The 13, 14,ded in and 15th amendment. It is not because they did not care about rights. It is because it was not their priority. They were therefore other reasons. This has been shrouded in myth. Is unique about the United States constitution is that there are so many different layers. They have their myths about the constitution. Even people who studied a little bit have their myths about it. And people who studied a lot have myths about it. Think about these russian babushka dolls. This is just an outer cover. It is not the real thing. Take it away and then there is a another beautiful one. Wait a minute. There is something more. You keep taking more and more layers away to try to get at the roping. That is what i want to try to do today, you peel away some of the layers of mythology surrounding the constitution. I will do about 40 minutes on that. Maybe you can help me peel away some more. Wanted to talk about the notion that the constitution at the democratic document. If you look at the actual complaints that the people who constitution, they had 13 sovereign nations. As sovereign as the United States and mexico and canada are today. They had complaints about them to listen to some the things they said. The problem was in excess of democracy, a headstrong democracy. A republican frenzy, democratic will democratic appearance. A couple of them used the analogy that really became useful for me. Seems like the reins of government were held with two feebly hand. He literally had been born. Analysis of what was going in is that americans have become unruly. Basically the founders leave that the revolution has started out great if it had gotten out of hand. There is a real sense in which this was an effort to push this back in the bottle. What specifically went on . All of the power. These were collect it. Votingnow how they were in the state legislature. And we got an election tomorrow. All but two states. They were elected every single year. In connecticut they are elected every six months. These see all introductions. Accountability. We had the state legislatures with all this power. Dates, the governor was not able to veto laws. Really overturn it. In most places he couldnt. It was like then to say that what we have was in excess. The transfer then to the level. They create this new national government. I focused on two duties in particular. One is the control over money supply. Before this was adopted, each of the 13 states have their own seven. The control of the money supply and the giving of taxes for the federal government. Before the constitution, the federal government had no power. It had to get any money that it got from the state. These two powers and others and transfer them from the states to this new national lessnment that was much sensitive to popular pressure than any of the state governments. Stop laws that he could stop the law of the house. It could overturn state laws. Look at all these ranches. The senate is elected for six years. The president for four. The Supreme Court justices are in the light. Are in for life. The framers designed this to be independent of the will that is the state chosen by legislature. It was not an accident they created a much less democratic government. Take it back on the hands of ordinary citizens and put it in the hands of those they could roll better. I think the most important way the constitution did that was simply by shifting power from the state level to the level of the federal government. Most people knew their state legislator personally. That is not true generally with your congressman or some or senator today. It asmadison defined extending this fear of government. What that says is shifting this to the National Level and it makes it harder for the effort for people to put pressure on the federal government. Ups is what they were coming again and again. It was in concert. The wanted to make it harder and harder for ordinary people who had grievances to get together and to concert their measures to put united pressure on the government. He said he ask them of tyranny is the only policy by which a republic can be administered on these principles. It is latin for divide and conquer. This was not divide and conquer the people because we hate them and we want to prevent them from having a say in government. When you let them run things you had an excess of democracy. They wanted to stop that. Horsemen waseatest also the commander of the continental army. He put it this way in a letter he wrote. Of government the raced in time and held with a steady hand. That was the purpose of the on situation. It was pretty much the opposite of that. That leads to the second method i want to talk about. A lot of stories have said what i just said. The same forsay democracy was something they got from the book they read. They said a child of the revolution reaches it. Of hamiltone out and j and washington and clinton all of these guys reading books . I also want to stress what i aint was the more profound motive. Believed thathole in the time after the reverend missionary war the United States have become a bad credit risk are not just the Government People themselves. The result is that was the country had become unattractive. They ruled the constitution. It a more safe place for transact ors. It was not just for their own economic benefit but for everybody. In article one, section two of the constitution. It prevents them from doing all afterings they have done the revolutionary war. They printed paper money. It will make it easier to pay your taxes. I can give him an old horse. That is probably worth a hundred dollars. Your taking care of. Was the country that was what theyder are trying to stop. Not because they hated farmers. They thought if we can stop oppressing creditors, if we can let them collect their debts then they will be willing to lend money in the future. Who is trying to embody this is James Madison. When madison started writing for the constitution, he was 36 years old here he was still living with his parents. He was hoping to get out of the house of some point soon. He devised one of the classic Great American get