Miracle at Philadelphia

A review of sorts

Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 (1966) has been reprinted in multiple editions since its original publication. My copy, acquired more than 35 years ago, is the twentieth anniversary Book of the Month Club edition.

The book is a narrative history of the events of one momentous summer. Bowen makes clear at the outset that the Constitutional Convention would not be known by that name until many years later. The Grand Convention or Federal Convention, as it was known in 1787, was sanctioned "for the express purpose of revising the Articles of Convention" (4). Although some members clung to this purpose, there were several who expected to replace the Articles from the very beginning. Had it not been for members maintaining secrecy of the contents of their day-to-day discussions, there likely would have been considerable public dissension. Bowen focuses on the men and their debates that summer as they crafted a constitution that still serves as the founding document for the United States government.

Although Miracle at Philadelphia has resided on my bookshelves for nearly four decades, it sat unread until this month. Long has been my impression that it supports a view popular in certain circles that our Constitution is a sacred text, that the "miracle" of 1787 was due to divine intervention.* Memory of how and when this book came into my possession is hazy, but likely stems from an active interest that I had during the mid-1980s in understanding the view that I believed it represented. I did not share that view then, and now reject it on the basis of deeper and broader knowledge than was mine then.

 

In the mid-1980s, a man whom I knew as a fellow member of a Bible study group suggested several times that I would enjoy Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory: Did God Have a Plan for America? (1977). "Since you like history, you'll love this book," he told me. I was employed as a substitute teacher while looking for a full-time job teaching high school history. After much prodding, I bought Marshall and Manuel's book, read it, and found it terrible. The authors began with a premise that is rooted in religious belief, offered shallow reference to some Bible verses, and then invested months looking for any scraps of evidence that confirmed their assumption. They even employed a large number of volunteer researchers to help with the task. Their narrative makes clear that accurate history was not the objective.

The Light and the Glory was written well-enough that is was easy reading despite obvious failures as a work of credible history. Even so, at the time I shared their vision for a Christian awakening in the United States. I did not agree that we had been a Christian nation from the beginning, at least not in the sense that they understood it.

A few years earlier, perhaps spring 1981, some of the views pushed by Marshall and Manuel were the focus of a film and rally that I had attended. Certain details are no longer clear in my memory. The film presented images of a religious rally in Washington D.C., where Christians gathered to pray. Perhaps it was the Washington for Jesus rally held in April 1980. My clearest memories of the event in Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum on the campus of Washington State University, where I was a student, are singing, holding hands with those beside me, and swaying from side-to-side. Throughout the evening a single Bible verse was repeated over and over again. "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Marshall and Manuel also deploy this verse.

I recall having the opinion that this verse had been wrenched from its context to apply it inappropriately to the United States. Central to this memory is the heated argument my friend Vic and I had as we walked back to our dorm. He did not share my concern that the Bible verse was misapplied. We were part of a religious group that emphasized careful Bible study, reading the Bible cover-to-cover annually, and memorizing Bible verses. I spent my first two summers during college at summer training in San Diego with this group. The second summer was devoted to four hours per day of careful and detailed study of a single book of the Bible (Colossians). I still value the close reading skills that I honed that summer, as they have proven useful for texts of all sorts.

Reading 2 Chronicles 7 as a whole does not lead me to think that it applies in any manner whatsoever to the United States. The belief that is does has had growing influence among the Religious Right since the 1980s. When this religious belief is supported by inaccurate history, it merits criticism.

When I acquired Miracle at Philadelphia, I intended to read it. More than likely, I expected that it would reveal itself part of the bad history pushed in The Light and the Glory. I was wrong.

George Washington wrote in a letter to Marquis de Lafayette:

It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the Delegates from so many different States (which States you know are also different from each other in their manners, circumstances and prejudices) should unite in forming a system of national Government, so little liable to well founded objections.
Washington to Lafayette, 7 February 1788 (at Founders Online)

This quote appears as a headnote at the beginning of Miracle at Philadelphia. My assumption that the book's title represented a theocratic perspective should have been easy to dismiss. In fact, aside from a snark finding "odd" the "slight taint of the Sunday school"** concerning Washington, the entrance of divine power in Bowen's telling of the story of the Convention begins with Franklin's call to prayer near the end of June (28, 125-127). This episode is well-known and always struck me as illustrative of Franklin's pragmatism.

