WEBVTT

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♫ Here\'s a tale you ought to know about the Constitution and a man who thought it ♫

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♫ did reverse the revolution. Luther Martin
lost the fight, forgotten is his glory ♫

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♫ drink some coffee, sit up straight, we\'re
going to tell his story ♫

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There has been no revision these
amendments supplement the Constitution.

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They do not change it, of course! George
Mason who truly supports the Bill of

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Rights and is a libertarian at that
level is certainly somebody worth

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reading on the other hand it\'s important
to remember Mason owns 250 or 300 slaves,

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and so there\'s something kind of ironic
about him talking about liberty during

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the Revolution that British Tory Samuel
Johnson said why is it that we hear the

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greatest yelps for liberty from the
drivers of Negroes and and that\'s that\'s

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something that Americans need to think
about as well. Of course the Bill of

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Rights is ignored for a century. The court
pays no attention, now that\'s the only

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thing to take care about is the Bill of
Rights, but for a century that you don\'t

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get court decisions hinging on the Bill of Rights.

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...reject the advice of those political
quacks, who under pretence of healing the

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disorders of our present government,
would urge you rashly to gulp down a

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constitution which in its present form
unaltered and unamended would be a

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certain death to your liberty as arsenic
could be to your bodies. Under the

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Articles of Confederation required all
thirteen states to amend the Articles.

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The Constitution when it was sent out
from Philadelphia had a provision that,

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you know, it took effect upon
ratification by nine states. This was

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this was astonishing to the
anti-federalists and the defenders of

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the Articles of Confederation. One of the
great questions in American history is

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how was it that the founding fathers who
knew they were writing an

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anti-democratic document and said so in
the privacy of the Constitutional

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Convention were able to impose this Constitution on the

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American people, and you know it\'s not like
they did it by military coup they set up

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these ratifying conventions all of that
was illegal under the Articles of

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Confederation, but it was a pretty
democratic setup. They you know there

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was disproportion, the West as usual
didn\'t get as many representatives in

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the conventions as the East did and
there were things like that and of

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course the vast majority of people
couldn\'t vote because they were either

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female, or enslaved, or didn\'t own
property and so forth but of course that

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had been the case before so you can say
that\'s on both sides of the equation.

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So how did they do it? Well number one is
they lied repeatedly to the voters about

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why they\'d written the Constitution and
about what it would do. That old rascal

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Hamilton at the New York ratifying
convention, essentially lies about his

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role in Philadelphia.
Hamilton tells them that he was the, you

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know, that he was solicitous of the
rights of states during the convention

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and then in fact this Constitution
protects and even empowers the states

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and they\'re saying no that\'s not
possible, this you know this is a

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constitution in some ways looks forward
to the diminishment of state power,

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but they had no record with which to
compare, you know, what Hamilton is saying

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now what he said in the convention. So,
the secrecy rule put the

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anti-federalists at a tremendous
disadvantage.

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Many of the anti-federalists in the
ratifying conventions tend to be

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middling sorts who are not well educated,
and this of course gave a tremendous

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advantage to the Federalists, but what is
amazing to me is how effective they are

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in their speeches. They\'re terrific in
the debates, they give these

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college-educated people like in New York,
Hamilton and Livingston,

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Melancton Smith gives these guys a run for
their money. He\'s a terrific debater,

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brings up wonderful issues as does
Martin. Of course Martin is a Princeton

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graduate so he\'s not socially
representative of many of the

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anti-federalists, so he\'s a little bit of
an anomaly in that sense.

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I\'d say the single biggest reason that
enough people came around to support the

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Constitution to get it adopted was that
it would cut their taxes.

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The Revolutionary War had been expensive, a
huge number of bonds floating around

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after the war, mostly bought up by
speculators, to pay off those bonds the

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states had adopted incredibly high taxes,
high enough in Massachusetts to cause

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Shay\'s rebellion and also to cause
rebellions in other states and one of

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the things that the Constitution did was
offer the prospect of tax relief.

