George Washington was indispensable to the rise of the United States as a free nation, but it turns out that three others—Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, not necessarily in that order—played about as great a role in American independence as Washington. Fair to say our country has Four Forefathers.
Since I know most about Adams, I title this blog on American Freedom "John Adams' Gift." More on that later, but for now I'm thinking about the ideal we have that all citizens enjoy equal protection from the law. This ideal, like many protectors of American freedom, came late to the party. The Framers--those who wrote the Constitution in 1787--may have been focused on creating an effective limited government, rather than on human rights per se. Four years after the Constitutional miracle in Philadelphia came the Bill of Rights. The Equal Protection Clause arrived about 75 years later. It grew out of the Civil War, and out of partisan bickering. Anyone paying attention to the news in 2012 knows a lot about partisan bickering.
The Civil War had many causes, but two that led the list were that bickering plus honest differences over the role of slavery in Father George’s “free country.” (It would be fair to say 'Father John's free country.')
The conflict over slavery was foreshadowed by the most articulate Briton of the time. Dr. Samuel Johnson was as superior to his contemporaries in literature and expression as Shakespeare was to his. Johnson declared that he who was tired of London, was tired of life. He did not like colonial cries of “no taxation without representation.” Colonial taxation, Johnson thought, was the natural price for the good system that created those colonies. Why, he penned, do we hear the loudest yelps for freedom from the drivers of negroes?
Good question, but they didn't think so in the South in 1776. Here are a couple more tidbits from Samuel Johnson that seem to fit today:
A merchant's desire is not of glory, but of gain; not of publick wealth, but of private emolument; he is, therefore, rarely to be consulted about war and peace, or any designs of wide extent and distant consequence.
. . . the present generation, which seems to think itself in more danger of wanting money, than of losing liberty.
---Johnson, Taxation No Tyranny, about 1775
There had been many fights over “driving negroes” before, but it was the accidental election of Abraham Lincoln that triggered the revolt. It was “accidental” because Lincoln was a Republican running against a northern Democrat and a southern Democrat, so, the presidency was, in a sense, handed to him. This would in hindsight appear to be a type of higher power intervention, providing just the man to preserve the Union at just the right time.
Once the North stood triumphant in the War, the man who had done most to preserve the Union wanted to ease the rebellious South back in as gently as possible, but many Northerners yearned to punish it. (With some wisdom, Dr. Johnson had written that a rebellion should not go unpunished, lest future rebellions be encouraged.) For example, after Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln, General James Longstreet, valiant assistant of General Lee in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, came, via the recommendation of General Grant, to President Johnson for a pardon. President Johnson cordially received him, according to Longstreet’s autobiography, but said Longstreet was one of three—Lee and Davis the other two—who had most harmed the Union and could never get amnesty.
The North’s first war goal was preserving the Union, and emancipation of the slaves soon became the second. Equality of all citizens before the law became a third war aim for “the more radical” Republicans like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens. They thought that black freedom would be a sham unless “the government guaranteed the civil and political rights of the freedmen.” Encyclopedia Britannica 1984, History of US, vol 18, p 971. This history is about 58 pages, 1418 – 1981 The Radical Republicans were in control of Congress after the war, and that led to the Equal Protection Clause.
The South made it easy for vindictive northern Congressmen to come up with measures of punishment. The War had hardly ended when southern Whites began writing laws that denied the Negro full citizenship; the so-called Black Codes either denied blacks’ right to contract or imposed harsher criminal penalties on “niggers” than on whites for the same offenses. One version stopped ex-slaves from earning a living in any way but farming. Congress decided it had to “reconstruct” the South, and part of Reconstruction was amending the Constitution to protect the new black citizens. The "Civil War" Amendments, numbers 13, 14, and 15, played this role, with the Fourteenth Amendment requiring the states to gives all citizens equal protection under the law. It was a logical part of what was supposed to be an American democracy "under law" rather than under human whims, but the whites in the ex-Confederacy hated it. Those niggers were not their equals and they didn't care what the law said to the contrary.
More, then, on equal protection under the law, and on Constitutional law and American freedom generally, on the next post. John Adams and his fellows gave us a very large gift of freedom, and it will take a while to cover even most of equal protection under the law. Broad concept, but just the kind of expansive thinking at which Adams excelled.
For now I'll just note that John Adams wrote the state constitution of Massachusetts mostly all alone. 'Twas him that made it the "Commonwealth of Massachusetts." Per David McCullough, he also was apparently the first to put into practice in a constitution, in a government, the idea of the courts being their own separate branch, rather than part of the executive branch. It is good to have them as independent as possible. Thank you, John Adams, for your gift, the gift of American democracy that is still giving to so many of us. We know you had the help of many hands, and we seek to carry on your work.
