A brief reconstruction of American Exceptionalism-Part 2

As I have shown in my previous essay how American Exceptionalism played a great role in shaping the American mind from the early Puritan colonists to the American independence.

As promised I will tell the story of American Exceptionalism from the framing of the constitution till the American civil war.

As we all know that following the victory of the American colonists in the American revolutionary war against the British, George Washington, a war hero, went on to become the first president of the newly independent Unites States of America.

In the concept of the American Exceptionalism we can start to see two separate camps of ideas emerging out among the exceptional elite. One of these groups will be the men who were progressives in nature and used to believe that “all men are equal before their creator”. These will be the people who would go on to become the “Abolitionists”, the movement that would later go on to fight for abolition of slavery in the United States. Another important group of people among the American elite were the “statists” a group represented by people like Alexander Hamilton who believed in a powerful , centralized state with a strong military , a powerful central government , a robust , national exchequer and rapid industrial and land expansion. This group of exceptional elite believed in rapid land expansion of the United States for a growing population. They believed America as an exceptional nation should push outwards to convert other peoples in the world towards American ideas.

The other group to emerge among the exceptional elite was the traditionalists and the conservatives who believed that only white, English-speaking Americans are the owners of the America. This group generally consisted of two elements i.e. the rich, white landowners of the Southern states like South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia and the fiercely independent-minded Libertarians. The white landowners supported slavery since their cotton business was dependent upon the use of slave labor. The libertarians resented any strong central authority and they were particularly critical against the taxes imposed upon them by the American government. The libertarian Americans used to have strong hatred against the British rulers for imposing taxes now that hatred gradually turned against the new American government. Their basic demand was that government should stay away as much as possible from the daily business of the people. They even resented the creation of a permanent national Army and a permanent national bank. Among one of these fierce libertarians was Thomas Jefferson who repeatedly clashed with the ideas of a powerful statist like Alexander Hamilton.

If one looks at a map of the United States in the late 1700-s and the early 1800-s, he will find a pattern. The progressives and the statists usually came from urban centers like New York and Boston which were going through rapid industrialization. The traditionalists and the libertarians were generally from more agrarian and rural states like the two Carolinas and Virginia.

The clash of these two different versions of American exceptionalism would ultimately determine the future of America in the 19-th century.

But when it came to the matter of the Native Americans both the camps held the same belief that America should expand and rapidly expropriate Native American lands since it was a divine right by the white, English-speaking Americans to do so. This can be understood very well from the following writing of Thomas Jefferson. In an 1803 letter to William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote:
“To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.... In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us a citizens or the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.”
The ruling elites of the United States were willing to expand greatly in the Indian lands for a rapid expansion and industrialization of America. There was a growing consensus among the ruling American elite across the political spectrum to push the remaining Native Americans across the river Mississippi and claim their land for industrial and agricultural expansion. The famous painting “American Progress” by John Gast in 1872 tells us about the attitude of the American elite towards the Native Americans. In this painting we can see Columbia, intended as a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she travels; she holds a school book. The different economic activities of the pioneers are highlighted and, especially, the changing forms of transportation. The Native Americans and wild animals flee. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/American_progress.JPG

