We are witnessing one of the greatest ironies of modern history: the population policy of the Chinese government. The state’s coercive one-child policy—complete with forced birth control, sterilizations, late (even caesarean) abortions, and likely infanticide—began officially in 1979 and went on for more than 35 years. It was gradually softened, beginning in 2013.
In 2021 the plan was completely revised—even reversed.
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) was the most prominent black American at the beginning of the twentieth century. He began and ran the Tuskegee Institute, an innovative industrial school for blacks, which is today Tuskegee University. He dined with President Theodore Roosevelt in the White House—the first time a black man had met with a president in the White House since Frederick Douglass met with Abraham Lincoln. He was a champion of education and moral betterment for all blacks (not just an elite). Thousands of boys were named Booker in his honor.
Washington’s fame declined after his death, however. W.E.B. Du Bois, an intellectual with a Harvard PhD, seems to have taken over the mantle of black leadership, after Washington’s death in 1915—if not before. Du Bois was much younger; he died in 1963.
Today Washington is sometimes disparaged as an “Uncle Tom” because he did not politically resist the growing Jim Crow restrictions of the South.
As readers know, I have written quite a bit about war on these pages.[1] But, to my surprise, I have never written about direct personal combat—specifically, about dueling. This amazes me because I just learned that dueling was a widespread activity, a way of life even, in the antebellum South.
We all know about the fatal duel in 1804 between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which led to the death of Hamilton. But I have recently learned that Hamilton was involved with—that is, at least entered into discussions about—ten duels before that. Burr had dueled once previously. (And Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel.)
A recent scholarly paper perused two newspapers (the New York Times and the Richmond Daily Dispatch) for duels reported between 1861 and 1865. They found 130 duels (over just five years!). Of these 130 duels, they write, “71 involve prominent figures, which we define as politicians, military officers with rank of at least colonel (Army) or captain (Navy), and other well-known private citizens.”[2]
It does not surprise me that Paul Finkelman (cited in Allen Guelzo’s article in National Review) argues as he does—he’s long twisted history to promote hostility toward the American Founders. What is more surprising is that most of the Constitution’s defenders, including Prof. Guelzo, have overlooked the actual reasons for the three-fifths clause, which, of course, is Exhibit A in the case against the Constitution.
In the course of researching my 2015 article on the use of financial phrases in the Constitution, I uncovered those actual reasons. They should not be so obscure: the apportionment formula flowed from the framers theories about representation and wealth rather than from any desire to accommodate slavery per se. Here is the relevant excerpt from my article. What the Constitution Means by “Duties, Imposts, and Excises”—and Taxes (Direct or Otherwise), 66 Case Western Res. L. Rev. 297 (2015). The many footnote citations are omitted:
Agreeing on the general principle of apportionment was less difficult than settling on a formula applying it. The Confederation system of allocating requisitions by state land values had proved impractical. Apportionment by actual taxes paid seemed to be likewise unworkable. A new formula was needed.
The starting point in the search was collective agreement that each state’s contribution in federal taxes would be a function of (1) the state’s population (2) and its wealth. Fortunately, experience strongly suggested that, for the most part, wealth followed population. In other words, population usually was a good proxy for wealth. Madison reported Connecticut’s William Samuel Johnson as telling the Constitutional Convention that “wealth and population were the true, equitable rule of representation; but … these two principles resolved themselves into one; population being the best measure of wealth.”
What was true in general, however, was not true always. Slavery created a valuation problem. Although few of the framers thought slavery was a good thing, slavery was a fact and they had to address the conundrum it created. The conundrum was this:
