The Mayflower Compact: The Document 156 Years Ahead of the Declaration | Lawrence Reed

[00:00:14] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Joining me today is Lawrence W. Reed, who is the President Emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education. And he's going to be talking about a new book that he has out. And then next week, we're going to begin a four-part series on economics with Lawrence W. Reed, teaching us more about economics and refreshing our memory on economics, which I think we need a lot of.

[00:00:43] But today, it's about his book, which is called Born of Ideas. Larry Reed, thank you so much for joining me today. Lawrence W. Reed, my pleasure, Jenny Beth Martin. Thank you for having me. Well, tell the audience a little bit about yourself. Okay. I'm a native of Pennsylvania. I grew up near Pittsburgh in a little town called Beaver Falls. And upon graduation, I went on to teach at Northwood University in Michigan.

[00:01:09] I did that for seven years. And then in all the years since, I have run as president various think tanks around the country. Three years in Idaho and back in Michigan for another 21 years at the Mackinac Center. And then 12 years running the Foundation for Economic Education, with whom I'm still full time, but as a very active president emeritus.

[00:01:34] That is great. And so in all of those think tanks, were you focused on economics? Economics and history to the extent the job allowed me, because that's my first love. Economics is a close second. But mostly at those think tanks, it was economics or economic policy at the state or federal level.

[00:01:56] Okay. And you've got a new book that is out called Born of Ideas. And we're going to get into that. But this is not your first book, is it? No. This is number nine. First one having come out 45 years ago. Wow. Very good. And so nine books. And this one is called Born of Ideas. And tell me a little bit about it.

[00:02:19] Okay. It is subtitled, How Principles, Faith, and Courage Forged America. So that would indicate that it is history-focused, but with a lot of economics. But I focus on key events and people and ideas from the Mayflower Compact involving the pilgrims in 1620, all the way through the Bill of Rights of 1791.

[00:02:47] Trying to find and talk about those key events, people, and ideas that shaped our country in its most formative stage. So this book is really focusing on your first love history. That's right. Yes. Okay. Very good. So let's talk a little bit about, I think, some of the stories and some of the information that you're sharing in the book.

[00:03:13] You said that it starts in 1620. That's when the pilgrims were in Plymouth. Yes. And how does that experience figure into America as a nation two and a half centuries later? Yeah. Well, you know, so many Americans, I think, know, broadly speaking, the pilgrim story. They may not know of a very significant document that the pilgrims drew up the day before they landed in Plymouth.

[00:03:44] You have to recall that they left England for reasons of religious persecution, but they didn't come straight to America. They went to the Netherlands where they spent a decade until they had a ship and investors to back the venture to the New World. And those investors, when it was time to sail, they put about 50 so-called strangers on the ship with the pilgrims.

[00:04:10] The pilgrims called these people the strangers because they didn't know them and they weren't on the ship for reasons of religious persecution. The investors put them there because they thought the pilgrims would need their skills as carpenters and so forth when they landed. But the weather blew the ship way off course.

[00:04:32] And instead of landing in what we now refer to as Virginia, the pilgrims realized that they were about to land far north in what we now call Massachusetts. And it was November. You know, they were late. So it was too late in the year for them to plant anything. They had to somehow get through that winter in whatever housing they could hastily construct. But when they determined they were way off course, that's when the strangers said, hey, we're out of here.

[00:05:02] We don't feel bound by our contract. And once we land, we may go someplace else or take the first ship back, which was not likely. But in any event, the pilgrims thought, hey, we've got to make an arrangement with these other people and try to get them to stick with us.

[00:05:20] So they drew up a written agreement called the Mayflower Compact, which is the first agreement on governance between two groups of people that did not involve a monarch in the history of the world. Even the Magna Carta from Britain, you know, that was nobles and the king. But this was two groups of people.

[00:05:43] And the document said, when we land, we will form a government of mutual consent, toleration. We're not going to have a monarch or a dictatorship of any kind. We're going to work together in freedom. And that is really the quintessential American concept that would be embodied so beautifully in the Declaration of Independence 156 years later.

[00:06:12] So I think that is the most meaningful early benchmark when you're looking at, you know, what were the formative events that defined America and helped to make us an exceptional country? Because they said, we are going to do this. This is how we're going to govern and live among each other. And there was no monarch involved dictating how they were going to actually implement it. That's right. Sometimes we talk about a social contract.

[00:06:41] Well, this was the real thing. This was a private, voluntary, social contract between two groups of people, not involving a government, to set up a system whereby they would be free and governed by mutual consent. So you also refer to an obscure document called the Religious Magna Carta. What is that about? Yeah, this is a remarkable moment also in colonial history.

[00:07:11] It happened in 1657. Remember that before New York was New York, it was New Amsterdam. It was a Dutch colony. And perhaps the most famous Dutch governor of the colony was a man named Peter Stuyvesant. He was not a very tolerant person. For various reasons, he did not like Quakers.

[00:07:34] So in 1657, he issued an order that throughout the colony of New Amsterdam, people were to shun the Quakers. If they come into town, force them out. Do whatever you have to, to let them know who's boss. You know, that kind of thing. Discriminate against them. Well, the citizens of Flushing, New York, which was part of the Dutch colony, they were very religiously tolerant people.

[00:08:03] And they came up with a document called the Flushing Remonstrance. Flushing Remonstrance in 1657, in which they said to the governor, we will not do as you command. Our faith in God and understanding of his commandments teach us to be tolerant and welcoming of fellow Christians. And so we're not going to run the Quakers out of town.

[00:08:32] Well, this was in direct violation of Governor Stuyvesant's order. And as a result, a number of them were jailed. He sent the troops to get them and put them in prison. But they held fast. And ultimately, it was the Dutch company that was the patron of the colony and also the church back in the Netherlands that leaned on Stuyvesant and said, get rid of that order.

[00:09:00] We're not a people who believe in such intolerance. So that was a great statement by people in defiance of authority and in favor of the freedom of religion. Which we still do today in America. We oftentimes will stand for liberty over the defiance of an overbearing government. Yeah. And, you know, what makes that especially significant is when it's not just your liberty that you're speaking out in favor of.

[00:09:27] I mean, the people who wrote the Flushing Remonstrants, they were Quakers. Right. So they were already safe from any action of the government. They were speaking out on behalf of other people and their religious liberty. And that, I think, is what makes their stand so remarkable. It really is. I don't know that I knew about that before now. So it's really interesting to hear about that, which is why people should buy your book.

[00:09:54] There are substantial portions of the book that are devoted to money and inflation. And inflation is – you are showing that money and inflation made a difference and was an issue in the American Revolution. Yes. But it's a problem still we're facing today as well. It has been a problem ever since the first government decided it wanted to take over money and used it to its own advantage.

[00:10:23] That's happened throughout history time and time again and rarely ends well. In the colonial experience, the first nationwide experience with paper money that was unbacked and that produced a great inflation began in 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence.

[00:10:45] That's when the Second Continental Congress, looking ahead to the prospects of war with England, decided, hey, we've got to come up with some money for things like equipping an army. But the Congress didn't have the power to tax. The only way they could get revenue is if the states said, OK, yeah, we'll send you something, how much you want. And sometimes they sent it. Sometimes they didn't.

[00:11:10] But Congress then said, well, we're going to have to print paper money and we'll just promise people that at some point in the future, if all turns out well, we'll give you gold and silver or something for it. They just kind of hoped it would hold its value. And at first they put Ben Franklin in charge of the printing press and said, now just print $3 million. That's it. And he said, OK.

[00:11:32] But then the pressure to print more continued to grow until by 1780, they printed so many of these continental dollars that they became completely worthless. So in the midst of trying to win the war, we had to fight our own self-generating hyperinflation. And finally, Congress got honest and said, look, we really mean it. We will give you gold and silver at a future date.

[00:11:59] Finally, when they did that, then we had a currency with integrity. That's it's interesting that it caused so much problem that it wound up not even being of value at all. I think that Americans today have trouble imagining what that means, that the dollar or the currency or the bill is meaningless. Yeah.

[00:12:26] You know, I have to say that the British certainly understood what it meant because they contributed to our hyperinflation. They had a ship. Well, they had a ship called the Phoenix. This is another chapter in the book. It had assaulted Staten Island with cannon. And then it parked itself off of Staten Island.

[00:12:49] And somehow they had secured the plates to print the continental dollar. And on the ship, the British were printing immense amounts of counterfeit American continental dollars and then smuggling them onto shore, knowing that, hey, the more paper dollars are running around, the more prices are going to soar and wreak havoc with the American economy.

[00:13:13] So I would argue that the Phoenix probably did more harm to the American cause with its printing presses than it did with its cannon fire. And what do you mean by that? How can a person or a country be harmed when the dollar is so devalued that it's worthless? Well, it makes it impossible to make contracts, certainly any long-term contracts.

[00:13:39] If the money is falling in value so rapidly that you simply know it's going to be worth a lot less a year from now, but you don't know exactly how much less. How do you make a contract? What's the amount you agree to pay? What's it going to be worth in even a month, let alone a whole year, if it's already declining at double or triple-digit rates? So it just messes up the economy, makes it difficult to make agreements and contracts.

[00:14:06] People become very disgruntled every time they go to buy something and find now it's much higher than it was a week or two before. That's not good for the cause of morale at a time of war. But we hung together and didn't allow it to do us in, fortunately, but that was a calamity that we did to ourselves. Yeah. Well, hopefully we don't do that same calamity to ourselves right now.

[00:14:33] We kind of are, but just not at the same speed. Yes. Thankfully, not at the speed of hyperinflation. And we don't have counterfeit money pumping into our country. So those things, at least, were on the right side of. We just need Congress and all levels of government everywhere to spend less money. Exactly. Spend less money. That's right.

