In the Winter of 1837-1838, New York’s “Locofoco” or Equal Rights Party tidily collapsed back into Martin Van Buren’s Democratic Party. It was the first libertarian movement in American history, and they’d fought a two-year political war against Tammany Hall to control the state and national party. In most ways, they were successful. But actually, 1840 was their year—their chance to permanently change America. It might just be the most important election year ever, and 178 years later, I’d say i...
Mar 20, 2018•22 min
Abram D. Smith is a forgotten figure in American history. Smith was born in either Lowville or Cambridge, upstate New York, in 1811, just before the post-war boom years of rapid social and economic change. As a young man, he experienced and contributed to a wave of nationalistic romanticism, enraptured with the wonders of American republicanism and democracy. He was in these regards fairly unremarkable, and yet in September 1838, probably in some Ohio forest, surrounded by blazing torchlight, a ...
Mar 13, 2018•22 min
The Young Americans were New York’s next generation of artists, intellectuals, and activists, and reformers, many of whom were inspired by the Loco-Foco movement, which challenged Tammany Hall for supremacy in the Democratic Party from 1835 to 1837. Their philosophies generally came from the great classical liberals, radicals like Tom Paine and William Leggett, equal in stature to most Young Americans, and they shared a deep faith in America’s world historical destiny. A Young American might hav...
Mar 06, 2018•23 min
During the painful Panic Winter of 1837, America’s first identifiably libertarian political party neared the end of its short life. After the February flour riots and facing nothing but dire circumstances, movement faithful gradually peeled away from the party. Further Readings/References: Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam. The History of the Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Party: Its Movements, Conventions, and Proceedings with Short Characteristic Sketches of Its Prominent Men. New York: Burt Franklin. 1967. Cu...
Feb 27, 2018•22 min
On 11 and 20 of January, 1836, the Equal Rights Democrats renounced all connections with Tammany and passed resolutions calling for ward me tings and delegate elections to a county convention. Delegates assembled on 9 February in the Eighth Ward. Moses Jacques served as President and wrote the “Declaration of principles.” He was history embodied. Moses’ father was a colonel in the New Jersey militia during the Revolution. Further Readings/References: Bridges, Amy. A City in the Republic: Antebel...
Feb 20, 2018•4892 hr 27 min
The conspirators fully expected Tammany regulars would play whatever dirty tricks necessary to maintain control over the convention. Each conspirator attended the meeting with pockets full of “Loco Foco” matches and candles. They were a new invention, friction candles ignited by striking the match tip against a surface. Locofoco supposedly entered the American lexicon as a bastardization of the Italian words for moving fire. And these people were definitely fireballs set into motion. Further Rea...
Feb 13, 2018•4606 hr 52 min
Last week we explored the life and ideas of William Leggett—the founding father of America’s first identifiably libertarian movement. This week we begin with his attack on censorship as a gross abuse of government power, a sure sign that freedom was dying. Further Readings/References: Earle, Jonathan. Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004. Grimstead, David. American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War. New York: ...
Feb 06, 2018•19 min
Somewhere during the course of his tour—somewhere in the Mediterranean—William Leggett developed a “life-long hatred of authority,” a libertarian spirit within him that revolted against power wherever it existed, wherever people attempted to constrict the liberty of others. Historians tell us the 1820s, 30s, and 40s was the Jacksonian Era, but this week and next we will follow Walt Whitman in declaring this “The Age of Leggett.” Further Readings/References: Leggett, William. Leisure Hours at Sea...
Jan 30, 2018•20 min
Nine Masons signed the Declaration of Independence, 13 helped draft and ratify the Constitution, George Washington and James Monroe were Masons, and for that matter so was Andrew Jackson. So was Henry Clay! Even the South American Washington, Simon Bolivar, was a Mason. All four of Napoleon’s brothers joined Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Voltaire, Ben Franklin, and innumerable other important artists, philosophers, and scientists in the fraternity. Further Readings/References: Elder Da...
Jan 23, 2018•20 min
While the two parties gripped one another in mock mortal combat, struggling for votes more than for principles, some precious few Americans remained unimpressed. In corners all over the country, people saw through the myth making and the gamesmanship. Put frankly, American democracy was a sham and the evolving two parties were vast conspiracies against the public’s liberty, security, and well-being. Further Readings/References: Clay’s “American System” Speeches Kohl, Lawrence. The Politics of In...
