wilson administration had eagerly implemented the sixteenth amendment, violated the property rights of American citizens by cruel and bitter taxation. Woodrow Wilson had also intervened into the sphere of personal choice by private citizens: the Federal Trade Commission, allegedly organized to protect consumers, reduced competition between businesses and thereby increased prices; the Federal Reserve System exerted control over the economy, reducing choice and creating risks which would eventually lead to the Great Depression.

While it is easy to condemn these actions in hindsight, it must be remembered that some members of the “progressive movement” - the movement which instituted these actions - were perhaps sincere, if gravely mistaken, in their desire to do something helpful for the average American. Not all of them were cynically manipulating the laws and the economy in order to gather power to themselves.

The net result was that by mid 1920, the ordinary citizen was not enjoying the hoped-for blessings of peace. The war was over, but the economy was crippled. In fact, America’s involvement in the war had been direct for only one year, and indirect involvement had been, if anything, profitable for the American economy in the years prior to the nation’s official entry into the war in 1917. Describing Wilson’s postwar economic misery, Amity Shlaes writes:

The country was expecting a revival, but instead the economy worsened before Americans’ eyes. Debt plagued many companies. Even Henry Ford was struggling under a giant burden of debt. Frederick Gillett told Amherst alumni at the Hotel Commodore in New York that February that “the present is one of the most critical times in the whole history of our country.” The federal war debt was $21 billion alone and the entire federal debt more like $25 billion; ten times the debt before the war. State and federal taxes both had escalated in recent years. Senator Borah had once said he could not imagine the top rate on income tax going over 20 percent; now the top rate was over 70 percent.

Two poisons were killing the economy: debt and taxes. 1920 was an election year, and, of course, the economy would be a major issue in the political campaigns. What the American voters wanted to was to move forward - to get past the burdens of high taxes, to get past the task of paying of the national debt, and to move into the prosperity which lay beyond. It is in part a rhetorical flourish to cast this as a “return” to the past, while simultaneously depicting it as a move into the future. In either case, or in both cases, citizens knew that they were bearing the burden of Wilson’s progressivism, with its high tax rates and micro-management of their personal decisions.

In this context the word “normalcy” was born. Although the word had been in use since at least 1857, Warren Harding is often credited with at least popularizing, if not inventing the word. Ordinary voters wanted a life not filled with wartime urgency, not burdened by taxes and by national debt, and free from interfering government regulations. On May 14, 1920, Harding, campaigning for the presidency, catapulted the word into fame. In Boston, at the Home Market Club, several speakers addressed the crowd, including Calvin Coolidge. Harding spoke later in the day. Coolidge and Harding expressed similar views, but Harding’s speech would be the one to became famous as he introduced the word. Amity Shlaes recounts the event:

Harding went at the same matters more deftly. He defended the free market more robustly and assailed “the false economics which lure economic control to utter chaos. The world,” Harding said, “needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation.” Rather than shouting or demanding discipline, Harding appealed to common sense. It was daunting to see how Harding’s gracious humor could melt even the stiff Boston crowd. “If I lived in Massachusetts I should be for Governor Coolidge for President,” he jovially allowed. “Coming from Ohio, I am for Harding.” Harding’s rhetorical style was often criticized, but this time the alliteration soothed rather than distracted.

The speech which Harding delivered that day became a turning-point in American political rhetoric, and a turning point in United States history. Harding’s use of the word ‘normalcy’ connected the best of the past with the best of the future. The nation had lived through a roller-coaster ride of progressivist interventionist policies. Even if well-intentioned, those policies had produced the political and economic equivalent of nausea: too much roller-coaster.

Such was the state of the nation in 1920. The successful campaign of Harding for the presidency was a sign of the voters’ desire for “normalcy” - a chance for moving forward from Wilson’s nightmarish bureaucracy, a chance for moving forward into an environment in which each citizen would have a chance - a chance for political expression, a chance for economic opportunity. Harding, as president, began to unfold that opportunity. Harding’s premature death, and an overplayed scandal of much publicity and little substance, got in the way of Harding’s concept of expanding freedom.

In terms of policy, the Harding administration and the Coolidge administration can be seen as largely continuous. In terms of the politics with which those policies were implemented, there was a significant difference in style. Which one was more effective remains a matter of research for historians. But the cumulative efforts of both offered a sense of hope to the average citizen. Opportunities seemed suddenly plentiful, after the barren days of the Wilson administration. Historian David Greenberg writes:

Apart from taxation, Coolidge also made strides in his second term in minimizing the regulation of business and finance. In his fourth annual message to Congress, on December 7, 1926, he issued a call “for reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people.” To the objection that workers, consumers, and other citizens needed safeguards, the president replied, “Unfortunately, human nature cannot be changed by an act of the legislature. … It is too much assumed that because an abuse exists it is the business of the national government to remedy it.”

