As subjects of the British king, the very idea of criticizing monarchy -- or King George III himself -- was a dangerous one. So how did we become a country where "no kings" is a guiding principle? Something we take for granted?
Holly Brewer is our guide to the resistance, risk and eventual revolution that transformed a British colony into a democratic country that would have no king.
Transcript
Holly Brewer: [00:00:03] I'm just going to start in a strange place.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:05] This is Holly Brewer.
Holly Brewer: [00:00:07] Hi, I'm Holly Brewer. I'm a professor of [00:00:10] history at the University of Maryland, College Park, and I work on early modern debates about justice and power.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:18] I called Holly up a couple [00:00:20] of weeks ago, because I've been thinking a lot about this principle that we have tended to agree on here in the United States.
Holly Brewer: [00:00:27] We're public. We have no kings.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:30] We [00:00:30] have no kings. And I wanted to know how that started. I mean, I know we had a Declaration of independence. I know we fought a long and brutal Revolutionary [00:00:40] war to secure that independence, those blessings of liberty. And I know that we wrote and then rewrote a constitution that cemented that principle. [00:00:50] But when and how did that become something that we ostensibly agreed on? All right, so let's start in a [00:01:00] strange place.
Holly Brewer: [00:01:04] It's with an image that we think was written by Benjamin Franklin's grandmother. [00:01:10] So sometime in the middle of the 17th century, which includes the words no church, no kings, and connecting the hierarchies of [00:01:20] the Church of England to the power of monarchy. And a pretty radical thing. But it's it's scribbled in a letter on an unpublished letter. It's [00:01:30] not published. And I begin with that to illustrate the problems of trying to measure anti [00:01:40] anti monarchical sentiment in early America.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:45] This is Civics 101 I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:48] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:49] And today [00:01:50] how we became the land of no kings. Because remember we used to have one.
Holly Brewer: [00:01:59] It [00:02:00] was seditious to even criticize a royal policy, but it was literally treason to criticize monarchy or the king directly. I mean, [00:02:10] he depended on what you said, and he said it to us, but you wouldn't want to put anything in print. It was bad enough to try to criticize the [00:02:20] Prime Minister or great lords or anybody else. And even then you would want to. If you look at colonial newspapers from the mid to late 18th century, for example, [00:02:30] there'll be criticism during the stamp out crisis of, say, Lord North, but they will write it out dash dash D. And [00:02:40] dash dash dash eight. So you have to guess right. So there's a little bit of plausible deniability.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:48] Nick I actually told Holly that [00:02:50] more than once during the conversation I had with her, I had butterflies in my stomach because she does the kind of work that, at least for me, makes the past a little less [00:03:00] hazy. She finds the humanity in the thousands of documents that are clues to our history. And when it comes to understanding how colonists felt about monarchy. [00:03:10] That takes a lot of effort.
Holly Brewer: [00:03:13] You certainly wouldn't want to criticize the King directly, because it could get you in all kinds of trouble, and usually it would just be in the form of a fine [00:03:20] or something like that. They weren't trotting out the full punishment for treason for these things, but you did have to be incredibly careful. And so when we find [00:03:30] things, it's evidence like this that's written into a letter or on a, you know, scribbled in a manuscript, it's not usually in the published press because it's [00:03:40] just stupid and dangerous to say something like that directly.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:46] So for Holly to really understand how some people in the colonies [00:03:50] felt about having a king, while we still very much had a king, she has to hunt for clues to read between the lines.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:59] Yeah. [00:04:00] When you're a subject of the king, even if you don't like what he's doing, you still don't want to be caught giving him a bad review. You have to be a little sneaky. [00:04:10]
Nick Capodice: [00:04:12] Wait, Hannah. That letter Holly mentioned. The one probably from Benjamin Franklin's grandmother. That was from the 1600s. [00:04:20] Isn't that a little bit early for being anti-monarchy? Even if you're being sneaky?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:26] Well, there was a little something called the English Civil War.