By the early and middle 1800-s the Native Americans had adopted various aspects of European-American culture, including Christianity. Some of them even fought alongside the US army in some of the military campaigns against some other Native Indian tribes. But this was not going to be enough for their American rulers who were eager to take the lands of the Native Americans away with a religious fervor.
The congress passed the formal “Indian Removal Act” in 1830.Andrew Jackson was the first of the American presidents to start the forceful removal of the Native Americans, a task which will be followed by his successor, President Martin Van Buren.
The Native Americans tried to resist against the mighty American exceptionalism but to no avail. In the beginning they went through the legal recourse. The Cherokee tribe approached the Supreme Court against what efforts of the US state of Georgia to expropriate their lands. But when the Supreme Court judge John Marshall gave the verdict in favor of the Cherokees, President Andrew Jackson said the following about the verdict "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it! Build a fire under them. When it gets hot enough, they'll go.” The Cherokees’ homes were burnt down and their property destroyed and plundered. The White settlers very quickly took over the land. Private Soldier John G. Burnett later wrote "Future generations will read and condemn the act and I do hope posterity will remember that private soldiers like myself, and like the four Cherokees who were forced by General Scott to shoot an Indian Chief and his children, had to execute the orders of our superiors. We had no choice in the matter."
In the winter of 1838 the Cherokee were forced to begin the thousand mile march with scant clothing and most on foot without shoes or moccasins. The march began in Red Clay, Tennessee, the location of the last Eastern capital of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee were given used blankets from a hospital in Tennessee where an epidemic of small pox had broken out. The authorities used the tactic deliberately to finish off as many Cherokees as possible before their final removal. Because of the diseases, the Cherokees were not allowed to go into any towns or villages along the way; many times this meant traveling much farther to go around them after crossing Tennessee and Kentucky, they arrived in Southern Illinois at Giaconda about the 3rd of December, 1838. Here the starving Cherokees were charged a dollar a head to cross the river on "Berry's Ferry" which typically charged twelve cents. They were not allowed passage until the ferry had serviced all others wishing to cross and were forced to take shelter under "Mantle Rock," a shelter bluff on the Kentucky side, until "Berry had nothing better to do". Many died huddled together at Mantle Rock waiting to cross. Several Cherokee were murdered by locals. The killers filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government through the courthouse in Vienna, suing the government for $35 a head to bury the murdered Cherokee.

Martin Davis, Commissary Agent for Moses Daniel's detachment wrote: "There is the coldest weather in Illinois I ever experienced anywhere. The streams are all frozen over something like eight or twelve inches thick. We are compelled to cut through the ice to get water for ourselves and animals. It snows here every two or three days at the fartherest. We are now camped in Missippi swamp four miles from the river, and there is no possible chance of crossing the river for the numerous quantity of ice that comes floating down the river every day. We have only traveled sixty-five miles on the last month, including the time spent at this place, which has been about three weeks. It is unknown when we shall cross the river...."
Finally the removed Cherokees settled near Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
This forceful relocation of the Cherokee tribe is known as “the trail of tears”. It is estimated that 4000 Cherokees died during their forceful removal from Tennessee to Oklahoma.
Some of the Native Americans tried to resist their forceful relocation by taking up arms against the US government but ultimately they also failed. A set of wars, called the “Seminole Wars”, between the American military and the Native Americans took place during this time which ultimately sealed the fate of the Native Americans. A Native American leader Osceola fought bravely for freedom but ultimately failed. Osceola was seized at the orders of Gen. Thomas Jessup when he appeared for a peace meeting under a white flag. Osceola died in prison, probably of malaria. With the death of leaders like Osceola, the Native American resistance eventually petered out.
With these defeat the Native American fate ultimately sealed. A fiercely proud people who had lived freely in the American lands for centuries now stood on the verge of extinction. Their fate would ultimately take them to be preserved like rare animals in different reserve forests called “Indian preservation centres”, located around America.
Two important concepts that dominated the foreign policy of the USA were the “manifest destiny” and the “Monroe doctrine”. Both these two concepts were based upon the belief among American exceptional elite that America is the god-given land of purity and the concepts and ideas of the “old world” i.e. Europe should not come to the sacred soil of America. Another important belief among the American elite was that America should expand it’s ideals to the whole of the North American continent as part of a divine plan.
The “Monroe Doctrine” came to effect in 1823. The doctrine states that further efforts by European countries to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed by the United States of America as acts of aggression requiring US intervention.
The doctrine was issued at the time when Latin American colonies of Spain were revolting against Spanish rule. Had the Latin American countries succeeded it would have meant that there will be no pre-dominant European power in the Americas. In that situation the USA could easily have access to these free Latin American countries’ markets.
The American elite saw a great chance in being the hegemonic power in the Americas if the Latin American colonies become independent of Spanish rule. This is the background behind Monroe doctrine.

