RX: "'Some colonies held back from endorsing independence. Resistance was centered in the middle colonies of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.'"A certain distrust of liberty apparently has a long tradition in some of those areas.
Me: "It still is."
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Overheard in the Office...
Bobbi was reading the Wikipedia article on the Declaration of Independence:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
Tradition? I'm beginning to think that it's Environmental. Maybe something in the Water that they use to make their Kool-Aid?
Well, that part of the world was full of torries at the start of this experiment. They are now called democrats, but they still loves them some king.
Delaware and Pennsylvania were the first two to ratify the United States Constitution.
Gerry
Pennsylvania's problem could (and to some degree can still) be summed up as: "Too damned many Quakers."
Dickinson was a Quaker and was one of the obstinate delegates who didn't want to sign on to independence because he thought it was too soon and he abhorred violence.
Morris, the other hold out, was a wealthy financier who had lost a lot of money due to the actions of the crown, but also because of the backlash. He wasn't the kind of guy that was inclined to be a radical. But he did sign the document, and largely financed the American Revolution.
The Justice Kennedy of our delegation was John Morton, who lived in my home town. He wasn't sure which way he was going to swing. He eventually went with Franklin and Wilson, and so went Pennsylvania's vote for Independence.
Quakers were against PA's various militia acts for some time, much to the annoyance of non-quakers. I should note that Quakers form the core activist group for gun control here in PA. Old habits die hard.
Gerry: The US Constitution was a freedom destroying coup d'état by the Federalists.
The first thing the Anti-Federalists did, once they got Washington's crew out of power, was to yank the Constitution's teeth by passing the Bill of Rights.
It ain't the states, it's the cities. Google up maps of the Presidential elections by county, subtract the Indian reservations, and it becomes painfully obvious that the culturally unassimilated foreigners (many 4th or 5th generation American born) in our cities, especially the coastal cities, almost always vote anti-American.
Add 7 of 8 African-Americans to the list of haters, enfeebled by three or more generations of welfare, matriarchy,and Affirmative Action. Then add the 2 of 3 American born Hispanics who also have been conditioned to the welfare state.
Almost all live in the moral and intellectual cesspools we refer to as our big cities, places that, at best, were only tangentially attached to mainstream America after the changes in immigration patterns during the late 19th century.
During the American revolution, about a third of the population was Rebel, a third (coastal and urban oriented) was Tory (practical, with the British navy able to sail up to your door), while the rest, analogous to our modern suburbanites, licked their collective finger regularly and held it aloft to see which way the wind was blowing.
A poll I saw a few weeks ago said 29% of Americans expected or wanted a civil war. That corresponds closely to the number of registered Democrats, so I wonder how much things have changed in the last 238 years.
I keep hoping against hope that I'll find a way to get my happy ass and family the hell out of Mordor-er, Maryland. (Money, natch) I'd think Wyoming is free enough, and the correct side of the Mississippi River.....
Reading the Declaration of Independence on 4 July is the only tradition attached to the holiday at Chez GVI. My daughter and I have done it for more than a decade.
gvi
For those interested.
1775
By Kevin Phillips
You can find it in the library. Good history so far.
The complexity of the colonies and the people are well presented.
Was it a "distrust of liberty" as you suggest,or was it that those colonies wanted to be taken care of by the King,same as those states still want to be taken care of by .gov ?The list looks the same to me.
Billf
As I recall, the Bill of Rights was demanded by the Anti-federalists as a sort of bulwark against the new federal government doing the sort of power grab that it has been doing for the past 100 years
The Bill of Rights was ratified at about the same time as the original constitution, not "after the Anti-Federalists got Washington's crew out of power", which didn't occur until Jefferson's election in 1800.
Windy:
The Constitution was written in 1787, and ratified in 1788 ( I believe Rhode Island was the last hold out ... Washington threatened to put up customs booths if they didn't ratify ).
The Anti-Federalists shoved through the Bill of Rights in 1789 ( the Federalist congress approved it to prevent an immediate Anti-Federalist constitutional convention ).
And yes, you are correct, that the Anti-Federalists did not completely defeat the Federalists until the 1800 election ( with Jefferson and Burr inflicting the coup de grace by completely redistricting all the federal courts, and failing to hire any Federalist appointed judges for the new positions ).
Post a Comment