Posted on by rjonakait

The Inclusive Declaration of Independence and the Founding of America

The Fourth of July celebrates the United States of America and its birth, but with our current mood many only want to point out the country’s current and historical shortcomings. Every Fourth, I urge all to read the Declaration of Independence, and in doing so, it is natural to focus on the multiple ironies of its most famous phrase: “all Men are created equal.” However, as we know, in eighteenth century America, women, Native Americans, and indentured servants were not seen as equal. And, of course, slaves were not equal. Any fair assessment of our history acknowledges, as Thomas E. Ricks states in First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020), that slavery was not a “stain” on the country; it was woven into the original fabric. And that weft and warp made the celebration of liberty painful to many Americans throughout our history, which was perhaps most powerfully stated by Frederic Douglass on July 5, 1852. Just as the Declaration should be regularly read, so too should this speech. (Africans in America/Part 4/Frederick Douglass speech (pbs.org.)

The Fourth of July is our birthday, however. Some might temper a child’s birthday celebration with a discussion of the child’s shortcomings, but I would hope that the major thrust of the party is, in fact, to celebrate the kid. We should be realistic in assessing our country, but there has always been much to celebrate, and the Fourth is a time of celebration. Because it is so easy to mock the Declaration’s equality statement, it is too easy to overlook the many ways that in its founding the country also furthered egalitarianism and inclusiveness.

We know many of the Declaration’s phrases—“When in the Course of human Events”; “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”; and others. But we often miss something about the tenor of the Declaration as a whole. There are no classical allusions or references. By eighteenth century standards, the language is simple. The document was not written for the elite peers of those who signed the document but for a wide swath of what were to become Americans.

Its logic demanded an inclusive appeal. The Declaration asserts that a government derives “their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed” not from the Divine Right of Kings. It declared “the Right of the People” to change government. The Declaration with these contentions could not just be addressed to an elite, aristocratic audience. It +was not directed to the enslaved, but it was seeking the approval of almost everyone else—the farmer, the joiner, the tavern owner, the schoolteacher, the sailors, the ship captain, the log splitter, and yes, the slave owner and trader. For an eighteenth-century document, its intended audience was remarkably inclusive.

The notion of the consent of the governed was a radical, egalitarian break from America’s English roots, and the emerging country’s conception of “the people” was much broader than almost anywhere else in the world. This is reflected in who could vote. Today we note the shortcomings of a franchise limited to propertied white males, but we seldom consider, as Jill Lepore does in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018), that a higher percentage of people could vote in the colonies than in England. The franchise was narrow by modern standards, but it was broad for its time.

Part of the reason for the inclusiveness of the Founding Era’s America was the high rate of literacy among its people, perhaps the highest of any country of its times. The seventeenth-century Pilgrims, Puritans, and others who settled here held beliefs that rejected an authoritarian church. They believed that the eternal truths came from the Bible, not from an authoritarian church, and, therefore, it was important that people could read the Holy Book. Literacy was stressed as well as the ability of each person to reason. Jefferson and the others may have expected that the Declaration would be read out to those assembled in taverns and inns, but they also knew that many people would read it for themselves, and all were expected to think and reason about the document, which led to its inclusive appeal to the people.

The Declaration did mention “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and the signers said that they had acted with “a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence,” but it did not beseech God, a god, or Jesus Christ for independence. Just as some only criticize the Declaration for its hypocrisies without recognizing its advances, some focus on the listing of God and divine providence and conclude erroneously that the Declaration was an act of religious faith, or, more particularly, the signers’ Christianity. But these references, which include the almost pagan formulation of “Nature’s God,” were not invocations of any particular divinity to grant them a new country. Government depended on the consent of the governed, not on divine will, and the appeal was to the people, not to some version of God. The Declaration’s wording was inclusive; it did not exclude any particular believer or any nonbeliever from its ambit. It rejected the too-often divisiveness of religion and relied on the reason of the people.

This lack of a religious appeal is not surprising. Thomas Ricks shows in First Principles that neither Christianity nor any other religious influence was prominent in the Revolutionary period. This only began to change in 1815. He reports that there was one minister for every 1500 people in 1775 America while there was one for every 500 by 1845. Scott L. Malcomson writes in One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventures of Race that in 1790 only one in ten white Americans was a member of a formal church. Jill Lepore in These Truths agrees that the country was founded in one of its most secular eras.

