Inventing American Constitutionalism

Brian Smith:

Welcome to Liberty Law Talk. My name is Brian Smith. I am the editor of Law and Liberty. With me today, I am very pleased to have Gordon Wood, who is the Alva O. Way University professor, and professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. The author of 10 books, including most recently, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes, as well as the National Humanities Medal. Gordon, thank you for joining me.

Gordon Wood:

My pleasure.

Brian Smith:

So, I wanted to have you on the podcast today, specifically to talk about Power and Liberty, which as I understand it began as a lecture you gave at Northwestern’s Law School. So, I wanted to ask, how did the themes of that lecture inspire the book? And what was your aim in writing it?

Gordon Wood:

Actually, it was a series of lectures, a half dozen lectures that I gave at a school, I think, in the fall of 2019. And as we got into the COVID period, I had these lectures, and I thought maybe I should try to publish them. And so, that’s what led to the publication. I hadn’t really thought about that when I was giving the lectures, but it worked out nicely.

Brian Smith:

So, what was your goal in presenting a condensed version of your entire sweep of scholarship about constitutionalism? What were the key things that you thought needed recapitulation right now, that you were aiming to give your audience?

Gordon Wood:

Well, although the lectures pretty much summed up my thinking over the past half century on the constitutional issues, I hadn’t actually put them into this form, in print, at least. So, I thought that this was a good way of conveying my thinking, starting with the imperial crisis, going on to the constitution making at the state level, which is what they aim for. The United States, literally was 13 states at the outset in 1776, and each of those states wrote its own constitution.

And then, having to explain the origins of the federal constitution, which [inaudible 00:02:39] granted, but they certainly hadn’t anticipated. I ended with the issue of private versus public, which helps explain the beginnings of the corporation. And then, I had a final epilogue on Rhode Island, my own home state, which suggested the middle class world that emerged following the revolution. So, all of that fit together, and it was what I wanted to say coming up my career.

Brian Smith:

So, I really specifically wanted to ask you about Rhode Island. It was a very striking epilogue, and I think a very surprising one. So, what was really special about Rhode Island at the founding? What made them stand out and can you say more about that analog between their middle class world and ours?

Gordon Wood:

That’s exactly right. They were a middle class society that probably of all the states, certainly the most middle class, that is to say they had the weakest aristocracy. And right from the beginning, they never were able to establish even a semblance of an aristocracy in their state. And as a consequence, they were very entrepreneurial minded, go looking for the fast money. And they were involved, of course, in slave trade, drum making, and all of that. But I think it’s the middle class nature of the society that… And of course, they were involved in paper money, which is, they had 11 issues, I think, of paper money as a colony. And this was far in excessive what any other colony did. And that paper money was capital, if you will. And they continued that after the revolution. They were the only state that refused to attend the Federal Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.

So for a host of reasons, Rhode Island was interesting. James Madison, in his small little essay that he wrote, a working paper for his ideas about the new Federal Constitution, isolated only one state that he complained about. And that, of course, was Rhode Island, mainly for its issuing of paper money which created inflation and hurt creditors. And Madison’s whole structure was designed to protect minorities from majority overreach, or majority tyranny. And Rhode Island was the example that he used of this democracy run wild.

So, for a host of reasons, Rhode Island was interesting. And, of course, Rhode Island went on in the nineteenth century to become an economic powerhouse. By the end of the century, they had five leading manufacturing firms in the world, were located in this tiny little state. So, there’s a host of reasons why they picked Rhode Island as an example of the middle class society that really came to dominate the north.

Brian Smith:

Yeah, it was a fascinating example of how banking and credit have these long-tailed effects that you-

Gordon Wood:

And, of course, it was not at all anticipated by the founders.

Brian Smith:

Exactly. And as you say, none of them really understood how complex and rich that network of commercial exchanges really were, or how they depended upon the relatively easy money that paper notes allowed.

