Transcription
Violence, resistance, and what it means to be an American. What your history books won't tell you.
Hey folks, I'm Chad Sturmer, an American scholar of resistance history at the University of Southern Denmark, and the author of Resistance History of the United States. For all kinds of reasons, from Chicago to Portland and beyond, a lot of people are talking about what is and isn't un-American. Is it un-American to deploy troops against our own citizens? Is it un-American for the people to engage in violence to resist abuses of the authority that comes from the people in the first place? The answer to this question is is no and no. It's quite American to do both. So, let's talk about why, and why you should push back against people who suggest otherwise.
Those two questions, the use of violence as a resistance tool, and the use of violence against the people, are as you might expect directly connected in American history. When people start talking about violence in our history, they usually point to the Revolutionary War. A war for independence after 10 years of aggressive resistance to British authority, all of which was violence in pursuit of the Patriots' political goals, as evidence of the absurdity of saying that it has no place in our history. And they're right. It's a dumb point. They also say the United States government established a monopoly on violence, which it used to keep 1/5 of the population in bondage for 80 years, and they're right again.
But, let's get to something a bit more specific, especially to this moment, the actual direct founding of this United States in its first republic through the Constitution of 1787. And for that, we have to ask two questions. Why that Constitution, and why then? I mean, there's nothing about the Constitution that was inevitable at all. It didn't have to be that Constitution. It didn't even have to be then. It didn't even have to be at all, despite what your American mythology books might say. The United States was operating effectively, if not efficiently, under the Articles of Confederation. As 13 states were starting to feel their independent way. The British had only been gone for three or four years by then. Things were bumpy, but they were working things out. Give them a chance, some of the leaders might say.
Not so fast, said James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. We know the old folks, those 40 and 50-somethings that had made the revolution, wanted independence to, I don't know, protect rights and liberties and all that foolishness. But, the United States could do and be so much more as one nation made up of all those independent states. Think of the trade. Think of the global power. Foreign princes will have to let us into their courts. Think of the money. Think of the security. And did we mention, think of the money? And if we achieve all those things, then you know, liberty and freedom, that'll be there for us, too. Yada, yada. Did we mention the money? Trade agreements might not be able to buy freedom, but they can sure rent it.
The only problem was, no one else really agreed with them. Madison and Hamilton and the others could yammer on about national possibilities, but the folks who had started the war and had just ended it were happy to work in their individual states and tweak them in pursuit of their happiness. If Massachusetts had a problem with New York, then that was the business of Massachusetts and New York. Virginia can just be quiet and pay attention to its own problems. Pennsylvania is right there. The economy was in a rough spot, and there was still a threat from Britain returning, and of course, 1/5 of the population remained in chains. But, the resistance fighters of the Revolution were okay with trying to work all that out without creating a new authority to mess up what they had just achieved for themselves. That's why when Madison and Hamilton met with representatives of other states in Annapolis in 1786, it failed embarrassingly. Only representatives of five states showed up. They trotted out their national ideas to a very small choir of other nationalists, but no one really got jazzed about it.
Then came a guy named Daniel Shays, a farmer in western Massachusetts. Shays and his neighbors, many of whom, like Shays, had fought for the Patriots during the war, had had enough of the new Massachusetts government. The legislature was dominated by Boston and its merchants, and was laying taxes that the farmers couldn't pay. They were just too high. They needed some help, some relief, some consideration. So, they went through the stages of resistance. They protested, articulating their grievances. They sent petitions and lobbied their representatives on Beacon Hill. But, they were ignored. Merchants didn't care, and they were making the rules. And when the farmers couldn't pay, Massachusetts started to take their farms, their only way of paying taxes and making a living. And the farmers had nowhere to turn. Every permitted channel had failed them. And what made it worse is that people like John Adams said they just had to lump it. They just had to accept it. The war was about shifting all power from London to Boston, all power to their representatives. And if you didn't like what those representatives were doing, then try to convince them to do something else, or vote them out. That's a republic. Congratulations. Isn't it glorious? Sorry about your home, though. But, those merchants need to make money.
And that's when it happened. This is a case study in resistance and violence as a resistance tool. Daniel Shays and the farmers were not rebels. They were not agitators. They didn't want to share a political power of authority. They wanted to keep their homes. They wanted their government, which was supposed to represent them, to at least listen to them. And yet, here it was placing taxes on them without their consent, and denying them any avenue for changing that. Isn't that exactly what they had fought against, they asked. Not conceptually or virtually, but exactly. Did Boston just become 300 tyrants 100 miles away, rather than 400 tyrants that were 3,000 miles away? What had they fought for?
