Miracle of America Lesson Four 4 part two 2 :

And now we're ready for part two of lesson four on the historical roots of America. And when we trace through these details, it's very evident why the founding fathers learned many of the basic lessons of good political science and economics almost from the very beginning. The English, they begin the development of people's law in America. Queen Elizabeth, she tried to head off the Spanish. Here's your next blank. So they wouldn't come up the coast and any farther. And so she assigned Sir Walter Raleigh, his picture is there, to establish a colony on Roanoke Island. That's off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Well, he did set up a couple of colonies, but both of them failed. Then it was James I who came along. He decided to try and do the same thing. And it was he who assigned a group of men to come over here in 1607 and set up a colony north of where the Spanish were. And that was known as Jamestown. And later their capital was over there at Williamsburg. Well, they put up right along with the hardships and set themselves up there along the James River. And up the river was the chieftain of a great tribe of the area. He was the father of Pocahontas. You've heard about her. And all of these people played an important role in the early history of Jamestown. Now the businessmen who sponsored the colony, the settlement over at Jamestown, they thought it would be more profitable if the colony practiced secular communism or communalism. Now they'd all work really hard and they would build things up and then they would divvy up everything as a reward. So a third of the people were assigned more or less to build the fort, a third to start a communal farm, and a third to go do what? Yeah, go find the gold. Well, it turns out some worked very hard and some didn't work very hard. They wanted to go looking for the gold. I mean, why not? They've heard about it. And when those working hard saw the other people not working, well, they do stopped working hard. Why should I work hard? And so they didn't have enough food that fall as a result. The farm wasn't developed. They weren't gathering things. And many of them starved to death. It's a horrible way to die. This same failure formula was repeated. New ship loads would come with more people and they would follow the same formula and people would die, people wouldn't work. And this went on and on for several years. Of the 10,000 people brought to Jamestown over the years, only 1,000 survived. Isn't that horrible? 9,000 died. There were graveyards and cemeteries throughout the whole region as a result of starvation. Well, this got fixed and it wasn't until Sir Thomas Dale arrived and oh, he whipped them in shape and he, corporal punishment, he even took a man who was stealing food out into the woods, chained him to a tree and walked away, just walked away and left him there for how many days till he died or the animals killed him, who knows. But he had strict rules and he did something that changed everything. He divided the land into privately owned plots and when that happened, private property ownership, right, that's against communism's ideas and communalism, your own private lot, everything changed from a spirit of malaise to one of energy and survival, from communism to free enterprise. So they left all their labors, they left working on the farm, they left tending to the forage still, they left looking for gold and they went to their own plot of land and they began to work the ground, plowing and planting their own and they suddenly, there were crops growing and they were able to put that, at least a couple of barrels of corn that Dale asked for, they could put those into the storehouse. So communism, communalism, that aspect of it had failed miserably in America. So in 1620, the same company sponsored another group of pilgrims into northern Virginia but the ship landed clear up north in Massachusetts. There they established Plymouth. The patron company had given up secular communism in Virginia but they still thought it would work among the pilgrims if they practiced what they called Christian communism or communalism. They weren't using these words and titles but that's what they were doing. So as Christians, they were supposed to look upon their neighbors as brethren and cooperate together. Well, did it work? Here's what happened. The project failed. Many starved. It was a total failure and it was unnatural and it made many so angry that things had to change and they went to Governor Bradford and complained, this isn't working. So Governor Bradford over the Plymouth colony, he writes this in his journal. He told the people, you are making a dictator out of me. I try to get the men to catch herring but they have backaches and headaches. I try to get you women to help but you have your excuses and you stay home and at harvest time, you bring your baskets to load up on wheat and many of you who work the least, you wanted the most. So you're making a dictator out of me and I don't like it. So out there is the land. Out there is the land and we've cut down the trees so you can go cultivate it. So here's the seed corn according to the size of your family and you get out there, it's yours. You work it or you die and oh boy, they went out there and they worked it and they worked the land. Does that sound familiar? Does that sound cruel to make people have to do their own work? Young