The Cross of Gold, the 1896 presidential election, Scopes, and beyond

Part the last of our series on William Jennings Bryan’s famous 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech brings us to the 1896 election, for which Bryan was the Democratic candidate. He ran against Goldbug William McKinley who, like most Republicans, blamed the Democrats and their bi-metallism platform for the economic Panic of 93. The McKinley campaign issued fake dollar bills that read “IN GOD WE TRUST…FOR THE OTHER 53 CENTS” to illustrate the Republicans’ belief that a dollar backed by silver instead of gold would only be worth 47 cents. McKinley looked for support not only from the big businessmen, financiers, and bankers Bryan decried in his Cross of Gold speech, but also from rich farmers, skilled workers, and small businessmen who had more to gain from reducing the flow of currency and curbing inflation.

McKinley was successful in winning this portion of the electorate, which included the wealthy farming states of the Great Lakes region and gold-mining California. McKinley’s alliance with stable, wealthy sections of the populace seemed more promising for the nation’s economic future than Bryan’s rag-tag army of small farmers, coal miners, and social reformers. The 176 electoral votes won in the poor southern and midwestern states that went to Bryan in the election could not match the 271 electoral votes of the wealthy northern and eastern states, and California that went to McKinley.

President McKinley was blessed by incredible good luck: shortly after his election, word of the gold finds in the Klondike reached the continental U.S. California’s gold had pretty much dried up, and McKinley had been faced with the problem of getting enough gold to replace the silver he was going to remove from the currency. That problem was solved by the Klondike, and McKinley was credited at the time with restoring the boom economy.

Bryan ran against McKinley once again in 1900, still pushing for bi-metallism and the little guy, and accusing McKinley of imperialism because of the Spanish-American War of 1898. McKinley won easily, as gold and the war were both very popular with the average American. 1908 saw Bryan run once again, and once again advocating silver while attacking the Republicans for trust-busting that helped big business and hurt small business. His slogan was “Shall the People Rule?” Their response was to elect William Howard Taft in a landslide.

After 1908, Bryan gave up his attempts on the presidency and became a much sought-after public speaker. He was asked to deliver his Cross of Gold speech hundreds of times, and he did so, never tiring of its populist message, and taking heart from its continued popularity. He was made Secretary of State in 1913 by President Wilson but resigned after Wilson declared war on Germany in 1915. Bryan continued to promote reform politics, supporting both Prohibition and women’s suffrage.

But his most famous second act was acting as the prosecution counsel in the famous 1925 Scopes Trial (the Scopes “Monkey Trial”) in which Tennessee teacher John Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution. Bryan’s reputation made him a seemingly knockout choice, but he was humiliated and outwitted by defense counsel Clarence Darrow, and while the jury returned the guilty verdict everyone had expected they would, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling on a technicality. If you have ever seen a cartoon or show that has a southern lawyer facing a big-time lawyer, and the southern lawyer says “Now, I’m just a country lawyer, but…” then tells a folksy anecdote, then goes in for the kill on the uppity, smug lawyer, that is a reference to Darrow’s skewering of Bryan. It’s unfair in that the big-time lawyer is usually represented as a rich, big-city, corporate lawyer, which is a 180 from who Bryan was, but that is the image that has gone down to posterity. Bryan’s reputation was shattered by the daily newspaper accounts of his humiliations in court at the hands of Darrow; fortunately for him, Bryan did not live long with the embarrassment. He died from complications from diabetes five days after the trial ended.

Thus the curtain closes on Bryan and the Cross of Gold. He recorded the still-popular speech in 1921, and you can hear it here. It’s worth our while to understand this speech and its importance, and to see that while Bryan never won the presidential office he sought, his ideas and reforms were in large part successful, and part of our lives today.

The Cross of Gold speech: a close reading

Part 3 of our series on William Jennings Bryan’s famous 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech focuses on the text of the speech itself. We’ve looked at the battle over bi-metallism fought by Silverites and Goldbugs that the speech addresses in part 2, and now we’ll see how Bryan lays out his argument for silver.

The text is from History Matters; the following are excerpts, not the entire text (it’s too long for us to consider here). All italics are my own unless noted. So let’s begin:

“I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability; but this is not a contest among persons. The humblest citizen in all the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause is stronger than all the whole hosts of error that they can bring. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity. When this debate is concluded, a motion will be made to lay upon the table the resolution offered in commendation of the administration and also the resolution in condemnation of the administration. I shall object to bringing this question down to a level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest of principle.”

—Remember that Bryan was speaking at the Democratic National Convention, so the distinguished gentlemen his audience have already listened to are the candidates vying to become the party’s presidential nominee, and their supporters. Bryan, while a Democrat, was in spirit a Populist; he was a supporter of the “common man”, the farmer and laborer, as opposed to the big businessman, banker, and machine politician. He immediately begins by positioning himself as a somewhat common man who has every right to speak to such a high-powered convention because he is “clad in the armor of a righteous cause”. He may be but “an atom”, but he speaks in the name of an eternal principle “as holy as the cause of liberty” itself, and, indeed the cause of humanity itself. Anyone who studies rhetoric will see a master practitioner in Bryan. He is in just one paragraph humble yet charged with integrity, a defender of humanity. Anyone who could listen to him and not choose the “resolution in condemnation of the [current president’s] administration”, the resolution against the gold standard, is basically an inhuman criminal.

“Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have passed. Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out as this issue has been by the voters themselves.”

—Never? There’s never been such a great issue as this? Not federalism, states’ rights, or slavery? Technically Bryan is covering himself by saying that this issue will be fully decided by votes, not war or acts of Congress. But all the same it’s a dramatic overstatement.

“On the 4th of March, 1895, a few Democrats, most of them members of Congress, issued an address to the Democrats of the nation asserting that the money question was the paramount issue of the hour; asserting also the right of a majority of the Democratic Party to control the position of the party on this paramount issue; concluding with the request that all believers in free coinage of silver in the Democratic Party should organize and take charge of and control the policy of the Democratic Party. …Our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory, until they are assembled now, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment rendered by the plain people of this country. …Old leaders have been cast aside when they refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they would lead, and new leaders have sprung up to give direction to this cause of freedom. Thus has the contest been waged, and we have assembled here under as binding and solemn instructions as were ever fastened upon the representatives of a people.”

—This is the important point: the bi-metallist platform of the Democratic party is the result of grass-roots activism; the “common men” of the party, the voters, have sent the clear message that they want the party to support silver coinage. Party leaders who wouldn’t go along with the people were voted out, and new leaders, like Bryan, voted in. Thus, Bryan, and his listeners, are under “binding and solemn instructions” to support silver. This is how Bryan represents the cause of humanity, and liberty: he is truly a representative of the majority of the people of his party, who lives only to do their will.

“The gentleman who just preceded me [Governor Russell] spoke of the old state of Massachusetts. Let me assure him that not one person in all this convention entertains the least hostility to the people of the state of Massachusetts. But we stand here representing people who are the equals before the law of the largest cities in the state of Massachusetts. When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a businessman. The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go 1,000 feet into the earth or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured in the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who in a backroom corner the money of the world.”

—Bryan claims that farmers, small businessmen, miners, and common laborers are just as important to the U.S. economy as big businessmen, bankers, lawyers, and Wall Street traders because the former does the exact same thing as the latter: they generate wealth. They put money into the economy. They grow the economy. But he goes further: the small businessman and farmer are actually better than the bankers and big bosses because the little guy actually does real work—he “by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth”. Big guys grow fat off the sweat of the little guy’s brow. Bankers don’t do anything but collect interest, bosses make money off their workers. Miners risk life and limb, while traders sit in nice rooms betting on what the market will do. Does the trader really deserve as much respect and consideration as the miner? Bryan thinks not.

“Ah, my friends, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!”

—Here Bryan builds on his theme of the virtue of the laborer and takes it into truly melodramatic realms. The little guys are all pioneers and mystical seers, “rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds”, and can be found “out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead”. Apparently only country people love nature, provide an education for their children, love God, and bury their dead. Since the little guys of the Democratic party voted for silver, Bryan and all the leaders of the party are speaking for these people, but it goes beyond that; suddenly, Bryan and his audience are those people. “They” turns to “we” as Bryan goes on: “We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity… We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!” For someone who started out assuring a Massachusetts Democrat that no one in the room had any hostility toward the east coast, Bryan has quickly turned the east coast into a hideous “them” who the Democrats are not just fighting but defying.

“Mr. Jefferson, who was once regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have a different opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.”

—If putting democratically elected government representatives rather than rich, corrupt bankers, in control of U.S. economic policy was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, it’s good enough for Bryan.

“The gentleman from New York says that he will propose an amendment providing that this change in our law shall not affect contracts which, according to the present laws, are made payable in gold. But if he means to say that we cannot change our monetary system without protecting those who have loaned money before the change was made, I want to ask him where, in law or in morals, he can find authority for not protecting the debtors when the act of 1873 was passed when he now insists that we must protect the creditor.”

—A New Yorker (of course–east coast!) says he’ll go along with bi-metallism, which reduces the value of the dollar, only if contracts that were signed before the bi-metallism law is passed are mandated to be paid in gold. So if I lend someone $10 in gold, I want them to repay that loan with ten valuable, gold-backed dollars, not ten silver-backed dollars that are only worth about $6 in the international markets. This would basically protect banks, the enemy of the farmer and small businessman who have to borrow a lot of money under the gold standard. But Bryan says, You’re very concerned about protecting lenders—why didn’t you care about protecting borrowers during the Crash of 1873, when many were forced into bankruptcies as banks called in loans? The New Yorker, of course, is biased against the little man.

“Now, my friends, let me come to the great paramount issue. If they ask us here why it is we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that if protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we did not embody all these things in our platform which we believe, we reply to them that when we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.”

—Why is the party focusing its entire platform on one issue, bi-metallism? Doesn’t the country have other problems that need to be addressed? Bryan replies that bi-metallism is the source of nearly all the problems in the country: debt, small business failure, monopoly, etc. If silver is restored, “all other necessary reforms will be possible.”