So, they took a page out of the Resistance History of the United States. What had they done 10 years earlier? Protests had failed. Organized opposition through the permitted channels had failed, and there was nothing left. Well, what was there? That's when resistance kicks in. And they had done it before. If courts are going to be the tools of taking our homes, we're going to shut down the courts. We didn't want to pay the stamp tax in 1765, and what did we do then? We made sure that the stamps didn't even land in Boston. How? The threat of violence. A bunch of guys with flintlocks can make quite an impression. So, the courts closed. The foreclosures stopped for a moment. But, the Boston merchants and the establishment that supported them, people like John Hancock, cried rebellion and anarchy and violence. John Adams reminded them that this is what they had fought for, so they just needed to deal with it. And still, no one listened. The farmers needed change. The authority of the Massachusetts Assembly had become just as abusive and in the same way as the British Parliament had been. And that resistance had been not only acceptable, but that resistance had been celebrated. And what made everything worse is that this new Massachusetts government was expressly established in the name of the people, based on the direct consent of the governed. That is the authority that was now being abused, authority that came from people like the farmers in the first place.
So, the farmers took the next step, directly in line with that tradition of American resistance. Failing to persuade, the farmers took steps to compel. By August of 1786, armed farmers were shutting down courthouses across western Massachusetts. In September, Shays led about 1,600 men to prevent the State Supreme Court from sitting in Springfield, and they succeeded. Courts couldn't operate. The foreclosures stopped. The system ground to a halt. But, the merchants packed. Government James Bowdoin called up the militia, but many militiamen refused to serve, or they joined Shays and the farmers. So, the merchants did what scared elites always do when the people won't obey. They assembled a private army. They raised private funds, about $20,000, serious money, and paid for a force of 4,400 men under General Benjamin Lincoln, a private army paid for by Boston merchants to march against Massachusetts citizens.
In January of 1787, Shays and about 1,200 men marched on the federal arsenal at Springfield to seize weapons. They needed arms if they were going to sustain their resistance. But, Lincoln's merchant army was waiting. On January 25th, as Shays' men approached, the arsenal's artillery opened fire on American citizens. Farmers were killed, 20 wounded. The rest scattered. It was the first time Americans had fired artillery at other Americans since the Revolutionary War. And this time, it was in the defense of creditors foreclosing on farms. Lincoln's forces pursued the farmers through the winter, finally catching and dispersing them in early February. 14 leaders were sentenced to death for treason. Most were eventually pardoned, but a few were executed. And Shays himself fled to Vermont, only returning to Massachusetts a couple years later under a pardon. But, the rebellion was crushed.
Now, what did that very real threat of violence, weapons in the hands of people who knew how to use them, do to the merchants in Boston and their allies? Well, it scared the hell out of them. So, did it make them wake up? No, it made them clamp down. They screamed rebellion. They wanted troops sent against their own people. They wanted to show what happened to those who opposed the new regime. Keep to your petitions and protests, and be quiet when they fail. But, they didn't have troops. So, the Massachusetts called on the Continental Congress for help. But, the Congress said no. It wasn't its job to help out with an internal problem in Massachusetts, and there weren't any troops anyway, even if it had the authority. And that made people very scared. The folks in the establishment, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, all frightened. Of who? Of the people. Of the American people.
You see, what really united so many white people in the 18th century establishment was, in a very real sense, a hatred and fear of the people. They thought of them as a mob, ruled by passion, driven by interest, not informed by reason. They called it the democracy, and that was a very bad word in the 18th century. Yes, one feared tyranny from a single ruler on one hand, but also anarchy from the democracy on the other. Leave it to these special people with sense and resources, which gave them independence, to rule everything. That's a republic. Keep that circle of decision-makers small. They know what they're doing. The people, they're dumb, gullible, easily led astray, and always following their feelings. They have to be controlled. Again, not much in your history books about that. But, that's exactly what Madison and Washington and Adams were saying to each other.