rich quick schemes. That was speculating indian land. In the fall of 1784, they went from the treaty. He saw how fertile the land was. They bought a few thousand acres that they wanted to buy a lot more. They needed to borrow money to invest in land and then sell it for hundred pounds more than they paid for. It would be easy to pay back their creditors. Nobody with lyndon the money. They had to cut back the scale of their ambitions. Americans will not lend us money. Maybe people in france will. Jefferson whos was over there as an american representative to this court of gog louis the 16th and said and see if you cannot borrow a bunch of money. He immediately ran back to say jefferson immediately wrote back nothing doing. They were afraid if they lent money to madison and monroe and somehow the deal went at, they would not be able to go into a Virginia Court and sue them to get the money back. Bad. The deal went that is really the problem with the framers of the constitution. Lots of other problems, of course, but the fundamental problem they were trying to solve was to make it impossible for state legislatures to protect debtors. There was a real sense in which the madison wrote off fundamental rights for which he was contending was the right to be sued. If you can be sued, you can borrow money. That is a short version of the interpretationic , but it brings up another myth about the constitution, and that is the myth that the framers were right, and that is one i want to challenge today because so many historians have sort of gone along with the idea that sure enough, the American Revolution originally went too far. Many people thought that the American Revolution had also gone too far, and they have gotten a lot of endorsements from modern historians. If i just go across the Charles River here to harvard, the reported on the 1780s, the time leading up to the constitution, again and again, minority Property Rights had been overwhelmed by populist majorities. The next thing i want to do today is to try to disagree with all these historians who support that and say actually, there were two sides to this story. That, yes, there is a case to be made for the big problem here is we are not attracting enough investment, that there is a case to be made for the farmers as well, so lets look at it from their standpoint. One of the main motives for the American Revolution was to get out from under that british taxation without representation. Well, they rebelled in 1776 and succeeded with the peace treaty of 1783 in winning independence, and then what happened . The representatives, now that we have our own representatives, levied taxes on them that were four times higher on average than they had ever been asked to pay as british colonies. These were taxes to pay off the war debt. You can see why they were levied, but i want you to look at it from the standpoint of the farmers. You not only have these incredibly high taxes, but they are much higher even than they seem on paper because there was almost no money in circulation in the economy. Weine if i told you guys, are going to have a new federal tax of 1000. You would all go home going, thats no good. Suppose i said that you have to pay in green stamps. Those of you who remember what they are, do any of you still have any . I would expect peter is still have green stamps, but even he doesnt. If there was one person in the room who did have green stamps, we would all be going to her or please. Aying, gimme, thats what it was like with gold and silver in this economy. So little was circulating in the economy that when a tax was levied that had to be paid in gold and silver, to get somebody to had who had some to part with that, you had to give them four or five horses when it had to be it used to be you only had to give them one or two. Massive deflation, and one of the phrases that got used up and down i have read petitions for legislatures and newspaper essays and also to of other documents up and down from New Hampshire to georgia over 13 thats, and the phrase keeps popping up is that when a legislature levies these taxes four times higher than we paid before and does not put money in circulation to pay those taxes with, it is making the same maded of us that pharaoh of the ancient israelites, and that is to make bricks without straw. People just could not do it, and people were having the sheriff take away their cattle, sometimes even their pots and pans to pay these taxes because they just did not have the money to pay. You canthe white see why somebody would support Something Like paper money because that gives them a medium with which to pay these taxes. I mentioned briefly that the main purpose of these taxes levied in the 17 80s was to pay off the revolutionary war debt. If the debt had remained in the hands of the people who bonds,ly got these war the soldiers who fought the revolutionary war and had been paid off many times with bonds, you know, the army comes through your town and says, everybody, give us your cattle, and we do not have cash to pay you, so we are going to give you i owe you ious. Initially, the bonds of gone to ordinary people, many of them, but they were quickly bought up , who couldculators see that the soldiers you cannot eat a bond. If you have been paid off with a bond and you are hungry, you have to turn that into gold and silver so you can use that to go by bread. Soldiers who had initially gotten the bonds had to dump threet as little as dollars for a bond that was marked 100. The vast majority of the bonds quickly ended up in the hands of the speculators. I have to tell you guys that was a major part of the research i did here into the whole land speculation business because i could see that was a critical engine of the constitution. Bond speculators demand these really high taxes, and those the farmers to demand policies like paper like paperpolicies money freak out guys like madison because they can see what it is doing to the Investment Climate chasing away investors. People like madison write the constitution to prohibit things like paper money. I knew bond speculation was really important, but as i would start to talk about it, i could see peoples eyes kind of glaze over. Somehow there are people out there who do not get excited about government finance. I do not know how that is. Im working on bond speculators, i was trying to find one guy that i could use to put a face on all the others, and i would find a letter by this one guy talking about speculation, but it was one list, and someone else would mention the account book, and it would reduce these scattered pieces, and i was not finding what i really wanted. Bond speculators who had left enough documentation that i could use him to really put a face on all the others. So one day here at the massachusetts historical society, i finally found my bond speculator, and it turns out the he i had been looking for all this time was a she. It was Abigail Adams. 