"A Republic, ... if you can keep it"

Benjamin Franklin's famous line that the United States government is a "republic, if you can keep it" is recorded only in the diary of James McHenry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Maryland. The Library of Congress placed an image of this diary online.

James McHenry. Diary, September 18, 1787. Manuscript. James McHenry Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (63.02.00) [Digital ID# us0063_02p1]

The number 18 at the top of the entry shown above is a reference to 18 September 1787, the day after the Constitutional Convention adjourned and the process of ratification began.

Franklin's comment is presented by McHenry as a reply to Elizabeth Willing Powel. She was well-known in the city and hosted delegates to the First Continental Congress for dinner parties. She is credited with convincing George Washington to continue as President for a second term. Her husband was Mayor of Philadelphia, the first to serve in this position after the United States gained independence, as well as the last to serve as mayor of the city under British rule. The Powels were among the richest residents of Philadelphia.

Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland is named for James McHenry. It was this fort that held against British bombardment 13-14 September 1814, successfully defending Baltimore Harbor, that inspired Francis Scott Key to write what became "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the United States.

Whether Franklin in fact uttered the words credited to him by McHenry is uncertain, but the phrase has taken on a life of its own far beyond the context of the day. The question, as recorded, was merely, "What have we got a republic or a monarchy?"

During the Convention's final day, Franklin delivered his longest speech of the Constitutional Convention. Franklin stressed that he did not believe the Constitution perfect, but he also doubted his own judgement. He did not think the current Convention, nor a subsequent one would produce a better constitution.

He began:

I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present, but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being oblig’d, by better Information or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own Judgment and to pay more Respect to the Judgment of others.

And then states:

In these Sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administred; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

Read the whole speech at The National Constitution Center.

In our era of mis- and disinformation today, we may be due for despotic government.

Cognitive Dissonance

The lines between autobiography and fiction are often permeable. Often a fiction writer's early work is grounded in the writer's own lived experiences. Nick Adams is not Ernest Hemingway, but they shared many of the same experiences. When Nick Adams returns to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan for some fly fishing after the horrors of World War I, the fictional character is following the footsteps of the author. Writers of autobiography, on the other hand, must deal with partial memories. We remember what we want about our past, and we remember some of the things that we would prefer to forget. Whether our pain or our success, we tend to forget certain details and may invent others.

After a Catholic childhood, I became a born again Christian in spring 1980. Over the next several years, my testimony--an account of my conversion--was something I was encouraged to develop as a compelling story and often asked to share in groups. The first real test of my new faith after I made a commitment to follow Jesus is easily recalled. It was only a few days or weeks after my conversion that Mount St. Helens erupted. The resulting ash fall led to many days of cancelled classes. I was in college at Washington State University. I had become something of an expert at drinking game of caps--throwing a beer cap into a glass several feet away--and so there was a lot of peer pressure to perform during the massive amount of drinking that took place in the dorm that week. But, I needed to bring my grades up and was spending my time in study. I resisted the temptations (see "May 18, 1980").

This morning I read an article that I tracked down after it was referenced in a few places. Then I walked my dog. As we walked, my reflections on that article provoked a memory of fall 1980. In Political Science 300 (Constitutional Law) one morning, the woman who sat in front of me turned around to look at someone behind me who was asking the professor a question, saw the political button that I was wearing, and looked at my face with an expression of stern disapproval. It would have hurt less had I not already developed a great deal of respect for her. I assumed from her expression that she despised Ronald Reagan.

I wore this button

How much of this memory is imagined and how much recalled? I do not know where the lines cross from memory to imagination. I know with certainty that I was wearing a campaign button promoting Reagan for President and I remember a look on the woman's face that I read as disapproval. Why she had cause to turn around, however, is less clear in my memory. Maybe I had asked the professor a question. Maybe someone behind or beside me was arguing with the professor. Maybe someone dropped a bottle of water on the floor and it made some noise.

The past few weeks, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my life in the 1980s. My early support of Reagan before and after my conversion from Catholic to evangelical Protestant led to a great deal of  disillusionment by the end of his administration. In fall 1980, I attended meetings, put up campaign posters, wore political buttons (I had one on my backpack in addition to the one on my shirt). I labored to convince friends that Reagan was a godly man, a Christian who would lead this nation in a direction that was good.

I do not recall what I thought about Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in 1980, but I'm fairly certain that I did not read the magazine article from 1 February 1981 that I looked at this morning. My home town newspaper carried Parade Magazine and I always read it in high school. But, I did not maintain a subscription in college. Instead, I spent several mornings per week in the periodicals room of Holland Library getting my news by reading Time, Newsweek, and other magazines and newspapers. During this time I started seeking a contrasting balance by reading the National Review on the right and the Nation on the left. Sometimes I tried to read Der Spiegel to get an international perspective and to practice my German.

This morning, I was attempting to check the accuracy of a quote that has appeared several times in my reading the past few days. The source is Marguerite Michaels, "Billy Graham: America Is Not God's Only Kingdom," Parade Magazine (1 February 1981), 6. Only the first page of the article is accessible without getting behind a paywall, but that is enough not only to verify the quote, but also to reveal a tension that caused me considerable cognitive dissonance several years later.

Michaels describes the political priorities of Falwell's Moral Majority as, "pro-family, pro-life, and against the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment], gay rights, pornography, SALT II [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks] and defense cuts." She then quotes Graham, "It would be unfortunate if people got the impression all evangelists belong to that group. The majority do not. I don't wish to be identified with them."

The next paragraph struck a cord with me, quoting Graham, Michaels offers:

I'm for morality. But morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak out with such authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists can't be closely identified with any particular party of person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left. I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will be in the future.