Of course, slavery existed throughout the country when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and we should not forget how that institution shaped our country. Nevertheless, for their time, the Founders also created an egalitarian and inclusive government in ways we now seldom appreciate. For example, unlike many of the state and foreign governments of the time, the United States had no property qualifications to hold office. In an era when they were common, no religious tests were required for holding office. And we seldom notice that the new country paid its officials. Many governments did not, so only the rich who could afford to be uncompensated could hold office. Unlike in other countries, all whites, or at least all white males, could hold office.

The new country also broke from history and the practices of most countries by having no hereditary offices. A formal aristocracy died in the United States. Revolutionary America also moved to a more equal society by repealing primogeniture laws, which dictated that the firstborn male child would inherit his parent’s entire estate. This extraordinarily egalitarian reform, whose importance is seldom noticed today, was led by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia.

A related change in property law was also happening during this time. Under English law, aliens could buy property, but they could not inherit it. Aliens could sell the land they owned, but they could not grant it in a will. Instead, on death, an alien’s property went to the state. Revolutionary America began to repeal such inegalitarian laws, helping to make the country more inclusive and prosperous.

The country’s first naturalization law had some of the same characteristics as the Declaration of Independence. It showed simultaneously both racial restriction and social inclusiveness. The law limited naturalization to free, white citizens who had lived in the country for two years. We, of course, notice that nonwhites were excluded. (“Free” meant indentured servants could not be naturalized until they completed their periods of indenture.) Blacks could not be naturalized until 1870, and other nonwhites could not be naturalized until well into the twentieth century. There was no legal definition of whiteness. When areas of Mexico became part of the United States in the early1850s, the former Mexicans of those lands were made citizens, and there was an implicit recognition that they were white. The Supreme Court dealt with whiteness and naturalization several times and concluded that Asians and South Asians were not white but that Syrians and Armenians were. In 1922 the Supreme Court held that a high caste Sikh was neither white nor black and could not be naturalized. He had fought for this country in World War I.

However, in addition to noting the racial restriction, we should also consider the inclusiveness of this law. It did not impose a property requirement for citizenship. The rich and the not rich could become citizens. Aristocratic origins did not matter. There was the racial limitation, but no national origin requirement. There was no religious test. At a time when Catholics could not hold office in England and Jews could not become citizens in many places, they could in the United States.

We should keep both racial restrictions as well as these inclusions in mind when we consider this country’s origins. The founding era accepted an institution whose ramifications have troubled us throughout our history, but it also gave us foundations for much of what is good in this country.

I am sure that some will mostly criticize America on the Fourth, which is their right. And I am sure that some will call such critics unpatriotic, which is their right.

Patriotism has often been a contentious concept. Vicksburg, Mississippi, offers an example of its fragility. Exactly four score and seven years ago to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to American General Ulysses S. Grant after a forty-seven–day siege. This was certainly one of the most important actions of the war because it gave control of the Mississippi River to the Americans and severed the confederacy.

Thus, July 4, 1863, was another Fourth of July for patriotic Americans to celebrate, but Vicksburg didn’t see it that way. The town did not honor the Fourth of July for the next eight decades. They continued to identify as confederates, not as Americans. Vicksburg simply ignored Independence Day until after World War II when General Dwight Eisenhower visited the town on the Fourth. Even so, Vicksburg did not want to celebrate the United States. It called the celebrations during Eisenhower’s visit a “Carnival of the Confederacy,” a title I am told that was dropped only when the country and Vicksburg celebrated the Bicentennial in 1976. I’m not sure what to make of their tenacious grasp of a different brand of “patriotism.” I guess I’m just glad that they finally celebrate along with the rest of us.

And I hope all Americans can find something to celebrate this Fourth of July.

Posted on by rjonakait

Trump’s Uncanny Inheritance

Whenever I listen to a minute or two of one of his rallies (which is as long as I can tolerate), I admire Donald Trump’s speaking ability. This is not the speechifying of many public figures. It is not like the famous speeches we may remember. It is different from JFK’s pronouncing that the U.S. was going to the moon; different from MLK’s I Have a Dream speech; or Ronald Reagan’s, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The oratory of those other figures was carefully scripted, and we knew that this was a performance for a massed audience. On occasion, Trump tries something similar, but we can always tell that he is reading words written by someone else.

Instead what I admire in Trump’s rallies is his “conversational” style. He does not seem to be talking to the massed audience all at once, but to an individual. (I say “conversational” because, of course, we don’t really think he would ever have a real conversation with anyone at his rallies or perhaps anywhere.) He has the ability to make it seem as if he is talking only to you, not just to a faceless crowd.

