Last Best Hope of Earth

Author: Last Best Hope of Earth

  • Constitution Sunday: On The Likely Failure Of Liberty, Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr., to Governor George Clinton

    Constitution Sunday: On The Likely Failure Of Liberty, Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr., to Governor George Clinton

    January 14, 1788

    Daily Advertiser (New York)

    Revising the Articles of Confederation was always going to be a difficult task. The system that the Articles erected was one where the states pulled the strings of a marionette puppet of a federal government; without the states, the federal government was nothing: for instance, although the Confederation Congress could impose a tax, it lacked any independent power of enforcement and would need unanimous approval of the state legislatures. Nonetheless, when delegates met in Philadelphia in a convention that resulted in the draft Constitution, they had originally set out to revise those Articles of Confederation, and, by amendment, to refine the existing system into a more functional, more effective government.

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  • The Legend of Winfield Scott Hancock

    The Legend of Winfield Scott Hancock

    War heroes earn respect through their service. The Civil War brought out more heroes than perhaps any other war in American history. They were men who served their country at its inflection point, and they could be assured that their time on the battlefield could translate to time in public office. General Winfield Scott Hancock was but one example. He was “a patriotic hero, a stainless gentleman, and an honest man.”[i] He became one of the greatest Generals in the war: one that the soldiers, officers, and citizens were glad to have. He got out from under a famous name and created his own legacy, becoming a regular name in the wartime newspapers. But there was still a question of whether his post-war career would be as glamorous as his time during the war. Although he had a reputation for “honest heroism and personal character,” he was a Democrat; and at a time when Democrats simply could not expect to win the Presidency.[ii]

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  • Constitution Sunday: John Hancock’s Final Observation

    February 6, 1788

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    At the conclusion of the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, John Hancock requested to “close the business with a few words.” He began with an endorsement: the Constitution—amended or not—was destined to deliver political freedom and dignity to the country. This was particularly so given the exhaustive debate that the draft Constitution fostered all of which tended to improve the proposed government.

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  • The Rise of James Garfield

    The Rise of James Garfield

    It was a time of oratory and a time when Ohioans became President. James Garfield was a product of the time. He was born into “a poor family” and “an intellectual in love with books.”[i] He attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute as a student and janitor, and by the following year, he became an assistant professor.[ii] Garfield was a man who treasured intellect. When William Dean Howells came to Garfield’s home in Hiram, Ohio in 1870, he sat on the porch and told a story about New England’s poets; Garfield “stopped him, ran out into his yard, and hallooed the neighbors sitting on their porches: ‘He’s telling about Holmes, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and Whittier.’”[iii] At a time when the Midwest fostered “a strong tradition of vernacular intellectualism” that manifested itself in “crowds for the touring lectures, the lyceums, and later the Chautauquas,” the neighbors gathered and listened “to Howells while the whippoorwills flew and sang in the evening air.”[iv]

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  • Constitution Sunday: Nathaniel Barrell, a “Plain Husbandman,” Warns of the Passion for Power, but Favors Ratification

    February 5, 1788

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    The draft Constitution had its parts that inspired and other parts that terrified. Nathaniel Barrell, either as a sign of his modesty or as a way to relate to his fellow residents of Massachusetts, claimed that he would not speak with the eloquence of a Cicero but would articulate his objections to the Constitution.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Charles Jarvis Supports Hancock’s Strategy on Amendments

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    February 4, 1788

    Building consensus is a challenge. In the United States Congress, consensus has always been difficult to build because of the diversity—geographic and otherwise—of its Representatives and Senators, given their assigned districts and states. But when the Constitution was being debated, the stakes were as high as they have been in American history: consensus was needed not for some legislation, small or large, but for reworking the structure of the states’ and federal government and putting the country on a new, bolder trajectory. At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, Charles Jarvis articulated his support for the draft Constitution—recognizing its merits—but only if the Constitution was passed with the amendments.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Isaac Backus on Religion and the State, Slavery, and Nobility

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    February 4, 1788

    Some governmental systems are engines of tyranny. They may be dressed up as virtuous systems, ones that account for all members of society, but the consequences flowing from the system always speak louder than the rhetoric its leaders spout. At the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, in February 1788, Isaac Backus arose and spoke in favor of the draft Constitution as it accounted for and did not contain many features of a system that leads to tyranny.

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  • Constitution Sunday: Samuel Nasson’s “Pathetick Apostrophe” to Liberty

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    February 1, 1788

    Changing a system—particularly a system about which one is fond—is difficult. For some, the system that the Articles of Confederation created was an ideal one as it permitted states to maintain a level of autonomy that the proposed Constitution would subsume. For Samuel Nasson, at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, this was a travesty given that the country had fought so hard to free its member states from Great Britain and its attempts to “enslave us, by declaring her laws supreme.”

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  • Constitution Sunday: John Hancock Proposes Ratification with Amendments and Samuel Adams Supports

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    January 31, 1788

    John Hancock, at the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, made a motion for the Convention to adopt the Constitution as it was a document that would not only “advance the prosperity of the whole world” but create a form of government that would “extend its good influences to every part of the United States.” But, recognizing that a contingent in the Convention would not support the Constitution without some modifications, Hancock argued that a series of “some general amendments” accompany the approved Constitution so as to “quiet the apprehensions of gentlemen.” Samuel Adams, recognizing that many people in other Conventions had similarly felt that a set of amendments was not only necessary but urgently needed, saw that including amendments would “have the most salutary effect throughout the union.”

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  • Constitution Sunday: Reverend Daniel Shute on Religious Tests and Christian Belief

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention.

    January 31, 1788

    Reverend Daniel Shute rose at the convention to speak not for—but against—adding a religious test as a qualification for offices that the Constitution created. He opined that such tests “would be attended with injurious consequences to some individuals, and with no advantage to the whole.”

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