40 Credits & A Mule, Part IV: The Measure of a Man

January 11, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I previously covered some of the reasons land ownership was inseparable from representative government in the early American model, but I’ve left out at least one pretty important one.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edmund Pendleton, August 1776:
You seem to have misapprehended my proposition for the choice of a Senate. I had two things in view: to get the wisest men chosen, & to make them perfectly independent when chosen. I have ever observed that a choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom. This first secretion from them is usually crude & heterogeneous. But give to those so chosen by the people a second choice themselves, & they generally will chuse wise men…

Jefferson is suggesting a method of electing Senators similar to what was later done for the Presidency – a kind of electoral college. As is often the case with Jefferson, his hybrid of grand insight and colorful language is almost irresistible. He begins with typical Enlightenment precision followed by intentional understatement with a touch of ‘snide bastard’. The choice of the masses, left to their own direct democracy-type devices, “is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.”

Then the imagery – “the first SECRETION from them is usually CRUDE and HETEROGENEOUS…” Before you tab open dictionary.com, “heterogeneous” means diverse – in this case, an incoherent mess. And this is the guy who LIKES the common man – er… in theory. Kind of. Some days. From far away.

That the Senate as well as lower (or shall I speak truth & call it upper) house should hold no office of profit I am clear; but not that they should of necessity possess distinguished property… my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth.

The Senate was intended to be the more austere, deliberative body – holding longer terms and intended as a balance on the more reactionary House of Representatives, elected every two years and thus presumably more responsive to the whims of the people. Jefferson’s parenthetical commentary is a nod to the superior role and trustworthy wisdom of the crude mess-secretors from a few sentences before.

I said he was brilliant, not consistent.

In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest & more disinterested than those of wealthy men: & I can never doubt an attachment to his country in any man who has his family & peculium in it…

We can’t trust the rich and powerful to run things, but neither can we trust the destitute. The landed citizen, however, in composite with others of his ilk – THAT’s a foundation. He is “attached” to his country – he has his family and his stuff here. Of course he wants the nation to do well – he has a vested interest uncharacteristic of those without such things.

If I buy my groceries at Wal-Mart and they go out of business, it’s inconvenient but not devastating. I may shop there, but I won’t organize the shelves or clean the bathrooms because that stuff is neither my job nor my problem. If, on the other hand, I not only work there but have stock in the company – my entire life savings and retirement, perhaps – you’ll find me helping people even on my day off, and replacing the toilet paper without begin asked. In that scenario, I NEED Wal-Mart to survive. I’m counting on it to succeed. Its destiny and mine are the same.

Substitute ‘Merica for Wal-Mart (not much of a stretch, really) and there you have it.

I was for extending the right of suffrage to all who had a permanent intention of living in the country. Take what circumstances you please as evidence of this, either the having resided a certain time, or having a family, or having property, any or all of them. Whoever intends to live in a country must wish that country well, & has a natural right of assisting in the preservation of it. I think you cannot distinguish between such a person residing in the country & having no fixed property, & one residing in a township whom you say you would admit to a vote…

The final reason land was so essential to early American democracy was that it established a stake in the success of the nation for those who held it. There are no stakes higher than protecting one’s home and sustenance – men will do almost anything to ensure success, even become informed voters.

Well, that’s the theory, anyway.

After the Civil War, many Freedmen believed they deserved – and that they had in fact been promised – “40 Acres and a Mule.” Some had actually been granted such at the unauthorized discretion of Union generals who, reasonably enough, took land from defeated plantation-owners and redistributed it to former slaves.

These few instances were reversed to smooth the transition into Reconstruction and maintain the almost cultish commitment Americans had to property rights – and, apparently, irony. The freedmen received nothing.

Well, that’s not entirely true. They received freedom. That was a pretty big deal. But freedom to do… what?

With no education, no land, no resources, no momentum – what the hell were they going to do?

Many stayed where they were, working the same land they’d been working, in exchange for food and shelter. Others left their former “masters” and wandered, either seeking loved ones from whom they’d been separated or simply wanting to go… somewhere else.

