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I want to welcome everyone back to the Peaking Yona's show.
George Bagbee is back for part three. How are you
doing tonight, George.
Speaker 2: Well, I've had some productive days lately. I'm working really
hard on a bunch of projects. Very nice to be
with you tonight.
Speaker 1: Good to be with you. Good to hear that you're
doing a lot of work there. We appreciate it, and
the feedback on the first two episodes I spent excellent,
so I'm excited for this one, especially since it's about
an individual that I have actually read a lot on.
So take it away, Well, that's good to know. I'm
looking forward to interacting with you on him. I've prepared
material on John Randolph or John Taylor of Caroline. I'll
mention John Randolph in passing as we progress here. John
Taylor of Caroline is a major American Jeffersonian thinker, and
we've talked in our previous two episodes about the Federalist
Party and their vision for America, especially in the person
of Hamilton. We've also talked about Jefferson's construction of the
Constitution and how Hamilton's victory does an awful lot to
build American economic institutions, and ultimately the way that the
Federal government comes to operate, But the Jeffersonian vision is
extremely important in understanding the sectional conflict that develops in
our early history. At the time of Washington's administration, the
vast majority of Americans are involved in agriculture. Even the artisans,
the shipbuilders, merchants, lawyers, and other professionals, they are still
operating farm and gardens on the side, They're still tending animals.
That is just a mainstay of American existence at the time.
And our cities remain very small. We have a very
small urban population that's very closely adjacent to the agricultural countryside.
And so Hamilton's vision for the Republic really is far
fetched for the people of his day. His vision of
an industrial, financialized America, it only speaks to a relatively
small minority of the population, and they're more in the
Northeast than they are anywhere else.
Speaker 2: At this stage. Jefferson's appeal is much more broad because
of his agrarian focus and his more las a fair
kinds of policies. Jefferson certainly favors the state level organization
and the idea that the states could actually be very
significantly different from one another. In the predominant way of life,
that it would correspond more with the regions of the country.
John Taylor, his great achievement is in his consistent pushing
back on the centralized model that Hamilton is proposing in
Washington's administration. Another figure that comes in and develops constitutional
law in a really big way is the Hamiltonian disciple,
Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court. Though Marshall
was a Virginian, Marshall was also a high federalist, a
follower of Hamilton's ideas, and actually does more to promulgate
Hamilton's vision of this broad construction of the Constitution, this
very broad reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause and
the General Welfare Clause. He does more to advance that
reading than Hamilton could have possibly done with his mere
opinions as Cabinet Minister. So the agrarian well I mentioned
mars John Taylor actually systematically pushes back on Marshall's interpretation.
Of course, he is not a Supreme Court justice. He's
a statesman, an elected official frequently from Virginia. But he
doesn't have the role of pushing it back in constitutional
law writing opinions on Supreme Court cases. But he does
write a lot of literature, very learned and well argued
literature pushing back on this, and is a very philosophical
kind of voice in the Jeffersonian school. So John Randolph
comes to speak in a very a very philosophical way
ultimately of the Southern agrarian position, which is extremely important
for us to understand as we're approaching the sectional conflict
between the North and the South. So, just to introduce
the issue, I wanted to jump back into classical history
because these are very long gest stating ideas when it
comes to government, and we find this kind of argument
brewing in the Roman Republic. For example. The Roman Republic
was founded by Lucius Junius Brutus and his comrades, who
overthrew the Tarquin and established a representative government. Now, the
old Roman idea of citizenship was that Roman citizens had property,
Roman citizens paid taxes, Roman citizens bore arms and knew
how to use them. There was a kind of militia
organization in Roman society from the early Republican times, and
this was the basis of the very successful Roman army
upto the time of the Punic Wars against Carthage. Roman
citizens with their own arms, made up the Roman army,
and there was a prohibition on army service for those
who did not own land. You actually had to have
a stake in your society in order to be eligible
to fight for it. And as Rome has great success
they conquer Carthage in the Punic Wars, they have a
tremendous boon of land and booty and slaves from their conquest.
The population becomes more urbanized, and this creates the problems
of empire that eventually result in the consolidation of imperial
power in Rome. And that's its own story. But you
have in the example the Roman Republic, this honorable aristocracy,
the famous Roman virtues like magnanimity and discipline and such.
These are where the great strengths of the Roman state
originally came from. And naturally it was a place where
American patriots looked for inspiration in their own story. They
were classically educated. They were looking back on the history
of Greece and Rome and seeing examples that they wanted
to imitate, examples of success. So Brutus and this is
not this isn't Caesar's assassin in this case, though the
founding fathers also related to him. Lucius Junius Brutus, the
founder of of the republican movement that overthrows the king
Tarquin the Proud. He is an inspiration for them and
the participatory republic with the responsible property owning citizens they
saw as a model for America. In our successful independence
move against King George, we establish an agrarian republic, and
it's overwhelmingly agrarian at its start. Yet we also have
figures like Hamilton who are dreaming of a more centralized
and economically focused empire. So these tensions, they do seem unlikely,
given the overwhelming predominance of agriculture in the seventeen eighties,
but they create this great battle of schools of philosophy
visions of what America could be. The classical philosophers from
ancient Greece give John Taylor his main talking points. Aristotle
and Plato are both the original sources for our ideas
of economics. They both wrote about it. Both of them
recommended strictures on merchants and those that dealt chiefly with money,
which is very interesting. They recognize at tension between the
producers of commodities, which are plants and animals, also things
like material you dig out of the earth in a mine.
They recognize at tension between those that produce commodities and
those that dealt with money and only commodities for trade.
