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Speaker 1: If you want to get the show early and ad free,

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Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me

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about this, even though I think on the last ad

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I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,

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support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.

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It's because of you that I can put out the

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amount of material that I do. I can do what

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I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together

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and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are

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doing together onkindinal philosophy, it's all because of you. And yeah,

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I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough.

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So thank you. The pekan Yonas Show dot com. Everything's there.

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Peaking Yona's show.

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George Bagbee is back for part three. How are you

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doing tonight, George.

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Speaker 2: Well, I've had some productive days lately. I'm working really

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hard on a bunch of projects. Very nice to be

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with you tonight.

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Speaker 1: Good to be with you. Good to hear that you're

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doing a lot of work there. We appreciate it, and

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the feedback on the first two episodes I spent excellent,

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so I'm excited for this one, especially since it's about

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an individual that I have actually read a lot on.

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So take it away, Well, that's good to know. I'm

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looking forward to interacting with you on him. I've prepared

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material on John Randolph or John Taylor of Caroline. I'll

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mention John Randolph in passing as we progress here. John

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Taylor of Caroline is a major American Jeffersonian thinker, and

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we've talked in our previous two episodes about the Federalist

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Party and their vision for America, especially in the person

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of Hamilton. We've also talked about Jefferson's construction of the

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Constitution and how Hamilton's victory does an awful lot to

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build American economic institutions, and ultimately the way that the

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Federal government comes to operate, But the Jeffersonian vision is

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extremely important in understanding the sectional conflict that develops in

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our early history. At the time of Washington's administration, the

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vast majority of Americans are involved in agriculture. Even the artisans,

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the shipbuilders, merchants, lawyers, and other professionals, they are still

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operating farm and gardens on the side, They're still tending animals.

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That is just a mainstay of American existence at the time.

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And our cities remain very small. We have a very

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small urban population that's very closely adjacent to the agricultural countryside.

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And so Hamilton's vision for the Republic really is far

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fetched for the people of his day. His vision of

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an industrial, financialized America, it only speaks to a relatively

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small minority of the population, and they're more in the

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Northeast than they are anywhere else.

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Speaker 2: At this stage. Jefferson's appeal is much more broad because

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of his agrarian focus and his more las a fair

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kinds of policies. Jefferson certainly favors the state level organization

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and the idea that the states could actually be very

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significantly different from one another. In the predominant way of life,

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that it would correspond more with the regions of the country.

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John Taylor, his great achievement is in his consistent pushing

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back on the centralized model that Hamilton is proposing in

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Washington's administration. Another figure that comes in and develops constitutional

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law in a really big way is the Hamiltonian disciple,

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Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court. Though Marshall

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was a Virginian, Marshall was also a high federalist, a

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follower of Hamilton's ideas, and actually does more to promulgate

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Hamilton's vision of this broad construction of the Constitution, this

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very broad reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause and

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the General Welfare Clause. He does more to advance that

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reading than Hamilton could have possibly done with his mere

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opinions as Cabinet Minister. So the agrarian well I mentioned

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mars John Taylor actually systematically pushes back on Marshall's interpretation.

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Of course, he is not a Supreme Court justice. He's

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a statesman, an elected official frequently from Virginia. But he

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doesn't have the role of pushing it back in constitutional

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law writing opinions on Supreme Court cases. But he does

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write a lot of literature, very learned and well argued

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literature pushing back on this, and is a very philosophical

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kind of voice in the Jeffersonian school. So John Randolph

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comes to speak in a very a very philosophical way

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ultimately of the Southern agrarian position, which is extremely important

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for us to understand as we're approaching the sectional conflict

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between the North and the South. So, just to introduce

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the issue, I wanted to jump back into classical history

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because these are very long gest stating ideas when it

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comes to government, and we find this kind of argument

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brewing in the Roman Republic. For example. The Roman Republic

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was founded by Lucius Junius Brutus and his comrades, who

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overthrew the Tarquin and established a representative government. Now, the

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old Roman idea of citizenship was that Roman citizens had property,

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Roman citizens paid taxes, Roman citizens bore arms and knew

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how to use them. There was a kind of militia

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organization in Roman society from the early Republican times, and

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this was the basis of the very successful Roman army

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upto the time of the Punic Wars against Carthage. Roman

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citizens with their own arms, made up the Roman army,

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and there was a prohibition on army service for those

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who did not own land. You actually had to have

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a stake in your society in order to be eligible

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to fight for it. And as Rome has great success

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they conquer Carthage in the Punic Wars, they have a

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tremendous boon of land and booty and slaves from their conquest.

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The population becomes more urbanized, and this creates the problems

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of empire that eventually result in the consolidation of imperial

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power in Rome. And that's its own story. But you

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have in the example the Roman Republic, this honorable aristocracy,

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the famous Roman virtues like magnanimity and discipline and such.

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These are where the great strengths of the Roman state

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originally came from. And naturally it was a place where

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American patriots looked for inspiration in their own story. They

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were classically educated. They were looking back on the history

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of Greece and Rome and seeing examples that they wanted

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to imitate, examples of success. So Brutus and this is

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not this isn't Caesar's assassin in this case, though the

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founding fathers also related to him. Lucius Junius Brutus, the

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founder of of the republican movement that overthrows the king

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Tarquin the Proud. He is an inspiration for them and

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the participatory republic with the responsible property owning citizens they

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saw as a model for America. In our successful independence

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move against King George, we establish an agrarian republic, and

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it's overwhelmingly agrarian at its start. Yet we also have

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figures like Hamilton who are dreaming of a more centralized

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and economically focused empire. So these tensions, they do seem unlikely,

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given the overwhelming predominance of agriculture in the seventeen eighties,

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but they create this great battle of schools of philosophy

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visions of what America could be. The classical philosophers from

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ancient Greece give John Taylor his main talking points. Aristotle

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and Plato are both the original sources for our ideas

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of economics. They both wrote about it. Both of them

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recommended strictures on merchants and those that dealt chiefly with money,

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which is very interesting. They recognize at tension between the

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producers of commodities, which are plants and animals, also things

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like material you dig out of the earth in a mine.

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They recognize at tension between those that produce commodities and

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those that dealt with money and only commodities for trade.

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They distinguish between natural wealth getting, which is related to

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natural processes like the reproduction of cattle, the tilling of

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the earth, and the raising of crops out of the earth,

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and the unnatural means of getting wealth, which means that

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you buy the corn at a certain price in one place,

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you sell it for a higher price in another place,

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or even more unnatural, you lend out money and make

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money on the interest. They both recognized these crafts, and

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both Plato and Aristotle they they've criticize it as an

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unnatural kind of process. This is unnatural wealth getting. In

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Book one of Aristotle's Politics, he actually uses the Greek

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word oikonomia to describe the operations of the basic unit

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of society, the household, which he tells us this is

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the basic unit because of the essential human relationships that

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you find there the man and wife is, their relations

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to their children, also their relations to their slaves and animals,

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are political societies and miniature. But also because the household

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generates wealth naturally. In Aristotle's conception, the household is a

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small business, or more properly, a farm. It's generating natural commodities.

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He says that the wealth that the household creates has

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a natural use value, and the focus of the basic

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unit the household, for Aristotle, is for the enjoyment of living.

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So the small farmer, he is growing the food he

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likes to eat. He's tending animals according to his own

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preference and such. It's not primarily about making money. It's

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primarily about Now that sounds kind of idealistic, but that

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is more or less what lives of farmers were like,

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especially away from trade routes in America at the time

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of the founding. They're all interested in having cash crops

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and refining the goods that they bring out of the earth,

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taking them to market and trading and such. But their

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primary concern is actually bringing these natural goods out of

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the earth or out of the animals, and refining them

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and enjoying them in an isolated farm far from the

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rivers or roads. This is the natural course of how

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people live, so it actually corresponds very well with what

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Aristotle is describing. And Aristotle contrasts that with the merchant,

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who is interested in moving the goods, and his object

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is money. That's what his goal is, is to accumulate

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this artifice that represents value, exchange value, and not the

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commodities themselves. So in the economy or the household economy

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that Aristotle uses this word to describe, it's about money

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as a means, or money as a means to an end,

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not money as an end, and he distinguishes between the

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two motivations there So here is Aristotle from the politics.

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Natural riches and the natural art of wealth getting are

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a different thing. In their true form, they are part

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of the management of a household, whereas retail trade is

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the art of producing wealth by exchange. For then man

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would go on without limit, and so the desire would

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be unsatisfied and fruitless. So the merchant who is after

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money as an end in itself is never satisfied with

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what he is produced. Whereas the farmer who brings wheat

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out of the ground turns it into flour and makes

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bread with it for his family. This has a great

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satisfaction involved. It's not about stockpiling bread without end. It

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is the satisfaction of living and enjoying the commodity that

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has been produced. Now, obviously that's not the whole of

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what's going on. In early America. People are producing crops

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to seldom, but the point of their activity is actually

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a lifestyle. The small farmer is living a lifestyle that

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supports a family, and he does make money off of it,

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but that is not the point, right The independence of

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the homestead is highly valuable to them. Economic independence, like

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political independence, is a self satisfying kind of activity. So

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Aristotle he distinguishes between economy as I've described and kapaliki,

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which is what he calls the retail trade. Aristotle goes

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on to say the state arises, and by state he

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does not mean a modern bureaucratic government. Translate this as

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the community the polus, if you will. The translators usually

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turned the Greek word polus into state, and this is

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probably an example of that. But he says the community

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arises out of the needs of mankind. No one is

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self sufficing that the individual cannot he cannot provide for himself.

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The Aristotle ultimately says this is a biological limitation. Man

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cannot divide himself and reproduce by himself. He must form

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a family, and then the family cannot survive on its own.