Holly Brewer: [00:04:29] In [00:04:30] England in the 17th century. In the first century of the colonies, there were two revolutions, both of which involved displacing [00:04:40] a king and in the first case, King Charles the first. After seven years of civil war, he was put on trial by Parliament and tried [00:04:50] and executed, and he kept repeating. During his trial he refused to defend himself except by saying that they had no right to try him, that he was [00:05:00] above the law, that God only could sit in judgment on him, and that he was appointed by God, and that therefore they had no capacity to judge him. And that's [00:05:10] probably when that that manuscript drawing from Franklin's grandmother originated.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:15] Oh, so there were colonists observing this thing from afar and [00:05:20] quietly supporting it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:22] Well, it's complicated. The colonies were pretty new. Many of them loyal to the Crown, specifically the king's son, Charles II, who was an exile. But [00:05:30] some were less than thrilled with their deposed king.
Holly Brewer: [00:05:34] You know, you can find all kinds of other evidence from around then, too, especially in New England, where they were less [00:05:40] sympathetic to monarchy, partly because especially Charles the First, partly because of their perceptions that he was intolerant of their [00:05:50] Puritan religious beliefs.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:52] Holly told me about this guy, Samuel Maverick. He lived in the Massachusetts Bay colony, And he wrote this letter when the restoration happened. [00:06:00]
Nick Capodice: [00:06:00] The restoration, that is, when Charles II was basically invited to just come on back and be king again. He was restored to the throne.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:09] Right. [00:06:10] So Samuel Maverick, who did not get along so well with the Puritan leadership in Massachusetts, is describing the colony in this letter.
Holly Brewer: [00:06:18] And he wrote this letter and [00:06:20] reported on just how terrible they were in Massachusetts and how much they didn't like monarchy. He says there's a tavern right at the main wharf coming [00:06:30] into Boston, and it used to be called the King's Arms.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:34] The King's Arms, by the way, refers to the royal coat of arms, the one with the unicorn and the lion. It symbolizes divine [00:06:40] right and power. It also was, and is a pretty common name for inns and taverns in Massachusetts.
Holly Brewer: [00:06:47] In Boston. They renamed the [00:06:50] tavern from the King's Arms to the King's Head. And the reason that this was so dramatic is, of course, the Kings had, [00:07:00] after the execution of Charles the first would have been a bloody head. Right? This was an incredibly radical thing to do for them to rename the King's [00:07:10] Arms, which celebrated monarchy, to the King's head.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:13] Wow. So this tavern was saying something without saying something. Essentially, it's that plausible [00:07:20] deniability thing again, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:22] And clearly Samuel Maverick knew what they meant. He's saying, look at these terrible British subjects. Now, of course, you cannot prove [00:07:30] that they are opposed to the king. It's just a name. So here's the thing. The English monarchy is restored in 1660. There are still over 300 years until [00:07:40] the Declaration of Independence. And there was a lot going on in North America, British colonies trying to establish themselves amidst resistance from tribal nations and threats from pirates [00:07:50] and competing foreign nations. There were also Nick rebellions.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:54] Oh, yeah, I know about this. Colonists rebelling against royal governors [00:08:00] and also against English law. Right.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:04] Right. There were these English laws that basically said the colonists could only send trade goods on English ships. [00:08:10] Some of them could only be shipped to England. And some of the stuff going to the colonies had to go through England first so it could be taxed. And even if these policies did not mean a [00:08:20] huge financial cost for the colonies, they were politically unpopular. In North Carolina, Nick, in part because of the trade laws, colonists even seized control of the government, [00:08:30] arrested officials, and created their own government for two years.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:36] This smacks of self-governance. Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:39] Yeah, it sure [00:08:40] does. By the way, the guy who led that rebellion, John Culpeper, had to go to England. He was tried for treason, and then he was acquitted.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:48] Wait, seriously?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:49] Yeah. Because the English [00:08:50] lords feared what would happen in the colonies if he were convicted. He came home a hero. But the reason I'm telling you all of this is to say that things were tumultuous. [00:09:00] In the 100 years before the revolution. The colonists were resistant to taxation without representation, to governance being imposed on them in ways that felt unfair. [00:09:10] America, in short, was developing a vibe.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:14] All right. What about the term that we hear a lot in this era? Salutary neglect that was going [00:09:20] on, too, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:21] Yeah. We talked about this in our episode on the Declaration of Independence. There was this unofficial policy of not enforcing English laws, specifically trade laws in the American [00:09:30] colonies, which helped the colonies to thrive. But part of the reason England was a little lax on laws is the fact that they were distracted. [00:09:40]
