Did the "united states" really become the "Unites States of America" on July 4th 1776?

This is a subject we touch on in the section on the Declaration of Independence which, if read literally, establishes the separate independence of each colony, not a unified group.

Historian Joseph Ellis builds upon this argument and challenges the idea that a national was really formed on July 4th, 1776. He recently published a book on that subject. He argues that the effort to develop the current constitution marks a "Second American Revolution" and is more properly considered the point when the United States of America became a nation.

Further, he argues that four key figures - George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison - were responsible for this change. This helps put into context what was and was not accomplished by the Second Continental Congress in July 1776.

If you're interested:

- PBS NewsHour: A ‘quartet’ of patriots who brought the United States together.
- Boston Globe: ‘The Quartet’ by Joseph J. Ellis.
- Amazon: The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789.
- Wikipedia: Joseph Ellis.

From Vox: 3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake

This is provocative.

- Click here for the article.

It's always instructive to look at "what-ifs?"

1 - Abolition would have come faster without independence.
2 - Independence was bad for Native Americans.
3 - America would have a better system of government if we'd stuck with Britain.

Discuss

From the New Critereon: Augustus & the birth of the West

The Dish flags a the latest story on the person most responsible for Romes' shift from republic to empire - Augustus Caesar. He recently turned 2000.

- Click here for the Dish's appraisal.
- Click here for the article - which is behind a paywall.

Along with his better known uncle Julius - Augustus was considered a warning by the framers of the Constitution. An ambitious person who was able to consolidate power and rule directly - no input was necessary from the general population unless he thought it expeditious.

The irony is that despite all this, it's the Roman Empire (with the coliseum and aqueducts and the rest) that we remember and what is emulated in the architecture American government. Consolidated governments can sometimes enhance peace and prosperity - at least for a while. This creates the obvious dilemma.

From the article:

Bereft of historical sensitivity and untutored in the milestones of world history, Americans let slip by, all but unnoticed, the bimillennium of the death of one of the truly towering figures in Western history. While the works of Alexander the Great and Napoleon disappeared with their exit from the stage of history, and where George Washington and Winston Churchill worked on a smaller canvas, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus created and dominated a political system that set the Western world on its path for the succeeding two thousand years. In forgetting the death of Rome’s first emperor and ignoring his legacy, Americans continue to impoverish their understanding of the world they now bestride.

. . . After the Ides of March, the teenaged Octavian figured in no one’s political calculations. Mark Antony was the dominant figure, and Brutus and Cassius retained significant forces. Yet within just a few years, it would be Antony and Octavian fighting for the ultimate supremacy of the Western world. To read of Octavian’s cautious, calculating, and sure moves during the two decades of civil war, leading to his victory at Actium in 31 B.C., is to encounter political genius of the rarest kind. With his indispensable partner, Agrippa, Octavian then did what had escaped even the great Caesar: establish a durable and impregnable political system to capitalize on his military victory. Thus ended both a century of civil war and Rome’s traditional freedoms. To a world desperate for stability, Augustus was accepted as the unquestioned and irreplaceable arbiter of order.

Augustus’s legacy did not stop with politics, for the Rome of our dreams, too, is largely his creation, carried to its ultimate expression by his successors. The world might not still be fascinated with a city of brick had not Augustus left it one of marble, to paraphrase his famous saying. The fora, baths, Colosseum, and palaces of eternal Rome maintained, even enhanced, their spell over men’s imaginations by their ruins, as much as in their pristine prime. Even the anti-monarchical Americans drew legitimacy from Rome’s material forms. Washington, D.C. is modeled more on imperial Rome than Greece, with its Capitol Hill and classic architecture.

A royalist presidency?

The Dish flags a book that suggests we that the presidency is not only based on the British model, but that the colonists - prior to becoming revolutionaries - wanted the king to balance the interests of the colonial legislatures with Parliament, as well as among themselves.