families, the wife would be over helping an elderly couple and come home exhausted and then have to care for her own family because her husband has been out working for the community. Why do we have to do this for them? They should be doing their own work and when they all got their piece of land, that's when it changed and suddenly these older people said, well I guess we can work our own crops and the women giving excuses, I got the kids. They brought the kids with them out onto the plots of land to work it right alongside their husbands. Private property ownership demonstrated a second time in America that this communalism, this communism just doesn't work. So does that sound ruthless to make people carry their own weight? Well, here's what happened the very next year. Here's what Governor Bradford wrote. This is quoting him. At length, after much debate, the governor gave way that they should set corn every man for his own purpose and in every regard to trust themselves, that's a key word, fill in your blank, and so assigned to every family a parcel of land according to the proportions of their number, close quote. So after one year, the governor was able to write, quoting again, they had very good success for it made all hands very industrious so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. The women now went willingly into the fields and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled, meaning force them to go work, they would have been thought great tyranny and oppression. How dare you make me go work? Socialism, communism doesn't work. No matter how complex the technology and how advanced the society may be, it doesn't work. And here we've got two early examples. So Governor Bradford also wrote that he was puzzled why men like Plato, who we talked about earlier, why he believed that pooling property into a great commune, why that would work. And you know what he said, as though they were wiser than God. Nope, they're not wiser. So in the Bible, it said that Christians should share their property. But what sounds like pooling their property together isn't what they did. The New Testament said that they pooled their problems together, and they used their property to solve the problem. This was not communism, but it's voluntarily helping to solve a community problem, making their property prosperous to help other people, not just surrendering it to a common storehouse under the bad ideas of communism, communalism. All right. Well, the English colonists came to America with a sense of divine mission, or a manifest destiny. Now, Professor Conrad Cherry says in his book, quote, the belief that America had been providentially chosen for a special destiny has deep roots in the American past. Yeah, geographically, geographically, the founders felt their commonwealth of freedom would eventually cover the whole North American continent. So, as far as the population goes, at your next blank, as far as population was concerned, John Adams said, they were building a constitution and a system of government, which would one day have a population of between, quoting him here, 200 and 300 million freemen. That's what they were expecting. Where's America today? 330 some odd million. That's what they were building for and beyond. All right. So, the founders did not consider themselves a master race, but they considered themselves master servants who had an obligation to their creator to design a system which would benefit the whole world. Let's quote John Adams again, quote, I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth. All right. So, do you catch that spirit? We're going to do a great mission for humanity. That's what they're thinking. We're not going to enslave humanity. We're going to liberate humanity. Okay. The founders often spoke of America as the new promised land and themselves as a modern Israel. So, back to Professor Conrad Cherry, we quoted earlier. He says, quote, throughout their history, Americans have fancied themselves a new Israel, a people chosen for the awesome responsibility of serving as a light to the nations, a city set upon a hill. Yeah, that's what we've always thought. And that's our great mission. Well, many leaders in Europe also spoke of America as a land of promise. Did you know that? You know, they heard all these great things. And they saw in our system, the hope of the world. And one of those was Bishop George Barclay in England. He was a famous philosopher. And he wrote a whole poem about the destiny of America. And he said something which few Americans would comprehend today, today anyway. Here's the last verse of his poem. Westward the course of empire takes its way. The four first acts already passed. A fifth shall close the drama with the day. Time's noblest offspring is the last. There's probably not one American in a million that knows what George Barclay was talking about. But the founders did. And they used to emphasize this all the time. They were talking about prophecy, about this nation growing, fulfilling a manifest destiny. Now, George Barclay said that from in the Bible, from Daniel to the book of Revelations, it tells about the four brutal, bloodthirsty kingdoms that would spread their terror across the earth, which would come one after another. And then the Bible said the Creator would prepare the world for the setting up of his own kingdom. And they've all come and gone, come and gone, as it says. Well, we can identify