Founding Fathers Archives - Page 3 of 16

Celebrating Our Savior

Easter is one of the most significant Christian holy days. What occurred on this day defines and distinguishes the Christian faith from all others. As Roman 1:4 affirms, “Through the Spirit of holiness Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord!”

At Easter, we remember not only the great sacrifice of Jesus on the cross but especially that through His triumph over the power of sin and death we can have eternal life. Across the centuries of American history, our public leaders have reminded us of the importance of Easter.

For example, signer of the Declaration of Independence Charles Carroll declared:

The approaching festival of Easter, and the merits and mercies of our Redeemer…have inspired me with the hope of finding mercy before my Judge and of being happy in the life to come — a happiness I wish you to participate with me by infusing into your heart a similar hope.

And, many generations later, President George W. Bush reminded America:

Easter is the most important event of the Christian faith, when people around the world join together with family and friends to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the hope of life to come. For Christians, the life and death of Jesus are the ultimate expressions of love, and the supreme demonstrations of God’s mercy, faithfulness, and redemption.

Easter is a special day of joy and rejoicing–through what Jesus did on this day, eternal life is now available to all who believe on Him!

An Appeal to Heaven Flag

During the early days of the War for Independence—while the gun smoke still covered the fields at Lexington and Concord, and the cannons still echoed at Bunker Hill—America faced innumerable difficulties and a host of hard decisions. Unsurprisingly, the choice of a national flag remained unanswered for many months due to more pressing issues such as arranging a defense and forming the government.

However, a flag was still needed by the military in order to differentiate the newly forged American forces from those of the oncoming British. Several temporary flags were swiftly employed in order to satisfy the want. One of the most famous and widespread standards rushed up flagpoles on both land and sea was the “Pinetree Flag,” or sometimes called “An Appeal to Heaven” flag.

As the name suggests, this flag was characterized by having both a tree (most commonly thought to be a pine or a cypress) and the motto reading “an appeal to Heaven.” Typically, these were displayed on a white field, and often were used by troops, especially in New England, as the liberty tree was a prominent northern symbol for the independence movement.¹

In fact, prior to the Declaration of Independence but after the opening of hostilities, the Pinetree Flag was one of the most popular flags for American troops. Indeed, “there are recorded in the history of those days many instances of the use of the pine-tree flag between October, 1775, and July, 1776.”²

Some of America’s earliest battles and victories were fought under a banner declaring “an appeal to Heaven.” Some historians document that General Israel Putnam’s troops at Bunker Hill used a flag with the motto on it, and during the Battle of Boston the floating batteries (floating barges armed with artillery) proudly flew the famous white Pinetree Flag.³ In January of 1776, Commodore Samuel Tucker flew the flag while successfully capturing a British troop transport which was attempting to relieve the besieged British forces in Boston.⁴

The Pinetree Flag was commonly used by the Colonial Navy during this period of the War. When George Washington commissioned the first-ever officially sanctioned military ships for America in 1775, Colonel Joseph Reed wrote the captains asking them to:

Please to fix upon some particular color for a flag, and a signal by which our vessels may know one another. What do you think of a flag with a white ground, a tree in the middle, the motto ‘Appeal to Heaven’? This is the flag of our floating batteries.⁵

In the following months news spread even to England that the Americans were employing this flag on their naval vessels. A report of a captured ship revealed that, “the flag taken from a provincial [American] privateer is now deposited in the admiralty; the field is a white bunting, with a spreading green tree; the motto, ‘Appeal to Heaven.’”⁶

As the skirmishes unfolded into all out warfare between the colonists and England, the Pinetree Flag with its prayer to God became synonymous with the American struggle for liberty. An early map of Boston reflected this by showing a side image of a British redcoat trying to rip this flag out of the hands of a colonist (see image on right).⁷ The main motto, “An Appeal to Heaven,” inspired other similar flags with mottos such as “An Appeal to God,” which also often appeared on early American flags.

For many modern Americans it might be surprising to learn that one of the first national mottos and flags was “an appeal to Heaven.” Where did this phrase originate, and why did the Americans identify themselves with it?

To understand the meaning behind the Pinetree Flag we must go back to John Locke’s influential Second Treatise of Government (1690). In this book, the famed philosopher explains that when a government becomes so oppressive and tyrannical that there no longer remains any legal remedy for citizens, they can appeal to Heaven and then resist that tyrannical government through a revolution. Locke turned to the Bible to explain his argument:

To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to Heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society and quitting [leaving] the state of nature, for where there is an authority—a power on earth—from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded and the controversy is decided by that power. Had there been any such court—any superior jurisdiction on earth—to determine the right between Jephthah and the Ammonites, they had never come to a state of war, but we see he was forced to appeal to Heaven. The Lord the Judge (says he) he judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon, Judg. xi. 27.⁸

Locke affirms that when societies are formed and systems and methods of mediation can be instituted, armed conflict to settle disputes is a last resort. When there no longer remains any higher earthly authority to which two contending parties (such as sovereign nations) can appeal, the only option remaining is to declare war in assertion of certain rights. This is what Locke calls an appeal to Heaven because, as in the case of Jephthah and the Ammonites, it is God in Heaven Who ultimately decides who the victors will be.