“Why is it that within three months such a change has come over the sentiments of the country? Three months ago, when it was confidently asserted that those who believed in the gold standard would frame our platforms and nominate our candidates, even the advocates of the gold standard did not think that we could elect a President… Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform that declared for the maintenance of the gold standard until it should be changed into bimetallism by an international agreement. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans ; and everybody three months ago in the Republican Party prophesied his election… Why this change? Ah, my friends, is not the change evident to anyone who will look at the matter? It is because no private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people the man who will either declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this people, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers…”

—Goldbugs had this 1896 election locked up with their pro-gold Republican candidate McKinley, and were sure bets to steamroll the Democrats into accepting the gold standard as well, but the sheer and pure power of the People, the little guys, won out. McKinley’s “personal popularity, however great”, cannot protect him from “the avenging wrath of an indignant people”. McKinley’s decision to act bilaterally with the United States’ international trading partners and adopt a currency policy that everyone agreed on, was in effect a move to “surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers…” Thus the rise of the Democrats, against all odds, in the election.

“If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization… we can tell them this, that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. [This] is a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? [The] sympathies of the Democratic Party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party. There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.”

—The only people who want the gold standard are the parasitic, idle, undemocratic rich. There is no trickle-down economics, where legislation that makes the rich richer also benefits the poor (“their prosperity will leak through on those below”). What does exist is poor men working their way up the ladder through their smarts and hard work and democratic principles, which benefits the whole nation.

“You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

—Immediately after this, Bryan will insist once again that he accuses the east coast of no wrong; it is clear, however, that this is a west v. east battle for him, great cities against small farms, “broad and fertile prairies” against cities. Farms are the backbone of the economy and the virtue of the nation, and it is farms that are irreplaceably important, not cities and banks and smokestacks.

“If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

—There is power in our union: the battle for silver will be won by the little man, the “producing masses of the nation”, and not the inactive parasites sitting on their golden thrones in New York or Boston. The poor man will not be crucified with a crown of thorns, will not be sacrificed to the gold standard; and since the little guy is humanity, “you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

One can only imagine the torrential applause this speech was concluded with. Bryan was elected the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and newspapers across the country reverberated with the story and the speech, which was reprinted ad infinitum. Next time, we’ll see how it all played out.

Next time: the 1896 election

The “Cross of Gold” speech: what is it about?

Welcome to a series on William Jennings Bryan’s famous 1896 Cross of Gold speech. This speech, delivered at the Democratic National Convention, helped win the Bryan, former Representative to Congress for Nebraska, the presidential nomination of the Democratic party. It’s a very famous speech and it was powerfully delivered, and was so popular that for decades after the convention Bryan was asked to deliver the Cross of Gold speech, and did.

But let’s start by being frank: this speech suffers, for the 21st-century reader, from two major drawbacks: first, and foremost, it never makes clear what on Earth the problem is that it’s addressing; and second, it is written in the bombastic 19th-century style that thrives on rhetorical flourishes and long, drawn-out analogies. Thus it’s hard for modern-day readers to make much headway through Cross of Gold. One might read the entire speech and not understand what issue Bryan is addressing. The reason for this is that by the time he gave this speech, the issue of coining silver v. remaining on the gold standard had been a violently contested political, social, and economic issue for decades. Bryan’s audience didn’t need a lesson on what the issue was. Everyone in that convention hall knew what their party’s stand was on silver, and all Bryan had to do was to reinforce the righteousness of that stance by talking about how it would help the farmer and other “common men”. It would be like giving a speech today where you just kept saying “Tea Party ideas”—your audience would know what that shorthand means. You wouldn’t have to explain it. You could just talk about how a) harmful or b) good those ideas were, depending on your political stance.

But today, we know little about the savage war over the coinage of silver, and this has created a terrible vacuum where we continue to study Bryan’s famous speech with almost no background on what it was addressing and no conception of what it means. It has become a ritual with no meaning. Let’s rectify that here.

We’ll move into the background of the speech next time with a history of the battle between Silverites and Goldbugs, as they were called, and the principles they were fighting over. It is actually fascinating, and focuses on themes that are still very much front-and-center in 21st-century U.S. politics, including “class warfare”, business v. individual rights, how much control the federal government should have, financial booms and busts, and more.

Next time: Silverites v. Goldbugs

“The most radical president” – some candidates

We heard someone involved in the campaign of a Republican primary candidate recently state that President Obama is “the most radical president in American history.” One is accustomed to hyperbole during an election season, but this was a particularly arresting case of myth-making. I assume this person meant “radical” as a negative, although radical change can be positive or negative. Whether well- or ill-intentioned, though, the claim that our current president is the most radical ever does not hold water. Even an extremely brief glance over presidential history brings to light many other candidates for that title:

George Washington: Radical in a good way. Encouraged a radically new form of government, one without a monarch, even when offered the post himself. Supported our new democratic system, represented it with honor and dignity to the world, and set crucially important precedents, including stepping down from office after his second four-year term. Tried to prevent political parties from forming—if he had been successful, we’d have a radically different political scene today.

Thomas Jefferson: Radical in mixed ways. It’s hard to picture Americans today admiring a president who supported a violent dictatorship and felt the U.S. should provide military support for it (as Jefferson did in France). Jefferson also overrode the Constitution to make the Louisiana Purchase (Congress, not the president, should likely have carried out any geographic expansion).

Andrew Jackson: Radical in a bad way. Sponsored intense corruption within his Administration by appointing cronies to high political office, legislated through the veto, and, most importantly and unforgivably, demanded and carried out the removal of the Native Americans of the southeast, even after the Supreme Court found in favor of the Cherokees’ remaining on their land.

