 It was, of course, Jefferson's gift at one time or another to put with eloquence the right answer to every moral question. In practice, however, he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course calculated to bring him power, Gore Vidal. So for today's episode of Liberty vs. Power with my good friend Patrick Newman, author of Cronyism, Liberty vs. Power in America, 1607 to 1849, we're going to look at the turn of the Jeffersonian Revolution, particularly focusing on the second term, the Louisiana Purchase and the consequences thereof. But Patrick, I want to start this episode by kind of going back a little bit and setting what I think is one of the aspects of early American history that we are obviously not talked, we are told in schools that it's something that comes through in the fifth volume of Conceived in Liberty. It comes through in your book that there really was a lot of interest in the establishment of governments outside of Washington, D.C. and the Constitution, right? That there were concerted efforts to break away from the regime that had been established, particularly after the Constitution and an interest in kind of a politically decentralized sort of format, you know, Jefferson himself had spoken in favor of such arrangements. But I think this is something that, you know, when we think about this period of time and we think about the consequences of the Louisiana Purchase, it's important to kind of keep that in the back of our mind when we think about, again, there are a lot of Americans, or at least a lot of residents of these territories that, you know, we're perfectly fine thinking outside the box in the way that political arrangement should be had. Yeah, so that's a great point. Basically, one thing I argue in my book is that I think the Louisiana Purchase was in many ways a turning point for the United States. It was enormously important in the history of cronyism, and a lot of people realized that because a lot of people don't know how much cronyism was connected with Western expansion and the actual expansion of the country. When we're taught history in high school, etc., we're usually taught that it was almost ordained that we were going to expand to the West Coast. The United States would include everything in the modern continental United States as well as then Alaska and Hawaii. But it wasn't always so. A lot of people thought that there would be multiple confederacies. There could be Western governments. A lot of people thought the West Coast would be a separate republic. This even continued potentially into the Civil War when people thought California was going to secede. That's partially why we built the Transcontinental Railroad to bring them in. It's crucial to recognize this because it's crucial to remember and to realize that it's very hard to have a limited government over a large territory. A small government in terms of political economy is generally only possible under a small territorial region. We can pretty much sum up and describe everything from the Revolutionary War through the Louisiana Purchase and so on using Jefferson's phrase, The Empire of Liberty. This is the title of a Gordon Wood book. Jefferson used this to describe his vision for what the North American continent would look like. Jefferson thought you would have at the very least a very states rights oriented single government or more likely you would have multiple confederacies throughout the continent that would be united through a common language English as well as constitutional norms. This is something that's really important. This is a true ethos of your average American back then that totally gets overlooked because it's just seen as well you need centralization and you need one government but it wasn't always so. Well there's also some personal ambition at play here. One of the figures that is brought up and conceived in Liberty 5 is a very fascinating character, James Wilkinson, who saw himself. When we're talking about the West in particular during these days, necessarily talking about the Pacific Ocean though that definitely comes into play but we're thinking just west of the Appalachians. Kentucky was the far west frontier and yet you did have an attempt particularly the economic impact of that Mississippi River. One of the major early points of foreign relations was getting access to the Mississippi River and there's very interesting sort of background there with with good old John Jay trying to get an agreement for kind of broad usage of that for the Americans and some division there. But if the American government can't get access to that Mississippi River, Mr. Wilkinson and some others in the West kind of recognize okay well if Spain has access to what we need and the American government doesn't then really what is in our best interest is it to ally with the ones with the river or those without. It's just some interesting overlooked little anecdotes here. Can you touch on a little bit about Mr. Wilkinson? Yeah of course so this is something that when I read editing Rothbard's Conceived in Liberty you know that fifth volume I was absolutely delighted and fascinated by because you don't hear about this you don't hear about how Kentucky tried to go at it led by James Wilkinson to be its own state. You know I've never heard of the proposed independent state of Franklin like an additional state basically made out of some of the land in that area. So the Mississippi River was very important in terms of controlling trade at this time period. Due to the Appalachian Mountains if you were really the you know if you were in the west so at the west even something like western Pennsylvania or Ohio etc you would you were closer in terms of you know closer economically to the Mississippi River than you were with the east coast. So rather than ship your goods east to west you would actually ship your goods north to south through the port of New Orleans and then and then have it be carried up to the east coast by by boats etc. So it was very important to have control of this Mississippi River. Now Britain in the Treaty of France excuse me at the Treaty of France in the Treaty of Paris after the Revolutionary War had kind of given the United States the the the the rights to use the Mississippi River even though like they didn't really have control of it this is a little bit a little bit of power politics going on by Britain trying to sort of play off potential enemy potential enemies you know against each other and during this time period there was a lot of southerners and westerners who wanted to use the Mississippi River and Spain wouldn't let them and the proposed Jay Gordoki Treaty with with John Jay and the Gordoki from from from Spain was basically going to relinquish the Americans use of the Mississippi River and Spain was genuinely prepared to enter into you know various other favorable arrangements to the United States. And southerners and westerners were very upset about this Patrick Henry who was a governor of Virginia was very upset about this and this would have been a major catalyst to potentially having multiple confederacies because the south really wanted to use the Mississippi River as did the west and if the United States would not get control of the Mississippi River then the country would would would would fracture at least the land in that country would fracture and this was seen in movements with James Wilkinson who wanted to sort