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To: GOPcapitalist
Wide circulation is often nothing more than the appeal to the limited. Bad ideas, bad writings are frequently widely circulated. Nothing surprising about the anti-feds having wide circulations after all they controlled virtually all the State governments and local political machinery. It would be surprising if their ideas were NOT more widely circulated than those attacking the status quo.

If Luther Martin is the best you can come up with then my point is confirmed. Without his largely self-imposed disabilities Martin might well have been a great man but as it was he drank himself into a lesser status. How great a man COULD he have been? And even a GREATER lawyer than he was.

Even when a drunk is dead right he is not taken as seriously as less correct people who are cold sober. Martin, like most drunks, was obnoxious, quarrelsome and insufferable. He was a tragic figure. Wonder what led to that?
774 posted on 09/08/2003 7:16:39 AM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (America's Enemies foreign and domestic agree. Bush must be destroyed.)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Wide circulation is often nothing more than the appeal to the limited.

Yet you have no evidence to qualify Lee's writings as anything of the sort. My point is simply that they were very influential in his own day as one of the greatest contributions to his side of the debate. The only substantial reason they are lesser known than the federalists today is the fact that they took a position that was opposite of what ended up happening.

If Luther Martin is the best you can come up with then my point is confirmed. Without his largely self-imposed disabilities Martin might well have been a great man but as it was he drank himself into a lesser status.

Actually, the worst of his alcoholism hit him in older age. Though always a friend of the drink, he nevertheless proved his capability as one of the nation's leading legal minds over several decades. His greater "flaw," if you can call it that, was not the drink but rather eccentricity that accompanied what truly was a stroke of genius. Martin was bluntly spoken and had an extremely sharp tongue. It made him great in a courtroom and in print, but highly undiplomatic and abrasive in a congress. The writings of the other convention delegates reflect this sentiment - they practically all appreciated his brilliance and were also generally respectful of his contributions on the part of the states in committee negotiations, but on the open floor he came across as highly inflamatory in his rhetoric. It was that fact, and not the drink, that hindered his effectiveness as a floor debator.

As for his anti-federalist contributions, you cannot reasonably dispute that they were among the most far-sighted of any on either side of the ratification debate. He held anti-slavery views that were more advanced than almost all of his peers, he foresaw the abusive growth of the federal government, he predicted the civil war in greater detail than anyone a full 70 years before it happened. Yet you desire to arbitrarily dismiss the quality of his writings for no other reason than that he worked opposite of your false deity Hamilton.

782 posted on 09/08/2003 8:38:28 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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