Abraham Lincoln: Radical in a good way. He ended slavery in the United States by writing the Emancipation Proclamation, and refused to negotiate an end to the war by agreeing to allow slavery to continue in a restored Union. Pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. Planned to move an Amendment giving black men the right to vote through Congress as well. Went from racist to abolitionist in a few short years.

Woodrow Wilson: Radical in mixed ways. Promoted legislation to end child labor, pushed for the creation of the League of Nations and for U.S. membership. On the other hand, an entrenched racist who kept civil rights legislation at bay, helping to ensure that the 1910s extended the nadir of civil rights in this country another decade.

Franklin Roosevelt: Radical in mixed ways. Tried to govern bascially without Congress, tried to tamper with the Supreme Court to make it his tool, pursued a series of economic policies that helped lengthen the Depression. On the other hand, he understood that the government had an obligation to protect vulnerable categories of citizen, such as the elderly, children, and the poor. Provided a reliable federal safety net to these people for the first time in U.S. history.

Lyndon Johnson: Radical in a good way. The series of civil rights acts passed not only during his Administration, but because of his untiring efforts, finally put the nation on the track Lincoln had envisioned for Reconstruction. Education reform, Medicare, urban renewal, conservation, space exploration, and a war on poverty, all pushed forward by Johnson. His failure to see through the advisors who pushed the war in Vietnam is the blot on his record.

Ronald Reagan: Radical in a bad way. Set in motion the anti-government movement amongst conservatives, made cutting taxes and running a federal deficit a battle-cry of the Republican party, was generally unmoved by opportunities to negotiate an end to the Cold War.

George W. Bush: Radical in a bad way. Pursued war with Iraq based on misinformation about Iraqi arms manufacture from advisors, trampled on civil rights in the name of homeland security, and moved aggressively to stop taxation of the wealthy, immobilize the federal government, remove the federal safety net for vulnerable citizens, and pay for the war through deficit spending.

So there’s a short list of some radical presidents. We could use a few more who are radical in good ways.

American Isolationism: The Mock Trial of Hitler

In our last post on American isolationism before WWII we ended with the promise of an extraordinary demonstration against German fascism that took place in the U.S. in March 1934. That event was a mock trial of Adolf Hitler.

This article depends for its quotations on two good sources: “Publicly Deliberative Drama: The 1934 Mock Trial of Adolf Hitler for ‘Crimes against Civilization'”, Louis Anthes, The American Journal of Legal History , Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 391-410; and In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson, Crown, NY, 2011.

The trial, which was attended by 20,000 people, was sponsored by many groups; it originated with the American Jewish Congress and included many labor unions–in fact, two months earlier New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and AFL Vice-President Matthew Woll had led what they termed a working-class anti-fascist rally at the same location, Madison Square Garden. Now they joined two dozen other leaders in American society, religion, and politics, including former New York Court of Appeals Judge Samuel Seabury; John Haynes Holmes, Minister of the Community Church of New York City; Raymond Moley, former Under-Secretaryof State under Roosevelt; and Mayor LaGuardia.

The Case of Civilization v. Hitler begain with an indictment against Hitler and his government which, amongst other crimes, “has not only destroyed the foundations of the German Republic, but, under penalty of death, torture, and economic extermination, and by process of progressive strangulation, has reduced and subjugated to abject slavery all sections of its population.” Hours of speeches from the famous men assembled concluded with a decision against the Nazis. [Anthes 392]

The Nazi government was furious. It had protested to the U.S. State Department before the trial, news of which had reached Germany in February, and Hans Luther, the German Ambassador to the U.S. met repeatedly with State Deparment personnel, including Secretary Cordell Hull; each complaint and meeting ended with the Americans repeating that “our constitutional guaranties of freedom of expression” prohibited the federal government from stopping the trial, or any other peaceful public demonstration. The Germans persisted in complaining, and six days after the trial Luther raged to Hull that “such offensive and insulting acts by the people of one country against the Government and its officials of another country” should not be tolerated. Four days later, he appeared in Hull’s office with a list of what Luther described as “abusive and insulting expressions of American citizens toward the Hitler Government.” [Larson 239]

Hull’s reponse was firm: “…America’s relationship with the previous German government had been ‘uniformly agreeable’ and [it] was only during the control of the present government that the troubles complained of had arisen… The whole problem would go away, Hull intimated, if Germany ‘could only bring about a cessation of these reports of personal injuries which had been coming steadily to the Unitd Stats from Germany and arousing bitter resentment among many people here.” [Ibid, 240]

The mock trial of Hitler on March 7, 1934 was followed by a few other trials and many rallies against fascism, culminating in another Madison Square Garden rally in July 1942, led by Rabbi Wise, against Nazi atrocities. By that time, of course, the U.S. was at war with Nazi Germany. There are echoes of the 1934 trial in the Nuremburg Trials after the war, which the U.S. insisted upon over British and Soviet objections (Britain wanted show trials without a defense, if any, and the Soviets wanted to go straight to executions).

This trial and the anti-Nazi demonstrations that preceded and followed it do not, of course, mean that there was no pro-Nazi sentiment in the U.S; there was, and American fascists held their own rallies and marches. The largest was the German American Bund, which also drew 20,000 people to a rally in New York on President’s Day 1939. One feels more certain that many people attending this rally were truly isolationist; by February 1939 war was just months away, Germany had annexed the Sudetenland and Austria, and there was more concrete concern about America entering another war.