Their principle grievance was with Parliament, not the king:

Resistance leaders and the Continental Congress repeatedly urged George III to take their side in the struggle against Parliament’s assertion that it possessed unlimited authority to enact laws governing the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” In their view, the king should act as a wholly independent monarch who would treat each of his empire’s representative assemblies as possessing essentially the same authority. If Parliament overstepped its power in enacting laws for the colonists, the king should intervene, wielding his royal veto against unjust legislation. He should act, as Thomas Jefferson memorably wrote in 1774, as “the balance of a great, if a well poised empire.” Far from clinging unthinkingly to the Glorious Revolution settlement of 1688 and its aftermath, which made the British king a decidedly constitutional and limited monarch, George III should reclaim his prerogative and vigorously exercise the independent powers that custom and theory located in the executive.

From the Atlantic: U.S. Income Inequality: It's Worse Today Than It Was in 1774

3 week students will be looking at the political history of the founding era beginning Monday, this might help tie the paper topic into that subject.

American income inequality may be more severe today than it was way back in 1774 — even if you factor in slavery.

That stat's not actually as crazy (or demoralizing) as it sounds, but it might upend some of the old wisdom about our country's economic heritage. The conclusion comes to us from an newly updated study by professors Peter Lindert of the University of California - Davis and Jeffrey Williamson of Harvard. Scraping together data from an array of historical resources, the duo have written a fascinating exploration of early American incomes, arguing that, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, wealth was distributed more evenly across the 13 colonies than anywhere else in the world that we have record of.

Suffice to say, times have changed.

Could the Boston Tea Party be considered an act of terrorism by the British?

This appears to be one of the questions that set off the opponents of CSCOPE and led them to believe that the curriculum is fraught with political bias.

Here's a related clip from a news source covering the debate:

Criticism intensified when parents discovered a lesson plan used in previous incarnations of CSCOPE that asked students to consider whether participants in the Boston Tea Party could be considered terrorists in some contexts by the British. Another sample lesson asked students to design a flag for a new socialist country. Some critics also suggested that lessons on the world’s major religions contained too much material on Islam.

Patrick opened Saturday’s debate arguing that studies showed that students in school districts that use CSCOPE performed worse on state standardized tests that those who didn’t. However, he acknowledged that his source was a survey conducted by a ninth-grade business class.

When the debate shifted to the question of bias, Ratliff referred to the Boston Tea Party lesson, saying: “The lesson does not say the Boston Tea party members were terrorists. It does not say it.”

Patrick shot back: “Do you think it’s a good idea to plant the seed (of terrorism) in the mind of high school students?” When Ratliff tried to answer about international perspectives, hecklers shouted: “This is America! You’re American!”

“Read it for yourself and see if you become a terrorist overnight,” Ratliff responded.

In a story last year, the Huntington Post hunted down the assignment, which has since been changed. It asked student to comment on a news story and whether the event covered met the definitions of terrorism:

News report: New Act of Terrorism A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.

Its actually a question historians have asked before, so there's nothing new about it:

Here's the simple definition of terrorism from Websters: 

the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal

And a description of the event from about.com: 

On the night of December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty, a loosely knit secret organization of American colonists in favor of American independence, illegally boarded three British East India cargo ships in the Boston Harbor and threw 45 tons of tea into the harbor, rather than let the tea be landed. Today, as some have argued, this protest might be considered an act of terrorism, since it was property sabotage designed to bring to wide attention the political objectives of a non-state group, the American colonists. The event is considered one of the catalysts of the American revolution.

Also check out the Wikipedia entry on the Boston Tea Party.

So the question seems to be whether property sabotage is an act of violence that tries to achieve a political goal. The goal was in fact to provoke the British to do something extreme, which it did by passing the Coercive Acts, which included shutting down trade. This hit the merchants in the pocket and drove them to stop waffling on independence and start supporting it.

So it did have its intended political consequence, though no lives were lost - maybe that does not make it terrorism in the minds of some.

Its worth trying to dig into what drives this dispute - aside from pure politics of course.

The Pacificus-Helvidius Debate

Despite the fact that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton worked together on both the drafting of the Constitution and the campaign to get it ratified, they soon started to disagree with each other over aspects of the document - including the relative powers of the legislative and executive branches over foreign policy making, including war making powers.

