The Wars of the Roses: The Actors and their Actions

In the late fourteenth century, the Hundred Years War against the French began. It involved the English kings Edward III (r. 1327-1377), Richard II (r. 1377-1399), Henry IV (r. 1399-1413), Henry V (r. 1413-1422), and Henry VI (r. 1422-1461, 1470-1471). In 1461, after Richard (duke of York) and Richard (earl of Warwick) rebelled, York’s son, Edward, became King Edward IV. In the late 1460s, the earl of Warwick and Edward IV became estranged, Warwick eventually restoring Henry VI to the kingship. Edward was restored with assistance from the duke of Burgundy and the trading Hanseatic League. In 1483 he died and his son briefly reigned as Edward V. That June, however, Edward IV’s brother Richard, duke of Gloucester (another son of Richard, duke of York), seized power as king, and was crowned Richard III. In 1485 Henry Tudor, a relation of the Lancastrian kings Henry IV-VI, invaded England (he had spent many years in exile in France) and unseated Richard III. Henry Tudor became King Henry VII and married one of Edward IV’s daughters, thus uniting the York and Lancastrian branches of the English royalty. According to legend he symbolically used a red-petaled rose with a white center as his badge, combining the white rose of the House of York and the red rose of the House of Lancaster.

Bastard Feudalism decreases Monarchy Power

From the mid-1300s to 1453, the English kings waged intermittent war against their French counterparts (the Hundred Years War). Until 1453 all the English kings fought in France to assert their rights to French land and titles, especially the French Crown. Because the general trend among the nobility of the later middle ages was to find bureaucratic civilian roles, not martial in nature, acceptable, these English kings were hard pressed to find men and funds for their offensive wars (Pollard 188). To recruit soldiers for his French expeditions, Edward III subcontracted with other nobles, allowing them to raise, equip, and indenture (bind into their personal service) fighting men (their affinity, or retinue). The result of this system, commonly referred to as “bastard feudalism,” was to increase the power of a few nobles, who became magnates—something like a modern industrial tycoon in wealth and clout. The men who wore the uniforms of and owed allegiance to these magnates, when they returned from their French adventures, were naturally inclined to follow their magnate’s direction and, in the absence of a peaceful way to make a living, were indeed eager to propagate additional conflict (Plummer 15). In exchange for their service, a nobleman gave his men what was called “good governance”—he adjudicated his retainers’ disputes with one another and used his influence to except them from law enforcement (Plummer 15-16). Localized allegiances, together with the enormity of the magnates’ wealth, allowed the higher ranks of the nobility to act more independently of, and in some cases defy, the monarchy. Much of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the kingship of England degenerate from an absolutist monarchy to a position as first among equals. The monarchy became, during the Hundred Years War, dependent on its subjects.

The reign of Henry VI in particular saw a great deal of the degeneration in the role of the king as head of state. He was largely not an energetic executive, being more interested in learning and private life than with taking a directional role in his kingdom’s fate (Findling 83). In a king’s case, good governance (mitigation of disputes for those persons who owed allegiance) meant balancing the interests of the members of the upper peerage (the magnates) in addition to enforcing justice throughout the kingdom. Disputes became crises when the disputes of lesser nobles, left unmitigated, escalated into quarrels among England’s powerful magnates, who were, in large part, kings unto themselves. These magnates cared most of all about preserving their local spheres of interest and control, and hardly found national politics of great importance (Lander 1980, 278). But when they were passed over in the line for royal favor, they dissented. Henry VI notably failed to reward magnates in a manner fitting the service they rendered or could be expected, with their huge wealth and sometimes royal blood, to render. Promotions, estates, and annuities instead went to the king’s personal favorites. Good governance, which was a prerequisite to order and lawful action, grew at this time to be particularly lacking.

Financial security was also necessary to dispense justice. Under Henry V’s expansionist policy in France, the English Crown became chronically indebted. The council which ruled England during the childhood of Henry VI continued the significant military (and thus financial) commitments Henry V had made, borrowing nearly £150,000 even as credit tightened and revenues from export duties shrank (Pollard 112). Aside from national defense, Henry VI’s court was a spendthrift institution, freely awarding grants of land, office, and annuities, thereby depleting the Crown’s available resources (Watts 154). But despite the need to curb Henry VI’s gift-giving, patronage was an integral part of good governance. To withhold grants threatened to alienate the magnates who enforced the law. Richard, duke of York, rebelled in the 1450s, at least initially, because, according to custom, a person of his status and power was indispensable to the Crown and should be (though he was not) one of the king’s councillors. Richard, duke of Gloucester, seized power in 1483 because he feared his sister-in-law’s family would fail to incorporate him into the governance of England. He was able to do so because his brother, Edward IV (r. 1461-1470, 1471-1483) had built up his power as the premiere magnate in northern England. In foreign affairs, it was important for the monarchy to not offend commercial interests. In 1471 the duke of Burgundy and leaders of the Baltic Hanseatic League gave Edward IV, deposed in 1470 by the formerly Yorkist earl of Warwick, their support because Warwick’s government had declared war on Burgundy (one of England’s primary trading partners) and pirated Hanseatic League shipping in the English Channel. Financial obligations and markets were often a sticking point for the question of which candidate for the throne a nobleman or trading coalition would support.

