American History part 1 -- from Revolution to Fracture

A New World. 
1. Who would a new world attract? Certainly the adventure seekers and the innovators. Also, those looking for new ways to make money. Some were running away from a bad situation. And of course, the ill-intentioned, looking to get away from the law. Finally there were the people already here, just waiting to be crowded out.

Might there be gold? Surely there were all sorts of goods to exploit, said the Spanish, who destroyed the Aztecs and Incas to get at them. The Dutch West India Company, the Plymouth Company, and the Virginia Company all came to get rich. There was tobacco to be farmed, which would soon bring enslaved Africans to do the farming.

The Puritans sought freedom from the Church of England -- after briefly trying to take over England themselves. They couldn't force their ways on England, so they looked for somewhere else to do it. In Massachusetts, they could finally impose their freedom on everyone -- for a few years, at least. Mary-land was Catholic. Virginia and Georgia were Anglican. Pennsylvania was Quaker. 

After a century of religious wars, America decided it was best to let people worship their own way. This new land would not have an official church. There would be a wall between the church and state. Jefferson called it the separation of church and state.

2. The Spanish did better in the south. The French did ok in the north. England would rule the middle. Thirteen colonies. A rowdy bunch. 

They made the mistake of thinking they were British citizens -- who should be treated like British citizens. Worse still, they were filling their heads with all sorts of silly ideas: that all men were created equal, that people had certain inalienable rights, that governments should answer to the governed. Imagine the audacity. "No taxation without representation." Really? 

Clearly, they didn't understand how King George III saw things. He was the king. They were his servants, the help. They should do whatever he said. And he had bills to pay, thanks to a war he just finished. So, tax them he did. 

And they got angry. 

You know what happens when people get angry. Some of them shout. Then some nervous soldiers shoot them. The king thinks, "Serves them right. They should respect authority." Then they get angrier. Then some of them drop a few million dollars worth of tea in a harbor. Then the king gets angrier. And the whole thing just escalates.

They appeal to him. But he's the king. More shouting. More shooting. Pretty soon you have these high minded colonists writing declarations. They're posting, "Give me liberty or give me death" on social media. They're creating an army, well a voluntary militia using their own guns. 

That's when it stopped being a protest. That's when it became a revolution.

Out of Many, One?
3. What do you do you with thirteen colonies, each with different economies, grudges, and versions of faith? How do you turn them into a country? 

You start with some words. Big ones. Self-evident truths. Unalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t a constitution. It wasn’t a law. It was an argument. A manifesto, really. Directed at King George. And also the world. And just maybe even themselves. 

They were trying to throw off a king. They needed some something that sounded like justice. Something that rang eternal. Something grounded in nothing less than the Creator himself.

"All men are created equal." Of course, they didn’t really mean everyone. Women? Not really. The people who already lived there when they arrived? Definitely not. The enslaved Africans farming their land? Not even close. They didn’t get a seat at the table -- not even a folding chair. 

But the words were out there now. And words have a way of haunting their writers. As a black man would later write in 1935, "Let America be America again... America never was America to me."

They would somehow win. It was almost a miracle -- ragtag militias defeating the world’s most powerful empire. Leading them was a quiet, unflashy man named George Washington. And when the war was over, he did something nearly unheard of. He stepped down.

Following the example of the noblest of ancient Romans, Washington gave up power. Others would have gathered a mob and stormed the halls of authority to keep their fist tightly around the reins of power. Not Washington. And in so doing, he helped make space for something even more unusual than revolution.

A republic.

4. The colonies were now states. What was the proper balance between the states and this new government thing? Version 1 gave more power to the states. It was called the Articles of Confederation. It lasted about as long as a bad group project. States printed their own money, taxed each other, and ignored Congress like it was a substitute teacher. 

The founders quickly realized that revolution was easier than unity.

Enter the Constitution. Drafted in 1787 in a locked room in Philadelphia. It was part blueprint, part peace treaty. It gave the federal government real teeth. The government could tax, raise an army, and regulate trade. 

It also built in checks and balances. Three equal branches of government. The president was like the CEO of a company. Efficient. The Congress set the rules and passed laws. The judiciary was like a referee to say when the others had stepped outside their lines or broken the rules. The system would only work if they all kept their ends of the deal.