Locke goes on to explain that when the people of a country “have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to Heaven whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment [importance].”⁹ However, Locke cautions that appeals to Heaven through open war must be seriously and somberly considered beforehand since God is perfectly just and will punish those who take up arms in an unjust cause. The English statesman writes that:

he that appeals to Heaven must be sure he has right on his side; and a right to that is worth the trouble and cost of the appeal as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived [God’s throne] and will be sure to retribute to everyone according to the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow subjects; that is, any part of mankind.¹⁰

The fact that Locke writes extensively concerning the right to a just revolution as an appeal to Heaven becomes massively important to the American colonists as England begins to strip away their rights. The influence of his Second Treatise of Government (which contains his explanation of an appeal to Heaven) on early America is well documented. During the 1760s and 1770s, the Founding Fathers quoted Locke more than any other political author, amounting to a total of 11% and 7% respectively of all total citations during those formative decades.¹¹ Indeed, signer of the Declaration of Independence Richard Henry Lee once quipped that the Declaration had been largely “copied from Locke’s Treatise on Government.”¹²

Therefore, when the time came to separate from Great Britain and the regime of King George III, the leaders and citizens of America well understood what they were called upon to do. By entering into war with their mother country, which was one of the leading global powers at the time, the colonists understood that only by appealing to Heaven could they hope to succeed.

For example, Patrick Henry closes his infamous “give me liberty” speech by declaring that:

If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon—we must fight!—I repeat it, sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!¹³

Furthermore, Jonathan Trumbull, who as governor of Connecticut was the only royal governor to retain his position after the Declaration, explained that the Revolution began only after repeated entreaties to the King and Parliament were rebuffed and ignored. In writing to a foreign leader, Trumbull clarified that:

On the 19^th day of April, 1775, the scene of blood was opened by the British troops, by the unprovoked slaughter of the Provincial troops at Lexington and Concord. The adjacent Colonies took up arms in their own defense; and the Congress again met, again petitioned the Throne [the English king] for peace and settlement; and again their petitions were contemptuously disregarded. When every glimpse of hope failed not only of justice but of safety, we were compelled, by the last necessity, to appeal to Heaven and rest the defense of our liberties and privileges upon the favor and protection of Divine Providence; and the resistance we could make by opposing force to force.¹⁴

John Locke’s explanation of the right to just revolution permeated American political discourse and influenced the direction the young country took when finally being forced to appeal to Heaven in order to reclaim their unalienable rights. The church pulpits likewise thundered with further Biblical exegesis on the importance of appealing to God for an ultimate redress of grievances, and pastors for decades after the War continued to teach on the subject. For example, an 1808 sermon explained:

War has been called an appeal to Heaven. And when we can, with full confidence, make the appeal, like David, and ask to be prospered according to our righteousness, and the cleanness of our hands, what strength and animation it gives us! When the illustrious Washington, at an early stage of our revolutionary contest, committed the cause in that solemn manner. “May that God whom you have invoked, judge between us and you,” how our hearts glowed that we had such a cause to commit!¹⁵

Thus, when the early militiamen and naval officers flew the Pinetree Flag emblazoned with its motto “An Appeal for Heaven,” it was not some random act with little significance or meaning. Instead, they sought to march into battle with a recognition of God’s Providence and their reliance on the King of Kings to right the wrongs which they had suffered. The Pinetree Flag represents a vital part of America’s history and an important step on the journey to reaching a national flag during the early days of the War for Independence.

Furthermore, the Pinetree Flag was far from being the only national symbol recognizing America’s reliance on the protection and Providence of God. During the War for Independence other mottos and rallying cries included similar sentiments. For example, the flag pictured on the right bore the phrase “Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God,” which came from an earlier 1750 sermon by the influential Rev. Jonathan Mayhew.¹⁶ In 1776 Benjamin Franklin even suggested that this phrase be part of the nation’s Great Seal.¹⁷ The Americans’ thinking and philosophy was so grounded on a Biblical perspective that even a British parliamentary report in 1774 acknowledged that, “If you ask an American, ‘Who is his master?’ He will tell you he has none—nor any governor but Jesus Christ.”¹⁸

This God-centered focus continued throughout our history after the Revolutionary War. For example, in the War of 1812 against Britain, during the Defense of Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key penned what would become our National Anthem, encapsulating this perspective by writing that:

Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”¹⁹

In the Civil War, Union Forces sang this song when marching into battle. In fact, Abraham Lincoln was inspired to put “In God we Trust” on coins, which was one of his last official acts before his untimely death.²⁰ And after World War II, President Eisenhower led Congress in making “In God We Trust” the official National Motto,²¹ also adding “under God” to the pledge in 1954.²²

Throughout the centuries America has continually and repeatedly acknowledged the need to look to God and appeal to Heaven. This was certainly evident in the earliest days of the War for Independence with the Pinetree Flag and its powerful inscription: “An Appeal to Heaven.”

Endnotes

¹ “Flag, The,” Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, ed. John Lalor (Chicago: Melbert B. Cary & Company, 1883), 2.232.
² Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee at the Thirtieth Meeting, Held at Toledo, Ohio, October 26-17, 1898 (Cincinnati: F. W. Freeman, 1899), 80.
³ Schuyler Hamilton, Our National Flag; The Stars and Stripes; Its History in a Century (New York: George R. Lockwood, 1877), 16-17.
⁴ Report of the Proceedings (1899), 80.
⁵ Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1849), 261.
⁶ Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston (1849), 262.
⁷ Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston (1849), 262.
⁸ John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: A. Millar, et al., 1794), 211.
⁹ Locke, Two Treatises (1794), 346-347.
¹⁰ Locke, Two Treatises (1794), 354-355.
¹¹ Donald Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1988), 143.
¹² Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, August 30, 1823, National Archives.
¹³ William Wirt, The Life of Patrick Henry (New York: McElrath & Bangs, 1831), 140.
¹⁴ Jonathan Trumbull quoted in James Longacre, The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (Philadelphia: James B. Longacre, 1839), 4:5.
¹⁵ The Question of War with Great Britain, Examined upon Moral and Christian Principles (Boston: Snelling and Simons, 1808), 13.
¹⁶ Jonathan Mayhew, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers (Boston: D. Fowle, 1750) [Evans # 6549]; John Adams to Abigail Adams, August 14, 1776, National Archives.
¹⁷ Benjamin Franklin’s Proposal, August 20, 1776, National Archives.
¹⁸ Hezekiah Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America (Baltimore: William Ogden Niles, 1822), 198.
¹⁹ Francis Scott Key, “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” The Analectic Magazine (Philadelphia: Moses Thomas, 1814) 4:433-434.
²⁰ B. F. Morris, Memorial Record of the Nation’s Tribute to Abraham Lincoln (Washington, DC: W. H. & O. H. Morrison, 1866), 216.
²¹ 36 U.S. Code § 302 – National motto.
²² Dwight Eisenhower, “Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words “Under God” in the Pledge to the Flag,” June 14, 1954, The American Presidency Project.