Impact of the Wars of the Roses

While there are great lessons to be learned in studying the causes of any conflict or hardship, the change begotten from those causes is also relevant. The Wars of the Roses were a transitional period, marking England’s transition from a medieval feudal monarchy to the more centralized, modern notion of a state. The Tudors of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries constituted a style of government more absolutist in nature, where less power was distributed regionally among magnates. Out of the Wars of the Roses the monarchy emerged stronger and less dependent on agents not its own. By the end of Henry Tudor’s reign in 1509, the English monarchy was once again the chief executive of a unified state.

This change was effected through the reimposition of old customs where they had lapsed and their continuance where they had been maintained, and via newly developed techniques. One of the simplest ways for a king to more easily enact legislation was to pack parliament with members of his personal affinity. Indeed, most of the nobility at some time succeeded in ensuring that their retainers were elected to a seat. The Crown was no different: on average, “30 per cent of the shire and 17 per cent of the borough seats” were filled by candidates who were the king’s retainers (Lander 1980, 61). Parliament could enact acts of attainder, which declared their target a traitor, deposed him of his titles, confiscated his estates and assets, and declared his heirs illegitimate. Though it was not impossible for a man to receive a royal pardon and restoration, attainders were a powerful incentive for any subject to remain loyal. Recognizances—contracts for good behavior—were also common, especially after Henry Tudor became king as Henry VII in 1485. During his reign, nearly every nobleman was obligated to pay the king substantial sums if he, or a person whose behavior he had guaranteed, challenged the royal authority. The prospect of financial ruin was surely a strong deterrent from rebellious activity (Lander 1980, 359). Despite the terror legal enactments could create, the most effective rulers were a powerful personality, capable of balancing competing factions and maintaining a sense of national unity. Edward IV and the Tudor kings are such examples.

The Yorkist and Tudor governments also developed several new innovations. The first of these, by Edward IV in the early 1470s, deals with a late, brief episode in the Hundred Years War. At this time, Edward IV wanted to renew military conflict with France. When the expedition departed England, over sixty percent of both archers and men-at-arms participating had been recruited by peers present at court, who had a feudal duty to fight alongside the king. Residents of the countryside, unless affiliated with a court peer, took a much smaller martial interest in military adventure than they had under Edward III and Henry V. Of most interest is the fact that the primary justification for the 1475 invasion rests on national defense instead of a feudal claim of overlordship in France. In a document of over eleven printed pages, “the king’s title to the crown of France is not even mentioned until almost the end of the fifth page, and even then it is rapidly disposed of in fourteen lines as part of a long argument that attack is the best form of defense” (Lander 1976, 229). Not only was Edward’s feudal title to France mentioned in passing, it is mentioned to shore up his regime’s national defense arguments.

Administration (mainly revenue collection) of royal estates also improved during the Yorkist and Tudor kingships. Very soon after he was crowned in 1461, Edward IV created a new council to oversee his lands which was composed mainly of men trained in administration. The lands this council was responsible for were often increased in number (Lander 1980, 70). The Lancastrian kings (Henry IV-VI, r. 1399-1461, 1470-1471) notably neglected to administer the Crown’s estates with the same very effective methods as they used for their private property (Lander 1980, 72). This failure of theirs helped perpetuate the role of the king as a feudal lord. To regain control of governance from local magnates, the Yorkists and Tudors also expanded the role of royal institutions. Much like Henry IV, Edward IV amassed his own personal, countrywide affinity, which somewhat limited the local magnates’ power (Lander 1980, 50). But in 1485, Henry Tudor was hardly able to do so. He had spent much of his life in exile in Brittany and France. He was compelled to rely on the professional men of the royal household—men who would just as soon work for one king as another. Tudor’s 1487 Star Chamber Act empowered the Privy Council “to deal with the major cases of disorder and corruption,” and eventually included “a group of sub-committees, including the court of audit, the court of poor requests, the council learned in the law to deal with enforcement of Crown prerogatives, and the council of general surveyors to oversee the management of the Crown’s estates” (Pollard 367). Given the foundation Edward IV provided, Henry VII was able to effect a restoration of the monarchy’s former role in English politics as head of state.

Governance methods change with the needs of governors. The late fourteenth century, for the English kings to fight the Hundred Years War, required a change in governance. Consequently, the bastard feudal system was developed. Under it, local magnates increased their power and became more responsible for law enforcement. Their power, wealth, and connections grew so extensive that the monarchy was powerless in any endeavor without their support. By the 1440s and 1450s, when the Hundred Years War wound down and the French rolled back English conquests, magnates’ attention was diverted back to England. They no longer had French concerns. But their retinues and wealth remained; magnates fought even harder than they had in previous ages to retain control of their particular spheres of influence. Eventually, magnates rebelled against the weak rule of Henry VI. The changes of the Yorkist and Tudor kings, some ancient tradition and some new innovation, returned England’s monarchy to the role it had filled under Henry II and Edward I. The kings of England became, once again, head of state. Their function as feudal lords, as titular leaders of the nobility, was over.