of work with Spain and not work through the United States so he was pushing for an independent state of Kentucky unfortunately for him as well as really from you and I our perspective Kentucky only just entered in as a state into the union not as its own state but this Mississippi River thing I cannot stress this enough how important this was really for United United States economy up until really the the civil war with the rise of railroad so whoever controlled the Mississippi River controlled a lot of western commerce as well as the Gulf and so the United States wanted to have a stronger government that would allow him to take the Mississippi River and this is still an issue going again right up to the Louisiana Purchase while the James Wilkinson initial sort of you know plot was what I believe 1780s right later on however Mr. Wilkinson is once again part of a plot by former vice president Aaron Burr to try to rally up old American troops and organize military action against Spanish controlled New Orleans with the explicit goal of creating you know a new government there with Aaron Burr at the head and and he brings in you know he talks to Andrew Jackson about it William Henry Harrison lots of interesting characters and it's actually Wilkinson who at this point I think Wilkinson was on the payroll the Spanish Native American tribes the British the American government Burr's group I mean it's just fascinating he was he was definitely a you billing maximally but you know it's really still up to this point where there is still a lot of movement along these lines and that kind of sets the stage for when we get this environment where you know the Louisiana Purchase comes to be one of the other things I think is interesting is the historical framework where that we're building off of here we're thinking about you know Napoleon is at you know the is kind of at his peak within France right there there is a lot of stuff that's happening in the global environment that is also playing a role here and setting up you know the Louisiana Purchase basically and originally you know the Louisiana Purchase was not you know it pushed by the Jefferson administration but rather as you outline the book you know part of you know initial diplomatic talks you know more broadly can you just talk about kind of the framework that gets us into the actual conversations of the purchase itself yeah sure so just to sort of speed through the American history which we've been covering in prior episodes obviously the U.S. Constitution gets passed and then in 1795 I believe there was Pickney's Treaty which basically allowed the United States to trade on the Mississippi River this was done with a little bit of coercion in the sense that Spain was now fearful of after Jay's Treaty of an alliance between Britain and the United States so this is sort of well we're able to one you you know once once again sort of use our might to threaten to get what we want and of course this I believe it was Robert Morris who noted that this would increase the land values in that area of which he held so there you go you got all of the crony interests there and by 1800 so around when when when Jefferson became president in 1801 there was a lot of sort of worldwide politics going on that you know tangentially would affect the United States most notably Spain had secretly agreed to transfer its control of Louisiana to France okay now a couple of things Louisiana back then did not just refer to the state of Louisiana which we have now okay New Orleans was the most important part of that all right obviously it's a port city it's at the it's at the end of the Mississippi River it's right on the Gulf but Louisiana the land stretched all the way up to basically Montana so you can look on a map online and you can just see how large this area was and so transferring it from Spain to France was obviously a major power play because the Spanish government was seen now as very decrepit it was sort of holding on to a crumbling empire and it acquired you know in many you know hundreds of years ago etc. Louisiana itself had bounced around in control and Spain says they're going to transfer it to France provided that France helps them install some Spanish royalty into a various government in Europe and France agrees never to transfer to Great Britain or the United States okay so unfortunately for Spain France basically said no or we're not going to do that the United States was worried when France had control of Louisiana because they said all right here is now a different animal than what we've dealt with with Spain you've got Napoleon he is currently you know riding high in Europe then there's a string of successes in the early 1800s so clearly he had potential but very quickly on Napoleon realized that it just wasn't feasible to have a French presence in North America colonies etc especially when you had to deal with war in Europe in Great Britain okay so this Louisiana issue featured prominently in the United States politics at the time Jefferson had initially wanted to just purchase New Orleans or at least get control of the Mississippi River but then the entire land soon became available to him and this was an enormous temptation yeah they made a deal too good to to pass up remind me the details of the deal itself there were 15 million dollars for a whole bunch of land yeah it was 15 million dollars and so for our for our modern readers it 15 million dollars you're like well that's nothing now you know government spent trillions and even back then actually so even adjusted for inflation it was a bargain for the land it really was when you just think of the massive amount Napoleon wanted money and he wanted it fast because he wanted to start a new war so he needed some quick cash and so this is something that is usually kind of sold as a an obvious good move right there I think the typical high school textbook may even mention a little bit of constitutional concerns at the time that ultimately this was just too much yeah it's such a good steal you could not pass it up but I think it's interesting from this perspective and I really think this chapter is one of the the very best in really highlighting the difference of the narrative that you have outlined here building off of Rothbard's work because again it's the the the impact of this absolutely corrupting the political ideals of what we think about with Jeffersonian politics right now I love the way that you start off this chapter framing it with the death of Hamilton how his death in 1804 uh was the hammer hammered the nail into the federalist coffin but while the reactionary forces decayed their special interest policies lived on for slowly but surely the libertarian republicans embraced statism and so that it is this move because of you know touching on the aspects that we were talking about last week with kind of recognition that with the drawing back of the the spending programs of the federalist regime things like that it's not only important just in a tax aspect right like oh well you know this is going to create more birds and taxes on farmers and things like that but there really is a corrupting element here when you think about the creation of new government offices when you think about money spent and investments uh that you know have to be allocated through the political process you start dealing with a sectional differences and different considerations and here you the the