The mechanisms by which Coolidge and Harding created opportunities for citizens were simple in principle: cut taxes, cut spending even more, and reduce the national debt. These principles created prosperity for all Americans.

In creating economic benefits for all Americans, Coolidge and Harding went sharply against the grain of the Wilson administration. While Woodrow Wilson had worked to keep Blacks out of universities, mercilessly mocked the Republican Party’s habit of appointing African-Americans to significant federal posts, and re-segregated civil service jobs such as those in the Post Office to keep “Negroes” from working near other people, Coolidge and Harding both spoke courageously in favor of anti-lynching laws. While Woodrow Wilson referred publicly to Blacks in racial epithets which are too crude to mention in this blog, Coolidge was the first sitting United States president to give a commencement address at a “Historically Black College” or “Historically Black University” when he spoke at the graduation ceremonies at Howard University. African-Americans understood Coolidge’s bold stance against the KKK and voted for him in large numbers in 1924. Coolidge’s campaign mocked the Klan with its deliberately misspelled slogan, “Keep Kool with Koolidge!”

Historian Robert Ferrell explains how the Harding and Coolidge policies created wealth, jobs, and prosperity for all citizens, of all races, of all classes, in all parts of the country:

In holding down government expenditures and saving enough money to retire the debt, Coolidge employed several devices, one of which was the Bureau of the Budget. The very fact that the bureau’s statisticians and accountants were screening the proposed expenses of cabinet departments and the independent agencies gave comfort to the parsimonious president. The bureau’s experts also could watch for special proposals by those well-known spendthrifts, the members of Congress. When the president presented his annual budget he could feel fairly sure that it was as low as he properly should go, and not a crazy quilt of special-interest propositions.

The Coolidge and Harding administrations successfully used free market policies to combat racism, to offer opportunities to Americans of every class and region, and to generate prosperity for the nation generally. The laissez-faire policies of Coolidge and Harding cannot be blamed for the Great Depression: although the exact causes of the Depression are still debated, they seem to emanate generally from Wilson’s Federal Reserve Board and from tariff and taxation policies which distorted the organic and natural trends of the market.

In any case, Wilson’s policies left the nation in economic shambles in 1920. Harding and Coolidge are properly seen as revitalizing not only the nation’s economy, but also revitalizing civil liberties in general.

Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Race

The presidency of Woodrow Wilson marked a low point for African-Americans and their struggle for civil rights. Prior to taking office, Wilson, as president of Princeton University, had worked to deter Blacks from applying to Princeton; if they applied, he worked to ensure that they were not admitted. Addressing Princeton alumni, Wilson criticized President Theodore Roosevelt for appointing African-Americans to federal offices; Wilson used a crude racial epithet to describe Roosevelt's appointees.

Occupying the White House after Theodore Roosevelt - Wilson took office in March 1913, Roosevelt left in March 1909, with Taft serving a term in between - Wilson sought to undo the Republican Roosevelt's integration. In fact, Wilson would not only undo Roosevelt's appointments of Blacks to federal offices, but Wilson would also go on to undo the integration of the federal civil service which had been in place since Reconstruction. Wilson imposed segregation on various agencies within the government, e.g. the post office, which had been integrated for decades.

Beyond removing African-Americans from federal posts, and beyond re-segregating the civil service, Wilson went further. He publicly praised the KKK. This horrified not only Blacks, but millions of Americans - people of all races, religions, and ethnic background. His affirmation of the Ku Klux Klan was the final bit of evidence which confirmed that Woodrow Wilson was a hate-filled and bigoted racist.

Just as Wilson had worked to undo the desegregation of Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft, so Wilson's successors - Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover - worked to reintroduce integration to the federal government and civil rights to the Blacks. Harding and Coolidge both advanced a legislative agenda which included antilynching bills. Hoover worked to reintegrate federal agencies. Historian Jonathan Bean writes:

In 1913, Democratic president Woodrow Wilson ordered the segregation of government offices. Moorfield Storey and other officers of the NAACP protested, but Wilson responded: "[B]y putting certain bureaus and sections of the service in the charge of negroes we are rendering them more safe in their possession of office and less likely to be discriminated against." Perhaps because he had spent most of his adult life outside the United States, Secretary of Commerce Hoover was uninterested in racial issues; moreover, thinking in terms of rigid classes violated his individualist philosophy. Hoover's Red Cross work during the Great Flood of 1927 opened his eyes to racism in the South. The following year he responded positively when the NAACP asked him to desegregate the Commerce Department.