An Inspiring Relationship

The enduring love and affection between Founding Father John Hancock and his wife Dorothy is a story worthy of Valentine’s Day.

Dorothy Quincy Hancock was born about 10 years after her famous husband, John. In April 1775 during their engagement, the two were visiting the small town of Lexington, just outside of Boston. Dorothy stayed with Lydia Hancock (John’s aunt) and John stayed with Pastor Jonas Clark. They both witnessed the first battle of the American War for Independence: the Battle of Lexington Green. (The following account is related in the 1912 book The Pioneer Mothers of America, reprinted by WallBuilders as Wives of the Signers):

On April 18th….Dr. Joseph Warren hastily dispatched Paul Revere on the ride that has made his name immortal. About midnight, Revere galloped up to the Rev. Mr. Clark’s house….By daybreak, one hundred and fifty men had mustered for the defense. John Hancock, with gun and sword, prepared to go out and fight with the minute-men, but [Samuel] Adams checked him….Hancock…went with him back through the rear of the house and garden to a thickly wooded hill where they could watch the progress of events. Dorothy Quincy and Aunt Lydia remained in the house, as no danger was apprehended there, and so by chance were eye witnesses of the first battle of the Revolution. Dorothy watched the fray from her bedroom window and in her narration of it notes: “Two men are being brought into the house. One, whose head has been grazed by a ball, insisted that he was dead, but the other, who was shot through the arm, behaved better.”

Dorothy helped minister to the wounded men.

The Hancock’s were married four months later, but since John was president of the Continental Congress, the two were forced to spend much time apart. Many of John’s letters to her reveal his deep affection for her.

My Dear Dear Dolly….I shall make out as well as I can, but I assure you, my Dear Soul, I long to have you here….When I part from you again it must be a very extraordinary occasion….I was exceeding glad to hear from you & hope soon to receive another letter.

My Dearest Dolly: No Congress today, and I have been as busily employed as you can conceive–quite lonesome, and in a domestic situation that ought to be relieved as speedily as possible! This relief depends upon you, and the greater dispatch [haste] you make, and the sooner you arrive here, the more speedy will be my relief!

Valentine’s Day is a good time to learn more about the loving relationships so common among our Founders and their wives.

Fatherly Advice

Each year on Father’s Day we celebrate our fathers and thank them for all the ways they bless us (a practice we should carry with us throughout the year!). In addition to our own fathers, we also have national fathers for whom we can be thankful and who were also great fathers to their family.

John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and America’s second President, was the father of six children. During the War for Independence he spent much time in public service and away from his family. Not wanting to neglect his children, he and Abigail Adams wrote letters to each other about how the children’s education should proceed, including these suggestions:

The education of our children is never out of my mind. Train them to virtue. Habituate them to industry [hard work], activity, and spirit [endurance]. Make them consider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful or ornamental knowledge or accomplishment. Fix their ambition upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones. (August 1774)

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to a excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.(October 1775)

John Quincy Adams grew up under this instruction. He became our nation’s sixth President, and was the father of four children. In his many years of public service, he would often spend extended periods away from his family. Wanting to encourage and advise his children during these times, especially on growing strong spiritually, he wrote a series of letters giving his son advice on how to read and study the Bible. In one of these letters, he said:

I advise you, my son, in whatever you read, and most of all in reading the Bible, to remember that it is for the purpose of making you wiser and more virtuous. I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year. I have always endeavored to read it with the same spirit and temper of mind, which I now recommend to you: that is, with the intention and desire that it may contribute to my advancement in wisdom and virtue.

This advice from our Founding Fathers is definitely worth remembering.

America’s Exceptional History of Anti-Slavery

Recently the idea of American Exceptionalism has been ridiculed in academic and political circles with entire books dedicated to the purpose of tearing down any thought of an ethical America.[i] Much of this recent shift centers around America’s record on slavery. For instance, organizations such as the New York Times have started initiatives declaring that the “true founding” was not until the introduction of slavery 1619[ii] and that the “founding ideals were false” due to the existence of slavery.[iii]

The shift to a negative perspective of America largely stems from the revisionist school of history beginning in the 1960’s and culminating with Howard Zinn’s monumental 1980 People’s History of the United States. This book popularized the historiographical approach of doing “history from the bottom up,” which means telling the story of America through the interpretive lens of oppression. A fellow activist historian of Zinn’s, Staughton Lynd explains the fundamental premises underlying this approach in his Doing History from the Bottom Up. In their interpretive model, “was founded on crimes against humanity directed at…enslaved African Americans,” and therefore must be evil.[iv]

Such anti-American revisionism forgets that America’s record of anti-slavery actually is exceptional compared to the rest of the world. Rarely do revisionists remember that over half of the American states had passed laws abolishing slavery by 1804, nearly thirty years before William Wilberforce effected the similar results in England. This wide-scale abolitionism was planted by the Biblical beliefs of several early colonies, was watered by the advocacy and action of the patriots during the American Revolution, and finally brought forth fruit through the establishment of a Constitutional Republic designed to advance liberty and defend the ideals of the Declaration.

