Dispute #2: the Monolithic (less slaves) Unity of Antebellum America around Conquest

["Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The sweeping nature of Anthony's generalizations leave his position very
vulnerable from just about any angle. Let's just touch on just a few of
them...

>From the very inception of American civilization--back in the colonial
period--the British colonists made the first original American capital
crime--the first they'd kill you for on this side of the Atlantic (in
addition to all the things they'd kill you for overseas)...this was the
crime of running away to live with the Indians.  They adopted this
because a very reasonable portion of the early English settlers here
took a look at the founders/owners of things like the Virginia Company,
then at the Indians, and were quite sanely crossing over and becoming
Indians themselves.  The rulers saw this kind of white flight as so
overwhelmingly treasonable...to the king, to the company, to Christ, to
the white race, etc. etc. etc.

Multi-racial "maroons"--communities of refugees opting to live outside
of European society in the New World--were endemic to European
settlement here.  My "Borderland Visions" in a recent number of MONTHLY
REVIEW covered enough of the U.S. experience with "maroons" to
demonstrate just how common these things were.

Would these sorts of things have been possible if Anthony was correct in
asserting that the whites of all classes (and, presumably, those blacks
not held as slaves) were united behind the project of western expansion
and conquest?

On the policy of Indian Removal, there were obvious precedents of all
sorts, but its institutionalization as the default U.S. policy was
established by Jackson and the Democrats, and the initial removals were
on the largest and most dramatic scale when they were moving the
"civilized nations" from the South...making their world safe for, among
other things, plantations and slavery.

Not only was there not a clear and universal agreement about this, but
the split was evident in ruling circles itself.  The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled against the State of Georgia and in favor of the Cherokee Nation
which had took the issue into the courts.  Jackson used the army to
remove them anyway.

The Southern Democrats got almost all of the appointments in the Office
of Indian Affairs and benefited tremendously as individuals from the
carefully structured official monopoly imposed on commerce with the
Indians, etc.  This continued right up to the Civil War.

The third-party advocates of the 1850s (the Republicans) were clearly
divided on this in a way that the Democrats (and Whigs) had not been.
William H. Seward was clearly as interested in conquest and expansion as
the Southern Democrats.  Abraham Lincoln and others saw U.S. Indian
policy as a disgrace on many levels...and the first really militant
white advocates of Indian rights came out of this movement--John Beeson,
Thomas Henry Tibbles, etc.

The little labor movement in the cities of that period was far removed
from all of this, but insofar as it addressed the matter, it was clearly
sympathetic to the Indians and blamed removals and Indian wars on land
speculators, "monopolists," and the same set of villains who were
oppressing working people in the white world.  I think they hit the nail
on the head.

It should also be noted the working class based movement for radical
land reform in the United States detonated a massive petition drive to
the U.S. Congress.  As many as a quarter of million Americans petitioned
the Congress for democratic land redistribution.  At the core of this
movement, the National Reform Association (praised by Marx and Engels)
saw these things in terms of equal access for Indians, Mexicans, blacks,
and women along with propertyless white men.

Almost all of the land we're discussing, btw, were in the states not the
western territories.  A large part of the state of Illinois remained
"public lands" as late as the 1850s.  This was what they were
petitioning government to divide.

All those issues came together as the United States tried to deal with
the vast territorial acquisitions won by James Knox Polk's
administration in the War with Mexico 1846-48.  That conflict was very
controversial outside of the South, and a lot of professional soldiers
(including U.S. Grant, E.A. Hitchcock, etc.) explicitly described it as
a wicked war of conquest, waged in the interest of the slave power.
Pulpit and press across the North denounced it.  In the end, U.S.
victory in that conflict destroyed the unity of the Democratic party,
severing much of its Northern wing, and left the Southern Democrats
unable to dominate the politics of the nation as handily as they had
earlier.

Most importantly, the insurgent political movement of the 1850s called
itself "republican" in an explicit repudiation of the "imperial"
politics of the South.  Alvan E. Bovay, the New York land reformer came
up with the name and it was adopted by the first public meeting to call
for such a party--that at Ripon, Wisconsin in February 1854...Ripon was,
btw, a recently dissolved socialist community, the Wisconsin phalanx
("Ceresco").  Both he and the man who publicized this name
nationally--Horace Greeley--were quite clear as to the anti-imperial
goals of the early Republicans.

All this provides us with evidence of a complex and dynamic
society...one in which "the lower orders" haven't simply gone along with
the agenda of the high and mighty, including the agenda of conquest
fostered by the dominant Southern faction of the ruling class that had
clear mastery over the U.S. before 1848 and largely had its way
thereafter until the 1860 election.

In sum....Anthony says that all he really wants to do is to understand
the past, as do I.  Someone with that goal has to be open to possibility
that just maybe we weren't born with all the answers.  History is about
trying to get it right.  That requires examining evidence and building
an understanding on that evidence.  That means we all have to be open to
learning new things and actually thinking about them.

Anthony--who I never met and do not know--says he's just trying to
understand history and that I'm quibbling with what he calls his "ideas"
because I just don't like him or something.  He seems to think that
these matters are all about him and his ego vs. me and my ego.

Fundamentally, Anthony's assertions just don't jibe with the evidence.
They wouldn't if I were not here to say that they don't jibe with the
evidence.  They wouldn't if I had never been born, and they wouldn't if
I were making those assertions myself.  They wouldn't if everyone else
on this list proclaimed those assertions to be a brilliant and Anthony
the next Marx.  This would be odd, given that "Marxism" he asserts
ignores class differences and conflicts, and misunderstands the internal
dynamics within the ruling class and the overall politics of dual power,
but I've seen odder things.

I've called for referring any further discussion with Anthony because
we've gone 'round offlist on this.  He offers an "idea," to which I
respond with evidence, which he refutes on the grounds that I don't like
him and am picking on him.  I'd like to see a different response from
him, at long last.

Solidarity!
Mark L.




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