But the majority of Americans in the 1930s were not knee-jerk isolationists; they despised Nazism and were willing to oppose it in many ways, from boycotts to signing petitions to working with relief groups to try to help Jewish Germans. They did not want to fight another war, but they did not refuse to acknowledge that a) the Nazis had to be stopped, and b) that war might be the only way to do this. There is always a vocal minority that grabs the national spotlight; here we have two: the 20,000 who rallied against Hitler and the 20,000 who rallied for him. Given the commitment of Americans to the principles of our Constitution, and their willingness to fight once war did come, it is hard to believe that the latter group had more unspoken support amongst Americans than the former.

Were Americans really isolationist before WWII?

There are a few things you will read almost without fail in any history of the U.S., from textbook to blog: the Puritans had a strong work ethic; Americans were the underdogs in the Revolutionary War, Andrew Jackson was a champion of the common man; Mary Todd Lincoln was insane; and Americans were isolationists before each of the World Wars. Generally, the more you read about any “given” subject, the less certain you become of the common knowledge dispensed about it, and sometimes you do a complete 180, realizing that the traditional take on a historical moment is just not true. That’s where Truth v. Myth comes from, and that’s what we’re looking at here.

American isolationism is a tricky topic. Generally, the cult of American isolationism has been built on these cornerstones: the lack of political action taken against Germany by the U.S. government until war was declared; Americans’ over-arching concern with the domestic economy during the Depression, which precluded any real or sustained interest in foreign affairs; and Roosevelt’s struggles to get Congress to authorize material support for Britain from 1940-1941.

The first and last of these concerns official government action; the second addresses the man in the street. They are often connected by saying, The man in the street did not want war with Germany and so the government tried to stay out of it. Only when Pearl Harbor was attacked did Americans rise up and demand war, and so Congress declared it.

But it’s clear when you study the U.S. in the interwar period that there was no single, national opinion on Europe and whether to intervene in German policy. The majority of Americans were concerned about what was happening in Germany; the increasingly oppressive and criminal policies the Nazi government introduced from the start of its rule in March 1933 were fully covered in the U.S. press, and that coverage alarmed and angered many Americans. More Americans had ancestors from Germany than from any other European nation, so millions of German-Americans were outraged at what they considered to be the Nazi destruction of German culture and civilization. Other Americans worried that Germany would provoke another war in Europe—not simply because they didn’t want the U.S. to fight another war, but because the struggling U.S. economy needed a strong European export market. Communist and Socialist Americans were united with Democrats and Republicans in decrying the rise of fascist dictatorship. And Jewish Americans spread the word of the growing persecution of Jewish Germans through every available outlet.

So we see that there was a great deal of concern and anger about the Reich and its policies, and there was also real activism against Nazi Germany. Jewish Americans led the way, in particular Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, who organized an anti-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1933 that drew 25,000 attendees. In the depths of the Depression, Wise called for an economic boycott against Nazi Germany that was supported by the American Federation of Labor and the International Trade Union Congress as well as the Jewish Labor Committee. The determination to isolate and attack Nazi Germany thus cut across religious lines.

Why didn’t the U.S. government act against the Nazis if so many Americans were against Germany? That is a very complex topic for another post (and has been addressed in many books), but suffice it to say, for here, that there were several factors at play: the government did not want to provoke another war if there was a diplomatic solution; the government did not receive any real support from any European nation for ostracizing Nazi Germany; and, significantly, the government, like most governments in Europe, simply did not believe that a government so oppressive, so cartoonish, so ridiculous and unstable, could possible last very long. Just as the Founders wrote slavery protections into our Constitution because they felt certain that slavery could not possible endure for very long in our democracy, so the U.S. (and Europe) continued to maintain as normal a relationship as possible with Nazi Germany, certain that it would quickly fall apart or be destroyed by an uprising of the German people.

In the meanwhile, Americans who also could not believe the Nazi regime would last did not ignore the growing threat. Local newspapers in big cities and small towns published the criminal actions of the German government. Many people with relatives in Germany worked to get them out of that country. Jewish Americans continually broadcast details of the emerging Holocaust. And, as we’ll see in the next post, there was an extraordinary demonstration against Hitler on March 7, 1934, that infuriated Germany and impacted relations with the U.S.

Next time: Hitler on trial in Manhattan

Child labor in the U.S. during the Industrial Revolution

Following up on our earlier post on child labor in the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries, we consider how any child who worked 12-hour days 6 days a week experiencing ungodly levels of air and noise pollution; financial, physical, and often sexual exploitation; fatigue, hunger, and illness or injury lived to tell the tale. What got children through this sort of life?

One leavening factor was that the child usually worked alongside family members. This meant the child worker could share food with someone, had company, and knew someone at work spoke and understood her language if she hadn’t learned English yet. Another was that, as we described in the first post, most of these children expected to work like adults, and were proud of their ability to contribute to the family economy. They weren’t snatched from a happy childhood of school and play and thrown into the factory; they were born to work and in some sense could not fully miss what they never had.

But the most important factor in America was that child laborers and their families believed their days in the factory might be numbered—in America, land of opportunity, one could reasonably hope to work one’s way up from the factory floor. If a boy worked hard, learned English, and stayed alive, he could become the floor manager or boss. If he was really sharp, he could become a white-collar assistant manager. A girl hoped to work only until she got married—if she was smart and lucky, she might marry an overseer and retire to a life of non-factory work (working from home as a seamstress, laundress, or hat-maker, for example). If she was very lucky, she could marry one of those white-collar managers and never work again.