[00:14:56] Did the ideas of enlightenment and the religious revival called the Great Awakening play significant roles in the Patriot cause and in the Declaration of Independence? Yes, they sure did.

[00:15:08] In fact, John Adams, who was a very prominent revolutionary, later our second president, he once said years later after the war that the American Revolution didn't begin in 1775 with Lexington and Concord or 76 with the Declaration of Independence. That instead, it began decades earlier in the minds and the hearts of Americans.

[00:15:36] This is why I titled the book Born of Ideas. The Enlightenment started in Europe. It had both good and bad ideas. I'm happy to say that America borrowed the best ideas of the Enlightenment and became the first country in the world, in fact, to take enlightenment ideas and put them into practice.

[00:15:56] Those were ideas such as government should rule by the consent of the governed, that the king can't just do anything that he wants, that he may claim to be ruling by divine right, but we don't believe that. He has to pay attention to the wishes and needs of the citizens he governs.

[00:16:16] It was also an enlightenment idea that our rights as individuals come not from government, but from our creator, and that if the government does its job, it will uphold and protect those rights. But when it tyrannizes and takes away those rights, it was also an enlightenment idea that it was time then for the people to rise up and shed themselves of tyrannies.

[00:16:45] And that very much makes its way into the Declaration. The Great Awakening was a Christian revival that began with people like George Whitefield. Jonathan Edwards was involved, and Jonathan Edwards was involved, other famous names, Gilbert Tennant, in the 1740s.

[00:17:04] And it contributed to this growing notion of freedom and independence from Britain in America because it taught us that, hey, we're made in the image of God, and he didn't intend for you to be somebody's slave. And you have a right to insist on government that answers to the people that governs. So the best of the Enlightenment ideas worked in harmony with the best of the Great Awakening ideas.

[00:17:31] And by the time of the 1770s, Americans were not only the best read people, the most literate people in the world, but they were, I think, the most principled. Just look at the Boston Tea Party. You know, we know that they threw 350 chests of tea into the British Harbor. And one of their objections was no taxation without representation.

[00:17:59] They weren't objecting to the amount of the tax on tea. Same with the Stamp Act of a few years before. They were objecting on the basis of principle that Britain had no right to tax the colonists when we had no representation in their parliament. So that's just one of many examples of how principle became more important to the colonists by the 1770s than even the amount of taxation.

[00:18:29] Yeah, it's interesting that you said they were the most well read and that principles were so important. It just makes me think that it's part of why we just have finished the Constitution training and founding document training.

[00:18:48] And we're doing economic training and we're probably going to do some political theory training, explaining the differences between socialism and communism and fascism and capitalism. And just explaining the concepts again to people and reminding people what they are.

[00:19:08] Because if we don't do that and we don't keep coming back to those basic principles, it can be really easy to come up with the wrong answer to the problems of today. Ronald Reagan once said that we're only a generation away from losing our liberties. And Ben Franklin before him said that the founders gave us a republic, but only if we can keep it. It depends upon our understanding, our knowledge and our passion for the ideas that made us great.

[00:19:38] So as we talk about your book and as we will begin the economic lessons that we'll begin doing next week, it's important to remember our founders were steeped in the principles and we have to keep going back and rereading and relearning and reminding ourselves what they are. Yeah. And they were well versed in history.

[00:20:05] They knew, for instance, why the old Roman Republic rose to greatness. And they also knew to a great extent why they lost that liberty. They wanted to borrow the best of the old Roman Republic without taking on some of the baggage that led to its demise. So they were very smart and history focused men and women.

[00:20:28] And you point out when we were just talking, you pointed out that there were and you did it again, the best of the ideas from the Enlightenment. And the French Revolution did not do that. Right. So there's a contrast, like a contemporary contrast. Yes. In the kind of what can happen when you're not being steeped in those principles versus just rebelling for the sake of rebelling or revolting for the sake of revolting.

[00:20:56] Yes. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, so only less than a decade and a half after ours began, it started out looking promising. In fact, in 1789, the Marquis de Lafayette, who had fought on our side here in America as a young man, he, along with help from Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen at the start of the French Revolution.

[00:21:25] So we had good reason to think maybe, you know, they were going to evolve as we did. But they didn't. They took a turn towards tyranny and bloodshed that was just absolutely horrific. And for a number of reasons, they lacked the focus on respect for the individual. They were more collectivist in their approach.

[00:21:47] They followed Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher who talked about the general will, you know, as if that could somehow be divine. Our founders talked about the importance of the individual respecting his rights, not some collective abstraction that like the French talked about.

[00:22:06] Plus, you know, we had about 100 years or more before our Declaration of Independence of what was called salutary neglect, meaning the mother country kind of left us alone.

[00:22:18] It wasn't until 1760 when George III came to the throne that England really began to meddle in our affairs, which meant that we had a good long history of setting up our own legislatures, voting for our own representatives, taxing ourselves, not being taxed by a foreign entity and so forth. But the French had no such experience.