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The Constitution offered tax relief in
kind of an ironic way because it creates a

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new government that can also tax you,
that is you\'re living in the state of

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Maryland, the federal government can now
tax you and so can the state government

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of Maryland. It can\'t do quite all the
taxes it couldn\'t before but can still

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do lots of taxes. Double taxation would
actually result in a tax cut because the

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federal government could tax merchandise
as it entered American ports and get

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most of the revenue it needed that way
and that was actually a lot cheaper,

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a lot easier on farmers because there\'s no
money in circulation in the countryside

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and we don\'t have to get money out of
the farmers anymore because we\'re gonna

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get most of it from the merchants, and so
at least in the short term the

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Constitution promised small farmers a
tax cut, and it delivered that promise.

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Unfortunately the short term turned out
to be very short for many farmers

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because in order to take over paying off
the state\'s debts for the Revolutionary

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War, Congress adopted a new tax; an
excise on whiskey and that was so

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onerous that it led to the Whiskey
Rebellion, not just in western Pennsylvania

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it also happened in Kentucky and
Connecticut and other states as well.

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I think that if there had been a modern
kind of voting and a modern referendum

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the Constitution would
have been opposed I mean the majority of

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people were probably opposed it but the
politics of it as described by

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Pauline Maier in her book on
ratification are interesting because one

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after the other the states, and they have
to, keep the Federalist are brilliant

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political organisers,
and when they see in New Hampshire that

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it\'s going the wrong way well
let\'s postpone convention send the

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people back get it get another take on
this and bring them back, and they you

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know that votes are very close. It\'s
almost impossible for us to conceive

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today that people were, many people, were
opposed to the color of the ratification

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of the Constitution in 1787, 1788 you
know we have this consensus view of

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American history, you know, in which
anytime it was a great quarrel clearly

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there were there were the white hats and
the black hats and after a certain

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struggle the white hats won, and we
forget the black hats we paint devil

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tales on them, and then we forget them. In
the Maryland ratifying convention Luther

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Martin he arrived late which was a
disaster because it was a very short

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convention. He had laryngitis and said
nothing

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so his role was not what you would call
influential. This guy who could not shut

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up and he arrives in Annapolis and he couldn\'t talk.

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♫ Maryland would now decide, does this plan unite us? ♫

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♫ Luther Martin came to fight, but he had laryngitis ♫

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♫ Constitution won the day, opponents are forgotten ♫

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♫ To the victor go the spoils and losers they are rotten ♫

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There was much dissension, but we finally
ratified the Constitution on the

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condition that it be amended at the
first session of the new National

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Congress, and it was by ten amendments
called the Bill of Rights.

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The anti-federalists do win a concession:
the Bill of Rights. You know which

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Madison, and Hamilton, and Wilson, etc. had
resisted strongly saying there\'s no need

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for it you know you can trust us you can
trust the central government it\'s not

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going to exceed its powers.

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First of all the idea of the Bill of
Rights that the anti-federalists wanted was

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structural they wanted real changes, you
know, limiting the taxing power, limiting

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the presidency, and what Madison does is
take 200 amendments that the various

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states had proposed and sort through
them and come up with, he comes up

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about 12. There are now but 12 amendments
to our Constitution which would require

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your approval or recommendation to the
state. Expressed originally in many more,

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they represent the honoring of pledges
made, not to disgruntled factions

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advocating revision of our fundamental
law, but to patriotic Americans who made

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that law effective and desire now its
strengthening. So, Madison kind of outwits

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the anti-federalists and that\'s why they
call the Bill of Rights that\'s proposed

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a \"tub for the whale\", because you know
sailors when they\'re out and a whale is

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coming at them they throw a tub
overboard victory area would be diverted,

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a diversion.

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Many of the anti-federalists were
completely disappointed with the Bill of

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Rights because they wanted much more
fundamental changes in the Constitution.