Works Cited

Findling, John E. and Frank W. Thackeray. Events that Changed Great Britain from 1066 to 1714. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Lander, J. R. Crown and Nobility, 1450-1509. London: Edward Arnold, 1976.

Lander, J.R. Government and Community: England, 1450-1509. London: Edward Arnold, 1980.

Plummer, Charles. Fortescue on The Governance of England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885.

Pollard, A. J. Late Medieval England: 1399-1509. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000.

Watts, John. Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

The revolution of 1776 is important in that America was established as its own ruler, with its own policies and with its own foreign relations. No longer was it a backyard of Britain’s to be looted, as colonies were. This revolution is widely popularized; everyone knows about it. And it is indeed important. Immediately the United States sought relations with France; political debates of the 1790s often centered on whether Britain or France would be America’s diplomatic and trade partner. President Jefferson asserted independence by enacting embargoes on the ships of both countries until they respected freedom of the seas for American vessels. He also sent an expedition of Marines to Tripoli to forcefully exact concessions from the pirates there. These are all important, but they did not change the way Americans interacted—that change belongs to industrialization.

Each new mode of transportation and communication and manufacturing enlarges a citizen’s world. In the War of 1812, American trade with Britain, already experiencing the industrial revolution, declined immensely. To make up for the lack of finished goods, factories such as that at Lowell were established by wealthy merchants. America emerged from the war as a valuable trading partner; many Britons would invest their capital in American factories. Formerly, the outwork system prevailed. If products were at all made by machines, they were simple, and the products were made in smaller, more home-like settings. The factory system centralized production, using hundreds of workers and more complex machines using water power, all under a single roof.

As demand increased for finished products, factories had to be established inland and their products shipped to consumers far away from any waterway, in the American interior. Roads were useful, but they were few and far between. Many merchants built toll roads, since the states could little afford the expense. Alternatively, canals were built to connect major waterways. The Erie Canal was built in the 1820s and used through the twentieth century. Networks of canals were often built, and shipping goods over water was much cheaper than by land, especially if they were fragile. Before the 1810s invention of the steamboat, barges were used to transport goods down a river and then broken up for timber. Steamboat traffic was two-way; settlers in the interior were enabled to become consumers rather than only producers. By the late 1830s, steam power was being applied on land. Iron locomotives were developed, running on iron tracks much like roads, but much faster. Line construction was predominantly centered in the mercantile north, where there was more demand for manufactured products.

These advances in the ability to conduct business grew the world of the average American. Farmers did not produce crops for their sole benefit. Surpluses were sold not only locally but dozens, hundreds of miles away—even in different countries. Factories were used to produce goods not only for urban residents, but for the most remote farmer. But, as the depression of 1837-1843 shows, this growing economic activity exposed Americans to international crises of money which they could do little, if anything, about. While the revolution of 1776 is important to American, the market revolution of the early 1800s made American important to the world.

The absolute power of the state was until very recently held as an absolute belief. Laws, for the most part, applied evenly over all classes and distinctions of the citizenry. Nowadays, laws are fashioned for the benefit or detriment of one particular segment of the population. Nowadays, competing interests are balanced. Government has become rather a compromiser, instead of its legitimate function as a mitigator of damages. The various welfare and entitlements in not only openly socialistic countries in Europe but even in our United States are shining beacons of this state-sanctioned, state-supported, state-encouraged debauchery. With every paycheck, the industrious, hard-working people are looted not by some distant tax official but by their peers. The peers of the honest workers have decreed themselves masters, claiming their cut of wages as though they were running a mob. Ours is supposed to be a Limited Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 78, described a limited Constitution thus: “one which contains certain exceptions to legislative authority.” Government power ought to extend only to creating remedies for identifiable wrong clearly caused by one party to another. Government is only to send people to jail for crimes they have been duly convicted of and, where applicable, order restitution in a civil case. And when sentencing, it must not forget that each and every competent person is to be held as the source of the offending action. A criminal’s peers are not to be blamed for not teaching him right and wrong; ignorance of the law is no defense from it. Crimes are not to be excused because all the legal methods of obtaining an outcome are closed off; acts are crimes because they are wrong—because they are harmful to others. The fact that a person would be harmed in the commission of a crime does not mean the crime should be eliminated from our statute books.

Now, some of you may ask, “Who is the legitimate giver of charity? Are we not supposed to help our fellow men?” And if you are a Christian who believes each of us has a responsibility to assist those who do not prosper, you might ask, “Are we not commanded by Christ to help our fellow men?” It is true, each of us has that responsibility. But charity is unquestionably not to be distributed at the point of a sword wielded by the government. Until Karl Marx, the only actor to demand charitable contributions was the Church. And even then, gifts were not to be made for our sake, or for our peers’ sake, but for God’s sake. Charity was primarily a means of worship. Its recipients and residual beneficiaries were third parties in an exchange involving the givers and God. Benevolent acts for the sake of the material beneficiaries have never been commanded. Such a command has no place in civilized society. Men should only be coerced into paying their share of what is necessary to defend and ensure the safety of their property from looting moochers. It seems as though today the industrious pay both protector and pillager. Instead of protecting the ambitious, those who have worked to amass the quality of life they see fit, we confiscate what they have labored long hours to acquire and redistribute to the decadent.