It was careful. Strategic. And full of compromises.

Take the Senate. Two representatives from every state no matter how big or small. Or the Electoral College. It was a way to let elites keep a hand on the wheel. Or the Three-Fifths Compromise. It was an agreement to count enslaved people as partial persons for political math, while denying them any actual rights. That one wasn't just tangled. It was morally rotten.

And yet, the document worked. Mostly. It got ratified. As long as they would add a Bill of Rights, which was essentially an insurance policy against tyranny.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even entirely democratic. But it was a system that could be improved over time. In theory, it was strong enough to hold together a messy, aspiring republic. And it was flexible enough to let that republic grow into its lofty words.

5. As I said, the first amendments to the Constitution were the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech -- we can badmouth the government without getting arrested. Freedom of religion. We can be Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists and freely practice our religion here. Congress can't pass laws that assume specific religious beliefs. The press can publish whatever it wants and not get hauled to jail.

The government can't search our houses without probable cause and a warrant. You have to have evidence to arrest us. Everyone here -- legal or illegal -- has a right to due process. Everyone has a right to a fair trial. We are innocent until proven guilty.

Still more. We have the right to remain silent. The right not to be tortured. We have the right to own a gun -- as long as we don't shoot people at random with it.

Anything else is anti-American. Anything else has no place here. Anything else should be arrested itself and thrown into jail -- with due process and a fair trial, of course.

So they made a government. Now they had to figure out what kind of country it would be.

Alongside the politics, something else was going on -- faith. America’s early years were marked by bursts of religious passion known as the Great Awakenings. The First Awakening in the 1700s stirred revivalism and helped spark ideas of equality before God. The Second Awakening, in the early 1800s, fueled movements for abolition, temperance, and women’s rights. 

Religion wasn’t just in church. It was shaping how Americans thought about justice, purpose, and who got to speak for God.

The Rise of the People
6. The Constitution gave them structure, but not identity. That came slowly, through trial, error, and power struggles. The first few presidents were mostly elites. They were men who had land, education, and powdered wigs. 

Washington set the tone with his dignity and restraint. Adams was brilliant but cranky. Jefferson wrote poetry about liberty while owning over 600 slaves. Madison built the system and then watched it buckle under the brief War of 1812. (The British burned the capitol after we tried to invade Canada.) Monroe tried to soothe it all with a “Doctrine” that said the U.S. should take over everything from sea to shining sea.

Still, the country was growing. It was growing physically and politically. The Louisiana Purchase doubled its size. Steamboats, canals, and cotton began stitching together a national economy. 

The stitching came at a cost. Native peoples were being pushed out. Slavery was expanding west. The North and South were already starting to eye each other suspiciously. And under it all, the democratic spirit was starting to boil. The common man wanted in.

Thus spake Andrew Jackson. The first Democrat.

He wasn’t like the others. No Harvard. No powdered wig. He was a self-made frontiersman, a war hero, and a political battering ram. His followers called it a movement. His critics called it mob rule.

Jackson believed the people -- well, the white, male, property-owning people -- should steer the country. He dismantled the Bank of the United States. He waged war on elites. He used the veto like a sword. He didn’t just expand democracy. He redefined it, for better and worse.

His presidency was populist, combative, and fiercely loyal. He rewarded his supporters with government jobs -- whether they were competent or not. He ignored Supreme Court rulings when he didn’t like them, putting the Constitution on shaky ground. And when it came to Native Americans, he was brutal.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced entire nations from their homelands. The Trail of Tears wasn’t just a tragedy. It was American policy -- might makes right. Thousands died so that white settlers could move west. Some Christian nation.

So yes, Jackson was a man of the people. But not all the people. Only the ones he liked. He showed the country what democracy could do. And what it could destroy.

A republic is more than a democracy. It is a democracy with rules. Rules that protect the minority and the powerless from the majority. Just like the Bible teaches. Or is supposed to.

The logic behind Jackson’s presidency soon had a name. Manifest Destiny. It was the belief that America was meant to expand across the entire continent. It sounded noble. In practice, it meant running over people, waging war on Mexico, and dragging slavery westward. It wasn’t just expansion. It was violence dressed up as national purpose.