growth of this again major increase of spending done through questionable constitutional grounds though from the perspective of you know the way that we understand the reason for the constitution it was explicitly designed to expand the government not to limit it and therefore it it can be very fairly argued as was the time that this was a constitutional move even if it when it gets the Jeffersonian principles and that the strictly the strict reading of the constitution that the old republicans that that we've been praising you know that that strategic pivot you know there is a sound legal argument in defense of the constitution but it goes against that work being done by an anomaly in theory the political party in power right now yeah so this this is a very important point to understand regarding the Louisiana purchase and just what exactly it did to the republican party because in many ways it's sort of this it was uh the this corrupting agent because it it swelled the amount of land in the country to an enormous size and this led to all sorts of changes in the republican party which which we will which we will get to but it was this this usually when the Louisiana purchase is discussed in high school you know american history textbooks or even college american history textbooks it's described as one of the most important and beneficial uh per you know laws in united states history and it's generally regarded as jefferson's best legislation so that's when people who usually are jefferson haters they'll say well he did that he did the louisian purchase which of course from our perspective is probably like his worst thing that he did right because um by pushing for this it really did open up pandora's box so to speak to broad constructionism all right the constitution does intended by you know is created as intended by the federalists it does allow for the purchase and annexation and incorporation of territories into the united states they they they intended this okay and many republicans also argued along these lines but jefferson was dedicated during this time period to upholding his strict constructionist view and his logic was basically saying okay we can read into the treaty making power because of course there has to be a treaty in order to purchase the uh the the land you know from from another country but it's saying well once we do that well then you know the powers are boundless so wouldn't it be better to just pass an amendment okay requiring uh are you like pass an amendment allowing or explicitly enabling us to do that then we can purchase the territory and for this it's it's really the precedent so it's the idea that's saying all right we're in control of the government we could read the constitution broadly or we could stick by our principles uh read the constitution strictly and then we're going to set a good precedent because even this way it would still be a problem if louisiana was purchased but it would have been less a problem because at least there would have been an amendment okay but jefferson ultimately um said he discarded this this possibility he said all right we'll pass an amendment after the fact which is completely useless then it defeats the purpose of actually having a binding constitution and once he did that once he he sort of broke his rule once he stuck his hand into the cookie jar so to speak well then he really just said all right well why don't we use the constitution uh you know read it broadly to accomplish other aims that we want and then when that happened the whole strict constructionist approach really suffered a fatal setback so this louisiana purchase has important implications not just for territorial land you know land mass and all of that but also for the um the the the the constitutional implications regarding other policy so it's really important to understand that jefferson he he was really torn by this and he was at one point going to push for an amendment and even though some people said napoleon wasn't going to wait uh napoleon was going to wait he needed the money uh he wasn't going to uh he he's only going to sell it to the united states so there wasn't someone else uh he needed the money and it could it could have gone through but instead jefferson just basically decided to downplay constitutional issues and once he did that the die was cast so to speak and i think that's what makes the jeffersonian uh the tenure if it was anybody besides jefferson sort of in that role even if the same decisions were made you know once you have you know like literally the the living philosopher you know the embodiment of you know values they go you can only you know you describe it inherently as jeffersonian when you have him as the head of state during this time i think it also kind of shows the obvious limitations you know you still have people out there that believe oh well if only you have a constitutional framework that we stick really close to you know if jefferson can't do it then then who is right you know the idea that legal presidents and and very strict interpretations of governing documents that that alone can you know stand against power because it can defend liberty against power again i can't i think this is a very important illustration of how that doesn't work and that that ultimately it's it's it's only by having people in that position that can say no you know they can say no to that deal um that that can stop it from happening and i think it's interesting the way you lay out because not only do we have the consequences just from a a political president sort of standpoint but there's also the personal relationships here right because it wasn't simply thomas jefferson that ended up kind of going along with the convenient out here but there are several old republicans the people that have been championing this very strict constitutionalist framework uh you know borrowing from you know trying to try to keep that anti-federalist sort of project if you will alive a lot of them kind of went on board with this you missing john taylor of virginia how how uh john randolph uh is a defender of the constitutionality as as a loyal jeffersonian but that this kind of ends up being a breaking point here can i talk a little bit about the the personal relationships that are altered by this move within this kind of old republic tradition yeah okay so this is this is a very important um aspect of the aspect of the louisiana purchase that um really kind of it doesn't get looked at because looking into the personal relationships in the unique uh bonds various individuals had is is sort of overlooked in american history particularly around this time so there's a couple of things that need to be mentioned one um the republican party uh many of the leaders had sort of decided to downplay the constitutionality issue this is notably john taylor who is briefly a senator during this time as well as congressman john randolph they did recognize that the constitutionality issue was an issue okay so it was actually a problem and this was it was it was brought up for basically two reasons that's important to distinguish between this one you genuinely had republicans who are a little concerned at this they recognized that hey is this uh constitutional and also on the related note does france actually have the right to sell us this land that was a big uh sticking point in terms of proof of ownership so to speak the constitutionality issue was