The narrative, then, is this: on the state level, the civil rights gained by the Blacks during Reconstruction began to evaporate during the late 1800's, as Democrats regained control of southern states from the Republicans. On the federal level, the civil rights gained by African-Americans during Reconstruction began to evaporate during the Democrat administration of Woodrow Wilson; Blacks began to regain ground on the federal level during the Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. African-Americans would have to wait longer to regain that ground on the state level, as the Democrat party held the southern states under racist domination even when the Republicans had influence on a federal level.

FDR's Policy Toward the Soviets

The Czarist regime which dominated Russian during the nineteenth century, and during the first few years of the twentieth century, was a cruel and paranoid regime. Even if the personality of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, was somewhat more humane - such is the hypothesis of some biographers - it was too little, too late. The Tsarist secret police mercilessly hunted anyone who seemed to be possibly involved with any critique of the government, arresting quite a few innocents along the way. This police force was known for brutal interrogations, beatings, and killings; suspects who survived to trial were not given what Western Civilization calls 'due process,' and were sentenced to long years in labor camps, where few survived their sentences, or were simply sentenced to death.

Beyond chasing anyone who seemed likely to be critical of the government, the Czar utterly ruled out any reforms in his government which might move it in the direction of a republic with freely-elected representatives. His relations with the Duma - Russia's nominal parliament with little real power - went from bad to worse, as he refused to acknowledge the Duma as having any authority, and he dissolved it. Liberties like freedom of speech and freedom of the press were unknown. Although intended to prevent the government's overthrow, the Czarist regime's oppressiveness actually gave cause to revolutionaries.

Given the Czarist regime's harshness, it was no surprise that many western observers initially hoped that the 1917 revolution would give rise to a more humane government. The rhetoric put forth by Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders sounded as if it would lead to the types of political liberties favored by Western Civilization.

But it soon became clear that the Soviet dictatorship would be no improvement over the czarist regime. By some metrics, it would be worse. The communist government of the Soviet Union murdered Russians by the millions. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech essentially disappeared. The Russians who had been oppressed by the czarist regime soon realized that they were being maltreated with even more brutality by the communists. Western observers who had hoped for progress under the Soviet Union saw Russia dissolve into a nightmare of cruelty.

By the time western governments, including that of the United States, realized which type of ruthless government was dominating Russia, it was too late. The results of the 1917 revolution were firmly in place. Not only did the communist dictatorship - which allowed no meaningful elections, but gave elaborate pretenses of such - have a secure grip on power in the Soviet Union, but it had also installed spies inside the United States government.

Although it was clear, equally to foreign policy specialists and to the ordinary citizen, that the Soviet government was no friend either to political liberty generally or to the United States specifically, policy makers inside the State Department were under the influence of misinformation given to them by Soviet agents who had obtained influential posts inside the government.

In addition to these moles, who were in two-way communication with the KGB and other Soviet agencies in Moscow, there were also sympathizers: those who were so infatuated with communist ideology that they continued to support Lenin and Stalin even after their atrocities became public.

There was a significant number of knowing and willing agents, both in the State Department and in other offices inside the United State government. There was also a large number of sympathizers, regarded by the Soviets as intellectual dupes, who were neither employed by, nor in direct contact with, Soviet intelligence agencies, but whose activities were certainly helpful to the Stalinists.

Among the agents on the Soviet payroll were State Department officials like Alger Hiss, Julian Wadleigh, Laurence Duggan, and Noel Field. They reported to agencies like the NKVD, the GPU, and the OGPU. Among those who, having a fondness for communist ideology, helped the Soviets without being on the payroll of the Soviet intelligence agencies and without direct contact to those agencies were men like Harry Hopkins, who perhaps never released state secrets to the Soviets, but who, wittingly or unwittingly, nudged United States policy in directions favorable to the Soviet Union.

Hopkins, for example, was convinced that the United States could form a "friendship" with the Soviet Union, even as Stalin was directing his spy networks to undermine the U.S. government. Hopkins hoped that the United States could render "assistance" to the Soviet Union, encouraging such friendship, even as the Comintern, an agency of the Soviet government, plotted the overthrow of the U.S. government. Policy documents formulated under the supervision of Harry Hopkins, and transmitted by Hopkins to President Franklin Roosevelt, contained these words and ideas.