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It needs neighbors, it needs people to trade with, needs

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people to cooperate with, people to help defend itself. And

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so they organize into a community, and they have specializations.

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You know, there's one that makes bread, and one that

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makes shoes, and one that builds houses, and so on.

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He says, all of us have many wants, and they

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exchange with one another, and one gives and another receives,

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until the idea that the exchange will be for their good.

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So this is the origin of community life. The merchant's

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duty is to be in the market and to give

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money in exchange for goods. So he sees this as

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the effect of large communities. They develop a merchant class.

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Aristotle doesn't say they should be proscribed forbidden. He sees

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this as a natural element in human history, like Plato

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does as well. But Aristotle, like Plato, are They're both

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suspicious of the artificial, unnatural characteristics and goals of such

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a class, to the point that Plato in his Laws,

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which is one of his later works and a bit

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more involved than the famous Dialogues, he proposes political strictures

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on the merchant class to keep them out of lawmaking

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to various degrees. Here is Plato in the Laws. By

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filling the markets of the city with foreign merchandise and

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retail trading and breaking in men's souls navish and tricky ways,

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it renders the city faithless and loveless. But it's very interesting.

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Plato is focused on the spiritual character. What a predominance

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00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:15,000
in merchant activities, in what Aristol calls the retail trade,

241
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:21,519
What that does to a man's soul. He says, it

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00:23:21,599 --> 00:23:24,039
does this not to itself only, but to the rest

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00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:30,559
of the world as well. So Plato is very suspicious

244
00:23:31,359 --> 00:23:40,079
of this tendency, of this kind of professional obsession. Similarly,

245
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:48,440
we see among the agrarian statesmen such as Jefferson this

246
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:55,000
clear preference for the farmer as a political class, and

247
00:23:55,240 --> 00:24:02,839
a great suspicion of schemes imperial ambitions, as we see

248
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:11,440
with Hamilton, to patronize the merchant class, to link them

249
00:24:11,519 --> 00:24:16,160
up in constructive ways with the political class, to make

250
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:24,359
them dependent on one another, the financiers giving greater powers

251
00:24:24,519 --> 00:24:30,200
to federal bureau's lines of credit and such, and that

252
00:24:30,559 --> 00:24:35,359
this kind of relationship is very dangerous. Yes it does

253
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:41,519
increase political power. Yes it may increase the means by

254
00:24:41,559 --> 00:24:45,559
which we might do great and powerful and wealth getting

255
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:52,720
kinds of things. But Jefferson and his agrarian school, best

256
00:24:52,799 --> 00:24:56,599
exemplified by John Taylor and also the likes of John

257
00:24:56,680 --> 00:25:02,799
Randolph of Roanoke, they are very averse to this. They're

258
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:07,880
very critical of this, and they have a solid ancient

259
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:13,559
tradition to draw on, which is why I say that

260
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:18,720
John Taylor of Caroline It ultimately has a major contribution

261
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:24,200
in philosophy, though we'll find he offers an awful lot

262
00:25:24,759 --> 00:25:31,519
for us to consider. Jefferson famously said on this point,

263
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:38,920
which is certainly a classical allusion to the politics, he said,

264
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:44,839
the cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.

265
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:51,400
They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous,

266
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:55,480
and they are tied to their country and wedded to

267
00:25:55,559 --> 00:26:03,400
its liberty and interests. Jefferson, like the other agrarian writers,

268
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:10,839
is like Plato, like Aristotle, very dismissive of the value

269
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:18,400
of large cities and urban populations, consumer populations, populations, very

270
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:22,799
dependent on finance. And of course I know I'm describing

271
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:30,559
my own lifestyle because the independence of the small business,

272
00:26:31,039 --> 00:26:35,359
the cultivator of the earth their political and economic independence

273
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:40,920
is increasingly scarce in our lives. It's not available to us.

274
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:48,400
We do not have any ready opportunities to go and

275
00:26:48,559 --> 00:26:56,440
be self sufficient farmers or deal primarily in producing commodities

276
00:26:56,480 --> 00:27:00,319
in natural ways as opposed to these artificial ways. That is,

277
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,359
that is the predominant way of life in our world now,

278
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:12,079
certainly in the Western world. Jefferson says of cities just generally,

279
00:27:12,519 --> 00:27:18,599
he says, I view great cities as pestilential to the morals,

280
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:22,720
the health, and the liberties of man. The useful arts

281
00:27:22,759 --> 00:27:28,200
can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the others. With

282
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:33,319
more health, virtue, and freedom. That would be my choice.

283
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:37,559
So he says, yes, we may not have such excellent

284
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:41,119
production of luxuries as you might find in European cities.

285
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:46,039
That seems a small price to pay for the independence,

286
00:27:46,559 --> 00:27:52,920
the economic and political independence, and the virtues cultivated by

287
00:27:53,079 --> 00:28:01,480
the agrarian life predominating. This is a very long lived

288
00:28:01,799 --> 00:28:09,599
tradition in the South, particularly where the agricultural lifestyle predominated

289
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:16,279
until modern times. Even in the early twentieth century, it

290
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:22,039
was still the main means of living through large areas

291
00:28:22,079 --> 00:28:24,720
of the South where we don't see the growth of

292
00:28:25,079 --> 00:28:32,440
the great southern cities Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte. We don't

293
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:38,680
see the growth of these areas until very recently, the

294
00:28:38,759 --> 00:28:45,599
latter half of the twentieth century. Jefferson goes on to say,

295
00:28:46,359 --> 00:28:50,359
when we get piled upon one another in large cities,

296
00:28:50,839 --> 00:28:58,000
as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

297
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:04,319
So that frame the talking points of this school of

298
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:12,079
thought and gives us a more philosophical insight given Plato

299
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:18,599
and Aristotle in their explanation of these issues, so that

300
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:22,880
we can dive deeper into John Taylor of Caroline and

301
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:27,279
better understand just what he was getting at. So Taylor

302
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:33,559
he was, He saw a service in the War for Independence.

303
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:39,960
He ends up a colonel of the Virginia Militia. He

304
00:29:40,079 --> 00:29:44,720
is from the Tidewater of Virginia. He's from Caroline County,

305
00:29:44,799 --> 00:29:49,839
which is just east of Fredericksburg, Virginia, so it's up

306
00:29:49,839 --> 00:29:55,759
on what's called the Northern Neck, adjacent to Westmoreland County

307
00:29:56,319 --> 00:30:00,160
and the seat of the Lee family, who were his

308
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:05,039
his neighbors. He is very interested in this question of

309
00:30:05,359 --> 00:30:11,440
real versus artificial wealth, and this is a major theme

310
00:30:11,839 --> 00:30:18,559
of his writings. He wrote a compelling volume. It's more

311
00:30:18,599 --> 00:30:25,039
of a practical volume meant for farmers, called the air Raider.

312
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,079
This is a series of essays. I think there are

313
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:33,759
sixteen chapters in this volume, and it was the most

314
00:30:33,759 --> 00:30:38,559
popular thing he ever wrote, because on his practical side,

315
00:30:38,599 --> 00:30:42,839
he was a farmer his entire life. In spite of

316
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:48,920
his public prominence, in spite of his output in philosophy

317
00:30:49,039 --> 00:30:52,000
and law, in spite of his service in Congress and

318
00:30:52,079 --> 00:30:57,799
then the state legislature in Virginia, he was at the

319
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:04,000
end always a farmer. In rator. Half of the book

320
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:11,559
concerns agricultural reforms to restore barren land in Virginia that

321
00:31:11,599 --> 00:31:16,200
had been overfarmed. The other half of the book concerns

322
00:31:16,839 --> 00:31:23,920
the philosophy the political economy of farmers predominating in a community,

323
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:30,720
and why, in his view, the production of real wealth

324
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:38,559
out of commodities is politically vital that it forms a

325
00:31:38,599 --> 00:31:44,839
certain kind of society, one that is more rooted, one

326
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:48,839
that is more disciplined, one that is more aware of

327
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:57,759
natural limits, and with more of a cheerful dismissal of

328
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:07,880
the ambitions of these abstract economic powers business combinations, banks

329
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:12,480
and such, because they're actually independent of them in a

330
00:32:12,519 --> 00:32:17,440
serious way, and he believed that this was the root

331
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:23,160
of American political institutions, the fact that most Americans were farmers,

332
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:30,759
the vast majority in fact. So he was a great

333
00:32:31,119 --> 00:32:38,839
critic of Hamilton's protective tariff system back at the time

334
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:43,160
of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and such he was

335
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:48,440
a anti federalist, So he's a unique individual, and that

336
00:32:48,559 --> 00:32:55,200
he had great prominence in national politics after the ratification

337
00:32:55,279 --> 00:33:00,440
of the Constitution in spite of his outspoken anti federalism.

338
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:04,880
He was in fact elected to Congress in the first

339
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:10,000
Congress as an anti federalist critic of the Constitution. So

340
00:33:10,279 --> 00:33:12,920
even though he lost that fight in Virginia, very narrowly

341
00:33:13,279 --> 00:33:17,160
lost it, he went and served as a statesman. He

342
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:23,559
was so respected in Virginia. He was a great critic

343
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:29,759
of Hamilton's protective tariffs, so he is a great proponent

344
00:33:30,319 --> 00:33:34,640
of a free trade model for the economy. He said

345
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:40,400
that the tariffs amount to a wealth transfer from one

346
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,920
portion of the economy to the other. Because farmers are

347
00:33:46,079 --> 00:33:51,160
in need of manufactured goods, they pay a higher price

348
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:57,319
for them with these protective tariffs, and this moves their capital,

349
00:33:57,559 --> 00:34:04,480
their wealth from the agricultural sector to the cities, which

350
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:10,880
he sees as the special sites of government patronage. Through

351
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:17,000
that protective tariff system, Hamilton proposed, this becomes a really

352
00:34:17,079 --> 00:34:21,880
big issue later in our history. It is of minimal

353
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:26,760
practical importance in the fact that it wasn't much happening.