Nick Capodice: [00:09:40] Well, there was essentially a world war going on.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:43] There was the Seven Years War, a massive global conflict that came to the North American theater in the form of the French [00:09:50] and Indian War.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:51] Which Britain won.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:52] Indeed it did. It all wrapped up in 1763. But you see, even if you win a war, you still have to pay the piper. England [00:10:00] was in a ton of debt, and now it had all this time on its hands. And hey, they protected the colonies. So the colonies need to foot part [00:10:10] of the bill.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:10] Yes. Taxes.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:15] Taxes and not just taxes. England knew that tribal nations were not [00:10:20] going to take defeat sitting down. So they kept troops in North America. They also wanted to manage their newly acquired territories to the west. That's the stuff they took from France. So [00:10:30] colonists were forbidden from settling west of the Alleghenies. People like George Washington, for example, had fought in the French and Indian War. They'd been promised [00:10:40] land in return, or they'd been planning for decades to grab that land whenever they could.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:45] So westward expansion was an American obsession. From very early on.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:49] An [00:10:50] English interference with this plan was not welcome. So we have England telling us we cannot have the land. We want English troops roaming around who, by the way, [00:11:00] the colonists were required to house and give supplies to.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:05] Wait, wait, hold on a second. Is this why we have the Third Amendment, our most neglected [00:11:10] amendment? Yes. This story keeps getting better and better.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:13] And of course, as you mentioned, we have taxes. Oh the taxes. And we're gonna get to that after [00:11:20] a quick break.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:21] But before that break, if you want to learn more about what went into cementing a country without kings, we have a whole series on our foundational documents. [00:11:30] You can check out the whole shebang on our website, civics101podcast.org, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:51] We're [00:11:50] back. We're asking how we agreed to be a country without kings. And before the break, the French and Indian War had just ended and England was really [00:12:00] starting to grind colonial gears, quartering soldiers, forbidding expansion and taxes.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:06] And I know we got to have a gentle touch on the historical details [00:12:10] on this one, because otherwise we're going to be here all night.
Speaker4: [00:12:13] All week, all week.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:15] But I think basically what people need to know here is that the colonies had developed [00:12:20] a sense of independence. They had their own methods, their own plans. And now. Now the mother country was yanking them back in certain ways. [00:12:30]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:30] Right. And all of this without representation in British Parliament. Still, this didn't yet mean we were anti-monarchy, at least not out loud. Early on in this [00:12:40] episode, our guest Holly Brewer explained the danger of critiquing the crown itself. It was treason in the early days of the colonies, and remained treason in the years before the [00:12:50] Revolutionary War.
Holly Brewer: [00:12:51] One of the things that really fascinates me is there's been some scholarship that has said people didn't really criticize the monarchy, and therefore [00:13:00] people approved of the monarchy in colonial America. But when you realize that it's dangerous to do so, and you can find examples of people being thrown in jail for saying, [00:13:10] God damn the King in a tavern, for example, in North Carolina in the 1750s or something like that, you realize that people learn [00:13:20] to be careful. I mean, not that you might not think things, but you're not going to put it in print. So you have to be suspicious of just looking at what's in the newspapers [00:13:30] and assuming that represents what people really thought about monarchy. And so it was normal in the lead up to the revolution, to blame the king's ministers [00:13:40] for the policies and the problems and not the king himself, because that was a safer thing to do. But people might really be realizing [00:13:50] or probably were really realizing this is the Kings bad choices about prime ministers because he chose the prime ministers. And so that was creating all [00:14:00] kinds of problems.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:04] So even though the safest way to critique your government was to avoid the guy at the top, [00:14:10] people were aware of the fact that the guy at the top was ultimately responsible for the things they didn't like.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:17] Yeah, it makes me think about the fact that Americans [00:14:20] today often blame the president before they'll blame whatever cabinet member made, whatever decision, we go straight to the top. But back to the colonies. Tensions are [00:14:30] building amidst taxes and policies and conflict with British troops. Real quick, Nick. Do you know who Oliver Cromwell is?