By continuously feeding such misinformation to FDR, Roosevelt's policy views were nudged into a direction which played into the hands of the Soviets. To be sure, not all of Roosevelt's advisors were keen on Russian communism, and some of them warned the president about the dangers. Historian Medford Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Seeking Soviet “friendship” and giving Moscow “every assistance” indeed summed up American policy at Teheran and Yalta, and for some while before those meetings. The most vivid expression of Roosevelt’s ideas to this effect would be quoted by William Bullitt, a longtime confidant of the President, and his first envoy to Moscow. Bullitt recounted an episode early in the war in which he suggested to FDR that American Lend-Lease aid to Russia might provide some leverage with a balky Kremlin. To this, according to Bullitt, the President responded: “I have just a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for world democracy and peace.” (Emphasis added.) Bullitt, who had learned about Stalin the hard way in Russia, tried to dissuade the President from this view but was not successful.

The pro-Soviet advisors inside the Roosevelt administration mocked those who warned about the dangers of Stalin, even as Stalin was orchestrating a manmade famine in the Ukraine which would kill millions, and even as Stalin was preparing to team up with Hitler against the United States. The Soviet agents in the State Department ridiculed those who attempted to alert FDR to Stalin's sinister activities, scorning them as backward-looking. Any data about Soviet butchery was countered with reminders that the czarist government hadn't been that much worse.

After the 1917 revolution, a civil war between the "White Russians" and the "Red Russians" lasted from 1917 to 1923. The White Russians had hoped to dislodge the Bolsheviks, while the Red Russians were the communists who hoped to solidify their hold on power. During and after that war, which the White Russians lost, emigres from the White Russian side gave useful data to the State Department. The data from the White Russians complemented data gathered by Americans like William Bullitt on the ground in Russia.

As the ever-grimmer picture of Lenin's and Stalin's butchery and aggressions emerged, the pro-Soviet faction in the State Department worked to discredit the data offered by the White Russians.

When U.S. and Soviet diplomats met, three issues were on the table. First, the Soviet destruction of freedom of religion was extending even to visiting U.S. nationals on Russian soil. Second, the Comintern was continuing to organize subversive groups to attempt violent overthrows not only of freely-elected western governments, but also of the Chinese government. Finally, the Soviet government had confiscated and nationalized assets belonging to U.S. citizens which happened to be on Russian soil at the time of the revolution.

Although these human rights violations were flagrant and glaring, the pro-Soviet elements within the State Department still worked to steer the negotiations to the advantage of the Soviets. Historian Jean Edward Smith writes:

Because the career diplomats in the State Department - many of whom had spent the last fifteen years hobnobbing with White Russian emigres - were still imbued with nostalgia for the czarist past, Roosevelt handled the negotiations himself, first through Henry Morgenthau, then through William C. Bullitt. Morgenthau, as head of the Farm Credit Administration, dealt with the Soviet trade organization Amtorg; Bullitt with Boris Skvirsky, the senior Russian commercial representative in the United States. As a result of these covert discussions, FDR invited Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov to Washington for direct negotiations in early November. The ostensible outstanding issued involved freedom of religion for Americans in Russia and the continued agitation for world revolution mounted by the Comintern. The real sticking point was the restitution of American property seized by the Soviet government in its nationalization decree of 1919. Roosevelt and Litvinov compromised. The agreement is known as the Litvinov Assignment. The Soviet government assigned to the United States its claim to all Russian property in the United States that antedated the Revolution. The United States agreed to seize the property on behalf of the Soviet Union, thus giving effect to the Soviet nationalization decree, and use the proceeds to pay the claims of Americans whose property in Russia had been confiscated. The constitutionality of the assignment was twice challenged before the Supreme Court, but in both instances it was upheld, the "taking clause" of the Constitution not withstanding.

Two factors shaped FDR's policy: first, pro-Soviet sympathizers in the State Department directed a continual stream of misinformation to him; second, his declining health stole his resilience and stamina and predisposed him to look for easy solutions rather than strive for diplomatic gains.

