Power and Liberty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon S. Wood
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The State ◽  
British Government ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
The Revolution

This book covers major issues of constitutionalism in the American Revolution. It begins with the imperial debate over taxation and representation between the colonists and the British government. That debated climaxed with the Declaration of Independence. Each of the former colonies became republics and drew up written constitutions with several of them including bills of rights. These constitutions established patterns that later influenced the federal Constitution created in 1787, including bicameral legislatures, independent executives, and independent judiciaries. But because the Confederation of the states lacked the power to tax and regulate trade and the state legislatures were abusing their considerable power, the revolutionaries sought to solve both problems with a new federal Constitution in 1787. In addition to having to recognize the equality of each state in the Senate, the Convention faced the problem with slavery. Although most Americans thought that slavery was gradually dying, South Carolina and Georgia wanted to import more slaves and forced the Convention to guarantee twenty more years of slave importations and some protections for slavery in the Constitution. The institution that benefited most from the Revolution was the judiciary. It became very important in monitoring the demarcation between the public and the private realms that emerged from the Revolution.

scholarly journals The principle of morality (administrative, tax and "public") in the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988

KPGT_dlutz_1 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-527
Author(s):  
Demetrius Nichele Macei ◽  
Francisco Cardozo Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Tax Evasion ◽  
The State ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Relationship ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Direct Reflection

This study aims to analyze the issue of tax morality and ethical (or unethical) attitudes identifiable in the tax legal relationship, considering the performance of duties in its two faces, the public (tax authority) and the private (taxpayer). The work approaches the aspects of Tax Justice, Equity and Fair Tax, inspired by the teachings of Klaus Tipke, leading to the confirmation that a tax is sustainable not only when it respects the ability to contribute, but also when the society accepts it as legitimate and necessary, even in a context of high tax burden. Thus, for this to occur is fundamental that the State manifests an ethical posture in dealing with taxpayers and with the resource’s application, whether in order to legitimize this conduct or to inspire the taxpayers to adopt the same behavior, assuming that their misconduct (tax evasion) is a direct reflection of the State posture.

Revolution in Boston? Eight Propositions for Public History on the Freedom Trail

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred F. Young
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Public History ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Public ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Freedom Trail ◽  
The Many ◽  
Collaborative Efforts ◽  
The Revolution

The author reassesses the public presentation of history on Boston's Freedom Trail, founded in the 1950s, in light of the reinterpretation of the American Revolution which has brought into focus the multi-sided struggle for liberty and equality within America. In eight propositions, he questions whether the many sites of the trail with a minimum of coordination, do justice to the "popular" side of the Revolution. Boston is at risk in dealing with race and gender, he suggests, of fragmenting the Revolution. In avoiding the "dark" side, it can fall into an exclusively celebratory history. To present a more coherent history, the author points to the need for greater collaborative efforts by the sites which make up the trail.

Visible States and Invisible Nation: Newspaper Coverage of Nineteenth-Century Lawmaking

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-381
Author(s):  
Emily Pears
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative

Abstract:Researchers and the public alike have long recognized that in American politics visibility matters. To claim credit for policies, to recruit supporters, and to maintain democratic legitimacy, the lawmaking process must be visible to the American public. Yet little is known about how the public perceived the legislative process during the nineteenth century. This article uses systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of newspapers in Baltimore, Maryland, Portland, Maine, and Charleston, South Carolina, to measure the comparative visibility of lawmaking at the state and federal levels between 1830 and 1880. The research demonstrates how analysis of newspaper coverage can be used to better understand public perceptions of state and federal lawmaking during time periods without polling data. The visibility of congressional lawmaking varied greatly from one state to the next, and competition for coverage between state legislatures and Congress remained strong across the country throughout the studied period.

State-Issued Currency and the Ratification of the U.S. Consitution

1989 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary M. Schweitzer
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Money Supply ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The U.S

Paper money, a major component of the colonial money supply, was critical to the economic policies of the colonial legislatures. Why did the state legislatures relinquish the power to issue money to the new federal government through the ratification of the Constitution? Hostility between states with radically different philosophies regarding paper money raised concerns about the viability of the union, and it was this fear which led to the clause in the Federal Constitution that prohibited state paper money issues.