This makes me think about something I read decades ago about the development of popular music. Before microphones, singers sometimes used a megaphone to reach their audiences, but mostly they just projected their voice so that it could be widely heard. They were singing for a massed audience without any individuals being singled out. Think opera today. I may feel thrilled to hear the soprano, but I don’t feel that she is singing just to me. I am just one of many who is hearing her at the same time.

When amplification started, the popular culture historian I read said that at first singing styles did not change. The music was still for a massed audience. Then, according to that writer, Bing Crosby changed everything. He used the microphone in a new way that felt not that he was singing to a group, but was singing to every individual in that group. Close your eyes and listen to Crosby singing about that white Christmas. He is singing to you. It is a personal experience, not a mass one.

Trump’s strength in his rallies is that he does not talk to a crowd. He makes it seem as if he is talking to everyone personally, and that has turned out to be a powerful ability to attract and keep followers.

Trump has benefited from speaking to large public assemblages in this way. He reads the room seeking laughter and outrage from his listeners, and this serves to acknowledge them. It gives them an identity when they feel overlooked and some sort of hope that he can make their lives better.

In these rallies he is an heir to a much older America where people got education and entertainment by hearing speakers and lecturers. America’s golden age of oratory was from roughly 1870 to 1925, a time before the mass media of radio and television had permeated the nation. What there was instead was an extensive railroad network. Able to appear in towns of all sizes, speakers utilized this network to entertain and inform. People like Frederick Douglass, Emma Goldman, William Jennings Bryan, and Clarence Darrow may have had other careers, but they all were on the lecture circuit. For example, Frederick Douglass edited a newspaper and wrote much, but he was perhaps most widely known for his oratory, which not only spread his views but earned him sizeable sums.

These speaking tours must have been exhausting because the speakers were almost constantly on the move. Emma Goldman, for example, made 321 speeches in a year. In breaks from the Scopes trial in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, Darrow road the rails to Chattanooga and elsewhere to speak, and Bryan also appeared at auditoriums whenever the trial was in recess. Wherever such speakers appeared, they gave audiences their money’s worth, speaking for more than an hour, eliciting laughter and outrage as they tried to get the audiences to adopt their views. Trump may not know who these people were (When president Trump said, “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”), and he certainly does not espouse the racial views of Douglass or the pro-labor, anti-capitalist views of Goldman, the true populism or religious faith of Bryan, nor the populism or agnosticism of Darrow. Even so, at his rallies he in essence shares a legacy with these and similar people. I can’t imagine he knows who they are, but if he did, he would not see them as kindred spirits; He would only despise them.

Posted on by rjonakait · 2 Comments

The Lost Trip

An autumn trip to upstate New York has much to offer. The drive north through the central part of the state goes through lovely country of welcoming rises affording broad vistas. The farms look prosperous with well-painted red barns offset by what are now the tawniness of fallow fields satisfyingly spent from the summer’s efforts. The fields are now highlighted with the yellows of goldenrod. You pass Indian lands with casinos and cheap smokes to find forests with tall pines spreading their green. But, of course, you want to see the maples and elms, the ashes and horse chestnuts. The colors become more vibrant the further north you go.

As you approach Canada, the late afternoon is not cold but crisp, and a deep breath opens the nasal passages to new smells. It all calls out for hot, spiced apple cider, and that can be found in abundance. Upstate New Yorkers have been known as apple knockers. Perhaps that was meant to be derogatory, but it should convey that upstate New York is a wonderful place for apples of dozens of varieties. No one should spend an autumn without the exhilaration of crunching into a crisp apple. And, of course, although it may be good all year round, an apple crisp for dinner’s desert with local ice cream (for there are many dairy farms in upstate New York) is almost required during the fall. And, for breakfast, go for warm apple pie with a wedge of sharp cheddar. Maybe not every day of your life, but at least once each year in upstate New York.

And then there is the town that is the destination. It has an uncrowded wonderful museum showing how photography transformed the world and its art. Another museum allows for thoughts about how play and amusements have changed as toys have evolved. You learn more about some nineteenth century Americans who lived in the town and made this a better America, and you wonder if there is still time for you to leave more of a legacy.

You stay at a historic inn and meet interesting people who are as eager as you are to see the fall colors. You eat breakfasts of innovative dishes there but eat dinner in the former railroad station that now houses an award-winning barbecue restaurant.