Many ended up working for white landowners under various arrangements. The South had just lost a rather brutal war – they didn’t have money to pay anyone. But food, shelter, a place to be… that they had. Eventually sharecropping and tenant farming were ubiquitous.

Freedmen didn’t have any land, or a realistic way to obtain land. Carpetbaggers from the North began establishing schools, the government had a few agencies, but overall opportunity was… limited. Just over a decade after the South surrendered the war, the North surrendered Reconstruction and brought their troops home in exchange for the Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes.

You all remember Hayes, right? A President for whom it was worth giving up the closest we’d ever come to realizing our founding ideals?

Yeah, me neither. And maybe we weren’t as close as we should have been in such a position – war won, Amendments ratified, South destroyed. But still…

Hayes fought bimetallism, stopped a railroad strike, and sped assimilation of Amerindians. In short, after Lincoln’s death, the Republican Party went to hell fairly rapidly. Their only real saving grace was that they weren’t Democrats.

The freedman had gained everything – in theory. On paper, they were FREE! The men could vote! Land ownership! Education! Equality before the law! Unalienable rights, in your FACE!

Without land, though, they couldn’t provide for themselves. The system didn’t facilitate advancement via laboring for others – just ask the Lowell Girls, the Newsies, or any ox. Freedmen (or others without land) couldn’t do the things people had been conditioned to expect as a prerequisite for suffrage – for being a ‘full American’.

Despite written law, it became difficult to vote. It was impossible to gain economic ground, individually or as a community. Expression is severely limited when any unpopular thought can result in loss of livelihood. How does one maintain a sense of self against so much negation? At what point do we become our labels?

That’s the suffrage part. If Jefferson was correct about the spiritual and moral benefits of ‘laboring in the earth’, working the land of another may or may not have been worth partial divine credit. In terms of ‘vested interest’ in our national success, whatever support black Americans lent to their country came without terrestrial reciprocation.

White men who succeeded under the system believed they deserved to succeed. Most had genuinely worked hard and made good choices by the standards of the time. It was not perhaps logical, but WAS very human, to see those who did NOT flourish as undeserving… obviously. We all want to be part of a good system, an ordered universe, and to be justified in whatever satisfaction we draw from our efforts. Generally, ‘facts’ adjust themselves to fit our paradigms rather than the reverse.

That’s not even a white thing – that’s just a people thing.

What began as a checklist for civic participation became the default measure of a man. What was intended to protect representative government from the incompetent or slothful became an anchor on those who didn’t fit certain checklists as of 225 years ago. You are unworthy. Not quite a full American – and thus not quite a full person.

The issue becomes your state of being rather than whatever rules you have or haven’t mastered, or whatever goals you haven’t met. It was self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing. It became circular.

And then it stopped being about land and started being about something else. A new ultimate requirement and cure-all, which must be made theoretically available to all for ‘democracy’ – such as it is – to survive.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

40 Credits & A Mule, Part II: Chosen People

January 1, 2015July 31, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I last opined on the almost sacred role of land in founding a new democracy – United States version. It was, to many Framers, the most obvious and tangible measure of a man’s legitimacy, his potential value as another voice in the national discussion.

Land was about provision, responsibility, independence – individually-sized portions of national ideals. Its role was not asserted so much as recognized – much like many other “self-evident” truths bandied about in those days.

But the issue wasn’t solely terrestrial.

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782)

I’m no authority on Jefferson, but you don’t know that – so let’s just play along and not make trouble, alright?

Jefferson’s preference for the poetic over the particular could be a bit chaffing at times, although it also gave us such timeless idealizations as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – whatever that means. The tension between his rhetoric and his behavior has been subject to much analysis, and rightly so, but at the risk of seeming an apologist, not living up to one’s words – even to the point of hypocrisy – doesn’t negate the potential value of the words.

Maybe we’re just not living up to them.

(Seriously, if we did background checks on every motivational meme on Pinterest, which of you would escape untarnished? Let he who is without sin post the first troll.)