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They wanted to make it harder for
Congress to adopt navigation acts, that

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is laws favoring American manufacturers
over imports from overseas. They wanted

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to shift some of the taxing power back
from the federal government to the

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states. Some wanted, a very few wanted, to
allow the states to print paper money

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which the Constitution prohibits them
from doing and that really would have

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wiped out the Constitution in the eyes
of its authors because that\'s one of the

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main things Constitution does, it
prohibits the states from printing paper

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money. Here\'s Patrick Henry,
anti-federalist, on the idea of

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ratifying the Constitution with the hope
or promise that a Bill of Rights would

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later be attached: \"only a crazy man
would buy a defective machine in hope of

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repairing it afterward\". They were saying
this Constitution allows for too much

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power in the federal government, that\'s
why we need to have changes made

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amendments and they didn\'t have in mind
what Madison proposed that became the

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Bill of Rights, they wanted restrictions
on the power to raise money and the

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power to raise men. Now, they lost on that.
There has been no revision, these

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amendments supplement the Constitution
they do not change it. Of course we feel

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comfortable with the critics of the
Constitution because as we see it they

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argued for greater support for rights
and certainly the most popular part of

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the Constitution is the first
ten amendments, what we call the Bill of

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Rights. George Mason, who truly supports
the Bill of Rights and is a libertarian

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at that level is certainly somebody
worth reading. On the other hand it\'s

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important to remember
Mason owns 250 or 300 slaves, and so

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there\'s something kind of ironic about
him talking about liberty. During the

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Revolution that British Tory Samuel
Johnson said, \"why is it that we hear the

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greatest yelps for liberty
from the drivers of Negroes?\"

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And that\'s something that Americans
need to think about as well. Of course

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the Bill of Rights is ignored for a
century, the court pays no attention.

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Now, that\'s the only thing that they care about
is Bill of Rights, but for a century

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you don\'t get Court decisions
hinging on the Bill of Rights until after

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the Civil War. The country became
democratic in 1868, in 1870, 1868 with the

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14th amendment in 1870 when it gave
black men the right to vote and

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immediately upon the heels of doing that
became undemocratic once those rights

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were being exercised and the Supreme
Court failed to uphold those rights and

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support the democracy it claimed it was
supposed to be supporting, it failed then

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until it reached 1965 with a Voting
Rights Act and then once again failed

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this nation in June of 2013 when Chief
Justice John Roberts continued in what

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he had started over 20 years ago which
which was his theory on how to gut the

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Voting Rights Act, and that\'s the opinion
he wrote in Shelby County versus Holder.

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The preclearance provision that we now
find undermined again, the democracy we

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claim to have in this country.

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There is an irony in saying we should
worship the founding fathers for giving

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us gun rights, and freedom of speech, and
freedom of Liberty, and no unlawful search

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and seizure, because they didn\'t give us any of that
stuff! Now Luther Martin demanded a Bill of

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Rights, but as an opponent of the Constitution, it was sort of a side issue for him almost.

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He noted that \"had the government
been formed upon principles truly

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federal as I wished it there would have
been no need of a Bill of Rights.\"

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Madison of course says that a Bill of
Rights is a parchment barrier, that it

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won\'t do any good
and he\'s seen that in Virginia over and

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over again, and if you think about the
fact that within seven years after the

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passage of the Bill of Rights, we passed
the Sedition Act, and then in World War I

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President Wilson gets Congress to pass

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first the Sedition Act and then the
Espionage Act which makes basically free

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speech illegal if you oppose the war
effort in any way. I mean there\'s a movie

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banned during World War I about the
American Revolution because it puts our

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British allies in a bad light. This is
absurd! So at one level Madison is

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right that it\'s a parchment barrier and
another level of course he later comes

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to the conclusion that having this on
paper is a good thing because it gives

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us something to try to achieve. Now we
had a nation, a constitution, and a Bill

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of Rights with provision for further
amendments. It was up to us to protect

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these privileges.

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What happened?

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Well that got the idea across.

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I\'ll have this gizmo fixed in a second.

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Then put on something easier to take, a rootin\' tootin\' Western. Men fighting it out the old fashioned way.

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Now did they solve every problem? You know, of course not.

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But they started that foundation that through the years could expand

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and really live up to that promise of \"We the People\" and \"all men created equal\".

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They were radical ideas, they\'re still radical ideas in lots of places.W hat gives you hope for the future?