They distinguish between natural wealth getting, which is related to
natural processes like the reproduction of cattle, the tilling of
the earth, and the raising of crops out of the earth,
and the unnatural means of getting wealth, which means that
you buy the corn at a certain price in one place,
you sell it for a higher price in another place,
or even more unnatural, you lend out money and make
money on the interest. They both recognized these crafts, and
both Plato and Aristotle they they've criticize it as an
unnatural kind of process. This is unnatural wealth getting. In
Book one of Aristotle's Politics, he actually uses the Greek
word oikonomia to describe the operations of the basic unit
of society, the household, which he tells us this is
the basic unit because of the essential human relationships that
you find there the man and wife is, their relations
to their children, also their relations to their slaves and animals,
are political societies and miniature. But also because the household
generates wealth naturally. In Aristotle's conception, the household is a
small business, or more properly, a farm. It's generating natural commodities.
He says that the wealth that the household creates has
a natural use value, and the focus of the basic
unit the household, for Aristotle, is for the enjoyment of living.
So the small farmer, he is growing the food he
likes to eat. He's tending animals according to his own
preference and such. It's not primarily about making money. It's
primarily about Now that sounds kind of idealistic, but that
is more or less what lives of farmers were like,
especially away from trade routes in America at the time
of the founding. They're all interested in having cash crops
and refining the goods that they bring out of the earth,
taking them to market and trading and such. But their
primary concern is actually bringing these natural goods out of
the earth or out of the animals, and refining them
and enjoying them in an isolated farm far from the
rivers or roads. This is the natural course of how
people live, so it actually corresponds very well with what
Aristotle is describing. And Aristotle contrasts that with the merchant,
who is interested in moving the goods, and his object
is money. That's what his goal is, is to accumulate
this artifice that represents value, exchange value, and not the
commodities themselves. So in the economy or the household economy
that Aristotle uses this word to describe, it's about money
as a means, or money as a means to an end,
not money as an end, and he distinguishes between the
two motivations there So here is Aristotle from the politics.
Natural riches and the natural art of wealth getting are
a different thing. In their true form, they are part
of the management of a household, whereas retail trade is
the art of producing wealth by exchange. For then man
would go on without limit, and so the desire would
be unsatisfied and fruitless. So the merchant who is after
money as an end in itself is never satisfied with
what he is produced. Whereas the farmer who brings wheat
out of the ground turns it into flour and makes
bread with it for his family. This has a great
satisfaction involved. It's not about stockpiling bread without end. It
is the satisfaction of living and enjoying the commodity that
has been produced. Now, obviously that's not the whole of
what's going on. In early America. People are producing crops
to seldom, but the point of their activity is actually
a lifestyle. The small farmer is living a lifestyle that
supports a family, and he does make money off of it,
but that is not the point, right The independence of
the homestead is highly valuable to them. Economic independence, like
political independence, is a self satisfying kind of activity. So
Aristotle he distinguishes between economy as I've described and kapaliki,
which is what he calls the retail trade. Aristotle goes
on to say the state arises, and by state he
does not mean a modern bureaucratic government. Translate this as
the community the polus, if you will. The translators usually
turned the Greek word polus into state, and this is
probably an example of that. But he says the community
arises out of the needs of mankind. No one is
self sufficing that the individual cannot he cannot provide for himself.
The Aristotle ultimately says this is a biological limitation. Man
cannot divide himself and reproduce by himself. He must form
a family, and then the family cannot survive on its own.
It needs neighbors, it needs people to trade with, needs
people to cooperate with, people to help defend itself. And
so they organize into a community, and they have specializations.
You know, there's one that makes bread, and one that
makes shoes, and one that builds houses, and so on.
He says, all of us have many wants, and they
exchange with one another, and one gives and another receives,
until the idea that the exchange will be for their good.
So this is the origin of community life. The merchant's
duty is to be in the market and to give
money in exchange for goods. So he sees this as
the effect of large communities. They develop a merchant class.
Aristotle doesn't say they should be proscribed forbidden. He sees
this as a natural element in human history, like Plato
does as well. But Aristotle, like Plato, are They're both
suspicious of the artificial, unnatural characteristics and goals of such
a class, to the point that Plato in his Laws,
which is one of his later works and a bit
more involved than the famous Dialogues, he proposes political strictures
on the merchant class to keep them out of lawmaking
to various degrees. Here is Plato in the Laws. By
filling the markets of the city with foreign merchandise and
retail trading and breaking in men's souls navish and tricky ways,
it renders the city faithless and loveless. But it's very interesting.
Plato is focused on the spiritual character. What a predominance
in merchant activities, in what Aristol calls the retail trade,
What that does to a man's soul. He says, it
does this not to itself only, but to the rest
of the world as well. So Plato is very suspicious
of this tendency, of this kind of professional obsession. Similarly,
we see among the agrarian statesmen such as Jefferson this
clear preference for the farmer as a political class, and
a great suspicion of schemes imperial ambitions, as we see
with Hamilton, to patronize the merchant class, to link them
up in constructive ways with the political class, to make
them dependent on one another, the financiers giving greater powers
to federal bureau's lines of credit and such, and that
this kind of relationship is very dangerous. Yes it does
increase political power. Yes it may increase the means by
which we might do great and powerful and wealth getting
kinds of things. But Jefferson and his agrarian school, best
exemplified by John Taylor and also the likes of John
Randolph of Roanoke, they are very averse to this. They're
very critical of this, and they have a solid ancient
tradition to draw on, which is why I say that
John Taylor of Caroline It ultimately has a major contribution
in philosophy, though we'll find he offers an awful lot
for us to consider. Jefferson famously said on this point,
which is certainly a classical allusion to the politics, he said,
the cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous,
and they are tied to their country and wedded to
its liberty and interests. Jefferson, like the other agrarian writers,
is like Plato, like Aristotle, very dismissive of the value
of large cities and urban populations, consumer populations, populations, very
dependent on finance. And of course I know I'm describing
my own lifestyle because the independence of the small business,
the cultivator of the earth their political and economic independence
is increasingly scarce in our lives. It's not available to us.