[00:22:41] They went from absolute monarchy to a violent overthrow and with little experience in representative government. And they didn't have the caliber of men and women that we did. In fact, in one instance during the Reign of Terror, there was a region of France called the Vendée, which had been a center of resistance to the French Revolution.

[00:23:07] The revolutionaries sent troops to the Vendée and they killed almost 200,000 people just in that one region. I mean, the place was soaked in blood. Can you imagine Ben Franklin or George Washington or James Madison saying, hey, here's a part of the country that doesn't agree with us. Let's go kill 100,000 or 200,000.

[00:23:28] I mean, the caliber of the character of the American revolutionaries was light years beyond that of the French revolutionaries who would lop off heads and think nothing of it. Okay. And then some people on the, well, not even just some people on the left, but all of us as a country, we know also that we did all of this that you were just talking about. And there's a difference between what we did versus what the French did. And we still had slavery.

[00:23:58] So how did the founders handle slavery from what you were reading and talking about? And why didn't they abolish it, even though we eventually got to that after our Civil War? The founders went further in the direction of the liberation of all men than any previous generation in all of history. Did they go the full measure right off the bat?

[00:24:28] No, they compromised for the sake of unity at a time of crisis and war with the mother country. But you have to remember these things are best understood, I think, in context. But I'm interrupting you. I think that is so important.

[00:24:44] If we look back, even just 120 years ago, we didn't have computers or satellites or instant communication or the ability to read every single thing that's ever been written in our phone. So even if we go back to the 80s, like in the beginning of the 80s, there wasn't even a touchtone phone. You had to have the rotary dial. So context does matter. Yeah.

[00:25:12] It's easy for us to look at it from what we know today, but sometimes we have to be able to compartmentalize what we know today and go back and see, but where were they? That's right. People of every generation are greatly influenced by what they inherited, by what's going on in the culture around them. And in history, we talk about the sin of presentism, which is judging people of the past by the conventions of today.

[00:25:40] A good example would be, let's say we could bring the Wright brothers into our room here today. And if we were to say to them, what's wrong with you guys? You built this rickety flying machine. It didn't have Wi-Fi, no meal service, nothing. You know, I mean, it wouldn't make sense to berate them for that. They took flight further than any previous people had ever done. They set us on a path, lots of room for improvement, and we've done that.

[00:26:09] But you can't criticize them for not doing what was subsequently done and probably couldn't have been done in 1903. When it comes to slavery, it goes back to 3500 BC in Mesopotamia. It has affected every country on the globe. There isn't a country that, or maybe three or four, I think somebody once calculated, there are three or four where slavery never took hold at all.

[00:26:39] But almost every country in the world has had slavery. And it was widely accepted, rarely questioned. In 1700, as late as that year, hardly anybody, any place on the planet was even questioning slavery. Everybody thought, well, it's been here forever. Some people are meant to be slaves. Within 100 years, by 1800, it's being questioned everywhere. And one reason for that is the words of the Declaration of Independence.

[00:27:08] Even Abe Lincoln, you know, almost 100 years later will harken back to the Declaration when he makes a case against slavery. We have to fulfill our promise. We can't live as hypocrites. We've got to take our founding ideals and make them feasible and implemented for all people. Well, at the time, if the founders had tried to abolish slavery, some did, by the way.

[00:27:34] It was not, you know, even Thomas Jefferson tried to get an abolition of slavery and to blame George III for it in the Declaration. We would have fallen apart as a nation right from the start because not everybody had evolved in their thinking to accept that slavery was an evil thing. The first country in the history of the world to abolish slavery didn't do it until 1804. And that was the Caribbean nation of Haiti.

[00:28:04] Well, by 1804, there were eight American states that had already abolished it or put it on the path to extinction within their borders. So America is exceptional not because we had slavery. Everybody had it. We're exceptional because of what we did, the lengths to which we went to get rid of it.

[00:28:25] And, you know, even in Africa, you have to remember that it was rare that slave traders would invade an African country and cut their way into the interior and capture people for slavery. They were in collusion with Africans themselves.

[00:28:45] The Africans were doing the initial dirty work, capturing people from neighboring tribes and then taking them to port where they would sell them to the slave traders. So slavery within Africa by Africans is as old as the hills. But thankfully, in part because of the sentiment expressed in our declaration, slavery is reviled the world over.

[00:29:14] It is indeed. We still have work to do with human trafficking even today. And I think that people, especially before President Trump became president, didn't understand just what a problem it was. I think that that's one of the things President Trump with his focus on the border has helped bring to shine light on and bring delight around the entire country.

[00:29:41] So tell me a little bit about some of the individual heroes you wrote about in the book. One of my favorites is a young man named Nathan Hale. Hopefully we're still teaching about him in our schools. Nathan Hale was 21 when in 1777, after the Continental Army had been driven out of New York City,

[00:30:07] Washington, as commander in 1777, needed somebody to go back into Manhattan undercover and spy on the Brits. Washington needed to know where are their gun emplacements? How many troops have they got? Where are they? What are their plans? Whatever a spy could find out. And one man stepped forward and volunteered, and that was Nathan Hale, 21 years of age.

