Customer Reviews

Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin (Lives of the Founders)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mr. Kaufmann has written an important and informative little book on a man I'd previously never heard of. I read a review in the WSJ, bought the book, and didn't want it to end. Mr. Kaufmann's conversational style of writing brings his vituperative/loquacious subject to life. There's a lot of dirt on the sainted Founders that I'd never read, but confirmed after reading this little volume.
Highly recommended if you're looking for solutions to our current situation as a nation. Well done, Mr. Kaufmann.

First heard of the book and author on a radio program. Was so intrigued that I went to the book store that afternoon and purchased it. I am not disappointed at all. This is the first book by Kauffman that I have read, but will not be my last! Well written; thought provoking; informative; entertaining! An added bonus is its application to current events - will most likely make you even more disgusted with todays representation when you hear the past prognostication. If you are interested in American history, constitutional history, the founding fathers, or just great stories - then this is the book for you! Have already purchased additional copies for family/friends.

The copy of "Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet" that I picked up had an eye-catching yellow sticker on the front jacket, with the following text printed upon it:

"WARNING: This book contains ideas that will not sit well with what you learned in high school 'social studies' classes. Constitutionolatry and the received wisdom of the nature and purpose of the American State emerge from these pages battered and limping. Reading this book may result in changes in your thinking."

All right. I made that up. My copy did not include that warning, but perhaps it should have. Readers unfamiliar with either the author or the suppressed history of the Founding -- specifically the extent to which the adoption of the Constitution was the defeat of, not a victory for, the principles of the American Revolution -- are in for a shock when they read this book. Not to sound conspiratorial, but how else can you describe the systematic erasing, not only of men like Luther Martin but more fundamentally of the ideas they stood for, from our collective understanding of our national story? Victors' History is one thing; history meant to reinforce our own submission to the central government is something very different.

There's an awful lot packed into book that's disguised as one more brief biography of yet another American Founding Father. What tears away the disguise is, for one thing, the fact that almost nobody has ever heard of Luther Martin. The more fundamental "tell," however, is the author's name on the front cover, and anyone who's read any Bill Kauffman knows they're in for a treat. You might think a short book like this is something you can breeze through quickly, but in fact it took me much longer than I expected to finish "Forgotten Founder" simply because Kauffman kept making me stop, think about the argument he was making or fact he was reporting, and sometimes even re-read the previous paragraphs or even pages to make sure I had it all in context. I cannot over-stress how deeply Kauffman's version of the Constitutional Convention and the personalities and interests involved differs from we're all taught in school and absorb through our civic worship and popular culture.

But of course, "Kauffman's version" is not his alone, and the story he presents us is solidly researched and well-sourced. And, given that it's Bill Kauffman writing, it's also extremely well-written, subtilely humorous, and powerfully engrossing. Even for a died-in-the-wool revisionist like me, some of what I found in these pages came as a shock. But as both a Kauffman fan and someone sympathetic to much of what Luther Martin was defending, it was a remarkably pleasant shock indeed.

Luther Martin is frequently thrown into the pot of lesser-known Anti-Federalists. Modern studies of the so-called "Anti-Federalists" misrepresent them in two critical ways: First, they tend to equate the Anti-Federalists with today's conservatives when, in fact, the Anti-Feds were classical liberals. Second, the very label "Anti-Federalist" is conflicted, because the form of government these people supported was a loose confederation of otherwise independent states, much the way the EU is today. Ironically, this is the exact definition of Federalism, which may help explain why Martin embraced the Federalist Party later in his life once it had shaken the implicit monarchism of Hamilton. He was trying to save the legal concept for posterity, and he understood the true meaning of a confederation, just as his close friends Samuel Chase and Aaron Burr did. The author finds it interesting (as I do) that the three founders who most supported a true confederation were also the most difficult to label. They didn't fall neatly into either the Hamiltonian or Jeffersonian cliques, and they were despised for it.

So, here's our founding Libertarian, incorrectly tagged an Anti-Federalist, and what an enormous character he was! As one of our foremost scholars of constitutional law, Martin was blessed with a scathing intellect and no discretion whatsoever. He set loose on the Constitutional Convention with little respect for the prevailing backsliding of his peers. Martin comes across these days as a drunken radical who offered little to the Convention beyond passionate, alcohol-soaked rhetoric that irritated his more refined colleagues. Here's his message: Big Government, Big Religion, Big Business, Big ANYTHING necessarily limits liberty, because people will ultimately be forced (by violence, if necessary) to sacrifice their own ambitions (what idealists these days call "dreams") to the mundane goals of larger institutions. Here's the drunken reject from Maryland warning us about Communism, Imperialism and multi-national Corporatism decades before any European philosopher or economist.

Martin's biography - his story - is told here with lovely wit and insight by Bill Kauffman. This is a marvelous, profound and entertaining biography with modern purpose. It's exceptionally well done and will challenge your acceptance of "politics as usual." BRAVO!

I must admit as a scholar of early America I had hardly heard of Luther Martin, so when I got this book I was excited to read about him. This book is written very well and is hard to put down. The descriptions of the debates at the constitutional convention make you feel like you were there. Martin, outspoken and firm in his ideas is a patriot of the first order and thanks to this great book people will again know his name. If you are intrested in the founding fathers and that time period this book is for you.

Mr. Kauffman's little book informs the people of what went wrong with this country. The Anti- Federalists were right, the constitution was dangerous and corruptable. Most conservatives don't realize this and love the constitution, but they will probably lose their liberties and never retain their prosperity again under this nationalist system. Read this book and other anti Federalists on the dangers of the Constitution, and you will see that all warnings by the ant-federalists came true . We need an amendment where a majority of the states can nullify any act by the National government. Bill Kauffman is an entertaining writer who brings Luther martin, a brilliant drunk, to life.
Take care!!
JAck

As an armchair history buff with a specific interest in the founding fathers, this is so far, the best book I've read.

Too often, history (as a subject) gets a bad reputation because many associate it with a boring recitation of names, dates, and places that was endured in high school. But when presented correctly, a historical study should take those names, dates, and places from the past, and illuminate their relevance to situations and events occurring today. Such a study is even more effective when it shatters a few myths or misconceptions. Bill Kauffman's Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet skillfully accomplishes both goals.

Kauffman's device for his study is the arguments of Luther Martin. While Martin was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and an Attorney General for Maryland, his arguments have been forgotten by the general public. In resurrecting those arguments, Kauffman destroys the notion that the Founding Fathers were united in their vision for a new government, which they skillfully articulated in the Constitution. Instead, Kauffman shows that the Founding Fathers were anything but unified in the direction that the Constitutional Convention took. Having made the reader aware that there were other viewpoints which were argued during and after the Convention, Kauffman makes those viewpoints relevant by pointing out Martin's criticisms of the governance model that was adopted. Martin's arguments that a strong federal system would lead to a remote government, responsive only to moneyed individuals/organizations and preoccupied with dictating how its citizens should live seem eerily prescient of the feelings that many currently seem to have toward the United States Government. By establishing the relevance of Martin's arguments, Kaufmann makes credible Martin's alternate vision of the United States as a confederation of states with a weak central government. While I'm not entirely convinced that Martin's alternate form of governing would be the utopia that Kauffman implies it would be (as is evidenced by Europe's current struggles with attempting to have all the benefits of a central government without losing their individual sovereignty), he writes in such a convincing and entertaining manner that the concept has to be given consideration.

I was particularly moved by the book's coda, where Kauffman describes his attempt to find Martin's grave. He discovers that the grave, like Martin's ideas, has been paved over and forgotten. But, thanks to Kauffman's illuminating study, Martin's admonishments and vision need no longer linger in obscurity.

Mr Kauffman's Luther Martin seems less a biography of the eccentric Mr. Martin than an excuse for an "I told you so" manifesto of Kauffman's own politics. Kauffman can't or refuses to get out of the way of his own narrative. Every paragraph gets the flourish of his own opinion and comparison to contemporary politics no matter how distracting from the story, some purely superfluous.

An example: Martin is quoted (at length - as was his wont) "Their object...to aggrandize and elevate its rulers and chief officers, far above the common herd of mankind, to enrich them with wealth and encircle them with honors and glory...." Kauffman follows this with his own observation just in case the reader is incapable of his or her own extrapolation, with, " You can scoff at this flight of fancy, or you can consider the careers of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard V. Cheney." All right, I've considered... I don't particularly admire either of these contemporary politicos anymore than the author, but that said, is there a biography hiding in this little book or not?

What there is of history helps somewhat redeem the book. Martin is a "damned" interesting rascal - to use his own invective. And since the victors write the history books, Luther Martin has been largely lost to all but the researcher.

I was not particularly put off by Kauffman's politics - libertarian, I suppose, but the book is subtitled, "The Life of Luther Martin", which leads the reader to expect biography not personal polemics! History is used in this book as the pulpit to preach Kauffman's political sect and his "damned" odd thesis. Most of his argument rests on Montesquieu's pronouncements (promoted by the Anti-Federalists) about the geographic size limits of a republic, which by-the-way, must have been since debunked by the very success of 224-years of our constitutional form of government.

The book stumbles on for 166 pages, so it is at least a short read, but there are some things to be learned (occasionally even about Mr. Martin) and sadly there are few if any published options on this topic. Kauffman's thesis? (whether you want one or not) We would have been better off with the Articles of Confederation than the Constitution. The fact that we had over 10 years of utterly disastrous government under the Articles is left unexplored by the author. It all ends for the hapless reader with a close of the little book and a heartfelt, if not stunned... HUH?