Like the Federalist Papers, this argument was carried out in dueling essays, this time Madison and Hamilton were on opposing sides of the issue.

They were called the Pacificus-Helvidius Debates.

Here's a description of the debates from the Liberty Fund:

The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793–1794 matched Hamilton and Madison in the first chapter of an enduring discussion about the proper roles of executive and legislative branches in the conduct of American foreign policy. Ignited by President Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, which annulled the eleventh article of America’s Treaty with France of 1778, the debate addressed whether Washington had the authority to declare America neutral, despite an early alliance treaty with France. Hamilton argued that Washington’s actions were constitutional and that friction between the two branches was an unavoidable, but not harmful, consequence of the separation of powers. Madison countered that Washington’s proclamation would introduce “new principles and new constructions” into the Constitution and contended that “the power to declare war and make treaties can never fall within the definition of executive powers.” In the introduction, Morton Frisch asserts that the debate between Hamilton and Madison helped to clarify “certain constitutional principles that we now associate with executive power generally” such as that foreign policy is essentially an executive function. Yet it is the open-ended character of our Constitution that has continued to allow different interpretations of the limits of the powers of government, a debate that continues to this day. Frisch writes in the introduction, “The open-ended character of some of the constitutional provisions afforded opportunities for extending the powers of government beyond their specified limits. Although not given prior sanction by the Constitutional Convention, such additions served to provide a more complete definition of powers without actually changing the ends of government.”

Click here for more on the debates. I find it interesting - and instructive - that we've been arguing about the nature of war making powers as long as we have.

The Great Wall of Texas

Here's a provocative piece. Something that fits one of the themes touched on occasionally in class: how is a republic best preserved? Or, what are the principle dangers faced by republics?

The author points out that the decline of great civilizations and/or nations is sometimes accompanied by an effort to wall itself off from the world. Is this what the US might be doing in not only building a border fence, but in restricting free trade pacts?

I found this part especially interesting:

The psychological impulse to protect a nation's wealth and culture from foreign contamination is an example of what behavioral economists call "loss aversion" - the idea that people are more concerned about what they might forfeit than gain from change. History tells us that with great power comes great loss aversion.

Take the fate of Ming China, the world's most fabulously wealthy civilization in the 15th century. The empire cut itself off from foreign trade after the 1430s, an action urged by Mandarin bureaucrats in order to clip the power of the merchant class, their rivals at court. Court intrigue is also revealed by the extension of China's Great Wall, and the abrupt termination of the voyages of Admiral Zheng He, both reflecting the Confucian attitude that foreign barbarians offered nothing of value. The following centuries saw China transform into a weak and isolated time capsule.

Are forces in American politics driven more by fear of losing current benefits than the promise of future gains? Will these lead to a static society and, ironically, future loss?

The author ties a similar episode Britain faced a couple centuries back with American independence:

Britain itself is a particularly interesting frontrunner to the U.S., but not because of its reputation as the birthplace of free market economics. During the peak years of empire, Britain's Parliament neglected to extend citizenship to its colonial subjects not once, but twice. The first time it fumbled a continent full of human capital was in North America in the 1770s. The second time was in the 1880s, when a fear of declinism stymied progress.
Prime Minister William Pitt (the elder), who led Britain during the 18th century, recorded his own expansive dream of a Greater Britain in his personal papers. Pitt's "scheme for better uniting" proposed that there be four members of Parliament to represent Virginia, four for Pennsylvania, four for Massachusetts, three for Jamaica, three for New York, two for Canada, and so on. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations made the same appeal. And yet it never came to pass. In 1707, the English Parliament added Scotland's representatives to its chamber. Northern Ireland was given direct representation in 1800. Conspicuously absent was an offer to the Americas during the decades in between, or the Indians later.
Later, at the dawn of the 20th century, the British Empire was fading relative to other European nations. British economic power was roughly double that of France and triple that of Germany in 1820, a lead that eroded over the following century. Leaders in Parliament were puzzled by the relative decline, and began to question their historical "laissez faire" policies. Rather than reform its colonial structures, as Cambridge professor John Seeley called for, prime ministers debated which trade barriers to erect and how high. Decline followed.