“Those who labor in the earth…” I suppose he could have just said “farmers,” but this paints a more vivid picture to set up where he’s going. It’s not about a role in the economy or the food chain – it’s about the agency of individuals, applied not merely to ground or soil but to the “earth”. It’s a wide-angle lens on an idealized way of life – Jefferson’s strength.

“…the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people…” Wow. Jefferson getting all allusion-y up in here. The most obvious antecedent would be the Israelites of the Old Testament. Jefferson wasn’t a huge fan of biblical literalism, but that wouldn’t negate its value as a frame of reference. The addition of “if ever he had a chosen people” may be read as emphasis (“that’s a miracle if ever I saw one!”) or a touch of skepticism (“if there are such things as miracles, this would be one”) – an ambivalence consistent with his few recorded thoughts on scripture. But the power of the image – the holy role of the Hebrew children – that he utilizes quite intentionally.

It’s like he has a point to make.

It wasn’t much of a leap from Old Testament progenitors to fresh young Americans – the City on a Hill, the people whose destiny was quickly becoming manifest, and who a century later would carry their “white man’s burden” well past the boundaries of the continent.

But for now the issue was land – or at least the way of life it promoted.

Farmers worked 365 days a year. Soil still needing tilling on your birthday, cows needed milked on Christmas, and no matter how sick you might be, those crops weren’t going to reap themselves. It was labor-intensive and the hours were long, and yet after doing all you could do, all day every day – you waited.

You waited for the rain. You waited for the growth. You waited for the births. You waited for the universe to do its part.

Sometimes it didn’t. Often, even when it did, it took too long and was too slow and there was no way to rush it, but many ways to ruin it. This combination of intense human application and eternal patience is inconceivable generations later. Almost nothing works that way anymore – at least not the sorts of things to which you set your hand when young, ways of life from cradle to grave. Sometimes enough years and sufficient survival teach similar lessons in the 21st century – but they come too late to shape much more than your reflections.

The laboring Jefferson extols, however, produced “substantial genuine virtue” – a type of perspective and wisdom unavailable minus the requisite experiences.

You won’t find accounts of farmers going rogue in meaningful numbers, he claims. Presumably this is related to all that virtue and sacred fire. I have to think myself they couldn’t possibly have found the time or energy to be particularly corrupt. The immediate, tangible consequences of immorality or irresponsibility would be a sufficient deterrent should all else fail. Like playing in the traffic or juggling chainsaws, any screw-ups would be quickly self-correcting.

Agriculture… is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness. The wealth acquired by speculation and plunder, is fugacious in its nature, and fills society with the spirit of gambling. The moderate and sure income of husbandry, begets permanent improvement, quiet life, and orderly conduct both public and private.” (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to George Washington, 1787)

Jefferson had a distrust of bankers, stock markets, or anything financial industry-ish – so much so that he took great personal pride in never having the foggiest idea how to make his estate solvent (he died in substantial debt). Farmers raised essentials. They produced raw materials which could be woven into clothing, smoked for pleasure, eaten to survive. “Real wealth.”

Bankers scribbled numbers in little books, in stuffy rooms, producing nothing, but somehow always taking from you. Farmers dealt in uncertainty, but financiers gambled. While farmers produced, money men “plundered.” The soil, properly tended, would always be there – would always prove reliable. Paper numbers and percentage points never were.

Jefferson is claiming an essential role of land beyond voter qualifications. He’s claiming it as a lifestyle – a moral anchor, social stabilizer, and the only true source of economic security. Husbandry grows in men the essential traits of a fledgling democracy – applied labor, determination, patience, and pragmatism. It’s the wisdom of the earth in the hands of the earth’s masters.

(Look, those Enlightenment types thought science-y thoughts, but whether they’d admit it or not, they were quite comfortable with a little melodramatic sheen to their ageless words and divine mission and all that. They sang into their hairbrushes in front of the mirror just like the rest of us – they just did it with bigger words and paradigm-altering consequences.)

I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787)

Uh-oh.

