Download ppt - The Romance of Democracy: Manifest Destiny All this will be our future history (Political Science 565)

The Romance of Democracy:Manifest Destiny

“All this will be our future history”(Political Science 565)

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• Confronted with criticism, designer Mark McNairy tweets:

• “MANIFEST DESTINY. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.”

• “I AM SORRY FOR MY SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST COMMENT. IT HURT ME DEEPLY TO BE CALLED A RACIST AS THAT IS NOT ME. I REACTED WITHOUT THINKING.”

The Age of Enlightenment

• ~1650~1800• For:– Reason

• The source of universal truth

– Scientific method• Empiricism• Nature as the source of

truth• Nature as a reserve of

resources to be exploited• Nature as a thing to be

dominated

– Intellectual freedom• Freedom to exercise

reason• Liberal, but not always

democratic• May or may not entail

political freedom– Contract

• Only consensual agreements are binding

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The Age of Enlightenment• Against– Passions

• Emotions • Bigotries

– Favorable or unfavorable• Appetites

– Tradition • Authority• Customs

– Superstition • Religious• Magical• Ritual

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The Romantic Era

• ~1780~1850• Against– Aristocracy• Political forms• Social norms & restrictions, manners

– Over-emphasis on rationalism• Deadening, mistaken• Science & reason not only sources of truth

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The Romantic Era

• For– Sincerity

• Be who you are• Authenticity • Spontaneity• Emotion

– Love, fear, awe, solidarity

• The importance of unique individuals

– Aesthetics• Folk art & customs• The experience of beauty

– Nature• Inherently valuable• More important than the

social world• Beautiful, forceful

– New politics• Liberal & radical• Nationalist

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Jacksonian Democracy

• Andrew Jackson– Hero of the Battle of New Orleans– President 1829-1837– Man of the [white] people• Bowed to the crowd at inauguration

– Promoter of more direct democracy– Removal of the Cherokee & Trail of Tears– Favored strong states rights, Union

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Jacksonian Democracy

• Jacksonian Democracy– Egalitarian– Racist– Populist– Nationalist

• Young America– Locofocos– Expansionist

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Walt Whitman’s “The Last of the Sacred Army” (1842)

• A fictional encounter with the last living veteran of the Revolution. – He is the last man alive to have served under George

Washington, and “the Last of His Witnesses.” After handling a “relic” once handled by Washington and bearing his initials, Whitman asks a philosopher, who had also come to see the Last Witness whether it is well that “such reverance [sic] be bestowed by a great people on a creature like themselves.

• The self-respect each one has for his own nature might run the risk of effacement, were such things often seen. Besides, it is not allowed that man pay worship to his fellow.” (21)– Idolatry– Can you worship something you have made?

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Walt Whitman’s “The Last of the Sacred Army” (1842)

• The Philosopher:• “Fear not,” because “the occurrences that you have

just witnessed stem from the fairest and manliest traits in the soul.” The philosopher is able to persuade Whitman that – it is well that the benefactors of a state be so kept alive in

memory and song, when their bodies are mouldering. Then it will become impossible for a people to become enslaved, for though the strong arm of their defender come not as readily to the battle, his spirit is there, through the power of remembrance, and wields a better sway even than if it were of fleshly substance. (22)

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John L. O’Sullivan• 1813-1895• Democratic party activist• Editor, literary critic, gov’t

envoy to Portugal• Influential in van Buren,

Pierce administrations• Founder, editor-in-Chief of

United States Magazine & Democratic Review– Whitman & Hawthorne– NOT Melville

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John L. O’Sullivan

• Defining the American community of belief• Moral perfection and political exceptionality

of US national identity• Expansion of US is expansion of liberty• Liberty as a political good of the first order• States’ rights & strong sense of national

mission and identity• Unconsummated revolution

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United States Magazine & Democratic Review

• “Politico-literary” journal• Nationalist project of culture• Helped to launch Nathaniel Hawthorne &

Walt Whitman to prominence• Central to “Young America”– Nationalism, democracy, expansion

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The Nation as Crusade

• The “high and holy” democratic/voluntary principle (“Introduction”)– “the fundamental element of [America’s] new

social and political system” • Defining America

– “The best government is that which governs least”– “Let man be fettered by no duty, save

His brother’s right—like his, inviolable”


• A community of belief– “full and free profession of the cardinal principles

of political faith on which we take our stand”– “true and living faith”


• US exceptional, world-historical importance• “All history has to be re-written; political

science and the whole scope of all moral truth have to be considered and illustrated in the light of the democratic principle. All old subjects of thought and all new questions arising, connected more or less directly with human existence, have to be taken up again and re-examined in this point of view.”