Nick Capodice: [00:14:38] So Cromwell was the guy who took over. [00:14:40] Way back when Charles the First was executed. He was the Lord protector of the Commonwealth of England. Controversial guy. Some people say he was [00:14:50] a military dictator. Some people say he was a hero.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:55] And a true loyalist to the Crown would be anti Cromwell. He [00:15:00] helped to overthrow the English monarchy. So in 1765, the very unpopular Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on the American colonies. [00:15:10] That same year, a clandestine resistance group launched in Boston, Massachusetts, to protest taxation without representation.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:23] I [00:15:20] was hoping we'd get to these guys. The Sons of Liberty.
Holly Brewer: [00:15:26] The Sons of Liberty were meeting at a place called the [00:15:30] Green Dragon in what they did to make sure that only people that agreed with them could come in as they took. They had a painting like a sign [00:15:40] of the Lord protector, Oliver Cromwell, who was the one who defeated Charles first and was in charge of the Commonwealth earlier. And they put it [00:15:50] halfway down the door. So imagine like a doorway and they take the sign and they put it halfway down. So that to walk through the doorway you have to bow [00:16:00] low and then walk underneath this picture. And so their logic was, if someone is willing to bow to the Lord protector, they can come in and be part of the Sons [00:16:10] of Liberty meeting. But if they're not, this is a good way of making people choose their allegiance.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:20] So, [00:16:20] Hannah, look, I know this is all leading towards a long, deadly war, but this kind of thing is just funny. It's clever, you know, it's [00:16:30] good marketing. It is both serious and tongue in cheek. If you bow before the guy who helped to overthrow the king over 100 years ago. You're one of us. [00:16:40] And if you can't bring yourself to do that, we got your number right.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:44] And the Sons of Liberty were not the first resistance effort in the years after the French and Indian War, but [00:16:50] their riots, boycotts and propaganda fueled the sentiment of liberty all building up to the shot heard round the world. April 19th, 1775, [00:17:00] at the Battle of Lexington and Concord between British troops and the American colonial resistance, and still still the [00:17:10] battle against monarchy itself. The war against a king that took a little common sense.
Holly Brewer: [00:17:19] Well, what [00:17:20] most historians say, and I think this is right, is the first example of directly criticizing the king is Thomas Paine's Common Sense. [00:17:30] Paine was actually from England, was from a Quaker family. Benjamin Franklin met him in London in 1773 or [00:17:40] 1774 and said, you should come. He liked his ideas, said you should come, and helped him. Anonymously published this pamphlet called Common Sense, which we all know [00:17:50] there were thousands of copies, probably one for every ten people in early America in early American, given that many people couldn't read, and [00:18:00] we know it was at taverns and people were reading it out loud, this was incredibly widely distributed. And it appeared in January of 1776.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:09] As in six [00:18:10] months before we declared independence.
Holly Brewer: [00:18:12] And not only did it directly criticize the king that King George the Third, but it also [00:18:20] criticized monarchy in general. The idea of hereditary power, given the way that you're supposed to talk about monarchy as divine in a world where [00:18:30] the king is the head of the church and called God's anointed servant, which is part of the routine church services that people are supposed to be attending. This is pretty radical [00:18:40] talk. Talk that people laughed at, people listened to. And as he pointed out in great [00:18:50] detail. Choosing your king on the basis of whoever happens to be born to the king before he might be a good person, but will [00:19:00] the child be good? Especially because princes are likely to be spoiled and not grow up among the common people. They really won't understand things. So it's [00:19:10] a really deliberate and sustained attack on monarchy, for which he knew he was potentially in great trouble because it was a really dangerous thing, too, right? And [00:19:20] of course, all the early editions were published without his name on it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:25] Now, Holly told me this was a major moment in the colonies, this barrier that had prevented [00:19:30] so many people from criticizing the king out loud had cracked. And King George the third, of course, played a role in that as well. In more ways.