As yet our manufacturers are as much at their ease, as independent and moral as our agricultural inhabitants, and they will continue so as long as there are vacant lands for them to resort to; because whenever it shall be attempted by the other classes to reduce them to the minimum of subsistence, they will quit their trades and go to laboring the earth.” (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Mr. J. Lithgow, 1805)

So…

Land ownership allows the property owner to demonstrate his capability, his competence, his potential to be a useful voice – a valid voter.

Land ownership promotes solidity, character, ethereal virtues reflected in wise words and actions – valuable in and of themselves, sure, but especially necessary in a nation relying on the people themselves to provide beneficial leadership – directly or through their choices regarding representation.

Land must be available to meet the demands of an expanding nation. Without sufficient, arable land, the ideals on which the nation was founded lack the requisite elements to survive. It’s not an optional ingredient – it’s the eggs in the democracy omelet, the flour in the ‘Mericake.

Finally, in a nod to inconveniently unfolding realities, Jefferson argues that even the POTENTIAL of land ownership – its availability – provides an essential safety valve, a check on the industrializing leaven of Europe as it attempts to leaven the entire American loaf. That he so easily adjusts his faith to accommodate current events I leave to you to interpret as you see fit.

This land. Chosen people. If it fails here, it fails everywhere. Darkness. Tyranny. Monsters rule the earth.

We’re gonna need more land.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

40 Credits & A Mule, Part I: This Land

December 31, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Land was a big deal when our little experiment in democracy began. Why?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… (Declaration of Independence, 1776)

Consent of the governed? As in, the people being ruled make the rules, and all that? Huh – big responsibility. Harder than it sounds.

Given the number of reality shows based on the challenges of a dozen people living together (in a free house with unlimited alcohol and no jobs), running an entire country based on mandates from the masses seems… problematic.

If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote…

You gotta pay close attention when any argument begins with “in theory…”

But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.” (Alexander Hamilton, Quoting Blackstone’s Commentaries on The Laws of England, 1775)

So, in order to assure that everyone’s political voice is more or less equal, we’re going to have to deny a political voice to some – to those without the ability to provide for themselves. Otherwise, the entire representative system may be undermined through the ability of the wealthy to manipulate the indigent.

Ironic, huh?

Then again, Hamilton was kinda Machiavellian about such things. Maybe someone less… cynical?

Viewing the subject in its merits alone…

That sounds a whole lot like “in theory” again…

…the freeholders [landowners] of the country would be the safest depositories of republican liberty. In future times the great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation, in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands; or, which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition, in which case there will be equal danger on another side. (James Madison, Speech in the Constitutional Convention, August 1787)

No help here from the ‘Father of the Constitution’. Apparently handing power over to men without land leads to either a tyranny of the masses (mob democracy) or a system in which the ignorant are led about by the manipulations of the wealthy and power-hungry.

My god, we wouldn’t want that. Can you imagine?

It appears that while our new nation was taking the concept of self-rule well beyond anything previously attempted, there were still substantial concerns over appropriate limits. (It’s one thing to talk about student-directed learning, but quite another to hand them chalk and the wifi password and tell them you’ll check back in May.)

Hey… maybe Jefferson! You can find quotes from Jefferson to prove just about anything. Let’s see…

My observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest & more disinterested than those of wealthy men…

You see? That’s what I’m talking –

…and I can never doubt an attachment to his country in any man who has his family & peculium in it… (Letter to Edmund Pendleton, August 1776)

I had to look up ‘peculium’. It means ‘stuff’ – including family, income, etc. Not quite the same as land, but still property – still evidence of competence via one’s successful estate. In other words, no help from T.J.

Landowners were reliable, and self-sufficient. Their voice was their own. Those without? Not so much.

Keep in mind this was a new country – a baby nation. The Declaration was as much a Birth Certificate as a break-up letter, and our forebears were trying something entirely new. They were idealists, sure – but they were also educated, and realists, and had some idea how people tend to people-ize.

If this ‘self-government’ thing didn’t work, America would fail. If America failed, then democracy had failed. And if democracy failed here, it effectively failed everywhere – in most cases it would never even begin.

The Dark Ages return – tyranny and ignorance. Monsters rule the earth.