A careful review of the colonial anti-slavery context, the development of abolitionist thought during the War for Independence, and the staunch leadership of the pro-freedom Founding Fathers reveals how America led the way in abolishing slavery. Instead of the modern academic narrative which attempts to debunk American exceptionalism, history shows that America was exceptional in their struggle for emancipation.

As mentioned earlier, by 1804 all of the New England states as well as Vermont, New York, and New Jersey had either completely abolished slavery or enacted positive laws for the gradual abolition of it. This is four years before the Federal Congress ends the slave trade, and almost three decades before England votes to follow suit and abolishes slavery. The American wave of emancipation constituted the largest group of people who had voluntarily freed their slaves up to that point in modern history.

The 1810 census documents that the total population of those states—Massachusetts (Maine included), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey—stood at 3,486,675.[v] This was approximately 48% of the total population, slave and free, of the United States at that time. Although not entirely free of slavery due to the gradual emancipation laws in states such as New York and New Jersey, the total percentage of the population waiting for emancipation was only 0.9% in states originally a colony. So, by 1804 half of America had succeeded in passing laws for the abolition of slavery, and only six years later they had been 99% effective in accomplishing that goal. Nobody else in the world was anywhere close to what those Northern States had succeeded in doing—in this America was exceptional.

Massachusetts itself has the honor of being the only state to have totally abolished slavery by the time the first census was completed in 1790, and Vermont was not far behind with only seventeen slaves left to be liberated by their laws.[vi] Massachusetts also receives distinction for passing potentially the earliest anti-slavery law in the American colonies within the 1641 enactment of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties. The tenth capital crime in that legal code stated that, “if any man stealeth a man or mankind, he shall surely be put to death. Ex. xxi.16.”[vii] Taken from the Bible as evidenced by the scriptural citation, manstealing was interpreted by the New England colonists to include what they considered improper enslavement—later it was to expand to all vestiges of slavery.

Blackstone describes manstealing as, “the forcible abduction or stealing away of a man, woman, or child, from their own country, and sending them into another.”[viii] Going further to say, “this is unquestionably a very heinous crime, as it robs the king of his subjects, banishes a man from his country, and may in its consequences be productive of the most cruel and disagreeable hardships.”[ix]

This law was not simply an empty letter either, and when the first instance of manstealing occurred in 1646 the General Court of Massachusetts was vigorous in its prosecution. The record explains that:

The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man stealing, as also to proscribe such timely redress for what is past, and such a law for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and most odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter, with others unlawfully taken, be, by the first opportunity, (at the charge of the country for present,) sent to his native country of Ginny, and a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice hereof, desiring of honored Governor would please put this order in execution.[x]

Interestingly, the Court chose to go farther than the law necessarily required, deciding to send back the slaves at the cost of the community. After making arrangements for the liberated slaves, the General Court then, “appointed a committee to examine witnesses and draw up the case about Captain Smith and Mr. Kezar killing stealing, and wronging of the negroes, etc.”[xi] This response to the arrival of a slave ship is markedly different than when the first one arrived on the shores of Jamestown, and it indicates an entirely different culture which from an extremely early period looked down upon the slave trade.

Their reliance upon the Bible to begin to understand their relationship to slavery led New Englanders down a dramatically different path than both the Southern colonies and the world. Instead of viewing enslavement as a natural product of race, they understood it arose out of either personal misfortunes (such as debt) or bad choices (such as crime). The New England slaves therefore attained levels of rights unheard of practically anywhere else.

The Puritans’ idea of a “Bible commonwealth” relied upon the Mosaic laws for much of their own statutes concerning servitude. Therefore, slaves had an increased level of social status with rights including the right to own property, testify in court against white men, wives could not be compelled to testify against their husbands, had legal standing to sue which included suing their masters for freedom.[xii] Additionally, enslaved people had the equal procedural rights within the courtroom which, together with the right to sue, led many slaves to advocate for freedom through the New England government.[xiii]

The wider context of slavery both domestically and globally makes North America’s record even more exceptional. First it must be noted that slavery has existed within every culture historically documented. In fact, the story of American slavery begins long before Christopher Columbus ever dreamed of sailing across the ocean sea. The native tribes he discovered all had slaves and on a whole it is estimated that 20 to 40 percent of native populations were slaves, making the native Americans on par with the slave empires of Greece and Rome.^[xiv] This native American tradition of slavery continued uninterrupted by colonization, and by 1860, 12.5% of the population in the Indian Nations were black slaves, equaling one slave for every eight Indians.[xv]

Expanding the scope of inquiry even wider, throughout the nearly 400 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade 12,521,337 Africans were taken to be slaves around the world. Only a small minority of that number ever embarked to the areas that would become the United States—305,326 to be exact, totaling 2.4%.[xvi] For comparison, Spain and her territories received 1,061,524 slaves during that same period representing nearly 8.5%, and France only barely received more with 11% (1,381,404). Next was Great Britain with 3,259,441 slaves taken from Africa, meaning that over one quarter (26%) of all slaves sourced from the African continent were intended for English lands. That, however, pales in comparison to Portugal and Brazil, where 5,848,266 enslaved humans were shipped—nearly 47% of the total number. Even the Netherland had more stake in the trans-Atlantic slave trade than America did, themselves accounting for 554,336 and 4.4%.[xvii]

What is more, slavery both globally and in America was never simply white on black. Just as every people group has owned slaves, every people group has correspondingly been enslaved. Prior to the 1700s there were more white slaves globally than there were black slaves.[xviii] In fact, early records from Massachusetts reveal that in December of 1738 several white men were sentenced to slavery for a variety of crimes. One had been an indentured servant who physically assaulted the man he was working for, and then “did conspire also against the life of his said whole common wealth,” and two others for theft alongside breaking and entering.[xix] The next year the Massachusetts court similarly sentenced another white criminal to slavery for attempted rape.[xx]