Bowen's narrative of the call to prayer consists almost entirely of excerpts from Franklin's speech and the subsequent discussion as recorded by Madison and others. She begins with a physical description of Franklin, "sitting with the famous double spectacles low on his nose" (125). Then two paragraphs of Franklin's speech, summary of a portion of the speech, and then Franklin's call for action.

I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.
Benjamin Franklin, 28 June 1787, as quoted by Bowen (126)

Roger Sherman seconded Franklin's motion, there was a brief discussion, but no vote was taken. Decades later, before most of the primary documents became available, an account of this event was presented in a letter by a man who claimed to be telling a story as he learned it from one of those present. This letter was then published and widely distributed.

According to this account, after Franklin's motion:

The doctor sat down, and never (said Gen. D.) did I behold a countenance at once so dignified and delighted as was that of Washington, at the close of this address! Nor were the members of the Convention, generally less affected. The words of the venerable Franklin fell upon our ears with a weight and authority, even greater than we may suppose an oracle to have had in a Roman senate! A silent admiration superseded, for a moment, the expression of that assent and approbation which was strongly marked on almost every countenance ...The three days of recess were spent in the manner advised by Doctor Franklin; the opposite parties mixed with each other, and a free and frank interchange of sentiments took place. On the fourth day we assembled again, and if great additional light had not been thrown on the subject, every unfriendly feeling had been expelled; and a spirit of conciliation had been cultivated, which promised, at least, a calm and dispassionate reconsideration of the subject.
William Steele to Jonathan Steele, September 1825 (Records of the Federal Convention of 1787)

Although Bowen does not mention Steele by name, she references some of the contents of this letter: "it was rumored that Hamilton had said ironically the Convention was not in need of 'foreign aid'. This is palpable nonsense" (127). James Madison refers to the account in the letter as "erroniously given" (Madison to Jared Sparks, 8 April 1831, Founders Online).

The myth propagated by Steele may be better known than a more accurate narrative rooted in primary sources produced by those at the convention.

Debates continued without resolution, according to Bowen, and then the Convention took a recess. Up to this point in the book, Bowen's narrative follows the Convention day-by-day and does not steer far from the available primary sources. Then, she departs from the Convention itself to sketch in some details about the American people, the land, and some of the issues of the day, especially focusing on the ways these issues produced sectional divisions between north and south, large states and small, and conflicts over how the West should be developed and governed. When she returns to the Convention itself, she mentions a letter Franklin wrote to the Pennsylvania Packet three days after the Great Compromise. From there she works back to the compromise itself.

After two months of constant bickering between large states and small, it was finally agreed on 16 July 1787 that there would be equal representation of each state in the Senate and proportional representation of each state in the House.

Was Franklin's call to prayer the decisive turning point? Marshall and Manuel state that it was.

That speech--and the sober reflection in the silence which followed--marked the turning-point. Their priorities rearranged by Franklin's startling admonition, the delegates, nearly all of whom were believers of one kind or another, got on with the business of crafting a new constitution. (343)

Bowen's narrative of what led to the Great Compromise could be read as the hand of divine power, but also admits natural explanations: 

Perhaps the delegates would never have reached agreement, had not the heat broken. By Monday, July sixteenth, Philadelphia was cool after a month of torment; ... Even the mosquitoes were quiescent, though on the streets at noon the horseflies droned and darted. (186)

Bowen's narrative is a lively read. My neglect of this book for nearly four decades was an error. She contests rather than supports the myths propagated by Marshall and Manuel.

I do wish, however, that the author had not opted to leave out clear documentation. She states that she had copious footnotes and deleted them.

The book's opening paragraph sent me in search. It, too, was focused on the weather in that hot Philadelphia summer. She mentions a diarist stated there were fewer "cooling thunderstorms" and then, "Perhaps the new 'installic rods' everywhere fixed on the houses might have robbed the clouds of their electric fluid" (3). Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod. The glimpse Bowen gives the reader here of the popularity of his invention and of the state of eighteenth century scientific understanding of the weather and human agency would be worth pursuing through the sources she does not divulge.


  
*Although principally authored by Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence also gets pulled into the orbit of those holding this view. See Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997).

**Bowen mentions Parson Weems: "perhaps Parson Weems will never be lived down" (28). Mason Locke "Parson" Weems, A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington (1800) was a popular book as is the source of many apocryphal stories about Washington and events that took place in eighteenth century America.