Gordon Wood:

None of the founders really, except for Hamilton, understood what a bank was anyhow. Adams never did. Jefferson never did. But Hamilton knew what a bank was, but he was unusual. But what Madison wanted in constitution was a veto given to the Congress over all state legislation. That’s so impractical. Can you imagine if they had stayed in all bills that the states wanted to pass would have to be sent to Washington, and having hearings, and the Congress would have to approve them? Well, that was Madison’s proposal. He was so frightened at what the states were doing.

Well, that was so impractical that they mentioned, threw it out, and had substituted Article one Section 10 of the Constitution, which lists a number of prohibitions on what the states can do. Namely, they cannot print paper money. Well, if that had been enforced rigidly, it would’ve stifled the antebellum economy. States get around that by chartering banks, which in turn issued the paper money.

And, of course, there were probably hundreds of banks. And by the eve of the Civil War there were 10,000, probably 10,000 different paper currencies. It was just chaos. And of course the Civil War ended all that. The federal government shoot its own greenbacks, as we do today, and taxed the state banks out of business. But up to that time there was just these state banks issuing currency, and it must have been intolerable as a businessman to deal with this. You’re in Providence, in Rhode Island, and you get a bank note from the first Bank of Nashville, Tennessee. What do you do? Well, probably if you wanted to take it, you’d probably discount it because it’s so far away. The bank note would say, “We, the Bank of Nashville promise to pay the bearer $100 in gold or silver,” but you’re not going to go to Nashville. So you take the note, discount it, give the person $90 worth of goods, and then hope you can pass it on to somebody else. That’s the way it worked. It must have been very chaotic.

Brian Smith:

So, I wonder if we can rewind a bit though. I jumped the gun a bit, just out of excitement because I wanted to hear more about Rhode Island. But I wonder if we could go back to the beginning, and talk a bit about sovereignty. So, you say that defining who was sovereign was the issue that finally broke up the empire in the… Can you explain that a bit?

Gordon Wood:

Yes. Well, the imperial debate started over an issue of representation, where the parliament issued a stamp tax. Parliament said, “You can’t tax us. We didn’t give consent to that.” And the British responded by saying, “Oh yes, you were. You were virtually represented in the House of Commons.” And the Americans said, “We don’t like this virtual representation, we’ll have none of it.” But the issue then moved to the issue of sovereignty, which was something that the English and Blackstone, the great legal jurist had worked out. Although he didn’t invent it, he put it into his book published in 1765, that there must be in every state, one final supreme lawmaking authority. And in the British constitution, that authority rests in parliament, and there can be no deviation from that. There has to be that final authority.

And the Americans kept saying, “Well, no, we want to divide authority. You have some authority over us, yes, for trade purposes and so on, but we don’t want you to have the right to access.” And the British responded in the following fashion. They said, “If you deny parliament’s authority in one aspect, you have to deny it entirely. You have to accept parliament’s authority, it’s final authority.” And when confronted with that choice, by the end of the 1760s, 1770, the columnist responded to say, “Well, if that’s the case, we’re independent of parliament, and we’re tied only to the king.” And they worked out in a series of pamphlets written by all of the major founders, Jeff Adams, all wrote pamphlets saying, creating what I would currently called the Commonwealth theory of the Empire, similar to the modern Commonwealth, that is to say Canada, Australia, New Zealand, are tied to the British nation by the Crown only. And each of their parliaments are independent. Something worked out in the twentieth century, 1931.

So, that’s the position the colonists are forced into by the early 70s, that they are tied only to the Crown. And of course by English standards, this was just, because we, Americans, can’t fully appreciate it. But Parliament represented such a liberty loving, it was the source of English liberty. It was the bastion of freedom against the Crown. The Crown was the source of tyranny. And through history, especially from the seventeenth century on, parliament had come to the side, or to rescue the people from the tyranny of the Crown. So, for the colonists to take on parliament, was to create a confusing situation for the British. They thought the Americans must be Tories. That is to say not good wigs. Wigs being the people who support parliament and support liberty, support all of the things that parliament did, especially the glorious revolution of 1608.

