A Warning from the Past

“I said that this Government, if put to the test—a test that it is by no means calculated to endure—as a government for the management of the internal concerns of this country, is one of the worst that can be conceived . . ..” —John Randolph of Roanoke

“Why should the government pay the expenses of one class of men rather than another?” —John C. Calhoun of South Carolina

From its beginnings, the U.S. government was regarded by Southerners as a matter of liberty, honour, and American mutuality. From its beginnings, the predominant class in the North regarded the government as a source of profits. Southerners saw the Constitution as the people’s control over government power. Northerners saw it as an instrument to be manipulated to their advantage. This difference came to a head in the struggle between Hamilton and Jefferson. Jefferson and his friends (John Randolph, John Taylor, etc.) called Hamilton, Adams, and their friends “monarchists.” By this was meant not only that they favoured kingship, which they did, but also that they wanted a strong central government built on patronage to the wealthy (at the expense of the ordinary hard-working producers). The patronage was to be paid through national debt, manipulation of the currency, and various types of business subsidy, which were falsely claimed to be necessary and beneficial to all Americans.

Jefferson and his friends (including a valiant minority of Northerners) managed to hold Hamilton’s schemes in abeyance for two generations, although they were constantly and aggressively put forward. Lincoln’s conquest and near-destruction of the South established the Northern program without any effective check. Yet, Jeffersonian ideals continued to wield a certain power long afterward, right up to World War II. It is this Jeffersonianism that is the main theme of Southern history, and not slavery as trendy “scholars” today claim. The regime of the Republican George W. Bush and the Democrat Barack Obama (there is no difference) has now delivered the final deathblow to the system of government and to the ideals of freedom established by our forefathers. The Constitution no longer exists except as a collection of minor procedural rules. The distinction between government spending for public purposes and for private profits has been abolished, as has the distinction between federal spending for national purposes and for merely local purposes. The government is now making sure that the economy is frozen so that those who are presently wealthy will remain so and that your and my children and grandchildren will pay the price in a diminished life.