Speaker5: [00:19:39] Than one. [00:19:40]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:40] We're going to get to that after a quick break. We're back. We're talking about the long and winding [00:19:50] road that led to our country being without a king. And a big part of that was being able to criticize the king and the idea of monarchy itself out loud before [00:20:00] the break. Our guest, Holly Brewer, told us about Thomas Paine's Common Sense, a pamphlet that was published in the colonies in January of 1776. [00:20:10] It targeted both King George the Third and the problem of monarchy itself, and it got the colonists talking. But Nick, it was [00:20:20] still immensely controversial.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:23] Wait. But at this point, we were already fighting, weren't we? The Battle of Lexington and Concord [00:20:30] had happened. The revolution had begun. So if that's the case, why was Thomas Paine's Common Sense so controversial?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:39] Okay, this might be familiar [00:20:40] to anyone who has seen the musical Hamilton or studied this period in history closely. Yes, the fighting had already begun. And yes, we talk [00:20:50] about the shot heard round the world as the beginning of the Revolutionary War changed the world as we know it. Except Nick. The Continental Congress [00:21:00] tried to end the fighting after just a few months.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:04] Oh, yes, that's right. This is the Olive branch petition.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:07] Yeah. Congress signed this thing on July 5th, 1775. [00:21:10] That's a year minus a day before the Dunlop broadside of the declaration was printed in Philadelphia. But do you know what the Olive branch petition [00:21:20] actually says?
Nick Capodice: [00:21:24] No, uncle. Truce? No. Backsies.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:28] It begins, quote, [00:21:30] to the King's most excellent Majesty. Most gracious sovereign. We, your Majesty's faithful subjects of the colonies.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:39] Wow, [00:21:40] that is some serious groveling Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:42] Oh, yeah. It goes on to say, essentially. Hey, Your Majesty, we love you. We're loyal to you. Great Britain is amazing, [00:21:50] but we have had some issues with your ministers. And yes, things got out of hand. Please, please, please stop the fighting and let's just work something out together.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:59] And what [00:22:00] did George think of that?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:01] He refused to read it. He gave a speech to Parliament, said the colonies were rebelling and Britain was going to squash it, and [00:22:10] then eventually denounced the colonies. Unfortunately for him, common sense was about to hit the shelves.
Holly Brewer: [00:22:19] It [00:22:20] was also a timing issue. So I think this probably arrived in the colonies in about January, about the same month, and was reported in the newspapers where the king got so angry [00:22:30] about what had happened in terms of the battle at Lexington and Concord and the emerging war that he declared that the colonies [00:22:40] were outside of his protection, that they were no longer subjects, that they were. He rejected them. And so it made it, you know, arguably safer because [00:22:50] he said they were outside of his protection. Then all of a sudden he had said, I'm not your king anymore. Right. So they felt like there was a certain space [00:23:00] there, but it was still something they were scared about.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:07] Something I can't stop thinking about. It is [00:23:10] amazing to me, Hannah, how long and how much it took for us to say publicly. All right, George, you're the problem. [00:23:20]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:20] Which, of course, we finally did. The Declaration of Independence, [00:23:30] which included a laundry list of grievances against the king, was approved on July 2nd and signed by many of the framers two months later. Holly told me [00:23:40] about this letter that one of the framers, Benjamin Rush, sent to John Adams, and now he sent this about 35 years after the declaration was signed.
Holly Brewer: [00:23:50] And [00:23:50] do you recollect your memorable speech upon the day on which the vote was taken? Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up one after [00:24:00] another to the table of the president of Congress, to what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants, the silence and the gloom of the morning [00:24:10] were interrupted, and I well recollect only for a moment by Colonel Harrison in Virginia, he said to Mr. Jerry at the table, quote, I shall have a great advantage [00:24:20] over you, Mr. Jerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing, from the size and weight of my body, I shall die in a few minutes. But from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air for [00:24:30] an hour or two before you are dead. End quote. The speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business [00:24:40] was conducted.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:41] It is a literal gallows humor joke.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:45] I know. I appreciate this letter so much. Like the way it gives this deep sense of dread. [00:24:50] You know, you hear your name called. You walk up to the table. You put your signature on a document that could condemn you to death. And then some guy [00:25:00] tells a joke, right? But it, like, barely lightens the mood.