them. Daniel in the Bible says the first one was Babylon, then Persia, then came Greece, then came Rome. And it was compared in the days of Daniel as a great image. Some of you have read this. You know, a head of gold, that's Babylon. A chest of silver, that's Persia. A belly of brass, that's Greece. Hips of iron, that's Rome dividing into the east and the west, Rome. And that degenerating into toes of iron and miry clay. So for 150 years, the Europeans were studying the Bible in their own language. So they understood this. So the first four acts, as the poem says, as George Berkeley said, are already past. Therefore, he said, the world was now ready for the fifth act, which it would prepare mankind for the Creator's kingdom of universal peace and universal prosperity, that God would cut out of the mountains without hands, a great stone that would roll forth and fill all the earth and peace and prosperity. That great, out of the Bible, it says that. So Bishop Berkeley felt that in this great new movement, America would lead the way on this great new mountainous continent and God would about the fifth act. So the founders sometimes called America the land of Joseph, which would one day feed millions of the world's starving people. And they looked out across the great land and said, one day between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, we will find to possess it and it will be cultivated and it will feed not only our own people, but the starving people of the whole earth. See, this is the way they were talking. What other country does that? They worked to put up barriers. So no, we're not going to engage with the world and the world's needs. So this is how the founders viewed this country. They said that in Europe, the great churches have been subjected to political influence. They were national churches, that is, political institutions more than religious. And therefore they believed it would be in America that God would reform and restore. Those are your two blanks. The church to its primitive purity. All right, that's also out of Professor Cherry's book. So there was a feeling all over Europe that the churches had become too ornate, also too elaborate. And as they read the New Testament, there must be a simpler and better way to go. So they had their puritanical movement to purify the Church of England and a number of reform movements anyway. And so the professor said here in America, quoting the writings of the founders here in America, God will undoubtedly reform and restore his great church to its original purity. Well, the founders felt they were under a covenant with the creator to perform this special mission for the benefit of all mankind. Okay, now let's quickly go through the tremendous split that developed between England and her American colonies. In order to appreciate what happened, we need to talk about King George III. Oh boy. When George III took over the throne of England, he was actually quite popular because the previous kings had not been Englishmen. So around 1700, the Parliament suddenly realized that all the immediate heirs to the English throne were sympathetic both in religion and politics with the King of France. So the Settlement Act of 1701 ordered that no future person could become ruler of England unless he had descended through a granddaughter of James I. Well, her name was Sophia and she had married the elector of Hanover, Germany. Oh, that's the foreign connection. So Queen Anne's children kept dying young, so there was not a direct king descending from her queen, from Sophia. So when Queen Anne died in 1714, and therefore George I, Elector of Hanover, he became king when she died and became king of England even though he always said that he was a German, he didn't like England, he didn't like the weather, didn't like the food. He went home and he was sort of an absentee king and he was a very immoral person and he went down in history as a unpopular, immoral king. So George II, let's talk about him for a second. He's another German. His greatest problem was that he lived too long. He took over in 1727 and he ruled until 1760. Well, this is getting close to when we're making our break for freedom, right? So he ruled so long that even his crown prince died. Crown prince is the person the king grooms before he dies to take over the leadership. So when he did finally die in 1760, his son took over as King George III. So King George III was the grandson of King George II and was the first king of that century who was not a German. He was born in England, educated in England. He spoke English beautifully. He considered himself a patriot king. He was extremely popular among the English people. His English was good and he had 15 children and then he went insane. I think that's just a reflection on what happened to him. It had nothing to do with 15 kids, well at least as far as we know. So it's just a historical fact. But he expected everybody to be supportive of what he was doing for the British Empire. But his policies began to antagonize the American colonies. So in the early 1760s, King George III ordered a strict enforcement of the navigation acts. Now those may not be as familiar to you, but those acts were to suppress the purchase of foreign goods. The idea was to buy English and keep our money here at home. Well this resulted in extensive smuggling, you can imagine, both in England and America. So the king authorized the admiralty courts to