A READER THE LIBERTARIANISM.ORG READER SERIES INTRODUCES THE MAJOR IDEAS AND THINKERS IN THE LIBERTARIAN TRADITION. Who Makes & King Mob Monopoly History Happen? From the ancient origins of their craft, historians have used their work to defend established and powerful interests and regimes. In the modern period, though, historians have emphasized the agency and impact of everyday, average people—common people—without access to conventional political power. Monopoly & King Mob provides readers with dozens of documents from the Early Modern and Modern periods to suggest that the best history is that which accounts for change both “from above” and “from below” in the social hierarchy. When we think of history as the grand timeline of states, politicians, military leaders, great business leaders, and elite philosophers, we skew our view of the world and our ideas about how it works. ANTHONY COMEGNA is the Assistant Editor for Intellectual History at Anthony Comegna Anthony Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. He received an MA (2012) and PhD (2016) in Atlantic and American history from the University of Pittsburgh. He produces historical content for Libertarianism.org regularly and is writer/ host of the Liberty Chronicles podcast. $12.95 DESIGN BY: SPENCER FULLER, FACEOUT STUDIO COVER IMAGE: THINKSTOCK Monopoly and King Mob Edited by Anthony Comegna CATO INSTITUTE WASHINGTON, D.C. 109318_FM_R2.indd 3 7/24/18 10:47 AM Copyright © 2018 by the Cato Institute. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-944424-56-5 eISBN: 978-1-944424-57-2 Printed in Canada. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available. 109318_FM_R4.indd 4 25/07/2018 11:38 PM TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: AMERICAN HISTORY, ABOVE AND BELOW . .1 PART ONE: FEUDALISM TO CORPORATISM . .17 1. EARLY NEW ENGLISH CHARTERS . 19 2. NEW NETHERLAND COMPANY CHARTER . 29 3. THOMAS MORTON’S NEW ENGLISH CANAAN . 45 4. THE SAGA OF PIRATE CAPTAIN JOHN GOW. 93 5. SLAVERY & EMPIRE: THE DESTRUCTION OF WHYDAH BY DAHOMEY. 111 6. SLAVERY’S DEFENDERS VERSUS THE FIRST ABOLITIONISTS . 123 7. “THEIR VOYAGE TO HELL”: PIRACY, THICK AND THIN . 133 PART TWO: THE REVOLUTIONARY NINETEENTH CENTURY . 147 8. WALKER’S APPEAL . 149 9. THE EQUAL RIGHTS OR LOCOFOCO PARTY DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES . 167 10. THEODORE SEDGWICK, MONARCHY VS. DEMOCRACY . 175 11. LEGGETT, THE RESTRAINING LAW, AND THE STREET OF THE PALACES . 183 12. O’SULLIVAN, INTRODUCTION TO THE DEMOCRATIC REVIEW . 191 13. LEGGETT AND SPOONER, ABOLISHING SLAVERY WITHOUT THE STATE. 205 v 109318_FM_R2.indd 5 7/24/18 10:47 AM MONOPOLY AND KING MOB 14. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FERRET SNAPP NEWCRAFT, ESQUIRE . 215 15. EXTRACTS FROM THE PRIVATE DIARY OF A CERTAIN BANK DIRECTOR . 235 16. o’SULLIVAN’S GREAT NATION OF FUTURITY . 255 17. WHIPPLE, MEMOIRS OF ELLEANOR ELDRIDGE . 263 18. GEMMEL, TWO YEARS IN VAN DIEMAN’S LAND. 275 19. ANN PARLIN, GREAT MEETING IN RELATION TO RHODE ISLAND (SPEECH AT THE NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE HOTEL) . 285 20. LEVI SLAMM, BATTLING THE EMPIRE . 295 21. ABRAM D. SMITH, IN RE BOOTH . 315 22. SPOONER, ABOLITION PLAN/TO THE NON-SLAVEHOLDERS OF THE SOUTH . 335 PART THREE: THE CENTURY OF STATISM AND BEYOND . 347 23. AMERICAN REACTIONS TO ITALIAN FASCISM, 1922 . 349 24. SMEDLEY BUTLER AND THE “BUSINESS PLOT” (1934) . 363 25. EISENHOWER, FAREWELL ADDRESS . 389 26. BARRY GOLDWATER, ACCEPTANCE SPEECH (1964 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION) . 399 CONCLUSION: THE NEW NECROMANCERS: TECHNOLOGY, DEMOCRACY, AND INDIVIDUALISM . 413 NOTES . 441 vi 109318_FM_R2.indd 6 7/24/18 10:47 AM Introduction: American History, Above and Below Historians today possess a wide and constantly developing array of methodological perspectives and research methods to assist them in understanding how our world became the way it is. In a previ- ous reader volume,1 we surveyed classical liberal and libertarian theories of history: interpersonal conflict arose when some indi- viduals chose to exercise power to curtail the liberties of others. In this volume, we turn from theory to method. In Monopoly & King Mob, our documents will take us through American history from the dawn of the early modern era to the Cold War. We will expand on the liberal theory of history by showing how different historical methods of reconstructing the past yield different narratives about what exactly happened and what we do with our knowledge. History is what economist Ludwig von Mises termed “thymol- ogy” because it deals with the psychology preceding human action. 