Civics Flashcards
1
Q
Magna Carta
A
- Rights of the Barons versus the Monarch. In the 1590’s it was mythically revived as the primordial rights of Englishmen prior to Kings. It restricted the ability of the King to tax without consent of the royal council. This royal council became parliament. Parliament came to be seen as the will of the people and it had authority over common law, which was judge made law, sort of like SCOTUS cases being used as precedents as if they were law. How was a similar case ruled upon before? That is common law. And it said that it is illegal to critisize the government because, who was the government? The people. England itself. That is not the U.S. way. In the U.S. the people represent their will not through the operations of government, but through a written constitution (similar to the Calvinist belief that authority comes not from leaders but from the Bible itself).
2
Q
Petition of Right
Early Colonial Democracy
A
- Reaction to Charle’s I actions to deprive any individual of property and freedom without need to justify it. He was taking money from ritch people. So rich lords and commons alike combined to force him to sign petition. Charles also forced citizens to feed soldiers, to the petition was similar to the 3rd Amendment.
- Though the Plymouth Pilgrims had the Mayflower Compact of 1620 they signed on the boat with “strangers” (non-separatists) which required government by civil consent and compromise rather than divine decree as the Pilgrims would have liked it, the later Massachusetts bay colony was anti-democratic. For these puritans, inequality was an expression of God’s will. God had separate lists of rights for women, children and servants. Absolutely no religious freedom. To vote you not only had to be a church member, you had to be a “visible saint” meaning that through your material prosperity, God had demonstrated to everyone that you were elect. Since Puritans had many children and also many new colonists came, the vast majority of eligible voters in later years would be of this persuasion, which was collectivist and republican in that it believed only those with “virtue” could rule with the good of the group in mind. Everyone else, including women and free people of color, would be tainted by their own individual special interests. The southern colonies, on the other hand, were individualists and sought only their own welfare.
1638: The Fundamental Order of Connecticut united 3 towns under a single government. This idea of confederation.
1643: The New England Confederation formed between Plymouth, Massachusets Bay, New Haven, and Connecticut. 8 commissioners, 2 chosen by the governmental councils of each colony. Raised funds for Harvard, established missions to the Indians, arbitrated tariffs and other trade disputes, made treaties, raised armies against the Natives (King Philips War).
3
Q
Economic Snapshot of colonies
Habeus Corpus act
A
- New York is taken over by the English. Many colonies began as joint stock companies to increase the wealth of shareholders, not the crown directly. The Northern colonies were farmers. Small farm = freedom. Freedom = disposes Indians. 2nd and 3rd sons don’t inherit land, so increasingly inhabit cities and become merchants of textiles and metal work.
Southern colonies especially had an elite ruling class, such as Washington’s grandfather, hereditary aristocracy but huge poor white working class. Still better to be indentured in America than a poor surf in English with no chance of ever getting your own small farm= freedom. - Court must examine the lawfulness of a prisoners’ detention. It prevents unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment.
4
Q
Bill of Rights (English)
A
- Decide who is next to inherit crown. Limits monarch. Gives some powers to parliament such as free speech. Prohibits cruel and unusual, just like U.S. 8th. Right of protestants (who just kicked out the Catholic king James II) to bear arms in their defense. No right of taxation for the king without parliament’s agreement.
5
Q
Locke’s Treatises
A
- Consent of governed. Social contract. Natural rights. Fail to protect= overthrow.
6
Q
Voltaire’s Letters on the English
A
- Separation of church and state.
7
Q
Rousseau’s Social Contract
A
- Laws belong to citizenry and leaders beholden to them. No divine right.
8
Q
First Continental Congress
A
- Republicanism: only property owning citizens posses virtue: the ability to make decision for the good of the whole groups without being biased by special interests. Liberalism: Citizens give up some liberty in exchange for the government promise to protect their natural rights: life liberty property. Property if not used properly through intense occupation (aboriginal title) it is up for grabs in the doctrine of Christian discovery. Tension between Lockean rights and British-derived rights. The revolutionary idea that we have rights not on the list that Britain assigns us. No taxation without rep was not only in reference to B, but in reference to common man wanting rep in an elite colonial govt.
9
Q
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
Declaration of Independence
A
1776
- Limited government: freedom from interference from government
Natural rights: life liberty and property and happiness.