suppress this smuggling by prosecuting offenders in the admiralty courts, which had no juries. And James Otis was one American lawyer and politician who stood up in the midst of this. And he said, taxation without representation is wrong. He argued against the writs of assistance that allowed officers to go through and search for smuggled goods to knock on the door, tear open your mattress, rummage through everything, tear up the floor to see if you have something that you should be paying taxes on. And people would ask, what are you looking for? And these soldiers would say, well, we don't know. But that's why we're looking. If we find it, we'll know. Oh, the people hated that. James Otis said, what you're doing is not right. It's not constitutional. He became famous for that very act, standing up the kind of this action, just raiding people's homes and declaring their basic rights were being violated. So in our Constitution, we're protected from that. Then an act in 1763 wouldn't allow any Americans to settle over in the Ohio Valley where some had already become established. And that was bad. They were already making great plans for more settlements over there. The colonists defied the act and resentment against England grew as England tries to close in the borders on everybody. You weren't going to have any of that. So in 1765, the king had his agents in Parliament pass the dreaded Stamp Act. And the colonists, oh, they said, this, this is taxation without representation. It was during a debate on the repeal of the Stamp Act that Charles Townsend asked, quote, will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence, will they grudge to contribute their might? He said, well, we had defenders over there in England who challenged this and they stood up for the rights of the Americans. And we have some great quotes in your handout that, that you can go look at to see how they stood up. Because what was happening if the Americans are being taxed on things and they stopped purchasing, where were they purchasing from? Those in England. And so they suffered. So they were opposed to a lot of these actions. So although the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, other acts came and followed along. The Townsend Act was passed in 1767 and regiments of troops began arriving in America to enforce the collection of taxes under this, this new act. And the king even had a Quartering Act passed, which required the colonies to provide room and board for the soldiers, free of charge. And you know, that would mean going into their houses if necessary. So these are the events which finally led to the eruption of violence in America. So on March 15th, March 5th, rather 1770, the Boston Massacre took place, March 5th. And you know, John Adams and Josiah Quincy learned that a crowd of 300 men and boys were largely responsible for provoking the conflict. And they defended the British soldiers and they persuaded the jury to spare their lives, and they succeeded. Well, then came King George III's scheme to trick Americans into paying a tax on the tea. Oh boy. So I have the trick spelled out in your, in your outline there, and I'm gonna let you read that there. But I'm telling you, the Americans were, their eyes were wide open to what the king was trying to do, to get money out of them, to set a precedent so he could say, well, you're already paying the tax, you ought to pay more. Nah, they weren't gonna fall for that. Well, that was primarily in Boston. The people there, they refused to let the tea be unloaded. That was part of the trick, let the tea be delivered. They weren't gonna let that happen. And the governor refused to let the ships return until they were unloaded. So we have the royal governor saying, hey, these ships can't go until we get rid of the cargo. And the people are saying, don't you dare unload the cargo. So we have this impasse. Well, you've, you've heard of what happened on December 16th, 1773. The Sons of Liberty boarded the boats and they threw all the tea into the harbor. This is known as the famous Boston Tea Party. Now, if you, if you go on a tour there, there's some places where you can reenact your own tea party. You can throw the bells overboard, down with the king, and reenact that. Well, oh boy, the reaction of George III was swift and vengeful that they would come and destroy all of this property. First, he closed the Boston Harbor. This was a major entryway into the colonies. He placed the city under martial law. You couldn't go out of your homes. He appointed General Gage in charge of the British troops in America as the new governor of that area. He suspended the charter of Massachusetts, which is the, which came from the king says, I hereby grant you a charter to build your city. They suspended that and dissolved the people's elected assemblies that they had. They were operating as a, as a state really, their own government. He suspended all town meetings until such a meeting was approved by the new military governor. And he threatened to bring serious offenders that they captured, fomenting rebellion, whatever, and over to England for trial. They wouldn't get a fair trial over there. And that really riled the colonists. So, the First Continental Congress convened for six weeks during September and October of 1774 to head off the outbreak of war. It was coming. Everybody could feel it. Britain would not let up. So, it just looked like war was coming. Nevertheless, the