1777, 20 years before her husband became president , she began the process that she would continue all through those 20 years of fighting these by getting these soldiers and farmers and other peoples bonds from them at a fraction of their face value and then holding them with the hope that the price would go up. She was ultimately very successful at it. There was one series of bonds she bought at 15 she would pay 15 for a 100 dollar bond, and she cashed out when they had risen from 15 to 90, so she made a profit six times her initial investment. But it took her a while to get going as a speculator because she initially had to overcome the objections of her husband, john. John adams hated on speculators. Parasitesm as these who redistribute wealth without actually producing anything, and they are also a threat to the government, he believed. That is, that they are a small clique of people with power to influence the government and incentive to influence the government in their own favor. So she had to persuade her husband to stop investing in land, which he thought was a much safer investment safer for the person because, you know, you cannot burn down 40 acres of land, but you can burn the stuff on it, but the land will still be there. It was a safer investment for the person but also safer for the country because bond speculators were such a threat to the government, whereas farmers, those were the real people. As you know, he was a lawyer and had all sorts of public jobs, but he saw himself as first and foremost a farmer, and like thomas jefferson, he believed that the only truly virtuous were farmers. And abigail would say to him, thats all great, and i believe in that, too, but our land is making 1 a year, and i can make you 18 a year just on the interest on these bonds, and that is not counting when we actually redeem the bonds and cash out. As i said, on one of these bonds, she sex couples she sextupled, if that is the word, her investment. She took about educating john about the value of these bonds. Togetherime, they were in europe, and she had been his business agent throughout the revolutionary war while he was off being a congressman and diplomat, but she was with him on april 20 4, 1785, over in a letterhen he started andis new business agent, there was a farm he wanted to buy. He was sending along 200 pounds sterling. He starts off this letter by going, ok, i want you to drop on me for 200 pounds and use it. Buy these bonds thats on the front of this letter. If you flip over to the back of the letter where he continued, john adams says, showing what i have written to madame, she has of purchasing. Instead of that, you may draw upon me for 200 pounds in as Good Exchange rate as you may obtain and lay it out at most you judge for my interest. I imagine him writing on his , and abigail walking by and literally changing his mind right in the course of the letter. A case can be made for bond speculators. Sold theirers who bonds to speculators like Abigail Adams, if the speculators had not been there, they might not have gotten anything at all for the bonds, so at least they got their three dollars out of 100, or whatever they got, but you can also understand the anger of the farmers at having to pay taxes , higher taxes than they had ever paid as british colonists, without a money supply in most states to pay those taxes with in order to bond speculators like Abigail Adams. Not that they knew that she she used very clever techniques to prevent anyone from knowing she was speculating, but they knew about the bomb speculating class, and it is really galling to watch your only horse which you need to pull your plow being led away to pay your taxes and knowing where that money is going. After the sheriff has auctioned off your horse to further enrich some bond speculators. I think you can further see their side to the argument. To help with this last thing, i will say today i want to introduce you to one more character from the revolutionary is hermanis name husband. He was born in North Carolina, but as a young man im sorry, was born in maryland but moved to North Carolina as a young man and got caught up in the regulator rebellion when farmers were rebelling against the extortions of lawyers and merchants and judges and clerks. There is a great book on the regulator rebellion. He got involved in that and was crushed by the establishment. They put him in jail three times. They tossed him out of the legislature. An army came out and destroyed his farm. So he fled North Carolina and moved to pennsylvania. He actually took a pseudonym for. While, and alias tuscape death. You can see that on land deeds and stuff. He had gone through several different religions. By this time, he sort of was inventing his own religion. He became a christian millennial and wrotellennialist a bunch of pamphlets making the case that farmers deserve things like paper money. If theyre going to levy taxes, they have to give paper money with which to pay them off and so forth. He wrote in one of those pamphlets that the same then who refused to allow british tyrants to oppress them were now willing to tyrannize over others. You might not remember my saying at the beginning that people like James Madison thought that we need to extend the sphere of government, shift some key powers from the state t