In addition to white slavery in America, Americans themselves were sold into slavery in the Barbary Coast of North Africa after being captured by Muslim slave traders. Charles Sumner, the famous abolitionist and founder or the Republican party, documented that fourteen men from Boston and Philadelphia would fetch $34,792 in the African slave market of 1785.[xxi] Beyond just the American sailors, the Muslim Barbary Pirates conducted extensive slave raids along the European coast, meaning that:

“Between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.”[xxii]

Just as there were white slaves both in America and the world, there also were black slave masters. Carter Woodson, often considered the “Father of Black History,” conducted a close study of the 1830 census data in order to investigate rates of free blacks who themselves owned slaves. His research revealed that, out of those free blacks who were eligible to own slaves (head of households living in states which would later join the Confederacy), 16% of them owned black slaves.[xxiii] Certain states, however, stand out in their relatively high frequency. South Carolina for instance saw 43% of eligible free black people own slaves, 40% in Louisiana, 26% in Mississippi, 25% in Alabama, and 20% in Georgia.[xxiv] Such statistical data simply shows just how varied the institution of slavery was throughout both history and the American story—far from the monolithic image presented by revisionists.

With so much of the world having been embroiled with slavery and the slave trade for hundreds of years, it makes the actions of America not only unique but remarkable. By the time the 18^th century began, many of the northern colonies began passing laws which established duties on importing slaves. The intent was for such acts cut away the slaver’s profit margin and therefore making it economically undesirable to import slaves into those regions. In 1700 elements of the Massachusetts citizenry petitioned the legislature for restrictive duty on slaves “to discourage the bringing of them” of forty shillings.[xxv] The next year the colony sought to set a limit to the period of slavery that a person could serve, and in 1705 they were successful in obtaining a four-pound import duty.[xxvi] Rhode Island had passed a slightly smaller duty two years earlier of a still substantial three-pounds.[xxvii]

Other colonies such as New York and Pennsylvania attempt to pass even more restrictive bills regulating the slave trade into relative non-existence but many of their efforts were vetoed by the authority of the Crown.[xxviii] The Royal veto of anti-slavery measures, often because of the economic benefit which England derived from the global trade, became a common response to colonial attempts at restricting slavery.

Nearly seventy years later such practices nearly made it into the Declaration of Independence after appearing in Thomas Jefferson’s draft and being approved by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. The grievance against the slave trade was the longest out of all of them, occupying the better part of a page in addition to having the most words underlined or capitalized outside of the title. The grievance in the draft reported to Congress read as follows:

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation tither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.[xxix]

Many other Founding Fathers agreed with Jefferson—in fact, the majority of Founding Fathers agreed with him. Only two states voted against the grievance thus keeping it out of the final Declaration of Independence.

(It should also be noted that although many today claim that when the Declaration states that “all men are created equal” the Founding Fathers really meant to say “all white men are created equal,” Jefferson himself explicitly identifies slaves as men and thereby included in the American promise.)

With over a century of anti-slavery activity, it should come as no surprise to see a dramatic increase in manumissions and widespread emancipation during and immediately following the War for Independence. From 1790 to 1810 the number of free blacks in America increased from 59,466 to 108,395, displaying a growth rate of 82%. The next decade saw that number expand another 72% to 186,446.[xxx] While the number continued to grow albeit at a lower rate of growth in the years leading up to the Civil War, those first two decades of the American Republic saw the strongest rate of voluntary emancipation ever recorded up to that time. It is this period which Arthur Zilversmit calls the First Emancipation.[xxxi]

John Adams, an attorney prior to becoming a politician, recalled the environment of emancipation during those years saying:

“I was concerned in several Causes, in which Negroes sued for their Freedom before the Revolution.…I never knew a Jury, by a Verdict to determine a Negro to be a slave—They always found them free.”[xxxii]

During the Revolution itself many slaves who fought for freedom from England also achieved freedom from slavery, being manumitted on account of their service. William Whipple, signer of the Declaration and General under Washington, freed his slave, Prince Whipple during campaign after realizing the incongruity of his own actions.[xxxiii] Another veteran of the Revolutionary War, a slave named Prime, was actually re-enslaved after the war but, with the help of anti-slavery advocates, he successfully petitioned for his emancipation, winning his freedom not only on the battlefield but in the courtroom as well.

Upon examining this period, renown historian Benjamin Quarles remarked that the War for Independence and the environment leading up to it empowered the black population with the tools and personal agency to reach for their freedom as Americans. He writes that the slaves, “gave a personal interpretation to the theory of natural rights and the slogans of liberty and independence,” and many white leaders who were awakening to the injustice helped them in that greater revolution.[xxxiv]

This brief examination of the overarching facts and context concerning America’s early history with slavery shows that the story is infinitely more nuanced than the revisionist narratives propagated by Zinn, Lynd, and the New York Times. The real history, however, reveals that America’s record for anti-slavery is exceptional when placed in the context of the world at that time. Instead of presenting a view of history as if it Jamestown won the ideological battle for America, historians today must realize that the tree of slavery was choked out by the tree of liberty. That the ideas of Plymouth overcame those of Jamestown.

The story of the northern colonies, when properly told, shows that America was among the first places in the world to lead a successful fight against slavery in both word and deed. Furthermore, the anti-slavery Founding Fathers paved the path which many of the global abolitionist followed in the decades to come. America ought not to be remembered as a land of oppression but rather one of liberation. The New World has been the frontier of freedom from the beginning, being the first to struggle for emancipation and find large-scale success. Those small American Republics, carved out of the wilderness, showed a level of civilization unheard of at that early period, passing anti-slavery and abolition laws before virtually anywhere else in the world. America was indeed exceptional—a seedbed of liberty for themselves and the rest of the world.