From The Atlantic: Secrecy Undermines the Ability of Congress to Function as the Framers Intended

Does the surveillance state - or the "deep state" - undermine the system of checks and balances?

Congress cannot act as a check on the executive branch in the way the Framers intended when hugely consequential policies it is overseeing are treated as state secrets. The Senate, intended as a deliberative body, cannot deliberate when only the folks on the right committees are fully briefed, and the Ron Wyden types among them think what's happening is horribly wrong, but can't tell anyone why because it's illegal just to air the basic facts.

Our senators have literally been reduced to giving dark hints.

And the House of Representatives? Members are up for reelection every two years because the body is supposed to respond to the will of the people. But by some accounts, the people are only now finding out about surveillance that some House members signed off on three or four election cycles in the past.

Not that we know all the details even now.

It's one thing to keep the identities of CIA agents and the location of our nuclear arsenal classified. But this is something different. The national-security state, as currently constituted, is removing many of the most important moral and strategic policy questions we face from the realm of democratic debate and accountability. In a real sense, our current approach is preventing our system of government from functioning in very basic ways that the Framers intended.

The Constitutional Convention: May 30th and 31st

On May 30th the convention resolved itself into a committee of the whole, which effectively turns the entire group into one big committee so they can discuss whatever is at hand. In this case the content of the Virginia Plan. It would meet this way for two weeks.

On May 30th it was decided that the national government woudl be divided into the three chambers and then discussed whether whether representation should be based on a state's population or financial contributions to the national government.

On May 31st a bicameral legislature was agreed to, and that the legislature would be elected by the people. The proposal that the "second branch" would be elected by the "first branch" was defeated. Each house would be able to initiate legislation and Congress was given power over areas where the states were incompetent, and would be able to negate state laws.

On this day in US Constitutional History: The Virginia Plan is introduced

On May 25th, the convention meet its quorum requirement and was then able to do business. Click here for James Madison's notes on the day's events. Robert Morris nominated George Washington to be president of the convention, this would be seconded by John Rutledge, and he would be selected unanimously. Morris was one of the small group of people involved in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He was wealthy and lived in Philadelphia so he offered his home to Washington. Rutledge would later be appointed to the Supreme Court by Washington. Morris would be Washington's first choice for Treasury Secretary - he had previously served as Superintendent of Finance of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. When he declined the offer, Washington selected Hamilton. Morris served as a Senator and supported the Federalist Party.

Three members were also appointed to prepare standing rules and orders for the convention.

On May 28th, the Committee on Rules issued its report and 16 rules were adopted.

On May 29th, 5 additional rules would be adopted including the requirement that the proceedings be secret. Edmund Randolph then introduces the Virginia Plan, which was written primarily by James Madison. Randolph would later serve as the first Attorney General of the US and the second Secretary of States. Madison took the notes of Randolph's comments, which included a list of the defects of the government established in the Articles of Confederation.

Ewwww....

This story circulated a couple weeks back, but it seems that the Jamestown settlers had a more varied diet than we once thought.

We tend to safe guard the reputations of our predecessors - uncomfortable truths are . . . uncomfortable.

"These United States"

The Atlantic noted that President Obama used the term "these United States" instead of "the United States" during the recent dedication of the George W. Bush library and went into the historical significance of the two different terms.

The former describes the US as a collection of discreet states while the latter sees it as a singular nation. This is an important distinction.

The author  notes that Ronald Reagan used the term alot, but not many other recent presidents, and few since the Civil War. They speculate on what this means for the internal cohesion of the nation. Is the polarization we've witnessed in Congress spreading throughout the nation? If so, are we approaching an increased crisis in our collective ability to govern?

We cover this topic in early lectures. The Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation treated the phrase "Unites States of America" as a descriptive, plural term, while the Constitution attempted to solidify the status of the nation and the relationship between the states and used the phrase to refer to a single entity. An ongoing battle has been waged in defining relationship between the powers of the national and state governments ever since. The story simply highlights that fact.

I recommend a quick read.