[00:30:32] He disguised himself as a Dutch schoolteacher, went into Manhattan. Unfortunately, his cover was blown when someone recognized him. And the British arrested him and found him guilty of treason. And as he was marched to the gallows, and this is recorded in the diaries of some of the British officers who were present and couldn't believe what a young man of composure and courage they were looking at.

[00:31:03] But as he was put up on the scaffold and the noose put around his neck, he uttered those immortal words, I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country. And how, thank God we've had people of such conviction and courage in our history. Yes. You need them. And he was right there. He never wavered.

[00:31:29] And just what an incredible man to do that. And we still see that today in that kind of spirit today, not necessarily, what I'm about to say is not necessarily from people who have given their life and actually died. But I've talked to so many veterans in the years that I have been doing this work, and they will do anything for the country.

[00:31:57] And I've talked to them sometimes where they're 60, 70, 80 years old, and they're like, if I had to put my uniform back on right now to defend our country, I would do so. It's inspiring. And they love our country. And the people who have fought for our country have done so out of love from the very beginning. Yeah, absolutely. And they weren't all Americans.

[00:32:25] There were some who came from other countries to join in our fight. I have chapters in the book about several of Polish extraction. Tadius Kosciuszko came from Poland, was trained in engineering and helped to build the fortifications at Saratoga, widely revered by Americans who knew him because he helped win that battle that brought the French in on our side.

[00:32:51] Then you had Casimir Pulaski, another Pole, known to this day as the father of the American cavalry. But he came from Poland to join in the fight for American freedom. He's, to this day, he's one of only eight people in all of our history to be given the honor of honorary American citizenship because of his service during our revolution. He's buried, by the way, in Savannah, Georgia, where he lost his life in battle.

[00:33:21] Then you had Haim Solomon, also from Poland. He was a very wealthy man, one of the wealthiest in the colonies when he arrived from Poland just a year before the fighting with Britain began. But within a very few years, he completely bankrupted himself. Why? Because he gave it all. He gave it all. He made loans to people and to the army that he fully did not expect to ever get paid, didn't matter to him.

[00:33:49] And he gave away much of his fortune. He gave it all for America. And then, of course, who can forget the Marquis de Lafayette from France who came at the age of 19. He broke French law because by law it was illegal for Frenchmen to leave the country to go fight in our battle for independence until France joined the cause.

[00:34:15] But he broke the law and he showed up in Philadelphia at age 19, knocked on the door of Independence Hall to volunteer to fight for Washington's army. And the first person who met him at the door turned him away. I mean, you can imagine. He probably thought, who's this kid from France? You know, he can barely speak English and he wants to join our army. Maybe he's a spy. Who knows?

[00:34:41] But anyway, Lafayette turned out to be one of George Washington's favorite comrades in arms. He thought of him, Washington did, as a second son. And Lafayette fought bravely and was wounded during our war for independence. One of the greatest, I think, military figures in all of history, not just our revolution. Yes. He just quite an amazing legacy that he has left behind.

[00:35:10] And then you also wrote about Sam Adams and Patrick Henry and Joseph Warren and Mary Otis or Mercy Otis Warren. Yes. Yeah. Don't forget the woman. As Abigail Adams told John Adams not to forget the woman. Mercy Otis Warren was thought of in her day as the conscience of the American Revolution.

[00:35:34] And the reason for that was she was a playwright and she was very staunchly pro-Liberty and anti-British. And she would often have to put a fictitious name to her plays because they were so subversive. And she knew she'd be in trouble if the Brits knew she was the author. Well, she opened up her home to the Sons of Liberty when it was founded in 1765.

[00:36:03] And so some of the greats like Sam Adams would meet in her home to plot resistance against British rule. She later became a key figure at the time of the Constitutional Convention in the late 1780s. She was one of the people who said to Congress, I'm going to urge that the Constitution not be adopted unless you include a Bill of Rights.

[00:36:27] And she prevailed on James Madison to incorporate the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. And she wrote a history of the colonial struggle against the British, which President Thomas Jefferson, well, Mercy Otis Warren was still alive, required his cabinet to read. Every member of Jefferson's cabinet had to read her history to get a good sense for what makes an American truly a good American.

[00:36:56] That is very interesting. And Thomas Jefferson had a lot of books. Yes. And so for him to require that tells you just what he thought of the value of that, the contents of that book. I think he's famous for saying, I have a pillow at home. In fact, that actually says it on it. I cannot live without books. Yes. I feel the same way. This is only a teeny tiny portion of the books that I have.

[00:37:24] And notice I have your book now in there. Oh, I appreciate that. So one more of the heroes. What about Thomas Paine? Oh, Thomas Paine. You know, I can't imagine. I don't think we would have produced the Declaration of Independence, at least not in July of 76. It might have come later.