354
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,480
It was happening to a degree. There were certain protective

355
00:34:30,519 --> 00:34:35,239
tariffs in Washington's administration. But it gets expanded over time,

356
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:40,320
it gets increased, and this is a very serious issue

357
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:47,119
by the time of the Andrew Jackson administration. Taylor says,

358
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:51,679
the bounties, and this is the this is the particular

359
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:56,559
word Hamilton uses in his report on manufactures in the

360
00:34:56,639 --> 00:35:03,519
Washington administration. Bounties are these protective tariffs, the fund or

361
00:35:03,559 --> 00:35:07,679
the revenue from which are to be used for internal improvements,

362
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:11,440
for the building of roads, the improvement of waterways, the

363
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:15,760
building of canals, the building of port cities or port facilities.

364
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:23,920
Taylor says the bounties are partly but never completely reimbursed

365
00:35:24,639 --> 00:35:32,000
to agriculture. So he notes that agriculture will benefit from

366
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:37,559
the internal improvements to some degree, but on balance it

367
00:35:37,599 --> 00:35:43,280
benefits industry more because it was meant to benefit industry

368
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:48,239
that's the purpose of protective terrafs is to benefit manufactures,

369
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:57,239
to reduce their competition. Taylor, like Jefferson, makes many overtures

370
00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:02,400
to the political virtue of the the agrarian element. He says,

371
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:09,480
the yoke fellow of the earth must thrive or starve together.

372
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:14,079
If the nation pursues a system of lessening the food

373
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:19,719
of the earth, the earth in justice or revenge will

374
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:26,840
starve the nation. So, rather like Jefferson famously saying the

375
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:33,960
farmers are the chosen people of God, Jefferson famously said

376
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:38,159
that in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Taylor

377
00:36:38,639 --> 00:36:44,119
likewise points to the health of the commodity producing element

378
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:48,679
of the nation as the essential element of any nation.

379
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:56,320
That this is the place where people are connected to

380
00:36:56,519 --> 00:37:00,239
the rhythms of nature. This is the place where they

381
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:06,199
acquire natural virtues, a sense of limits, a sense of tragedy,

382
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:14,679
an awareness of death, an awareness of God. Ultimately, this

383
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:23,000
is something later on the Vanderbilt Agrarians at Nashville, Donald Davidson,

384
00:37:23,039 --> 00:37:28,199
Allan Tate, Robert Penwarren, and others. They write about this

385
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:35,880
enduring theme in Southern literature and in our political history,

386
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:43,280
that the connection to natural forces that the farmer is

387
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:51,960
immersed in his lifestyle. Makes for a religious and artistic people,

388
00:37:54,039 --> 00:37:57,960
makes for a people who are very much aware that

389
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:01,760
they are not ultimately in control, that there are limits

390
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:06,960
to man's actions, whereas, of course, the city dweller in

391
00:38:07,039 --> 00:38:13,360
an overwhelmingly artificial environment is far less aware of these

392
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:18,280
natural forces. He wants light, he flips a switch. He's

393
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:22,800
too hot, he flips a switch. He wants food, He

394
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:29,000
calls for some, pays for some. He is so separated

395
00:38:29,679 --> 00:38:35,000
as obviously that's the norm for us, it's the norm

396
00:38:35,079 --> 00:38:43,760
for me. They're so separated from the harsh realities of

397
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:51,760
life that they grow distant from the traditional virtues, from

398
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:56,079
ties to particular places. We realize this when we live

399
00:38:56,079 --> 00:39:03,119
in these artificial environments. Might drive a thousand miles and

400
00:39:03,159 --> 00:39:07,360
it's the same coffee shop. It's the exact same design.

401
00:39:08,679 --> 00:39:11,480
The cup of coffee comes from the exact same factory.

402
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:16,039
It has been tooled so that it tastes precisely the

403
00:39:16,119 --> 00:39:21,920
same as it does a thousand miles away, And we

404
00:39:22,039 --> 00:39:30,039
no longer appreciate the differences between place and place, the rootedness,

405
00:39:30,199 --> 00:39:35,320
the sense of place. These are important distinctions that are

406
00:39:36,519 --> 00:39:43,559
all too obvious in a traditional society, in a negrarian society. Now,

407
00:39:44,599 --> 00:39:48,800
I say all of this in preparation to approach a

408
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,280
very interesting point with Taylor, and this is one that

409
00:39:52,360 --> 00:40:00,760
I must say, I have very complicated feelings concerning this point.

410
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:06,880
Was very fruitful. Uh, there are there's a lot of

411
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:16,800
correspondence between Taylor, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson himself on

412
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:21,800
this point, which I have I have mind now for

413
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:29,119
years and found tremendous inspiration in. It's all concerning the

414
00:40:29,159 --> 00:40:37,159
subject of equality, which is that that very fruitful phrase,

415
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:39,960
whatever else we might say about it from the from

416
00:40:40,079 --> 00:40:47,159
Jefferson's declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. Now,

417
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:54,280
this is troublesome, certainly given that it is historically a

418
00:40:54,360 --> 00:41:02,039
leftist talking point. John Adams, who I have a genuine

419
00:41:02,079 --> 00:41:07,639
admiration for, took issue with this and and said it's

420
00:41:07,679 --> 00:41:15,440
a preposterous statement. And late in life, after the passions

421
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:21,639
of political debate had died down, Adams renewed his friendship

422
00:41:21,679 --> 00:41:24,440
with Jefferson and they and they had a very fruitful

423
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:30,400
correspondence about this precise thing. But John Taylor enters into

424
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:38,199
this discussion. Taylor is a great critic of Adams's Defense

425
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:42,679
of the Constitutions of America, which is one of Adams's

426
00:41:43,119 --> 00:41:49,360
major works. Adams, Adams really is worth our time. By

427
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:52,639
the way, He's not the focus of this series. Obviously,

428
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:55,239
We're focused on the sexual conflict, and Adams kind of

429
00:41:55,519 --> 00:41:59,920
falls out of the picture sadly. The Federalists. We'll talk

430
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:05,199
more about the Federalist Party later, but Adams's thought is

431
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:09,840
not so important in this context. The Federalist Party dies

432
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:14,960
and a lot of these ideas are ushered out. Adams

433
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:18,159
does have so much to contribute, though, if you're interested

434
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:21,760
in Adams, who ought to be treated very seriously, and

435
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:28,400
we can learn so much from him. Russell Kirk edited

436
00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:34,039
some bits of Adams in his Conservative Reader, and also

437
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:39,480
in his very good book The Conservative Mind, where he

438
00:42:39,559 --> 00:42:43,960
treats Adams very seriously, as he does actually people like

439
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:51,400
John Randolph, who Russell Kirk really liked, but Taylor. John

440
00:42:51,480 --> 00:43:00,760
Taylor was insistent on political equality and democratic in situtions.

441
00:43:03,199 --> 00:43:08,840
That being said, he is also a Southern landowner, a

442
00:43:09,039 --> 00:43:15,960
manorial figure who has many slaves as several dozen. When

443
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:18,400
he's talking of equality, he's talking of it in a

444
00:43:18,519 --> 00:43:22,480
qualified way. We can just take this for granted, but

445
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:29,880
he is insistent on this overwhelming property owning element in

446
00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:38,599
America being politically equal. John Adams retorts on this. Taylor

447
00:43:38,639 --> 00:43:44,159
actually writes a book against John Adams's defense of the

448
00:43:44,199 --> 00:43:49,400
constitutions of America, something that Adams had spent twenty years writing.

449
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:57,760
Taylor Taylor, with steam coming out of his ears, presumably

450
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:02,360
writes something like five hundred pages in rebuttal of John

451
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:07,400
Adams's magnum Opus and puts it to press. And he

452
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:13,239
even anonymously sent John Adams his book in the mail.

453
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:17,199
It didn't even tell him who had written it. He

454
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:19,639
didn't include a letter or anything. He just sent this

455
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:28,079
substantial volume to John Adams. John Adams recollects this in

456
00:44:28,199 --> 00:44:32,519
private correspondence. He may have been writing Jefferson in fact,

457
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,559
where he said, I received this tone in the mail,

458
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:39,000
and I think it might have been John Taylor's book.

459
00:44:40,119 --> 00:44:43,840
It sounded very like his speeches in Congress, and so

460
00:44:44,159 --> 00:44:46,639
he may have in fact known who had written it

461
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:55,559
when he received it. But Taylor criticizes Adams because Adams

462
00:44:56,320 --> 00:45:04,159
disparages the masses of of the people. At least that's

463
00:45:04,159 --> 00:45:11,440
what John Taylor says. Adams insists that there are organized

464
00:45:11,639 --> 00:45:19,079
elites that determine the fate of societies. This should sound

465
00:45:19,199 --> 00:45:23,039
very familiar to us, and this is one of the

466
00:45:23,079 --> 00:45:26,480
reasons why I believe Adams really deserves our serious attention.

467
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:35,840
Taylor is an egalitarian agrarian, and this is a very

468
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:44,679
important point to understand the sectional conflict because for and

469
00:45:46,199 --> 00:45:48,840
I've been wanting to give Adams his due here. I

470
00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:55,280
think that Adams is correct. I think that Taylor is

471
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:58,000
going too far in his criticism of Adams, where he's

472
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:10,400
alleging Adams is characterizing most American citizens as subservient slaves

473
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:16,360
in a political sense, not illegal, and that Adams is elitist.

