Liberty Chronicles

Michael Douma joins us for the first part of a two-part series to discuss how we see the past as as an interpretative history. He argues that history is a creative discipline because we choose to arrange facts in a certain way.

Douma goes through his new book, Creative Historical Thinking, and how he typically asks his students to draw a timeline of their lives or a timeline of American history. Quite often, each students’ timeline forms differently. Relating that to the study of the past, Douma argues that every timeline a historian draws, is a different interpretation of the past, creating history. Everyone has a different mental model or “timeline” in which they view their lives and that allows history to be a creative endeavor.

Is the past simply what happened? With that in mind, is history our interpretation of the past? Is history how we give meaning to the past? What is the difference between an error in conception and an error in fact? If you had to drawl the timeline of your life how would you drawl it?

Michael J. Douma website

Creative Historical Thinking, written by Michael J. Douma

What is Classical Liberal History?, written by Michael J. Douma

Music by Kai Engel

What is the Importance of History, written by David Boaz

Is there a Purpose to History?, Free Thoughts Episode

What is Classical Liberal History?, Liberty Chronicles Episode

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Timothy Sandefur joins us this week to discuss how Frederick Douglass and his beliefs do not align perfectly to today’s political factions. He is often mischaracterized due to his legendary status. Has Douglass been purposefully distorted over time? Does the omission of facts about what he did and how he acted play a large role in that distortion?

Frederick Douglass is defined as an individualist, which is best exemplified by his speeches and attitudes toward serving in the military. In his speeches and writings, he believed that slaves should join the army, not to serve their country, but rather, to give themselves a sense of pride. This, he believed, was a crucial way for the slaves to feel empowered because they earned their freedom in a way that ensured that it would never be taken away.

Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, by Timothy Sandefur

How Libertarians Ought to Think About the U.S. Civil War by Timothy Sandefur

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself 

Music by Kai Engel

Slavery in America, Encyclopedia of Libertarianism

What to a Slave is the Fourth of July, written by Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, Free Thoughts Episode

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1848 was a wild ride. That year the Free Soil Party tried to force Whigs and Democrats to take a stand on the issue of slavery in the territories. Once and for all, politicians would have to openly declare themselves either in favor of Free Soil for free society or Slave Territory, for the planters’ personal dominion.

Johnson, Reinhard. The Liberty Party, 1840-1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University. 2009.

From historian Joel Silbey:

The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841-1852. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1967.

Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2002.

Party Over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 2009.

Music by Kai Engel

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The average Free Soiler was a radical Loco-Foco, probably from New York, touched by more than a decade of early libertarianism. But always and everywhere there were also the opportunists, the schemers, the self-advancing office seekers, desperate to leverage free soil into greater personal power, and right there at the top of this magnificent new party was the schemer in chief, the little magician, the Red Fox of Kinderhook, the architect of the Second Party System itself, and now the perpetrator of one of the dirtiest double games in all of politics, Martin Van Buren.

For an overview of the later Loco-Foco movement

Blue, Frederick. The Free Soilers, Third Party Politics, 1848-54. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 1973.

Earle, Jonathan. Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004.

Mayfield, John. Rehearsal for Republicanism: Free Soil and the Politics of Antislavery. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press. 1980.

Rayback, Joseph G. Free Soil: The Election of 1848. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press. 1970.

Music by Kai Engel

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The Polk Administration was a strange time in the early history of American Libertarianism called Locofocoism. In many ways, it was the time of ultimate triumph. Polk was as committed to their economic program as anyone else on the national stage, including their champion, Martin Van Buren. He was a Republican nationalist and an expansionist, and so were many of the more hopeful and naive Locofocos. By 1844, Locofocoism was all over the country, from the shores of New England, through the mountains of New York, and out to the plains of Ohio and Wisconsin, right the way down, even in the South, to places like Montgomery, Alabama, and for at least a brief period, Polk was their man. Everything looked bright, but the peace within the democracy was uneasy at best. Then along came Polk’s war on Mexico, an unforgivable tragedy to some, and an insurmountable political disaster to most others. To set things aright, to protect the power and interests of the North’s free citizens, to expand the zone of liberty and Republicanism, in the face of both British and slave-holding aggression, Northern radicals rose up in political revolution.

Blue, Frederick. The Free Soilers, Third Party Politics, 1848-54. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 1973.

Earle, Jonathan. Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004.

Mayfield, John. Rehearsal for Republicanism: Free Soil and the Politics of Antislavery. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press. 1980.

Rayback, Joseph G. Free Soil: The Election of 1848. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press. 1970.

George H. Smith, “The Liberty Party”

Music by Kai Engel

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In the end, a few thousand early libertarians in New York made the Mexican War a possibility. And almost right away, Polk began betraying Van Buren defectors. He ignored Van Buren’s cabinet suggestions and supported the conservative faction in New York.

For an overview of the later history of locofocoism

“The Artist as Exemplar: Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life”

A quick life of Thoreau in the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism

Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas (1871)

Polk’s Special Message to Congress (11 May, 1846)

Lincoln’s “Spot Resolutions” at the National Archives

Music by Kai Engel

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Dr. Nima Sanandaji has a PhD in Engineering from Stockholm’s Royal Institute, and he has written over 20 books on policy, philosophy, current affairs and history. He joins me now to talk about his latest, “The Birthplace of Capitalism,” which explains how and why ancient Middle Easterners invented capitalism and entrepreneurship.

Nima Sanandaji’s Wikipedia entry

His latest book, The Birthplace of Capitalism: The Middle East, Timbro (2018)

Dr. Sanandaji’s 2016 speech on Nordic socialism at the Cato Institute

Roderick Long joins Free Thoughts to talk about libertarian themes in Confucianism

Music by Kai Engel

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Corporations are so commonplace, so ubiquitous, and considered so necessary that we barely stop to ask whether it’s ever been justifiable in the first place. Here to help us tackle one of the great, relatively forgotten questions in Libertarian history is Gary Chartier.

Gary Chartier’s Wikipedia entry

His archive at the Center for a Stateless Society

“Corporations: A Contractual Program” in Literature of Liberty, December 1979

“The Limited Liability Corporation” in Literature of Liberty, September 1982

William Leggett, “The Restraining Law and Its Abominations,” August 1836

Music by Kai Engel

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In the grand catalog of 19th century America, there are few villains so worthy of a Libertarian’s scorn, as James K Polk. The Jacksonian period was one flush with eager upstarts, middling men who hit it big with cunning and peculiar talents. Polk, too, was one of these eager, young, upstart Americans.

Frances Whipple, ed. Liberty Chimes. Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Providence. 1845.

May, Robert. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2002.

Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1997.

Sellers, Charles. James K. Polk, Jacksonian: 1795-1845. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1957.

James K. Polk, Continentalist: 1843-1846. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1966.

Music by Kai Engel

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We often learn that Manifest Destiny was the invention of racists and conquest-hungry imperialists, and there is some truth to that, but much as historians have ignored it and much as we might like to do the same, America’s first libertarian movement was also responsible. Jacksonian radicals called Locofocos provided the ideology that helped transform the United States from a limited republic into a continental empire. Uncomfortable as it might be, we will find that their early libertarianism was a jumping-off point for what only later became a much more typical racist imperialism.

“Battling the Empire,” Part One and Part Two

“The Oregon Question”

“A Latent Leaning Toward Texas:” Republicanism vs. Empire

John L. O’Sullivan: The Great Nation of Futurity

Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1981.

Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation. New York: Knopf. 1963.

Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill & Wang. 1995.

Music by Kai Engel

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