[i] Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2009); Godfrey Hodgson, The Myth of American Exceptionalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

[ii] “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times (accessed December 5, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

[iii] Nikole Hannah-Jones, “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals were False When They were Written,” The New York Times (December 5, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html

[iv] Staughton Lynd, Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E. P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014), xii.

[v] Aggregate Amount of Each Description of Persons Within the United States of America, and the Territories Thereof (Washington: 1811), 1.

[vi] The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1858 (Boston: Crosby, Nicholas, and Company, 1858), 214.

[vii] Francis Bowen, editor, Documents of the Constitution of England and America, from Magna Charta to the Federal Constitution of 1789, (Cambridge: John Bartlett, 1854), 72.

[viii] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (London: A. Strahan and W. Woodfall, 1795), 4.218-219.

[ix] Ibid., 4.219.

[x] Nathaniel Shurtleff, Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston: William Whites, 1853), 1.168.

[xi] Ibid., 1.176.

[xii] Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), 19.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Fernando Santos-Granero, Vital Enemies: Slavery, Predation, and the Amerindian Political Economy of Life (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 226-227.

[xv] Joseph Kennedy, Preliminary Reports on the Eighth Census, 1860 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1862), 11.

[xvi] “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Estimates,” Slave Voyages, https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates (accessed December 6, 2019).

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Philip Morgan, “Origins of American Slavery,” Organization of American History Magazine of History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (July 2005), p. 53

[xix] Nathaniel Shurtleff, Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston: William Whites, 1853), 1.246.

[xx] Ibid., 1.269.

[xxi] Charles Sumner, White Slaves in the Barbary States (Boston: William D. Ticknor and Company, 1847), 32.

[xxii] Robert Davis, “Counting European on the Barbary Coast,” Past &Present, No. 172 (August 2001), 118.

[xxiii] Thomas J. Pressly, “‘The Known World’ of Free Black Slaveholders: A Research Note on the Scholarship of Carter G. Woodson,” The Journal of African American History 91, no. 1 (2006): 85.

[xxiv] Ibid.

[xxv] Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, 51.

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] Ibid.

[xxviii] Ibid., 47-49.

[xxix] Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 210-211.

[xxx] Kennedy, Preliminary Reports, 7.

[xxxi] Zilversmit, The First Emancipation.

[xxxii] Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1877), 401-402.

[xxxiii] William Nell, Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (Boston: Robert Wallcut, 1855), 198.

[xxxiv] Benjamin Quarles, “The Revolutionary War as a Black Declaration of Independence,” Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, edited by Ira Berlin (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1983), 285.

*Originally published: April 6, 2020

* This article concerns a historical issue and may not have updated information.

The State of Judicial Selections: The Missouri Plan and How it Fails

Introduction

Since much public policy is now created by the judiciary, the federal judicial system in America receives increasingly more attention from politicos, pundits, and reporters. Federal judicial appointments are often closely watched, as are cases at the US Supreme Court. Yet despite the attention, the original intent of the judiciary is not well understood today. And ironically, although 90 percent of all cases are heard at the state rather than the federal level,[i] the role and operation of the state judicial system is almost completely overlooked. With so much resting on state courts, how those judges are selected is undeniably important. Texas has recently become a center of attention for this issue.

Texas currently selects its judges by a vote of citizens through popular elections, but some want this to change. Due to the rise of Democratic voters in the larger urban areas of the state (such as Dallas and Houston), some Republican-leaning groups are urging a move away from allowing the people to choose their judges. Instead they urge the adoption of what has become known as the “Missouri Plan” (also known as “Merit Selection” or “Assisted Selection”), which eliminates contested judicial elections. However, as will be documented below, this so-called “Merit Selection” is based on subjective personal opinions rather than any objective standard of measurement. Instead of advancing well-prepared constitutional judges to seats, the “Missouri Plan” consolidates power into the hands of an unelected and unaccountable group of administrators, making the state judiciary more partisan and polarized.

Before examining the results of Merit Selection in other states, how does the plan work? While there is some difference in the way various states employ this system, the overarching details are similar. A small group of undemocratically appointed commissioners of supposed elite legal “experts” choose a tiny handful of nominees for a particular judgeship. The governor then picks one of those privately-selected nominees to become judge, and that largely ends the process.

But who are these “experts” that choose a state’s judges for the people of that state? In some states, the members of that small nominating commission are appointed by the governor, but usually the private state bar, legal associations, the legislature, the governor, and sometimes sitting judges split the choice of commissioners. Nearly 75% of the board members end up being lawyers,[ii] which has become such a problem that some states have passed laws limiting the number of attorneys that may be appointed. Texas is now being urged to accept this system as a replacement for having voters choose the judges who will rule over them.

Texas, The Nation, And Various Other Methods

A prominent group arguing for this shift is Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), an organization that has achieved many good things in the past, including major substantive tort reform. On its website, TLR explains why Texans should no longer be allowed to choose their judges:

Texas is one of only a few states that elects its judges.[1] Because there are often so many judges on the ballot and because these are often lower-profile election contests, many Texans simply don’t have enough knowledge about the candidates for judicial office to make informed decisions. Many voters cast their votes for judges based on party affiliation or name recognition, since they have no knowledge of the relative merits of the candidates. Historically, this has led to groups of long-serving, competent, experienced judges being swept out of office based on nothing other than partisan affiliation.[iii] (emphasis added)

Their aim is to prevent larger blue cities from electing an increasing number of Democrat judges rather than Republican ones by moving Texas away from democratically contested elections. But before examining whether adopting the Missouri Plan (or any of its derivatives) would be good for Texas, it is worthwhile to review the six different types of state judicial selection systems currently in use.