We do not have any ready opportunities to go and
be self sufficient farmers or deal primarily in producing commodities
in natural ways as opposed to these artificial ways. That is,
that is the predominant way of life in our world now,
certainly in the Western world. Jefferson says of cities just generally,
he says, I view great cities as pestilential to the morals,
the health, and the liberties of man. The useful arts
can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the others. With
more health, virtue, and freedom. That would be my choice.
So he says, yes, we may not have such excellent
production of luxuries as you might find in European cities.
That seems a small price to pay for the independence,
the economic and political independence, and the virtues cultivated by
the agrarian life predominating. This is a very long lived
tradition in the South, particularly where the agricultural lifestyle predominated
until modern times. Even in the early twentieth century, it
was still the main means of living through large areas
of the South where we don't see the growth of
the great southern cities Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte. We don't
see the growth of these areas until very recently, the
latter half of the twentieth century. Jefferson goes on to say,
when we get piled upon one another in large cities,
as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
So that frame the talking points of this school of
thought and gives us a more philosophical insight given Plato
and Aristotle in their explanation of these issues, so that
we can dive deeper into John Taylor of Caroline and
better understand just what he was getting at. So Taylor
he was, He saw a service in the War for Independence.
He ends up a colonel of the Virginia Militia. He
is from the Tidewater of Virginia. He's from Caroline County,
which is just east of Fredericksburg, Virginia, so it's up
on what's called the Northern Neck, adjacent to Westmoreland County
and the seat of the Lee family, who were his
his neighbors. He is very interested in this question of
real versus artificial wealth, and this is a major theme
of his writings. He wrote a compelling volume. It's more
of a practical volume meant for farmers, called the air Raider.
This is a series of essays. I think there are
sixteen chapters in this volume, and it was the most
popular thing he ever wrote, because on his practical side,
he was a farmer his entire life. In spite of
his public prominence, in spite of his output in philosophy
and law, in spite of his service in Congress and
then the state legislature in Virginia, he was at the
end always a farmer. In rator. Half of the book
concerns agricultural reforms to restore barren land in Virginia that
had been overfarmed. The other half of the book concerns
the philosophy the political economy of farmers predominating in a community,
and why, in his view, the production of real wealth
out of commodities is politically vital that it forms a
certain kind of society, one that is more rooted, one
that is more disciplined, one that is more aware of
natural limits, and with more of a cheerful dismissal of
the ambitions of these abstract economic powers business combinations, banks
and such, because they're actually independent of them in a
serious way, and he believed that this was the root
of American political institutions, the fact that most Americans were farmers,
the vast majority in fact. So he was a great
critic of Hamilton's protective tariff system back at the time
of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and such he was
a anti federalist, So he's a unique individual, and that
he had great prominence in national politics after the ratification
of the Constitution in spite of his outspoken anti federalism.
He was in fact elected to Congress in the first
Congress as an anti federalist critic of the Constitution. So
even though he lost that fight in Virginia, very narrowly
lost it, he went and served as a statesman. He
was so respected in Virginia. He was a great critic
of Hamilton's protective tariffs, so he is a great proponent
of a free trade model for the economy. He said
that the tariffs amount to a wealth transfer from one
portion of the economy to the other. Because farmers are
in need of manufactured goods, they pay a higher price
for them with these protective tariffs, and this moves their capital,
their wealth from the agricultural sector to the cities, which
he sees as the special sites of government patronage. Through
that protective tariff system, Hamilton proposed, this becomes a really
big issue later in our history. It is of minimal
practical importance in the fact that it wasn't much happening.
It was happening to a degree. There were certain protective
tariffs in Washington's administration. But it gets expanded over time,
it gets increased, and this is a very serious issue
by the time of the Andrew Jackson administration. Taylor says,
the bounties, and this is the this is the particular
word Hamilton uses in his report on manufactures in the
Washington administration. Bounties are these protective tariffs, the fund or
the revenue from which are to be used for internal improvements,
for the building of roads, the improvement of waterways, the
building of canals, the building of port cities or port facilities.
Taylor says the bounties are partly but never completely reimbursed
to agriculture. So he notes that agriculture will benefit from
the internal improvements to some degree, but on balance it
benefits industry more because it was meant to benefit industry
that's the purpose of protective terrafs is to benefit manufactures,
to reduce their competition. Taylor, like Jefferson, makes many overtures
to the political virtue of the the agrarian element. He says,
the yoke fellow of the earth must thrive or starve together.
If the nation pursues a system of lessening the food
of the earth, the earth in justice or revenge will
starve the nation. So, rather like Jefferson famously saying the
farmers are the chosen people of God, Jefferson famously said
that in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Taylor
likewise points to the health of the commodity producing element
of the nation as the essential element of any nation.