colonists were determined to stand up for their rights by whatever means was necessary. So, the Americans finally felt compelled to resort to force of arms in order to defend their rights during 1775 and 1776. So, you've heard of the shot heard around the world. You've heard of the raid on Lexington and Concord. That happened in April 19th of 1775. There's about 95 Americans that were killed there and elsewhere. They were trying to, the British were trying to destroy stores of powder and weapons that they had heard were being stored there. But by the time they arrived, the colonists had taken it all and dispersed it among the farmers and everybody. So, they couldn't find it. But that's what they were going after there. It's critical to stop them. Well, the so-called Green Mountain Boys from Vermont, they came in and they attacked and burned down the British fort at Ticonderoga. They did that on May 10th, 1775. That same day, Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia to authorize the raising finally of a Continental Army as George Washington, the commander-in-chief. Well, meanwhile, as the American militia closed a ring around Boston, which had been closed, and British ships were there, and the British were living in the city and everything. Well, the militia is moving around to encase them. And while General Gage decided to attack with 2,000 troops, and this is the famous Battle of Bunkers Hill, which was really fought on Breeds Hill. But the Americans were forced to retreat. At the end of that battle, they lost 500 people. But Gage, General Gage, he lost over a thousand of his troops. And they were still surrounding Gage. Well, this inspired rebellion and vigor and anger against so many other Americans and they began to flock to the cause. So, on July 3rd, 1775, Washington took the siege of Boston as Supreme Commander of the Continental Army. And in October, General Gage was replaced by General William Howe, who had led the attack on Bunkers Hill. The month of December 1775 was a low point of the war for Washington. He not only lost a campaign against Quebec, trying to move up into Canada and stop the British, that was led by Montgomery and Benedict Arnold. But because of illness and termination of enlistments, meaning the soldiers reached the last day of their enlistment, so they just went home. So, because of that, he lost most of his army. So, January 1776, Congress authorized the bombarding of Boston. So, Washington had Henry Knox. He had been off recovering cannons from this Fort Ticonderoga that got burned down. He went off and got 59 cannons from those burned ruins. And he hauled those, ah, weeks and weeks, months. He hauled all those cannons into Boston so they could take military action by the early spring. And to his surprise, to Washington's surprise, during that period, a lot of his troops came back. And that encouraged him. He was able to recapture Boston on March 17th, 1776. General Howe reluctantly retreated to Halifax, taking with him his forces and more than a thousand American loyalists who were living there in Boston. They left with him. And so many people, American Tories, piled onto the ships. The British didn't have a room for a lot of their supplies. So, they left all these supplies behind. And that was great for Washington. So, suddenly he's got fresh supplies and he's able to now help members in his forces who didn't have adequate clothing or whatever to carry on the war. All right. How's that? In this lesson, we covered 284 years of American history from Columbus to the spring of 1776. At this point, the founders had a terrifying decision to make. Did they dare do it? This brings us to lesson number five, which is called the birth of a nation. In this next lesson, number five, we cover the four great events which made the United States the first free people in modern times and taught the founding fathers what they needed to know in order to write a strong constitution. So, we've covered 284 years of American history. And a lot of you are wondering, well, can I read this on my own? And what books would you recommend? And we'll be recommending many books over the course. But take a look at these, Inventing the Flat Earth. That's a great little book. It's a fast read. It talks all about the lie, the myth of the flat earth. We've got over here Christopher Columbus by Samuel Elliot Morrison, Admiral of the Sea, of the Ocean Sea. Great book on his whole life. Get a hold of that one if you can. Pulitzer Prize winning author. The story of the Plymouth people and all the problems they had with communism and communalism. You can read that in this little book here of Plymouth Plantation edited by, written by William Bradford, but also Samuel Elliot Morrison did some editing comments. It's real good. Mort's Relation, another short little book that tells that story of how communalism just didn't work. All these are written by the actual pilgrims. And then Marco Polo, there's several good books out there. You can kind of take your pick. This is a good one by Milton Rogoff. He wrote it. God's New Israel by Conrad Cherry. We quoted him a couple of times in our lesson. Another great book that gives the perspective of the founders on everything. So those are good books to add to your library. And I would encourage you to get those that you think would be helpful. And we'll be ready now to start on lesson number five next time. Thank you for joining us today.