And it gave Madison and Hamilton an idea. Feed the fear. It's an old adage in political communication. When persuasion fails to move people, scare the out of them. Daniel Shays could be everywhere, in every state, in every community, waiting to strike. They were rebels intent on turning America into mob rule anarchy. That would be the end of the liberty they had fought for, right? And Madison and Hamilton had a solution, a new national government that consolidated all the power that the individual states were misusing and contain the ability to deploy troops to crush internal unrest. Even a standing army to respond to internal threats and external ones, despite all of the criticisms of a standing army in the 18th century. And there was no time to lose. The United States was at stake. The Shaysites were everywhere, were organizing and about to strike. And didn't you hear that Britain was ready to pounce if the mobs took over and pushed the United States back under British rule? Our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor at stake again. We need a union, one that can act against the people and for us in the global arena. And, by the way, we need this particular version of the union that James Madison conveniently has all ready to go. No changes, no alterations, no alternatives, no broader constitutional convention, no real debate. The country's on the verge of collapse from within. That pushed many in the establishment over to the nationalists. Fear of the people and a desire for the power to keep them down. It's not opinion, it's not interpretation, those are bare facts. Now, interpret the fear and the desire for power any way that you like. You might think it was justified, maybe you agree with Madison, you do you. But this is the basis of the Constitution that we have, what that Constitution was and why then.
So, Madison and Hamilton pushed to move quickly to get ahead of the other people they were afraid of, the old revolutionaries, the guy who had started the whole American Revolution thing in the first place. Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Mercy Otis Warren. If they got going, all bets were off. If they found out what they were up to, Katie bar the door. The Constitution, or at least that Constitution was doomed. Madison, in particular, was terrified of Patrick Henry. Henry was already a legend in Virginia politics for how he could mobilize the lower sort of white people. Henry literally gave James Madison nightmares. So, they had to move quickly. But they couldn't move quickly enough. Now, the strategy did work quite well to that point. They stole a march on the old revolutionaries and sped through the ratifying conventions in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, other states. But then they ran into Virginia. And Henry was ready. But by then, ratification was almost done. Too many of the states had ratified. The Constitution was going to be adopted. So, Madison shifted the game a little bit. It wasn't fear of the people that led his arguments, it was fear of being left out of the union. But Henry stuck to his guns, even seeing what was inevitable. So, he shifted from defeating the Constitution, which they figured out was impossible, to the possible, forcing concessions from the nationalists, a bill of rights. Madison said no, not necessary, worthless, over his dead body. States could protect those rights anyway. But Henry mentioned that, yeah, dead bodies, we can negotiate that. People would never accept a constitution imposed on them without a bill of rights. And when Henry said that, the people would never accept it, Madison's blood ran cold. He knew what Henry meant. Henry turned the fear of Shays and the mob against Madison, the very real threat of violence of the people. Henry had already shown what he could do with it. He had come close to toppling Virginia's royal government in 1775 with just a few words, mobilizing the same sort of people who followed Shays. Madison could fear unrest, but Henry could guarantee it. Protect rights and liberties or else there will be consequences for your Constitution, and he told Madison, consequences for you, too. And it worked. He scared Madison so badly, it's a great story, that Madison made it his mission in life, what it sort of became, to get a bill of rights that he did not want adopted in the first federal Congress. But without the credible threat of violence, there would have been no bill of rights. And without the fear of Shays' violence, there would have been no constitution.
That's part of your resistance history. The Constitution was born from a fear of violence and the desire of nationalists to control it by deploying troops against American citizens and making sure that they developed a constitution that would give them the power to do that. And the Bill of Rights was an even more direct product of American resistance, pushing the nationalists to concede authority by accepting limits to it under fear of the violence of the people. Because, here it is, the awareness that the people can revoke the consent that they give to the government and return it to their own hands to redeploy wherever they like is a human political right. One of those pesky inalienable things Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration. And it's a real legacy that we have to contend with as a reality today.
So, when someone tells you that violence has no place in American politics, or that it's un-American to deploy troops against citizens, or that resistance to authority through force is somehow outside our tradition, push back. Tell them about Daniel Shays. Tell them about Patrick Henry. Tell them about the Constitution itself. Tell them about the Bill of Rights. Tell them that both the violence of the state against the people and the violence of the people against an abusive state are woven into the fabric of our being. Now, you could say, "Ted, you're being too reductive about the founders' motivations." Well, they said it, I didn't. Read their stuff about fear of the people. Or, "Ted, you're romanticizing mob violence." I get that a lot. Well, I'm not romanticizing it, I'm just acknowledging [Music]