also brought up by uh federalists who are very upset at this they were the uh minority party ever since the revolution of 1800 and they realized that adding louisiana to the united states would basically relegate new england to a perpetual minority because all of these states in the west they would be loyal to the republican party they would basically be able to out vote the federalists so the federalists wanted to use any tactic they could and they brought up the constitutionality issue not as an actual sort of ideological motivation but simply just to try and throw a a road block in so this is important because this is implications as well for for later history there are many who use the constitutionality issue simply as an obstructionist tactic okay james madison had kind of did that earlier he was this big government guy then he became the small government guy and you know that was sort of an opportunistic switch but randolph uh taylor jefferson they were all ideologically in favor of strict constructionism but this time they just sort of decided to sweep it under the rug to get what they wanted which was louisiana and uh because randolph was a distant cousin of jefferson he was close with jefferson he was kind of jefferson's man in congress this was uh you know this this this is an important moment especially because randolph most famously became a critic of the uh louisiana purchase so this constitutionality issue was brought up but it was ultimately sidestepped simply because the jefferson and the republican party they wanted all of that land and it was just at the end of the day it was just too much land the land corrupted the republican party and it's interesting is that there's a counter argument that was being made in some pockets of time that basically they they they too wanted the land but thought ultimately kind of buying it was unnecessary because of the thought that no there's some military adventurism that you could have down here you know you get together a few militia groups and uh with the promise of you know them being able to be become very wealthy men uh by by taking over some of these areas like there was a counter argument as well that you didn't need government to do it that the the farmers and the the hunters out there kind of take care of the the spanish on their own right uh getting together which again i just think it's an interesting dynamic here um but if i recall correctly john randolph goes on to say that that this moment this this decision with louisiana purchase is the greatest curse that ever befell us right infamously he said that so regarding your your earlier point uh yeah this is what the federalists wanted to do when spain closed off use of the river because americans were being disrespectful to spain at least not really closing off use of the river basically just requiring them uh some extra payments federalists including hamilton said well we just got to invade then negotiate in republicans even especially the western ones they didn't want war so they fortunately said no we're not going to do this and then the news of the sale from france came and changed everything and all that good stuff but so randolph after the fact after the louisiana purchase is passed in late 1803 randolph uh in the second jefferson administration and beyond started to realize that this was actually not as good of a um of a purchase as he thought it was and this is because one it was leading to more and more desires for land right because once you have some land then you need to expand more in order to protect the new frontier of course then when you get the new frontier then you need more land to protect you know the frontier and then so on and so forth in that also this massive expansion in order to keep it in the united states to keep it from breaking apart it's leading a lot of politicians to embrace government funded public work so internal improvements roads canals etc binding the extremities of this enlarged empire together okay and it also it was increased the power of the executives influence in the legislative process which randolph didn't like so he became sort of anti louisiana purchase because he realized that sort of what just what a uh a tripwire this whole thing was and this was all tied in with him breaking with jefferson on a number of jefferson's expansionist policies that he pursued in his second administration after louisiana purchase because he was corrupted by it so the land led to corruption and the corruption led to cronyism well this guy gets uh you know one of the great libertarian memes of you know who will build the roads this kind of goes directly to you know this being a very very important issue actually because yeah as you outline well i think one of the things that i really enjoy is you're highlighting the degree to which you know a lot of the arguments for pumping money into the these internal improvements was on the importance of building up the the the perception that state investment that private investment in roads canals and all the things needed for internal trade would not be up to what was necessary uh to kind of get the economy going but as you point out you know the the economy of america was greatly influenced by what was going on in europe and the degree to which that attracted capital to the shipping industry and new england interests i think in particular taking advantage of the trade embargoes going on with europe you know there was marketplaces for these goods paying very very good money because of the disruptions and you know at atlantic trade european trade that you know some of the arguments being made in favor of in the spending aspect that came after the purchase itself you know the the economic analysis is is not as complete uh as as if we look at a much broader scale at what's going on globally yeah so this is this is a great point and this is especially an issue in traditional american history because they say well you you have to have the government build roads you have to have the government build infrastructure so well even if you had potential problems well this is just the only way it could be we even see this today you know the infrastructure bill uh whatever just assume that well the government has to be in charge of infrastructure and that's just simply not true one there was private roads and you know with some government assistance on the state local level but it was generally minor roads were built to connect towns merchants would pay for the construction of the roads even though they might not get a direct return on the road but they would get the indirect return through more commerce coming into the town boosting their sales and so on so you did have private enterprise uh produced what were traditionally thought of as public goods and that these privatized roads canals railroads later on etc uh interactively were much more efficient than the government enterprises okay and i did love i loved it when i found that explanation i think it was by this engineer benjamin latrobe and he brings this up and i said oh this is such a genius explanation that well one of the reasons why there was a relative lack of funds for private infrastructure during this time period was not due to the fault of the free market it's just that so much private investment was going into the shipping industry because it was very profitable for americans to kind of play both sides and do engage in smuggling and to