Popular sovereignty: government is from the people
Republicanism: government needs to be controlled by the people. People select representatives to administer the government on their behalf.
Social contract: give up some liberties in exchange for protection. Government stays out of my way unless I an my fellow citizens have freely delegated a power to the government and said, government take care of this for me (secure my property rights).
10
Q
Articles of Confederation
A
- Unicameral congress only. No tax collection. 9/13 for decisions. 13/13 for additional articles. No army. Confusion of Article 9 that only the Congress has propriety over Indians except when the states want it.
11
Q
Constitutional convention
A
- Virginia Plan combined with NJ plan. Article I: Congress. Article 2: Executive. Article 3: Judiciary. L can make laws but E can veto. L can override veto and unfund both E and J. J cannot yet nullify laws. Concessions to slave states: slave trade will still be viable for G and Carolinas. Congress unable to decide if it wants to outlaw until 1808. To avoid tyranny of Govt: Separation of Powers and Federalism. To avoid tyranny of rabble: Senators elected by state legislators. Electoral college- also a concession to slavery because a most voters lived in the North even though most people lived in the South. A popular vote would be antislavery because Black people couldn’t vote (even free POC). Commerce clause gives congress authority over interstate and foreign commerce and dealings with Native Americans. Guarantee Clause: Fed troops will protect states from invasion. Necessary and proper clause: Congress can make laws necessary and proper to the carrying out anything the constitution says.
12
Q
Constitution Ratified
A
- Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote Federalist Papers: Strange new powers to the central govt: power to tax, to control interstate commerce. We just fought a revolution in order to get rid of an outside government that wanted to control the states. Federalism: things that the states can do that the feds cannot control. Some powers are shared, some are only federal and some are only states. As opposed to Unitary government where the states only have the powers that the national government gives them, like local branches of a main company. Republicanism= a government that is accountable to the people, that truly has the good of the (white male landowning) people in mind, not only the self interest of the representative and the interest groups to which that representative belongs (which is why women and POC could not be representatives). Anti-federalists (Brutus) believe that the Constitution created a govt that is neither federal nor republican. Federalists (Publius) thought it was both federal and republican because even though it grants new powers to central government, there were checks and balances against those powers. Not a threat to the rights of the states (federalism) or to the liberties of the people (republicanism).
Fed 45: Madison: Central govt has few powers. States have many in the constitution. Fed 10, 51: Madison believes in what he is writing that constitution created a good balance between central govt and states. Gave central enough power to protect the union from its eminent destruction by Native Americans, but still protected the states.
Hamilton: Wanted a unitary national government, and was planning on using the constitution later, once people bought into it, to get the pesky states out of the way and the let the rabble have less of a say. His tactic was we just need people to ratify this so lets say whatever is necessary, promise GA that we won’t use federal troops to protect Creek against white squatters (even though that is what we promised the Creek) and promise the bill of rights, but as soon as its signed, we’ll overawe the Natives with our army and overpower the states with our power. Fed 70: Executive is good. Fed 78: judiciary is least dangerous branch according to him. But antifederalists think that it is the most dangerous, the least accountable to the people because they aren’t elected and once they’re on, they’re on forever. Hamilton argues nothing new because in NY you already have a similar court. Why give them so much power? They don’t have much power in fact because they don’t have any way to check the other branches (and they didn’t at the time, no review). 84: we don’t need a bill of rights.
13
Q
Constitution in Effect and GW Executive. And Judiciary Review Act.
A
- SCOTUS can enforce court appointments. This aspect is the first thing SCOTUS rules unconstitutional later on in 1803.
14
Q
Naturalization act of 1790
Jefferson agrees to Hamilton’s 5 point plan
A
- restricts citizenship to free white people of good character. In response to 3 Chinese men who want citizenship.
- Hamilton’s plan is 1. establish the nation’s credit worthiness by paying off war debt for all states. 2. Establish a national debt with interest bearing bonds giving the rich a stake in the nation’s success. 3. Create a bank of the U.S. that is private and will turn a profit for shareholders, but that will hold public funds and issue currency. 4. Whiskey tax to get money for points 1-3. This hurt small farmers whose most profitable use of grain was whisky. 5. Encourage domestic industrial manufacture through a tariff of foreign goods. This artificially makes those more expensive making local products more competitive.