[00:37:46] But he was the man who turned colonial opinion in the direction of freedom and independence when he wrote the first of two great works, Common Sense. Yes. That appeared in January of 1776. So keep in mind the context. The shot heard around the world had been fired at Lexington the previous April, but the Declaration hadn't appeared yet. That would be in July of 76.

[00:38:14] But in January, Thomas Paine writes this widely read all over the colonies from north to south pamphlet called Common Sense in which he eloquently made the case that it's time to drop our pens and pick up our swords. That we have tried every possible means to achieve a peaceful resolution of our differences. They're not listening over in London.

[00:38:42] And it's time to take up arms. And this was a guy who was born in Britain. Had only been in America for about a year or so. He was a failed businessman making corsets in Britain, but his company went bankrupt. But he ran into Benjamin Franklin while he was still in London. And Franklin saw something in him. And he said, you know, if you'll travel to America, I think you'll like what's taking place there. And I'll open some doors for you.

[00:39:12] And he did precisely that. Paine became associated with a printer and then later opened his own print shop. But in January of 76, he writes Common Sense, which awakens the colonists that, hey, time, the clock is ticking. It's time to rise up. And he brilliantly made the case against hereditary monarchy. Oh, my gosh.

[00:39:36] If you read that today, you can see how why the Brits thought it was incendiary for him to say how ridiculous it is for somebody to say, I get to be king just because my daddy was. And so pain really changed a lot of minds in the right direction. There's a chapter about a Pennsylvania couple who has the same last name as you, Joseph and Esther Reed. Yes. Tell me about them.

[00:40:01] When I started researching Joseph and Esther Reed of Pennsylvania, being a native Pennsylvanian, I was hoping I might find that there's a ancestral connection there. But a genealogist looked into it and said, no, you're not related. But I sure would have been proud if he had found that I was. Joseph Reed was an aide-de-camp to General Washington at the start of the war.

[00:40:28] He also became a member of the Second Continental Congress and the first governor of Pennsylvania, although that position wasn't called governor at the time. He was president of Pennsylvania. But it was changed later to governor. So he was an important figure himself. But his wife, I think, is especially intriguing.

[00:40:51] Thanks to an archivist in Washington, I was able to access correspondence in their own handwriting between Esther Reed and General Washington. And she wrote to him. And you can access them today, too. Anybody can. The National Archives will allow you to do that. You can see in their handwriting, Esther writes to Washington and says, I would like to raise money for the soldiers.

[00:41:19] And Washington writes back and says, hey, that's a great idea. More power to you. Let me know how it goes. And then she writes a letter later reporting back. And she says, General, I'm happy to tell you that we have raised $300,000, equivalent today to several million dollars at that moment, in private voluntary funds.

[00:41:42] And Esther Reed organized the largest single private fundraising campaign for the troops of the war. So when she reports to Washington in her letter about this, she says, I would like to distribute it to each man in arms. And Washington writes back, thanks for the notion, but says, that's probably not a good idea because many of the men will just use it for drink.

[00:42:11] So he says, here's a better idea. Why don't you and your lady friends get together, buy cloth and whatever else you need, and sew pants and shirts for the men because that's what they really need. And so she says, OK. And they sewed thousands of pairs of pants and shirts. But Elizabeth Reed didn't want the men to forget who did this. So she had a little insignia or what's the word?

[00:42:40] Some verbiage anyway, sewn into each garment that reminded them this was from the ladies. Well, I don't blame them. Oh, yeah, exactly. And they should be proud of that contribution. Absolutely. It's a very important contribution. Yeah, she was a hero. And being able to raise that money. And then you have the others who gave all financially. They truly were pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred. Absolutely.

[00:43:08] Everybody got involved by the end in some way or another. It truly was a popular revolution. It didn't start out that way. You know, we have estimates that maybe a third of the people in America did not favor separation. A lot of them left. But by the end of it, everybody was on board pretty much. So how did Washington win the war? Well, you know, typically you think of wars are won because you have more guns than the other guy.

[00:43:36] You win more battles than the other guy. You have a bigger navy or whatever. None of that was true for Washington. He faced the most powerful military on the planet in the American War for Independence. He lost two out of three battles that he fought. But he knew tactics. He knew strategy. He knew when to hit and when to retreat, when to harass. And he took advantage of unique circumstances.

[00:44:06] His midnight raid on Trenton on Christmas night in 1776 was absolutely brilliant. When he and his men crossed the river over to Trenton, surprised the German mercenaries called the Hessians and trounced them. And then a week or so later, he does it again at Princeton, beats the British forces twice in the space of a week. But most of the battles he actually lost.

[00:44:36] But give him credit. He held the army together. Even as Congress could not afford to pay the men. They went, many of them, years with receiving no compensation. They had families back home that were wondering, how are we going to make a go when our chief breadwinner is in battle and he doesn't have a nickel to send home? Well, what held them together was Washington's character. And that's the theme of that chapter in my book.