The Crisis of the 1780s

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-73
Author(s):  
Gordon S. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The State ◽  
Great Power ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Federal Constitution

This chapter describes the crisis that led to the calling of the convention that created the federal Constitution in 1787. Although the Articles of Confederation that united the thirteen states lacked the powers to tax and regulate trade, the country was not doing too badly economically or demographically. But the state legislatures were abusing the great power that had been granted to them in the revolutionary state constitutions and tending to ran amuck. The multiplicity, mutability, and injustice of state legislation, especially with the printing of paper money, led reformers to use the weakness of the Confederation as a cover to scrap the Articles and to create an entirely new and powerful central government.

Revolution and Exodus

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-172
Author(s):  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
The State ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter describes the events of the revolution as well as its aftermath. The représentants intended gradually to take power at Geneva by means of a new law code. Law would place limits upon the powers of the magistrates by establishing a clear distinction between sovereignty and government. For the représentants, there came the point when the magistrates could not be trusted to pursue the public interest. Constitutional change, in the form of the new law code, was justified especially when the magistrates wanted to involve the French in day-to-day politics, seemingly handing over Genevan sovereignty to the foreign power. At the same time, the argument was reiterated that the représentants were protecting independence and the established constitution. It was the magistrates who had once been the fathers of the state, living honourable lives of simplicity and frugality, but who had turned to luxury and selfishness.

The Religious Conspiracy Theory of the American Revolution: Anglican Motive

1976 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Hogue
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
American Religion ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
The Revolution

The historian of American religion seeking to establish the relevance of his specialty to the event of 1776 labors under something of a handicap, a disability epitomized in the cold silence about religion in those documents which have become the secular scriptures of the nation's political faith. Neither the official justification for the Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, nor the popular contemporaneous one, Paine's Common Sense, accords the remotest of influences to formal religion. If the Revolution had a religious dimension, evidence for it must be sought elsewhere. Both the exegete, hoping to throw new light upon old truth, and the skeptic, to whom a received dogma is a standing challenge, have perforce turned to the antiquarian's shelves, stuffed with the literary remains of a pamphleteering age.

Pitt and Peel—1783–4, 1834–5

1899 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Frank H. Hill
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Working Through ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Force ◽  
George Iii ◽  
The Revolution

The classic view of the struggle between George III. and the Whig aristocracy, which had its climax and catastrophe in the years 1783–4, is given with great force in Sir George Trevelyan's ‘History of the American Revolution.’ ‘By the time,’ he writes, ‘George III. had been on the throne ten years, there were no two opinions about the righteousness and wisdom of the Revolution of 1688. To hear them talk they were all Whigs together, but meanwhile, under their eyes and with their concurrence, a despotism of subtle and insidious texture was being swiftly and deftly interwoven into the entire fabric of the constitution. The strong will, the imperious character and the patient unresting industry of the King, working through subservient Ministers on a corrupt Parliament, had made him master of the State as effectively and far more securely than if his authority had rested on the support of an army of foreign mercenaries.’

The Strength of This Country

2018 ◽  
pp. 48-88
Author(s):  
Ryan A. Quintana
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Early Production

This chapter examines the several ways that black Carolinians helped transform South Carolina into a modern independent state during the American Revolution and in the years immediately following its conclusion. Beyond looking closely at slaves’ wartime labor, the chapter further examines the important discursive role that enslaved men and women played in the early production of the state. It also interrogates the role of black Carolinians’ rebellious activities, and how such acts directly shaped early statecraft and challenged the state’s claims to authority.

The Federal Constitution and the Defects of the Confederation

1908 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 532-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Farrand
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The Revolution

While it has frequently been stated that in framing the Constitution of the United States the federal convention of 1787 was engaged in a very practical piece of work, it never seems to have been realized how completely the members of that convention were dependent upon their own experience. With the Declaration of Independence the colonies organized themselves as States, framing and adopting constitutions. In the course of the Revolution, those States united under the Articles of Confederation. When this latter instrument of government proved to be inadequate, a fresh essay was made and our present Constitution was the result. That the Constitution was framed because of defects in the Articles of Confederation is universally accepted, but it does not seem to be recognized that experience had shown certain specific defects to exist, that the convention was called for the purpose of correcting those specific defects, and that the Constitution embodied in itself little more than the remedies for those defects.In order to appreciate this point of view, which it is believed is the true historical interpretation of the action of the federal convention in framing our Constitution, it is necessary to divest oneself of preconceived ideas and prejudices due to modern misinterpretation.

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