Posthumous Freedom

A petition of freedom from 20 slaves who were fighting in the Revolutionary War to the New Hampshire General Assembly was unearthed 30 years ago in the state archives of New Hampshire by Valerie Cunningham, a historian and preservationist from Portsmouth.  The argument and irony of the petition has become well known to historians of the era and up to the Civil War that the colonists were fighting so hard for their own freedom from Great Britian yet were unable to see the plight of their slaves who wanted their own.  Their petition was ignored as it was deemed not the right time to free them.  Later, only 6 slaves were granted their freedom.

Now, 233 years later, it appears that the 14 slaves who were never granted freedom may receive it from the New Hampshire government.  It is a symbolic decision, obviously.  State Senator Martha Fuller Clarke is sponsoring the Senate bill, which has already passed through the Public and Municipal Affairs Committee and is now headed for the full Senate vote.  Governor Maggie Hassan has already agreed to sign the bill upon approval by the full Legislature.

It calls attention to efforts of community organizations to protect and preserve the African burial grounds, culture, and contributions of the people.  The African Burying Ground Committee in Portsmouth has been working for the past ten years to build a memorial park in an African-American burial ground in downtown.  The funds are just not available, however, their hope is to break ground this summer with their design, including granite engravings with passages from the petition.

What do you think?  Is it too little, too late?  Or a needed gesture?

If you’d like to see more about the African Burying Ground Committee, the cause, and possibly make a donation, you can visit their website at http://www.africanburyinggroundnh.org/ .

You can read more about this petition here at the Boston Globe and see more about the memorial here at the City of Portsmouth.

LOC Call for Teacher-In-Residence Applications

An awesome opportunity just popped into my inbox and unfortunately I cannot take part so I wanted to pass it along in case any of my followers can!

The Library of Congress (LOC) has opened the application process for their Teacher-In-Residence.  Visit their website here for more information.

Book Review: Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution

Woody Holton. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.

Woody Holton’s Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution should be a work of interest for scholars of the American Constitution and all that surrounds it, as well as students of early American history who have a solid bit of background already.  His argument appears to be twofold: that the delegates sent to Philadelphia to draft and revise the Constitution did so to create less of a democracy, taking direct power away from the people and thus forming a republic, but it was also because of the demonstration of power from the populace through rebellions against the states’ taxes and repayment demands.  Thus, as a result of these uprisings the Framers of the Constitution took a finite amount of power, especially financial power to extract tax from citizens, from the states and placed it in the central government.  Essentially, for about ten years, the newly formed United States had a true democracy with limited power in the central government until they discovered this democracy was a losing game financially and that “the American Revolution had gone too far” leading to “an excess of democracy” (5).

Holton takes an interesting look at the class issue through his economic argument surrounding the framing of the Constitution, bringing the common man into the Pennsylvania courtroom with the elite men.  He often stakes a case against the Framers, basically labeling them as members of the elite class with anti-democratic sentiments when they stepped into that courtroom to impact the future of the nation.  However, at the same time, Holton paints a painful picture between the creditors and debtors and the fate of the nation with the state governments’ failure to pressure people into paying their debts, both those to their creditors and those to the state.  Everyone was acting in their own self interest, including many of the Framers who were also credit holders to these farmers in rebellion. My impression is that the Framers and Holton were arguing that had they not drafted and proposed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the United States would have been headed for civil war with outcome unknown.  The sense of the populace rising against being supposedly outrageously taxed by their own state echoes some of the arguments against the Crown prior to the Revolution.

I think much of Holton’s argument surrounding the creditors and debtors still rings true today, as he notes briefly around the Civil War in his epilogue.  The rhetoric of the elite claiming that the farmers “were responsible for their own predicament” sounds much like claims on those discussing the classic stereotype of the “welfare mom” or seniors on Medicaid or Social Security who did not save enough money (53).  Also, the belief that many Americans hold regarding the men and women in government positions come from an elite class who form the laws to govern and hold the lower and middle classes back.  Likewise the claim that people were being overtaxed is still a war cry today in every election in every state, but especially the presidential election.

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