The Road to Civil War
7. The country kept growing. Land, population, ambition. But under all the steamboats and railroads and waving fields of wheat was a slow, spreading fire. It was the question everyone wanted to avoid.

What do you do with slavery?

The North didn’t want to compete with it. The South couldn’t live without it. And the West -- new, raw, unsettled -- became the battlefield where that conflict played out. Every time a new state wanted in, the fight started again. Slave or free? Stay in balance or tip the scales?

They tried compromise. Missouri. 1820. Let one slave state in, one free state in. Keep the scales balanced. Then came the Compromise of 1850. California free, but runaway slaves had to be returned. It basically nationalized slavery enforcement. Even Northerners had to help.

Then came Kansas-Nebraska. 1854. “Let the people decide,” they said. They called it popular sovereignty. What they got was bleeding Kansas. Warfare in the prairie over whether people should be property.

Enslaved people kept fleeing. Kept suing. Kept speaking. Frederick Douglass. Sojourner Truth. Harriet Tubman. They weren’t debating. They were escaping, resisting, fighting. The South tightened its grip. The North started to listen. And the Supreme Court? It doubled down.

In 1857, the Court told Dred Scott he wasn’t a citizen. Couldn’t sue. Had no rights the white man had to respect. It wasn’t a ruling. It was a spark in a powder keg.

The country wasn’t cracking. It was already cracked. John Brown tried to end slavery with bullets. The South saw abolitionists as terrorists. The North saw the South as a moral disgrace. The center didn’t hold. Then came 1860.

Abraham Lincoln. The first Republican. 

Back then, the parties were flipped. In the mid-1800s, the Democrats were the party of slavery. Republicans opposed it. Democrats were mostly in the South. Republicans were mostly in the North.

Abraham Lincoln didn’t run on ending slavery outright. He ran on stopping its spread. That was enough. The South seceded before he could even unpack. One by one, states broke away. They didn’t trust him. Or democracy. Or the idea that their world could change.

And so, war.

The Civil War wasn’t just about states’ rights. It was about whose rights counted. Did the spirit of the Constitution protect slavery -- or people. The war would show whether the Union could survive a moral cancer it had tried to manage instead of remove.

Lincoln led not just with words, but with resolve. He didn’t free the slaves at first. But as the war ground on, the stakes became all or nothing. If there would be a Union, it would not keep people in chains any more. The Emancipation Proclamation turned the war into something more than politics. It made it a reckoning.

The cost was staggering. Over 600,000 dead. Cities burned. Families shattered. The South, once rich on cotton and cruelty, was broken. But so was the illusion that America could sidestep its original sin forever.

The war ended. The slaves were free, at least on paper. The Union was preserved -- barely. And a new question emerged. What kind of nation would rise from the ashes?

What would it do with its freedom now?

Gen Eds H5b: From Enlightenment to the American Revolution

This is the second part of "From Crowmell to Napoleon." I've split the fifth period in this history series into three posts.

These are posts in the World History part of my "General Education in a Nutshell" series. This series involves ten subjects you might study in a general education or "liberal arts" core at a university or college. The first topic in the overall series was philosophy. So far in the world history section:

• World History Overview
• From 9-11 to the Present
• From the Cold War to the Millennium
• From Waterloo to World War II
• 5a. The French Revolution 

___________________________
The American Revolution
6. The American Revolution preceded the French Revolution by only a few years, and there is a strong possibility that the French Revolution would not have taken place if the American Revolution had not. On the one hand, the American Revolution inspired French revolutionaries, not least that the ideals of the Enlightenment need not just be ideas. They could actually be put into place in a real government, in a real Constitution.

On a more concrete level, the French monarchy expended significant resources in helping the American revolutionaries, which accentuated France's own economic crisis. Without this economic and social crisis, the French revolution would not have taken place, despite the ideas. Ideas scarcely have legs unless they have a womb in which to grow. Ideas in themselves are weak. They need a concrete catalyst to explode. Without the economic and social crisis of France, the ideas themselves would not have brought revolution.

7. The causes of the American revolution were also more economic at first than ideological. Of course we also have to consider the temperament of the kind of person likely to move to America in the first place. To move so far from one's homeland in such an age suggests most colonists were either 1) adventuresome, 2) ambitious or idealistic, 3) trying to escape something, or 4) in the family of one of the above.