[00:45:04] That the men loved him and he loved them back. They saw him as a pillar of character and integrity. He was as honest as the day is long. He was a stern disciplinarian, but the men came to appreciate that. He lived with them. He didn't command battles from, you know, up in a fancy castle. He was on the battlefield with them, leading the charge. They respected that.

[00:45:32] And I'll give you one little story that's also in the book in that chapter on Washington that I think reveals his character. It was after the Battle of Germantown, which we lost. The Britons, the British won that decisively. The two armies separated. So you have this field in between. And with the two sides cleaning themselves up, you know, from a fierce battle.

[00:46:00] Here comes a little terrier from behind British lines romping across the field into the American side. And, of course, the men are delighted to see this cute little dog. And then they look at his collar and discover the name of his owner, General William Howe, the Supreme Commander of British Forces in North America. Belongs to their number one guy. And, of course, the men immediately say, oh, let's keep him.

[00:46:30] That'll serve the general right. You know, he just whipped us on the battlefield. Let's keep his dog. But General Washington intervened. He was a dog lover to begin with. He had more than 50 dogs in his lifetime. And he said, no, this is not what gentlemen do. We know who's he. He's not a combatant. And we know who he belongs to. We're going to return him. That's what gentlemen do.

[00:46:54] And so he dictated a letter, which is still visible today, to his aide-de-camp. At that time, it was Alexander Hamilton, later Treasury Secretary. Hamilton takes down Washington's words in a note that say something like, you know, it is our pleasure to return to General Howe, a dog which seems to belong to him. Something to that effect. Very innocent but clear.

[00:47:21] And the note is given with the dog on a leash to one of the American soldiers who marches it back to British lines and returns the dog to its rightful owner. That's a glimpse of Washington's character, I think. Yes, absolutely. And it's a sweet story. Yeah, it is. It's a sweet story. It humanizes. Yeah. It humanizes the whole war, actually, not just him. You talked about the role that women play.

[00:47:48] What about black people and Indians or Native Americans? Native Americans were a divided lot. Well, that's certainly true of black Americans, too. Indian tribes that were far from the front lines often didn't come into the struggle on either side. But of those that did, about two-thirds sided with the British, one-third approximately with the Americans.

[00:48:16] Part of that was that they had—the Indians who favored the British had training relationships with the Brits. But they also appreciated that the British king had declared in 1763 that American colonists would not be allowed to go across the Appalachians to settle Western lands. So the Indians thought, well, that'll keep them on the East Coast and out of our hair. So they went with the Brits, those Indians that thought that was a good idea.

[00:48:44] But one-third fought with us. At Valley Forge, there were some 50 Native Americans, mostly Oneida and a few Mohawks, who camped with the Continental Army and General Washington in that awful winter of 77, 78. One of them, I mentioned him in the book, he had been adopted by an immigrant family near where he had grown up as a Native American.

[00:49:13] He kept his ties. He could kind of come and go. But the Native American—I mean, the American family that adopted him educated him very well. And, well, then he went back to the tribe as an older man. At Valley Forge, some of the men in their diaries write about this Indian who, on frosty mornings

[00:49:41] in that vicious winter, if you venture out from camp, you might find this Indian in the woods singing French opera. When I came across that, I thought, what? I mean, any stereotype I may have had about Native Americans was gone with that revelation. So that's an interesting story for sure. Black Americans, they too were divided.

[00:50:07] The British governor, Dunmore of Virginia in particular, offered black slaves their freedom if they would join the British cause, and many did. But there was no reason to believe at that point that the British would keep their word. I mean, they were still, at that point, the greatest slave-trading power in the world. They didn't abolish slavery until 1833. But nonetheless, that promise was enough to lure some black Americans to the British side.

[00:50:34] But there were others who joined the American cause. Washington authorized the creation of an all-black regiment at the request of the men themselves in Rhode Island. And they waged three successful battles, thrashing the Hessian mercenaries that the British had planted in Rhode Island. It won three battles, an all-black regiment in Rhode Island.

[00:51:00] So then you had a black woman, Phyllis Wheatley, who became the first black woman, maybe in the world. We know she was the first black woman in either the Americas or in Britain, to author a published book of poetry. Well, she was very much on the American side and actually was praised by George Washington

[00:51:29] for her poetry skills. He invited her to visit him. And this was still during the war. And she actually spent at least an hour with General Washington talking the affairs of the war and so forth as battle raged nearby. In his tent, Washington spent time with her because he thought she was really an incredibly inspirational woman.

[00:51:58] These are good stories that need to be told, especially as we're at the 250th anniversary of our country. And to remember some of the stories that are lesser known and to document those and remind people about them. It's very, very important to do that. But you recently wrote an article on your website that touches on a subject that's not in the book

[00:52:27] about how America solved a problem of a nearly non-existent Navy going up against the world's greatest naval power. Tell about that. Yeah, I wish I had written that in time to put it in the book, but I didn't. But it's an amazing story. Just imagine at the start of the war with Britain, the American Navy consisted of only 27 ships. The British Navy had 250. How could you possibly compete?

