April 2 - American History Chat
Link to Video on Facebook
Link to transcript (provided by Rana Olk)
In this session, Heather discusses the formation of the American identity from the founding of the Republic through the Antebellum period, later splitting into two different notions, one in the North centered around the independent individual working for himself and another in the South, emphasizing a privileged and powerful oligarchy, which 'knew better' and would 'take care' of those less able or fortunate. In the South the concept of democracy, due to the workings of the cotton economy, depended on enslaving other people, whereas in the North, the democratic principle was centered on the concept of the small farmer. Slavery, critical to the way of life in the South, was anathema in the North, because there, among other reasons, it was seen as unfair to those who had to toil with their own labor, without the assistance of slaves.
Links related to topics covered in the chat
Letters from an American Farmer, by Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
'We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their power, because they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself.' (from Letter III: 'What is an American')
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA By Alexis De Tocqueville
' There is a country in the world where the great revolution which I am speaking of seems nearly to have reached its natural limits; it has been effected with ease and simplicity, say rather that this country has attained the consequences of the democratic revolution which we are undergoing without having experienced the revolution itself. The emigrants who fixed themselves on the shores of America in the beginning of the seventeenth century severed the democratic principle from all the principles which repressed it in the old communities of Europe, and transplanted it unalloyed to the New World. It has there been allowed to spread in perfect freedom, and to put forth its consequences in the laws by influencing the manners of the country.'
Alan Taylor's Book on the War of 1812 reviewed
'Taylor contends that the United States ultimately emerged as the victors of the civil war of 1812. The conflict consolidated America’s grip on its 1783 borders and established its hegemony over native peoples in both the Northwest and the Southwest. British statesmen never again would challenge the territorial integrity of the United States.'
War of 1812 video from CollegeHumor
The "Era of Good Feelings"
' Despite the mythology surrounding the merits of the militia, a stronger, federally-supported regular army would eventually be established as a consequence of the war. Economically, the British maritime sanctions and blockades spurred American manufacturing, especially in the North. Politically, the Democratic-Republicans, most of whom supported the war, enjoyed an unprecedented rise in power while their opponents, the Federalists, all but disappeared from the political landscape. With its borders now secure from foreign interference, the United States embarked on an immense westward expansion that would carry with it the divisive question of slavery and mark a new era in Native American-U.S. relations. Because of westward expansion and economic prosperity, the years immediately following the war would be labeled as the Era of Good Feelings.'
Democratic Review
The United States Magazine and Democratic Review was a (usually) monthly political journal published by Langley in the 19th century.
Manifest Destiny and Texas
'This part of American history, known as the ante-bellum (before war) era, begins with expansion and the great migration across the continent west of the Mississippi. The idea of manifest destiny—that the United States was destined to occupy the entire North American Hemisphere—came of age in the 1840s. It began with the annexation of Texas, which led to the Mexican-American War and the resulting great land cession. It was also the time of “Oregon Fever” as wagon trains took pioneers over the Rocky Mountains to the Willamette and Columbia River valleys.'
Cotton Gin
'Before the invention of the cotton gin, not only was the raising of cotton very labor intensive, but separating the fiber from the cotton seed itself was even more labor intensive. Only the largest plantations found raising cotton cost effective. The invention of the cotton gin and its manufacture changed that. Growing and cultivating cotton became a lucrative and less labor-intensive cash crop, contributing immensely to the rise of cotton production in the Deep South.'
Reckless cotton speculation in 1830s Mississippi revealed the cracks in the slave economy
'No part of the country was more flush than what was then its southwestern frontier, because western Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana possessed some of the most fertile soil on the continent for growing cotton. With the demand for the crop from the textile industries practically insatiable and average New Orleans prices for it increasing by 80 percent during the first half of the 1830s, the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans from millions of acres of prime southwestern cotton land dovetailed with federal provisions that set initial prices of public land at just $1.25 an acre to create a frenzy of migration, investment, and agricultural production. Already vital to the American economy by the start of the 1830s, over the course of the decade cotton crops accelerated national economic development, furthered the rising position of the United States as a global power, and cemented cotton’s place as the most significant commodity on Earth'
Joshua Rothman, chair of the history department at the University of Alabama, wrote 'Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson', which HCR brought up in her chat. A very large portion of this book is currently (5/24/2020) available for preview on google books. Rothman talked about his book a few years ago, describing a type of culture that was quite pervasive in the antebellum South, in which 'investors, settlers, slaves, brigands, and fortune-hunters converged in what was then America's Southwest …[and]…created a tumultuous landscape that promised boundless opportunity and spectacular wealth. Predicated on ruthless competition, unsustainable debt, brutal exploitation, and speculative financial practices that looked a lot like gambling, this landscape also produced such profound disillusionment and conflict that it contained the seeds of its own potential destruction.' Interestingly, this culture was characterized by prominent lack of religiosity.
As many other authors (e.g. Glen Feldman) have pointed out, later in the century and in the 20th century and beyond, religion became a core feature of Southern culture and politics, so this raises a question of when and how the transition occurred. Rothman (partially) answered this question in another conversation, when he discussed Eugene D. Genovese, a now deceased 20th-century historian who is very interesting from a historiographic perspective.