The promise of rising up, even entering the middle class, white-collar world after a relatively brief if truly hellish few years on the factory floor drove many child workers, and gave them the mental fortitude to make it through the factory work day. This was their parents’ hope, too. And even if a child worker never progressed past overseer, his own children might do better, and then a grandchild might end up going to school and being a doctor or lawyer. That was the promise that didn’t exist for most immigrants in their “old country”. American exacted a toll, but it offered a payoff.

Even children who labored without hope of their own advancement did it for a sibling; stories abound of siblings working slavishly to pay for one smart, usually younger brother to go to school and even college. If that one brother made it, he could relieve the sufferings of his whole family. Many a young girl worked tirelessly to give her brother a better life, and dreamed of the day his success would allow her retirement from the machine floor.

So there was a powerful psychological impetus for many of the children who worked in factories during this period, namely the belief that it would pay off one day and they would no longer have to work so hard, even if it was a brother or son who eventually made a life of relative leisure possible. That was the promise of America.

As we turn our throughts back to today’s child laborers, most of whom are basically enslaved in cotton fields or gold mines, we see there is no promise of a payoff of any kind motivating their labor—just fear and hopelessness. One story about the children who are enslaved to work in “fair trade” cotton fields in Burkina Faso we heard today actually made the claim that the farmers there who beat children almost to death for not picking enough cotton don’t know that that is wrong because “no one has told them it’s wrong”. We think Clarisse Kambire, shown here, knows that it’s wrong:

Clarisse Kambire, 13, a child laborer, poses for a photograph in the room where she sleeps in Benvar, Burkina Faso, on Friday, Nov. 11, 2011. In Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world, where child labor is endemic to the production of its chief crop export, paying lucrative premiums for organic and fair traden cotton has — perversely — created fresh incentives for exploitation. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

And so we will state that it’s impossible that any adult could “not understand” the injustice of child labor, the inhumanity of child slave labor, and the crime of beating child workers. Bosses and plantation farmers in the U.S. in the 1800s knew it was wrong to exploit children; they just also knew that no one would stop them from exploiting those children, and therefore they did it. Everyone, everywhere, knows that this is wrong. More power to those who are working around the world, and in the U.S., to try to stop child labor once and for all.

Summarizing the Dred Scott Decision

Here in the final installment of our series on the 1857 Dred Scott decision, we conclude our close reading of Chief Justice Taney’s majority opinion and sum up what the case meant in its own time, and what it means to us today.

Taney began the opinion by citing precedent for upholding slavery, pointing out that slavery was written into U.S. law by the Founders. He then explained why the Founders were racist (as we would say; Taney certainly did not put it this way), and thought black people were inferior, and took this to its logical conclusion—if black Americans are ignorant and cannot understand law, they cannot be made citizens because they cannot uphold democracy. Therefore, the Founders did not accidentally omit black Americans from the definition of citizen, but consciously acknowledged that black Americans could not function as citizens. Thus, they did not ever mean for the definition of citizen to be changed to include black Americans.

Remember that this is Taney’s interpretation; we know that slavery was such a divisive issue amongst the Founders that the new nation was almost torn apart at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Plenty of Founders did not hold this opinion of black Americans, and even many of those who supported slavery did believe that someday it might be abolished. But we need to stick with Taney’s thinking here to understand his decision.

We see that Taney is actually avoiding ruling on Dred Scott and slavery at all; he is refusing to involve his Court in the slavery debate because he believes Congress should be the sole author of slave law. Taney says the Court’s hands are tied: enslaved people are miserable, Taney says, and the people enslaving them are despotic, but the law is the law.

Why not just amend the Constitution if slavery is wrong? Overturn precedent—the Court can do that. Here, in his conclusion, Taney will erase that possibility as well. Again, these are excerpts, and not the full text of the opinion, and all italics are mine:

“No one, we presume, supposes that any change in public opinion or feeling, in relation to this unfortunate race, in the civilized nations of Europe or in this country, should induce the court to give to the words of the Constitution a more liberal construction in their favor than they were intended to bear when the instrument was framed and adopted.”

—So even if not everyone looks down on black people like they did in the past, slavery is law in the U.S., it is supported by the Constitution, and black people are specifically and deliberately excluded from citizenship by the Constitution. You can’t have a liberal interpretation of the Constitution in this regard—it allows no loopholes.

“Such an argument would be altogether inadmissible in any tribunal called on to interpret it. If any of its provisions are deemed unjust, there is a mode prescribed in the instrument itself by which it may be amended;”

—At last! Why not just amend the Constitution if we’re not all agreed now, in 1857, that slavery is justified because black people are inferior?

“…but while it remains unaltered, it must be construed now as it was understood at the time of its adoption… Any other rule of construction would abrogate the judicial character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day. This court was not created by the Constitution for such purposes.”

—This is an astounding solipsism. Taney is saying that the Constitution can be changed (altered), but until it is changed, it must be obeyed (“it must be construed now as it was at the time of its adoption”). So yes, you can change the Constitution if you deem it unjust, but until you change it you can’t change it. And he’s not going to change it… because it hasn’t been changed yet.