[00:52:56] And by the end of the war, the American Navy, the official Navy, was down to only 20 ships, whereas Britain had shot up to 500 by the end of the war. But the Brits would have had hundreds more if it hadn't been for how the Congress handled this issue. In May of 1776, two months before the Declaration, realizing how puny our Navy was,

[00:53:22] the Congress came up with the idea of issuing what are known as letters of mark, M-A-R-Q-U-E. Letters of mark are official authorizations of a government to private entities to create their own Navy and go after the enemy. Congress didn't just say, you know, do it however you want. They actually wrote up rules of conduct.

[00:53:47] And if you capture a British vessel, you get to keep the proceeds of the sale of whatever they've got in their cargo. The Congress didn't even take a cut, even though it needed the money. It said to privateers, as we called them, private owners of these ships, that if you take a British ship, you can sell everything that's on it that you want and divide it amongst your men. It's yours.

[00:54:13] Well, they in effect deputized or privatized the Navy. And if you're wondering, well, how effective was it? The number of British vessels that American privateers sunk or captured was about 600. Wow. 600. So we would have been looking at around 1100 at the end of the war if they'd not done that. If they hadn't done that. Wow. Yeah.

[00:54:38] So we privatized the Navy and took a really dire situation and turned it to our advantage. Just shows the free markets were. Absolutely. Amen to that. That's the first thing I thought, too. Now, you said you are not related to Reed, but you wrote about John Witherspoon and the fact that you descended from the Witherspoons of Scotland. Yes.

[00:55:01] My genealogist friend did determine that John Witherspoon and I both descended from a common ancestor just a few generations before him. I'm not directly related to John Witherspoon. Wish I had been. He was the first clergyman and the first, or not the first, I mean the only, the only clergyman and the only college president to sign the Declaration of Independence.

[00:55:28] He was active on behalf of freedom and independence from the day he arrived in 1768 from Scotland. He came here already, a friend of American liberty and preached it from the pulpit. But he also became the sixth president of what would become Princeton University. It was called the College of New Jersey, but later to become Princeton.

[00:55:57] But, you know, he saved that college twice. Did he? Twice. Once was when the finances, when he took it over, it was nearly broke in 1768. The board that hired him thought, you know, we need a savior here to turn this college around. And he did. It didn't even have a library, but he had a significant one which he brought over with him and donated it to the college, which became the core of the Princeton Library.

[00:56:26] Then he saved the place later when the British destroyed part of the campus. And he evacuated the students and got them out of town, so none of them were harmed. And after the British left, he organized a very successful fundraising campaign to rebuild the campus. So he's very highly thought of to this day as the savior of Princeton, you might say. That is amazing.

[00:56:54] I think all the Ivies right now could use the savior who could come in and remind them of the principles we were talking about a little while ago. Most of them were founded as Christian institutions. They would not tolerate much of what goes on there today. And they go back so far in our history. And right now, they're just stomping on our history. Okay, last one.

[00:57:19] So many people, like the people at Princeton today, talk about American democracy and saving democracy. What is it that the founders gave us? Was it really a democracy? No, they did not give us a democracy. I think the best, most accurate description is that they gave us a republic with democratic elements.

[00:57:41] A democracy, a full-blown 100% democracy would mean that everybody gets to vote on everything. It would be awkward, unwieldy, impossible. And it wouldn't preserve the rights of minorities. I mean, there are some things that shouldn't be put up to a vote. Can you imagine today if somebody said, let's reinstitute slavery and put it up for a vote?

[00:58:10] That's not a justified function of government to enslave people, even if you could get 99% of the people to vote for it. A republic respects the rights of individuals and puts some things beyond the reach of any majority. And also, it involves electing people democratically, but those people we elect then become our representatives.

[00:58:36] So you vote for your congressman and the one who gets the most votes democratically is the one who wins. But then he or she goes to Washington and doesn't say, OK, let's have a vote back home on everything we have to deal with here. They do the voting on important issues. And then you and I, as the voters, decide, did we like what our representative did? If not, we'll run against him or throw him out at the next election.

[00:59:01] So we've kept the best elements of both by preserving the democratic nature of elections, but also putting beyond reach of any majority certain rights that are there for all time. And hopefully we can actually keep the republic. I hope so. It depends on us. It's not automatic or guaranteed. Not at all.

[00:59:28] And we've had it for 250 years, but we've got to make sure we hold on to it for the next couple of years and then years after that as well. Hopefully this book will help accomplish that. I hope so as well. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Larry Reed. I'm so glad that you did. And I hope everyone goes and buys this book, Born of Ideas by Lawrence Reed, Lawrence W. Reed. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Jenny Beth. Appreciate it.

[00:59:58] If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X, and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit TeaPartyPatriots.org.

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