ship goods to nations at war with each other and that this was a diversion this is a government diversion of funds this wasn't uh not you know entirely done by the private sector so in the absence of the napoleonic wars if we just pretended for some reason that they never happened you would have seen much more uh private investment in infrastructure even more than what already occurred so it's it's important to note this in uh just to see because it's such a one it's just a fascinating explanation but also shows that yeah the free market can do things you don't need the government uh to funnel money into various taxpayer boondoggles etc and of course unfortunately one of the big champions of this entire process of really pumping money into canals and roads and other internal improvements is our boy albert gallatin who who actually creates you know he has this entire system that he proposes one of the things i think it's interesting is again if we think about the way that something as you know or you know mundane as road construction really does play into uh the the corrupt the corrupting aspect is you highlight the example of the national road um that was plagued with delays and you know they make decisions that are overly expensive because of the federal money involved it ends up becoming something that is little used the way that uh you know we saw this particularly with the boom of the railroad industry right the the way that certain routes go are purely political in nature and then it also just adds new cards to the deck for for wheeling and dealing and i think senator clay you you highlight it kind of starts recognizing that hey if i want to bring money to kentucky to get this road done here where i'm at then what i need to do is start working with other states so you pat their back for spending and and and then we can all benefit right and so it really creates this environment with with the other side of it is going kind of going back to the point about the the republican party really embracing that this is almost you know imperialistic aspect of you're using the funds from the internal improvement side to make sure that federalist dominated new england states don't get any ideas about separating um you know which comes up from time to time right at you know it's a session and these sort of things we're not simply a western frontier thing they were not a southern thing they were discussed in the north it turns out they find that that you know getting funding for internal improvements is a good way of of downplaying some of the radicals among them and making sure that uh you know there there is no state out there getting too many uh questions about self-determination on their own right yeah okay when it comes to internal improvements there's a tremendous amount of cronyism that's that's involved i was always influenced one of the first books i ever read was the myth of the robber barons by burton fulsome and when he goes into how the government transcontinental railroads union pacific and central pacific in particular were built they were built uh very poorly they used the wrong materials it was hastily done there were these winding routes because they were trying to collect more money etc as opposed to james hill's private nor great northern i was always very influenced by this argument and i really try to show this in my own book cronyism because yeah these these these constraints do affect government projects right so the national road was you it was built with cost the materials there were political appointees of people in charge of creating the road that shouldn't really have been in charge of this but they were there because it was a patronage job there were political considerations for the route of the road and gallatin basically told jefferson that hey you know the road should go through various towns because we need them for an election and then in one case one of them was gall it was also gallatin's hometown so you know a little bit of a little bit of cronyism personal personal sweetener there and uh yeah that this is this is a huge issue because you see it throughout government uh investment so called investments that this is uh the the inevitable result so in you know we really pushed for uh the to keep new england in the union we had the land speculation schemes of of the yazu we are trying to satisfy them or jefferson is trying to placate them uh that way the the internal improvements is really to keep the west from from leaving right and this is always the idea that you got to give them a sweetener right if they're supposed to stay in the union and this is this is this is a big issue one other point i just want to mention uh when we talk about various people free market people otherwise coming out in favor of internal improvements uh it is important to note that many laissez faire economists at this time had also made an unfortunately in our opinion they made exceptions saying that oh well under certain conditions uh the government can build roads like adam smith or other people whether it's military necessity like for national defense or just something else etc in americans they accentuated that they they they thought one well we can spend more money if we have all these fiscal surpluses uh and if we want to keep the west in the union or if it's under developed etc but it ultimately came from um the some of the the free market economists the economic thought at this time not really fully recognizing uh the errors in their own logic ideas do have consequences in the policy realm all right and it's just important to uh to to note this i i remember reading one time charles sumner a noted free trade a noted free market republican the later republican party uh actually had read john baptist say a treatise on a political economy and he had uh underlined the parts were say uh had come out in favor of internal improvements right and so it's like it's an interesting uh dynamic so it's just important uh to keep that in mind jefferson was anti-internal improvement he recognized the corruption that it would cause the political issues he was familiar with free market thought but once again he acquiesced uh particularly when he realized that he had to keep you know he had all this land in louisiana they better start building uh public works to connect the west with the east well you mentioned that the next topic i wanted to go over because it wasn't simply the louisiana purchase the internal improvements within there that became a dark spot of this time frame but also again some of the ramifications of the yazu scandal um that uh we mentioned briefly in the last episode and and really you know it starts off with with actively bailing out land speculators here and so we kind of start setting the framework of privatized gains socialized losses um can you just touch on this role um we're going to get to john marshal here in a second but kind of setting up the dynamic of kind of the big business of land speculation and in the way that this kind of you know really is is an illustration of legal privileges going directly to benefit a you know financial corporate class yeah exactly so land speculation is it was an enormously important um aspect of crony has been the past in ways that it's not now simply because most land has been appropriated and somehow you know things have been built on it but so back in the day and this is something rothbard mentions conceived in