"small land holders are the most precious"

One text always leads to another. As I continue my efforts to comprehend the incomprehensible, to probe into the foundations of the hyper-conservatism of the present American political landscape, I set out to peruse a classic text: Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition (1962). The text was originally published as Liberalismus (1927) and initially the English translation was titled The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth, but Mises sought to "reclaim" the term liberal from those he regarded as socialists, and so the present title. I'm reading the etext edition from the Online Library of Liberty.

After the amusing Introduction, the meat of the argument begins with a chapter titled "Property". There Mises offers:

The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production (for in regard to commodities ready for consumption, private ownership is a matter of course and is not disputed even by the socialists and communists). All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

Such a yoking of notions of freedom and liberty to notions of private property immediately brings to my recall Charles A Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). Simultaneously, I think of Thomas Jefferson and his celebration of the Yeoman farmer as the backbone of American self-government.

Consequently, I find myself reading a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison from Fontainebleau outside of Paris, France. Jefferson wrote a nine where he meant to write an eight, and so the letter appears in volume 8 rather than volume 4 of Paul Leicester Ford, The Works of Thomas Jefferson (1904-5). As with the works of Mises, the Online Library of Liberty has a digitized and searchable edition. Here is the complete letter, as published there.

Dear Sir,—

Seven o’clock, and retired to my fireside, I have determined to enter into conversation with you. This is a village of about 5000 inhabitants when the court is not here & 20,000 when they are, occupying a valley thro’ which runs a brook and on each side of it a ridge of small mountains most of which are naked rock. The King comes here, in the fall always, to hunt. His court attend him, as do also the foreign diplomatic corps. But as this is not indispensably required & my finances do not admit the expense of a continued residence here, I propose to come occasionally to attend the King’s levees, returning again to Paris, distant 40 miles. This being the first trip I set out yesterday morning to take a view of the place. For this purpose I shaped my course towards the highest of the mountains in sight, to the top of which was about a league. As soon as I had got clear of the town I fell in with a poor woman walking at the same rate with myself & going the same course. Wishing to know the condition of the laboring poor I entered into conversation with her, which I began by enquiries for the path which would lead me into the mountain: & thence proceeded to enquiries into her vocation, condition & circumstances. She told me she was a day labourer, at 8. sous or 4d sterling the day; that she had two children to maintain, & to pay a rent of 30 livres for her house, (which would consume the hire of 75 days) that often she could get no emploiment, and of course was without bread. As we had walked together near a mile & she had so far served me as a guide, I gave her, on parting, 24 sous. She burst into tears of a gratitude which I could perceive was unfeigned because she was unable to utter a word. She had probably never before received so great an aid. This little attendrissement, with the solitude of my walk led me into a train of reflections on that unequal division of property which occasions the numberless instances of wretchedness which I had observed in this country & is to be observed all over Europe. The property of this country is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downward. These employ the flower of the country as servants, some of them having as many as 200 domestics, not labouring. They employ also a great number of manufacturers, & tradesmen, & lastly the class of labouring husbandmen. But after all there comes the most numerous of all the classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked myself what could be the reason that so many should be permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are undisturbed only for the sake of game. It should seem then that it must be because of the enormous wealth of the proprietors which places them above attention to the encrease of their revenues by permitting these lands to be laboured. I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers & sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, & to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be provided to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small land holders are the most precious part of a state.
Jefferson to Madison, 28 October 1785

My first question concerned the correspondence of Jefferson's views with those of Mises. Jefferson seeks the good of all. Mises asserts, "liberalism was the first political movement that aimed at promoting the welfare of all" (Liberalism, 22). Mises admits that liberalism and socialism share this goal, differing principally in their methods.

Both Mises and Jefferson emphasize the rights of property. But Jefferson's notion of the commons ("The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on") is an idea that I have yet to encounter in my reading of Mises. Moreover, one gets the impression from Mises that Jefferson's scheme of progressive taxation might proceed from principles that he would call socialist, distinguishing them from liberal.

Reading this letter of Jefferson's creates doubts concerning some of Mises' historical claims with respect to eighteenth century classical liberalism, but it does offer evidence for some of his claims. Mises labors to see all economic theory as bipartite: liberalism vs. socialism. Jefferson draws from and engages with a somewhat more nuanced view.