That this is the place where people are connected to
the rhythms of nature. This is the place where they
acquire natural virtues, a sense of limits, a sense of tragedy,
an awareness of death, an awareness of God. Ultimately, this
is something later on the Vanderbilt Agrarians at Nashville, Donald Davidson,
Allan Tate, Robert Penwarren, and others. They write about this
enduring theme in Southern literature and in our political history,
that the connection to natural forces that the farmer is
immersed in his lifestyle. Makes for a religious and artistic people,
makes for a people who are very much aware that
they are not ultimately in control, that there are limits
to man's actions, whereas, of course, the city dweller in
an overwhelmingly artificial environment is far less aware of these
natural forces. He wants light, he flips a switch. He's
too hot, he flips a switch. He wants food, He
calls for some, pays for some. He is so separated
as obviously that's the norm for us, it's the norm
for me. They're so separated from the harsh realities of
life that they grow distant from the traditional virtues, from
ties to particular places. We realize this when we live
in these artificial environments. Might drive a thousand miles and
it's the same coffee shop. It's the exact same design.
The cup of coffee comes from the exact same factory.
It has been tooled so that it tastes precisely the
same as it does a thousand miles away, And we
no longer appreciate the differences between place and place, the rootedness,
the sense of place. These are important distinctions that are
all too obvious in a traditional society, in a negrarian society. Now,
I say all of this in preparation to approach a
very interesting point with Taylor, and this is one that
I must say, I have very complicated feelings concerning this point.
Was very fruitful. Uh, there are there's a lot of
correspondence between Taylor, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson himself on
this point, which I have I have mind now for
years and found tremendous inspiration in. It's all concerning the
subject of equality, which is that that very fruitful phrase,
whatever else we might say about it from the from
Jefferson's declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. Now,
this is troublesome, certainly given that it is historically a
leftist talking point. John Adams, who I have a genuine
admiration for, took issue with this and and said it's
a preposterous statement. And late in life, after the passions
of political debate had died down, Adams renewed his friendship
with Jefferson and they and they had a very fruitful
correspondence about this precise thing. But John Taylor enters into
this discussion. Taylor is a great critic of Adams's Defense
of the Constitutions of America, which is one of Adams's
major works. Adams, Adams really is worth our time. By
the way, He's not the focus of this series. Obviously,
We're focused on the sexual conflict, and Adams kind of
falls out of the picture sadly. The Federalists. We'll talk
more about the Federalist Party later, but Adams's thought is
not so important in this context. The Federalist Party dies
and a lot of these ideas are ushered out. Adams
does have so much to contribute, though, if you're interested
in Adams, who ought to be treated very seriously, and
we can learn so much from him. Russell Kirk edited
some bits of Adams in his Conservative Reader, and also
in his very good book The Conservative Mind, where he
treats Adams very seriously, as he does actually people like
John Randolph, who Russell Kirk really liked, but Taylor. John
Taylor was insistent on political equality and democratic in situtions.
That being said, he is also a Southern landowner, a
manorial figure who has many slaves as several dozen. When
he's talking of equality, he's talking of it in a
qualified way. We can just take this for granted, but
he is insistent on this overwhelming property owning element in
America being politically equal. John Adams retorts on this. Taylor
actually writes a book against John Adams's defense of the
constitutions of America, something that Adams had spent twenty years writing.
Taylor Taylor, with steam coming out of his ears, presumably
writes something like five hundred pages in rebuttal of John
Adams's magnum Opus and puts it to press. And he
even anonymously sent John Adams his book in the mail.
It didn't even tell him who had written it. He
didn't include a letter or anything. He just sent this
substantial volume to John Adams. John Adams recollects this in
private correspondence. He may have been writing Jefferson in fact,
where he said, I received this tone in the mail,
and I think it might have been John Taylor's book.
It sounded very like his speeches in Congress, and so
he may have in fact known who had written it
when he received it. But Taylor criticizes Adams because Adams
disparages the masses of of the people. At least that's
what John Taylor says. Adams insists that there are organized
elites that determine the fate of societies. This should sound
very familiar to us, and this is one of the
reasons why I believe Adams really deserves our serious attention.
Taylor is an egalitarian agrarian, and this is a very
important point to understand the sectional conflict because for and
I've been wanting to give Adams his due here. I
think that Adams is correct. I think that Taylor is
going too far in his criticism of Adams, where he's
alleging Adams is characterizing most American citizens as subservient slaves
in a political sense, not illegal, and that Adams is elitist.
Adams certainly is elitist, because Adams believes in elites. Just
to give you a taste of what Adams has to say,
here's an example. This is Adams on the subject of
equality to Jefferson. I think that you will find Adams's
point very valuable. This is eighteen thirteen a letter to Jefferson.
Has science or morals, or philosophy, or criticism or Christianity
advanced or improved or enlightened mankind upon this subject and
shown them that the idea of the well born is
a prejudice of phantom, a point, no point, a cape, flyaway,
a dream. I say it is the ordinance of God
Almighty and the constitution of human nature, and wrought into
the fabric of the universe. Philosophers and politicians may nibble
and quibble, but they will never get rid of it.
So the idea you you can raise a child around books,
teach him discipline, right, orient his mind towards high things,
teach him the scripture, take him to church. You're going
to get a very different result from the child that
watches HBO night and day is never taught to do
anything for himself. I mean, just just take that as
an example of being well born, well bred, that this
makes substantial differences in people. Adams says, this is the
constitution of human nature. This is a law of God Almighty.
This does make a difference. Adams is saying that there
really are substantial differences between people that everyone knows. You
cannot dismiss it as mere prejudice. Now, Adams is so
compelling in this correspondence which he does have with Taylor,
though he can't get concessions from Taylor. Taylor is more intractable.
He gets concessions from Jefferson. Adams finally concludes, I think
that we more or less agree there is natural aristocracy,
which is quite remarkable he got that out of Jefferson.
But that's an aside. Ultimately, let's go back to Taylor. Taylor,
in an agrarian context is insisting property owners are basically
responsible by definition, and a citizenry which is predominantly property owners,
particularly farmers, rather than businessman, manufacturers, merchants. It produces a
certain kind of citizenry that has a real political equality.