Equally astounding is the next statement, that changing the Constitution (ruling differently on its construction) is not something the judicial branch can do. Taney equates finding the Constitution to be unjust with popular fads or opinions. The implication is that no reasonable, far-sighted, intelligent person would ever find the Constitution to be unjust, so anyone who wants to change it is a nut who probably has lots of crazy ideas. The judiciary will not stoop to that. This despite the clear role laid out in the Constitution for the judicial branch to analyze U.S. laws and amend any that are unjust.

“And upon a full and careful consideration of the subject, the court is of opinion, that… Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and not entitled as such to sue in its courts…”

—After maintaining that the judiciary has no Constitutional role in changing U.S. law, and reiterating that it was no accident that led the Founders to exclude black Americans from citizenship, Taney delivers the actual opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford: there is no Dred Scott v. Sandford. The case should never have been brought in the first place since black Americans aren’t citizens. Taney is basically saying a) his hands are tied—he could never overturn slavery by amending the perfect Constitution, and b) that option isn’t even open to him since he’s not hearing a case about slavery, but dismissing a wrongful suit.

Now Taney makes a bizarre statement:

“It is true that the result either way, by dismissal or by a judgment for the defendant, makes very little, if any, difference in a [monetary] or personal point of view to either party. But the fact that the result would be very nearly the same to the parties in either form of judgment, would not justify this court in sanctioning an error in the judgment which is patent on the record, and which, if sanctioned, might be drawn into precedent, and lead to serious mischief and injustice in some future suit.”

—How a judgment in Scott’s favor, which would have made him and his wife free, could make “very little, if any, difference” to that enslaved man is unclear, to put it mildly. Taney seems to be saying, Hey, whatever way we went on this one wouldn’t matter to the slaveholder and the slave themselves, because it’s not about them. The case is about precedent in the law, and if we had ruled at all in this case—either for or against Scott—we would have sanctioned re-interpreting the perfect Constitution, and that would have created a whole new string of precedent that might someday do the “serious mischief and injustice” of outlawing slavery.

“Upon the whole, therefore, it is the judgment of this court, that it appears by the record before us that the plaintiff in error is not a citizen of Missouri, in the sense in which that word is used in the Constitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States, for that reason, had no juisdiction in the case, and could give no judgment in it. Its judgment for the defendant must, consequestly, be reversed, and a mandate issued, directing the suit to be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.”

—Since black Americans are not citizens, Scott should never have appeared in any U.S. court, and so the Circuit Court was wrong to hear the case and issue a ruling, and the case is now dismissed.

And that’s it, for Scott, Sandford, Taney and his Court, and the American people. The Constitution is perfect because it was the work of the Founders who were steeped in the best wisdom of western Civilization, it has been upheld by precedent, and it is not supposed to be amended by anyone, especially not the Judiciary. The Court could amend the Constitution, but until it does that, it won’t do that.

The Dred Scott decision, after close reading, comes across as less a fiery defense of slavery and the idea that black people are inferior than as a lame, panicky, resentful hand-washing by the Court. It does not want to deal with slavery, so it won’t hear the case. It can’t change the Constitution until it does so, and until then the Constitution must be obeyed as-is. Dred Scott is shameful for many reasons, but chief among these, perhaps, is that the highest institution of our Judiciary took a pass on its Constitutionally mandated responsibilities in the name of the Constitution, and doomed its own citizens to slavery without having the guts to admit it.

It would take President Lincoln and his Republican Congress to amend the Constitution to ban slavery, putting that amendment to a vote by the free citizens of the U.S., and finally ending slavery in this country.

Reading the Dred Scott Decision: Precedent, precedent, precedent

Part two of our look at the 1857 Dred Scott decision leads us to do a close reading of the words of its author, Chief Justice Roger Taney. This close reading will show and focus on Taney’s thorough, driving citation of precedent in the question of slavery and race in United States law.

Taney’s citing of precedent serves, as we shall see, two purposes: first, it puts the burden of deciding whether enslaving black people is legal and/or morally justified onto previous generations, removing it from the shoulders or conscience of the Court; second, it makes the question of enslaving black Americans moot, removing the need for the Taney Court to make a decision on this controversial issue.

Let’s begin reading Taney’s majority decision. This is not the full text! It is excerpts taken in order. The full text is far too long for this format. All the italics are my own, to highlight meaning:

“The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution[?]”

—The seemingly meaningless, boilerplate starter “the question is simply this” is actually freighted with meaning. Taney will repeat it later. It serves to say, “We are facing a legal question, as a Court. This means that we must take the issue of slavery as a legal question that has been dealt with in courts before ours, and therefore a thorough examination of precedent—how those earlier courts decided the question—is not only necessary, but will likely answer the question for us.” In our justice system, precedent is very important. If 50 courts before you have decided one way on an issue, you have no legal footing to decide a different way, unless you are going to say the law is unconstitutional and needs to be changed.

The Supreme Court does just that from time to time, of course; there are occasions when it overturns precedent and says an existing law is unconstitutional and therefore all those previous judgments were wrong. But this is rare. So when Taney brings up the definition of “citizen” as specified in the Constitution, you know he is not likely to overturn that definition.