The claims made in Frothingham v. Mellon and those made in Flast v. Cohen are dissimilar because in Flast, a specific constitutional limitation on the power of Congress to make appropriations was exceeded. In Flast, it was asserted that “Titles I and II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965,” which appropriated funds for religious schools, violated “the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment” (Flast v. Cohen: 1531). The Court in Frothingham held that status as a taxpayer was not sufficient to have standing to sue; in Flast the Court redefined its position, holding that there was “no absolute bar in Article III to suits by federal taxpayers challenging allegedly unconstitutional federal taxing and spending programs. There remains, however the problem of determining…the personal stake and interest that impart the necessary concrete adverseness” (Flast: 1533). This injury in fact occurred with Congress’ “breach of a specific limitation upon its taxing and spending power” (Flast: 1534).

In Frothingham, the Court firstly examined her specific claim of damages, that the Maternity Act simply harmed her rights to due process. In addition to a claim of unconstitutionality, the taxpayer must show that a personal injury was sustained. Mrs Frothingham never claimed a specific monetary amount of damages resulting from the Act, and neither was the Court able to find a specific amount. Because a taxpayer’s “interest in the moneys of the Treasury…is shared with millions of others; is comparatively minute and indeterminable; and the effect upon future taxation, of any payment out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating, and uncertain,” it would be impossible for the Court to apply a remedy (Frothingham v. Mellon 1529). This would contradict the political questions doctrine of Baker v. Carr which, as it pertains to this case, prohibits hearing the merits of a case which lacks “judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it” (Baker v. Carr: 49). Further, in deciding the case either for or against Mrs. Frothingham, the decision would amount to an advisory opinion, which Muskrat v. United States writes is “a function never conferred…by the Constitution, and against the exercise of which this court has steadily set its face from the beginning” (Muskrat v. United States: 42). Hence, the dismissal.

While the Court does write that taxpayer suits, which are matters “of public and not of individual concern,” “cannot be maintained” (because “if one taxpayer may champion and litigate such a cause, then every other taxpayer may do the same, not only in respect of the statute here under review but also in respect of every other appropriation act and statute whose validity may be questioned”) the opinion does not necessarily mean that excesses of authority will never be found (Frothingham: 1529). Critically though, in Frothingham, the Court was effectively not being asked to uphold a right or award specific damages (they held that Fifth Amendment rights to due process had been respected and that specific damages were indeterminable). In the absence of a “case” or “controversy,” the Court would be assuming “a position of authority over the governmental acts of another an co-equal department, and authority which plainly we [they] do not possess” (Frothingham: 1529). This contradicts another part of the political questions doctrine, that the Court will not hear the merits of cases that involve “the impossibility of a court’s undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government” (Baker: 49).

Turning to the merits of Frothingham, where it is claimed that “the effect of the statute will be to take her property, under the guise of taxation, without due process of law,” it cannot be denied that Congress has the power to tax all citizens of the United States to fund its programs (Frothingham: 1527). Mrs. Frothingham argued that her Fifth Amendment rights to “take her property without due process of law” would be abridged because, to support the Federal program established by the Maternity Act, which Massachusetts (her state of residency) may or may not accept, the Federal government would raise her taxes (Frothingham: 1528-1529). Whether a person is able to benefit from an appropriation does not affect whether he must pay his taxes in full. There will always be programs which do not benefit all citizens equally. The Maternity Act was only to improve the health of mothers and children, not fathers. Even defense appropriations will only discernibly benefit citizens in regions under threat of attack or which are attacked by a foreign power. Frothingham and the Maternity Act, both post-Nineteenth Amendment, could not have violated due process. As long as Congress passes appropriations bills via the procedure outlined in the Constitution, due process is given. Mrs. Frothingham, legally able to vote and to work for political ends, could have and may have voted for candidates who would neither enact the Maternity Act nor approve it for operation in Massachusetts. Her success in those efforts, given the plurality method of election which we have, is irrelevant.

This due process issue is distinctly separate from any allegation that Congress has overstepped a boundary set forth in the Constitution, such as in Flast. The Court established that a breach of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment presents an injury sufficient to have taxpayer standing. While the Government asserted that a case where a party claimed standing because of their taxpayer status is merely disagreement between taxpayer and appropriator and can be resolved by the via repeal of the Act by the Legislature, specific harms are detailed in the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments (Flast: 1532). Since the Fifth Amendment rights asserted in Frothingham are procedural in nature and there is no limitation in the Fifth Amendment on the taxing power of Congress, Mrs. Frothingham’s claim of taxpayer standing was not consistent with the complaint she made. Rights to due process are not limits on government authority to legislate in the same way that, say, the Establishment Clause is. The Fifth Amendment does not prohibit the taking of life, liberty, or property in all cases. Such taking is prohibited only in the absence of “due process of law” (The Constitution of the United States: lxvii). While Mrs. Frothingham may receive a financial disadvantage because of the Maternity Act, she did not claim that Congress had breached an express Constitutional limitation on its authority.