The Supreme Court was willing to go along with Roosevelt's policy toward the Soviets because it already had been at the receiving end of FDR's ability to bully the court. The two challenges, 1937 and 1942, to Roosevelt's deal with the Soviets, indicated that the U.S. government would be complicit in aiding the Soviet nationalization policy in seizing property which belonged to private citizens. Assets belonging to Russian citizens - assets which happened to be on U.S. soil - were seized, thus denying the rights of those citizens. The Soviet government had stolen assets both from U.S. citizens from Russian citizens, assets which happened to be on Russian soil at the time of the revolution. FDR would use the U.S. government to complete the theft by seizing any assets on U.S. soil which happened to belong to a Russian citizen. He would use the proceeds to pay the claims of American citizens whose property on Russian soil had been stolen by the Soviet government. But he was paying them with stolen cash. The Supreme Court did not have the stamina to resist Roosevelt's action; it knew that it would be bullied into submission for contradicting the Roosevelt administration, just as it had been bullied into approving the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, after striking down its clone, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.

In the end, FDR knew better. He was savvy and cosmopolitan - he'd spent more time in Europe than many of his State Department appointees. But his illness sapped his strength, and his agreement with the Soviets was the easy way out - appeasing the Americans whose property had been confiscated by the Stalinists - and the easy way out was more appealing than insisting on a principled diplomatic stance.

George Washington and the Synagogue

In Newport, Rhode Island, stands the nation’s oldest synagogue, built in 1763. Its age, and its symbolic significance for religious freedom, are already enough to make it noteworthy. But it has added importance because George Washington visited it, and did so to underscore the nation’s commitment to free worship. Eric Tucker, writing for the Associated Press, reports that

The history of the synagogue starts with a group of Sephardic Jews who arrived in 1658 in Rhode Island - a colony founded by Roger Williams and his followers on the principle of religious tolerance. They established a congregation, and the synagogue was built a century later designed by Newport architect Peter Harrison, whose other notable buildings include King’s Chapel in Boston.

The tradition of freedom of belief began with the early settlers like Roger Williams and William Penn, and was carried forward to the next generation of colonists. Religious freedom was a widespread value among the colonists. In New York, John Rogers, during a 1783 sermon, declared that

Another instance of the divine goodness to us, and which we may not pass unnoticed, is, his providing us in New York with so good a constitution, for the securing our inestimable rights and privileges. I do not say it has not its imperfections; but it is upon the the whole, equalled by few, and surpassed by none of the constitutions of the sister states, in wisdom, justice, and sound policy. The rights of conscience both in faith and worship, are fully secured to every denomination of Christians. No one denomination in the state, or in any of the states, have it in their power to oppress another. They all stand upon the same common level in point of religious privileges. Nor is this confined to Christians only. The Jews, also, which is their undoubted right, have the liberty of worshiping God in that way they think most acceptable to him. No man is excluded from the rights of citizenship on account of his religious profession. Nor ought he to be.

Washington’s visit to the synagogue set a clear tone for the new nation. As the war was winding down, Washington’s presence in the building was a message that Jews and Christians in America, despite differences in belief, had a common heritage which would form the foundation for a natural law view in which personal freedom and individual liberty would be goals of the political system. After visiting, George Washington wrote to the leaders of the synagogue:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

The depth of Washington’s consideration of the congregation which met in the synagogue is manifested in the fact that his first visit to the location was in 1781, and his letter to them was written in 1790. Clearly, the group had a significant spot in Washington’s mind. The degree of religious freedom to which he was committed was astounding at that point in time: Rabbi Mordechai Eskovitz notes that in the 1700’s, Jews in the United States “had the privilege of praying as free citizens,” while the rest of the world “didn't have much religious tolerance.” In the two centuries following Washington’s visit, while a few other nations in the world embraced the notion of religious freedom, the relative situation remained much the same: while America strives to offer unprecedented levels of freedom to its citizens, much of the world remains oppressed by governments which restrict, regulate, and tax. Eric Tucker writes that

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower also attended services at Touro, as did poet Robert Frost.

Leaders like Eisenhower defended the Judeo-Christian value of tolerance against Soviet Communism during the Cold War in the twentieth century, and we defend it against the terrorist attacks of Islamofascism in the twenty-first century. The Touro synagogue in Rhode Island has became an enduring symbol for this struggle, and for the need to defend freedom against the inevitable attacks on it. Perhaps Robert Frost was considering the need to dedicate one’s self to liberty's defense when he wrote

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,

The United States must keep its promise, remaining vigilant despite fatigue, defending the peculiarly Judeo-Christian concepts of freedom and liberty. That is the nation’s duty.

James Otis Discusses Taxes

James Otis was born in Massachusetts in 1725. His father was also named James Otis, and sometimes he is listed as "James Otis, Jr." but often the "Jr." is omitted. Although he was disabled by the time the fighting began in 1775, he was pivotal in the developing events leading up to the revolution. One of his contributions was his precise and articulate formulation of the grievances against the British government.

