Shakin' All Over

First heard this song on Live At Leeds, the 1970 album from The Who.  Great tune with remarkable bass playing by John Entwhistle.  Knew it was a cover of an older song which I assumed was American and from the late 50s.  To my surprise I recently discovered it was by a British band in 1960 and was a #1 song in the U.K. and a flop in the U.S.

The band was Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.  The song was written by Johnny Kidd and the slinky guitar by Joe Moretti.  Very cool sounding song for its time.  Johnny Kidd died in a nightime head on car collision in 1966 at the age of 30.  Moretti was a session guitarist through the 1960s and 70s, before moving to South Africa in the late 70s where he became a house musician at a Sun City Casino.  He passed in 2012. 

Realities

It is natural to feel nostalgic for what the Empire was, just as one might regret the gentle light of oil lamps, the splendor of the fleet at sail and the charm of the temps des equipages [ship's crew].  But so what? There is no policy worth anything outside of realities.

    - French President Charles de Gaulle, August 1960, speaking on the ongoing war in Algeria.

Quoted by Richard Vinen in his recent book, The Last Titans: How Churchill and de Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World.   Vinen goes on to write of de Gaulle, ". . . de Gaulle was a reactionary . . . this made him unsentimental.  He looked back with regret but there was almost a playful self-conciousness about any suggestion that the past could be revived."

Forgotten Americans: William Wirt

 

 

The Constitution established the structure of the federal government, but the implementation and development was a different matter.  The Office of Attorney General was created by Congress on September 24, 1789 in the Judiciary Act (the Department of Justice was not established until 1870). The AG's role was to advise the President and represent the United States in cases at the Supreme Court.  Wirt would transform the Office of Attorney General.

William, born in 1772, was the youngest son of Swiss and German immigrants who ran a tavern in Maryland.  In a pattern common in those times, by the time the young boy was eight he was an orphan and he got some schooling by assistance from an uncle and family friend.  He took up the study of law as a teenager, moving to Virginia where he was admitted to the bar, shortly thereafter marrying the daughter of Thomas Jefferson's physician and moving to the Charlottesville area where he also became acquainted with James Monroe.

After his wife's death in 1799, William moved to Richmond, first coming to prominence in 1800 by defending the notorious James Callendar, a Jefferson supporter (and later critic) against prosecution under the Alien and Sedition Act.  Marrying for a second time in 1802, five years later President Jefferson asked Wirt to serve a prosecutor in former Vice-President Aaron Burr's trial for treason.

In 1817, Wirt was nominated by President Monroe as Attorney General and he was confirmed by the Senate.  The Office he inherited was nothing like it is today.  In a Spring 2001 article from Duke Law School, H Jefferson Powell noted in "William Wirt & the Invention of the Public Lawyer":

Wirt stood at the intersection of a number of cross-cutting forces in the development of American law and American society more generally.

“[W]hen I had the honor of receiving the appointment,” he wrote the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee a few months later, “I asked for the documents belonging to the Office … but my inquiries resulted in the discovery that there  was not to be found … any trace of a pen indicating, in the slightest manner, any one act of advice or opinion which had been given by any one of my predecessors, from the first foundation of the federal government to the moment of my inquiry.”

It was under Wirt that the Office of the AG began to systematically organize opinions and briefs for future reference and he regularized the representation provided by the office.  The prestige of the AG rose in concordance with these improvements.

Powell also notes "Wirt's mature view of the role of law in American society" as;

. . . encapsulated in a letter he wrote to President Monroe in 1823, urging that the Republican Monroe consider appointing the distinguished New York judge – and well-known Federalist – James Kent to the United States Supreme Court. Wirt conceded that Kent’s appointment “would, at first, produce considerable excitement” (by which he plainly meant protest by Republicans offended at the choice of a Federalist) but argued that the short-term cost was far outweighed by the long-term advantage to the nation of appointing a judge of Kent’s stature and character to the high Court. “The Constitution is the public property of the United States,” Wirt reminded Monroe, not the instrument of a political faction, and in addressing issues of constitutional moment “a President of the United States should look to the good of the whole country, to their great and permanent interests.” This concern for the law as a means
of expressing and safeguarding political community pervades Wirt’s legal opinions as Attorney General as well and distinguishes his understanding of public law from the more adversarial views that seem predominant today. 

Along with his reforms of the AG's Office, Wirt participated in most of the major Supreme Court cases of his era including McCulloch v Maryland, Dartmouth College v Woodward, and Gibbons v Ogden.  In 1824, Wirt issued an opinion holding the South Carolina Negro Seaman Act of 1822 to be unconstitutional as an infringement on the federal government's exclusive power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce.  The South Carolina statute had been enacted in the wake of Denmark Vesey's plan to initiate a slave uprising (there is some debate as to what extent this plan actually existed).  It required that any free black seaman on a ship coming into a South Carolina port was to be imprisoned until such time as the ship left port.  Despite Wirt's opinion and federal court rulings against the act, South Carolina continued to enforce it until the Civil War.