Holly Brewer: [00:25:03] But it does give you a sense of just how terrified they're all were. And some of those who wrote the [00:25:10] declaration, Livingston, who was one of the five Committee of Five who helped to drop the declaration. He didn't sign it in the end. And there's others [00:25:20] who were there originally who weren't there for the signature phase. So some did chicken out. And for most of them, it turned out okay. But it was scary. [00:25:30] And I think understanding that is really important, that it's hard to measure popular sentiment against monarchy [00:25:40] when it was so dangerous to speak up Gab openly. Now, of course, after the declaration is signed and people are openly at war. It's it's a it's [00:25:50] a much more complicated business, right.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:02] So [00:26:00] is this it, Hannah? Like, is this when it really and truly started the era of an America that [00:26:10] was against kings?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:11] Well, plenty of people were still loyalists and plenty more claimed to be loyalists when they had a red coat staring them down. The Declaration of Independence self [00:26:20] proclaimed unanimity of the 13 states. But not everybody wanted out of the monarchy. The gloves were off, though, for those who did. Holly [00:26:30] talked about a moment when she was going through all of these revolutionary era summonses from the King.
Holly Brewer: [00:26:36] In the fall of 1776, in Frederick County, [00:26:40] Virginia. When I was going through those files, one of those summons. Somebody had clearly the sheriff or some official who was delivering it had [00:26:50] crossed out. They'd kept the part about Georgia third, but they crossed out defender of the Faith and King by the grace of God. And and they put in just two words [00:27:00] the devil. So, so. So there really was a sense [00:27:10] in which the revolution was deliberately against the king and really angry about him.
Nick Capodice: [00:27:17] And is this around about the time when the former colonies started to [00:27:20] write their own constitutions?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:22] Yeah. And they certainly looked to the monarchy for inspiration for what not to do.
Holly Brewer: [00:27:27] So you have, throughout these new constitutions, [00:27:30] um, processes of electing everybody in every position of making sure that people had their jobs, usually during good behavior [00:27:40] and not at the pleasure of the governor. And you had efforts to make sure that everybody in all positions [00:27:50] were accountable if they did things wrong. Um, so processes of impeachment and removal, frequent elections, language [00:28:00] that people who serve in such positions are the servants of the people and not vice versa. So there was a real effort to subvert. [00:28:10] Even though they have some of the same structures of power, the authority structure, from being something that was top down towards something that was [00:28:20] more bottom up.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:25] And then, of course, Nick, we know how this particular story ends. The United States [00:28:30] won the war against this ancient, powerful monarchy, against monarchy itself. And the framers had to decide what the new nation would [00:28:40] look like. And who would be the leader at the top. Would it be one person? Would it be three? How would they be elected? How long would they serve? And even the most [00:28:50] extreme proposals were a far, far cry from monarchy. And then they had to convince the rest of the new country.
Holly Brewer: [00:28:59] One of the things [00:29:00] that's really striking about that is there's nobody at those ratifying conventions or in the newspapers who's saying the president is [00:29:10] too weak? Nobody. I mean, in a highly fractured ideological landscape, you would have expected somebody to [00:29:20] say something like that. Even in a newspaper, if they really thought it. And maybe the ones who really thought something like that. I mean, of course they left the country. They'd stayed [00:29:30] loyalists or they weren't speaking up at that point. But at least you don't see things like that in the newspapers at all. What you see are worries that there might be [00:29:40] a way for the president to become a dictator, even with all these restraints that are put on him. And you see a lot of emphasis in the discussions [00:29:50] on, oh, no, no. He's going to be responsible before the law. He's going to be accountable. He can be impeached without any punishment, then removal, [00:30:00] and then he can be tried by the courts of common law. If he does something seriously wrong. So there's constant reassurances in these debates that, yes, this is [00:30:10] this person is not a king.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:17] You know, Hannah, over the course of this whole conversation, [00:30:20] I just kept thinking about that one line from the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident. [00:30:30] Right. The framers thought monarchy was unnatural. That absolute power over others, power that does not [00:30:40] answer to anybody was a violation of our innate human rights. Even if that power was used for good, it is inherently wrong. And [00:30:50] they knew what they were talking about. They lived it. It was their system. They were born into it. They suffered under it, and they broke free. It [00:31:00] wasn't about taxes. It was about humanity versus inhumanity.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:06] Yeah. You know, there's one thing that Holly said that I keep turning over in [00:31:10] my mind because the framers created a country where people have come to take democracy for granted. You know, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's because [00:31:20] democracy is truth is human is based on what is self-evident. Or maybe we take it for granted, or even grow to dislike it, [00:31:30] because we've stopped thinking about why we made it in the first place.