1 109318_Introduction_R2.indd 1 01/07/2018 5:26 PM MONOPOLY AND KING MOB History is in the domain of human motivations, and it does not describe the mechanics or logic of human action. History is not about necessary causes and effects, and it is not a hard science explaining the facts of nature. It is about the ideas according to which people made their decisions, and as such there is no practi- cal end to the amount and types of evidence historians might mus- ter. Every fact in someone’s personal history may come to bear on the choices they make, though the law of supply and demand may never change. Any general theories of history, therefore, must fol- low from our observations of what motivates behavior. The econ- omist may demonstrate the law of comparative advantage without referencing individual psychologies, but the historian must amass evidence to explain why people choose to cooperate when they do. Although economics is primarily a theoretical discipline that uses the stuff of history to illustrate theory, history must be a vigor- ously and rigorously empirical discipline that builds theories on mountains of evidence. Historians can then hand their gargan- tuan haul of data about human motivations to the economist to speculate about how individuals might best achieve their goals. The thymologist tags in the praxeologist, and the liberal or liber- tarian social sciences have a powerful combination of disciplines.2 The historian’s craft, then, demands especially careful attention to research methods and the collection, analysis, and presenta- tion of evidence. Historical research methods are numerous and diverse, ranging from the straightforward and well known (such as oral history) to the obscure but highly useful (such as proso- pography). Although many research methods do not necessarily come with any ideological baggage attached and they may not 2 109318_Introduction_R2.indd 2 01/07/2018 5:26 PM INTRODUCTION change the resulting narrative of events dramatically, sometimes the tools we choose during research deeply affect the facts we find. Although most students of history are aware of the prob- lems of source bias, the researcher’s selection bias, and the vari- ous limitations of methods, too few students spend serious time considering how one’s theoretical understanding of human action influences one’s collection and presentation of data. If, for exam- ple, the historian in question believes that only individuals act, she is more likely to practice “history from below.” If the historian believes that collective entities are the most important agents in human decision making, she will be more likely to practice “his- tory from above.” History from above is the reconstruction of past events as the deeds of Great Men and their Great Books, Great Laws, and Great Works; the influence of Big Institutions, Big Forces, and Big Ideas. Very often, history from above is the story written specifically to justify the world as it is. It tends to serve the interests of those in power and explain how virtually everything good in the world is the result of those in power. History from below is the history of average people, common people, working people; racial, ethnic, religious, and political minorities; women; children; and any other socially, economi- cally, politically, or culturally marginalized people. The perspec- tive “from below” demands a far different set of source materials from that of history from above. To learn what powerless people thought and did, we must trudge through unpublished and uncol- lected letters and manuscripts; we must dig away in archaeologi- cal sites; we must practice a variety of interdisciplinary methods, 3 109318_Introduction_R2.indd 3 01/07/2018 5:26 PM MONOPOLY AND KING MOB from anthropology to linguistics; and we must diligently trace the lives of individuals as individuals, because history is built from the millions of choices each of us makes on a daily basis. Should one construct American history from above, it usually would end up sounding like the time-worn and too-familiar story about American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny coupled with the steadily growing and centralizing national government led by quasi-deified Great Chieftain presidents. In that version, American history has been the project of early settlers in des- perate search of freedom and a subsequent “natural aristocracy” of “Founding Fathers.” The Founders brilliantly managed to harmonize popular liberty with centralized power in the New World without constant civil wars or foreign imperialism. The American Revolution delivered the world promised to European immigrants during the 17th and 18th centuries of British rule, and over time the Revolutionary promise gradually blessed more and more of the population. As Great Men like Lincoln exer- cised good will toward all (even martyring himself in the cause), Americans vicariously cleansed themselves of any wrongdoing and progressed clear-souled into the limitless future. So long as we continue paying due deference to our (divinely inspired?) Constitution and every year do our supreme demo- cratic duty to vote, we will march right along and fulfill history’s dictates. More often than not, history from above produces a narrative in which The People constitute a stupid and unfortu- nate influence on American life. Their only saving grace is in the election of Great Leaders. According to the perspective from above, the great things have been accomplished by an exceedingly 4 109318_Introduction_R2.indd 4 01/07/2018 5:26 PM INTRODUCTION small number of great individuals leading huge, impersonal collectivities.