474
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:23,480
Adams certainly is elitist, because Adams believes in elites. Just

475
00:46:23,519 --> 00:46:26,400
to give you a taste of what Adams has to say,

476
00:46:27,719 --> 00:46:31,039
here's an example. This is Adams on the subject of

477
00:46:31,079 --> 00:46:35,360
equality to Jefferson. I think that you will find Adams's

478
00:46:35,519 --> 00:46:41,320
point very valuable. This is eighteen thirteen a letter to Jefferson.

479
00:46:42,159 --> 00:46:47,079
Has science or morals, or philosophy, or criticism or Christianity

480
00:46:47,679 --> 00:46:53,000
advanced or improved or enlightened mankind upon this subject and

481
00:46:53,159 --> 00:46:56,880
shown them that the idea of the well born is

482
00:46:56,920 --> 00:47:03,519
a prejudice of phantom, a point, no point, a cape, flyaway,

483
00:47:04,039 --> 00:47:08,880
a dream. I say it is the ordinance of God

484
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:14,239
Almighty and the constitution of human nature, and wrought into

485
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:20,199
the fabric of the universe. Philosophers and politicians may nibble

486
00:47:20,519 --> 00:47:24,199
and quibble, but they will never get rid of it.

487
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:32,360
So the idea you you can raise a child around books,

488
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:38,480
teach him discipline, right, orient his mind towards high things,

489
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:44,559
teach him the scripture, take him to church. You're going

490
00:47:44,639 --> 00:47:48,519
to get a very different result from the child that

491
00:47:49,079 --> 00:47:53,559
watches HBO night and day is never taught to do

492
00:47:53,679 --> 00:47:58,800
anything for himself. I mean, just just take that as

493
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:03,159
an example of being well born, well bred, that this

494
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:09,119
makes substantial differences in people. Adams says, this is the

495
00:48:09,159 --> 00:48:12,199
constitution of human nature. This is a law of God Almighty.

496
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:17,639
This does make a difference. Adams is saying that there

497
00:48:17,639 --> 00:48:21,840
really are substantial differences between people that everyone knows. You

498
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:26,320
cannot dismiss it as mere prejudice. Now, Adams is so

499
00:48:26,519 --> 00:48:30,199
compelling in this correspondence which he does have with Taylor,

500
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:33,840
though he can't get concessions from Taylor. Taylor is more intractable.

501
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:40,239
He gets concessions from Jefferson. Adams finally concludes, I think

502
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:44,000
that we more or less agree there is natural aristocracy,

503
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,000
which is quite remarkable he got that out of Jefferson.

504
00:48:48,159 --> 00:48:55,119
But that's an aside. Ultimately, let's go back to Taylor. Taylor,

505
00:48:56,159 --> 00:49:03,360
in an agrarian context is insisting property owners are basically

506
00:49:03,519 --> 00:49:14,519
responsible by definition, and a citizenry which is predominantly property owners,

507
00:49:15,159 --> 00:49:23,119
particularly farmers, rather than businessman, manufacturers, merchants. It produces a

508
00:49:23,199 --> 00:49:30,599
certain kind of citizenry that has a real political equality.

509
00:49:31,639 --> 00:49:40,480
And Taylor is very apprehensive about a falling away of

510
00:49:40,559 --> 00:49:46,519
a property owning citizenry into a citizenry of the employed,

511
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:55,400
what he calls the paper system, to emphasize the artificiality

512
00:49:56,079 --> 00:50:04,000
of the ekonomia, that we are not now involved in

513
00:50:04,159 --> 00:50:08,440
our regular lives, in our lifestyles, in fact, in producing

514
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:20,679
real wealth, which are commodities, but in acquiring media for exchange,

515
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:29,360
which he says is deracinating, alienating. This is this is

516
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:30,800
such an interesting point.

517
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:32,679
Speaker 3: We have.

518
00:50:33,039 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 2: We have other great Southern agrarians, writers, people like John C. Calhoun.

519
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:47,440
We occasionally in academia, in scholarship, you will find people

520
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:55,360
speaking of John C. Calhoun as an American Marx, not

521
00:50:56,039 --> 00:51:00,159
in the least because he had the same goals as Mark.

522
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,679
He recognized some of the same things that Marx talked about,

523
00:51:06,199 --> 00:51:11,559
had a very different take on them. The artificiality of

524
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:21,320
modern economy was for Taylor, as for Calhoun, a recognized

525
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:29,559
factor in their politics that they opposed. Ironically, we find

526
00:51:29,639 --> 00:51:33,280
Marx opposing the same thing, yet saying it's inevitable and

527
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:38,519
the revolution will destroy it all. So it's an interesting

528
00:51:38,519 --> 00:51:42,840
factor we talked about in the Marxist context, you know,

529
00:51:42,880 --> 00:51:46,039
the alienation of labor and things like that. These are

530
00:51:46,079 --> 00:51:52,000
things that Taylor also appreciated. But Taylor didn't think it

531
00:51:52,039 --> 00:51:58,079
was at all necessary that we transition from that agrarian

532
00:51:58,119 --> 00:52:04,639
property owning society to that alienated manufacturer consumer society. He

533
00:52:04,679 --> 00:52:07,280
didn't want that kind of system. He called it the

534
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:13,639
paper system, emphasizing the artificiality of it. So Taylor, he

535
00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:21,320
warned that the paper and patronage aristocracy was being advocated

536
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:31,159
by the likes of Atoms Adams for his benefit. Adams

537
00:52:32,199 --> 00:52:36,000
disavows this entirely. One of the things Adams' rights in

538
00:52:36,039 --> 00:52:40,320
response to Taylor is that he has always been an

539
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:43,960
opponent of banks. Adams even says, I don't believe that

540
00:52:44,079 --> 00:52:48,079
banks have ever contributed substantial good to any place where

541
00:52:48,079 --> 00:52:53,559
they've been established, that they demoralized the populace. In fact,

542
00:52:53,639 --> 00:52:57,559
that's what Adams says about banks. In that Taylor and

543
00:52:57,599 --> 00:53:02,840
Adams are in complete agreement. Butaylor is convinced that these

544
00:53:03,639 --> 00:53:10,639
Northern Federalists. Unfortunately, Taylor did not have this long drawn

545
00:53:10,679 --> 00:53:14,639
out argument with Hamilton, who was a much more worthy

546
00:53:14,679 --> 00:53:18,840
opponent on this field, though it's very interesting what resulted

547
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:25,079
with the debate with Adams. Taylor is convinced there is

548
00:53:25,159 --> 00:53:35,280
a conspiracy, a power hungry conspiracy to centralize wealth and

549
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:48,039
to create a patronized artificial aristocracy using the Philadelphia Constitution. Now,

550
00:53:49,519 --> 00:53:53,840
there are plausible arguments against this, and I would point

551
00:53:53,880 --> 00:54:00,960
to Forrest McDonald's work in particular. McDonald does not admit

552
00:54:01,039 --> 00:54:09,159
of any paper aristocracy conspiracy, but that was certainly the

553
00:54:09,159 --> 00:54:14,079
effect of the Federalist movement the establishment of the Philadelphia Constitution.

554
00:54:15,159 --> 00:54:23,360
Hamilton and John Marshall affected, and Marshall is one of

555
00:54:23,679 --> 00:54:35,320
Taylor's other great combatants in his career. Taylor is convinced

556
00:54:35,639 --> 00:54:42,880
that this Hamiltonian faction in what is then the Federalist party,

557
00:54:43,639 --> 00:54:48,960
they are going to set up aristocracy. Taylor is constantly

558
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:57,000
charging that this is ultimately a monarchist conspiracy to set

559
00:54:57,079 --> 00:55:05,679
up these these titles, these special patronage and status in

560
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:09,920
the economy, to centralize wealth in the cities and the like,

561
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:14,159
and that that's what it's all ultimately meant to do,

562
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:18,679
which is why Taylor is the great advocate of the

563
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:23,599
states organizing to resist it in their own jurisdictions.

564
00:55:25,199 --> 00:55:27,840
Speaker 1: I couldn't find my notes on Calhoun, but I found

565
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:33,000
some notes on Tailor, and I actually this is this

566
00:55:33,079 --> 00:55:41,440
is what I had. That he advocated for an excited citizenry,

567
00:55:41,559 --> 00:55:46,440
that they must always be willing to take effective political action,

568
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:53,000
that any new subsidized class of capitalists needed to be uprooted.

569
00:55:54,239 --> 00:55:57,599
And he talked about suffering the same fate of England,

570
00:55:58,119 --> 00:56:07,400
a Whig oligarchy, class conflict, economic fluctuations, high taxation, standing army, inflation, war,

571
00:56:08,039 --> 00:56:12,320
ruin of the productive classes. And he warned against the

572
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:19,800
mercantilism of London and Washington, causing men to confound artificial

573
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:23,679
politically created property with the justly acquired property earned in

574
00:56:23,719 --> 00:56:29,360
the marketplace. He actually made a distinction between saying that

575
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:34,199
he was actually free market, laisse fair and not capitalist.