Madison on Human Nature

Celebrations of John Calvin's birthday have brought out a flurry of pronouncements of an old idea. Many Americans in the nineteenth century accepted the idea that God extended special grace to the men who drafted the Constitution of the United States in the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787. After the emergence of history as a profession, also known as evidence-based scholarship, that idea declined in influence. Or, perhaps, it was the influence of Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) that rendered the old view out of fashion. Beard's views, too, have waned in their influence as new theories from intellectual history became dominant. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967) probably remains on more graduate student reading lists than most other secondary histories of the founders.

These days, theocentric histories cite secular authorities--the writings of James Madison, for example,--as I sought to illustrate in "Calvin and the Constitution". The theocentrists argue that belief in human nature as fallen led to limited government and separation of powers.

Because of man’s sinful nature, we cannot live in a state of anarchy; we need government to maintain law and order. But because those in authority have the same sinful nature as the rest of us, we cannot trust government with too much power. This led to the system of limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, and reserved individual rights that characterize republican self-government.
John Eidsmoe, "Celebrating Calvin's Legacy"

This argument rests upon a reading of a brief passage from Federalist 51:

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Federalist 51

But, Madison's views were more complex, or they changed over time. Federalist 55, also attributed to Madison although either or both may have been written by Alexander Hamilton, offers a more benign view of human nature, one that Jonathan Rowe claims is "barely consistent with Calvinism":

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.
Federalist 55

Self-government requires the capacity for virtue. Madison saw depravity in human nature, but he saw virtue as well. His view of human nature may have owed more to John Locke than to John Calvin. In any case, as Saul K. Padover asserted more than a half-century ago, Madison often appeared to steer a middle course between the extremes.

Moderation and balance permeated Madison's whole thought. At the Constitutional Convention he took a middle position between what today would be called the Right and the Left, between men like Hamilton who distrusted the people and those like Wilson who had confidence in them. In Madison's view, people, whether Americans or others, were neither inherently good nor naturally bad; they were, he argued, what society made them. If shown confidence, they would be likely to reciprocate it; if degraded by their rulers, they would become depraved.
Padover, The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings (1953), 11

Calvin and the Constitution

History is eloquent in declaring that American democracy was born of Christianity and that Christianity was Calvinism.
Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (1932)

Had he lived, John Calvin would have been 500 years old this month. He died, but his ideas live on, perhaps even in the Constitution of the United States. A writer for the New York Times asked Calvin's most recent biographer whether it was "fanciful" to detect traces of Calvin's thought in the Constitution. “Absolutely not,” replied Bruce Gordon, author of Calvin (2009).

Calvin’s legacy has been traced in everything from modern marriage and modern science to modern liberal government and of course modern capitalism. By many accounts, he is a major source of modernity’s very understanding of the self.
Peter Steinfels, "Man of Contradictions, Shaper of Modernity. Age? 500 Next Week," New York Times 3 July 2009

Several bloggers celebrated Calvin's birthday by posting claims that he is the virtual author of our republican form of government; others mocked these assertions. Reed R. Heustis, Jr. found quite a few new readers for his "John Calvin and the American Founding" at Worldview Times. Heustis sees the world in clear dichotomies--one is either a Calvinist or a Marxist. Such logic gathers ridicule as a dog gathers fleas. Ed Brayton asserts that Heustis deserves ridicule, noting that Heustis "presents not a single quote from even a single founding father that supports that claim." But Heustis does cite an authority: John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (1987).

Many joined the chorus denouncing Heustis by posting comments at Dispatches from the Culture Wars (Brayton's blog), including yours truly. To support my initial claim that Calvin's influence was predominantly negative--an example to avoid, rather than emulate--I quickly found a quote from the pen of Thomas Jefferson in Edwin Gaustad's Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation (1987).

The Presbyterian clergy are loudest, the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and ambitious; ready at the word of a lawgiver, if such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus.
Jefferson to William Short, 1820, as quoted in Gaustad (48)

My response nagged at me, in part because I knew that I had Eidsmoe's book someplace in an box yet to unpack. Although I had missed a slice the birthday cake baked for Calvin at the Presbyterian university here in Spokane because I had been busy moving my belongings to our new home, I now had time to consider the man's legacy. It takes me a few weeks to unpack a ton of books. Two hours of unpacking, sorting and repacking--it is a smaller house--was sufficient to locate Eidsmoe's Christianity and the Constitution.