And Taylor is very apprehensive about a falling away of
a property owning citizenry into a citizenry of the employed,
what he calls the paper system, to emphasize the artificiality
of the ekonomia, that we are not now involved in
our regular lives, in our lifestyles, in fact, in producing
real wealth, which are commodities, but in acquiring media for exchange,
which he says is deracinating, alienating. This is this is
such an interesting point.
Speaker 3: We have.
Speaker 2: We have other great Southern agrarians, writers, people like John C. Calhoun.
We occasionally in academia, in scholarship, you will find people
speaking of John C. Calhoun as an American Marx, not
in the least because he had the same goals as Mark.
He recognized some of the same things that Marx talked about,
had a very different take on them. The artificiality of
modern economy was for Taylor, as for Calhoun, a recognized
factor in their politics that they opposed. Ironically, we find
Marx opposing the same thing, yet saying it's inevitable and
the revolution will destroy it all. So it's an interesting
factor we talked about in the Marxist context, you know,
the alienation of labor and things like that. These are
things that Taylor also appreciated. But Taylor didn't think it
was at all necessary that we transition from that agrarian
property owning society to that alienated manufacturer consumer society. He
didn't want that kind of system. He called it the
paper system, emphasizing the artificiality of it. So Taylor, he
warned that the paper and patronage aristocracy was being advocated
by the likes of Atoms Adams for his benefit. Adams
disavows this entirely. One of the things Adams' rights in
response to Taylor is that he has always been an
opponent of banks. Adams even says, I don't believe that
banks have ever contributed substantial good to any place where
they've been established, that they demoralized the populace. In fact,
that's what Adams says about banks. In that Taylor and
Adams are in complete agreement. Butaylor is convinced that these
Northern Federalists. Unfortunately, Taylor did not have this long drawn
out argument with Hamilton, who was a much more worthy
opponent on this field, though it's very interesting what resulted
with the debate with Adams. Taylor is convinced there is
a conspiracy, a power hungry conspiracy to centralize wealth and
to create a patronized artificial aristocracy using the Philadelphia Constitution. Now,
there are plausible arguments against this, and I would point
to Forrest McDonald's work in particular. McDonald does not admit
of any paper aristocracy conspiracy, but that was certainly the
effect of the Federalist movement the establishment of the Philadelphia Constitution.
Hamilton and John Marshall affected, and Marshall is one of
Taylor's other great combatants in his career. Taylor is convinced
that this Hamiltonian faction in what is then the Federalist party,
they are going to set up aristocracy. Taylor is constantly
charging that this is ultimately a monarchist conspiracy to set
up these these titles, these special patronage and status in
the economy, to centralize wealth in the cities and the like,
and that that's what it's all ultimately meant to do,
which is why Taylor is the great advocate of the
states organizing to resist it in their own jurisdictions.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find my notes on Calhoun, but I found
some notes on Tailor, and I actually this is this
is what I had. That he advocated for an excited citizenry,
that they must always be willing to take effective political action,
that any new subsidized class of capitalists needed to be uprooted.
And he talked about suffering the same fate of England,
a Whig oligarchy, class conflict, economic fluctuations, high taxation, standing army, inflation, war,
ruin of the productive classes. And he warned against the
mercantilism of London and Washington, causing men to confound artificial
politically created property with the justly acquired property earned in
the marketplace. He actually made a distinction between saying that
he was actually free market, laisse fair and not capitalist.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, and his model is very important because he's
he's got a real political community in early Virginia where
most everyone is involved in the production of everything they
need to live. And they're very successful with this in
their ex supporting a lot and developing their communities. In
addition to that, you were talking about how the property
holders need to organize to resist this the paper aristocracy
getting patronized in the cities, that they have to reform
the institutions and stop this from happening. This is a
major element in Taylor's thought. He was the great proponent
of the citizen militia as opposed to a professional army,
which he saw as yet another special political interest, a
source of patronage and corruption in our republican institutions. So
he was for all of this a great advocate of
the state is the stated federalist policy of isolation or neutrality,
and and this is a common point. He would be
in agreement with Washington's Farewell address on these points. He
was a great critic, as as I said before, a
anti federalist critic of the Philadelphia Constitution on the grounds
that it was not representative enough that it was in
fact designed to be more aristocratic. He was a he
was very fearful and and justly so, the power of
the courts, the federal judiciary, and was proposing a great
many checks on the state level for the development of
the judiciary power. And and of course we've we've seen
in recent times anyone that's been paying attention to it,
then did federal judges are checking congressional legislation, executive actions
all over the place. And this is an unprecedented kind
of situation just in the last couple of years. But nevertheless,
it highlights Taylor's concerns way back then. He saw the
possibility of that power, which he said was a patronized
aristocracy with its own special interests, totally unaccountable to the citizens.
So he was in Jefferson's administration proposing all sorts of
checks on the judiciary. Now, this actually created some very
interesting actions. In eighteen oh four, Taylor got something that
he had proposed. He had been advocating for the impeachment
of Supreme Court justices, and Justice Samuel Chase Is brought
before the Senate in eighteen oh four to face an
impeachment trial. Now this is in Jefferson's first administration. We
have Vice President Aaron Burr who is presiding over this.
This is kind of this is an unusual coincidence. Burr
had just killed Hamilton and had actually just come back
to the capital after his faithful duel with Hamilton in
New Jersey to preside over the trial of Justice Chase.
Samuel Chase was a Federalist justice appointed either in the
Washington or Adams administrations. I forget which he came from.
He was known to be very partisan. He was known
to be very outspoken. He was also known to be
unfair to Jeffersonian Republicans in his.
