First published in 1848 Frederick Grimke s book in the words of the editor deserves comparison with Tocqueville s justly famous work Democracy in America and is in certain ways superior It is the single best book written by an American in the nineteenth century on the meaning of our political way of life A second edition of Grimke s work was published in 1856 and a third edition appeared posthumously in 1871 but since then this classic in American thought has been almost completely lost to sight Grimke was born in South Carolina in 1791 and later moved to Ohio where he became a judge He remained a bachelor led a rich and cosmopolitan intellectual life and accumulated an excellent library His sisters Angelina wife of the abolitionist Theodore Weld and Sarah were both famous for deserting their South Carolina heritage and becoming active in the abolition and woman suffrage movements In 1842 Grimke retired from the bench to devote the remainder of his life to study and writing setting himself the task of educating his contemporaries in the nature of their society His major achievement was The Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions Grimke s range of topics includes the right of the majority the character and operation of elective governments the function of political parties the American contrasted with the English and French constitutions and the separation of powers in the American political systems He sees governmental institutions as the expression of the general structure of society which calls them into being In his Introduction Mr Ward points to Grimke s thesis that the separation of powers in the frame of the American constitution works not because power is distributed within the government but because all branches of the government are directly or indirectly responsible to the will of the majority of the people outside the doors of government As a result of the party system Grimke wrote we may vary the paraphernalia of government as much as we please but it still obstinately persists in every one of its departments to be a government based upon the popular will Mr Ward calls attention to Grimke s passionate belief that freedom is its own justification and that its ultimate value is that it created the kind of character which made freedom possible He held that the only way to make a man fit for freedom is to give him freedom Yet unlike his sisters he shared a view of race that was pervasive in his time and was unable to imagine the extension of freedom to the slave In contradiction to his views of government and freedom he upheld Negro slavery even to the extent of sanctioning secession to protect it To him the open affirmation of the right of secession would serve to maintain the Union not destroy it

The Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions PDF

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