Wirt is recorded as owning several slaves at various points in his life.  There is an intriguing passage in John P Kennedy's 1850 book, Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt, Attorney General of the United States: 

"To test the theory that there was no natural inferiority of intellect in the negro, compared with the white man, he had one of his own servant boys and one of his nephews both educated exactly alike. I believe, however, that neither of them did much credit to their teacher." 

The Attorney General's reputation as an orator, in an age when that skill was much prized, was such that the House of Representatives selected him to give the principal address at a service in memory of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shortly after they both passed on July 4, 1826. 

After leaving office, Wirt's last great legal battle was representing Cherokee Nation against federal and state attempts to remove them from lands granted to the tribe by treaty with arguments in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court.  From the Wikipedia summary: 

. . . before the US Supreme Court Wirt argued, in Cherokee Nation v Georgia, that the Cherokee Nation was "a foreign nation in the sense of our constitution and law" and was therefore not subject to Georgia's jurisdiction. Wirt asked the Supreme Court to void all Georgia laws extended over Cherokee territory on the grounds that they violated the US Constitution, United States–Cherokee treaties, and United States intercourse laws. Although the Court determined that it did not have original jurisdiction in this case, the Court held open the possibility that it yet might rule in favor of the Cherokee. Wirt therefore waited for a test case to again resolve the constitutionality of the laws of Georgia. On March 1, 1831, Georgia passed a law aimed at evicting missionaries, who were perceived as encouraging the Cherokee resistance to removal from Cherokee lands. TheAmerican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, an interdenominational missionary organization, hired Wirt to challenge the new law. On March 3, 1832, the decision in Worcester v Georgia authored by Chief Justice Marshall, held that the Cherokee Nation was "a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress".  

Despite the legal victories, the Jackson Administration and State of Georgia prevailed as a practical matter. 

Powell's article reflects on the toll Wirt's years as AG took on him as well as the fact that today, unlike the 19th century, he remains little remembered despite his contributions to the young Republic:

Wirt’s preoccupation with his career subjected his marriage and his family to extraordinary stress: the Five years he lived after leaving Office were largely devoted to what was in effect a reconciliation with Elizabeth. Furthermore . . .  the fame for which Wirt sacrificed so much time and energy proved ephemeral: despite his historical significance, Wirt has no place in twenty-first-century Americans’ general picture of our past, and scarcely any greater prominence among contemporary lawyers. That is a matter for regret, and not merely because we know that it would disappoint Wirt: both in his life and through his legal views Wirt helped to create the legal universe in which we still live.

He was an affectionate, empathetic and sociable person who prized the creation and maintenance of warm human relationships. Wirt’s inability to undertake sustained political activity was in large measure due to his deep dislike of personal conflict and animosity. At the bar, in contrast, Wirt usually found it possible to remain on friendly terms even with lawyers against whom he litigated.

One of the things Wirt left behind when he took on the AG role was a thriving literary career.  Where in legal matters, Wirt prized dispassionate objectively, he was considered a passionate and engaging writer.  His works include Letters of the British Spy (1803), The Old Bachelor (1812), and Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1817).  This last volume constitutes much of what we know about the text of Henry's speeches, no record of which was kept during his lifetime.  Wirt interviewed those still alive who knew Henry and witnessed his speeches, through which Wirt attempted to reconstruct the text.  His efforts remain controversial among historians. 

The Bookshelf

Substack has become a valuable resource for me.  While already familiar with some authors, I've also discovered many others writing on a wide variety of topics.  Highly recommended are the book reviews at Mr and Mrs Psmith's Bookshelf.  Some of the reviews are jointly authored, others by either Mr or Mrs.  What makes them particularly valuable is that, along with reviewing the book, the reviews often serve as the launchpad for deep, interesting, and provocative discussions.

Some of my favorites:

Xenophon's Anabasis and The Education of Cyrus

An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World's Largest Amish Community 

Further Arguments Against Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel)

The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal

Leap of Faith (about the Iraq War and a book I've also written about) 

The Wizard and the Prophet

The Verge

Sick Societies 

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War 

 

Empire Of Liberty

Sad news today.  Gordon S Wood, the great historian of early America, died when hit by a car in the parking lot of a Shaw's supermarket in Rhode Island.  Though 92, Wood remained active, attending and speaking at conferences this year.

I've read his books Empire of Liberty, Power and Liberty, and Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and have The Radicalism of the American Revolution on my reading list for this summer.  Empire of Liberty is the story of the democratization of the new republic in its first 4 decades to an extent unanticipated by the Founders, and probably unwanted as to at least some of them.