Speaker 3: Work.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily in the capacity of a Supreme Court justice,
but in those days, the Supreme Court justices actually traveled
to appellate jurisdictions. They had regions that they served, and
they went to hear federal cases in various areas. In
addition to being a justice on the Supreme Court, and
he was known to be he was known to get
up on the bench and make political speeches in favor
of the Federalist position on controversial issues, which is a
very improper thing for a judge to do. A judge
is supposed to be impartial, and so he was kind
of an outstanding example. This was very prevocative, and the
Jefferson administration was trying to hold into account so dig
get his trial. John Randolph of Roanoke was the major
advocate for this, another one of these agrarian statesmen of
the time, and Randolph is making speeches in Congress demanding
this trial, and he actually does get it, but Chase
is acquitted. This is the only time a Supreme Court
justice has ever been held for impeachment where articles of
impeachment presented against him, a trial is convened. That's the
only time in our history that happens, and it's never
attempted again. Marburie versus Madison, which is the Marshall case,
the first great case of justice, John Marshall, the great
Hamiltonian jurist. It it's a very interesting story. President Adams
had appointed a great many judges on midnight of his
last day in office, so they go to post and
Jefferson is sworn in the very next day. His Secretary
of State, James Madison, who is party to this case,
doesn't send out the mail. He just holds the mail
from the executive at post, and these judges do not
get their appointments in the mail from Adams. And this
is part of Jefferson's policy where he's trying to reform
the judiciary on more Jeffersonian lines. Obviously, it's the first
transfer of power between parties in American history. Well, Justice Marshall,
here's the case of mister Marbury, who is supposed to
receive an appointment, who sues James Madison, Secretary of State,
for not sending out the mail. And Justice Marshall determines.
The Supreme Court determines what is in its purview. The
Supreme Court ultimately decides what its own powers are. It's
the only unchecked branch of the federal government. This is
an expansion, a radical expansion of the judiciary power as
understood in the time, and it was a controversial move.
This is precisely what Taylor had been warning would happen
and alleging it's part of a bigger conspiracy to consolidate power.
So Taylor is adamant there must be more done to
check the power of the judiciary. We need to make
various reforms. He is a great advocate of an amendment
to the Constitution directed by this. Now that you have
a Supreme Court case Marborie versus Madison, that is one
potential remedy. And so he spends an awful lot of
effort contending for this, but does not actually get it.
Do you have anything to add on this?
Speaker 1: No, not at this time.
Speaker 3: So the.
Speaker 2: Marshall matter Marshall, in addition to Marburie versus Madison, he
gives us the Dartmouth College case. Soon after, Taylor is
writing books against Marshall at this time. One of his
books is called Constitutions Construed, which in the in the
title itself, we see it matters tremendously how we are
going to interpret this Constitution. And he is the great
enemy of Marshall. He actually gives us very detailed arguments
against Marshall's jurisprudence, and this expansive reading of the constitution.
The Dartmouth College case is a very interesting one. The
corporation of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire is being challenged
by the state Government of New Hampshire, which had incorporated
the college. Marshall hears arguments from the great Daniel Webster.
Very early in Webster's career. He actually argues the case
in favor of the college before the Supreme Court. Later
has a very long career in the Senate, and we
will re encounter him later on. Memorably says in his
speech to the court, it is a small college, but
there are those who love it. And that's just a
line from Webster that everyone remembered. Marshall decides in favor
of the college against the State of New Hampshire, saying
that the articles of incorporation are a contract that states
cannot interfere with. Even though the state had made the corporation.
It's an artificial institution created by law. It's immortal. The
state actually wanted to make it a public institution. They
were objecting to various things the board of the college
was doing, and Marshall determines in the Dartmouth College case
that the college is inviolate, that the state cannot change
the nature of a corporation. Now, this greatly increases the
power of these business combinations as well as other kinds
of corporations like universities, and is another major step towards
this vision of Hamilton of business enterprises, these immortal corporate
institutions that the very states that chartered the institutions cannot
regulate anymore. And this is alarming for Taylor, who has
a vision of the small property owner personal property, which
is a very different form of property. It's far removed
from the owner of a share of stock right who
has never seen necessarily any of the enterprise that he
is invested in, does not have any special knowledge of
it necessarily. It's it's a very abstract kind of ownership.
It's the most common kind of ownership. Now, it was
novel then. It's the vision of Hamilton to make that
the mainstay of American economic life. It is quite antagonistic
to Tailor's very concrete vision of property that this is
something related to a person, This is something that they
know all about because it's their lifestyle, that they have
thorough knowledge of the property, of how to make it
productive and even to use it for the enjoyment of
their lives and to raise their families and the rest.
It's a very interesting contrast, and we see the developed
of that jurisprudence has major effects another martial case, and
this will be my final point on Taylor for tonight.
It's McCullough versus Maryland. So this was our major point
in our last conversation the argument concerning the Bank of
the United States. We were going over Hamilton's arguments pro
and con and Jefferson's his strict construction of the Constitution
that the Constitution did not give the federal government the
power to make this bank. We remember that Washington endorses
the scheme after receiving arguments from Hamilton and Jefferson, in
spite of Jefferson's more concise and plausible argument, Hamilton's interpretation
of the ness Syrian proper clause as effectively meaning convenience,
whatever the federal government might find convenient to do, they
may do that, and using that for his own special purposes,
his own special economic vision for the country and the
patronage of manufacturers. In particular, in McCulla versus Maryland, this
fascinating case involves Tailor's primary focus in his career to
rally the authority on a state level to check the
expansion of the federal government and its power grab. The
state of Maryland had passed a law outlawing the Bank
of the United States, saying that it had no right
to operate in the state of Maryland. Mister McCullough was
a clerk at the Bank of the United States branch
in Baltimore. The Maryland authorities sent tax collectors to the
Bank of the United States branch after the passage of
this law outlawing the branch. Remember this is a private institution.