Eidsmoe's Scholarship

John Eidsmoe blogs for the Foundation for Moral Law, where he posted "Celebrating John Calvin's Legacy--Not so much Charles Darwin's." His point in his blog entry is expressed in greater detail in his book: Calvin's emphasis on total depravity "led to the system of limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, and reserved individual rights that characterize republican self-government." He also cites in the blog, and in more detail in the book, the authority of two prominent nineteenth century historians: Leopold von Ranke and George Bancroft.

John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.
Leopold von Ranke, as cited in Eidsmoe (18)

In Christianity and the Constitution, Eidsmoe reveals his sources for the idea that Calvinism "stands out above all others" (18) among the ideas that influence the founders. Five of the first six footnotes--documenting the assertions of Ranke, Bancroft, Jean Henri Merle d’Aubigné, and Emilio Castelar--are to a single text: Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination. Boettner's book dates to 1932, but Eidsmoe cites a 1972 reprint. The remaining footnote for the first three pages of the chapter "Calvinism" is discursive. Eidmoe identifies himself as a minister of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren, "lest [he] be accused of a Calvinistic bias" (19).

Boettner's text is a work of theology, not history. It does contain a brief section, "Calvinism in History" at the end. Eidsmoe's technique of citing authorities that declare the influence of Calvinism is readily aparent in Boettner's section on history, and he offers a longer list of authorities than Eidmoe. In Eidsmoe, the Ranke quote is attributed to E. W. Smith and cited from Boettner. Boettner gives us the source of Smith's statement.

In his book, "The Creed of Presbyterians," E. W. Smith asks concerning the American colonists, "Where learned they those immortal principles of the rights of man, of human liberty, equality and self-government, on which they based their Republic, and which form today the distinctive glory of our American civilization? In the school of Calvin they learned them. There the modern world learned them. So history teaches" (p. 121).
Boettner, 215

Egbert Watson Smith's The Creed of Presbyterians (1901) delves into history, as Boettner, at the end of a theological tract. Under the title "The Creed Tested by its Fruits" Smith strings together quotations from dozens of authorities, citing the source of many. Both Ranke and Bancroft are among his authorities, but for reasons not entirely clear to me, these two are omitted from the footnotes. I have failed to locate the source of Ranke's statement and failed as well to find the origin of Bancroft's frequently repeated line:

He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.
Eidsmoe, "Celebrating John Calvin's Legacy"

Eidsmoe presents hyperlinks. Ranke's line is referenced to Philip Vollmer, John Calvin: Theologian, Preacher, Educator, Statesman (1909) in which appears an essay, "Calvinism in America" by William Henry Roberts. Perhaps the work of Roberts is the Ur-text for arguments that "Calvinism is the chief source of modern republican government" (Vollmer, 202). Smith cites another text by Roberts, Proceedings Seventh General Council (1899). Eidsmoe's hyperlink for Bancroft's statement takes us to David W. Hall, Genevan Revolution and the American Founding (2005). Eidsmoe certainly deployed this quote in advance of the the publication of Hall's book (Boettner is cited in Christianity and the Constitution), but perhaps Hall documents it better. I'll add the book to my reading list.

As I mentioned to the author of the blog, Samuel at Gilgal (another list of quotes from Boettner), it would be helpful if someone could locate the source of Ranke's statement instead of joining the ranks of those that repeat it endlessly.


From Theology to History

The arguments that appear at the end of several theological treatises from a century ago are deployed at the beginning of Eidsmoe's Christianity and the Constitution. Where others end, he begins. The publisher (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan) makes a strong claim for Eidsmoe's scholarship on the dust jacket: "He meticulously documents his position, using the writings of the founders themselves." Eidsmoe does not rest on the authority of prior historians, but delves into the primary sources--writings of the founders--to elucidate their influences and support a thesis that that not begin with him. The core of Christianity and the Constitution is thirteen chapters, each one concerned with one of the so-called Founding Fathers. Twelve of these chapters concern men that were present in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Eidsmoe begins with John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). He was not at the convention, but is "the man who shaped the men who shaped America" (81). Eidsmoe accesses Witherspoon's writing and influence through two biographies and one master's thesis. Citations to the writing of this "founder" are all "as quoted in" Varnum Lansing Collins, President Witherspoon (1969 [1925]); Martha Lou Lemmon Stohlman, John Witherspoon: Parson, Politician, Patriot (1897); and Roger Schultz, "Covenanting in America: The Political Theology of John Witherspoon," MA Thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1985. No where does Eidsmoe cite Witherspoon's writings directly.