These were just some of things I planned to write about after our planned trip upstate this week. But instead, I got Covid—feeling better, thank you for asking, but still some lingering effects—and we did not make the journey.

Posted on by rjonakait

Statues and the Executive Order

Peacefully and violently, many have questioned some of our public statues and monuments. Trump responded by issuing an executive order.

He prefaced the order by saying, “Their selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or understanding.”

Trump went on to command: “It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property. . . The Attorney General shall prioritize within the Department of Justice the investigation and prosecution” of such matters. The order concludes: “This order is not intended to, and does not, affect the prosecutorial discretion of the Department of Justice with respect to individual cases.” Prioritize, but you still have all your discretion. Prosecute, but only “as appropriate.”

What, then, does the executive order do? One thing it fails to do is to give guidance on what duties within the DOJ should be given shorter shrift. If Department of Justice attorneys shift priorities to statues, then other matters in the DOJ bailiwick will have to have a lower priority. What now should get lesser attention? Immigration? White collar crimes? Antitrust matters? Drug crimes?

But what I most noticed is that the president said that others have a “deep ignorance of our history.” He said something similar a few years ago in response to a movement to remove memorials to Confederate soldiers. President Trump then said that he was “sad” at the removal of “our beautiful statues” and that “you can’t change history, but you can learn from it.” I wonder, however, if Trump applies these statements to himself. Has he ever sought to learn about our history after looking at those beautiful statues?

The president has a home in Manhattan’s Trump Tower. It is a short distance from a great, amazing, huge collection of public statues and monuments—Central Park. I wonder how often he has gazed at them and was inspired to learn more history.

The southeast corner of Central Park, the closest entrance to the Park from Trump’s penthouse, is only a few minutes’ walk (or more likely, a few minutes’ golf cart ride) from the Tower. There he would have encountered a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman on horseback. If looking at the monument inspired him to read about that General, he might have learned that Sherman’s capture of Atlanta is credited with guaranteeing Abraham Lincoln’s re-election and thereby the defeat of the Confederacy. Lincoln pledged to preserve the Union; his opponent was expected to make peace with the Confederacy. Does Trump think about what would have happened had Sherman failed at Atlanta? He may not think about what it would have meant for slavery and Blacks or the cotton trade and the New York financiers who backed it or how it would have affected our country’s expansion into the territories, but surely you might think that he would wonder how Mar-a-Lago and his Charlottesville winery would have been affected if they were now in the Confederate States of America.

If he sought to learn more about Sherman, he would learn how important the defeat of the Confederacy was to this American patriot. He could learn that Sherman, like many others of his era, had changing views about Blacks; that thousands of freed slaves joined his March to the Sea; that he settled thousands of the recently-freed on land expropriated from Southern whites, in what were some of the first actions of Reconstruction. Trump might be inspired to learn more about Reconstruction; its end in 1877 that wiped away many of these gains for the former slaves that had been initiated by Sherman; and the institution of Jim Crow that did much to shape our present nation.

Trump might learn that Sherman declined the Republican Presidential nomination of 1884 by saying, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” Would he find this amazing? If you don’t want to do the work of a President, you should figure that out and say so before running for the office.

A block away from Sherman’s likeness are statutes of Simòn Bolivar, the Venezuelan who is known for liberating much of South America from Spain, and José de San Martin, the Argentine who helped liberate both Argentina and Peru from Spain. He might learn from these figures that Latin Americans do not look kindly on foreign powers trying to dictate to them. But, of course, if Trump had learned this, he probably would not have made some of his statements about Venezuela and Mexico.

A short hike, or even shorter ride, from these men on horseback is Balto’s statue. Balto was the Siberian husky that led a final team of sled dogs delivering diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, a story that was covered breathlessly by newspapers worldwide. Surely there are lessons to be learned here about humanitarianism and the mainstream press. And perhaps the president might also realize that he ought to have a puppy.

Maybe Trump has seen these statues near his penthouse, and though I find it doubtful, even learned something from them. I am more confident, however, that Trump has not learned from a statue at the other end of the park from the one of Sherman. It is near 110th Street, which borders Harlem. There he could see a statue of Frederick Douglass. Enough said.

Central Park has, not surprisingly, more statues and memorials, including ones of Beethoven, Christopher Columbus, Robert Burns, and many others. But perhaps the most important one to visit if you are in the park these days is on the east side of the park near 74th Street—Alice in Wonderland. Surely there is much to contemplate at her feet.