Jan 16, 2018•19 min
We should not fool ourselves into thinking democracy was some benevolent aristocrat’s generous gift. Nor should we believe democracy was something average people heroically fought for and won. The truth is, ballots have never translated to real political power and influence—they never have. The near-universal patterns in these democratizing state legislatures and constitutional conventions were political pragmatism and opportunism. Further Readings/References: “The Votes and Speeches of Martin V...
Jan 09, 2018•25 min
Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of economic history at Northwestern University. He has a PhD from Yale, he has taught and studied all over the world, and has supervised many dozens of doctoral students in pursuit of the past. He joins us today to talk about his latest book, A Culture of Growth, and the creeping revolution that enriched the world. Further Readings/References: Mokyr, A Culture of Growth, Princeton University Press. 2017. Mokyr, Joel. The Enlightened Economy: An Econom...
Jan 02, 2018•37 min
We have to remember that American democracy was not something won courageously over time so much as it was a long, drawn out process of corrupt bargaining between politicians and the voting public, Conspiracy- and coalition-building between current voters and potential voters, and Nasty, Nasty Deals. George Kremer to Andrew Jackson, 8 March 1825 Andrew Jackson to Henry Lee, 7 October 1825 Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 20 April 1820 Hammond, Bray. Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolu...
Dec 26, 2017•21 min
What if I told you that Christmas—the holiday we know and love so well—was a capitalist Conspiracy to indoctrinate the working class into bourgeois culture and values? At one end of the Conspiracy was the very real circle of New York City antiquarians and aristocrats trying to snuff out earlier forms of the holiday, replacing these folk practices with the distinctly quiet, calm, peaceful, productive, contemplative, bourgeois form of the holiday we know today. At the other end stands their greate...
Dec 19, 2017•23 min
Between 1815 and 1845, the world changed more dramatically than in any other previous 30-year period. Humanity began to break the food trap which had kept hundreds of generations barely producing enough to feed the living, keeping almost nothing to provide for the future. Further Reading: “ Rip Van Winkle ” on WikiSource Feller, Daniel. “ The Market Revolution Ate My Homework ” Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991. Stokes ...
Dec 12, 2017•20 min
Shownotes: Kevin Gutzman is a New York Times best-selling author and professor of history at Western Connecticut State University. He has a PhD from the University of Virginia and much of his research has focused on precisely that state. Three of his books—Virginia’s American Revolution, James Madison and the Making of America, and Thomas Jefferson: Revolutionary—flesh out what Gutzman takes to be a radical, revolutionary time and place in American history. We would be remiss if we did not try t...
Dec 05, 2017•34 min
Reformist minded and very far from the Hartford Wits, to be sure, but the Jeffersonians were still fundamentally the agents of a different sort of American elite. While these white male mechanics and yeoman farmers made for a more democratic ruling elite than the great colonial landholders and office-mongers, they remained relatively content with driving slaves, dominating women and children, and using the power of government to support their own interests—local and relatively liberal as they ma...
Nov 28, 2017•19 min
Benjamin Lay was a fearless firework of “isms.” Part Quaker, part philosopher, part sailor, abolitionist, and commoner, Lay was also “The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.” Joining us this week is Marcus Rediker, one of the most important living historians and Lay’s most recent biographer. Further Readings/References: Marcus Rediker’s website His Amazon author’s page Benjamin Lay, All Slave-Keepers…Apostates James Nayler, The Lamb’s War Thomas Trion, A Way To Health, ...
Nov 21, 2017•37 min
Few concepts or examples in history have a total sample size of exactly one. With history-making resolve, the slaves in Haiti seized their freedom, which revolutionary Paris only begrudgingly recognized. When the planters, the British, the Spanish, and finally Napoleon himself tried to re-enslave them, they simply refused and resolved themselves to fight to the death for the liberties they’d won. Further Readings/References: James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Dom...