So, the Americans are forced into a very peculiar position, in terms of fish culture, where they’re opposing the bastion freedom that is parliament, and are tying themselves to the Crown, which is the source of purity. And from the British point of view, it was totally confusing. North said, “They’re just a bunch of Tories, these Americans, what are they doing?”

Brian Smith:

But at some point though, in this narrative, a concept of sovereignty resting in the people emerges to replace the sovereignty of the king. When did that happen?

Gordon Wood:

Well, you see, when we get to the Federal Constitution, there’s opposition from the anti-federalists, and large opposition. The country was really divided. In fact, if they’d been a poll taken, the Constitution needed. It was an unusual situation. This was an unanticipated creation, this federal government. And the anti-federalists raised the issue of sovereignty. They said, “Look, sovereignty says, the doctrine says, there must be in every state, one final supreme lawmaking authority. And we can look at this constitution and its supremacy clause, that’s going to be the Federal Congress, and our states, which will be reduced to nothing, to measuring the height of fence posts and laying out roads. And that’s all states will have to do. This is intolerable for us.”

And it was a very embarrassing argument for the Federalists, which is the name that the supporters of the Constitution took. They were awkward. They said, “Well no, we’re going to divide power. Some power’s going to be given to the federal government, some powers will remain with the states.” But the anti-federalists, just the way the British had, just came back over and over again, so there must be in every state. And they invoked this doctrine of sovereignty.

And it’s James Wilson, who is, I think, relatively unrecognized founder, very smart Scotsman, who had immigrated to the colonies as a young man. He was a graduate of St. Andrews in Scotland. He comes up with a solution. He says, “We’re going to relocate sovereignty in the people.” Now, this isn’t just meaning that powers all derive from the people. And all good wigs in England believe that, saying that this actual law making authority, final supreme power, rests in the people. And they’re doling out bits and pieces of it to the different agents, some to the federal government agents, and some to the states. And once that idea, he did it in a lecture he gave out of doors, and then also repeated it in the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention. And once Madison and others heard this, they said, “Ah, that’s all we need. That solves all of our problems, all of our intellectual problems, this doctrine of sovereignty resting in the people.” And so, that’s the origins of it.

Brian Smith:

So, that’s really interesting. But prior to this, you say that one of the other great innovations in the Americas, is the move to written constitutionalism. And while these don’t exactly evolve in parallel, it is this very unprecedented move, which you’re right to point out. What do you think drove this desire to move away from the unwritten English Constitution and into a written series of documents that we could use to understand our political process and its parameters?

Gordon Wood:

Well, it’s true. The English did not have a written constitution, and still don’t have. It’s very unusual. I guess Israel’s the only other state with England that doesn’t have a… But England did have a lot of written documents, and starting with Magna Carta in the thirteenth century, and all the way up through the Bill for Habeas Corpus, and then of course the Bill of Rights of 1688, ’89, those were all written documents. You write things down when you’re not sure that when you want to make them clear, and assert their strength by writing them down. That’s why we have written contracts. And so, that’s what they thought they were doing.

And of course, England briefly had a written constitution in the middle with the Cromwell, and the little experiment in Republicanism that England had. But there was nothing like what took place in 1776. Each of those states wrote its constitution. And it’s hard for us to understand, but the states were independent. They had a significance for each [inaudible 00:18:29], the people who lived in the states, that’s difficult for us to appreciate. We think of the states more as ministry of units. But think back, Massachusetts had a hundred and some years, 50 years of history. Virginia had the same thing. So, when Jefferson said, “My country,” he didn’t think of the United States as his country. It was Virginia. And when John Adams said, “My country,” he meant Massachusetts.

So, you have to think of the articles of consideration, which is the first treaty that holds these states together, like the EU today. We know there’s an EU, but how much do people think of themselves as Europeans? Frenchmen think of themselves as French, and the Germans say, “Well, we’re Germans.” But there is this thing called the EU, and to some extent they are aware of a Europeanness, and that’s a best way of understanding how Americans thought of themselves. They did talk about themselves as Americans, but they also knew that they were the citizens of Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania, or Virginia. And so that first tree, like the EU, the articles were based on a treaty of these 13 states coming together. And each of them had its own constitution. So, moving to the Federal Constitution 10 years later, was something nobody anticipated, 1776, not a single person even raised the idea of such a strong federal or national government in 1776.

