What It Meant To Be A Founding Father And [r]epublican

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Mandeville, LA –This Clip of The Day was originally aired and published on Apr 10,2014 and is part of the Founders Pass Flashback Collection.

Exclusive Transcript – “Taylor writes a series of letters to this Thomas Ritchie guy.  They get published in a pamphlet that is published under the title “Spirit of seventy-six.”  I am not kidding you.  If you’ve ever wondered why I named my movie about the Constitution’s writing and ratifying “Spirit of ’76,” this is a little bit of an indication here.  “Spirit of ’76” was a term that was used and revered at the time.  In “Spirit of seventy-six,” there were these letters that Taylor wrote to Ritchie which recounted and recapped how the New Englanders had basically almost ended the republican form of government with the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798.  And had it not been for Jefferson, the whole thing would have blown up and the whole union would have dissolved in 1801.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  About four weeks ago I was doing some research for my Daily Caller piece and I found this essay that was written about John Taylor of Caroline, who was the brains behind the entire Virginia dynasty of those first four presidents, or four of the first five presidents.  The dynasty part was really Jefferson and Madison and Monroe.  There was an awful lot of behind-the-scenes politicking that went on, and an awful lot of worry over what was happening and the shape of things to come.  It was Taylor of Caroline and Monroe and Madison and Jefferson and others’ greatest fear that the republicanism used and promoted and guarded through the Constitution was not going to survive.  They were already seeing…

FOLKS, a message from Mike – The Project 76 features, Church Doctrine videos and everything else on this site are supported by YOU. We have over 70, of my personally designed, written, produced and directed products for sale in the Founders Tradin’ Post, 24/7,  here. You can also support our efforts with a Founders Pass membership granting total access to years of My work for just .17 cents per day. Not convinced? Take the tour! Thanks for 17 years of mike church.com! – Mike

HERE’S YOUR FREE AUDIO PREVIEW OF THIS CLIP OF THE DAY

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They were already seeing that New Englanders and Northerners had other designs on how the new general government ought to work, that it shouldn’t be constrained to the silly Constitution, it shouldn’t be constrained to Article I, Section 8.  Bear in mind, this is in the early days of the republic.  We always say, [mocking] “We have to get back to the Constitution the way the founders did.”  Guess what?  As soon as the ink was dry on the ratification instruments, the abuse and perversions began.  You had three classes of people.  You had monarchists, republicans, and aristocrats.  Most of the New Englanders were either monarchists or aristocrats.  Most of the Southerners were republicans, although certainly not all of them.

In any event, one of the more famous incidents that happened was who was going to succeed Thomas Jefferson.  It was thought that it was going to be James Monroe.  By the bye, Monroe was the star of Washington’s Crossing: The Times That Try Men’s Souls.  Seventeen-year-old James Monroe is the star.  Many people thought it was going to be Monroe.  Of course, you know from your history books that it was not.  It was Madison.  There was a struggle for that.  While the struggle was going on, a newspaper editor that went by the name of Thomas Ritchie, got involved in the fray and got the wrong opinion of Taylor of Caroline and how he was promoting James Monroe, because he was, and why he was not going to and how wrong it was for Taylor to not then promote Madison, who would be Jefferson’s chosen guy.  Taylor responded by writing some letters to the editor of that newspaper saying: Dude, I don’t know where you get your information from, but if it’s not Monroe and it’s Madison, I most certainly will support him.  Furthermore, the accusations you’ve made about me, about how I’ve bailed on the idea of republicanism and bailed on this and that and the other are not supported by truth.

The reason I bring this up, this is what’s really cool and intriguing, especially for those of you that long for the day that someday you will live in your own little republic and it will not be attached to Mordor on the Potomac River.  Taylor writes a series of letters to this Thomas Ritchie guy.  They get published in a pamphlet that is published under the title “Spirit of seventy-six.”  I am not kidding you.  If you’ve ever wondered why I named my movie about the Constitution’s writing and ratifying “Spirit of ’76,” this is a little bit of an indication here.  “Spirit of ’76” was a term that was used and revered at the time.  In “Spirit of seventy-six,” there were these letters that Taylor wrote to Ritchie which recounted and recapped how the New Englanders had basically almost ended the republican form of government with the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798.  And had it not been for Jefferson, the whole thing would have blown up and the whole union would have dissolved in 1801.

Let me repeat that.  Had it not been for the election of Jefferson — remember, Jefferson almost was not elected.  Remember, there were 37 votes they had to take because there was a tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr.  It wasn’t until Hamilton went: All right, I don’t like this Burr guy.  I can’t stand Jefferson but I don’t trust Burr.  So he wrote a letter to one of the guys in Maryland, I’m trying to remember who it was, and said: You’ve got to change your vote, man.  Stop voting for Adams and just go ahead and vote for Jefferson.  I’ll be close to this administration.  I’ll be able to keep my eye on them.  And so he did.  The rest, as they say, is history.  It was just one vote away.  Hamilton could have written to someone else and said: You’ve got to vote for Burr.  We could have had President Burr, and we would have had a vastly different form of government.  We know that Burr was a secessionist.  We know that Burr was in bed with Pickering.  We know that Pickering wanted the New England states to secede from what they thought were the evil, despicable Southern states, beginning with Maryland all the way down to Georgia.  This whole thing could have turned out differently.

In any event, there were a few people that kept the effort together, and Taylor of Caroline was one of them.  In researching this and trying to find this pamphlet, I finally found it after weeks of looking for it.  I found it at a little university in Georgia.  They actually have a hard copy of it.  I had an email exchange with the curator and I convinced him to scan the hard copy that he had — because I’m not going to Georgia to get it — and to send me the scanned images and he did yesterday.  I now have it in my possession.  I’m reading this yesterday and I’m just fascinated by this stuff.  There’s a preface that begins the series of letters called “A Pamphlet, containing a series of Letters, written by Colonel John Taylor of Caroline, to Thomas Ritchie, editor of the ‘Enquirer’, Richmond in consequence of an unwarrantable attack made by that editor upon Colonel Taylor,” published by E.C. Stanard, editor of “Spirit of seventy-six,” Richmond, 1809. [/private]

In the preface that Stanard writes, we find the difference between those guys of the late 18^th century and the guys of the early part of the 21^st century and how we approach and how we think about government and what it ought to do and the men that work inside it.  I only have to read a couple paragraphs of this to you to get the idea.  You also will then get the idea or maybe be convinced that Taylor of Caroline County was the republican hero that I make him out to be, or that Professor Gutzman makes him out to be.

This thing is probably about five pages long.  I only have to read about a page and a half of it for you to get the idea, plus you get an inside window to the inner workings of what was going on in the election of James Madison over James Monroe.  I’ll just pick up in the middle of this and get to the end point that I have marked.

End Mike Church Show Transcript