Nov 14, 2017•40 min
Who are the actual revolutionists?—the radicals or extremists who end up overpowering the moderates and installing the new regime? Further Readings/References: Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, Revised Edition. Vintage. 1965. Klooster, Wim. Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. New York: New York University Press. 2009. Palmer, R.R. The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, Volume One: The Struggle. Princeton: Princeton Un...
Nov 07, 2017•39 min
It is Reformation Day, and a particularly special one at that. 500 years ago today—as goes the legend—Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. In Luther’s day, Halloween was All Saint’s Eve—part of Allhallowsmas or Hallowstide, a three-day, ritual-packed observance of Christianity’s early martyrs and first saints dating to the eighth century. The unconverted Romans looked at the first saints and saw a small clique of radical, fanatical, cannibalistic zombie/dea...
Oct 31, 2017•24 min
Sheldon Richman can be found on Twitter @Sheldon Richman , readers can find his articles at the Libertarian Institute , and his books at Amazon . Beard, Charles. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, 1913. Hyneman & Lutz (eds.) American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760-1805, Two Volumes. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 1983. Morgan, Edmund. The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1956. Richman, Sheldon. America’s C...
Oct 24, 2017•36 min
In 1741, African slaves, Spanish sailors, Irish servants and soldiers, and antinomian Dissenters conspired to burn New York’s Fort George and murder the city’s wealthy and powerful inhabitants. They hatched their plot at John Hughson’s tavern and spread word to the surrounding countryside and down Long Island. At the sight of flames from the city, country slaves and servants should rise up, kill their masters, and move on the city where they would welcome a Spanish flotilla of conquerors and per...
Oct 17, 2017•22 min
The colonists governed themselves and had little need for imperial management; colonists all over disparaged the idea of monarchy and Tom Paine smashed it to pieces; the world’s most powerful state lost its most vigorous appendages, and the settlers expanded all sorts of civil rights to new cohorts. We remember the triumphant victory of a new nation-state, and the gains made by some toward exercising a greater control over that state; but revolution bred counter-revolution. “The Indictment and T...
Oct 10, 2017•19 min
Mauritius is a rare example of a Creole culture from the start. There really aren’t many of these in world history. The island had no indigenous human beings and the first human visitors to the island were Muslims from East Africa and Arabia in the medieval era. There were no permanent settlements there until the 17th century when the Dutch arrived. Bernardin de St. Pierre, Paul and Virginia, 1788. Gordon, Daniel, ed. Postmodernism and the Enlightenment: New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century Fr...
Oct 03, 2017•26 min
For two decades, New Orleans was a town with about 400 riotous, irreligious, desperate individuals. Jean-Baptiste, Sieur de Bienville always hoped the French Empire would take more interest in the area—it was the gateway to wider America, the key to the continent’s greatest river, its richest soils, and a highway for the Indian trade. If only it actually had people in it! Further Readings/References: French, Douglas E. Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Supply of Money. Second Edit...
Sep 26, 2017•22 min
Spanish Missionaries intended to project power, but the Indians held the balance of power and Spanish authorities proved unable to control either mission culture or powerful native groups across the countryside. Further Readings/References: Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill (NC): University of North Carolina Press. 2007. Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, Charles ...
Sep 19, 2017•20 min
Along with Frederick Douglass, the most famous slave in history was probably Olaudah Equiano. On Equiano’s Middle Passage, he shared space belowdecks with other Africans from possibly dozens of ethnic groups, speaking different languages. Once loaded into the ship’s hold, they were all outsiders. Music by Kai Engel Further Readings Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800. London: Verso. 1997. Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History. Lon...
Sep 12, 2017•20 min
Peter Leeson is the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. His work often reads as forays into high weirdness, voyages to strange unknown countries penetrated only by the light of economic reasoning. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Princeton University Press. 2011. WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird. Stanford University Press. 2017. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Sep 05, 2017•35 min
The Golden Age of Piracy raises the question: Who among you would turn down the opportunity to play Master to a small continent? Would you submit passively to be dominated by the world? Would we respect the lives and liberties of those weaker than ourselves, or would we, too, given the right opportunities, proclaim ourselves King? Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Beacon Press. 2004. “The Saga of Pirate Captain John Gow” “From Pirate to Tyrant:...
Aug 29, 2017•19 min