livery this comes from ethics of liberty his natural rights political philosophy that for something to be truly owned it has to be homesteaded you have to mix your labor with it uh so you have to build a a fence on a plot of land you have to cut down trees you put a farm whatever so the gradual process of excuse me the process of settlement into the west would have been much more gradual if it was through this means right but instead what you can do is the government can simply just declare ownership of land saying well all of that land uh is ours and we're going to defend it with with with military um you know arms and all of that and then they can just sell those claims to speculators who in turn can sell them to settlers in many cases people who've already lived on the land and say oh yeah now you got to pay for this because we technically own the land you don't it's a huge instance of cronyism so in the 1790s georgia uh had basically sold all of this land to various speculators and this was the land of alabama in mississippi sort of the the so-called yazu lands and then the georgia legislature wanted to revoke it and hamilton and the federalists say no you can't do that because of the contract clause and this sort of had remained unresolved when jefferson became president so jefferson ultimately had wanted to compromise with the land speculators because because many of them were from new england and after the louisiana purchase many uh people in new england were now sort of the elites were kind of rumbling uh threats of of of secession or just something because they realized they would lose all of their political power from louisiana so jefferson wants to set aside some land of you know as sort of his compensation for the speculators and this is something that really angered john randolph because he's saying wait a second this is very clearly like the federalists what the federalists were doing in the 1790s uh do we really want to go down this road and randolph was you know he was a big uh fighter of this and he kept on delaying it until until the matter went to the supreme court but this itself just this uh jefferson's moderation regarding the yazu land issue is is a big turning point because now he's actually sort of pursuing his own cronyism by saying no we need to bail out these yazu uh land claimants we need to set aside some land and or some money and we need to do this because we have to keep our country from breaking apart um you know when it comes to supreme court on this issue one of the things i love is you highlighting the uh questionable relationships of some of the supreme court justices to this entire racket of land speculation can can you please touch on the great uh john marshall on this issue and and why this might not have been completely uh on the up and up necessarily yeah so john marshall is one of those great great instances of cronyism because a lot of people you learn about john marshall i i took ap us history when i was in high school i've read a lot of history books um i've read a lot of stuff on john marshall and his constitutional opinions and you got all these people the great man of the court they're the great john marshall he's the big government advocate what none of the you don't learn this at all and i just find this simply astonishing border borderline scandalous is two things one that john marshall and his brother james were enormous land speculators right so you're dealing with someone who's like who is who has dealt with immense amount of land speculation including the virginia and that these guys are also linked with who was at the time in the 1790s the the the one of the the wealthiest richest men in america robert morris james marshall john marshall's uh brother had married the daughter of robert morris and they had engaged in various speculation uh schemes together so when you read this you're like whoa wait a second why was i not informed of this at all like this might influence uh some people's opinions of this man and john marshall was someone who was very concerned about what would happen in the yazu uh you know what would happen with the with the the yazu claimants because john marshall was in undergoing he was suffering a similar experience in virginia there was a large land grant in virginia that now that the the virginia legislature had wanted to rescind the marshals were involved in it they didn't want that to happen so the case of fletcher v peck all right which is the supreme court case this is john marshall recurrent recalling what we spoke about in an earlier podcast regarding judicial review used to protect federalist cronyism john marshall is using judicial review to overturn a state law georgia basically rescinding the yazu uh uh land grants and saying nope can't do that uh you know you gotta provide compensation for them and okay so why do you want to do that obviously john marshall was a big government person ideologically he wanted to find some uh defense of this using the contract clause and all of that but he also clearly wanted to protect his own land speculation so he wanted to set a a precedent uh for this and you saw this in later supreme court cases um uh where we're basically uh the the supreme court upheld the validity of the um marshals titles to land in virginia now to be fair marshall had excused himself from these various uh court cases but joseph's story who was also on the supreme court he was someone who had also worked for land speculators he had also worked for the yazu land speculators he's basically doing marshall's dirty work on the supreme court so this it's it's a fascinating story it's it's one of the uh it's similar to the george washington you know moving the capital to benefit himself this is just like a very simple uh you know tight explanation of just personal cronyism and what makes it all the more remarkable is this is this is a chief justice this is supposed to be a person who's who's above all this he's a great you know uh legal analyst he's he's kind of making deals basically to line his own pockets and you're going well it's good to know nothing's changed in the united states history well speaking of figures that don't mind lining their own pocket uh the next topic let's go a little bit into the the fun of uh the the the adventure ventures of west and east florida which once again pulls back in a diplomatic issue once again it brings us back to this expansionist impulse that the jeffersonians have taken on and it also brings into the story uh one of my favorite figures minister tally ran of france very flamboyant uh an interesting character in his own right um you know that there there is issues with so so so when we think about you know west florida in particular we can't let the name fool us west florida is you know louisiana mississippi right as well some of some of that so west florida at the time so you have to imagine okay so um florida for for those of you who one of the things that really wanted to do in my book is to put pictures which probably would have helped because there's like a lot of geography stuff so at the time florida the panhandle of florida right so those those stomping grounds the panhandle of florida extended all the way to new orleans so the little juts in the states of mississippi and alabama the modern states to the coast those did not exist in the panhandle of florida because of new orleans was the most important part of florida when people