“The question before us is, whether [people of African ancestry] compose a portion of this people [described in the Constitution as citizens], and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”

—Again, we have to read this as a description of precedent, not someone’s personal opinion. Yes, Taney says “We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution”, but what he is saying is, Because the writers of the Constitution did not intend to include black Americans as citizens, we are forced to think that they cannot now be citizens. Precedent—if the Founders did not specifically include black Americans in the definition of citizen, then that is an important piece of precedent for the Court today to take into consideration.

You may be asking at this point, Where in the Constitution does it say black Americans are not and cannot be U.S. citizens? The Constitution doesn’t say that anywhere. We will deal with that, as Taney does, in our next post. For Taney does, in the second half of his decision, provide and lengthily analyze proofs that the Founders did not include and could not ever have intended to include black Americans as citizens. So for now, let’s continue with his establishment of that precedent.

“On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”

—This is not a burst of personal-opinion racism, but again a description of legal precedent: if the Founders who created our Constitution saw black Americans as inferior, and wrote that into our law, and did not choose to grant them the right and privilege of citizenship because of that perceived inferiority, then we, the Court today in 1857, have to take that into consideration. It wasn’t just a private belief of the Founders; they wrote it into our law. Therefore, racial inequality must be seen as part of our law, and therefore difficult to overturn.

You see how Taney is moving here. He is painstakingly setting Dred Scott up to fail. If racism is not just personal, but legally incorporated into the law of the United States by our Constitution, Taney’s Court is likely going to have no choice but to decide against Scott without even having to think about it, without having to consider Scott’s case. In the eyes of precedent, Scott’s case was heard and decided against him 70 years ago, in 1787, when the Constitution was written and ratified.

“[Therefore Dred Scott] could not be a citizen of the State of Missouri, within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and, consequently, was not entitled to sue in its courts.”

—This will be the eventual conclusion of this long decision. Since the Constitution says Scott is not a citizen, he has no right to even bring a case into a U.S. court. Again, precedent allows the Taney Court to dodge the controversial bullet of the slavery issue by refusing to even hear the case.

“It is true, every person, and every class and description of persons, who were at the time of the adoption of the Constitution recognized as citizens in the several States, became also citizens of this new political body… And the personal rights and privileges guarantied to citizens of this new sovereignty were intended to embrace those only who were then members of the several State communities, or who should afterwards by birthright or otherwise become members, according to the provisions of the Constitution and the principles on which it was founded…”

—So only those who were deliberately included in the definition of “U.S. citizen” when the Constitution was written in 1787 are citizens today in 1857. And, crucially, people who weren’t included in that definition (immigrants, for the most part) were only able to become citizens if doing so did not overturn the Constitution and “the principles on which it was founded”.

This is important. Taney sees that there are some people who have to become citizens of the U.S., and that they are allowed to do so. How can you give a foreign-born person U.S. citizenship? And how can you give an immigrant citizenship but not a black American, native-born right here in the U.S.? What’s the difference?

Taney is going to answer this question in the second half of his decision, which we’ll look at next time. For now, we see that he has skillfully avoided even dealing with the issue of slavery by using precedent to show that a) you cannot rule against slavery without amending the Constitution; but b) no Court has ever done that, so it’s unlikely that it should be done, and c) the Court couldn’t overturn the Constitution even if it wanted to because Scott, as a non-citizen, can’t bring a case to trial in the U.S. and therefore the case before the Court must be dismissed.

Next time: Why some people could become citizens, but not black Americans

The Dred Scott Decision: An Investigation

To say that the 1857 Dred Scott Decision is a landmark of U.S. jurisprudence, history, and civil rights is an understatement. It is one of the bare handful of Supreme Court cases and decisions that is regularly studied in U.S. schools (along with Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, and the early Marshall decisions). What most Americans learn about Dred Scott is this:

In 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared in its Dred Scott v. Sanford decision that black Americans, whether they were considered free people or enslaved, were not citizens of the U.S. and could never become citizens because of their race. Dred Scott was an enslaved man who lived in Missouri. The man enslaving him took Scott and Scott’s wife Harriet north to the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin, then took them back to slave Missouri. Scott claimed that once he and Harriet had crossed the border into free states, they had become free, as slavery was not allowed in those states. Once a person has gained free status, whether deliberate or not, he or she cannot be returned to slavery.

Chief Justice Taney was firmly pro-slavery and his decision was based on his desire to protect slavery where it existed in the southern states and where it might be outlawed in the west. In his majority decision, Taney said that black Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.”

Taney then topped this outrageous statement with the assertion that the Declaration of Independence’s ringing statement that “all men are created equal” did not apply to black people. He wrote, “it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration…”

Taney’s racism and determination to protect slavery led him to disallow Scott to even present a case to the Supreme Court, since he was not U.S. citizen and to reaffirm not only the legality of slavery but its righteousness. One man’s mission sentenced millions of people to slavery.

This common interpretation of the decision is not quite right. Its outcome was, indeed, that slavery was upheld. But the decision is more a careful avoidance of drawing conclusions about slavery than a pro-slavery manifesto. It is just another in a decades-long series of non-decisions that refused to get the Court involved in the impossibly dangerous slavery debate. The Court had, for years, insisted that Congress fulfill its appointed duty to legislate and create a law to solve the slavery issue once and for all. It would not accept Congress lobbing that hot potato back in its lap.

In the next post, we’ll look briefly at the context of the Dred Scott case, and see why the Court was put in the position of deciding a slavery issue, and why it resisted doing just that so vehemently.

Next time: the slave question in 1857