I first heard of Genovese in an interview Chris Tomlinson gave about Ned Turner, in which William Styron’s 1967 novel, 'The Confessions of Nat Turner' and the ensuing controversy it generated was discussed. Genovese, in his book "Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made" tried to reconcile two poles of historiography which emerged in the early and mid-20th century (one pole characterized by the tradition started by U. B. Phillips, which was supportive of the so-called 'lost cause narrative', and the other by Stanley Elkins, who compared slavery to Nazi concentration camps). For Genovese, religion was pivotal, providing a means for control and a paradoxical source of spiritual strength, thus making possible a hegemony through manufactured consent. Only a very small percentage of people in the south were 'plantar elites', and to maintain hierarchies, narratives and symbols were needed.
Genovese, according to Rothman, came to be an admirer of the conservative value system of the plantar elite, which to him represented important aspects of Western civilization (such as its humanistic values, and its religious and family traditions), and provided a kind of paternalism (both to slaves as well as to whites in lower parts of the hierarchical system. An ordered harmonius society was possible when everyone knew his or her place.
The Liberator
The Liberator, weekly newspaper of abolitionist crusader William Lloyd Garrison for 35 years (1831–1865). It was the most influential antislavery periodical in the pre-Civil War period of U.S. history.
This book (published in 1986), available to borrow for free on the Open Libary online, covers the development of the Virginia colony from the late 17th century through the 18th, and provides a background for understanding Nat Turner's rebellion
Nat Turner's rebellion
'On the evening of August 21–22, 1831, an enslaved preacher and self-styled prophet named Nat Turner launched the most deadly slave revolt in the history of the United States. Over the course of a day in Southampton County, Turner and his allies killed fifty-five white men, women, and children as the rebels made their way toward Jerusalem, Virginia (now Courtland). Less than twenty-four hours after the revolt began, the rebels encountered organized resistance and were defeated in an encounter at James Parker's farm.'
In this episode from the New Books series of podcasts, Christopher Tomlins discusses Nat Turner, who in 1831 led a band of slaves in Virginia in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites. Tomlins provides a striking account of Turner’s intellectual development, religious cosmology, and motivations, and offers an original and incisive analysis of the Turner Rebellion itself and its impact on Virginia politics. Tomlins also undertakes a deeply critical examination of William Styron’s 1967 novel, "The Confessions of Nat Turner", which restored Turner to the American consciousness in the era of civil rights, black power, and urban riots, as well as the original pamphlet that inspired it, written at the time of the rebellion. Stryon's book was controversial when it came out, prompting a debate between historians. Styron provided his own perspective on it in 1992. Tomlins finishes with some insights from Max Weber and Walter Benjamin. Tomlins takes a 'Benjaminian' view of histriography, i.e. history as a process of creating the past with our own consciousness, actively imbuing it with meaning, rendering it recognizable, and even allowing it to serve as purpose, be it aspirational, polemic, or justificatory.
James Hammond's Diary
Hammond's 'Cotton is King' speech
'In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.'
Alexander H. Stephens 'Cornerstone' Speech
'Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so.'
North vs. South in Antebellum America
'The Civil War that raged across the nation from 1861 to 1865 was the violent conclusion to decades of diversification. Gradually, throughout the beginning of the nineteenth century, the North and South followed different paths, developing into two distinct and very different regions.
Missouri Compromise
'In an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Furthermore, with the exception of Missouri, this law prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude line. In 1854, the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Three years later the Missouri Compromise was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
'The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, that brought an official end to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), was signed on February 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, a city north of the capital where the Mexican government had fled with the advance of U.S. forces. By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including parts of present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, to the United States. Mexico relinquished all claims to Texas, and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern boundary with the United States.'
1849 California gold rush
'In the cold morning hours of January 24, 1848, James Marshall, a construction foreman at Sutter’s Mill, was inspecting the water flow through the mill’s tailrace. The sawmill, on the banks of the American River in Coloma, California, was owned by John A. Sutter, who desperately needed lumber for the building of a large flour mill. On that particular morning, Marshall not only found the water to be flowing adequately through the mill, but also spied a shiny object twinkling in the frigid stream. Stooping to pick it up, he looked with awe at a pea-sized gold nugget lying within his hand.'
Kansas Nebraska Act
'The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as 'Bleeding Kansas,' as proslavery and antislavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote. Political turmoil followed, destroying the remnants of the old Whig coalition and leading to the creation of the new Republican Party. Stephen Douglas had touted his bill as a peaceful settlement of national issues, but what it produced was a prelude to civil war.'
Bleeding Kansas
'Bleeding Kansas is just one in a series of growing acts of violence surrounding slavery and abolition in the lead up to the Civil War. This event led to the crisis over the Lecompton Constitution as the violence surrounding Kansas put pressure of national politicians to accept a constitution that definitively legalized or prohibited slavery in an attempt to stop the bloodshed. Although horrified over the violence, Republicans used the events in Kansas to their political advantage to build their base, whereas the events only widened the divide between northern and southern Democrats. The political ramifications highlight the growing sectional tensions and the violence that ensured.'
Dredd Scott case
'The Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford was issued on March 6, 1857. Delivered by Chief Justice Roger Taney, this opinion declared that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. In addition, this decision declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.'
The First National Income Tax (1861–1872)
'During the first months of the American Civil War, an important political debate played out in the U.S. Congress over how to restructure the nation’s system of public finance and taxation. The fiscal crisis occasioned by the military conflict forced Republican leaders (who dominated our national political institutions) to adopt drastic and controversial measures including the expansion of public borrowing, the issuance of a national paper currency (so-called Greenbacks), and the adoption of a national income tax.'