Basing his argument on ideas drawn from the Magna Carta and from the English Bill of Rights of 1689, James Otis clarified the argument that the taxes on the colonists were unfair because the colonies had no voting representatives in Parliament. Otis was probably the first to say or write the phrase "no taxation without representation" - but the evidence is not conclusive. The oldest surviving text with that phrase is dated February 1768: a London magazine's account of a speech. But Otis was widely read and discussed in English political circles, and the author of that speech may well have gotten the phrase from Otis. It is confirmed that Otis wrote "Taxation without representation is tyranny" and other similar phrasings of the thought. Historian Les Standiford writes:

However, the concept of the basic unfairness of being taxed without the consent of one's elected representatives had certainly been eloquently expressed by the Boston assemblyman and attorney James Otis, Jr., as early as 1764 in a pamphlet of protest, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. Otis framed his argument by asking, "Can there be any liberty where property is taken away without consent?" Then he began his answer with a second question: "Is there the least difference as to the consent of the colonists whether taxes and impositions are laid on their trade and other property by the crown alone or by the Parliament?"

Having graduated from Harvard College in 1743, James Otis had been practicing law in Boston since 1750. In 1761, he gained fame by mounting a legal challenge to "writs of assistance" issued by the British government. These documents were search warrants which allowed English tax officials nearly unlimited access to the homes of colonists. Neither the specific home to be searched, nor the object of the search, were specified; British bureaucrats were entitled to barge into anyone's home, with no notice, and look for anything they pleased. James Otis may be the spiritual father of the fourth amendment, which reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In May 1761, Otis was elected to the legislative body of Massachusetts, and would be reelected continuously as long as he was fit. Like many of the early revolutionaries, his arguments were based, not on his rights as an American, but rather on his rights as a British subject. This reveals the degree to which the early protesters were still trying to work with the British system. Only when it became clear that they would never be granted appropriate representation in Parliament, and only when it became clear that the British would continue to ravage the colonists and trample human rights by means of taxation, that independence became the goal, instead of correcting the behavior of the British government. Les Standiford quotes Otis:

For Otis, it was a simple matter, though he made his case with passion: "I can see no reason to doubt but the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, on real or personal, fixed or floating property, in the colonies is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonists as British subjects and as men ... for in a state of nature no man can take my property from me without my consent: if he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. If such a proceeding is a breach of the law of nature, no law of society can make it just. The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented [emphasis added] appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right."

In 1762, Otis published one of his most famous works, a book titled A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; in it he articulated the view that the colonists should not be taxed to pay for the defense of the colonies by English soldiers and by the English navy, because the colonists could protect themselves with their militias, do it better, do it at less cost, and do it without creating the misery which the drunken and harassing English soldiers inflicted upon the colonists. He drafted documents which were sent to London to explain the rights of colonists according to British law, and he was a member of the Stamp Act Congress. He published two more books, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved and Considerations on Behalf of the Colonists, and his speeches and writings were influential within the growing revolutionary movement. He wrote:

The sum of my argument is: that civil government is of God; that the administrators of it were originally the whole people; that they might have devolved it on whom they pleased; that this devolution is fiduciary, for the good of the whole; that by the British constitution this devolution is on the King, Lords and Commons, the supreme, sacred and uncontrollable legislative power not only in the realm but through the dominions; that by the abdication, the original compact was broken to pieces; that by the Revolution it was renewed and more firmly established, and the rights and liberties of the subject in all parts of the dominions more fully explained and confirmed; that in consequence of this establishment and the acts of succession and union, His Majesty George III is rightful King and sovereign, and, with his Parliament, the supreme legislative of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging; that this constitution is the most free one and by far the best now existing on earth; that by this constitution every man in the dominions is a free man; that no parts of His Majesty's dominions can be taxed without their consent; that every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature; that the refusal of this would seem to be a contradiction in practice to the theory of the constitution; that the colonies are subordinate dominions and are now in such a state as to make it best for the good of the whole that they should not only be continued in the enjoyment of subordinate legislation but be also represented in some proportion to their number and estates in the grand legislature of the nation; that this would firmly unite all parts of the British empire in the greater peace and prosperity, and render it invulnerable and perpetual.