Both Frothingham and Flast are still good law. The Court merely determines in Frothingham that “the appellant…has no such interest in the subject matter, nor is any such injury inflicted or threatened, as will enable her to sue,” not that all suits based on a litigant’s status as a taxpayer are to be dismissed (Frothingham: 1527). Flast clarifies the taxpayer standing test by writing that taxpayer standing is conferred if a taxpayer attacks a spending program’s constitutionality and Congress has harmed a taxpayer (identified by a breach of a constitutional limit on its authority).

Bibliography:

Ronald Rotunda, Modern Constitutional Law: Cases and Notes (St. Paul: West Group, 2004).

But the workers’ conditions were not to be like those in England. Appleton saw the high wages (and thus large amount of debauchery) of the English mill workers as un-American, so the BMC built dormitories for young farm girls to live in while they worked before their marriages. Rules were strict, but the Lowell factory system included, schools, churches, libraries, and banks for the workers. Sarah Bagley, factory worker and later reform advocate, wrote that “Pleasures there are, even in factory life; and we have many, known only to those of like employment” (Bagley, “The Pleasures of Factory Life,” 140). While the girls were taken care of, though, their routines were very strict. Long workdays, infrequent breaks, and only Sundays and holidays off from work were perceived as oppression by the management. Factory employment was highly sought-after by women as a means of supporting their New England farming families who, in the face of agricultural expansion in the Old Northwest, were seeing a decline in their fortunes. The wages of Lowell and factories like it were used often by women to support their familial needs: “a father’s debts are to be paid, an aged mother to be supported, a brother’s ambition to be aided” (Bagley, “Voluntary?,” 141). Desperate women worked for little pay in strict conditions out of necessity, and by 1845 Sarah Bagley’s very favorable opinion of a charming factory reminiscent of her countryside home was entirely gone. The necessity compelling their work in Lowell was “slavery quite as really as any in Turkey or Carolina” (Bagley, “Voluntary?,” 141).

What induced this change? Why did conditions go from at least satisfactory and rewarding to downright horrid? In the mid-1830s, Appleton left management of his factories to other people. Ownership and management were separated. Originally, Appleton had tried to do some good for his employees in addition to reaping profits for his investors and for himself. He remained generous to the end of his life but, like so many later Captains of Industry, his generosity was not always used for his workers’ benefit. In his pursuit of more wealth to give away, Appleton’s employees suffered from declining wages, stricter conditions, and fewer benefits. Appleton wanted to use the women of New England, who he described in 1858 as “well educated and virtuous,” to spur American manufacturing forward. This kind of economic righteousness would offer an alternative to the “operatives in the manufacturing cities of Europe [who] were notoriously of the lowest character for intelligence and morals” (Appleton, “The Introduction of the Power Loom, and Origin of Lowell,” 138). As Appleton moved from a career managing his business into a political career, he relinquished his managerial tasks. He devoted less attention to the conditions of his own factory and gave them to the concerns of his big business constituency.

This trend made the Lowell factory system one of oppression, though the oppression was not systematic. The goal of improving the lot of the workers toiling in the mills was lost; profit was the motivating factor. This is in part due to the economic depression experienced for many years after the Panic of 1837. Demand for products, and the prices people were willing to pay for them, dropped to very low levels. To make ends meet, to continue paying dividends on stocks, the factories cut wages and workers’ services. And even though the pay was low and conditions bad, women continued to work there because it was still the best way for them to save money for their families. Unfortunately, the conditions born out of this depression were never returned to their pre-1837 levels, and squalor and poverty would become the hallmarks of the working class in America.

In Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt, Mark Smith has compiled the fifteen historical documents about the 1739 Stono, South Carolina slave rebellion. We find diary entries from contemporary people, describing their impressions of the outbreak and containment of the revolt; reports from merchants connected with other colonies about Spanish spies and saboteurs seeking to gain an advantage over England in The War of Jenkin’s Ear; the Negro Act of 1740, which was enacted to regulate slaves’ activities and provide punishments for both slaves who violated this law and for whites who grossly mistreated slaves. We are also given later accounts of the rebellion; these used eyewitness accounts as their basis. The first and second, those of Lt-Gov William Bull, Jr. and Alexander Hewatt, draw on material from Lt-Gov William Bull. The third is an account by an abolitionist, who heard from a friend of his about the rebellion from the sole surviving member of one of the families the slave rebels massacred. The fourth is a narrative by one of the descendants of the rebels. All are very interesting; each primary source provides critical yet speculative information, and each of the secondary sources presents an interpretive approach to the sources it draws on.

While reading through these essays, I was struck most by Smith’s, but not in a very good way. Although he has done a good job of presenting contexts for the actual sources, his article seems to stress far too much the Catholic nature of some of the slaves. We do not seem to know for certain whether any of them were Catholic, or how often they observed Catholic practices. It is known only that the place of origin of many of the rebels’ leaders, if not many of the participants, was probably the Kongo, a kingdom which had had extensive contact with the Catholic Portuguese and their missionaries. While the Kongolese adaptations of Catholicism may have and probably were very important to them, Smith places far too much emphasis on discovering why the slaves rebelled on 9 September specifically. While the ringleaders of the event may have planned over a short term to revolt on that day, I find it difficult to believe that all the participants would have understood the day’s significance, or even what was going on. Smith makes it sound as if the revolt’s participants had planned it over the course of several weeks, giving special attention to 9 September.