576
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:40,719
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, and his model is very important because he's

577
00:56:41,639 --> 00:56:48,199
he's got a real political community in early Virginia where

578
00:56:48,559 --> 00:56:52,639
most everyone is involved in the production of everything they

579
00:56:52,679 --> 00:56:59,079
need to live. And they're very successful with this in

580
00:56:59,159 --> 00:57:06,480
their ex supporting a lot and developing their communities. In

581
00:57:06,519 --> 00:57:09,679
addition to that, you were talking about how the property

582
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:16,559
holders need to organize to resist this the paper aristocracy

583
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:20,440
getting patronized in the cities, that they have to reform

584
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:25,000
the institutions and stop this from happening. This is a

585
00:57:25,039 --> 00:57:29,280
major element in Taylor's thought. He was the great proponent

586
00:57:29,599 --> 00:57:34,519
of the citizen militia as opposed to a professional army,

587
00:57:34,599 --> 00:57:40,639
which he saw as yet another special political interest, a

588
00:57:40,840 --> 00:57:48,760
source of patronage and corruption in our republican institutions. So

589
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:54,400
he was for all of this a great advocate of

590
00:57:54,440 --> 00:58:00,440
the state is the stated federalist policy of isolation or neutrality,

591
00:58:01,119 --> 00:58:04,239
and and this is a common point. He would be

592
00:58:04,599 --> 00:58:10,719
in agreement with Washington's Farewell address on these points. He

593
00:58:10,840 --> 00:58:13,559
was a great critic, as as I said before, a

594
00:58:13,559 --> 00:58:19,000
anti federalist critic of the Philadelphia Constitution on the grounds

595
00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:25,079
that it was not representative enough that it was in

596
00:58:25,159 --> 00:58:32,000
fact designed to be more aristocratic. He was a he

597
00:58:32,119 --> 00:58:36,840
was very fearful and and justly so, the power of

598
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:45,800
the courts, the federal judiciary, and was proposing a great

599
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:51,079
many checks on the state level for the development of

600
00:58:51,239 --> 00:58:55,159
the judiciary power. And and of course we've we've seen

601
00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:58,599
in recent times anyone that's been paying attention to it,

602
00:58:59,039 --> 00:59:08,039
then did federal judges are checking congressional legislation, executive actions

603
00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:13,599
all over the place. And this is an unprecedented kind

604
00:59:13,679 --> 00:59:17,000
of situation just in the last couple of years. But nevertheless,

605
00:59:17,000 --> 00:59:22,039
it highlights Taylor's concerns way back then. He saw the

606
00:59:22,079 --> 00:59:26,599
possibility of that power, which he said was a patronized

607
00:59:26,679 --> 00:59:33,480
aristocracy with its own special interests, totally unaccountable to the citizens.

608
00:59:35,960 --> 00:59:43,559
So he was in Jefferson's administration proposing all sorts of

609
00:59:43,719 --> 00:59:48,719
checks on the judiciary. Now, this actually created some very

610
00:59:48,719 --> 00:59:55,800
interesting actions. In eighteen oh four, Taylor got something that

611
00:59:56,079 --> 01:00:02,199
he had proposed. He had been advocating for the impeachment

612
01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:12,000
of Supreme Court justices, and Justice Samuel Chase Is brought

613
01:00:12,039 --> 01:00:15,760
before the Senate in eighteen oh four to face an

614
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:22,639
impeachment trial. Now this is in Jefferson's first administration. We

615
01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:28,199
have Vice President Aaron Burr who is presiding over this.

616
01:00:28,199 --> 01:00:31,840
This is kind of this is an unusual coincidence. Burr

617
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:37,599
had just killed Hamilton and had actually just come back

618
01:00:37,960 --> 01:00:44,000
to the capital after his faithful duel with Hamilton in

619
01:00:44,320 --> 01:00:48,639
New Jersey to preside over the trial of Justice Chase.

620
01:00:49,480 --> 01:00:57,400
Samuel Chase was a Federalist justice appointed either in the

621
01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:01,079
Washington or Adams administrations. I forget which he came from.

622
01:01:01,639 --> 01:01:04,239
He was known to be very partisan. He was known

623
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:06,760
to be very outspoken. He was also known to be

624
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:11,599
unfair to Jeffersonian Republicans in his.

625
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:13,719
Speaker 3: Work.

626
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:19,039
Speaker 2: Not necessarily in the capacity of a Supreme Court justice,

627
01:01:19,039 --> 01:01:22,639
but in those days, the Supreme Court justices actually traveled

628
01:01:23,159 --> 01:01:29,079
to appellate jurisdictions. They had regions that they served, and

629
01:01:29,119 --> 01:01:34,400
they went to hear federal cases in various areas. In

630
01:01:34,440 --> 01:01:38,039
addition to being a justice on the Supreme Court, and

631
01:01:38,079 --> 01:01:40,280
he was known to be he was known to get

632
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:44,760
up on the bench and make political speeches in favor

633
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:49,440
of the Federalist position on controversial issues, which is a

634
01:01:49,599 --> 01:01:54,079
very improper thing for a judge to do. A judge

635
01:01:54,079 --> 01:02:01,440
is supposed to be impartial, and so he was kind

636
01:02:01,480 --> 01:02:04,840
of an outstanding example. This was very prevocative, and the

637
01:02:05,000 --> 01:02:08,480
Jefferson administration was trying to hold into account so dig

638
01:02:08,519 --> 01:02:12,760
get his trial. John Randolph of Roanoke was the major

639
01:02:12,840 --> 01:02:17,840
advocate for this, another one of these agrarian statesmen of

640
01:02:17,880 --> 01:02:24,000
the time, and Randolph is making speeches in Congress demanding

641
01:02:24,039 --> 01:02:27,320
this trial, and he actually does get it, but Chase

642
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:30,920
is acquitted. This is the only time a Supreme Court

643
01:02:31,039 --> 01:02:35,840
justice has ever been held for impeachment where articles of

644
01:02:35,840 --> 01:02:39,320
impeachment presented against him, a trial is convened. That's the

645
01:02:39,360 --> 01:02:43,920
only time in our history that happens, and it's never

646
01:02:43,960 --> 01:02:53,840
attempted again. Marburie versus Madison, which is the Marshall case,

647
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:59,440
the first great case of justice, John Marshall, the great

648
01:02:59,440 --> 01:03:11,320
Hamiltonian jurist. It it's a very interesting story. President Adams

649
01:03:11,719 --> 01:03:19,920
had appointed a great many judges on midnight of his

650
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:26,159
last day in office, so they go to post and

651
01:03:26,519 --> 01:03:31,639
Jefferson is sworn in the very next day. His Secretary

652
01:03:31,679 --> 01:03:35,400
of State, James Madison, who is party to this case,

653
01:03:36,719 --> 01:03:40,960
doesn't send out the mail. He just holds the mail

654
01:03:41,719 --> 01:03:46,280
from the executive at post, and these judges do not

655
01:03:46,480 --> 01:03:51,280
get their appointments in the mail from Adams. And this

656
01:03:51,400 --> 01:03:54,320
is part of Jefferson's policy where he's trying to reform

657
01:03:54,360 --> 01:04:00,559
the judiciary on more Jeffersonian lines. Obviously, it's the first

658
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:05,960
transfer of power between parties in American history. Well, Justice Marshall,

659
01:04:06,159 --> 01:04:08,760
here's the case of mister Marbury, who is supposed to

660
01:04:08,840 --> 01:04:13,239
receive an appointment, who sues James Madison, Secretary of State,

661
01:04:13,599 --> 01:04:17,960
for not sending out the mail. And Justice Marshall determines.

662
01:04:18,039 --> 01:04:25,400
The Supreme Court determines what is in its purview. The

663
01:04:25,440 --> 01:04:30,800
Supreme Court ultimately decides what its own powers are. It's

664
01:04:30,840 --> 01:04:36,960
the only unchecked branch of the federal government. This is

665
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:41,440
an expansion, a radical expansion of the judiciary power as

666
01:04:41,519 --> 01:04:44,199
understood in the time, and it was a controversial move.

667
01:04:45,039 --> 01:04:49,800
This is precisely what Taylor had been warning would happen

668
01:04:50,920 --> 01:04:57,400
and alleging it's part of a bigger conspiracy to consolidate power.

669
01:05:00,079 --> 01:05:06,559
So Taylor is adamant there must be more done to

670
01:05:06,719 --> 01:05:09,639
check the power of the judiciary. We need to make

671
01:05:09,800 --> 01:05:13,039
various reforms. He is a great advocate of an amendment

672
01:05:13,079 --> 01:05:15,639
to the Constitution directed by this. Now that you have

673
01:05:16,360 --> 01:05:20,480
a Supreme Court case Marborie versus Madison, that is one

674
01:05:20,519 --> 01:05:23,679
potential remedy. And so he spends an awful lot of

675
01:05:23,719 --> 01:05:26,679
effort contending for this, but does not actually get it.

676
01:05:27,320 --> 01:05:28,800
Do you have anything to add on this?

677
01:05:30,159 --> 01:05:31,159
Speaker 1: No, not at this time.

678
01:05:32,199 --> 01:05:32,960
Speaker 3: So the.

679
01:05:35,199 --> 01:05:42,280
Speaker 2: Marshall matter Marshall, in addition to Marburie versus Madison, he

680
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:48,440
gives us the Dartmouth College case. Soon after, Taylor is

681
01:05:49,239 --> 01:05:54,960
writing books against Marshall at this time. One of his

682
01:05:55,039 --> 01:06:02,719
books is called Constitutions Construed, which in the in the

683
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:06,360
title itself, we see it matters tremendously how we are

684
01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:11,039
going to interpret this Constitution. And he is the great

685
01:06:11,159 --> 01:06:15,519
enemy of Marshall. He actually gives us very detailed arguments

686
01:06:15,840 --> 01:06:20,480
against Marshall's jurisprudence, and this expansive reading of the constitution.

687
01:06:22,360 --> 01:06:25,719
The Dartmouth College case is a very interesting one. The

688
01:06:26,039 --> 01:06:32,280
corporation of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire is being challenged

689
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:36,800
by the state Government of New Hampshire, which had incorporated

690
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:44,639
the college. Marshall hears arguments from the great Daniel Webster.