Some of the earliest colonists came to America to be free to practice Christianity the way they wanted to. The Pilgrims who landed in Massachusetts in 1620 were separatists who were not particularly welcome in the Church of England. Quakers, German Baptists, Puritans, Baptists--many of these were attracted to a space where they could do religion their own way without some government clamping down on them. This spirit of independence and ideological persistence, even to the point of disobeying authority, was thus part of the early genetics of the colonies.

Of course most of them then clamped down just as much on whoever happened to disagree with their own understanding of Christianity once they got here. Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were banished from Massachusetts for going against the Puritan grain. Williams went on to found the territory that would become Rhode Island, a place that modeled the attitude toward religion that would prevail in the United States, namely, one where there was no official form of religion set by the state.

Hutchinson was banished not only for teaching contrary to the leadership of the Puritan churches in Boston but for holding Bible studies as a women. Her charisma was such that the studies became very popular.

8. No doubt some came to America to escape authority and accountability in a less noble vein. It would be surprising indeed if, among many who came for reasons of hope, there were not also some who came with less virtuous designs. We plausibly see these elements come to the fore in the various rebellions that took place long before the Revolutionary War. Bacon's Rebellion (1676), Culpepper's Rebellion (1677), the rebellions of 1689, the Paxton Boys Uprising (1763), the War of the Regulation (1771)--all of these in one way or another reflected a frontier mix that included in its ranks arrogant leaders, rabble rousers, and violent men.

9. The colonists perhaps most attractive to us are the adventurers. If you were looking for the adventure of a lifetime--especially if you were idealistic and naive--surely coming to the New World was an attractive option. We think of Lewis and Clark, who mapped and cataloged the way to the Pacific Ocean from 1804-1806. We think of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.

10. If the personalities above were prone to independence and potential defiance, the distance of England made it difficult to use force to keep the common person in check. The common person was used to much more independence in America than people elsewhere, especially after the first generation to arrive. They had a taste of what independence looked like. They were not likely to acquiesce on the assumption that "This is just the way things are."

The "French and Indian War" or Seven Years War between the British and France (1756-63) not only gave the British control of Canada (from the French) and Florida (from the Spanish). It also left them with a debt that they were keen to partially recoup from the colonies themselves. The Sugar Act of 1764 hit merchants in the pocket with increased taxes on sugar, coffee, and some wines. Those taxed were not involved in the decision.

The Stamp Act of 1765 similarly put a tax on all paper documents in the colonies--newspapers, wills, deeds, even playing cards must have a stamp on it in exchange for this tax. This act of the British parliament infuriated many colonists. From this conflict more than any other came the sentiment that there should be "No taxation without representation." Those who were supposed to distribute the stamps were harassed and pressured to resign. Finally Parliament repealed the act in 1766, while making a statement that they had the right to pass any laws over the colonies that they wished.

11. But a precedent and trajectory of sorts had been set. They were set in mind to oppose any such impositions of far off bullies. They had called a convention of sorts in 1765 to make a statement to the king. The Townshend Acts of Britain were a series of acts meant to bring the colonies in line while raising revenue. One thing led to another. Boston was occupied by British soldiers. In 1770 a jittery British soldier sparked a shooting that left five colonists dead.

1773 saw the Boston Tea Party, as a group of colonists dumped a boat full of tea into the Boston harbor. The tea was yet another attempt to force the colonists to do what their far off landlord insisted they do for the benefit of the landlord's interests, with no say on the part of the tenants. After the Tea Party were the Coercive Acts in response (or "Intolerable Acts," as the colonists called them). Massachusetts self-governance was taken away.

Blood was boiling. Pamphlets were produced. Men stockpiled ammunition and guns. Meanwhile, Britain stupidly and arrogantly doubled down.

In 1774, a First Continental Congress was called with delegates from the colonies in order to petition King George III in relation to the Intolerable Acts. No response. In such case, they had already planned then for a Second Continental Congress, which convened in May of 1775. A month earlier, the colonists had drawn blood in skirmishes around Lexington and Concord ("the shot heard round the world"), on that night of Paul Revere's famous ride.

Over the course of the next year, this second Congress made last ditch attempts at reconciliation which turned to resolve to declare independence. Representation of the thirteen colonies was tightened. On July 2, 1776 they voted for independence, and they signed their Declaration on July 4.