Nonpartisan Elections:

Used by 15 states, this is the most popular method. These are contested races in which judicial candidates do not formally identify with any official party—Democrat, Republican, or otherwise. This is done in hopes of encouraging voters to look deeper into the candidates’ actual record on issues and past a simple party designation. (The first non-partisan judicial election took place in 1873.[iv])

The Missouri Plan (Assisted Appointment, Merit System)

The second most popular system is the Missouri Plan, with a total of 14 states employing it at the State Supreme Court level. Begun in Missouri in 1940, it expanded rapidly, but since 1994 states have stopped adopting it, opting instead to retain their older systems.[v]

Gubernatorial Appointment

Also known as the federal model, the governor makes judicial appointments that then go before the legislative branch for confirmation. This method is currently used by 10 states, especially in the New England area. Originally, every new state that entered the Union after 1789 adopted the federal model but by the mid-to-late-1800s, most had moved to popular elections. In fact, since 1847, Hawaii has been the only state to enter the Union and select the federal model; the rest have opted for some form of citizen elections.[vi]

Partisan Elections

In 1832, Mississippi first moved away from the federal model and adopted partisan elections. New York followed suit in 1846, and then most of the rest of the nation.[vii] By the time the Civil War was fully underway, 70 percent of the states used contested partisan judicial elections,[viii] but some have since chosen other elections.

Hybrid

California, Maryland, and New Mexico use a hybrid system that merges the Missouri Plan with elements of the federal model—notably legislative confirmation. This retains at least a portion of the original constitutional checks and balances, but like the full-blown Missouri Plan, it often utilizes methods that keep the process of choosing judges excluded from the public.

Legislative Appointment

Used only in Virginia and South Carolina, this is the least common system. The legislature selects judges in a manner similar to the way Senators were chosen for the US Senate prior to the addition of the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, and has the option of reappointing those judges once their initial term has been completed.[ix]

The Philosophy Behind the Missouri Plan

With the push to adopt the Missouri Plan/Merit Selection in Texas, it is important to examine whether it justifies abandoning longstanding citizen voting traditions. Supporters offer two primary reasons for adopting a new system.

The first argument was presented above by Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR): “Texans simply don’t have enough knowledge” to make “informed decisions.”[x] This premise leads them to conclude that an unelected body of supposed experts (on whom TLR hopes to have substantial influence) is more likely to choose the type of judges TLR would prefer to have on the bench.

In one regard, TLR is absolutely right that an educated citizenry is vital for a healthy and vigorous political life. As Thomas Jefferson affirmed, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”[xi]

Signer of the Declaration Samuel Huntington agreed, declaring:

While the great body of freeholders are acquainted with the duties which they owe to their God, to themselves, and to men, they will remain free. But if ignorance and depravity should prevail, they will inevitably lead to slavery and ruin.[xii]

But if the problem TLR is trying to solve is citizen ignorance, the solution is citizen education, not reducing their rights and increasing an already over-bloated and unaccountable government bureaucracy. Informing citizens may not be the shortest or easiest route to their objectives, but it is undoubtedly the best for preserving political freedom.

The second argument for the Missouri Plan is that Merit Selection will stop corruption. Supporters allege that judicial corruption occurs because elections not only invite special interest money but they make judges too accountable to the people. As one group explained, “justices should be freed from wondering if their rulings will affect their job security.”[xiii] Proponents believe that if both money and the people are removed from the process, there will be less corruption.

Of course, this argument ignores the fact that the appointing commissioners also have their own vested interests and personal opinions as to how things should go in the judiciary, and they will select candidates accordingly. And if the concern is that special interest groups are “buying off” judges through donations, giving more political power to an unelected body is not the solution. There is no direct accountability for that body, their biases are not transparent, and recourse is difficult if not impossible to achieve, which increases rather than reduces opportunities for political malfeasance.

At its base, the Missouri Plan violates three core constitutional principles originally set forth by the Framers of our documents.

Three Fundamental Constitutional Principles the Missouri Plan Violates

1. Accountability

The first question that should always be asked with any political decision is, “How does this measure affect our liberty? —does it increase or reduce the rights and power of the citizenry?” If any part of the government is made less accountable, that proposal will be destructive of constitutional integrity.

Revolutionary patriot and signer of the Declaration Elbridge Gerry affirmed, “The origin of all power is in the people, and they have an incontestable right to check the creatures of their own creation.”[xiv] Whenever the people lose their ability to hold governmental bodies accountable for the execution of their public trust, it is a fundamental infringement on the rights of the people.

Defenders of the Missouri Plan claim their system does provide methods of recourse for the people, but even a cursory glance shows that the committee selection process is perhaps the least accountable system of all. The logic is so backward that one of the groups actively promoting this plan strangely argues that it is good “because concentrating power in one decision maker promotes greater accountability”[xv]

The lessons of history are clear and its voices of experience unanimous: whenever power becomes more concentrated, it generates increased autonomy, decreased accountability, and diminished freedom.

2. Preserving Constitutional Checks and Balances

Proponents of the Missouri Plan claim that citizen accountability over the judiciary is retained through judicial retention elections. (A retention election is one in which only the name of the sitting judge is on the ballot. A citizen simply votes yes or no for that judge, and if enough citizens vote no, then that judge is removed and the commission will select someone else to be judge.)

Not surprisingly, under this system the incumbent is reelected more than 99 percent of the time.^[xvi] The reason for this is simple: in a contested election there is an opponent to point out and publicize what the incumbent has done wrong; without this, citizens rarely know that a wrong has occurred. (By the way, if citizens are too uneducated to make the initial selection of a good judge, why do proponents believe they will make a wiser choice in a retention election?)