From Foreign Policy: How Geography Explains the United States

This isn't exactly a new observation, but its worth both repeating and clarifying. The author points out that the United States' unique geography - especially the fact that it borders two major oceans and has had more or less peaceful relations with its bordering nations - explains the world view of its citizens, as well as its history.

The United States is the only great power in the history of the world that has had the luxury of having nonpredatory neighbors to its north and south, and fish to its east and west. The two oceans to either side of the country are what historian Thomas Bailey brilliantly described as its liquid assets.

Canadians, Mexicans, and fish. That trio of neighbors has given the United States an unprecedented degree of security, a huge margin for error in international affairs, and the luxury of largely unfettered development.

Those last two points are huge: we have had a margin for error in foreign affairs (we could make mistakes and get away with it) and develop ourselves without worrying about attacks. But it has lead to a worldview the author claims is unrealistic. We are pragmatic, idealistic, arrogant and ambivalent, and we can be all that because we can make decisions without worrying about immediate repercussions - because of our unique geography. But it means that we can not always understand - or appreciate - what motivates other countries - which can lead to mistakes.

U.S. nationalism was defined politically, not ethnically. Anyone can be an American, regardless of color, creed, or religion. America's public square has become an inclusive one -- and is becoming more so, not less. That's all good news, but too often, it leads Americans to see the world on their terms and not the way it really is.

Just look at America's recent foreign-policy misadventures. Americans' mistaken belief that post-invasion Iraq would be a place where Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds would somehow look to the future to build a new nation reflected this tendency. It's the same story with the Arab Spring: From the beginning, America seemed determined to impose its own upbeat Hollywood ending on a movie that was only just getting started and would become much darker than imagined. The notion that what was happening in Egypt was a transformative event that would turn the country over to the secular liberals powered by Facebook and Twitter was truly an American conceit.

Since we are prepping for the finals, I took note of this bit that suggests that our isolated geography allowed us to carefully draft and discuss our constitutional order. Other countries have not had that luxury.

Sure, it was America's unique political system that forced compromise and practicality. But we shouldn't kid ourselves: The United States' success was made possible by a remarkable margin of security provided by two vast oceans, which allowed Americans the time and space to work on their union largely freed from constant external threats and crises.

Other countries have not been so lucky. It's fascinating to observe, for example, that Israel has no written constitution. Instead, it has a series of "basic laws" that have evolved over time. Why? The Israelis could not devote the time or risk the divisions that might have resulted from debating core issues when they were struggling to preserve their independence. These core questions -- such as those about the religious character of the state and the role of Arab citizens -- remain largely unresolved to this day.

Although the U.S. political system failed to resolve the problem of slavery without a civil war, the United States did manage to make it through that war as a united country. Location had much to do with this: You can only imagine America's fate had it been surrounded by hostile neighbors eager to take advantage of years of bloody war.

Maybe this helps explain Texas' 50 year struggle to find the right constitutional system - one that we continue to tinker with to this day.

On this day in history ...

Since we've been discussing state constitutions in 2306, this historical note is appropriate. On this day in 1777 Georgia adopted a new state constitution and abolished the practive of primogenitor and entail.

Primogeniture ensured that the eldest son in a family inherited the largest portion of his father's property upon the father's death. The practice of entail, guaranteeing that a landed estate remain in the hands of only one male heir, was frequently practiced in conjunction with primogeniture. (Virginia abolished entail in 1776, but permitted primogeniture to persist until 1785.)

Georgians restructured inheritance laws in Article LI of the state's constitution by abolishing entail in all forms and proclaiming that any person who died without a will would have his or her estate divided equally among their children; the widow shall have a child's share, or her dower at her option.

The British colonies in North America, and particularly the southern colonies, were known as a haven for younger sons of the British gentry. Most famously, Benjamin Franklin announced in his autobiography that he was the youngest Son of the youngest Son for 5 Generations back. Moving to the colonies was an attractive option for younger sons like Franklin because there younger sons could take their monetary inheritance and build up their own estates, whereas primogeniture and entail prevented them from inheriting similar estates in the mother country.

In yesterday's review of the Texas Bill of Rights we noted those limitations in one of the sections and discussed them. This helps us understand the role each played in the establishment of the nation.