12. The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Thomas Jefferson. In it we hear echoes of Enlightenment thinkers like the English John Locke (1632-1704), who suggested that life, liberty, and property were inalienable rights. The pamphlet writers of the days leading up to the revolution were full of such influences. Thomas Paine (1737-1809), for example, solidified popular support for the war in 1776 with his pamphlet, Common Sense, which was full of Enlightenment influence.

The original agreement between the colonies set up a confederation by the Articles of Confederation. These allowed Congress to make treaties with foreign countries, make war and peace, make coinage, and settle disputes between the states. It could not tax or regulate commerce.

This arrangement was not sufficient. There was a call for a Constitutional Convention in 1786 which took place in 1787 to put together a Constitution. Future president James Madison had already put together a coalition. He arrived early. He secured the support of early arriving delegates. "The man with the plan is the man with the power."

Again, embodying Enlightenment ideas, Madison's proposal had a division of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. This drew from French Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu (1689-1755). The Federalist Papers were put out in the days after the Constitution was proposed, 85 essays and articles by Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay urging the ratification of the Constitution by the colonies.

This took some time. Although five states passed it almost immediately, Massachusetts insisted that they would only sign if a Bill of Rights was added (something Thomas Jefferson had supported, but Alexander Hamilton had opposed). This was done after ratification, constituting the first ten amendments to the Constitution. New Hampshire was the ninth in 1788, causing the Constitution to go into effect. Rhode Island was the last of the thirteen original colonies to sign in 1790.

13. George Washington became the first US president in 1789, followed by John Adams and then Thomas Jefferson. Under Jefferson came the first major expansion. In 1803, Napoleon sold the "Louisiana Purchase" to the US to raise money for his impending war with Britain. It almost doubled the territory of the United States.

The Enlightenment
14. The Enlightenment is the name we give especially to a movement in the 1700s that glorified reason as the ultimate authority and basis for human thought and life. As an ideology, it was primarily a matter of the intelligensia of Europe, and its focal point as a movement was in France. The publication of the Encyclopédie in thirty-five volumes from 1751 to 1772 covered the gamut of knowledge from the standpoint of reason. Figures like Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and Voltaire published related works (1694-1778).

As historians look back, we can see trends and beginnings that were in play in intellectual circles before the movement received its name. So it is with the Enlightenment. The French may date it to the period between the death of Louis XIV in 1715 and the French Revolution in 1789, but we retrospectively should include intellectuals in England and France even earlier in the 1600s. And the German Enlightenment must go at least to the death of Kant in 1804.

15. The Enlightenment did not only champion reason, but also experience. What it did not champion was religion or tradition as authorities. Perhaps we can go back to Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who questioned everything in a quest for certainty. His final conclusion was that he could not doubt that he was thinking, that he at least existed, "I think therefore I am."

So Descartes suggested, like Plato two thousand years earlier, that reason was the truly reliable path to truth. He would be followed by Spinoza in the Netherlands (1632-1677) and Gottfried Leibniz the German (1646-1716).

There was however another path just as much a part of the Enlightenment as the "rationalists." These were the empiricists, those who said our senses were the only reliable path to truth. John Locke was in England, along with George Berkeley in Ireland (1685-1753) and David Hume in Scotland (1711-76).

Others who should be mentioned are Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who wrote the Leviathan in support of the divine right of kings. Then there was Rousseau, who wrote of the noble savage and of social contracts. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations attempted to set economics on a purely rational basis. Meanwhile, the scientific revolution continued, as natural law was pursued as the explanation for the way the world works.

Of course the love affair with reason would come to an end soon enough. Tired of reason's reign, romanticism would take over around the turn of the century into the 1800s.

Major Take-Aways

• Rhode Island was the model with a future, not Puritan Massachusetts. The ideal religious environment (and this fits well with Wesleyan theology) is one in which the law is based on basic morality and diverse religious groups can otherwise freely practice their religions.
• Victors in wars should apparently not be too overbearing in making the defeated pay for wars. It often comes back to bite you in the behind.
• Those who flex their muscles to show who is the boss, often later get kicked in the teeth.
• Doubling down with force on the disobedient only increases resistance and opposition.
• The early bird gets the worm. The man with the plan is the man with the power.