James Otis, along with Sam Adams and Patrick Henry, seemed to realize, more than some of their fellow founding fathers, the power of the emotion among the colonists. He perhaps realized early what others realized later: that the time was ripe for a revolution, and that the colonists had been subject to such abuse for so long a time that they were ready to riot, to throw valuable cargo into Boston Harbor, and to start a war for independence. Les Standiford reveals that Otis was even ahead of Benjamin Franklin in understanding the revolutionary sentiment among the people:

If Otis was calling for colonists to boycott the tax, however, shortly after the act's passage the British were taking steps to see that the desperately needed funds would in act begin flowing into the national coffers. Even Benjamin Franklin miscalculated the depth of passions loosed in the colonies, it seemed, for he went so far as to nominate a Philadelphia friend, John Hughes, to serve as stamps distributor for Pennsylvania. It was only when word reached Franklin that an angry mob had surrounded Hughes to prevent him from assuming his duties and another had marched on Franklin's own home, threatening to burn it down, that the envoy began to understand that a profound shift in Anglo-American affairs had taken place.

Sadly, James Otis was struck on the head by a British officer in 1769. He was disabled from that time forward, although he lived until 1783. By the time he died, the United States was free and independent, thanks in part to his work.

The Tuscarora War: Lessons Learned

The numerous small wars involving Indians - “Native American tribes” - prior to 1775 present a challenge to the historian. There is quite a bit of data about some of them, but discerning patterns in that data is difficult. Historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

In the hundred years prior to the American Revolution, colonists fought other wars strictly against Indians. For example, in 1711 the Tuscarora Indians in North Carolina launched a surprise attack that began the Tuscarora War (1711-1713).

Wayne Lee has written an article comparing and contrasting the methods of Tuscarora and the Cherokees, two Native American tribes, as they defending their territories.

The Tuscarora were party to a war, approximately two years in length, against the English and some Indian tribes allied with the English. The centerpiece of the Tuscarora defensive strategy was a large fortification. Professor Lee’s description of the fortress is impressive, so powerful was its defense; when it was place under siege, it inflicted significant casualties on its attackers:

IN 1713, the second year of the “Tuscarora War” found the Tuscaroras facing continued joint English-Indian attacks on their villages along the Neuse River and Contentnea Creek in eastern North Carolina. Over the course of the war the Tuscaroras had progressively refined their traditional defensive palisades, culminating in the complex fortification near the town of Neoheroka. Now besieged in that fort, and threatened with ever closer trenches, siege works, cannon, and even an underground mine, the Tuscaroras resisted desperately. They burrowed out underground bunkers, dug countertrenches, made arrowheads of broken glass, and inflicted significant casualties on the attacking force with constant fire from both muskets and bows. The final furious assault by the English and their Indian allies took three days. They stormed the fort, set it afire, and killed or enslaved its nearly one thousand inhabitants.

Yet fall the fort did, and when it fell, the Tuscarora suffered significant casualties and many of them became POW’s. The fort had been operated by over one thousand Tuscarora, and all of them wound up either dead or doing forced labor.

By contrast, the Cherokee, made guerilla-style raids the centerpiece of their defensive strategy, and did not focus their efforts on building fortifications. After two years of fighting, the English were willing to negotiate a peace treaty; the Cherokee suffered only an estimated sixty to eighty deaths.

Lee points out that we cannot speak of a “monolithic ‘Indian way of war’” inasmuch as we see divergent approaches in the examples of the Cherokee and the Tuscarora. Various groups not only had different methods, but they were redesigning their methods continuously as they understood more about European methods. Lee gives examples to stress the multiplicity of forms used by the Indians: guerilla, large fortification, and large-scale battle formation are three of the modes he mentions. He points out the they were flexible enough to vary tactics as the situation demanded, e.g., between large and small groupings.

He argues that previous historians had, while diverging on their descriptions of Indian warfare style, converged in terms of portraying the Indians as have a limited palette. Lee contends that the Indians worked with a large array of options, being conversant with a number of different tactics, and that we cannot paint a narrow picture of the “Indian way of war.”

The Tuscarora War began with Indian attacks on settlers around the towns of Bath and New Bern. The Tuscarora targeted English settlers, as opposed to Germans and Swiss who were also in the area. Lee contends that the Indians were making a point with the attacks, and saw military actions as symbolic and as a warning to the English, whose settlements were encroaching ever more on Tuscarora territory. The English, Lee writes, responded very differently, seeing this as a declaration of war, and something rather like total war, which would not cease until there had been a decisive defeat of one of the belligerents. Thus the English responded with large military formations to the Tuscarora raiding parties. The Tuscarora withdrew to their massive fortification, Hancock’s Fort. Surrendering this under pressure, they withdrew to a second defensive position, a fortress at Neoheroka. This illustrates one weakness of the Tuscarora strategy – because it is organized around a defensive fortification, the only actions available are surrender or retreat to a different fortification. No positive or constructive course of action – attack or offensive – is available. The ultimate Tuscarora defeat, according to Lee, offers a “lesson,” that a “European-style siege” will “likely overcome a native fortification.” The Indians lacked artillery and other key pieces of technology; they also lacked experience. The Europeans had been perfecting siege techniques for centuries.