Eighty percent of the shares are in private hands, the
other twenty percent being known by the federal government, and
it's given a special deposit to get it off the
ground and started. Nevertheless, it's constitutionally controversial, as we saw
with Jefferson's opinion. So half the country thinks this is illegitimate.
Or more perhaps the state of Maryland sends tax collectors
to the branch and they demand the tax from McCullough.
When McCullough refuses, they take the money out of the
branch and close it down. So this is a confiscatory
tax to put the bank branch completely out of business,
as it's not a reasonable tax. The bank could be
profitable and continue to operate with the tax. It was
meant to close the bank down. So McCullough sues Maryland
and it's a federal case. The matter of the case
is does this bank is this bank to be regulated
by the state in which it operates, or is this
federal policy, is this conflict ultimately between the state and
the federal government. And Marshall reads Hamilton's opinion Hamilton's interpretation
of the broad powers of the Constitution into his opinion.
So this becomes the official opinion of the Supreme Court
thanks to John Marshall, and Marshall says the federal government
must prevail on any point of conflict with the states,
and that these broad powers of the Constitution are what
the Constitution means now. In response to this, Taylor writes
a complete book and it's a point by point criticism
of the McCulla versus Maryland case. So we see in
Taylor's various works. He writes a famous work on tariffs,
in particular, it's called Tyranny Unmasked. He writes another work
that is a analysis of the Constitutional Convention in which
Taylor is alleging the federalist plan to centralize power and
to oppress the states, and it's called New Views on
the Constitution. He writes a variety of works, and we
see in Taylor the classical philosophical background of the preference
of commodity producers, their effect on the political economy, the
participation investment and virtue associated with the producers of commodities.
And this is Taylor's, as it was Jefferson's preference for
the economic order of the United States, that we should
be a nation of the broadest possible property ownership, and
they were the great enemies of this consolidation. Taylor in particular.
We might might at times characterize him as paranoid about
the intentions of the Federalists. I don't think he was
paranoid in relation to Hamilton. I think that he may
have been more paranoid in relation to Adams, who I
find very reasonable on the subject. But those were Taylor's enemies.
And Taylor is the great spokesman of the agrarian future
southern sectional political economy in its tradition, And so that
is my conclusion for John Taylor's agrarian vision. Did you
have anything to add tonight.
Speaker 1: Pete, You hit most of anything that I had in
my notes on Tailor. The one historians have used this
term to describe him, and it's one of the most
odd terms I've ever heard, Radical Whigism. What do you
think of that term?
Speaker 2: He is certainly an Enlightenment figure. He is we must
associate tailor with a certain radical left bent, and I
know that that is that is a very alarming way
to put it. I would like to have a different
way of describing him. Taylor in his service in the
Virginia Legislature at the end of our aware of independence,
he is very involved in disestablishing the church in Virginia,
in distributing the lands and resources of the vestries of
the churches, liberalizing policy on religion, basically basically turning Virginia
into from an established religious organization into liberal vision of
freedom of religion. So he is a liberal reformer and
in that aspect he is related to the Whig position
ross the sea in England. Whig has a rather a
different association later in American history, where we have a
major political party, the Whig Party, which is related to
Henry Clay, which has to do with liberal economic patronage.
Taylor is Taylor would have none of that. But he
is a free trader, which in his time is related
to the Whigs. Also, he has the Enlightenment talking points,
and this is very important to remember. Jefferson has a
lot of Let's frame it in this way. Jefferson is
very sympathetic with the French Revolution. James Monroe, future president,
associated with Taylor and Jefferson, is very enthusiastic about the
French Revolution, a personal friend of Thomas Paine, the great apeist, propagandist,
author of common sense, man known to publicly disparage the
Virgin Mary, really distasteful figure Thomas Paine, and I would
rather think the best about these kinds of associations, such
as with James Monroe. Thomas Jefferson, to his credit, is
rapidly disgusted with the progress of the French Revolution, so
we have that to remember. It doesn't want the same
thing to happen here, though he says many many things
to suggest the tree of liberty should be watered from
time to time with the blood of tyrants. The earth
belongs to the living, the day should have their control curtailed.
Things like that which are very radical statements. But this
is the kind of republican tradition that these men represent.
They are talking about major breaks with their colonial tradition.
Jefferson and Taylor do not want to end up like
the way that Europe has developed. They are great reformers,
and Taylor is using a lot of John Locke's talking
points when it comes to his opposition to monarchy and
to aristocracy. Remember that Taylor has this huge beef with
John Adams where he says that John Adams is characterizing
the regular farmer as a spiritual slave, a mere hewer
of wood and drawer of water. And Taylor is rather
demagogic on this attack with Adams. This is not actually
what Adams is talking about. Adams has a much more
considered position than that elite theory in fact. But nevertheless,
Taylor's points about aristocracy and monarchy he reduces to certain
familiar talking points, dismissing them as superstitious prejudice, which is
very interesting. I would identify John Adams as more of
a figure of the thought of the right on this
front than Taylor, who is not as reasonable in his
responses about the subject of equality. But that said, Taylor's
position is in the equality of property owners in a republic,
not the equality of the proletariat, not in an abstract
equality of all men. He does not believe that. In fact, he.
Speaker 3: Is very outspoken about the dangers of emancipation, fearing in
fact that the story of emancipation in the South will
mirror that of the emancipation on Santo Domingo in Haiti.