spoke about a florida when people spoke about florida they generally spoke about the panhandle because that was new orleans that was the gulf really east florida which is what we think of as florida now right so everything from modern day jacksonville the miami to tampa the peninsula was almost seen as sort of unimportant you basically throw a couple military forts there so you can police the gulf trade and all of that keep other people there but you know you that that was that the real meat was in west florida okay so jefferson in the republicans had sort of part of in terms of the cronies and in the corruption they had always insisted that florida was part of louisiana right there's like oh france you also sold us florida and france was like no because spain said no that's not part of florida it's it's it's not there at all it's it's it's a separate entity and so then jefferson basically decides to maneuver to acquire west florida okay so the land right by new orleans okay and so on and well basically the the the strategy that he uses and this is something that infuriated randoff was basically he wanted to bribe france to coerce spain into giving up florida okay and this is where talli rand was involved was basically saying like yeah give us a little sweetener and you know we'll get this job done for you so jefferson uh didn't want to tell this to the people he wanted congress to secretly appropriate which can really only be accurately described as a slush fund of money to basically be used to pay off french politicians to then self west florida and this was something that had just revolted john rand obviously saying okay now we're engaged in secret deals uh this is all you know the the sorted bribery and what is this going to do to our relationship with great britain if they find out that we're secretly bribing france like won't this actually increase foreign tensions because now britain's going to be upset they could potentially turn on us etc and this was just seen as a whole a a minefield and though though congress passed what was known as the two million dollar act basically never got implemented because randoff was scheming to delay appropriations and then problems with great britain etc had caused um more and more uh you know controversy over this but it was very important this we we did the whole history of florida and acquiring florida is like a great example of cronyism and so west florida was the main prize jefferson wanted to bribe france to coerce spain into doing it randoff wasn't going to have any of it and then this you know this this skirmish the scenario here you know it's really you know through for the next you know over a decade or i guess we're on a decade right of of just kind of tensions between florida spanish florida and american interests uh you know the provoking uh uh you know discontent amongst the population having people operate on taking over territory here and there and andrew jackson later on becomes a big figure and using his sort of military wits to to to invade uh the area around pinzacola or where where does jackson invade uh well so where where does jackson he invaded twice yeah so first you had this this little movement it was around 1810 regarding this little this uh guerrillas took the land so the the part of the panhandle this is uh a little bit the part of the panhandle that was closest to new orleans again remember it went all the way to new orleans you originally had some guerrillas they went in there they took it over they wanted to become an independent state and then madison said no you're going to be uh included into louisiana and yeah you can't say anything about it tough and then you had jackson during the war of 1812 he invaded the panhandle what's sort of now seen as the modern panhandle a little bit closer acquiring that land uh this is the land that became the little coastal parts of alabama in mississippi okay and then jackson invaded it again uh after the war of 1812 during the um uh during the seminal war and he had he had invaded and this was seen as a big pretext for the united states to bully spain into selling florida so there was many conquests of florida it was really just like a repeated attempt of the united states slowly just biting away florida and like poor spain and the residents of florida they're they're they're they're they're dealing with this but it's it's it's fascinating because florida is just super important for the the south and the united states at this time i mean it's seen as the it's this big uh protector of the gulf and whoever owns florida can really sort of monopolize uh the caribbean trade uh within this there is also a perception of madison's role in this as well that you some of the the compromises from the old republicans you have a great quote uh i consider this matter as fairly at issue whether this nation is to be governed by a secret macavelian invisible irresponsible cabinet or the principles of the constitution uh you know is madison really sort of a in much the same way as perhaps hamilton sort of this this macavelian figure uh really kind of wielding true political power you know pushing all the right buttons with jefferson manipulating the political landscape here you know the the different debates over getting trying to get regional factions involved in some of that aspect that that comes to dominate you know american policies going up the civil war these these sectional disputes you know what is madison's role through this period and and kind of setting up you know this this sort of of corruption of the republican party yeah enormously important because he's really the the head of the so-called moderates so these are the ex-federalists that join the republican party because they were sort of disturbed at the the federalists for going too far or for not bringing them in on their racket so they didn't really want to get rid of the federalist cronyism maybe downsize it a little bit or just put themselves in charge of it and so madison was made secretary of state by jefferson and secretary of state uh it was seen as a very important stepping stone in the presidency and it really was an important stepping stone for the early 1800s it's it's something that's not understood now and so madison was a very big sort of corrupting agent in jefferson's ear you know he thought the louisiana purchase was was constitutional he was okay with bailing out the yazu land speculators he was in favor of internal improvements he wanted to take over florida and he made many steps to do so in his own presidential administration after jefferson you know from 1809 to 1817 and he was very important in corrupting jefferson and this is why randolph was always sort of seething at him he was you know accusing him of being sort of this federalist kind of whispering in jefferson's ear so when i when i heard when i read books of randolph describing this i kind of think of now i think of madison is sort of like this grimo worm tongue from lord of the rings and you have jefferson he's like this aging fade it in and uh you know he's uh madison sort of telling him that oh yeah you can do all this stuff uh you know as long as it's all just you give it a good constitutional uh description you know the justification or all of that so madison's very important this is why i'm i'm i'm negative on him uh in many ways i'm sort of more critical of him than hamilton though i think hamilton was much worse i i definitely