Brian Smith:

No, you do a really interesting presentation in the book of how surprised everyone was that it didn’t come out of imminent crisis, that we built this new constitution. It wasn’t quite accidental the way you presented, but it acquired a force of its own. Can you say more about some of the peculiarities in that moment of-

Gordon Wood:

There were some federal problems, that is national problems that they worried about. This new federal government that they created, the articles of Confederation. The Congress that was created had no power to tax or to regulate international trade. Essentially, you have to think of the first Congress that was created with the articles, as giving the power of the Crown. It was a substitute for the Crown. And since the Crown couldn’t tax, and the Crown by itself could not regulate trade, neither could this new Congress. And everyone by I think by the mid 1780s, was ready to give the Congress the powers to tax at least a 5% impost, or tax on imports and the power to regulate international trade because it was getting confusing. Massachusetts was passing its own navigation acts that were hurting Connecticut or Rhode Island, and it just didn’t make sense to have each state having its own navigation system, national trade.

So, people are ready to give those powers to this Congress. But there is a larger problem, a much more potent problem that Madison put his fingers on. And of course, he’s not alone in this. That the state legislatures were running amuck. They had been given such power in the state constitutions, especially the lower houses, the Houses of Representatives, and they were passing all kinds bills, multiple… As Madison said in his working paper, “The Vices of the Political System of the United States.” It’s a very important document. Madison worked it out in April, or in the early spring of 1787, in preparation for the convention.

And he lists the problems that the states are. He said, “The multiplicity, the mutability, that is the changeability, and the injustice of all these state laws.” The mutability laws were being passed by annually elected legislatures with turnover of 50%.And so, every legislature had new laws to pass. And it was just getting confusing. Judges didn’t know what the law was. The multiplicity, there were more laws passed with Madison, in the 10 years since the Declaration of Independence, than in the entire colonial period. So he said, “We’ve got to do something about that.” But more important, these laws were unjust, and he focused on the paper money laws that were being passed, that hurt creditors. And I tried to explain why that was so harmful to the elite.

And any ways, those are the forces that are building up. And when the convention is called, most people assume they’re just going to add a couple of powers to the… That is the power to tax, and the power to regulate international trade, to give those powers to the Congress. But instead, Madison comes to the convention, and he’s backed of course by the Virginia delegation, and lots of other elite members of the society with a whole new proposal, the Virginia plan. He’s not going to amend the articles, he’s going to scrap them and substitute something entirely different. And this is a shock to many people when they find out it’s not the articles revised. It’s an entirely new constitution, giving an immense amount of power to the Congress and the President. So, that’s the background to what happened in 1787.

Brian Smith:

So, it seems like part of the realization that the members of the Constitutional convention had, was this sense that we need a higher law to reign in all of these challenges. But you also say, elsewhere in the book, that democracy itself is a problem under the articles. To what degree was this? Were these ideas like the Virginia plan, an attempt to reassert a republicanism against democracy?

Gordon Wood:

Well, that’s one way of putting it. The things that Madison complained about, which he calls the excesses of democracy, are in some sense things that we’ve come to take for granted. The idea that the politicians should be concerned about what their constituents think, and the horse trading, the things that… He served for a short time in the Virginia legislature. He was appalled at what was happening. And yet, the things that he complained about were, we considered the stuff of democracy. He had an idealized notion, and some of them… And the others did as well, an idealized notion of democracy. Now, we must be clear about this, the revolution was conducted not to create democracy, but to preserve liberty. That’s what they talked about. They never said in the serial crisis, we’re trying to create a democratic society. They thought that a democratic House of Representatives, which is where the democracy resided, that is the lower house, is important to preserve liberty, because the people would look after their liberty, but they didn’t think that was the goal of the revolution. That’s just a means towards the goal, which is the preservation of liberty.