I prefer to combine the conclusions of the Wood and Thornton reports. Wood argues that the revolt capitalized on South Carolina’s weaknesses from events such as the smallpox and yellow fever epidemics, slave desertions to Florida, dependence on slave labor, and arrival into Charlestown from St Augustine of a Spanish Captain. Thornton complements the Wood report by first establishing the Kongo background of the slaves, and then by explaining the military nature of that society. The Kongo slaves who instigated the revolt would have been very familiar with wars and raiding. Hence, they were able to make use of the firearms they stole (contemporary colonists wrote of being afraid for months of rebels not yet apprehended), made flags, beat drums, and at one point began a war dance in a field. These are all characteristics of Kongo fighters. Taking the Wood and Thornton analyses together, I believe that the revolt was made by slaves of Kongo origin who were aware of South Carolina’s weaknesses. The government were scattered, the white population were fearful of disease and, most importantly, mortified at the possibility of a slave revolt or Spanish invasion. The rebellion’s organizers made use of their military skills both to survive and press on towards Florida and to attract other slaves to their cause.

The variety of sources presented in this case study lead to many conclusions. This is true of any studied event or subject. Different contemporaries will place different emphases on certain aspects of the event they report on based on how the event affects them and what interest they have in it. The farther removed we are from an event, the more objectively we can examine not only it but also similar, subsequent, events.

There are many ways for a country to politically come of age. There are many ways for a country to develop into a democratic system. For some, it comes relatively easily, without foreign imposition, without fighting massively destructive conflicts, without the danger of trial and error. Some develop out of an old autocratic system, where the head of state gradually gives up power to an assembly of some kind for relatively short-term gains. Other states, especially ones whose boundaries were established relatively recently, have had rocker roads toward viable democratic systems. They have fought more wars, and they have to experiment with different rules and even entire systems before they become consolidated. Two examples of these opposing developments are the United Kingdom, a centuries-old democracy, and Germany, a decades-old democracy.

The United Kingdom began as the English absolute monarchy (England was unified by William the Conqueror in the late 1060s). Gradually, in exchange for higher taxes and domestic peace, monarchs began to barter away their power to what would later become the House of Lords and then the House of Commons. Perhaps the most notable documentation of this abdication of power was King John’s Magna Carta, from 1215. The English Civil War, in the 1640s, unseated the monarchy and established the rule of law. The Glorious Revolution, in 1689, reaffirmed the rule of law with the Bill of Rights (after the absolutist monarchy was restored in 1661). The parliamentary government became the primary giver of law, and the Bill of Rights enforced contracts, property rights, economic exchange, respected marriage and families, and gave basic and codified order. It also centralized the government and took power away from the Church and local elites. Executive power became centered in the Prime Minister, selected by the monarch and usually leader of the majority party in either the Commons or Lords. By the early 1800s, political parties—Tory Conservatives and Whig Liberals—had been formed.

Today, the United Kingdom is a two-party parliamentary democracy with a collegial executive and single member district plurality voting. Their two parties originated in a political divide regarding whether Parliament or the Monarchy should have more power. As the monarchy became more irrelevant (that is, as the Commons became the politically dominant House, especially after threats to dilute the Lords’ membership to approve Commons legislation). They have a collegial executive—the office of Prime Minister was originally an advisory position to the head of state and executive, the monarch. As we know though, the monarchy was diminished in stature and the Prime Minister and his advisers took over the mechanisms of government. Because of early local control, members of Parliament represent specific districts. It is almost obvious that the easiest way to minimize conflict, in the event that no candidate wins a majority of votes (while the UK has two dominant parties, the Labour party is also significant).

The democratic system of Germany is very different from the U.K. Germany was not a unified nation-state until the 1860s, when the kingdom of Prussia, under Otto von Bismarck’s leadership, consolidated the German principalities into one state. The German Empire was dismantled as part of the peace treaty that concluded World War I (thought the Kaiser had abdicated after a November 1918 socialist revolution). A parliamentary democracy with proportional representation was formed. This government was very weak, however, due to financial responsibility for war damage, hyperinflation, lost colonies, and the worldwide Great Depression. After Hitler’s Nazi party gained seats (due to the very low electoral threshold of 2 per cent), they manipulated electoral rules to gain more seats, eventually forming a coalition that would, in 1933, give sole power to Hitler, after his selection as Chancellor. After the German defeat in World War II, the western Allies built a democratic system in West Germany. After the Cold War ended and the Berlin Wall was torn down, Germany was reunified, and the current systems were enacted.

The German legislature—the Reichstag—as existed for over a century, even during the Empire. It did not have much measurable power until the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). It was, and still is, an assembly with proportional representation. However, because of their past experience with extremist groups who have little popular support, today’s electoral threshold is over twice that of the Weimar Republic’s low threshold of 2 per cent. Additionally, when citizens vote for party, they also vote for the people they want to represent the party. This diminishes the ability of elite party bosses to determine who the sitting politicians are. There are, like in the United States, two houses in the Reichstag, which also helps to balance power. A federal system, also like America’s, divides power responsibilities between the German government and the individual Lander. This is to prevent the mistakes made in government extent of power prior to World War II; so the national government has less control over the minutiae of citizens’ lives.