15
Q
Bill of Rights (U.S)
A
- Religion, speech, press, assembly, petition. 2. Arms, originally for militias to arm against Fed troops. 3. No forced quartering of soldiers (interpreted later as privacy). 4. Search warrants (also privacy). 5. Grand jury, eminent domain, congress will not take away rights without due process (but states still can), self-incrimination. 6. Speedy public trial by jury, know charges. 7. Jury trial in civil suits. 8. No excessive bail. Cruel and unusual punishment. 9. Natural rights no enumerated in constitution are still held by people. 10. If it doesn’t say it in the constitution, feds can’t do it.
16
Q
11th
Amendment process.
A
- States immune from suits of out of state citizens and foreigners.
Remember an amendment has to be proposed by 2/3 vote of both houses or by a national convention called by Congress at the request of 2/3 of state legislatures (never happened). It has to be ratified by 3/4 of state legislatures, or by 3/4 state conventions (only to repeal the 18th)
17
Q
First Party System
A
- Adams elected and Jefferson is VP because runner up. Adams is Hamiltonian federalist: pro-Britain, mercantilism, patent protection, balanced imports and exports, protect against democracy, limited free speech. Versus Jefferson Democratic Republicans: yeoman farmers, free land for small white families, pro-France, free speech, export raw mats and import manufactured goods. No U.S. manufacture.
18
Q
Alien and Sedition Acts
A
- Make it harder to become a citizen. Make it illegal to criticize the U.S. government. Virginia and Kentucky claim right to nullify this act.
19
Q
ON TEST Marbury V. Madison
A
- Adams trying to sabotage Jefferson as he takes office, appoints a ton of federal judges, but a few don’t get their appointments in time and Jefferson refuses to extend them, through Madison, so Marbury invokes the Judiciary Act to force Madison to give him the appointment. SCOTUS refuses and calls that part of the Judiciary Act to give them jurisdiction over such cases of enforcement unconstitutional. J gives itself power to make L unconstitutional and its decisions become actual law.
20
Q
12th
Commonwealth v. Pullis
A
- VP no longer runner up. Electoral college simplified so there is no possibility of a tie like there was between Jefferson and Burr. Electors vote once for P and once for VP.
- Cordwainer’s case→ indictment against boot makers and shoemakers for conspiring to raise their wages→ jury found the union was illegal and defendants were found guilty. A doctrine known as the labor conspiracy theory was developed that stated that collective bargaining would interfere with the market and destroy competition
21
Q
People V. Ruggles (N.Y.)
A
- Despite NY constitution, similar to U.S. constitution’s 1st amendment, disestablishing the government from The Church of England or any other religion, Ruggles is charge with blasphemy because it is a common law crime passed down from England. The Court specified that blasphemy was only when someone spoke out against Christianity, not against other religions. “we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those imposters.” They cited laws against immorality and laws recognizing Sunday as the day of worship as evidence of Christianity’s status under the common law. This was cited as precedent in Reynolds.
22
Q
Jackson’s victory of New Orleans
A
- End of Federalist party. Era of good feelings. U.S. market revolution is definitely not Jeffersonian, but their victory over Britain is definitely not Hamiltonian.
23
Q
ON TEST McCullough V. Maryland
A
- 2nd national bank is constitutional and Maryland can’t tax it so McCullough was right to not pay up. Anything appropriate is “necessary and proper.”
24
Q
Johnson v. M’Intosh
A
- Private citizens can’t buy land from Native Americans. Aboriginal title established through agricultural occupation is alienable only through Federal intervention, not private or state.
25
Q
Office of Indian Affairs
New York Completes Erie Canal
A
1824.
- 300 mile long canal connects Great Lakes to the Hudson river making NYC the most important port in the U.S. This is the time of the market revolution and the first industrial revolution. Steam ships. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is completed in 1828. Steam powered factories make it so factories can spring up anywhere, not just along rivers. The bank of the U.S. is funding infrastructure. Slaves are producing 3/4 of the worlds cotton. SCOTUS is fostering competition between corporations. Corporations are building 3000 miles of navigable canals, but SCOTUS is giving them eminent domain to do it under the 5th amendment. Factories bring together all contributors to a product instead of farming out half finished products to people to finish at home. People started to GO TO WORK instead of assemble from home. Women in the cult of domesticity housekeep so that their husbands can go to work for wages. The clock instead of the sun. Wage for an hour instead of for product. Work for a capitalist who owned factory instead of working own land (and land is freedom). This lack of freedom spurred many to go west. So many, that capitalists had to find their labor elsewhere, such as the Irish coming from the 1845 potato famine. Work that matters to your belly versus work that nobody will notice if you don’t do well. Telegraph is invented. Things can be shipped to consumers much more cheaply.