don't pull my punches when it comes to madison because sometimes it's the moderators that are just as bad as as as the is the is the big status because they're the ones who are causing the the the reform coalition defaulter and so this is sort of madison's legacy i i don't think he had a positive impact i mean there were good things he did i'm not being like super i don't i don't want to be like super harsh on him but ultimately at least in in in the modern uh united states uh you know after the um you know during the 1790s and the 1800s the 1810s he really just kind of comes across as as as a rhino really a republican in name only right which is as you know something that of course is used in in earlier polio early 2000s but it has just as much relevance uh to the republican party of the jeffersonian era well seems like in many ways i mean you could argue that madison was far more effective at growing government than alexander hamilton because he kind of had that cloak right and particularly the impact i mean the federalists get thrown out of power after the 1800s but it's the virginian dynasty that comes into play from there on out you know they they dominate the white house for a very long time and and it's it's sort of madison that that ends up kind of setting the stage for this this decay of the republican party um i just i get i i think that's one of the best aspects of this book from just a narrative standpoint that you know because there is a lot of sympathy to madison's ideas within you know libertarian circles and i think that you do a great job of kind of you're taking off the the mask there of a madison the libertarian um you know let's go ahead and end on one last point uh to get yet another example of republican decay um you know they they embrace uh you protection of domestic merchants manufacturers um and kind of setting the stage not only for uh the embargo that even you know high school textbooks will tell you it was a bad idea but really a just a kind of bellicose sort of stand here with great britain generally again keep going back to that that issue of land and expansion i mean it was the explicit goal of the jeffersonians at by this point to go after canada to go after south america right you know the idea of you know there's this this broad growing empire of power you know it is really much at play here and it ends up with heightening tensions between the us in the uk uh and you know you have you know which leads to the disastrous policies of the embargo um which you know thankfully we're kind of undermined by smuggling but you know this this is you know perhaps the the most obvious black eye of the jeffersonian administration but you're just kind of hitting some of the unique aspects of this kind of you know to me i just simply highlights kind of kind of the complete capitulation of the jeffersonian republican party to you know the the the saber rattling of the hamiltonians oh absolutely and this is why i think the first jefferson administration uh was was great with the exception of louisiana purchase would came which came at the end but the second administration is just a disaster so by the time jefferson leaves office in in march of 1809 uh his republican party has has changed tremendously from just 10 years ago when they were fighting the federalists so one of the things jefferson was also doing in his second administration was making moves to please manufacturers and uh shippers because they were concentrated in new england and he wanted to win that constituency bring them into the republican party this is always jefferson's goal keep the empire growing bring more people in to the republican party to ensure republican party dominance okay and the some of the the the laws jefferson uh you know pushed for the embargo act was something very extreme that most shippers in shippers didn't support the manufacturers did support but it's important to note that you know jefferson's justification for doing all this was kind of a lie because he always said we're going to engage in an embargo with great britain um because we want to show them that they can't impress our sailors uh and that we're going to use this as a means to prevent war right at the same time jefferson's also building up the military and he's preparing for a secret invasion of canada in the winter of uh of 08 and early 09 that basically gets stopped uh at the last moment because what jefferson really wanted it was he wanted canada and he also wanted florida okay and this is the the issue of the corrupting nature of land once you have louisiana and you have the new orleans well now you have to have florida because how is new orleans going to be protected if you don't have florida how are you going to be able to use the control the golf trade if you don't have florida and then when you have louisiana all the way to the west you also want to get canada you want to bring canada into the uh into the country in that way you can can totally monopolize the trade of the great lakes region okay and this is just continually the problem of of territorial expansion always leads to more territorial expansion all right so these these various laws such as jefferson's embargo act which i i often teach it to my students is sort of our nation's first lockdown kind of right where we say we're not going to import or export goods on american ships was completely disastrous right it led to enormous amounts of unemployment in idle ships um you know just of sailors and ships and hurt industry to hurt farmers because they couldn't sell their goods it led to smuggling jefferson was using uh u.s soldiers to prevent people from peacefully trading with canadians i mean just like a total disaster right when you're like jefferson what are you what are you thinking of it and poor albert gallatin who was against this embargo was basically saddled with enforcing it and the treasury bureaucracy blows up with all the edicts and rules and regulations of all this stuff and it's it really just shows you the the evolution of the republican party uh went from the reform group fighting the federalists so this liberty fighting power right to then liberty moderating and only moderately decreasing cronyism to then liberty getting corrupted by power to then supporting its own cronyism which is which basically culminates into a war of conquest uh the war of 1812 well i think that is a good part for us to leave off on kind of setting the stage for president madison coming up soon um if you have not yet got your copy of cronyism liberty versus power in america 1607 1849 we have a discount for you using a coupon code lvp we have a discount for both the paperback and hardback versions of the book if you've been enjoying this podcast you gotta get the book uh i believe there's also an audiobook and the works i'll be coming here shortly um but let's let's just also note that inflation is at seven percent right and the mesis institute were lowering prices on good so this is our way of fighting inflation right absolutely and cronyism and all all sorts so again if you are enjoying this podcast again we've gotten some great responses i want to thank you all for that please rate review subscribe you know do all all that sort of stuff you're supposed to do with podcast um again we got we got a lot of great episodes down the pipeline um with that being said for patrick newman this is slow bishop thank you for listening to liberty versus power