The manifest destiny was another important concept used by the American elite of the time. The American journalist John Louis O'Sullivan was one of the pioneers behind this idea. He called the US government in 1845 to annex Texas and Oregon County from Mexico and Great Britain, respectively. He wrote in 1845 “And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.” As I did mention earlier the basic belief behind the idea of “Manifest Destiny” was that since American ideals are divine and more virtuous they should be spread around the world as part of a divine plan to civilize the world. In this way O'Sullivan could be considered as the predecessor to the modern day American neo-conservatives who also sought to expand American system in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We can see that both “Monroe Doctrine” and “Manifest Destiny” are very much interrelated. The American exceptional elite saw a great chance in expanding their hegemony and to spread their influence throughout the Americas particularly at a time when Latin American Spanish colonies were revolting against Spanish colonial presence in the continent. The American elite thought that they would fill the vacuum when finally the Spanish would depart. They also believed that all these are part of a divine plan for exporting American ideals throughout the American continent.

Manifest destiny also influenced the policy of American government at the time towards the Native Americans. The American intellectual elite wanted the Native Americans to abandon hunting and adopt agriculture as a means of civilization. Hunting was considered as a primitive occupation. It was believed that by adopting agriculture, the Native Americans will be civilized i.e. “Americanized”.
There was a white supremacist attitude also included in the “manifest destiny” idea. A portion of the American exceptional elite believed that American land and nation were only meant for the White English-speaking Americans and the presence of large Native Americans or other non-White; non-English speaking people would pollute and dilute the divine mandate given to the White; English-speaking American people. This was expressed in the following remark by the politician John C. Calhoun in 1848 on the issue of whether America should annex and colonize the whole of Mexico.

“[W]e have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race.... We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged ... that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially over this continent. It is a great mistake.”

The inherent idea of Manifest Destiny which is to expand a state’s influence beyond it’s own borders also appealed to some other overseas ideologues. It left a profound impact on the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel who visited North America beginning in 1873. His ideas would later go on to create the German idea of “Lebensraum” which would go on to become the chief ideology of the Third Reich.

I mentioned earlier in this essay that after the American Independence, two separate groups emerged among the American exceptional elite. One of the were progressives who believed that all men were equal including the Negro slaves of the white population and the other were the traditional libertarians who believed that a white man is superior over the negroes and he certainly has the god-given right to keep them as his slaves.

The clash between these two separate ideas over the issue of slavery ultimately led to the gradual polarization of the whole American political map into two distinct parts; the north which was dominated by the progressives and the abolitionists and the south which consisted of the rich cotton farmers and conservative libertarians.

The main reasons behind the north-south divide could be considered as following:

1. The north was more densely populated and dependent completely upon industry whereas the south was more sparsely populated and dependent completely upon the production of cotton. As a consequence the north did not need slaves as much whereas the south being dependent upon agriculture needed the slaves for farming the precious cotton crop.
2. The northern people were influenced more by progressive minded Christian Churches such as the Quakers and the Methodists. Some of the Quaker leaders had earlier fought legally and constitutionally alongside the Native American Cherokee tribes for their rights. This led to a moderate and progressive and thereby anti-slavery attitude among the northern people. The south was more influenced by more fundamentalist Christian Churches like the southern Baptists who believed that slavery was a curse upon the Negroid people as a continuation of the Biblical concept of “curse of Ham”. The southern Baptists thereby supported slavery by justifying it with Biblical quotes.
3. The people in the southern states of the USA tend to be generally more conservative and traditionalist in nature. Alike their Puritan ancestors they generally tend to be more suspicious towards central government authority and they are particularly hateful towards the taxes. In the 1820-s and 1830-s the central government in Washington enacted a set of tariffs which were very unpopular among the free-natured southerners. They resented the Washington-based US central government. The whole US freedom movement against the British was based upon resentment upon the tariffs imposed by the British monarchy. Now the southern hatred of taxes and the central government found a new enemy, the Washington-based central government.
4. The founders of the US constitution did not have any clear understanding of the coming great division on the issue of slavery. In fact some of the famous founding fathers of the USA like the first three US presidents i.e. George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson all owned slaves. These founding fathers did not build any constructive constitutional mechanism to resolve the issue of slavery. They left it to individual American states to decide the issue of slavery among themselves. The southern states thought it useful to continue slavery whereas some of the northern states who thought slavery was a morally corrupt and regressive idea, banned it. So there was a great division among the individual states of the American state on the issues of slavery.
5. The fierce and proud libertarians in the south considered any law opposing slavery, passed by the government in Washington D.C. as a grave intervention in the rights of individual states by the central government. They were always eager to secede from the American Union each time any new anti-slavery legislation was passed by the federal government in Washington.