Despite claims to the contrary, Merit Selection is not a neutral system that chooses the best judges. To the contrary, it can be even more partisan and polarizing than popular elections. As an example, in Missouri from 1995 to 2008, Democrats received just over half of the general election vote, but of judges selected by the Merit System who made political contributions, 87 percent of them donated to the Democrat party.[xvii] Clearly, judges chosen by Merit Selection accurately reflects the beliefs of those who chose them, not the beliefs of the voters in the state they are to judge.

3. Maintaining Judicial Oversight

America’s concern with having judges not directly accountable to the people can be traced back to well before the American War for Independence. For example, in 1765, after years of living under British appointed judges, Founding Fathers like Samuel Adams began advocating for increased judicial accountability.[xviii] Consequently, when the Declaration of Independence was penned, four of its 27 grievances addressed judicial abuses, specifically lamenting that the King had “made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their office and the amount and payment of their salaries.” This was Britain’s version of a “Merit Selection” system.

The Constitution sought to correct this by greatly limiting the power of the Judicial Branch. As Federalist 78 affirmed, the judiciary in America:

has no influence over either the sword or the purse—no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society—and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will.… [T]he judiciary is, beyond comparison, the weakest of the three departments of power.…[and] the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter.[xix] (emphasis added)

Jefferson explained why the Judiciary should never be independent from the people:

It should be remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in politics that whatever power in any government is independent is absolute also…. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass.[xx]

In fact, he specifically argued that if the people were to be left out of any branch, it definitely should not be the judiciary:

We think, in America, that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government….Were I called upon to decide whether the people had best be omitted in the legislative or judiciary department, I would say it is better to leave them out of the legislative. The execution of the laws is more important than the making them.[xxi]

Because the impact from an unaccountable judiciary can be so substantial, it was intentionally designed to be what the Federalist Papers had called “the weakest branch.” At the federal level, judges were to be kept in check by the threat of impeachment, and unlike today, that was not an empty threat during the Founding Era. A number of judges were impeached and removed due to improper judicial behavior, including offenses such as rudeness to witnesses, profanity in the courtroom, judicial high-handedness, and judicial activism.[xxii]

Joseph Hopper Nicholas (who served in the federal Congress under Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson) led several of the judicial removal efforts. When some objected that the judiciary should be more independent, he warned:

Give them [judges] the powers and the independence now contended for and.…your government becomes a despotism and they become your rulers. They are to decide upon the lives, the liberties, and the property of your citizens; they have an absolute veto upon your laws by declaring them null and void at pleasure.…If all this be true—if this doctrine be established in the extent which is now contended for—the Constitution is not worth the time we are now spending on it. It is—as it has been called by its enemies—mere parchment, for these judges, thus rendered omnipotent, may overleap the Constitution and trample on your laws.^[xxiii]

Massachusetts understood this, and its state constitution made the point that all three branches—including the judiciary—were to be accountable to the people. (Ratified in 1780, the Massachusetts constitution is still in use today, making it the only active constitution in the world older than the US Constitution.) Written by notables such as John Adams, John Hancock, Sam Adams, and others, it declared:

All power residing originally in the people and being derived from them, the several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority—whether Legislative, Executive, or Judicial—are their substitutes and agents and are at all times accountable to them. [xxiv] (emphasis added)

Today an “independent judiciary” (meaning one unaccountable to the people or any other branch) has become the standard advanced by anti-constitutional Progressive groups such as Open Society (Soros funded), the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Equal Justice Initiative. Groups like these join TLR in their claim that the American people can’t be trusted to choose the right judge through regular elections and therefore a Merit Selection system such as the Missouri Plan is needed. (These groups fully understand that it is easier for them to influence or take over a small appointing commission than the full electorate of a state.)

Conclusion

In summary, the primary arguments for “Merit Selection” are: (1) the people lack the capacity to “appoint for themselves judges and officers” (Deuteronomy 16:18), and (2) elections, which make judges accountable, cause judges to become too political. The Founding Fathers believed the opposite on both points.

Concerning the first, Thomas Jefferson pointed out that if voters are ill-informed, the remedy certainly is not to reduce their involvement with the judiciary:

When the Legislative or Executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.[xxv]

Concerning the second point (that judges should not be directly accountability to the people), signer of the Constitution John Dickinson queried “what innumerable acts of injustice may be committed—and how fatally may the principles of liberty be sapped—by a succession of judges utterly independent of the people?”^[xxvi] Abraham Lincoln likewise affirmed that if judges are given the final word without accountability to the people, then “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having…resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”[xxvii]

If America is to remain a strong constitutional republic, we must protect the safeguards established by our forefathers to disperse power and authority. The safest repository was and always will be the citizens—and if the citizens lack proper knowledge, the correct solution is citizen education, not a return to the same authoritarian practices the British once employed against our colonial ancestors.

Thomas Jefferson reminded us of the fundamental principle of American government that should guide our considerations in the question of whether a system such as the Missouri Plan is worthy:

[T]he will of the majority—the natural law of every society—is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err, but its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived. Let us then, my dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of the society. We are safe with that, even in its deviations, for it soon returns again to the right way.[xxviii]

The American experiment rests upon the basic premise that we would rather suffer from the ignorant errors of the people than the deliberate machinations of a political elite. To voluntarily surrender the rights of the people for fear they might vote for the wrong party is to betray both today’s citizens as well as the great historical sacrifices made in order for Americans to make their own political choices.

The creation of a body of unelected bureaucrats deciding who will be the people’s judges weakens liberty, politicizes courts, and reduces accountability. In Texas (as well as the rest of America), the Missouri Plan/Merit Selection should be rejected. _▀