• The advent of the United States is a discontinuous break with history– Transforms not only the future, but also the past– Forces reinterpretation of all that has come

before and that will come– Analogous to birth of Christ


• The American interest = the universal interest– Voluntary principle = democracy = United States =

“the cause of all mankind”


• Defining the community:• What about slavery?– Vague commitment to eventual extinction of slavery– slavery was “not a political” problem, “but a moral

and economic one, the decision of which must rest, voluntarily, with the slave states themselves.”

– Matter of intrastate commerce, not rights (Democratic Review 14, 4/44, p. 429)


• Defining the community:• What about slavery?– Union composed of states, not individuals– Illegitimate to compel change in status quo– Would violate democratic principle


• Liberty > Equality– To be treated as an equal, one must be capable of

self-rule. – Some can, some can’t:– “According to their knowledge of, and respect for, the

rights of a citizen, shall their freedom from governmental restraints be measured out to them, and every privilege which they learn to exercise wisely, government will be forced to relinquish, until each man becomes a law unto himself.” (“Territorial Aggrandizement”)

The Nation as Crusade• To be considered an equal, one must first become free– Anglo-Saxon culture (not biology) makes whites most

capable of freedom• Until then, it is fair to regard the un-free individual as

an inferior– Slaves are made incapable of being free because the

brutality w/which they are treated has made them brute– Natives cannot be free because of their savagery &

primitiveness– Mexicans can’t be free because they are “semi-

barbarous”, have an aristocratic Spanish culture. They may one day be educated enough that they can be free.


• To forcibly annex Mexico would make a mockery of the voluntary principle

• It would also taint the US w/people who were not prepared to rule themselves

• Thus, Mexico should be left alone (he changed his mind)


• “The Great Nation of Futurity”– “we have, in reality, but little connection with the

past history of any [other nations], and still less with antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history.”• America is new, morally pure, and unstained by sins of

the past• A radical break from the past


• “America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminisces of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of personal conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement.”– America acts with pure motives, in the interest of

all mankind by definition


• “We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. “


• The old, the past is to be repudiated• For Americans, the only history that matters is

future history– It is not what we have been or what we have done

that makes us who we are, but what we will do and who we will be

• Americans are a people who are unmarked by sin

60 seconds of theology

• What is sin?– Not being a bad person– Not doing bad things (individual sins)

• In Christian thought, the taint of original sin is a state of moral imperfection. – A person can be very good and still be stained by sin.– Makes forgiveness necessary– Separates humans from God

• For O’Sullivan, America is beyond sin


• “We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands, that ‘the gates of hell—the powers of aristocracy and monarchy—’ shall not prevail against it.”


• America’s purpose, its telos is to spread democracy throughout the world– Telos: A purpose that is part of a things nature,

forming what it is• America is providentially destined to succeed

in this mission. Failure is impossible.• Voluntary principle = democracy = United

States = “the cause of all mankind” = The will of God


• The enemies of the United States and democracy are enemies not only of all mankind, but of God– They are intrinsically evil, satanic

• “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”– Matthew 16:18– Refers to the Christian church– America, embodying the will of God, is the new

church– By definition, the United States is a force of pure good

and its enemies agents of pure moral and religious evil


• Because the American interest is identical with the universal human interest and the will of God, everything done in the name of the American interest is by definition good, acting to promote freedom and democracy

• By the same token, every opponent of the American interest is by definition an enemy of God and all mankind


• “no lust for territory has stained our annals. No nation has been despoiled by us, no country laid desolate, no people overrun.”– The indigenous would probably disagree.– But, they cannot for O’Sullivan be free, and thus

are removed from consideration. Where they were, democracy will be.


• New York Morning News, Dec. 27, 1845:• “To state the truth at once in its neglected simplicity,

we are free to say that were the respective arguments and cases of the two parties, as to all these points of history and law, reversed—had England all ours, and we nothing but hers—our claim to Oregon would still be best and strongest. 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.”


• Manifest Destiny: manifest here means “made apparent, revealed, obvious”. Fated by Providence (the will of God) to spread across continent

• America’s moral & religious right and mission are prior to any existing legal claim.

The Nation as Crusade• “All this will be our future history, to establish on earth

the moral dignity and salvation of man—the immutable truth and beneficence of God. • For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which

are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field.

• Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?” (Great Nation of Futurity)


• The US is chosen by God for “blessed mission to spread the life-giving light of truth (democracy) to the world– America does not have a mission, it IS a mission. It

must redeem the world.

• Messianic Nation: Redeeming people of other nations, raising them to dignity of humans from bestial condition

Spot Resolutions• First. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was

shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican revolution.– Second. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was

wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico.• Third. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people,

which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States army.– Fourth. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all

other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east.

Spot Resolutions• Fifth. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, or

any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process served upon them, or in any other way.– Sixth. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the

approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the message stated; and whether the first blood, so shed, was or was not shed within the inclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it.

• Seventh. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his message declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the Secretary of War.– Eighth. Whether the military force of the United States was or was not so sent

into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defense or protection of Texas.