Wood trained at Harvard under the eminent historian Bernard Bailyn.  I've read several of Bailyn's books; The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America (which I wrote about here), Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours, and Illuminating History: A Reflection of Seven Decades.  Another Bailyn book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, is also on my summer reading list.

In 2019, when the New York Times published the ridiculously ahistorical 1619 Project, the World Socialist Web Site, a Trotskyite organization, published the first extensive critique of the project when it interviewed liberal, progressive, and socialist historians of early America, who unanimously panned the publication, including Wood who characterized it as "so wrong in so many ways" (his full interview is here).

Earlier this year, Wood published his thoughts on America's 250th anniversary in National Review, "The Five Greatest Words in the Declaration".  Some excerpts:

In the Declaration of Independence, the 250th anniversary of which we are celebrating this year, the Founders put down five significant words that came to define America’s culture — “all men are created equal.” No phrase could have been more radical, more momentous. Even the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789, with its statement that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” does not have the same power and significance.

Equality was based on a new understanding of people’s capacity to transform themselves. Educated people in the late 18th century came to believe — it was the basic premise of all enlightened thinking — that people were not born to be what they might become. 

Many enlightened American slaveholders (but, alas, not Jefferson) assumed that at birth they were no different from their black slaves; they had all started with the same blank slate. William Byrd, a wealthy slaveholder and learned member of the Royal Society, was as much of an aristocrat as Virginia was ever to know, yet he sincerely believed that “the principal difference between one people and another proceeds only from the differing opportunities of improvement.” Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier of Virginia, Jefferson’s dining and music partner, made the point more bluntly: “White, Red, or Black, polished or unpolished,” he declared in 1760, “Men are Men.” James Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s great biographer, during his tour to the Hebrides in 1773, was surprised to find a black African servant in the north of Scotland whose manners were no different from those of a white servant from Bohemia. But then he realized that he had forgotten the modern presumption that culture was man-made. “A man is like a bottle,” he observed, “which you may fill with red wine or with white.”

Education, which had been important only to New England Puritans, suddenly became an American obsession.

And not just the education of elites but of all the people. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 put it best, decreeing that “religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Americans now began creating numerous learned academies and historical societies and flooded their society with printed matter designed to inform the new republican citizenry. Three-quarters of all the books and pamphlets published in America between 1637 and 1800 appeared in the last 35 years of the 18th century. Between 1786 and 1795, 28 learned and gentlemanly magazines were established, six more in these few years than in the entire colonial period. By 1810, Americans were buying more than 20 million copies of 376 newspapers annually — even though half the population was under the age of 16 and one-fifth was enslaved and generally prevented from reading. This was the largest aggregate circulation of newspapers of any country in the world.

But the most important humanitarian organizations of the revolution focused on slavery. Hereditary chattel slavery — one person owning the life and labor of another person and that person’s heirs — is virtually incomprehensible to those living in the West today, even though there may be millions of people in the world presently still enslaved.

Slavery existed in a multitude of cultures for thousands of years without substantial criticism — until the late 18th century and the American Revolution. Although many modern historians have called the Revolution’s inability to free all the slaves its greatest failure, they have committed the great sin of anachronism by assuming that everyone in the past must have known that slavery was an evil. These historians therefore have not fully appreciated that the Revolution defied a world that for millennia had taken slavery for granted. It was the Revolution that for the first time in history made slavery a problem, and it led to the first instance of states’ abolishing the practice. Not only did eight Northern states abolish slavery in the aftermath of the Declaration of Independence, but slaveholders in the Southern states were thrown on the defensive and, for the first time, had to justify an institution that they hitherto had taken for granted. They fell back on the alleged racial deficiencies of blacks. The antislavery movement that arose out of the Revolution inadvertently fostered an ideology of racism in America.

The meaning of these five words in the Declaration of Independence was expanded in the succeeding decades to the point where every white man felt he was equal to every other such American. Once invoked, the idea of equality could not be stopped, and it tore through American culture and society with awesome power. It became what Herman Melville in 1851 called “the great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy!” The “Spirit of Equality” did not merely cull the “selectest champions from the kingly commons,” but it spread “one royal mantle of humanity” over all Americans and brought “democratic dignity” to even “the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike.”  

I came across this beautiful piece, The Things He'll Never Say, by former student C Bradley Thompson.  Wood was scheduled to come to Clemson on July 24, where Thompson would interview him.  At the end of the essay, Thompson lists some of the questions he had prepared.  Thompson also includes links to a number of videos featuring Wood.

Gotta Serve Somebody

I posted the studio version of this Dylan song a few years ago, and have a Mavis Staples cover on my playlist but just came across at Assistant Village Idiot this terrific 1980 live cut of Dylan performing the song at the Grammys.  Much better than the studio cut.

You're gonna have to serve somebody

It may be the Devil, it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody

Yes, indeed.  Everyone, whether they think they are or not.  And, as AVP points out, "it is best to at least be aware who that is rather than kidding yourself".