The outcome of the Tuscarora war caused the Tuscarora to seek safer residence elsewhere. They migrated northward and joined the Iroquois nation – it was at this time that the “five nations” of the Iroquois became the “six nations.” Millett and Maslowski write:

The Tuscarora Indians, an Iroquois tribe, moved northward after their defeat by the whites and were admitted to the confederacy in the early 1720s. Thereafter the Five Nations became the Six Nations.

Despite their experiences in the Tuscarora War – or perhaps because of them – the Tuscarora, when the Iroquois Nation dissolved because of conflicts among the tribes about whether or not to support the United States in its war for Independence against the British, chose to support the bid for independence:

In the New York – Pennsylvania region the war shattered the Iroquois Confederacy as the Oneidas and Tuscaroras supported the United States and the other four tribes assisted the British.

Like the Tuscarora, the Cherokee had a tradition of defensive warfare, and constructed significant fortifications, documented by the earlier Europeans to arrive in the area of South Carolina, North Carolina, and the areas that would become Georgia and Tennessee. This defensive pattern persisted into the early 1700’s, when the Cherokee allied with the English in various small conflicts. The Cherokee actually requested that the British built a fort in Cherokee territory, apparently so that, in case of attack, the Cherokee would have a place to which to flee for safety. In 1758 and 1759, relations between the English the Cherokee deteriorated seriously. Frictions arose first between individual settlers and small bands of Cherokee: on neither side did the combatants represent the official policy of their respective nations, and diplomacy continued well despite the small but continuous casualties adding up. Finally, an actual war erupted in 1760, when, according to Wayne Lee, the

attacks became serious enough to attract imperial attention, and General Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief in North America, dispatched a force of regulars to Charlestown in 1760, commanded by Colonel Archibald Montgomery, to mount a punitive expedition.

Having witnessed the defeat of the Tuscarora – they mentioned it in their negotiations with the British – the Cherokee adjusted their tactics and “shifted to a ‘new’ defensive strategy,” abandoning reliance upon major fortified strongholds, “avoid the approaching force, abandon the village,” hide in the woods or other natural geographic refuge,

and then harass the enemy — cutting off stragglers, and (for European enemies) targeting supply lines. The Cherokees had not entirely changed the role of war within their society, as the outbreak of the Cherokee War demonstrated. What they had done was to change their way of dealing with large-scale European military intrusion.

The Cherokee had done this by means “of long-distance sniping.” This change of strategy worked well, and led to the very opposite of the situation in which the Tuscarora had found themselves: the Indians laid siege to Fort Loudoun in which British soldiers were put on the defensive, “eventually forcing its surrender.” The new tactics worked to the extent that compared to the Tuscarora, “the Cherokee had escaped major damage.” While there were some Cherokee casualties, they were minimal, “compared to the disastrous defense of Neoheroka.” After negotiating a peace with the British, “the Cherokees proceeded to rebuild their towns and replant their corn.”

Lee’s bigger point is that Indians had a number of approaches in their arsenal of military theory: Lee contends that it is too narrow speak of an “Indian way of war,” inasmuch as the ‘Native Americans’ were constantly adjusting their strategies and tactics. Lee writes that the events of the Tuscarora and Cherokee “reveal a more complex and flexible response.” When the Cherokee saw that “a palisaded village could become a deathtrap when surrounded by English muskets and put to the torch,” they turned to other familiar courses of action. Given the broad range of actions in these conflicts, Lee asserts that the Indians displayed “an extraordinary flexibility.”

The Tuscarora reliance on fortifications reminds one of the Maginot Line and its stunning failure to defend France. One might hazard a generalization that since the large-scale introduction of gunpowder, which has made sieges more lethal, major fortifications have been less secure. One would need to review more cases before asserting such an extrapolation; certainly, many fortresses fell to sieges before gunpowder. One could make an even broader generalization about the notion of defending a place at all, and whether such defense is quite likely to fail based on centuries of experience.

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.