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My hope for the future rests in my faith in
a god and it\'s been said I believe by

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Dr. Woodson that the European lost their
Christianity in the Middle Passage and

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maybe that\'s where Africans gained theirs.
I have a faith in a sense of what is

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right and that this is earth, this is not
heaven and on earth there will always be

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battles and as long as people know that
this is a battle and that they\'re ready

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to come in with a value system that\'s
not based in rhetoric of this American

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dream and the praise of the founding
fathers, just for their existence, but

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looking at this from a very practical
standpoint. The anti-federalists lost decisively

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and their heirs had been losing
decisively for 225 years and yet there

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are American political movements that I
think have the anti-federalists as a

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kind of wellspring or source who worry
particularly about the corrosive effects

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of military Empire on America. Senator
William Fulbright, the Arkansan, Fulbright

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said the price of empire is America\'s soul
and that price is too high.

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He said that in the mid 1960s
as Vietnam was deteriorating into it

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became and that\'s very much an anti-federalist sentiment. I think that the

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best antidote to the empire is
recovering a sense of place. No matter

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where you are, it can be it can be your
hometown, it can be the place you live

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now, but you know Booker T Washington
once said cast down your bucket where

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you are. That means knowing your
neighbors, that means supporting local

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businesses, local music, local artists, and
I see great hope in these things and

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they completely transcend any kind of
liberal conservative left/right

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boundaries, all that red state blue state
nonsense.

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Most anti-federalists believed to much
greater extent than the men who wrote

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the Constitution that ordinary Americans
have the capacity to govern themselves

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and the Constitution made a supreme,
powerful, statement that ordinary people

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can\'t rule themselves and a lot has
changed since 1787, but that issue is

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still out there. There is still a
fundamental question about where is the

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problem? Is the problem that ordinary
voters want to be freeloaders and get

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free stuff from the government? Or is the
problem that there are wealthy interests

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who have too much power in Washington?
And that\'s the same battle that there

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was between the federalists the anti-
federalists. We the people of the United

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States in order to form a more perfect
union.. Is there a need to re-examine the

00:20:27.679 --> 00:20:31.940
structure of government? Well I think there are enormous

00:20:31.940 --> 00:20:36.890
problems with the structure the American
government. I don\'t know that a

00:20:36.890 --> 00:20:41.380
constitutional convention would be the
way to solve it. One could only imagine

00:20:41.380 --> 00:20:47.570
what kind of circus that could become
today. It would not be held in closed

00:20:47.570 --> 00:20:51.080
doors
it would not be leak-proof. It would not

00:20:51.080 --> 00:21:00.169
allow for a philosophical debate over
government. In terms of dysfunctional

00:21:00.169 --> 00:21:04.910
yeah we\'re kind of dysfunctional right
now, we have had dysfunctionality before

00:21:04.910 --> 00:21:11.450
I think of 1860, 1861. But we have
conventions, and developments, customs

00:21:11.450 --> 00:21:14.360
that have that have created this
government.

00:21:14.360 --> 00:21:20.549
I mean political parties, the
the agencies, the various federal

00:21:20.549 --> 00:21:24.239
agencies. They\'re not part of the
Constitution, they just develop. We have a

00:21:24.239 --> 00:21:31.529
whole structure of government that\'s
arisen that supplements fills in the

00:21:31.529 --> 00:21:35.820
Constitution. It\'s a very small document.
Jefferson and Madison would be shocked at

00:21:35.820 --> 00:21:40.470
the extent of the power that the
national government has, but some others

00:21:40.470 --> 00:21:44.729
like Hamilton would be delighted, this is
what he wanted all along. You know he

00:21:44.729 --> 00:21:49.499
would be delighted with the Pentagon and
the CIA and the whole vast apparatus

00:21:49.499 --> 00:21:53.279
that was his dream. It was not
Jefferson\'s at all. What is this

00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:59.399
country? Why was it created? What are the
consequences of the mechanisms of

00:21:59.399 --> 00:22:04.710
creation and as we are looking at today
going into the future has this growing

00:22:04.710 --> 00:22:10.789
population of people of color will then
become the majority of the United States

00:22:10.789 --> 00:22:17.909
will this constitution be able to
protect the rights of those people?

00:22:17.909 --> 00:22:26.309
Or will it be changed in a way that creates
an apartheid state? That is a question

00:22:26.309 --> 00:22:31.409
that concerns me, but since I know that
people of color have battled against

00:22:31.409 --> 00:22:37.739
more than this, then I look forward to
what we have to do to fight for full

00:22:37.739 --> 00:22:44.309
citizenship. To us, and to each new
generation to come is the continuing

00:22:44.320 --> 00:22:53.280
challenge to preserve for ourselves and
our posterity the blessings of liberty.