Speaker 2: Racial conflict and genocide. That is his outspoken fear about that.
So doesn't believe in the equality of races, doesn't believe
in the equality of cultures, does not believe in the
equality of classes. He's speaking of the equality of property owners.
Speaker 1: Well, I think Taylor can definitely be sound like a liberal,
and even Calhoun in his Disquisition on Government, can sound
very liberal. But that's only because their assumption is white European,
a white European populace and pretty much an agrarian populace.
And once outsiders from that tradition are introduced, then that
can quickly fall apart. And it's also very dangerous for
outsiders from that tradition to be introduced, because they will
the guard will the guard of the white European will
be down and the small minority can, definitely, especially in
a system of Gibbs for lack of a better term,
can gain power rather quickly because they can they can
organize quickly under the nose of the of the white
European living a liberal lifestyle among his own people.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and obviously that's outside of the purview of these people.
They could scarcely imagine such a thing. But they're taking
for granted the composition of their political community, which is
why they don't talk about it much. The differences with
with Taylor and Adams. Adams, we might say, and I
would follow Herbert Agar on this point, who I think
is very insightful on this. If you want some more
information about that, look for Agar's Land of the Free,
and he himself is an agrarian by conviction, though not
from the South. Agar thinks that John Adams had a
more realistic vision for America. That Adams knew there would
be a level of manufacturing, he did not want it
to dominate our culture or our political system. Adams wanted
a policy that allowed for the maximum number of responsible people,
which he believed was limited to some degree, to own
property and be respect and be active citizens, and he
distinguished them from the irresponsible. So there was a real
difference that must be acknowledged between the two, and that
had political implications. I think that is fascinating and obviously
a topic of separate investigation, though I've mentioned it several
times in this show. But Taylor is coming from a
more let's say, idealistic and Jeffersonian agrarian position where the
people in Taylor's community and these obviously these are the
Anglo Americans. They have a enterprise, cohesive culture, a drive.
What Taylor and Jefferson Randolph Calhoun are going to describe
as the aspects of an agrarian culture where they are
a more responsible people. These men do not live in cities.
They don't have any cities. There are like thirty five
thousand people in Charleston in eighteen sixty when the Civil
War begins. There aren't any cities in this whole region.
The people that they knew, they know these are agrarian people.
These are people that are all more or less engaged
in agriculture. Virtually everyone there are responsible people. They're taking
that for granted, and this is why they're so offended
with Adams saying not everyone is responsible, you know, and
there must be some political account for that. They say, oh, well,
he wants to set up the artificial aristocracy with government
paid tronage. He's a monarchist. Because they associate that with
the British Empire, which they want to separate themselves from,
with their various reforms, with their independence, in fact, with
the Republic and they're shocked to encounter these these northern ideas.
In Adams's case, I think a realistic idea, and it
doesn't correspond to what they see in their own political environment.
I'm hoping that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Makes sense to me, Well, mister Bagby, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I thought of something to share in relation to Taylor.
It was several years ago. I went out to the
Northern Neck and I saw Stafford House, which is where
Robert E. Lee was born. That's the old home of
the Lee family, and it's very beautiful there. That's old
tobacco country and the tidewater along the Potomac looking over
at Maryland, and the land is no longer agriculturally productive.
It had long been exhausted by the over cultivation of tobacco.
Still very beautiful. John Taylor was very interested in that,
in the exhaustion of the land and was an important
agricultural scientist, among other things, advancing innovative ways to restore
the productivity of exhausted soil. Because Taylor did not he
was not so favorable about expanding American territory. He had
questions about that, Republican questions because the more territory you have.
The more people you have, the more difficult it is
to have representative institutions. And that was another factor that
Taylor appreciated in his work. So Taylor wanted to restore
the productivity of the Eastern Seaboard, and that was one
of his major accomplishments. That was actually his most popular work.
His air tour. But when I went to Westmoreland County,
I went down to Caroline County. While I was over there,
I was traveling with some friends. We went to Port Royal,
which was Taylor's town. He was the head of a
private school there on the board, and I sought out
his plantation and I found it. There was nothing to
market there, but I studied before we went. And we
went out into a field down a dirt road and
there was there was corn planted, and I knocked on doors.
There were several houses on the property. I knocked on
doors and I found an ancient man who was who
had a nurse with him. He was in a wheelchair.
He couldn't speak, he was so weak, and I asked him,
where is John Taylor. I want to see John Taylor.
And he pointed out to the middle of his cornfield
and there was a clump of trees there, and I said,
is John Taylor out there? And he said yes, he nods,
and I said, may I go and see him? And
he nods again. So I walked with my friends across
this man's cornfield to this clump of trees and I
found John Taylor's grave and it was all overgrown with
these hardwood trees. And the trees had grown up in
between the tombstones and knocked them over and punctured the
caskets and such, and it looked like there were animals
living down beneath these tombstones and in the remains of
the family cemetery. But that's when I found John Taylor
of Caroline on a summer's day in Old Virginia.
Speaker 1: I am glad that I didn't end this early. And
you have to share that that adventure with us. Thank you, you,
You're welcome. Pleasure to join you tonight.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh. Always great to have you remind people where they
can find your work and your research and the books,
which absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've got a website that's www dot tallmen books dot
com where I republish histories, memoirs. I've created a few
volumes unique to my collection. I've edited scholarly papers by
Walter Fleming, a Southern historian, Charles Francis Adams Junior, the
great grandson of President John Adams, and others. I've got
memoirs from Reconstruction. I've got new biographies of famous American
Indian ins and outlaws and gunfighters from the Old West.
All their on my website, so do check that out.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, mister Bagley. Until the next episode,