It was John Adams (of all people) who best explained how the young nation could be both a land of opportunity and pragmatically defend itself against fools and freeloaders.

It is certain in Theory, that the only moral Foundation of Government is the Consent of the People.

There’s that “in theory” again – but I guess he’d met the others…

But to what an Extent Shall We carry this Principle? Shall We Say, that every Individual of the Community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must consent, expressly to every Act of Legislation? No, you will Say. This is impossible…

Adams probably talked too much, but I do love how he steps his audience through his reasoning. It’s very Socrates, very Holmes, very Bill Nye the Government Guy. Franklin may have been the poster child of the Enlightenment in the New World, but Adams was its lesson planner and edu-blogger.

But why exclude Women? You will Say, because their Delicacy renders them unfit for Practice and Experience, in the great Business of Life, and the hardy Enterprizes of War, as well as the arduous Cares of State. Besides, their attention is So much engaged with the necessary Nurture of their Children, that Nature has made them fittest for domestic Cares. And Children have not Judgment or Will of their own…

How did Abigail not kill him regularly?

I know a number of impressive women both professionally and personally. They are varied and wonderful creatures, but very few qualify for the epithet ‘delicate’. Clearly John was not in the room during childbirth.

But will not these Reasons apply to others? Is it not equally true, that Men in general in every Society, who are wholly destitute of Property, are also too little acquainted with public Affairs to form a Right Judgment, and too dependent upon other Men to have a Will of their own? … Such is the Frailty of the human Heart, that very few Men, who have no Property, have any Judgment of their own…

There it is – the same basic argument which was made time and again by our Framers. You gotta pass the 8th grade reading test to take Driver’s Ed, you gotta keep a ‘C’ average or better to play football, and you gotta have your own land to vote. It’s nothing personal. It’s simply an imperfect indication of minimal competence.

Doctors gotta have degrees to doctor on you. Drivers have to have a license. Barbers have to have special certificates confirming they can snip your hair off with scissors. None of these hold the power over the vast numbers of people a voter does. None could do the damage possible at the hands of the unqualified citizen.

Or so they reasoned. Personally, I think they were overreacting. I mean, pretty much everyone can vote today, right?

But Adams doesn’t leave it at that. He elaborates on a solution, a counterbalance. He looks at the long game.

Power always follows Property. This I believe to be as infallible a Maxim, in Politicks, as, that Action and Re-action are equal, is in Mechanicks. Nay I believe We may advance one Step farther and affirm that the Ballance of Power in a Society, accompanies the Ballance of Property in Land.
The only possible Way then of preserving the Ballance of Power on the side of equal Liberty and public Virtue, is to make the Acquisition of Land easy to every Member of Society: to make a Division of the Land into Small Quantities, So that the Multitude may be possessed of landed Estates.
If the Multitude is possessed of the Ballance of real Estate, the Multitude will have the Ballance of Power, and in that Case the Multitude will take Care of the Liberty, Virtue, and Interest of the Multitude in all Acts of Government. (Letter to James Sullivan, May 1776)

The first century of American history was largely shaped by this need for land. Some of this was primal and selfish. At times, shiny rocks were in the ground or particularly nice lumber stuck up out of it. But those were the temporal motivators. Behind them was a political, almost spiritual, paradigm – a distinction not always clear in that era.

To be a City on a Hill, one must have a hill. To be a republic – a government of-the-by-the-for-the – one must have qualified voters. The most universal way to demonstrate basic responsibility, competence, and character, was land ownership.

What neither Adams nor his contemporaries anticipated was just how quickly this baby nation would begin filling up – the locals spawning and immigrants flowing in as fast as boats could carry them. We were going to need more land, or this wasn’t going to work.

Without widespread, relatively easy access to land, democracy wasn’t possible, and this grand experiment would fail. If democracy failed here, it effectively failed everywhere – it would, in fact, never even begin elsewhere.

Dark Ages. Tyranny and ignorance. Monsters rule the earth.

We have some bad news for the Natives and Mexico.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part VI – ABCDF