691
01:06:45,199 --> 01:06:48,760
Very early in Webster's career. He actually argues the case

692
01:06:49,360 --> 01:06:53,800
in favor of the college before the Supreme Court. Later

693
01:06:54,159 --> 01:06:56,639
has a very long career in the Senate, and we

694
01:06:56,719 --> 01:07:01,320
will re encounter him later on. Memorably says in his

695
01:07:01,440 --> 01:07:04,360
speech to the court, it is a small college, but

696
01:07:04,440 --> 01:07:09,559
there are those who love it. And that's just a

697
01:07:09,559 --> 01:07:14,840
line from Webster that everyone remembered. Marshall decides in favor

698
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:18,639
of the college against the State of New Hampshire, saying

699
01:07:18,840 --> 01:07:24,840
that the articles of incorporation are a contract that states

700
01:07:24,840 --> 01:07:31,320
cannot interfere with. Even though the state had made the corporation.

701
01:07:32,400 --> 01:07:40,079
It's an artificial institution created by law. It's immortal. The

702
01:07:40,119 --> 01:07:45,159
state actually wanted to make it a public institution. They

703
01:07:45,239 --> 01:07:47,880
were objecting to various things the board of the college

704
01:07:47,920 --> 01:07:53,119
was doing, and Marshall determines in the Dartmouth College case

705
01:07:54,079 --> 01:07:59,800
that the college is inviolate, that the state cannot change

706
01:08:00,360 --> 01:08:05,960
the nature of a corporation. Now, this greatly increases the

707
01:08:06,000 --> 01:08:10,719
power of these business combinations as well as other kinds

708
01:08:10,719 --> 01:08:18,840
of corporations like universities, and is another major step towards

709
01:08:18,359 --> 01:08:25,840
this vision of Hamilton of business enterprises, these immortal corporate

710
01:08:25,920 --> 01:08:29,960
institutions that the very states that chartered the institutions cannot

711
01:08:30,119 --> 01:08:36,239
regulate anymore. And this is alarming for Taylor, who has

712
01:08:36,359 --> 01:08:40,840
a vision of the small property owner personal property, which

713
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:44,399
is a very different form of property. It's far removed

714
01:08:44,800 --> 01:08:50,039
from the owner of a share of stock right who

715
01:08:50,439 --> 01:08:54,079
has never seen necessarily any of the enterprise that he

716
01:08:54,199 --> 01:08:58,880
is invested in, does not have any special knowledge of

717
01:08:58,920 --> 01:09:06,439
it necessarily. It's it's a very abstract kind of ownership.

718
01:09:08,119 --> 01:09:12,279
It's the most common kind of ownership. Now, it was

719
01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:17,560
novel then. It's the vision of Hamilton to make that

720
01:09:18,159 --> 01:09:23,319
the mainstay of American economic life. It is quite antagonistic

721
01:09:23,399 --> 01:09:29,399
to Tailor's very concrete vision of property that this is

722
01:09:29,439 --> 01:09:36,079
something related to a person, This is something that they

723
01:09:36,119 --> 01:09:41,119
know all about because it's their lifestyle, that they have

724
01:09:41,239 --> 01:09:46,000
thorough knowledge of the property, of how to make it

725
01:09:46,600 --> 01:09:52,399
productive and even to use it for the enjoyment of

726
01:09:52,479 --> 01:09:55,079
their lives and to raise their families and the rest.

727
01:09:55,560 --> 01:09:59,960
It's a very interesting contrast, and we see the developed

728
01:10:00,159 --> 01:10:07,880
of that jurisprudence has major effects another martial case, and

729
01:10:08,359 --> 01:10:14,359
this will be my final point on Taylor for tonight.

730
01:10:15,439 --> 01:10:22,039
It's McCullough versus Maryland. So this was our major point

731
01:10:22,279 --> 01:10:26,680
in our last conversation the argument concerning the Bank of

732
01:10:26,680 --> 01:10:31,640
the United States. We were going over Hamilton's arguments pro

733
01:10:31,760 --> 01:10:39,039
and con and Jefferson's his strict construction of the Constitution

734
01:10:39,199 --> 01:10:41,960
that the Constitution did not give the federal government the

735
01:10:42,000 --> 01:10:46,119
power to make this bank. We remember that Washington endorses

736
01:10:46,199 --> 01:10:51,760
the scheme after receiving arguments from Hamilton and Jefferson, in

737
01:10:51,800 --> 01:10:59,119
spite of Jefferson's more concise and plausible argument, Hamilton's interpretation

738
01:10:59,399 --> 01:11:04,560
of the ness Syrian proper clause as effectively meaning convenience,

739
01:11:06,199 --> 01:11:11,079
whatever the federal government might find convenient to do, they

740
01:11:11,079 --> 01:11:17,239
may do that, and using that for his own special purposes,

741
01:11:17,399 --> 01:11:21,000
his own special economic vision for the country and the

742
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:29,680
patronage of manufacturers. In particular, in McCulla versus Maryland, this

743
01:11:30,319 --> 01:11:38,079
fascinating case involves Tailor's primary focus in his career to

744
01:11:38,720 --> 01:11:44,239
rally the authority on a state level to check the

745
01:11:44,399 --> 01:11:51,319
expansion of the federal government and its power grab. The

746
01:11:51,359 --> 01:11:56,199
state of Maryland had passed a law outlawing the Bank

747
01:11:56,279 --> 01:12:00,439
of the United States, saying that it had no right

748
01:12:00,520 --> 01:12:07,680
to operate in the state of Maryland. Mister McCullough was

749
01:12:08,079 --> 01:12:11,920
a clerk at the Bank of the United States branch

750
01:12:12,159 --> 01:12:21,000
in Baltimore. The Maryland authorities sent tax collectors to the

751
01:12:21,000 --> 01:12:24,159
Bank of the United States branch after the passage of

752
01:12:24,159 --> 01:12:30,439
this law outlawing the branch. Remember this is a private institution.

753
01:12:30,760 --> 01:12:34,600
Eighty percent of the shares are in private hands, the

754
01:12:34,640 --> 01:12:37,079
other twenty percent being known by the federal government, and

755
01:12:37,159 --> 01:12:41,640
it's given a special deposit to get it off the

756
01:12:41,640 --> 01:12:47,439
ground and started. Nevertheless, it's constitutionally controversial, as we saw

757
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:52,399
with Jefferson's opinion. So half the country thinks this is illegitimate.

758
01:12:52,880 --> 01:12:58,680
Or more perhaps the state of Maryland sends tax collectors

759
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:02,840
to the branch and they demand the tax from McCullough.

760
01:13:04,039 --> 01:13:09,479
When McCullough refuses, they take the money out of the

761
01:13:09,520 --> 01:13:13,560
branch and close it down. So this is a confiscatory

762
01:13:13,800 --> 01:13:20,319
tax to put the bank branch completely out of business,

763
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:24,239
as it's not a reasonable tax. The bank could be

764
01:13:24,359 --> 01:13:27,720
profitable and continue to operate with the tax. It was

765
01:13:27,800 --> 01:13:31,760
meant to close the bank down. So McCullough sues Maryland

766
01:13:32,079 --> 01:13:34,960
and it's a federal case. The matter of the case

767
01:13:35,640 --> 01:13:41,199
is does this bank is this bank to be regulated

768
01:13:41,239 --> 01:13:45,479
by the state in which it operates, or is this

769
01:13:45,600 --> 01:13:51,359
federal policy, is this conflict ultimately between the state and

770
01:13:51,399 --> 01:13:59,960
the federal government. And Marshall reads Hamilton's opinion Hamilton's interpretation

771
01:14:00,159 --> 01:14:04,000
of the broad powers of the Constitution into his opinion.

772
01:14:06,159 --> 01:14:10,479
So this becomes the official opinion of the Supreme Court

773
01:14:11,279 --> 01:14:18,039
thanks to John Marshall, and Marshall says the federal government

774
01:14:18,520 --> 01:14:21,760
must prevail on any point of conflict with the states,

775
01:14:23,520 --> 01:14:26,600
and that these broad powers of the Constitution are what

776
01:14:26,640 --> 01:14:33,039
the Constitution means now. In response to this, Taylor writes

777
01:14:33,359 --> 01:14:39,199
a complete book and it's a point by point criticism

778
01:14:39,439 --> 01:14:46,640
of the McCulla versus Maryland case. So we see in

779
01:14:46,680 --> 01:14:52,760
Taylor's various works. He writes a famous work on tariffs,

780
01:14:53,199 --> 01:14:58,119
in particular, it's called Tyranny Unmasked. He writes another work

781
01:14:58,640 --> 01:15:03,680
that is a analysis of the Constitutional Convention in which

782
01:15:03,720 --> 01:15:12,880
Taylor is alleging the federalist plan to centralize power and

783
01:15:13,199 --> 01:15:16,920
to oppress the states, and it's called New Views on

784
01:15:16,960 --> 01:15:23,119
the Constitution. He writes a variety of works, and we

785
01:15:23,199 --> 01:15:31,159
see in Taylor the classical philosophical background of the preference

786
01:15:31,680 --> 01:15:37,560
of commodity producers, their effect on the political economy, the

787
01:15:38,079 --> 01:15:44,720
participation investment and virtue associated with the producers of commodities.

788
01:15:45,960 --> 01:15:51,960
And this is Taylor's, as it was Jefferson's preference for

789
01:15:52,399 --> 01:15:56,960
the economic order of the United States, that we should

790
01:15:57,039 --> 01:16:04,399
be a nation of the broadest possible property ownership, and

791
01:16:04,439 --> 01:16:10,840
they were the great enemies of this consolidation. Taylor in particular.