The cases of the United Kingdom and Germany are very different. Whereas the British perfected their system to suit their own needs over a course of centuries, enshrined power in law and demoted their autocrat more quickly, and developed their own democratic system, the German state was one of trial and error, and today it has Constitutional policy in place to inhibit the recurrence of electoral manipulation and party extremism. Germany’s democratic institutions were imposed by wartime victors. Because of the Cold War, they were also carefully vouchsafed by the same people who imposed the governmental system. Today, both are consolidated democracies who exert large political and economic power both in Europe and in the world.

In the past century and a half, as the United States was transformed from an agrarian nation to a serious industrial power, millions of immigrants have come from abroad in search of a better life. While this had always been going on, ever since the discovery of the New World, the arrival of the industrial revolution to our shores heralded a newer era. This massive influx of new people was possible because faster, more extensive communication and travel systems were possible. The industrialized economy, which used very large amounts of unskilled labor, offered jobs to millions—jobs that needed to be filled. They came because, as awful as conditions ended up being for them in America, conditions in their home countries were worse. Millions came to escape religious persecution (especially eastern European Jews), or military service (like the Confino family, from the Balkans), or to have a chance at taking part in the free enterprise that would give them economic and social mobility.

Most immigrants in this later period, from the 1880s through 1920s, came from southern and eastern Europe. They brought with them their social mores and languages, and especially their religious institutions. All these attributes were a part of their cultural identity. And since America was always a more-or-less free and tolerant land, immigrants probably felt comfortable moving to a foreign land and worried minimally about losing their ancestral ties. Unfortunately, while there were many nationality districts in large cities and immigrants often formed old-country communal assistance societies (such as the Sons of Telsh, which the Rogarshevskys benefited from), divisions within the major groups made life difficult for immigrants. The Sephardic Jews (such as the Confinos) faced a lack of support from the Eastern European Jewish population. The transition was often eased, but in many cases it was made more difficult due to lack of support from the fellow people who had gone before and established themselves.

Life in the United States was also very different economically from the lives of the European and Asian immigrants. Many of them had been skilled in trades overseas, but it was very difficult to make enough money to support a family on those trades because of industrialization, the use of department stores, and the use of primarily unskilled labor in factories. While some immigrants did retain their trades, opening up workshops in their tiny apartments, they worked very long hours just to make their ends meet. On the whole, the people living in the tenement slums of urban centers were only economically well enough to pay their rents, pay for staple foods and a few clothes, and send their children to school for a few years.

All these immigrants came in search of the American Dream. What is this dream? Is it to live in a certain kind of society? Is it a specific quantity of economic goods that can be attained? They lived in cramped, horrid living quarters. They either worked in factories as worthless, untrained workers or in smaller shops at their own trades. Either way, they worked long hours in poor conditions for little pay. They had to concern themselves with their very existence, and the quality of it was secondary.

Russia has always fascinated me; it is a remarkable story of older, Byzantine, almost Eastern tradition, yet it had held on to its autocratic, elite-serving institutions even as it industrialized and has Western relations. In the last 300 years, Russia has gone from being a tsarist state dependent on local nobles to centralized and Westernized to reactionary and West-distrustful tsarist state to even more totalitarian isolationist communistic regime to a highly centralized, at least nominally democratic, state. It is unique because it is where East and West meet—it is a combination of the two.

Around 1700, Tsar Peter the Great traveled West to learn about modernization and industrialization, in order to build up Russian state power into international influence, much like Louis XIV of France. He wanted an absolutist, centralized, powerful country. When he came back, Peter reformed the army into a more efficient machine, expanded industry and exploration, conquered Finland, and astronomically raised taxes to pay for it. Additionally, he built a whole new city—St. Petersburg, Venice of the North—on tundra and swampland. He forced noble families to establish residences there, made it the capital, and proclaimed himself as head of the Russian Orthodox Church (much like the Roman Emperors, who wanted to control the Pope). He even went to far as to tax beards (traditionally very long) and dress, making his officials dress in the Western styles. He also implemented a ranking system for the civil service.

Under Catherine the Great and Alexander I, Russia became even more integrated into European affairs, being an important part of Napoleon’s defeat (they used scorched-earth warfare, and his army could not survive the harsh Russian winter) and later Congress system, which politically balanced Europe so one country could not defeat all the others. The Crimean War began as a Russo-Ottoman conflict, but it soon involved Britain and France and the Russian military fared very poorly. Tsar Alexander II ended the war in 1856. In 1861, he freed the serfs and reformed the land system from ownership of strips, based on fertility, to Western-style plots of land. He reformed the legal system, instituting an appellate system, and allowed local council elections. He had also begun plans for a constitutional monarchy, but was assassinated before they could be put in place. When World War I broke out in 1914, Russia was a contributor (it had pledged to defend Serbia and was allied with France).

Under Communist rule (1917-1991), Russia and its satellites were more hostile to the West. They paid for the Allied victory in World War II with their blood, but met American resistance to their expansion in the Cold War. Under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, they brutally ended dissent in their satellite states, and challenged American dominance with their space program and arms race, creating the NATO-like Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1955. They did not have the mass consumerist drive that existed in the West, especially in America, until Gorbachev’s late 1980s reforms allowed freer speech and international trade.

