American History Chat - April 30, 2020

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In today's chat, HCR discussed why the US didn't become an oligarchy in the late 19th and early 20th century, beginning with the role of Theodore Roosevelt, briefly laying out the accomplishments of the progressive era, and then finishing by spending considerable time on the continuing development of the ideal of the individual, often at the expense of some who couldn't be counted as 'individuals' because of race or ethnic origin, as institutionalized policies of exclusion peaked in some ways during this period. How did the progressive era emerge, and what happened on the edges, as statues, books, histories, and hollywood movies celebrated a particular form of individualism.

Links (underlined) related to topics covered in the chat

Roosevelt’s West

Topics in Chronicling America - The McKinley Assassination

Teddy Roosevelt’s attack on excessive concentration of wealth

JP Morgan and Roosevelt

In this episode of KPFA's "Letters and Politics", investigative reporter Susan Berfield discusses her book The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism. At the end of the 19th century, arguably the most important capitalist in America was J. P. Morgan, who was rich enough to bail out the US government at one point. Morgan was able to take advantage of economic depressions that occurred in the US in the 1870s and 1890s by acquiring distressed railroad and other companies (a process that became known as 'Morganization'). However, Morgan wasn't the only capitalist who was able to use his money and connections to consolidate his wealth. During this period, many others did it, and this led to the rise of inequality, of populist movements and antitrust legislation. An intellectual tradition, exemplified by Henry George's 'Progress and Poverty'. During this period, the thinking of Theodore Roosevelt evolved, both as a result of personal tragedies as well as through his experience after meeting figures such as Samuel Gompers. When Roosevelt became President after the assassination of William McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in 1901, he made it a priority to address the rising power of big business.

May 2, 1913: President Theodore Roosevelt Speaks Out for Suffrage

American ideal: Theodore Roosevelt and the redefinition of American individualism

Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A 'White Supremacist Future'

Why the Solid South (online book)

How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people

THE HISTORY OF LYNCHING AND AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTING RIGHTS

Mississippi: Black voters sue over election law rooted in state’s racist past

Nov. 10, 1898: Wilmington Massacre

The White Man's Declaration of Independence

The Leopard's Spots. A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865-1900 (summary)

Killers of the Flower Moon author interview

Red Summer In Chicago: 100 Years After The Race Riots

Palmer Raids in the Library of Congress

THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION

A Battle To Wash Away A Fountain's Controversial Namesake

Why FDR Didn’t Support Eleanor Roosevelt’s Anti-Lynching Campaign

Historians' interpretations of the reconstruction period in American history
This doctoral thesis written in 1961 takes a quite favorable view of the Dunning school

The Undoing of Reconstruction
The historian who gave his name to the Dunning School, a group of scholars who decried Reconstruction, explained his objections to the United States government’s effort to establish racial equality in the post-war South.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Black Reconstruction” and the New (Marxist) Historiography
W. E. B. Du Bois gave perhaps the definitive answer to the Dunning school in "Black Reconstruction" (available online). This article discusses this.

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877-1934)

a positive review of Bower's book "Tragic Era".

How I Bought Into Gone with the Wind’s Mythology of Whiteness

Learning from Laura Ingalls Wilder

Lonely America
In an era of hyper-individualism, we should rekindle the bonds of community

Stagecoach: Is There Such A Thing as an Anti-Western?

[From wikipedia] Richardson’s first book, The Greatest Nation of the Earth (1997), stemmed from her dissertation at Harvard University. Inspired by Eric Foner’s work on pre-Civil War Republican ideology, Richardson analyzed Republican economic policies during the war. She contended that their efforts to create an activist Federal Government during the Civil War marked a continuation of Republican free labor ideology. These policies, such as war bonds and greenbacks or the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act, revolutionized the role of the Federal Government in the U.S. economy. At the same time, these actions laid the groundwork for the Republican Party’s shift to Big Business after the Civil War.

In this 2001 book, Richardson "focused on the “Northern abandonment of Reconstruction.” Building on the earlier work of C. Vann Woodward, she argued that a more complete understanding of the period required appreciation of class, not only race. As Reconstruction continued into the 1870s and especially the 1880s, Republicans began to view African Americans in the South more from a class perspective and less from the perspective of race that had driven their earlier humanitarianism. In the midst of the labor struggles of the Gilded Age, Republicans came to compare “the demands of the ex-slaves for land, social services, and civil rights” to the demands of white laborers in the North. This ideological shift was the key to Republican abandonment of Reconstruction, as they chose the protection of their economic and business interests over their desire for racial equality." [From wikipedia]

In this 2007 book, "Richardson presented Reconstruction as a national event that impacted all Americans, not just those in the South. She incorporated the West into the discussion of Reconstruction as no predecessor had. Between 1865 and 1900, Americans re-imagined the role of the federal government, calling upon it to promote the well-being of its citizens. However, racism, sexism, and greed divided Americans, and the same people who increasingly benefited from government intervention—white, middle-class Americans—actively excluded African-Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and organized laborers from the newfound bounties of their reconstructed nation." [from wikipedia]

In this book, published in 2010, Richardson "focused on the U.S. Army’s slaughter of Native Americans in South Dakota in 1890. She argued that party politics and opportunism led to Wounded Knee. After a bruising midterm election, President Benjamin Harrison needed to shore up his support. To do so, he turned to The Dakotas, where he replaced seasoned Indian agents with unqualified political allies, who incorrectly assumed that the Ghost Dance Movement presaged war. The Army responded by sending one third of its force in order to avoid spending cuts from Congress. After the event, Republicans tried to paint the massacre as a heroic battle to stifle the resurgent Democrats." [wikipedia]

In this 2014 book, Richardson "extended her study of the Republican Party into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book studied the entire life of the GOP, from its inception in the 1850s through the presidency of George W. Bush. The party’s founders united against the “slave power,” a small group of wealthy white men who controlled all three branches of government. These Republicans articulated a new vision of an America in which all hardworking men could rise. But after the Civil War, Republicans began to emulate what they originally opposed. They tied themselves to powerful bankers and industrialists, sacrificing the well-being of ordinary Americans. A similar process took place after World War II, when Republicans sought to dismantle successful New Deal policies and prop up the wealthy. However, in both cases, reformers within the party were able to return the GOP to its founding vision of equality of opportunity, first Theodore Roosevelt during the Progressive Era, and then Dwight D. Eisenhower, who enforced integration and maintained the New Deal. The Nixon and Reagan administrations have represented yet another fall from the GOP’s founding purpose. It's ironic, Richardson points out, that Republicans treated Barack Obama with an unprecedented level of disrespect, as Obama's rise from humble beginnings to the highest office in the nation embodied the vision of the original Republicans." [wikipedia]

In her most recent publication, Richardson argues "that America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other. United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found and expanded upon deep racial hierarchies, meaning that hierarchical values survived in American politics and culture despite the crushing defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy. Those traditions--a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color--have found a home in modern conservative politics, leaving the tremendous promise of America unfulfilled." [wikipedia]