Liberty is being threatened by democracy. The democratic behavior of these lower houses in the decade following 1776, they suggest all kinds of solutions. First they say, “Well, maybe we could make the Senate more stronger, or the judges could use their authority to curb the lower houses.” But in the end they feel that that would not be satisfactory. And so, they go to this new federal government that’s going to be a way of curbing state legislatures.

Democracy starts as a technical term of political science, referring only to, it means ruled by the people, and the people are confined to the lower house. That’s why it’s called the House of Representatives. The Senates were not democratic bodies. They’re supposed to be Republican counterpart to the House of Lords. They represent the wisdom of the society, and if you will, the aristocracy of the society. And then the governors, and of course this is John Adams who has a tremendous influence on the state constitution make. The governors represent the sort of monarchical element. They go back to Greek philosophy. Aristotle talked about the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the democratical parts of government. And you try to get a balance among these three powers. That’s what’s the thinking that goes into the original state constitution.

The House of Representatives is the only body which is democratic, because the thinking of democracy is a technical term of political science. 10 years later, by the time you get to the Federal Constitution, democracy is already emerging in the way we think of it as the whole system, as a set of values that goes way beyond the organization of government. And we’re left with this awkward terminology when we talk about the House of Representatives. What do we mean by that? Is that the only body that’s representative? Are the Senate’s not representative?

So, we have to think about how these parties emerged. And by the time you get to the federal government, the Federalists are arguing that all parts of the government are representative of the people. And so, that the House of Representatives has no monopoly of representation. These are fantastic changes in a relatively short time, that get us into more or less the way we think about it today. And they’re already talking in terms that we would about democracy being the values of the whole system. And the people are everywhere in the system. So, in 10 years time, there’s a radical transformation of language and of meaning, that gets us into a world that we are very familiar with, it’s our world, in a 10 years time.

Brian Smith:

So, one of the most provocative things you say at the very beginning of the book, is that one of the very special things that happens in this time period is the forging of an identity through these documents. Because we’re not a blood and soil people. We’re not a people of one ethnic origin. We don’t have a singular tradition that’s handed down to us, but we do have these documents. So, can you say a touch about how out of this messy set of compromises, and this coalescing of understanding, which you just summarized for me, how do you think this notion of documents like the Constitution and the Declaration as a basis of identity, started to be formed in the early republic?

Gordon Wood:

Well, because they were quite aware that they will not single people. Even by 1790 when the first census, the English were of course the largest ethnic party, but they were Scots, they were Irish, they were French, and there were lots of Germans, some Swedes. They recognized immediately that they were diverse people. And John Adams wrote about it. He says, “We’re a hodgepodge. How can we ever hold together?” He was kind of pessimistic about it.

There were 19 different religions, and there were just as many different ethnicities. And he says, “This is not a nation.” So, there’s some awareness of the diversity, nothing like what we have today, of course, where the whole world is in the United States. But even then it was diverse. And so, they actually clinged to the documents as the adhesive force. And the person of course who cements that in our history is Lincoln. He comes to really, [inaudible 00:32:01] the Declaration of Independence. That that is the thing that pulls us together. But there was an awareness even back at in 1780s and 90s, that constitution, especially after the Federal Constitution, the constitution becomes the king, so to speak, and the thing holding us, this very diverse people, together. And I think that’s still true today.

Brian Smith:

Since you brought up the challenge of ever-increasing diversity, I wanted to talk a bit about slavery. And in particular, the way in which it’s become this central focusing project for the understanding of American history in recent years, both through the new history, histories of capital and the 1619 Project. Can you talk a little bit about how you think we ought to think in terms of slavery? And then, maybe we can talk more about where these movements are taking history in general.

Gordon Wood:

Well, slavery has existed in many states. Probably every culture at some time or another had slaves for thousands of years. And it was existing, especially in the new world, in Latin America, and in the United States at the time of the American Revolution. And it still exists in some parts of Africa and the Middle East, [inaudible 00:33:35] slavery. But there wasn’t anything quite like the plantation slavery that existed in Latin America and in the South.

