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>From Don Williams; small.corgi@verizon.net 1) Re Aedanus Burke, note that he served on the House's Select Committee which revised Madison's initial submittal of the Bill of Rights. Both he and fellow Anti-Federalist Elbridge Gerry played a significant role in the House's debates over the Bill. Some have suggested that the Federalists controlled the House and hence the content of the Bill of Rights. I think a broader view is that the Federalists were willing to compromise on individual rights in order to derail the Anti-Federalist campaign for a second Constitutional Convention and calls for "Structural Amendments" which would shift power back to the States from the Federal government. Another consideration was that North Carolina and Rhode Island had not ratified the Constitution due to the lack of a Bill of Rights, thereby making the Constitution illegitimate under the Articles of Confederation. Plus, ratification had been close in major states (New York , Virginia) and happened only after the Federalists promised a Bill of Rights. Moreover, the wealthy plutocrats probably approved of some checks on the power of the federal government; e.g., the Fifth Amendment clause which prohibits government confiscation of private property without compensation. (This clause has enormous effect even today --it ensures that the $6+ Trillion IOUs held by government Trust Funds in 2011 will have to be paid off by heavy taxes on boomer 401Ks/IRAs, not by "soaking the rich.") 2) I believe Mr Bernstein made several errors re Aedanus Burke's motivations. In a letter to Samuel Bryan on March 3, 1790 ( several weeks before Burke's challenge to Hamilton on March 31,1790), Burke had stated: "You may judge that I stand in a particular situation not agreeable to me. for my time at present is entirely taken up from with buisiness while I long for a little retiremt." --- see http://www.gwu.edu/~ffcp/exhibit/p13/p13_6btext.html and http://www.gwu.edu/~ffcp/exhibit/p13/p13_6bLarge.jpg . Judge Aedanus Burke CHOSE not run for a second term in Congress --probably because he wanted to retire and probably because South Carolina had passed a law prohibiting a Judge from leaving the state and Burke preferred the more honorable position. See http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B001086 . Burke's letter of March 3 (cited above) also showed that Burke was upset over the transfer of wealth to speculators that would result from Hamilton's proposal (on January 14, 1790) that the federal government pay off Revolutionary certificates at full face value. (As I noted earlier, Speculators like Hamilton's in-laws had been buying the certificates up at huge discounts in months prior to Treasury Secretary Hamilton's announcement. ) As Aedanus noted: "It will add strength and power to that faction that brought about the late 2d. revolution, and it will make their princely fortunes ". (Note that Aedanus' mention of the "late 2d revolution" referred to his idea that the wealthy had mounted a covert counter-revolution to seize power after the people won the Revolutionary War --via the new Constitution.) When Aedanus Burke accused Hamilton of lying about the performance of the Southern militia in the Revolutionary War, he was referring to remarks that Hamilton had made almost 8 months earlier -- at Nathanael Greene's funeral on July 4, 1789. It seems to me that Burke was using those old remarks as a pretext to kill Hamilton. Hamilton was in the Gallery when Burke rose on the House floor and said "I give the lie to Colonel Hamilton" --an insult which, by the code of the day, required Hamilton to either settle the matter with pistols or accept the insult and retire from public life as an acknowledged coward. Burke didn't succeed because Hamilton avoided the duel by giving Burke a letter which was "an explicit Disavowal of an intention in any part of the Eulogium delivered by him , to cast a reflection upon militia in general , or upon the militia of South Carolina in particular. " When Bellesiles quotes Hamilton's slurs on the militias in Arming America, he fails to note this one occasion on which Hamilton retracted his remarks. In my opinion, Meleney's book on Aedanus Burke, "The Public Life of Aedanus Burke" is biased against Aedanus. On page 197 of his book, Melany quotes part of Burke's letter to Bryan but leaves off the last sentence --in which Burke expresses a desire for "a little retiremt". However, Mr Bernstein evidently accepts Mr. Meleney's work and Meleney's assumption that Burke wanted to run for a second Congressional term. Even if we accept Meleney's assumption, however, we still have the case that Burke's challenge to Hamilton hurt Burke's chances for re-election, instead of aiding them. (see Meleney, page 197 and 206.) Hamilton's allies closed ranks against Burke. As Burke noted, "falling out with one of that Sett I made the whole administration my enemies for drawing all together, like Mules in a team they make common cause of any dispute with others." South Carolinian Federalists like Charles Cotesworth Pinckney were probably infuriated by Burke's challenge -- in part because it might disrupt Congress' assumption of South Carolina's war debt, in part because it might disrupt Hamilton's highly lucrative scheme (for some) of paying off Continental certificates at face value. If Burke killed Hamilton, it would have disrupted several major agendas. It's unfortunate that we don't know more about Burke's view of events in 1787 - 1791. My understanding is that Burke's personal papers were destroyed at his death per his will.
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