- Kauffman, Bill. Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet. Wilmington: ISI Books, 2008. ISBN 978-1-933859-73-6.
-
It is a cliché to observe that history is written by the
victors, but rarely is it as evident as in the case of the
drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution,
where the proponents of a strong national government, some
of whom, including Alexander Hamilton, wished to “annihilate
the State distinctions and State operations” (p. 30),
not only conducted the proceedings in secret, carefully
managed the flow of information to the public, and concealed
their nationalist, nay imperial, ambitions from the state
conventions which were to vote on ratification. Indeed, just
like modern-day collectivists in the U.S. who have purloined
the word “liberal”, which used to mean a
champion of individual freedom, the covert centralisers at
the Constitutional Convention styled themselves
“Federalists”, while promoting a supreme
government which was anything but federal in nature.
The genuine champions of a federal structure allowed
themselves to be dubbed “Anti-Federalists” and,
as always, were slandered as opposing “progress”
(but toward what?). The Anti-Federalists counted among
their ranks men such as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, George
Mason, Samuel Chase, and Elbridge Gerry: these were not
reactionary bumpkins but heroes, patriots, and intellectuals
the equal of any of their opponents. And then there was
Luther Martin,
fervent Anti-Federalist and perhaps the least celebrated
of the Founding Fathers.
Martin's long life was a study in contradictions. He was considered
one of the most brilliant trial lawyers of his time, and yet his
courtroom demeanour was universally described as long-winded, rambling,
uncouth, and ungrammatical. He often appeared in court obviously
inebriated, was slovenly in appearance and dress, when excited would
flick spittle from his mouth, and let's not get into his table
manners. At the Consitutional Convention he was a fierce opponent of
the Virginia Plan which became the basis of the Constitution and, with
Samuel Adams and Mason, urged the adoption of a Bill of Rights. He
argued vehemently for the inclusion of an immediate ban on the
importation of slaves and a plan to phase out slavery while, as of
1790, owning six slaves himself yet serving as Honorary-Counselor
to a Maryland abolitionist society.
After the Constitution was adopted by the convention (Martin
had walked out by the time and did not sign the document), he
led the fight against its ratification by Maryland. Maryland
ratified the Constitution over his opposition, but he did
manage to make the ratification conditional upon the adoption
of a Bill of Rights.
Martin was a man with larger than life passions. Although
philosophically close to Thomas Jefferson in his view
of government, he detested the man because he believed
Jefferson had slandered one of his wife's ancestors as
a murderer of Indians. When Jefferson became President,
Martin the Anti-Federalist became Martin the ardent Federalist,
bent on causing Jefferson as much anguish as possible.
When a law student studying with him eloped with and married
his daughter, Martin turned incandescent, wrote, and
self-published a 163 page full-tilt tirade against the
bounder titled Modern Gratitude.
Lest Martin come across as a kind of buffoon, bear in
mind that after his singular performance at the Constitutional
Convention, he went on to serve as Attorney General of the
State of Maryland for thirty years (a tenure never equalled
in all the years which followed), argued forty cases before the
U.S. Supreme Court, and appeared for the defence in
two of the epochal trials of early U.S. jurisprudence:
the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel
Chase before the U.S. Senate, and the treason trial of Aaron
Burr—and won acquittals on both occasions.
The author is an unabashed libertarian, and considers
Martin's diagnosis of how the Constitution would
inevitably lead to the concentration of power in
a Federal City (which his fellow Anti-Federalist George
Clinton foresaw, “would be the asylum of the base, idle,
avaricious, and ambitious” [p. xiii]) to the
detriment of individual liberty as prescient. One wishes
that Martin had been listened to, while sympathising
with those who actually had to endure his speeches.
The author writes with an exuberantly vast vocabulary which
probably would have sent the late William F. Buckley to the
dictionary on several occasions: every few pages you come across
a word like
“roorback”,
“eftsoons”,
“sennight”, or
“fleer”.
For a complete list of those which stumped me, open
the vault of the spoilers.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.Here are the delightfully obscure words used in this book. To avoid typographic fussiness, I have not quoted them. Each is linked to its definition. Vocabulary ho!This is a wonderful little book which, if your view of the U.S. Constitution has been solely based on the propaganda of those who promulgated it, is an excellent and enjoyable antidote.
malison, exordium, eristic, roorback, tertium quid, bibulosity, eftsoons, vendue, froward, pococurante, disprized, toper, cerecloth, sennight, valetudinarian, variorum, concinnity, plashing, ultimo, fleer, recusants, scrim, flagitious, indurated, truckling, linguacious, caducity, prepotency, natheless, dissentient, placemen, lenity, burke, plangency, roundelay, hymeneally, mesalliance, divagation, parti pris, anent, comminatory, descry, minatory
Spoilers end here.