792
01:16:13,039 --> 01:16:18,039
We might might at times characterize him as paranoid about

793
01:16:18,079 --> 01:16:22,399
the intentions of the Federalists. I don't think he was

794
01:16:22,520 --> 01:16:26,960
paranoid in relation to Hamilton. I think that he may

795
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:29,319
have been more paranoid in relation to Adams, who I

796
01:16:29,359 --> 01:16:36,000
find very reasonable on the subject. But those were Taylor's enemies.

797
01:16:36,439 --> 01:16:44,000
And Taylor is the great spokesman of the agrarian future

798
01:16:44,960 --> 01:16:53,319
southern sectional political economy in its tradition, And so that

799
01:16:53,520 --> 01:17:00,840
is my conclusion for John Taylor's agrarian vision. Did you

800
01:17:00,960 --> 01:17:03,439
have anything to add tonight.

801
01:17:03,159 --> 01:17:09,199
Speaker 1: Pete, You hit most of anything that I had in

802
01:17:08,760 --> 01:17:15,720
my notes on Tailor. The one historians have used this

803
01:17:15,920 --> 01:17:21,840
term to describe him, and it's one of the most

804
01:17:21,880 --> 01:17:28,520
odd terms I've ever heard, Radical Whigism. What do you

805
01:17:28,520 --> 01:17:29,319
think of that term?

806
01:17:31,039 --> 01:17:41,520
Speaker 2: He is certainly an Enlightenment figure. He is we must

807
01:17:41,600 --> 01:17:51,279
associate tailor with a certain radical left bent, and I

808
01:17:51,840 --> 01:17:56,680
know that that is that is a very alarming way

809
01:17:56,680 --> 01:17:59,119
to put it. I would like to have a different

810
01:17:59,279 --> 01:18:05,359
way of describing him. Taylor in his service in the

811
01:18:05,439 --> 01:18:11,319
Virginia Legislature at the end of our aware of independence,

812
01:18:12,680 --> 01:18:18,399
he is very involved in disestablishing the church in Virginia,

813
01:18:19,600 --> 01:18:27,439
in distributing the lands and resources of the vestries of

814
01:18:27,479 --> 01:18:39,760
the churches, liberalizing policy on religion, basically basically turning Virginia

815
01:18:39,960 --> 01:18:47,640
into from an established religious organization into liberal vision of

816
01:18:47,680 --> 01:18:53,000
freedom of religion. So he is a liberal reformer and

817
01:18:54,159 --> 01:18:59,520
in that aspect he is related to the Whig position

818
01:19:00,079 --> 01:19:06,319
ross the sea in England. Whig has a rather a

819
01:19:06,319 --> 01:19:09,000
different association later in American history, where we have a

820
01:19:09,039 --> 01:19:11,720
major political party, the Whig Party, which is related to

821
01:19:11,760 --> 01:19:18,680
Henry Clay, which has to do with liberal economic patronage.

822
01:19:20,319 --> 01:19:25,600
Taylor is Taylor would have none of that. But he

823
01:19:25,880 --> 01:19:31,600
is a free trader, which in his time is related

824
01:19:31,680 --> 01:19:38,840
to the Whigs. Also, he has the Enlightenment talking points,

825
01:19:39,359 --> 01:19:45,560
and this is very important to remember. Jefferson has a

826
01:19:45,600 --> 01:19:50,680
lot of Let's frame it in this way. Jefferson is

827
01:19:50,920 --> 01:19:57,000
very sympathetic with the French Revolution. James Monroe, future president,

828
01:19:57,199 --> 01:20:03,640
associated with Taylor and Jefferson, is very enthusiastic about the

829
01:20:03,640 --> 01:20:12,520
French Revolution, a personal friend of Thomas Paine, the great apeist, propagandist,

830
01:20:14,119 --> 01:20:21,960
author of common sense, man known to publicly disparage the

831
01:20:22,039 --> 01:20:30,119
Virgin Mary, really distasteful figure Thomas Paine, and I would

832
01:20:30,199 --> 01:20:34,960
rather think the best about these kinds of associations, such

833
01:20:35,000 --> 01:20:40,479
as with James Monroe. Thomas Jefferson, to his credit, is

834
01:20:41,279 --> 01:20:44,640
rapidly disgusted with the progress of the French Revolution, so

835
01:20:45,319 --> 01:20:48,399
we have that to remember. It doesn't want the same

836
01:20:48,399 --> 01:20:51,000
thing to happen here, though he says many many things

837
01:20:51,039 --> 01:20:53,640
to suggest the tree of liberty should be watered from

838
01:20:53,640 --> 01:20:57,800
time to time with the blood of tyrants. The earth

839
01:20:57,800 --> 01:21:02,319
belongs to the living, the day should have their control curtailed.

840
01:21:03,359 --> 01:21:07,960
Things like that which are very radical statements. But this

841
01:21:08,199 --> 01:21:12,039
is the kind of republican tradition that these men represent.

842
01:21:12,760 --> 01:21:20,439
They are talking about major breaks with their colonial tradition.

843
01:21:22,600 --> 01:21:26,680
Jefferson and Taylor do not want to end up like

844
01:21:27,239 --> 01:21:32,399
the way that Europe has developed. They are great reformers,

845
01:21:32,960 --> 01:21:39,880
and Taylor is using a lot of John Locke's talking

846
01:21:40,039 --> 01:21:46,680
points when it comes to his opposition to monarchy and

847
01:21:46,760 --> 01:21:52,720
to aristocracy. Remember that Taylor has this huge beef with

848
01:21:52,880 --> 01:21:59,000
John Adams where he says that John Adams is characterizing

849
01:21:59,399 --> 01:22:07,000
the regular farmer as a spiritual slave, a mere hewer

850
01:22:07,039 --> 01:22:10,319
of wood and drawer of water. And Taylor is rather

851
01:22:10,439 --> 01:22:17,000
demagogic on this attack with Adams. This is not actually

852
01:22:17,000 --> 01:22:19,359
what Adams is talking about. Adams has a much more

853
01:22:19,399 --> 01:22:28,239
considered position than that elite theory in fact. But nevertheless,

854
01:22:30,199 --> 01:22:39,680
Taylor's points about aristocracy and monarchy he reduces to certain

855
01:22:39,880 --> 01:22:48,199
familiar talking points, dismissing them as superstitious prejudice, which is

856
01:22:48,840 --> 01:22:55,239
very interesting. I would identify John Adams as more of

857
01:22:55,279 --> 01:23:00,720
a figure of the thought of the right on this

858
01:23:00,920 --> 01:23:07,680
front than Taylor, who is not as reasonable in his

859
01:23:07,760 --> 01:23:14,640
responses about the subject of equality. But that said, Taylor's

860
01:23:14,680 --> 01:23:19,079
position is in the equality of property owners in a republic,

861
01:23:20,880 --> 01:23:27,119
not the equality of the proletariat, not in an abstract

862
01:23:27,199 --> 01:23:32,880
equality of all men. He does not believe that. In fact, he.

863
01:23:32,920 --> 01:23:43,159
Speaker 3: Is very outspoken about the dangers of emancipation, fearing in

864
01:23:43,239 --> 01:23:49,039
fact that the story of emancipation in the South will

865
01:23:49,079 --> 01:23:55,199
mirror that of the emancipation on Santo Domingo in Haiti.

866
01:23:57,000 --> 01:24:03,600
Speaker 2: Racial conflict and genocide. That is his outspoken fear about that.

867
01:24:03,680 --> 01:24:07,039
So doesn't believe in the equality of races, doesn't believe

868
01:24:07,079 --> 01:24:09,840
in the equality of cultures, does not believe in the

869
01:24:09,840 --> 01:24:15,279
equality of classes. He's speaking of the equality of property owners.

870
01:24:16,600 --> 01:24:24,279
Speaker 1: Well, I think Taylor can definitely be sound like a liberal,

871
01:24:24,520 --> 01:24:29,640
and even Calhoun in his Disquisition on Government, can sound

872
01:24:29,760 --> 01:24:35,560
very liberal. But that's only because their assumption is white European,

873
01:24:37,520 --> 01:24:43,640
a white European populace and pretty much an agrarian populace.

874
01:24:44,640 --> 01:24:52,319
And once outsiders from that tradition are introduced, then that

875
01:24:52,399 --> 01:24:56,520
can quickly fall apart. And it's also very dangerous for

876
01:24:56,840 --> 01:25:00,640
outsiders from that tradition to be introduced, because they will

877
01:25:02,399 --> 01:25:05,359
the guard will the guard of the white European will

878
01:25:05,399 --> 01:25:11,840
be down and the small minority can, definitely, especially in

879
01:25:11,920 --> 01:25:17,119
a system of Gibbs for lack of a better term,

880
01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:21,479
can gain power rather quickly because they can they can

881
01:25:21,600 --> 01:25:28,079
organize quickly under the nose of the of the white

882
01:25:28,079 --> 01:25:32,000
European living a liberal lifestyle among his own people.

883
01:25:33,520 --> 01:25:41,920
Speaker 2: Indeed, and obviously that's outside of the purview of these people.

884
01:25:42,000 --> 01:25:49,000
They could scarcely imagine such a thing. But they're taking

885
01:25:49,359 --> 01:25:54,439
for granted the composition of their political community, which is

886
01:25:54,439 --> 01:25:59,680
why they don't talk about it much. The differences with

887
01:25:59,680 --> 01:26:06,840
with Taylor and Adams. Adams, we might say, and I

888
01:26:06,880 --> 01:26:10,680
would follow Herbert Agar on this point, who I think

889
01:26:10,720 --> 01:26:13,359
is very insightful on this. If you want some more

890
01:26:13,399 --> 01:26:19,119
information about that, look for Agar's Land of the Free,

891
01:26:19,359 --> 01:26:23,399
and he himself is an agrarian by conviction, though not

892
01:26:23,479 --> 01:26:28,600
from the South. Agar thinks that John Adams had a

893
01:26:28,600 --> 01:26:35,279
more realistic vision for America. That Adams knew there would

894
01:26:35,279 --> 01:26:38,319
be a level of manufacturing, he did not want it

895
01:26:38,600 --> 01:26:46,479
to dominate our culture or our political system. Adams wanted

896
01:26:46,560 --> 01:26:52,199
a policy that allowed for the maximum number of responsible people,

897
01:26:52,319 --> 01:26:58,800
which he believed was limited to some degree, to own

898
01:26:58,880 --> 01:27:02,479
property and be respect and be active citizens, and he

899
01:27:02,560 --> 01:27:08,800
distinguished them from the irresponsible. So there was a real

900
01:27:08,800 --> 01:27:12,800
difference that must be acknowledged between the two, and that

901
01:27:12,880 --> 01:27:20,720
had political implications. I think that is fascinating and obviously

902
01:27:20,920 --> 01:27:25,199
a topic of separate investigation, though I've mentioned it several

903
01:27:25,239 --> 01:27:29,720
times in this show. But Taylor is coming from a

904
01:27:29,760 --> 01:27:40,399
more let's say, idealistic and Jeffersonian agrarian position where the

905
01:27:40,479 --> 01:27:44,520
people in Taylor's community and these obviously these are the

906
01:27:44,560 --> 01:27:54,359
Anglo Americans. They have a enterprise, cohesive culture, a drive.

907
01:27:55,319 --> 01:28:01,840
What Taylor and Jefferson Randolph Calhoun are going to describe

908
01:28:01,880 --> 01:28:06,119
as the aspects of an agrarian culture where they are

909
01:28:06,199 --> 01:28:11,159
a more responsible people. These men do not live in cities.

910
01:28:11,159 --> 01:28:16,439
They don't have any cities. There are like thirty five

911
01:28:16,520 --> 01:28:23,199
thousand people in Charleston in eighteen sixty when the Civil

912
01:28:23,199 --> 01:28:27,439
War begins. There aren't any cities in this whole region.

913
01:28:30,399 --> 01:28:35,039
The people that they knew, they know these are agrarian people.

914
01:28:35,199 --> 01:28:38,880
These are people that are all more or less engaged

915
01:28:38,960 --> 01:28:46,039
in agriculture. Virtually everyone there are responsible people. They're taking

916
01:28:46,079 --> 01:28:49,159
that for granted, and this is why they're so offended

917
01:28:49,479 --> 01:28:53,000
with Adams saying not everyone is responsible, you know, and

918
01:28:53,079 --> 01:28:56,479
there must be some political account for that. They say, oh, well,

919
01:28:56,560 --> 01:28:59,800
he wants to set up the artificial aristocracy with government

920
01:28:59,800 --> 01:29:06,479
paid tronage. He's a monarchist. Because they associate that with

921
01:29:07,119 --> 01:29:11,640
the British Empire, which they want to separate themselves from,

922
01:29:11,640 --> 01:29:15,600
with their various reforms, with their independence, in fact, with

923
01:29:15,640 --> 01:29:22,800
the Republic and they're shocked to encounter these these northern ideas.

924
01:29:22,840 --> 01:29:28,159
In Adams's case, I think a realistic idea, and it

925
01:29:28,199 --> 01:29:33,279
doesn't correspond to what they see in their own political environment.

926
01:29:35,000 --> 01:29:36,760
I'm hoping that makes sense.

927
01:29:38,000 --> 01:29:42,239
Speaker 1: Makes sense to me, Well, mister Bagby, I'm sorry.

928
01:29:43,359 --> 01:29:46,880
Speaker 2: I thought of something to share in relation to Taylor.

929
01:29:47,439 --> 01:29:53,239
It was several years ago. I went out to the

930
01:29:53,279 --> 01:29:58,720
Northern Neck and I saw Stafford House, which is where

931
01:29:58,800 --> 01:30:02,279
Robert E. Lee was born. That's the old home of

932
01:30:02,319 --> 01:30:07,199
the Lee family, and it's very beautiful there. That's old

933
01:30:07,279 --> 01:30:13,920
tobacco country and the tidewater along the Potomac looking over

934
01:30:14,039 --> 01:30:21,640
at Maryland, and the land is no longer agriculturally productive.

935
01:30:21,640 --> 01:30:26,520
It had long been exhausted by the over cultivation of tobacco.

936
01:30:28,560 --> 01:30:32,960
Still very beautiful. John Taylor was very interested in that,

937
01:30:33,079 --> 01:30:38,239
in the exhaustion of the land and was an important

938
01:30:38,399 --> 01:30:48,039
agricultural scientist, among other things, advancing innovative ways to restore

939
01:30:48,079 --> 01:30:55,239
the productivity of exhausted soil. Because Taylor did not he

940
01:30:55,399 --> 01:31:01,399
was not so favorable about expanding American territory. He had

941
01:31:01,479 --> 01:31:07,239
questions about that, Republican questions because the more territory you have.

942
01:31:07,319 --> 01:31:09,680
The more people you have, the more difficult it is

943
01:31:09,720 --> 01:31:15,239
to have representative institutions. And that was another factor that

944
01:31:15,319 --> 01:31:21,479
Taylor appreciated in his work. So Taylor wanted to restore

945
01:31:21,520 --> 01:31:24,840
the productivity of the Eastern Seaboard, and that was one

946
01:31:24,840 --> 01:31:28,279
of his major accomplishments. That was actually his most popular work.

947
01:31:28,640 --> 01:31:33,880
His air tour. But when I went to Westmoreland County,

948
01:31:34,640 --> 01:31:38,479
I went down to Caroline County. While I was over there,

949
01:31:38,720 --> 01:31:43,079
I was traveling with some friends. We went to Port Royal,

950
01:31:43,680 --> 01:31:48,720
which was Taylor's town. He was the head of a

951
01:31:48,760 --> 01:31:56,000
private school there on the board, and I sought out

952
01:31:56,359 --> 01:32:01,319
his plantation and I found it. There was nothing to

953
01:32:01,439 --> 01:32:08,239
market there, but I studied before we went. And we

954
01:32:09,119 --> 01:32:14,520
went out into a field down a dirt road and

955
01:32:14,560 --> 01:32:19,720
there was there was corn planted, and I knocked on doors.

956
01:32:20,520 --> 01:32:23,199
There were several houses on the property. I knocked on

957
01:32:23,279 --> 01:32:28,880
doors and I found an ancient man who was who

958
01:32:28,920 --> 01:32:31,720
had a nurse with him. He was in a wheelchair.

959
01:32:31,840 --> 01:32:38,079
He couldn't speak, he was so weak, and I asked him,

960
01:32:38,479 --> 01:32:42,880
where is John Taylor. I want to see John Taylor.

961
01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:47,479
And he pointed out to the middle of his cornfield

962
01:32:49,199 --> 01:32:53,600
and there was a clump of trees there, and I said,

963
01:32:53,640 --> 01:32:58,239
is John Taylor out there? And he said yes, he nods,

964
01:32:59,079 --> 01:33:03,039
and I said, may I go and see him? And

965
01:33:03,079 --> 01:33:07,640
he nods again. So I walked with my friends across

966
01:33:07,680 --> 01:33:12,560
this man's cornfield to this clump of trees and I

967
01:33:12,720 --> 01:33:20,600
found John Taylor's grave and it was all overgrown with

968
01:33:20,760 --> 01:33:24,600
these hardwood trees. And the trees had grown up in

969
01:33:24,680 --> 01:33:29,239
between the tombstones and knocked them over and punctured the

970
01:33:29,359 --> 01:33:32,600
caskets and such, and it looked like there were animals

971
01:33:32,640 --> 01:33:37,720
living down beneath these tombstones and in the remains of

972
01:33:37,760 --> 01:33:43,640
the family cemetery. But that's when I found John Taylor

973
01:33:43,720 --> 01:33:47,960
of Caroline on a summer's day in Old Virginia.

974
01:33:52,000 --> 01:33:55,439
Speaker 1: I am glad that I didn't end this early. And

975
01:33:55,520 --> 01:34:01,520
you have to share that that adventure with us. Thank you, you,

976
01:34:01,520 --> 01:34:04,359
You're welcome. Pleasure to join you tonight.

977
01:34:04,399 --> 01:34:04,680
Speaker 2: Thank you.

978
01:34:05,880 --> 01:34:10,079
Speaker 1: Oh. Always great to have you remind people where they

979
01:34:10,119 --> 01:34:16,079
can find your work and your research and the books,

980
01:34:16,720 --> 01:34:18,279
which absolutely.

981
01:34:19,760 --> 01:34:19,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

982
01:34:20,039 --> 01:34:25,000
Speaker 2: I've got a website that's www dot tallmen books dot

983
01:34:25,039 --> 01:34:32,399
com where I republish histories, memoirs. I've created a few

984
01:34:34,199 --> 01:34:39,880
volumes unique to my collection. I've edited scholarly papers by

985
01:34:42,000 --> 01:34:47,800
Walter Fleming, a Southern historian, Charles Francis Adams Junior, the

986
01:34:49,000 --> 01:34:53,640
great grandson of President John Adams, and others. I've got

987
01:34:53,760 --> 01:34:59,640
memoirs from Reconstruction. I've got new biographies of famous American

988
01:34:59,680 --> 01:35:04,319
Indian ins and outlaws and gunfighters from the Old West.

989
01:35:05,439 --> 01:35:08,159
All their on my website, so do check that out.

990
01:35:09,600 --> 01:35:33,159
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, mister Bagley. Until the next episode,