In the 1960s and 1970s, social justice was central to Catholic teaching. One consistency for me between my Catholic upbringing and my life as an evangelical was a commitment to social justice. In the summer of 1981, I took a bus trip with a group of fellow college evangelicals from San Diego, California to Ensenada, Mexico. Seeing the poverty in Tijuana as we passed through that city provoked tears. Others, seeing the tears, consoled me, empathized with my pain, and engaged me in conversation about causes and consequences of inequality.

Nothing in that trip in 1981 dampened my enthusiasm for President Reagan. But, as the 1980s wore on, I finished college with a degree in history, got married, worked a variety of jobs as I sought full-time teaching work, and eventually returned to school for an MA to make myself more competitive in a difficult job market that favored football coaches as history teachers (I had run cross country in high school).

The more I learned of history and the more I listened to President Reagan and watched the policies he promoted, the less I believed that he and I shared the same Christian conviction that social justice was something one should work towards. In 1984, I voted for Reagan again, but with less enthusiasm than I had in 1980. It was the last time that I voted for a Republican candidate for President. In 1988, I favored Jesse Jackson.

The quote I sought to source: "The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it" (credited to Billy Graham). It appears in the first paragraph of the second column of the article. Here's the whole paragraph:

Billy Graham has talked with Jerry Falwell. "I told him to preach the Gospel. That's our calling. I want to preserve the purity of the Gospel and the freedom of religion in America. I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. Liberals organized in the '60s, and conservatives certainly have a right to organize in the '80s, but it would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."
Michaels, "Billy Graham: America Is Not God's Only Kingdom"

Reading Graham's words today, my curiosity is aroused. Surely he understood in 1981 how folks associated with the Moral Majority were using the phrase "religious freedom" to advocate for tax-exempt status for racially segregated Christian schools and colleges. But, the context suggests that Graham had a different notion of religious freedom.

In my view, the 1980s turned the Republican party sharply against policies that favored social justice. That Christians facilitated that shift, or tolerated it, became a growing problem for me. Billy Graham's words strike me today as prophetic.

A Small Lie

I am finding quite informative the book The Flag + The Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (2022) by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry. However, the authors repeat one lie that I’ve seen elsewhere.

In October 2020, shortly before losing his bid for re-election, then President Trump assembled a “1776 Commission” that included no professional historians, but was led by executives at the conservative Hilsdale College, as well as Charlie Kirk and other intellectual, politicians, and pundits. (46)

Almost all of this assertion is correct, but there are two errors. Hillsdale College is misspelled. The lie: there was one professional historian.

Victor Davis Hanson was on the commission and is a professional historian. His work on ancient Greece is highly regarded. I have read his book, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (1994) and recommend it. Less good is Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Culture (2001). That book attempts to extend the insights of The Western Way of War, but departs significantly from reliance on primary sources. As it gets closer to our time, the narrative becomes more highly partisan and the sources less credible. See my “Carnage and Culture: An Overview” (2008) for more on this book.

The 1776 Commission had a single professional historian. Saying it did not is a lie. However, that historian has spent the past several decades creating right-wing propaganda. His credentials as a historian of American history are as weak as my credentials as a historian of ancient Greece. Hanson had no legitimate place on a commission concerned with US history. None of the other commission members did either.

Gorski and Perry correctly assess the political nature of Trump’s effort to put out a statement concerning US history, a statement that had multiple problems historically, not least that historians had almost nothing to do with creating it. But, they overstate their assertion with a lie.

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.

Hamilton on the Nature of Genius

A Lesson in Sourcing

Many publications credit Alexander Hamilton with a statement that any genius he possesses is rooted in diligent study and a bit of obsession. Genius is "the fruit of labor and thought". This quote caught my interest last night while I was was reading a biography of a well-known twentieth century industrialist.* I went in search of a source, encountering mostly many quote aggregators that proliferate online with no sourcing information, each one simply presenting the same quotes as all the others with different lace surrounding the words.

One such farm, however, claimed to source all the quotes it had aggregated. LibQuotes claims, "278 sourced quotes" (libquotes.com/alexander-hamilton). Most of the sources among those that I checked are eighteenth century letters, essays, or reports authored by Hamilton, or early nineteenth century compilations of the same. But the quote on the nature of genius is sourced to an early twentieth century business education group that called itself the Alexander Hamilton Institute. The institute served to educate, principally through printed texts, business leaders. Their 1919 Modern Business Report List is the source referenced by LibQuotes. It neither is a credible source for the expressions of an eighteenth century political leader, nor the earliest readily available publication with Hamilton's alleged words. The quote appears on the back cover of the pamphlet.

I made a screenshot of the back cover and posted it on Facebook, noting the lack of credible evidence that Hamilton said or wrote it. I awoke to several comments, including several comments from fellow historian and blogger, Larry Cebula. Cebula notes that the quote, "appears nowhere attributed to Hamilton until the early 20th century." 

Following Cebula's comments, I spent some time searching Google Books. The earliest reference turned up so far is The Detroiter (24 January 1916), 5. It appears in a box. Surely the quote was in circulation earlier, but where did it appear?

The Detroiter January 1916

It appeared in many business publications as early as 1916 and into the 1920s, and continued to appear in similar publications up to our day. Tracing it to Hamilton is another matter. More than likely, the quote is fake. But it was fabricated more than a century ago. By whom? For what purpose? The search goes on.



*R. L. Wilson, Ruger & His Guns: A History of the Man, the Company and Their Firearms (1996). The Hamilton quote appears on page 97.