As Russia interacted with the West, it adopted some institutions—civil service, secularization and imperialism under Peter, diplomatic integration with the Congress system under Alexander I, and land and legal reform with Alexander II. But as it communized, it closed itself off, refusing to take on emerging Western characteristics such as elections, free press, and consumerism. Then it reopened, and now interacts on a world stage. Russia has combined reaction and revolution.

Newt Gingrich, in his book Real Change, pinpoints many issues that are important to the American people—illegal immigration, education, healthcare, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among others—that require and are in dire need of drastic, pivotal reform. “Americans believe overwhelmingly that we need a change in course” (3). Neither the Democrats in power, identified as a small fringe on the left of American society, nor the Republicans in power, who seem to lack the backbone to genuinely oversee, implement, and continue the change they began after their sweep into the House in 1994, have been good for this country. The issue has become one of Red vs. Blue; Gingrich’s solution is to make the issue on of Red-White-and-Blue. “Both parties are failing America” (6). He believes the American people are surprisingly united, based on his research for American Solutions for Winning the Future. At the same time, the massive governmental bureaucracy also needs reform.

Section One

Being a Republican former Speaker of the House, it is perhaps very easy for Gingrich to claim that the Democrats have no solutions for America’s critical issues. But he goes on to explain himself. “When Democrats are elected as a majority, it’s because of Republican failure” (7). “Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was as liberal as McGovern or Mondale” (8). Further, “McGovern lost…by 520 electoral votes to 17….Then, in 1984, liberal former vice president Walter Mondale ran against President Ronald Reagan and lost by 525 electoral votes to 13” (8). What Gingrich is saying is this: that “the 2004 presidential election should have been a Bush landslide. But…Republicans did not run a positive, values-oriented, big-choice campaign. They focused instead on merely turning out their base. The result was a marginal victory…with zero political capital to govern effectively. All it proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was slightly bigger than the anti-Bush vote” (9). When each party merely mobilizes it’s most radical base, it gains nothing even if it wins because of an inability to compromise. This condition ends in a perpetuation of the bureaucratic system that is obviously failing our country. “Any political party that begins each day by writing off a large number of fellow citizens is effectively delegitimizing itself as a choice for long-term governing….how could any party think it could turn its back on American of any ethnic group, geographic region, or economic status and still be considered worthy of governing?” (21).

As much as Republicans and conservative would like to believe it though, the Democrats are not the only people driving us to destruction. The Republicans are just as guilty, if not more. For forty years they were consigned to minority status, where leadership was not really required. They learned “how much easier it was to be in the minority. The majority has to think through an issue, translate it into legislation, make the compromises necessary…and then manage the committee, the House floor, and the conference with the Senate….they actually have to govern. The minority simply has to vote no” (17). The Republican victory in 1994 “propelled people into positions of power who had spent their entire lives in the minority and were comfortable being in the minority. To them, gaining the majority in 1994 was seen as the end. It should have been considered…as merely the first step to creating a governing majority” (15).

Section Two

The common issue to these parties, Gingrich writes, is that they become so involved in the political games Washington plays with America that they—no matter where they started—almost inevitably end up allowing the bureaucracy to continue. The American people clearly believe we are on the wrong track, as far as governmental policy goes. The last presidential election—where the winner’s whole campaign was based on the idea of Change and Hope—proves this. However, “[t]his change can’t come from a president or Congress alone. It will require transforming every level of government—federal, state, and local—by insisting that federal, state, and local elected officials be truly accountable to ‘we the people’ who elect them. It means demanding from our government the high level of performance that private sector entrepreneurs and workers achieve every day….the main difference between the private sector and the government…is that the private sector is largely ‘the world that works,’ and the government…is…‘the world that fails.’ We can no longer afford that failure” (10-11). Frankly, I agree with him. When a government does something it necessarily prohibits that function to private corporations, which tend to be more accountable for performance and results. In private businesses, “innovators come up with and employ commonsense solutions every day. They do not think challenges can’t be met. Accepting failure means losing business….improving services is critical to gaining and keeping customers” (11). Succinctly, governments should be like businesses in that they ought to be accountable for their failures and shortcomings. If a company isn’t providing the services and/or goods at a price customers are willing to pay then those goods will be purchased from someone else. The company will fade away and dissipate. This is not so with government. It is more permanent. However, if a government can do better, the people have an obligation—and, in this country, an opportunity—to elect new members into it.

The fundamental reason we need administrative change so badly is because we have a large group of “Washington bureaucrats, politicians, and lobbyists who don’t think of finding solutions to problems but of managing ‘the system’” (5). “Our current system of government is on a course of decay, decline, and disaster. This system won’t deliver the change we need….We must embrace real change. Our very survival depends on it” (12). We need something new; we must become inventive and innovative, and rescue ourselves from our cyclical complacency. It is “Einstein’s rule that simply doing more of the same” will “not produce a different result” (102). We need this change because “[E]ventually the bureaucracy’s concerns turn toward the bureaucrat and away from the citizen. Taxpaying citizens dealing with such bureaucracies are trapped in the world of the bureaucrats, on bureaucrats’ terms. In the free market, customers simply stop patronizing companies that fail to meet their needs” (92-93).