But the recent argument about the 1619 Project, that the protection of slavery was the source of the American Revolution. The data they used, the evidence they used is Lord Dunmore’s proclamation of November, 1775. Lord Dunmore was the Royal Governor of Virginia. He’s sitting in his ship, his British ship in Chesapeake Bay, in a desperate situation militarily. So, he issues a proclamation offering all of the slaves in Virginia, come to the Crown side and they’ll be free. About 300 slaves respond at that time. And this is the argument that underlies the claim by the 1619 Project, that slavery was the source of the American Revolution. That the fear of losing slaves was the source of revolution. It’s just not true. Virginia was already in a revolutionary situation. The rebels were in complete control of the government, which is why the governor is sitting out on his ship in Chesapeake Bay. He’s been ousted, and the rebels are in control. There was no fear of their slaves being taken away by the British that led to their revolution. Their revolution was based on they wanted to control their own destiny in Virginia.

But the other side of it is, of course, in 1776, the Northern states launched the first, and perhaps in modern times, the only effort at legalizing or abolition, that is the abolition of slavery. This is the first instance history of the world, of the modern world at least, in which a system of government which legalized slavery did away with it. Now, there’s not great numbers, about 50,000 slaves held in the northern states, but it is a momentous time. It’s a monumental event to have the first abolition movement in the world. And it had a great impact on the new world. You can imagine what the Southerners who weren’t prepared to free their slaves, and the Latin American observers of this felt. This was an ominous sign. If the northern states, still country, the United States could abolish slavery, then it could be abolished anywhere.

And so, from that moment on, the defenders of slavery thrown onto the defensive. Slavery essentially had never been tackled in this way before. There had been isolated instances of people opposing slavery, [inaudible 00:36:41] Samuel Sewall in 1700 wrote something against slavery, and Quakers had spoken out against it. But where slavery had been previously legitimate, no state had ever abolished it. So in that sense, the American Revolution was a momentous attack on slavery, and it divided the country. The Virginians were caught in the middle. There were lots of people in Virginia who were eager to abolish slavery, Jefferson being the most important. But it was too overwhelming for them. They had a population of about, it was about 40% of the population of Virginia, which was by far the largest state, 200,000 slaves in the state. It was just too much for them. But if they could have gotten over that, it would’ve been incredible.

But Virginians were eager to move against slavery, at least in 1776. It all changed later, especially with the Saint-Domingue, the Haitian rebellion in 90s, that frightened Virginians and frightened Southerners in general. But what’s interesting and never mentioned by the 1619 Project, is that in 1791, the College of William and Mary, the trustees, were all slave holders. Wealthy men, give an honorary degree to Grandville Sharp who was the leading British abolitionist at the time. Now, why would they do that if they were frightened of abolition? Why would they board an honorary degree to a British abolitionist?

Many Virginians were eager to try to move against slavery, and Washington was confident that slavery would die. They had been growing tobacco. Tobacco is a very soil exhausting crop. And so as a consequence, many of them, including Washington, were moving to the growing of wheat grain, and grain and wheat do not need the labor that tobacco did. And so, they had excess amount of slaves. Washington was renting his slaves out to people in Norfolk and in Richmond. And that’s the first step in their minds towards waged labor. If you’re renting your slaves out, then somehow or other they got the thinking that slavery is on its last legs, and is going to die a natural death. Now, they couldn’t have been more wrong. They live with the illusion that slavery was slowly going to end itself. It compete with free labor, and they live with that illusion. And there are dozens of people saying the same thing around the time of the federal constitution, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. They live with the illusions. Of course, we live with illusions too. We just don’t know what they are.

So, that’s the context. And so, it’s a very mixed thing. And certainly the 1619 Projects has got it backwards. What’s important is that the American Revolution makes abolition legitimate for the first time in history. The abolition of slavery by those northern states, eight northern states, is extraordinary. Even if the numbers are small, there are only 50,000 involved. It nonetheless is a momentous time to have that movement. And so, I think the American Revolution has to be seen as the beginning of anti-slavery. We are the first state to move against the slave trade when the United States moves against it. And we have this abolition movement in all of the northern states. Now of course, the southern states don’t, and that’s the problem. And of course, the division of the sections led to the Civil War.