00:22:56.120 --> 00:23:02.539
If you think that the current American
state is is too large, too intrusive,

00:23:02.539 --> 00:23:09.379
too war-like, too hostile to personal
liberties and community integrity then

00:23:09.379 --> 00:23:14.330
blame in part the Constitution. I would
say that the Constitution is sort of a

00:23:14.330 --> 00:23:20.450
slur on the capacity of ordinary
Americans, as originally written, and the

00:23:20.450 --> 00:23:25.200
Constitution has become a much more
democratic document. In doing so it has

00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:29.720
countered the original intent of the
founding fathers

00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:45.440
Luther Martin had bet on the wrong
horse in 1787, but his neighbors did not

00:23:45.450 --> 00:23:50.159
punish him for it. He would serve 30
years as Maryland\'s Attorney General, the

00:23:50.159 --> 00:23:53.059
longest such tenure in any state in our
history.

00:23:53.059 --> 00:23:57.090
Martin would serve as counsel for the
defense in two of the great state trials

00:23:57.090 --> 00:24:01.440
of the early republic, the defense of US
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, his

00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:05.850
old Maryland patron, against removal from
office after his impeachment and the

00:24:05.850 --> 00:24:10.230
treason trial of Aaron Burr. Both men
were acquitted in no small part because

00:24:10.230 --> 00:24:14.580
of the brilliant defense offered by
Martin. And what\'s fascinating is is that

00:24:14.580 --> 00:24:21.119
he\'s Attorney General of Maryland for a
very long time and he is a delegate to

00:24:21.119 --> 00:24:25.980
the Constitutional Convention. He is a
powerhouse in Maryland politics. He\'s a

00:24:25.980 --> 00:24:31.080
powerhouse in the Maryland legal
community, despite the fact that even his

00:24:31.080 --> 00:24:37.789
friends find him almost unbearable. He is
I think known in Baltimore as \"attorney

00:24:37.789 --> 00:24:46.379
brandy bottle\". What alcohol had not
numbed, a severe stroke polished off.

00:24:46.379 --> 00:24:50.369
The light went out but the motor still ran.
There are stories of Martin in Baltimore in

00:24:50.369 --> 00:24:54.919
the early 1820s wandering the streets
in frayed old clothes,

00:24:54.919 --> 00:25:00.840
partly demented, partially drunk, gnawing
on gingerbread. Sometimes wandering in

00:25:00.840 --> 00:25:07.049
and out of courtrooms. Yet, even in his
pathetic final years and the slough of

00:25:07.049 --> 00:25:12.480
senility, Martin was still respected by
his neighbors. you know. History may

00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:17.909
record him is this gadfly, but the people
of Maryland respected what he had done.

00:25:17.909 --> 00:25:22.919
In fact, he was paid an unprecedented and
unrepeated honor. The state of Maryland

00:25:22.919 --> 00:25:27.149
levied a tax of five dollars on every
lawyer in order to defray the expenses

00:25:27.149 --> 00:25:31.110
of his penniless old man. This is not a
tribute of state pays to its bums and

00:25:31.110 --> 00:25:38.460
gadflies. In his absolute final years,
Aaron Burr never forgot that Martin had

00:25:38.460 --> 00:25:43.169
stood by him in his hour of need,
and so when Luther Martin was gone into

00:25:43.169 --> 00:25:46.530
senility, reduced by drinking age to a
babbling old man

00:25:46.530 --> 00:25:52.230
rested threadbare wandering the streets,
Aaron Burr took him in. His final days

00:25:52.230 --> 00:25:58.110
Martin lived in Burr\'s home in New York
City. Luther Martin died July 10, 1826

00:25:58.110 --> 00:26:03.120
which was just six days after the
providential death of Jefferson and

00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:05.730
Adams on the same day, the fiftieth
anniversary of the signing of the

00:26:05.730 --> 00:26:12.000
Declaration. He was buried in Manhattan
and his grave is unmarked. It was in fact

00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:19.050
paved over, we have a general idea of
where he\'s buried but there\'s not even a

00:26:19.050 --> 00:26:21.080
marker.