Added to this was the Zeal showed by some in the abolitionist movement like John Brown who sacrificed his life to free slaves in Kansas. The pro-slave media considered people like John Brown as terrorists. Writer Benjamin F. Stringfellow of the southern newspaper Squatter Sovereign proclaimed that pro-slavery forces "are determined to repel this Northern invasion and make Kansas a Slave State; though our rivers should be covered with the blood of their victims and the carcasses of the Abolitionists should be so numerous in the territory as to breed disease and sickness, we will not be deterred from our purpose."
These southern denunciations did not deter abolitionist movement’s premiere volunteers like Frederic Douglas or Harriet Beecher Stowe. They kept pushing for emancipation of all slaves in the USA and the banning of slavery as a practice in the USA.
Among their opponents in the pro-slavery camp stood men like the famous South Carolina Politician James Henry Hammond or the famous lawyer William Harper who believed that non-whites should do the menial jobs so that the Whites can make progress in civilization. They also supported slavery based upon a belief that a paternalistic slave-owner takes care of his slaves in their old age, thereby helping the slaves. They also believed that slavery protects the slaves in south from northern industrial exploitation.
Ultimately the two camps came to a final showdown when Abraham Lincoln was elected the president of the Unites States in 1860. Immediately the American state of South Carolina declared independence from the American Union. In the following year Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed suit. They were later followed by Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina. The secessionist states came together to form “the Confederate states of America”.
President Abraham Lincoln had no option but to call in the American army to bring the rebellious states back to the fold. It was clear that the prior motivation behind the southern states to secede was their feeling of racial superiority. This was clearly mentioned in the following excerpt of the Cornerstone speech by Alexander H. Stephens, the vice president of the Confederate states.
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
The white supremacist attitude mentioned in the above speech is clear. It will be interesting to note that not even Abraham Lincoln was a believer that the Negro and the white are equal men. Indeed he maintained throughout the civil war that his most pressing concern was preserving the unity of the union and not abolishing the slavery.

So we can see that the American civil war was indeed a war between the two different ideas of American Exceptionalism. Ultimately, for the betterment of the United States of America and the rest of humanity, the progressives won. Emancipation for the slaves throughout the United States was declared on 1862 by President Lincoln.

But the plight of the Negroes did not end even though slavery had ended. Indeed the belief that Negroes were not the equal to their white counterparts, had already taken deep root among the people both in the south as well as in the north. The deep distaste of the Whites towards the blacks was institutionalized through many different laws in the southern states whose main aim was to keep the black and white populations, separate. Though the south could not keep the Negro slaves but they could still prevent the Negroes from being equal citizens, by law. The post-Lincoln central governments in the Washington did not want to further take on the southern states for fear of igniting another civil war.

The discriminatory laws against the blacks would continue to reign until the Civil rights movement, a century later.

Meanwhile the American exceptionalism through it’s ideas of “Monroe doctrine” and “Manifest Destiny” had taken it’s first steps towards the next level of American exceptionalism; the American Empire.

In my next essay I would discuss how American exceptionalism influenced American psyche from the end of the American civil war to the beginning of the First world war.