Brian Smith:

So I wonder, do you think that one of the great problems that the 1619 Project brings to light, is the degree to which the American history discipline has just been derailed into thinking in terms of contemporary politics? Is that the central problem that we’re facing right now?

Gordon Wood:

I think it’s bigger than that. I think we’re in the midst of a monumental period in our history. And this is elite driven, but we’re trying to atone for the 400 years of both slavery and segregation, that blacks in our society have suffered. And there’s just no doubt of it. The story is bad enough, the true story is bad enough, and there’s no reason to have to invent things the way Hannah Jones and the New York Times have invented, because the true story is bad enough. There’s just no doubt that slavery existed for several centuries. And then even with the north freeing of the slaves, the northern whites were unable to give equality to the blacks. And blacks had their rights taken away. Not immediately, but slowly. And by 1840, no new state that was brought into the union after 1840 gave blacks any rights of citizenship. And it’s really not until the 1960s that blacks have achieved any civic equality.

So, that bitterness and that guilt felt by white elites is driving these… So, the 1619 Projects is just an aspect. In some sense, one small aspect of this larger thing that’s running through our society, and will have to run its course. I’m not sure how long it’ll take, but we are going through an immensely important and monumental period in our history.

Brian Smith:

So, how do you think the history profession or other branches of the humanities or social sciences, can helpfully address this in a way that doesn’t rend the society apart?

Gordon Wood:

It’s gotten politicized and that’s not healthy. Well, all I can say is, I think the humanities are hurting. They’ve lost their confidence. I just give you a statistic. Over the last 10 years, Harvard, 10 years ago, 30% of the graduating class majored in the humanities. Now that’s down to 10%. And if that continues, if that tendency continues, first of all, a lot of colleges will begin abolishing the humanities. They won’t have the students. The students are looking for subjects that have monetary returns, finance or something in computer science. There are more computer science majors at Harvard than majored in all of the humanities put together. So, these are the tendencies of our time. And small colleges are either going out of business, or they’re being forced to abolish the humanities courses, because there’s no student in.

So, there’s a really larger problem going on, that’s bigger than just the 1619 Project. And there’s no doubt that American history and history in general is hurting, and it’s become politicized. Of course, it’s always been to some extent the problems. When Charles Beard wrote his book in 1913, it created sensation, and there was a lot of… Going through a very important period in our history. Can be depressing, but a 100 years ago, if you remember, there was an equal crisis in some sense with the new immigrants coming in. People really frightened of all these Eastern Europeans polls, and then the Italians and Jews all coming in. And it looked like the society could not absorb these people. They were too different from the previous immigrants. And there was a crisis. And remember what John Dos Passos, the novelists said, in light of the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, “All right then, we are two nations.” And it looked bad. We were a nation of native one and… Of 13%, about the same percentage of foreign born as we have today in 1920.

But we weren’t two nations then. But we were able to assimilate. And by 50 years later, intermarriage became the secret, and that crisis was averted. We didn’t remain two nations. And you remember AV’s Irish Rose, and the whole series of intermarriage. And that I think is the secret to our problem right now. I read somewhere that black-white intermarriage is up to 17%. Jews and non-Jews are marrying almost close to 50%. Asians and non-Asians are marrying 50%. That will ease the problems we worry about. But anyway, we are in a midst of a tremendous crisis. And I think it’s said by the guilt and the realization that blacks have suffered, and they’re not fully assimilated in some sense. It’s almost like new immigrants. They came in the 1960s, so to speak, even though they’ve been here from the very beginning. So, it’s a very difficult time for us, and we have to have hope or the patience to see it through.

Brian Smith:

Well, thank you for your time. I think this is an excellent place to end. Gordon Wood’s book, Power and Liberty, is available anywhere books are sold. And thank you for your time.

Gordon Wood:

Thank you.

Brian Smith: Thank you for listening to another episode of Liberty Law Talk. Be sure to follow us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please visit our journal at lawliberty.org.