26
Q
Second Party System
Tariffs
A
- Jackson elected because 21 of 24 states eliminated property requirements for white male vote. Whigs rise up in response to Jackson’s monarchical behavior. Jacksonian democrats want power in the executive. Whigs are elite northerners who make money off speculation and investment. Democrats make money by producing things, or owning slaves who produce things.
- Congress passed tariffs on imports of wool, iron. This helps the north because now their wool, iron goods are artificially cheaper in comparison, but it hurts the south because they don’t manufacture goods. South threatens to nullify these tariffs.
27
Q
Indian Removal Act
A
- Congress authorizes Executive to set aside lands west of Mississippi to exchange for Native American lands east of Mississippi.
28
Q
Cherokee Nation V. Georgia
A
- Cherokee claim that Georgia as a state has no authority over them since they are a foreign nation. SCOTUS refuses to rule because the Cherokee are nothing but wandering hoards and they are dependent wards, not an independent nation, so they have no standing in a U.S. court.
29
Q
Worcester V. Georgia
Panic of 1837
A
- SCOTUS repents of its earlier decision (some justices actually feel guilty at how they cheated them out of so much land that same year) now saying that the Cherokee is sovereign nation and that Georgia has no jurisdiction to imprison white missionaries for entering Cherokee land (supposedly it was against Georgia law for white people to enter Cherokee land without state approval, which it granted without Cherokee approval). Jackson refused to enforce this ruling and get the white missionary out of jail because he didn’t want to piss off Georgia since SC had just nullified a tariff law and threatened to secede if Jackson forced them to implement it.
- Jackson refused to extend the national bank and his pet banks printed way too much paper money. This inflation combined with land speculation (capitalists get richer just by loaning money) which Jackson tried to stop by saying all land must now be bought in gold/silver (specie) not credit, made all that paper money unbackable with specie since all the specie was in land. People went to withdraw their silver and it wasn’t there.
30
Q
Indian Reservation System
A
- Designed to keep Indians corralled off land whites wanted.
31
Q
Third Party System
A
- Same year as Kansas Nebraska Act repeals the Missouri compromise, the Free Soil party in 1848 had split the Democratic party over slavery and so antislavery democrats joined Whigs to form the Republican Party. No more whigs, now antislavery Republicans and proslavery Democrats.
32
Q
Dred Scott v. Stanford
A
- Black people, regardless of slavery, are not citizens nor were they ever meant to be citizens under the constitution. There are no such things as free states.
33
Q
13th
Economy of Civil War
A
- Slavery is only permitted as punishment for a crime.
The U.S. is a complete Hamiltonian national debt nation state, not a Jeffersonian agrarian utopia. There are more than 30,000 miles of RR in the U.S. Fed gives land to RR companies, prints national currency, institutes an income tax to pay for the Civil War. Huge boon for northern manufacture who had to make arms and clothing for the 800,000 soldiers who died. This makes the U.S. into the most industrial nation on the planet by 1880.
34
Q
14th
A
- Overturns Dred Scott. All persons born or naturalized in U.S. are U.S. citizens. Blacks count as a whole person for population, but Indians don’t. No rebels may hold office. Confederacy owes debts for war. Union owes none. Citizen clause overturns Dred. Due process prohibits states from taking life liberty or property without due process from citizens. Seem to make the states beholden to the BOR, not just congress, but it is not interpreted as applying all BOR to the states. Every right has to be incorporated to the states one by one. This means that SCOTUS has to strike down states laws that go against the BOR one by one until they are all incorporated. This power is used in Brown v. Board, Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore.
Equal protection clause prohibits discrimination and applies even to non-citizens living in states.