It may be a fine point, but I would not call extracts of primary sources from secondary works meticulous documentation from "the writings of the founders themselves." Perhaps he does better with James Madison. Indeed, The Papers of James Madison (1962), ed. William T. Hutchinson and William M. Rachel appear as the source for a long extract of Madison's Bible study notes. Eidsmoe also cites several letters from this scholarly resource. With respect to Madison, the publisher's claim has merit.

Eidsmoe's argument for the influence of Calvin on Madison begins with Madison's decision to attend the College of New Jersey, a Presbyterian college, even though Madison's family was Episcopal. Noting its pro-independence sentiment, he also claims "by 1769 the Episcopal church had become largely Calvinistic and not much different from Presbyterianism in basic doctrine" (95). Eidsmoe draws on Madison's letters to show the influence of Witherspoon, and Madison's attitudes toward Christian ministry, a career he considered for several years.

Unfortunately for the argument that Calvinism was a decisive influence on "the father of the Constitution," Madison spoke and wrote very little about religion after he entered politics. Eidsmoe addresses this problem, but departs from Madison's own writings, except for Federalist 51, and instead relies upon the analysis in James H. Smylie, "Madison and Witherspoon: Theological Roots of American Political Thought," The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Spring 1961, and a few extracts selected by Smylie. Smylie asserts, "man's innate depravity, of which Presbyterians are keenly aware, must be checked by counteracting forces" (Eidsmoe, 101).

Smylie extended his arguments through other articles, and studies of the influence of Witherspoon upon Madison and others has proceeded since his day. Perhaps because it is less less typical of historical scholarship, Terence S. Morrow's thesis in "Common Sense Deliberative Practice: John Witherspoon, James Madison, and the U.S. Constitution," Rhetoric Society Quarterly (Winter 1999), 25-47 is worth noting: "Madison's views on representation, this article contends, drew upon the teachings in rhetoric and moral philosophy that he received from John Witherspoon" (26).

Perhaps there is something of merit in assertions of Calvin's influence on our system of government beyond what is evident in Heustis's shoddy logic and convoluted argument. At first glance, Eidsmoe seems little better, and his "research" leaves something to be desired. Nevertheless, he does offer leads to other scholarship. His argument leaves me far from convinced that Calvin was "the virtual founder of America," but his case suggests Calvinist churches, colleges, ministers, and ideas were not without influence.

Founders, Slavery, Public Schools

In a coffee shop this week, I overheard criticism of public school teachers that nearly pulled me into a conversation that was mostly none of my business. Having once before jumped into other peoples’ conversations in that bistro, and remembering the mixed results, I desisted. The comments, however, came back to my consciousness this morning while browsing the archive of American Revolution & Founding Era.

Allegations of Racism in the Republic

Almost two years ago, Brian Tubbs characterized the lessons our public schools teach regarding George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and company as depicting them as racists whom we “should be ashamed to pay … any respect or honor.”

According to Lincoln, the Founders never saw slavery as consistent with the principles they enshrined in our heritage.

Rather, the Founding Fathers overwhelmingly deplored slavery and considered black Americans to be included in the Declaration's creed. Said Lincoln: “The fathers of this government expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to an end. They expected and intended that it would be in the course of ultimate extinction.”

His view is ignored or rejected in today's classrooms and in the media, but it was this very viewpoint that sustained his ultimately successful campaign to rid the nation of the evil institution he so ardently despised. But while Lincoln's argument was compelling, was it accurate?
Tubbs, “Should We Revere ‘Racists’?”

Tubbs offers several points of evidence that the Founders sought the eventual abolition of slavery and considered African Americans “men”. Indeed, his arguments remind me of those offered by my professor for a graduate course in US history from Jefferson to Jackson, in which my son’s current high school history teacher was a classmate. The professor explained that Washington intended that his slaves be freed upon his death, and he would have freed them sooner if it had been economically possible (or something to that effect—it was a few years ago).

I could draw on many sources from which to confirm, modify, and refute the points in Tubbs’ argument, but will confine myself to explicit evidence concerning classroom practice. My son’s teacher demands that the students read carefully and take notes upon their textbook, David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant, twelfth edition (2002).

Does this textbook support or refute Tubbs’ allegation regarding the Founders, slavery, and historical memory?

Tubbs tells us that Congress outlawed slavery in 1808. The American Pageant, describing the debates at the Constitutional Convention, offers more detail.

