…ville discusses the disparity of wealth between America’s slave states and free states. America had not yet gained her independence, he writes, when “the attention of the planters was struck by the extraordinary fact, that provinces which were comparatively destitute of slaves increased in population, in wealth, and in prosperity more rapidly than those which contained the greatest number of negroes.”3 Tocqueville goes on to describe in detail the…
…t don’t expect to hear that in a typical college history class. “Creating” New Rights Commonly used history textbooks don’t mention a word about how concerned the Founders were about restricting the role of the judiciary. But when it comes to more recent history, the textbooks portray judicial activism with a candor that the judges themselves would never dare use in public. Take the famous Roe v. Wade decision, for example. The justice who wrote t…
…he content of the site is of interest to readers, who are kind enough to recommend the site to their friends, or post links to it in various places. At any rate the comments and emails I get from visitors to the site have been a great encouragement to me as I toiled away on A Self-Made Nation: The People and Principles that Built America. Writing this book was a labor of love for me. From its founding the United States has been a nation where the…
…ureaucratic incompetence to make a quick financial score. In 1862 formed a New York company that worked closely with Peabody and Company matching up British investors with investment opportunities in the US. Next week’s post will examine the interactions of the Morgans, Carnegie, and the Vanderbilts in the post-war United States. Anyone who wants to receive these posts by e-mail is welcome to click the “Subscribe” button on the right-hand side of…
…and Scott by surprise. In 1877 the Pennsy, operating through a subsidiary company the Empire Transportation Company, bought up several smaller refineries and operated them in competition with Standard Oil. Empire also started construction on a pipeline network to channel crude oil from new oil fields away from Rockefeller’s refineries to its own. The railroad gave preferential freight rates to it’s Empire refineries to give them an advantage over…