To think of due process another way, states can go ahead and take away rights, but not without due process. So state laws that blanket eliminate rights, such as anti-abortion laws, are automatically violating that once abortion is deemed a right. A person might say, as Jane Roe did, “the state of Texas is taking away my right to an abortion without due process because of their law that takes it away from everyone automatically,” so the supreme court has to decide if abortion is a right.
35
Q
15th
A
- All races can vote provided they are citizens and male.
36
Q
Indian Appropriations Act.
A
- Overturned Worcester v. Georgia. No longer was any group of Indians in the United States recognized as an independent nation by the federal government. Indians are no longer treated as tribes with whom anyone can make a treaty, instead they are individuals treated as wards of the federal government. This act has never been overturned.
37
Q
Reynolds v. U.S.
A
- SCOTUS rejected Reynolds’ argument that the Latter-day Saint practice of plural marriage was protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Thus, his conviction was upheld, as was the constitutionality of the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act under the reasoning that monogamy was inherited from England under common law upon which U.S. was based, and established the U.S. as a white Christian nation saying that polygyny was “odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people.” The 1811 Ruggles antiblasphemy case was used by the U.S. as precedent that despite disestablishment, the U.S. was a Christian nation.
38
Q
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
U.S. Economic snapshot
A
- Kill the Indian. Save the man.
- More U.S. work in industry than in agriculture for the first time. But still only 20% live in cities. RR invent time zones. Captains of industry Stanford, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, are richer and more powerful than the government. Robber Baron Rockefeller’s Standard Oil buys up 90% of competitors.
39
Q
Chinese Exclusion Act
Civil Service Act
A
- 100,000 Chinese living in U.S. at the time.
- Civil Service Act which means people have to apply and pass a test to get some federal posts rather than simply buying them as the spoils of helping a candidate get elected. However, this backfires. Since they can no longer compensate individuals with posts, individuals don’t help them. Instead huge corporations help them with even more money and they compensate by creating policy favorable to those corporations.
40
Q
U.S. v. Kagama
Haymarket Riots
A
- Congress, not the states have authority over Indian Affairs since Indians are “dependent domestic nations.” This is not argued under the commerce clause article 1, but from some other understanding, (not sure where) that the tribes have a “status” of dependent domestic nations.
- The Knights of Labor are up to over 800,000 members after only a decade from starting and they get into a clash with the police that turns violent, harming their reputation and branding them radicals and socialists. The American Federation of Labor is formed as a less radical alternative, it is also for more skilled labor.
41
Q
Dawes Act
A
- Allots small parcels of land to individual Native families, not tribes, so that they can become civilized and Christianized and self-reliant farmers. But once the allocation is made, the remaining land goes to non-natives who take away 86 million of the remaining 138 million acres of land. If Indians can submit to this life style and make the land prosper and become effectively white and hold on to that for 25 years, they can become citizens.
42
Q
Sherman Anti Trust Act
Homestead Steel Strike
Pullman Strike
A
- Prohibits combinations that restrain trade but is mostly used against unions, not monopolies.
- strike occurred in 1892 at the Carnegie Steel Company’s steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Private guards were hired and the strike turned violent, resulting in most workers leaving the union and returning to work
- Grover Clevland ordered troops to end a railroad strike in Chicago
43
Q
ON TEST Plessy v. Ferguson
A
- Separate treatment doesn’t imply inferiority under the law as long as equal. Segregation in public does not violate the 14th equal protection as long as separate but equal.
44
Q
Fourth Party System
U.S. v Wong Kim Ark
A
- After the compromise of 1877 ending reconstruction when white Republicans lost interest in antiracism and Black Republicans were lynched and subjugated under Jim Crow, race ceases to be the issue dividing the parties. The populist party (anti: elite, cities, banks, railroads, and gold) endorses William Jennings Bryan against William McKinley in 1896. Democrats are poor xenophobic whites who think the government should do something to correct social ills. Republicans are rich imperialistic whites who think government should step in to expand U.S. business interests abroad. McKinley wins because of 10 million dollars in corporate financing of his campaign. Wilson is the only democrat during this system.
- ABC are entitled to U.S. citizenship because of the 14th. Why this didn’t go without specifying is testament to the fact that Indians were also not citizens under the 14th and wouldn’t be until Dawes and only then conditionally, not automatically by virtue of their birth.