Most of the states wanted to shut off the African slave trade. But South Carolina and Georgia, requiring slave labor in their rice paddies and malarial swamps, raised vehement protests. By way of compromise the convention stipulated that the slave trade might continue until the end of 1807, at which time Congress could turn off the spigot (see Art. I, Sec. IX, para. 1). It did so as soon as the prescribed interval had elapsed. Meanwhile all the new state constitutions except Georgia’s forbade overseas slave trade.
Kennedy, et al, American Pageant, 181.

More than a dozen pages earlier, in a section that begins with the Declaration’s “All men are created equal,” the textbook addresses why the Founders did not eliminate slavery in the new nation: “the fledgling idealism of the Founding Fathers was sacrificed to political expediency” (167). They quote Madison.

“Great as the evil [of slavery] is,” the young Virginian James Madison wrote in 1787, “a dismemberment of the union would be worse.” Nearly a century later, the slavery issue did wreck the Union—temporarily.
Kennedy, et al, American Pageant, 167.

(I will refrain from commenting here on the power and meaning of the phrase, “one nation indivisible,” that was routinely spoken as part of the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954 when the phrase was broken up in the war of rhetoric against godless communism.)

The American Pageant neither presents the Founders as demigods, nor as demons. It does, however, employ the term “demigods”—always in quote marks—which the authors attribute to Thomas Jefferson’s observation regarding the “extraordinarily high” (178) quality of the fifty-five participants in the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The text notes that they were “a conservative, well-to-do body” and nineteen owned slaves (178). The revolution “did not suddenly and violently overturn the entire political and social framework” (166). The “conservative-minded delegates” in Philadelphia, recalling Shay’s Rebellion, “deliberately erected safeguards against the excesses of the ‘mob’” (181).

The general theme of the text—hence of the curriculum now employed in my alma mater—highlights the possibilities and limits of the revolutionary era that created and established the United States. The years of the Confederation and Constitution resulted in “accelerated evolution rather than outright revolution” (166). The text highlights such anti-slavery achievements as Elizabeth “Mumbet” Freeman’s successful lawsuit to win freedom from slavery in Massachusetts in 1781, and the founding of “the world’s first antislavery society” in 1775 (167). It demonstrates that slavery was a controversial aspect of eighteenth century American society, continued to be a source of much conflict well into the nineteenth century, and emancipation did not eliminate all racism and sectional conflict.

From Jefferson to Lincoln

Tubbs makes much of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, validating Lincoln’s view of the Founders. The American Pageant presents a sidebar quoting Lincoln in his first debate with Douglas.

… there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to those rights as the white man.
Kennedy, et al, American Pageant, 421.

However, the text also prompts allegations that Lincoln, too, might have been a racist in the first words of the extract: “I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position” (421). Much earlier in the text, on the other hand, an 1865 quote of Lincoln’s is presented in the caption to a picture illustrating a slave auction: “Whenever I see anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally” (358). The text undermines simplistic caricatures of Lincoln.

It appears to me that The American Pageant does not tell students that they should be ashamed of the Founders and of Lincoln, nor does it urge that they venerate these men without a sense of their human flaws.

Brian Tubbs offers several examples—some quite specific, some vague—documenting his assertion that there is a “chorus of contempt and condemnation sung by scholars, students, politicians, judges, talk show hosts, authors, and everyday Americans concerning the sins of our nation's past” (“Should We Revere ‘Racists’?”). Such a generalization goes further than the evidence he presents: a caller’s statement to C-SPAN and a History Channel poll, both recalled years after the fact; a quote from a “biography” of Jefferson by Conor Cruise O'Brien (perhaps The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800); and a quote from “civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy” (source not cited). I prefer to see better support for such assertions.

Tubbs’ discussion leaves many gaps, but is far more nuanced than the assertion I heard in a coffeehouse. There, parents disgruntled with their children’s school alleged that many teachers could not pass the much scorned WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) for which they must prepare students. Relating the comment to some teachers, I suggested that they ought to take up the challenge because there is a huge difference between high school and college education—they would easily pass. The WASL tests what the state would like high school students to know before they graduate; teachers must know quite a bit more.

I too have observed problems with schools over the years, and have been vocal about these. Nevertheless, I get a little incensed when I hear assertions that teachers cannot pass the tests given to students or that schools teach that the Founders were little more than a bunch of racists. Those criticisms are inaccurate.