Holly Brewer: [00:31:35] And we are in a very, very difficult time right now because so many [00:31:40] norms are being ignored and overturned, but it's all the more important. I would suggest that we do think about [00:31:50] fundamental principles and how the world should work, and raise our voices about that. There's a line in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, [00:32:00] and I'll read it to you that no free government or the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, [00:32:10] temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. And there's something about that recurrence [00:32:20] to fundamental principles that I think is so important that it gives us a grounding. We should be thinking about what we want our fundamental principles to be, and then we [00:32:30] should adhere to them, because, frankly, a chaotic world where the rules are always changing is not good for anyone. Not even oligarchs, [00:32:40] Not even big business people need rules that they. They can follow norms. I have my own ideas about what their should be, which [00:32:50] look like some sort of real democracy, right? But regardless, people should always be thinking about what those fundamental principles are.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:04] Last [00:33:00] thing, Nick Hawley told me that in the early days of the United States, there was this concerted effort [00:33:10] to figure out what our laws would be. We had federal and state constitutions and legislatures, but they weren't starting from scratch.
Holly Brewer: [00:33:19] In early America, [00:33:20] before the revolution. A lot of the laws, a lot of how justice functioned, was not based on laws passed in the colonies. It was based on these common law guidebooks [00:33:30] that that local justices of the peace would use, or justices even on the High Court to understand how the law worked. But after the revolution, a lot of it changed. [00:33:40] And so there was a considered effort to to understand how the law was changing in a republic. If you're going to have these principles about government [00:33:50] based on the consent of the government. What parts of the common law had to be adopted?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:55] We kept a lot of the English common laws, definitions of crimes, contracts, property, [00:34:00] but some we used as examples of what the United States absolutely could not and would not be a country where one person [00:34:10] held all of the power, an unnatural country, a country with a king.
Holly Brewer: [00:34:18] One of the most important legal [00:34:20] justices and legal commentators of the New Republic was a man named Saint George Tucker, who was a judge in Virginia, and he [00:34:30] published um Commentaries on William Blackstone's Guide to the Common Law from earlier in the century that was English. And when [00:34:40] he got to the section about the Kings prerogatives, he kept them so, as he put it, so people could see the evils of monarchy, that, you know, this is what we don't want. But he he has all these footnotes. [00:34:50] He says none of this applies here. We're a republic. We have no kings. Our executive have no prerogatives. They are subject to the law just like any [00:35:00] other.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:28] That [00:35:20] does it for this episode. It was [00:35:30] produced by me. Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer, Marina Henke is our producer, and Rebecca LaVoy is our executive producer. You can check out Holly Brewer's [00:35:40] book By Birth or Consent Children, law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority. For more on her work on the origins of democratic ideas across the British Empire, [00:35:50] and stay tuned for her upcoming book that will examine the origins of American slavery in larger political and ideological debates. Music. In this episode by Luba Hillman, Hannah Eckstrom, [00:36:00] Anna Dagher, Joe and Jeannie Loving caliber Beigel Lenin. Hutton, Laura metcalfe, Otto. Hacker, Timothy, Infinite Mind Server Unlimited, Alex Lane, and [00:36:10] Chris Zabriskie. There's a lot more to the story of American democracy, and we have made hundreds of episodes trying to tell it. You can find them all at our website, civics101podcast.org. [00:36:20] Civics 101 is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.