American Nations

Does the layout of the states really help us understand the bature of politics in the United States. There's a string argument to be made that it does not because state border can overlay differences that cut across states.

Take the map below - click here to get access to a larger version and here for the book explaining the map. As other before him he suggests that the United States is better understood as a handful of separate, distinct national identities which transcend and cut across state borders.

While we think of Texas as having a unique identity, it has significant differences within it, that make certain areas more common to other parts of the nation. Note the regions in Texas that are in the Deep South and El Norte. Also note Greater Appalachia.

This happens to be the "reddest" part of the county. The counties with the highest percentage of the vote for McCain and Romney were in these areas.

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The Constitutional Sources Project

The folks at Scotus Blog are affiliated with this project. It calls itself a free online library of constitutional history.

Looks promising, and worth integrating into class material.

Did "We the People" apply to African- Americans at the time of the founding?

A great question.

Justice Clarence Thomas is not certain that it did:

“There was always this underlying belief that we were entitled to be a full participant in ‘we the people,’ ” Thomas told a crowd at the National Archives last week.
“That’s the way we grew up. It was the way the nuns, who were all immigrants, would explain it to us — that we were entitled, as citizens of this country, to be full participants. There was never any doubt that we were inherently equal. It said so in the Declaration of Independence.”

Click here for the video of an interview with Thomas.

Catch up on commentary here, and here.

Some critics of originalism have argued that the original Constitution was illegitimate because it excluded blacks. There is little doubt that the original Constitution tolerated severe racial injustices, most notably slavery. But there is nonetheless a difference between a Constitution that left slavery and other injustices alone (in part because abolition was politically impossible at the time), and one that categorically denied all blacks any “rights which the white man was bound to respect,” as [Roger] Taney put it.

Does "Make No Law" really mean "Make No Law?"

We just touched on the Bill of Rights in American Government, so we wrestled on whether this phrase is absolute in its restriction or if it allows some give (like with falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater).

Some brainy types go at it here:

Note that the First Amendment doesn’t say that Congress shall make no law restricting speech or press; rather, Congress can’t restrict “the freedom of speech” and “the freedom of the press.” Maybe that’s just a fancy way of saying “speech” and “press.” But maybe it suggests that “the freedom of speech” and “the freedom of the press” were references to broader legal concepts that were used to refer to limited freedom, not unlimited freedom. For instance, perhaps the freedom of speech and of the press were understood as excluding libel and slander, or possibly even obscenity, threats, and some other kinds of speech.

And here:

. . . perhaps the Founders, being politicians, enacted a broad generality that they agreed on, even though they had no consensus about exactly what it meant. I’m pretty certain that they did not mean that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” means that all speech restrictions — or at least all federal speech restrictions — are unconstitutional, period. Which part of “make no law” don’t you understand?, some people colorfully argue. Well, I understand “make no law” just fine, as do those who support the constitutionality of some speech restrictions. The real difficulty is with “the freedom of.”

These are worth a quick read if you have the time. What is the difference between "speech" and "freedom of speech?"

A rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence

Dave Ross posts a link to a 142 page rebuttal written by "a Tory pamphleteer named John Lind titled 'Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress.'" It addresses the charges made in the Declaration of Independence against the crown - specifically the grievances against the king.

Interesting, and problematic, observation:

You remember the part where the Declaration says King George (quote) "has incited domestic insurrections among us..."?

John Lind points out that what the rebels were really upset about was that the King had "offered freedom to the slaves."

(QUOTE) "Is it for them to say that it is tyranny to bid a slave be free?"

Lind goes on to mock the founders for writing noble words stating, "all men are created equal" and asserting "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" and then in the same document, complaining about the King for encouraging the slaves to rise up.

"Is it for them to complain of the offer of freedom held out to these wretched beings? of the offer of reinstating that equality, which, in this very paper, is declared to be the gift of God to all?"

Of course the British knew a wedge issue when they saw it, and they also had a military agenda in wanting to free the slaves, but even as we celebrate our separation from the mother country, we have to acknowledge, as Jefferson himself would have, that on this point at least, Mom was right.